San Juan Del Sick - July 2

Sydney is pretty sick. Today she has been bedridden because she is too weak to really move. She has all of the symptoms of food poisoning of some kind. With the stress of the weekend in San Juan del Sur, she is pretty run down. She has been drinking Gatorade to replenish some lost water and electrolytes and she has eaten a single package of soda crackers. As far as I know, time is now the only other remedy.

This weekend was suppose to be a fun, relaxing time and some of it was but for the most part we were in constant motion from one thing to the next. On Friday, we left without eating breakfast because we got up with just enough time to get to Hazell’s office. I have to keep remembering that everyone is going to show up late. We were so set on getting there at 8:00 but we could have stopped to get breakfast. It is really important to take care of yourself here because otherwise it will come back to you later.
So we left for Diria, which is a small town west of Granada, only a few kilometers. We received a ride for free, one of the only times I am sure we will get somewhere free, efficient and smoothly. We arrived so that we could help with the distribution of school supplies. It was actually a very nice time to just be able to hand out something simple but to the recipients, it was a little more money in their pockets.
One girl even came on her own because her mother was an alcoholic. The teachers said she came to school everyday on her own, she did her work diligently and never skipped a beat. For a first grader you could say that she was quite motivated.
After we handed out school supplies, we got a ride to the bus station where we were to pick up the next bus. We got on the bus and stood at first but soon were able to sit down. The buses are crowded, crowded, crowded. I am sure somewhere else in the world, you could find a more crowded bus but right then and there, fat and sweaty men and women with dirty children on their laps, all crowded on an old yellow school bus 4-wheel driving through potholes and dirt roads. It was a fun time.
In the turmoil of the aged transportation, I was reading about the super conscious levels that all human beings were potentially able to acquire. It sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo but in fact at that point I was tasting what it was to be in a state of complete Emptiness. After my lesson in Spiritual Enlightenment, I could understand what it was like to be able to relate to everyone. Not based on anything but the fact that everyone has a witness, a void, an emptiness that is behind the lies of their subjective identity. Behind all communication, physical awareness and eyes is the Emptiness that each of us shares with everything else. Furthermore, there is nowhere that does not have this emptiness. As soon as I was able to see the emptiness in others I was only on the edge of relating with the mountain. It is so hard to be able to realize a mountain, an environment, the wholeness of reality. I felt like the more I tried the further away from my goal I was getting. At best, I felt a sense of relaxation and compassion for everything, every circumstance and every possibility, for the whole of the past, present and future, inside and out, together.
We arrived in Rivas, got on another bus to San Juan and it started all over again. We arrived in San Juan fatigued and sweaty. Always sweaty, always. The hostel was cheap, 6.50 a night with a private toilet and shower, a bed with a sheet and security. We went and ate at a small hole in the wall inside the market, a large hole in the wall. Even after everything we were told in the United States about proper food handling, there was no way you could always

El Dia del Gato Numbero 2 - June 27

She passed away today I am sure every moment a backwards development from life. The fits and convulsions were earfuls of intense pain and agony only to come to long enough to realize she had no idea what was going on but enough internal disease to know something might happen again. Shivering,sh,sh,sh,sh,sh,ivering, so much. We stopped feeding her because she quit eating. She would never wake up! Seizure, sleep, seizure, sleep. Pretty soon she was gone mentally I could tell after we stopped hearing her small cries for help after her first few seizures. Her face so scared, asking with every look to make it stop. We couldn’t do anything nor could we find anyone who might know the answer because they actually knew.
People tell you things even if they have no idea what the real answer is here. Ask someone where something is and they will say 4 blocks away. Ask another person and they will tell you go back to where you asked the first person.
Circles here in this city. People run circles, sweating not so much from intense labor but from walking circles in the heat trying to make things work. Things aren’t easy here.
Nothing is really baddabing baddaboom. It’s kind of like badda…….badda…..baddabi……baddabing……. baddabing badda……baddabing badda…… except that now either badda got stolen or it broke so now we are back to just baddabing……baddabing……..finally baddabing baddaboom because in one day everything managed to flow, everyone showed up on time and every part of the whole project just somehow worked.

I took her sunken, soaked body in a plastic bag and I threw her away. I wasn’t quite expecting to come to Nicaragua to witness the long, slow death of a kitten suffering from disease inflicted convulsions but I suppose at this point no matter what happens, it is what it is and it is all a part of the same thing. I will remember her, I will remember her fight, I will remember that her name was Salvadora and that one day we saved her. The next we were powerless.