The wellspring

The dining room of the Hotel Posada Belen is something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel - it seems to stradle that line between the real and unreal in a setting that could only come from old magic. Outside in the 500-year-old streets of Guatemala City the air is loud and carcinogenicly choked on bus fumes, but behind the walls lies this tranquilo garden with three gregarious hombres cooking us up dinner, singing and laughing, oregano and candlelight filling the air and it feels like you could just sit here in their home, in time, forever. The house is full of paintings, weavings, artifacts that would delight the carbon dater. Handmade tiles lie underfoot and curved adobe archways rest above. All is good here.

I attempted to write a blog before we left Lago Atitlan, and in the last sentence all power was lost to the wind. Seems to be the theme here - throwing it all to the wind and seeing what comes your way. There is something about this country that gets at you, that strikes the core. It makes you shiver with delight and fear, it makes you feel vulnerable yet full, and, like we wanted, it makes you feel alive. Since coming to Guatemala my emotions lie right under the skin. All it takes is the right sound, smell, sight or tree branch to scratch through the epidermis, and I'm gone. The emotions just flow. I'm getting used to it, it's my new shadow, but some days I just want it to take a rest. I'm reading this book about Rigoberta Menchu and all the horrendous violence exerted against the Mayans. It's all so recent - in my lifetime, the sorrow, the rage, the struggle, you can feel it in the people, the earth here. And yet, everyday I am greeted with wide smiles.

The other trigger for me here, that's held it's hand steady on me is all the people, the children, the women with their fullsome bellies, the swollen tits of the stray dogs, the sweet smell of the watered earth. They've all made me wanton. And so as I scrunch on a chicken bus between 2 women cluching children on their laps, or I pull myself up a mountain trail being passed by a young woman with a babe swadled to her back, or when I bask in the sun on the rocks that balance above the rim of the lake - I stare down at my tight abdomen, my ribs poking through the skin, the small new scar that leads out from my womb and ponder my journey, the unknown that somehow makes my womaness seem so separate from theirs. I am not like them, my body doesn't bring forth life. And yes, my rational side soon kicks in, soothing me that it all is possible, that I have so many choices and opportunities than most of these women. I cope, I grab my composure. But it doesn't burn out the want and sometimes I'm just wrung dry. It's all around me. I'm soaked in it. And tomorrow, we leave for the orphangae. Welcome to our wellspring.