madrugando

I have about seven hours left in Guatemala. It is 4.30, which is positively sleeping in by my standards of late, and as my brain will not still itself, I find myself here. Any incoherence I blame on the hour, and on my farewell to chapin beers last night-- oh Moza, how I will miss you. 

It seems like an appropriate hour for waxing philosophical, for approaching a summary of the whole experience, for articulating that something I was supposedly seeking when I came and whether I found it, but the truth is that since my farewells, from Santiago and Santa Maria last Thursday and from the Suy Siquinajay family and San Andres Itzapa last Friday, I've had a hard time convincing my mind to settle. The magnitude of the change I'm willingly adopting, the absurdity of once more leaving behind people I've come to consider family and starting, if not from scratch, at least from staggering uncertainty, and the fragmentation of my understanding of the world when it doesn't include a morning check-in with Doña Elena or bouts of drawing and imaginative flourishes with Helen the three year old or gossiping with Mayra and Alicia or chasing Nacho (who is evidently dating Alicia!) and Edgar and Erik during pausa or stealing moments of conversation with Lester during the lunch hour or harassing Yeimy about her homework or debating with Cástulo whether toads eat fish or fish eat toads (as I am Seño Fish and he has become Profe Sapo), has rendered my brain all but incapable of lingering on the same thoughts for more than a few moments at a time. Every so often a face or a moment will lock me into a slightly deeper ache, but it isn't resolving itself yet into anything I can really articulate. 

I am hoping that I will be possessed with an overpowering desire to chronicle when I get home, as there is much to be documented. For now, though, this'll have to do. I'm going to go see if sleep is a possibility.