Lago Atitlán

Some years ago I went to a psychic who, among other things, by way of a seemingly coincidental flip of cards, told me I would change residencies soon and travel over the course of my life more than I could currently understand. A month before my first international move, I found it peculiar, but certainly more appealing than other things she said. I have thought about that old woman in her strange house by the highway many times since in many places. If I am being honest with myself, I recognize she has some strange hold on me that I cannot shake. I would not ever say I believe her, but I certainly would not say I don't.

One such place she came to mind was on Atitlán this past weekend, deep in the heart of Guatemala. I went back a second time for a number of reasons, but there is never a bad reason to go to the lake. Nestled beneath three volcanoes and bordered by unstable cliffs, the view changes spectacularly from every corner and crevice and small town. The long breakfasts are a cause for celebration. The lake is smooth like paper in the morning with the sunrise and by afternoon it gets choppy with wind. I would relax there with a book on a balcony, sitting by a beautiful girl who makes me happy, sipping on a cold beer, any day, and I hope that my life always has time for such things in such places.

Sometime during the course of my four days there I discovered I would not be going back to the lake for some time because I will be leaving the continent as a whole. It was night after a good day, and as I sat back in a chair next to a simple girl, relishing the many moments of my simple little life, thinking about the silly state of blissful romance I had fallen into, the phone suddenly made a subtle noise signaling an email from a job I knew if I got I would have to take. It was very much the sound of life growing complicated again.

I think back on those moments often: those where one minute your life heads one direction and the next it takes a turn. Sometimes they are positive and other times negative, though Marcus Aurelius would argue they are neither. Constant change is neutral and the natural order of the world, the same way a fire burns wood and turns it to ash and the same way a baby becomes an adult and later an old man. It's certain to me that we would believe very little of our changes before they actually occur, and who the hell knows what's right.

This change is itself many things, and it would take a lot for me to get up and leave a life only in its beginning stages. But it is how I love to travel and the style of life I love to live. While the world continues to boggle my mind in its bittersweet flow from place to place, full of goodbyes and hellos and arrivals and departures, images of the lake and her radiant smile are burned into my mind and soon they will be joined by other images, fueled by this strange need to be with everyone in every place at the same time.

Colonia Virrey

My house is surrounded by one of the most peaceful (and manageable) gardens in memory. The walls are tall, made of stone, and what I imagine old colonial residencies to look like. You can vaguely hear noises from the outside -- an occasional car or dog or piece of music from a neighboring house -- but overall the walls do their job and create the illusion that your space is yours, enclosed and impenetrable by distractions or influence. For this reason I sat and read in the garden today. I did the same yesterday with the same book. I have devised the perfect positioning system for a long bench and its cushions, where it falls under direct sunlight for most of the afternoon until the sun itself disappears in that distinct moment behind the trees as dusk.

The garden is made possible by a gardener who lives out back in a small wooden shack lit by one bulb. He is old, going on blind, and spends his days living harmoniously with his little green creations. The image of him preening shrubs from a ladder is imprinted in my mind as much as the plants themselves, and his absence I believe, this far in, would certainly change the essence of our little paradisiacal escape.

I was told recently that all his sons have been killed in Guatemala City, an hour up the road. There are a million reasons one could speculate, but the sad fact is it happens all the time there. It is one of the most dangerous capital cities in the world, sprawling out in various zones rampant with corruption, narcotics, and gang-related violence. While newspapers and other things bring it close, it all feels very far away in the garden.

I drifted off into a nap today and woke up to a breeze and a significant drop in temperature. I was also a shade darker and coaxed in that layer of grass, sweat, and soil that comes with prolonged time outdoors. Then I got up, walked inside the cabin, and shut the door in an act separating the gardener's world from mine. There are those omnipresent doses of perspective that arrive each day in Central America if you give yourself enough solitary moments in a quiet garden.