Guatemalan Destiny

From the Present:

I can see why so many people believe in fate. Sometime’s its hard not to. Right now I’m tempted to believe that our futures are carved by destiny and we are led helplessly by its hand.

I’ve arrived at the place in my journals that cover my first visit to Guatemala when I was thirteen, when I came to Guatemala with my older brother (15) to build houses for some of its most impoverished people.

In an unpredictable, but now clear way, this trip led to me living here for the last four years. Now at 26, I am by only 4 days exactly twice as old as I was then, causing these entries to mark the midway point of my life. The Guatemala I visited at 13, and the one I returned to and remained in at 22 seems so different. This has less to do with changes in the country and more to do with changes in myself. What we see depends so much on the eyes we see them with.

Thirteen years ago the things I noticed were much smaller. Literally. The called me “El Hombre Insecto” because I was bug crazy. I wanted to be an entomologist and I couldn’t pass a bush without searching it for members of the usually invisible, insect world.

I came to Guatemala armed with jars and nets and the hope of adding to my already extensive insect collection. This led to some tense moments with the customs agents on my return home, which I’ll elaborate on when my journals entries reach the end of their first Guatemalan foray.

From the Past: 

February 9, 1998 – Age 13: Mission Trip to Guatemala

Squares, tons, all forming a quilt. Flowing over it is an ocean coming from a perfect sunset. This is what it is like. 

2nd Flight: 

The clouds have never seemed so low as I fly over the blanked of cotton balls. 

From the Present: 

After having raced through five years of  journal entries in the eight months since I’ve been doing the 2Points4Honesty project, this is really the first entry where I see something poetic in the writing. It’s doing more than just describing something blandly, it’s trying to preserve something. And it’s succeeded as much as one can… re-reading puts me back in that plane, thrilled to have a window seat, inspired at the world blossoming below the portal…

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