Beautiful view

Life and death...

A local tradition

Yesterday, my town was filled with a colorful parade which I was surprised to see because it had disappeared a long time ago. "The dance of the canchules"Those are people with costumes of famous (or not) characters, who dance in the streets asking money to the viewers and local businesses. I wanted to take a good picture but it wasn’t possible. However I want to share the best looking one..

A sign in the sky...

When life seems so hard,

heaven sends a splendid Messenger of hope and peace...

A delicious tradition...

November 1º is around the corner and with it the time to savor the Fiambre, a Guatemalan dish...We have started to prepare it and many hands have come to help us… but there are not enough hands when we see the mountain of green beans.

Does this "warning" work?

The message says, “Prohibited to pee here. Fine: Q100.00”
Good try… but I don’t think it works. Pigs are pigs after all. ;)

Distance and closeness....

Dreams...

Dreams...
by Fiamma

We are in your bed and your arms hold my waist firmly. I’m safe in that place and I press myself against you. I want to feel the firmness and warmth that your body gives to mine. I know that’s the place where I’ve always wanted to be, the ultimate place to stay.

Suddenly, your right hand caresses my arm looking for my hair. You play with it and the feeling is amazing. Caresses and tender and I’m happy once again. Every day is different with you, every day I discover a small piece of you. And this emotion and our frankness and sincerity make our discussions more pleasant. Between your ideology and mine, we can forge paradises.

My hand looks for your hand and guides it to its primary place, the place where it belongs tonight, this moment. There are no words just whispers, murmurs, sounds, gestures, smiles and caresses. What more than this understanding? What more happiness than this moment yours and mine?

Then, slowly, we start dreaming our dream. I dream you dream about me, that I’m with you and we love freely. I love your freedom, your spirit, your words. Beautiful words of love.

I dream your hands hold my waist, today and tomorrow…

to Eduardo...

foto: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=58801&

Clouds... only?

Despite all the bad news that fills our Guatemala today… a heaven like this makes our hopes to reborn. Am I so idealist or is just a phase? ;)

Small details...

Small details give life to the greatest works… a brushstroke in a certain strategic place changes completely the story hidden in a painting...

Old house of tiles

Life in the countryside is a peaceful haven

compared to the turbulence of the city

The veil

A soft breeze came into the room and our pores started to wake up without other preamble than the restless hand movement in our skin. That image was an invitation to cross over the veil of material world and color the future with a light touch of candor and innocence....

A charm that ends at midnight

Charm ends at midnight
by Glenda Reina

Signs: hours, words: hours, meeting: a charm that ended at midnight …

Twelve words describe our friendship or, how I have called it lately, “our midnight charm”. Ours was a fortuitous encounter with jokes and more jokes. A mutual friend was the Cupid and introduced each other through the famous “messenger”, in that anonymous world of internet… the messenger was the accomplice for our meetings. And you showed yourself as the white armor knight and a generous heart that I waited for a long time; broad mind, an insuperable sense of humor, and an irresistible personality.

Then we recognized our voices… our modulation, the accent… every vibration transmitted odors, flavors, sensations, emotions, dreams, hopes, sadness and happiness. ¡We’ve just found our paradise!

Witty phrases and creative jokes were traded… hours and hours talking… half smiles, tender and silent… even the moments of silence gave our friendship that special touch. Our friendship had become in a spiritual necessity, a way to get away from the collective solitude where we were immersed. You were my complement and my strength in my tough moments. You put me at ease in my happy moments. And I know I meant the same to you. We said it so many times.

¡Great story! ¿Don’t you think? I can imagine the whispers and the words…
-¡She found her soul mate! ¡She found the perfect man!

Well, forgive if I interrupt your surprise exclamations… There was no perfect man… there was the fantasy of the perfect man. The one who see beyond the appearance and cares only for our “personality”. ¡Ja!

Do you remember how nervous we were in our “first date”? We have talked only about our likes and dislikes, dreams and disappointments; but we never said a word about how we were physically. That was the motive for our nervousness, how I’m going to recognize her?, how I’m going to recognize him? We felt like we were over that step.

It was such a wonderful moving, spiritual, and intellectual complement… and it was… It was a night full of emotions, complementarity, smiles, and laughs. The final touch, a stream of feelings that surge when were saying goodbye and our mouths found each other.

¡Oh, insincerity! Source of many displeasures and sadness. You showed me a perfect faked feeling. I should’ve noticed when you said that sentence, a weird sentence but the right one to describe the moment: -Let’s not break today’s charm, remember that it ends at midnight. Do not end like this the fairy tales? - ¡Amen! ¡So be it!

Charm ended that day, at midnight.

Internet and research

Learning through research and investigation is a very important part of the educative process. Because of this, “research” is one of the methods the Guatemalan teachers use in their courses.
However, with the Internet’s arrival to many of towns, this method has become questionable. You also can add to this problem the lack of libraries or recent books in those ones.

It became clear to me that Internet is being used in a wrong way. I worked for a while in a private school where I taught several groups. One group was a junior high school one and I assumed they already had the basic knowledge about researching and writing essays. But with one research assignment they showed me their lack of skills. They simply went to the internet café and requested the research to a worker. The worker did it and printed it. Anybody could see the plagiarism, and when I decided to run a short test about the researched theme, their writing wasn’t even close to the magnificence of the reports they delivered.

I worked in that place for a short time but I still see and hear about the same store. However, I got to the conclusion that many teachers encourage this attitude. Teachers don’t read thoroughly the reports and briefs they receive from the students. Our teenagers don’t take the time to read and interpret the information they get from the internet.

This isn’t a new issue because in the past, the students just copied from the books in the libraries. However, it is a wide issue with many shades and it is important to emphasize the need to encourage our children and teenagers to read, something that we’re hearing a lot these days.

To end this, a short anecdote. One of my students gave me his report… ¡in German! I was speechless because he didn’t even bother to read what the internet café person printed for him.

But you're not here anymore...

Ragazzo
by Fiamma

And I found you there
in the middle of an imprecise media
happy and fleeting at once,
restless and interesting,
a moment of peace in anguish times,
just a vision, an oasis in my desert

Appearance and opinion...

Today’s a little bit colder than others are and an unusual wind reminds me November and its festivities: All Saints Day and Dead Day, it also reminds me about the traditional dish called fiambre and, of course, the infernal advertisement campaign about Christmas, “20 days to get to the most beautiful month in the year”, bla bla bla.

A nice cup of rice with chocolate seems to be the right choice to accompany me at the beginning of my daily routine. Reading the newspaper takes me only fifteen minutes nowadays because it seems to be that we have the same and repeated stories everyday. Murders, beheadings, accidents fill the news, bad news running through the country which force us to distrust everybody around us and to pray harder looking for celestial help in order to come back home safe and sound, without a scratch (or even with scratches but alive).

¡Oh, those days! I wish I could go back to the time when it was possible to practice the good manners instilled in us by our parents. The courteous greeting or a nice smile that was traded when one met the neighbors, acquaintances or even the strangers. Those memories came stronger to my mind when I read a comment written by a young man in the Sunday’s news, where he talks how the police treated him just for his appearance. I wondered that day if the liberty of speech exists in this country. Why our society wants us to become clones of the current fashion trend? What’s wrong about the desire of wearing whatever we want?

I understand, of course, that the gang problem has made many and diverse expressions to look suspicious and people end to believe everybody with a different appearance belong to a gang.

However, if we pay attention, during the past few years, criminals have started looking like respectable people, very neat and now it’s rare to find a thief who looks like the preconceived idea we have of them. My father had a “close encounter” with some female delinquents in a bus. Those women wore according to the newest fashion and seemed young women going to their work. However, my father heard how, without any shame, they analyzed the bus passengers and their belongings; and when they noticed that no one was wearing anything valuable said loudly: “let’s get out of this piece of shit because only poor people is riding this bus”.

We’ve read about many stories of discrimination against the indigenous people when they try to enter to nightclubs, restaurants or hotels and they have been rejected because they have been wearing their native clothes.

Wonder if we judge accordingly to our own condition.

Enlightening anecdote

Browsing through this novel world of blogs… (novel for me) I found this funny and enlightening anecdote... ;)


¡Be careful with your desires!, it could become true

A man was complaining:- “Dear God, hear me, look how much I work, and look how happy is my wife staying home. I would do anything for one miracle: to trade places with my wife. In that way, that lazy woman will learn what’s like a man’s life.”God, in His infinite mercy, ¡ZAZ!, grants the man his miracle.

In the morning of the first day, the walking miracle hurries himself to wake up the children, prepares breakfast for everyone, does laundry, starts working in the lunch and takes the children to school..

In his way home, he stops in a gas station, goes to the bank, pays some bills, gets some clothes from the dry cleaner’s, goes to the supermarket and, almost without noticing, it’s almost one o’clock!

Back home, he continued the laundry, cleaned the house, prepared lunch, hurried himself to school to pick the children up, yelled to the kids, feed them, washed the dishes, finished laundry, supervised the kids homework, ironed for a while and watched TV for a few moments …
Then, he hurried again to the kitchen to prepare dinner while yelling at the kids again to take a shower.

At 9pm he was drained and exhausted and just wanted to go to bed and sleep soundly, but one more duty awaited for him in the bed …¡Wife’s duty! Which he fulfilled as best as he could…

- Next day, he claimed to God again:“¡Lord! ¡What I was thinking when I prayed so hard for that miracle! I beg you to return me to my body, please!”

He then heard the loving answer of God:
- Of course, my son, we will just have to wait nine months because last night you got pregnant.

seen here

I translated the anecdote from Spanish to English - Traduje la historia del español al inglés

Once upon a time...

I thrust my hands in your words to reach you… to reach your mouth and your arms… safe place for this lonely and discouraged soul… I reached your lips and played with them during the shortest time my imagination allowed me to…

My new toy

Like a kid with a new toy, that’s how I’ve behaved in the last few days. A constant search of information about how can I improve my blog and its appearance, avidly reading another blogs, etc.However, some thing attracted my attention and it’s that many of the articles I read about blog improving talk of “how to catch the attention of more readers”. Is that the primary necessity when you publish a blog? Mmmm, a direct reflection of reality. And that’s the truth, despite how much I would want Internet to become in something completely different. A perfect world, maybe? An utopia? A fantasy?

The desire of being accepted and fit is very strong in the majority of people, desire of standing out and to be admired. Nevertheless, society will always judge people for what they don’t have, for the rules they don’t follow.Meanwhile, I’ll continue sharing these simple thoughts… because with pleasure I’ve seen that I lost the anonymity and this humble blog has been visited… ;)

I wish you enough

Looking through some papers I found this short story sent by a friend. I share it with you today:

At an airport, I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together. They had announced her plane's departure and standing near the door, he said to his daughter, "I love you, I wish you enough". She said, "Daddy, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, daddy.” They kissed good-bye and she left.He walked over toward the window where I was seated.

Standing there, I could see he wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, "Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?” "Yes, I have," I replied. Saying that brought back memories I had of expressing my love and appreciation for all my Dad had done for me. Recognizing that his days were limited, I took the time to tell him face to face how much he meant to me. So I knew what this man was experiencing. "Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever good-bye?” I asked. "I am old and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is, her next trip back will be for my funeral, “he said."When you were saying good-bye I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.’ May I ask what that means?” He began to smile. "That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.” He paused for a moment and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more. When we said 'I wish you enough,' we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with enough good things to sustain them," he continued and then turning toward me, he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory. "I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright. I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more. I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive. I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger. I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting. I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess. I wish enough "Hello's" to get you through the final "Good-bye.”

He then began to sob and walked away.My friends and loved ones, I wish you ENOUGH!!! They say, "It takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them."

Take the time to live!!!

A new world

A new adventure starts to develop in front of my eyes because these technological advances will allow me to “undress” my soul, in a certain way.

Anonymity’s freshness and catharsis relief will become my allies in a simple and solitary life.There won’t be extraordinary stories or profound and philosophic thoughts, no. There will be only simple thoughts about daily life, my country, and all those details that could become interests to this loner.