Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Aqui Esta

I was cautious about getting into his truck, being that we'd only passed handshakes across the table, and that it went against my expectation that his church was at the bottom of the hill. Fear awaits eagerly for those who must trust the direction of another. But when he motioned hesitatingly to the bed of his truck, I knew he'd sensed my lack of trust, and so I compensated, not with a positive assurance, but with an ever greater fear of offending or disappointing.

I shut the door of his truck, and held the hinges in tact, using my arm through the open window, to brace the outside of the door, as we first geared down the stone paved ally-way, and seconded around the sharp left bend, now unfamiliar with the shop sings.

"Yo necesito apprender mas espanol," I chided, loud enough to compete with the pot-holes and fifteen plus year old transmission.

We pulled up to the gate, and the dust clouds spraying from the ends of their brooms spelt out why Alfredo and Antonio had left the comedor early. I imagined they didn't typically wipe down their rusted metal fold-down chairs, but every polishing sweep of their rags added cushion to its flat metal frame, as I ambled through a series of hand shakes and 'mucho-gustos' to a second-row seat against the far right wall.

Across the aisle, a young boy crunched Latin-American Cheetos as a prelude to the service; as two fell from his mouth, and skirted, like dice, into and against the door frame, landing snake eyes out of his vision, but square into mine. We, the Cheetos and I, locked stares seven times during the service, as if checking on them would somehow remove the irritation I considered, if those cheesy puff balls were to take the mold of the soles on my shoes.

Six:thirty struck, as it always does in El Salvador, tragically early, as if time were always on our side; except for those with wrist watches and places to be. My three friends, met at dinner, paced the entrance way, alternating expressions between welcoming visitors and that focused swinging arm clap, people typically perform prior to performing. I was busy scribbling in my robotoc journal, pretending not the hear the word ingles (English) from the chairs directly behind me. As if my cave would actually guard me from the obvious conclusion that I was an outsider, I stood timidly as the pastor brought the the attention of the congregation that I was from the United States, and that we had met at dinner, and had told him I thought a church service in Spanish would be extremely difficult. I had said that, but more so because the idea of joining folks, I'd only known long enough to shake hands with, seemed impulsive.

The tambourines started, almost as quickly as the two girls had emerged from the front-row seats, and we were singing. I didn't know a word, nor the melody to their song, so I clapped with my head down, smiling at the floor, praying for a Pentecost. Three-quarters through the first song, the band showed up, and fumbled their two guitars to the front, entering the chorus mid strum, impervious to the fact that their guitars hadn't been tuned since the early 90's.

We prayed, for a lady in the back row, for Pastor Antonio, and for Michael.

The pastor, extremely sensitive to my processing speed with numbers, gave me time to flip to Romans five:four for his opening passage, "For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope." I did my best to follow his facial expressions, but spent most of my mind wandering through the corridors of why I had felt so defeated inside; like I'd been spotlighted in a crowd and come up empty; and why the idea of a church service in Spanish on a Wednesday evening wasn't all that inconvenient to the three things I still yet have to prepare for; but was rather inviting.

John twenty:thirty-one "but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in his name."

"Aqui esta," was all I heard as he interrupted the fluid figments, of noble letters declaring my resolve, and personal determination to love like I hadn't before; nearly glossing my eyeballs; holding out his 'La Palabras de Dios', or Bible.

He might as well have embraced me, saying it again, "here it is."

The answers I seek, or the relief and reconciliation I covet, will never be found in my resolve, regardless of the persuasiveness in my feelings or present willingness to change, or love better. They are found in the gospel, and if the Holy Spirit can use three strangers and a Salvadoran pastor of a max, thirty person church to communicate that to me, I sincerely hope he can use an ex-pat blogger to do the same for you...aqui esta.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Ryan Adams - Dirty Rain


Last time I was here it was raining
It ain’t raining anymore
Streets were drowning and the water’s laming
All the ruins washed ashore
Now I am here just looking through the rubble
Try to find out who we were
Last time I was here it was raining
It ain’t raining anymore

Last time I was here you were waiting
You’re not waiting anymore
The window’s broke and the smoke’s escaping
The books scattered across the floor
And the churchbells are ringing through the sirens
Your coat was full of bulletholes
Last time I was here you were waiting
You’re not waiting anymore

So
May the wind blow
May the moonlight know your name
So
Let the needle pull the record ‘round
To the walls came in
You and I we’re out there dancing
In the dirty rain

Last time I was here it was raining
Like you have never seen it rain
And your eyes were filled with terror
And tears from the gasoline
As the stars exloding with gunfire
I saw you smiling just before
Last time I was here you were crying
You ain’t crying anymore

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Beneficio El Manzano: Partida #1 (Batch One)

Over the past two months, I have had the opportunity to volunteer with a company here in El Salvador, named Cuatro M. Although many faceted, they operate a coffee milling and exporting business in Santa Ana, and have given me the chance to shadow, and experience firsthand, life on a coffee farm. I am really amped for all that lies ahead, and am thankful to the owner, Emilio Lopez Diaz for exposing me to a side of coffee I never knew.

Preface
My hope is to feature excerpts from a coffee farm, mill, and roastery, about the life, work, treasure and toils within them. I want to tell of the coffee trees and the bramble, of the beauty I keep fresh on my mind, and of the four, white-lined, criss-crossing scars on my left arm, reminding me both are real.

The Coffee Tree and the Bramble - Beneficio El Manzano: Partida #1 (Batch One)




The 2011-2012 coffee harvest has officially begun at Beneficio El Manzano, in Santa Ana, El Salvador; receiving its first two batches of bourbon cherries on the twelfth of September from farms: Finca El Manzano and Ayutepeque.

After processing and drying, the pergamino, or parchment coffee, is bagged in burlap and transferred to the bodega, or warehouse, for thirty days to await hulling, the process of removing the parchment, or dry pulp, from the beans. (Complete details of the Milling Process at Beneficio El Manzano).

Then, this past thursday, Eduardo, from quality control, or the lab side of the company, hulled and roasted samples of both batches for Cuatro M's first cupping of the season, performed by himself and three of us others, including Emilio, the owner.

While evident of the early harvest, the cupping was, in itself, ceremonial of beginnings, for Cuatro M, of a promising new season that will certainly surpass those before in quantity and always expectantly in quality; and for me, of new tastes within the cup, new characters within the story, and a new side of the mountain I'd only ever talked about exploring.






Stay posted for upcoming events:
Sunday, October 16, 2011: Sustainable Harvest: Let's Talk Coffee 2011, tour of El Manzano Farm, Mill, and Roastery.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Unlikely to cohabitate well, doesn't mean we can't be friends


There is certainly no shortage of friendly mice in the La Mascota community, central-eastern San Salvador; home also to many dear human friends. This curious fury pal was lured Friday night into a cage, baited by Carlos Ernesto with a healthy portion of homemade tamale. Personally, not participating in his capture, I became attached to the creature, and therefore cannot speak much more on the matter, without feeling a slight bit of heartbreak.


Thursday, September 22, 2011

Quince de Septiembre


El Salvador turned two-hundred last week, so realizing, I'm well overdue on any kind of legitimate post, thought I'd let walk the parade. Not sure how or whether the rest of Central America holds parades on birthdays, but I'm nearly convinced it is the one place on earth where more people participate, than spectate. Literally the entire town comes out for the event, and while it consists of the students from the area elementary, middle, and high schools; from what I experienced, most people walk alongside the parade, absorbing whole portions, before hurrying up the street, to watch the same span of parade....six or eight times in our case, for the entire three plus hour length of time, spanning one end of town to the other; ultimately, all gathering in the local park for the anthem and hoo-rahs from town officials. Many of my students played a part in the caravan, and those of us that did not, walked and hollered our blue and white from the fringes, consuming pupusas, mais de loco, and horchata along the way.

Some photos of my students at the academy, along with some of Los Planes de Renderos' finest, kicking off with husband, wife, and daughter, who run 'Pupuseria Elisa' just one block up the street. No where else in El Salvador will you find liver and other internal chicken organs, so large and vibrant in a lunch soup special.












Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I could eat dessert with my breakfast

I suppose there are a great deal of things that would distinguish one as "well-off". I might not have given myself away this morning, had I not remembered and eaten the piece of pan dulce (sweat bread) in my sling-bag, purchased in Centro for a quarter, mid route to my second bus leg.

I might not even have noticed the man across the table, who drank only coffee, had he not slightly scoffed at my rightly-accused gluttony, having polished off four pupusas prior to un-bagging my breakfast dessert.

I don't typically like feeling distant from my fellow man, for any reason, be it dress, or home, or a natural predisposition for silverware. And when I say fellow man, I reference what one might define as the poor; let's be honest with ourselves, they comprise the majority, and their lives consist solely of mankind's' most natural functions; eating, sleeping, working, and loving. I want, in all circumstances, to live and act most like my fellow man, and this morning, I regret that I did not; not because I ate sweat bread, nor because I did so after my breakfast, but sheerly because I could, today, and can, tomorrow; and any day of the week, eat dessert with my breakfast; and if I really meditate on that thought, I mean really think about its implications, am not entirely convinced that true living, or religion for that matter, takes place within the state of having more than todays needed share.

Because if I think back
to the stories I learned as a child,
I remember a God,
who when he provided for the Israelites,
gave them solely enough for the day,
lest it spoil; and yet
somehow
I've managed to change
a God who does not change,
into one that condones eating dessert with breakfast.

Perhaps, one could claim that God allows wealth, even grants it to some; I'll concede, and won't argue, so long as we also agree that if God is the author, as one might claim, of financial wealth, in the sense that I could, if I wanted, eat dessert with my breakfast; if he wrote that story, then he must also, in his grace-filled authorship, determined a majority of his characters to have none.

If so, I hope to choose to be most like those, that God has, in far greater measure, decided are better off having no dessert with their breakfast.

Or I can state that God is solely the author of redemption, and of a kingdom, and pursue it with every workaholic bone in my system.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Edna St. Vincent Millay, age 15. Not making any point, just enjoying her poetry

Old Letters

I know not why I am so loath to lay

Your yellow leaves along the glowing log,

Unburied dead, that cling about and clog —

With indisputable, insistent say

Of the stout past's all inefficient fray —

The striving present, rising like a fog

To rust the active in me, that am a cog

In the great wheel of industry today.

Yet, somehow, in this visible farewell

To the crude symbols of a simpler creed,

I find a pain that had not parallel

When passed the faith itself, — we give small heed

To incorporeal truth, let slack or swell;

But truth made tangible, is truth indeed.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

But when the sun rises

You are content with knowing,
and not being known.
Concealing reverie,
like the focal horizon
behind dawn's first brightness.
As I,
with eyes,
although fixated,
am compelled patience.

I am content with being known,
and not knowing.
Wearing intimacies,
like blades of grass
under morning's dampness.
As you with ears,
although earnest,
find no joy in my repose,
save distance.

But when the sun rises, you
and I,
outstretching our expanses,
are relinquished
and laid bare,
and give pleasure.

Friday, September 9, 2011

When I knew when

I've got two poems
written on the back of my eyelids; one
to assure me when I wake
her beauty is real,
but the other to remind me
she won't be there.
So I choose to dream,
wherever I can;
to live within that space of time
when I knew when.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

She's got London

She's got London, etched into her soul, deep conviction her only compass; owing no apology or reason to rewrite her story.

She's got London, echoing her rhythms, for though her faults, far greater are, what inspirations lie around the page.

I toiled winter's snow and air, amidst the club and fang;
to find 'everything that was not death,' howling in her stare.

She's got London, printed on her hands, and I will sway, regardless of what any critics say, to the symphony they conduct.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

If I were a letter

I could have years to think upon losing you,
or only one mind, and morning
to get this letter through.

No pen could spell out those lonesome stars;
nor color, paint the hell
in a sunrise without you near.

Open me up.
Tell me your eyes, solely yours
breathe poetry from our silent stare.

Open me up.
Please call, what you read
beautiful.

Let this lump inside my throat, be
the Dear Rebekah;
my sweaty palms, and patient kiss
the forever, yours.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Bolas de Fuego: Nejapa, El Salvador

Bolas de Fuego is a long celebrated tradition in Nejapa, El Salvador; the stories behind which, coming from geographic and religious elements. The first tells of an eruption of the volcano, ElPlayon, in 1658, which forced the people of the old town, Nixapa, to leave that place and migrate to what is now Nejapa. The second, tells of a religious saint, San Jeronimo battling the devil with balls of fire. Personally, I find the second story more convincing.

Either way, every August 31st, the men of Nejapa enlist onto two teams, this year, one composed by the recently victorious FMLN political party;(conveniently the one that, just 25 or so years ago, the US, pledged $100 million, to keep from winning the civil war, and control of El Salvador; attributing to the 70,000 lives lost, but we'll save that story and sentiment for another post). They dress up, covering their arms and legs, and gather in a small, dusty, plain orange-walled weight room, to paint their own and one anothers' faces. This is where a group of friends and I, found ourselves Wednesday, a few hours before the firefight.








The two teams square off on the town's main, modestly paved two-laned road, each taking an end, some ridiculous amount of gasoline, and more than 5,000 tightly wound nylon and cloth balls; which they will light on fire and presume, round after round, to charge one-another, throwing these 'balls of fire' as their means of forcing the other team to retreat.
On the fringes, we spectators literally rode the shoulders of one another to observe, and at times, get caught up in the makeshift spiritual warfare. Like few Salvadoran events, I had the privilege of joining an Ohioan native named Justin who lives and works in my community. He found us a short brick wall, home to the vendors selling cheap Pilsner and soda immediately behind the sidewalk bordering the street; which was perfect for shooting video, yet awful for balance, and living. We eventually were pushed back by the crowds attempts to escape the chaos, and Justin took it as a sign that we needed to get into the street. I played textbook younger brother, and watched his back as he watched mine for the thirty minutes we made believe, we worked for National Geographic. Sincerely, a fantastic experience.

In the end, I can report no major injuries, other than the four inch bald spot on my right forearm. These characters speak more than I can tell, so I'll let them do the talking.