Burning Hands and Contentment

I am on fire. Lit up with inspiration. Gratitude flows within and without like water. Flowing. Like the blue-green afternoon tide of the lake. Lake Atitlán. Gratitude Abundant. Truly. Where do I begin?

I have been dancing circles here in La Cambalacha for the past two weeks. Like a crazy woman I run from teaching a morning yoga class - to translating a word document - to helping Lola and Angela with lunch in the kitchen (while dancing to the latest evangelical tunes on the radio) - to inventing a thousand afternoon games to entertain the youngsters whose attention span is fleeting - to dressing up in costume and getting in character for a dance/culture class with the 12 and 13 year-olds who are sometimes difficult to motivate - to talking long hours in the night with Gabriela (the founder and director of La Cambalacha who is an extraordinary dancer and has me hooked on learning Hip Hop) and Cambalacha family - to skipping happily down to the lake to bathe body and soul in morning sun rays - to walking arm and arm with María who fills my heart with joy the color of sunshine and rain - to choreographing dances for local children to perform in the upcoming town festival - to riding in the back of a pickup to the neighboring village to share art, music, ecology classes with the students in primary school - to contemplating the reason that children tend to go crazy on rainy days and trample upon your words and good intentions - to being reminded that children are made of rainbow colors -- sometimes dark with disrespect and ungratefulness, other times vibrant yellow and orange with laughter, songs and engaged imaginations. Each day, I arrive at my bedside absolutely exhausted and smiling; smiling at the good fortune of being here in La Cambalacha.

From the moment I returned to the shores of San Marcos La Laguna, I felt a rush of Contentment rise in my soul. Manifesting in a Gracious Smile. A smile that says Thank You to each and every breath that has carried me here. Life is Intense here in La Cambalacha. There is always much work to be done. Not only are we dedicated to facilitating the artistic development of nearly 2,500 children on the shores of Lago Atítlan; we are committed to living in community. On Fire with Intensity. The heartbeat of the day, powerful.

I feel strangely inarticulate as I listen to the evening rain. Swimming in such emotion, amazement, marvel as my life unfolds minute by minute. Two weeks on Fire passing with little opportunity to express in words the rhythms, sentiments, thoughts, emotions I am feeling strongly, like drumbeats, like a rainstorm, in my organs, in my breath, in my smile. A pause from writing due to Burning Hands. Swollen. Red Blistered. An overdose of acidic fruit and sunshine? A mean herb? A caterpillar? Animal Urine falling in the night? A strange spirit? I do not know exactly what happened to my hands. But they swelled up like balloons and put on an ugly mask of blisters and puss. In the healing process, my extraordinary living body generated an entire new layer of skin, allowing the old, dark, burned skin to peel away, piece by piece. Strange, powerful occurrence. When studying the Mayan calendar with a group of beautiful sisters one evening, I see the Tarot card that speaks of my sign and my nahual (animal spirit guide). My hands are in fire. I burned myself the last time I was here. Burned myself in the kitchen cutting Chiles. A down home Virginia girl unaccustomed to cooking with chiles picantes. Que locura.

Please take a look at the website of La Cambalacha. It is beautifully crafted. It gives you a glimpse of what we are doing here in San Marcos La Laguna. How we are singing, dancing, playing, sharing, creating and opening our hearts to the power of art and collaboration. I will be participating in a fantastic Cambalacha Parade on the 15th of September. I am learning to twirl a vibrant golden flag while dancing to the drumbeats of percussion and marveling at the clown faces and fun of the stilt walkers. Singing ... singing ... singing. I will try to write more frecuently. For now -- www.lacambalacha.org

Abundant Gratitude. Love. Learning. And lots of Rain that does keep us from living like Fire.

www.lacambalacha.org

Transitioning

I woke up yesterday morning feeling tense. Feeling nervous. Nervous about money. "How am I going to pay for the next year in Guatemala? If the numbers do not add up, how am I going to dedicate myself heart and soul to the children of San Marcos La Laguna for the next year?" I sat down on the patio next to the fountain and scolded myself for letting money tie me in knots. For letting pieces of paper and unfeeling numbers make a fool of me on this brilliant, quiet morning. "Laugh at me," I say to the fish and the turtle who swim lovingly in the clear water. "Laugh at me. This will help shake me back to a centered place."

I continue with morning yoga practice. Sitting quietly, patiently, trying to understand the knots in my nerves before sending them on their way out the door. "Let go of unserving preocupations," I say to myself. The turtle chimes in. "Teresa - the woman who sells anklets in the park - she has reason to worry for money, niña," he says. "Five children. Five children under the age of 7. Dead husband. She sells anklets for a living. She sells necklaces. Earrings. Teresa has reason to feel nervous about money. You, niña, with good shoes, good health, the privilege of traveling to Guatemala in the first place, the privilege to even think about volunteering in Lago Atitlán por un largo tiempo -- you have no reason to let money move you like a puppet." The turtle continues swimming. I let his words reverberate in my interior. Teresa is there.

Teresa bargains with me because her son, Steven, is hungry. He hasn´t eaten all morning and she is hoping to sell at least one pair of earrings so she can buy him a little something. Ice cream is the cheapest. Antigua is so expensive these days. Food is so expensive these days. I am in Parque Central when Teresa and Steven approach. Juan is there, too. He sleeps soundly on Teresa´s strong, hunched back. She remembers me from 3 weeks back. I show her the anklet she sold me, already fading with adventure - having swum in lake, waterfall and sea. I regret that I have no small bills to offer Teresa. I can see that Steven is hungry. I can also see that he is accustomed to hunger as he lets himself be distracted by the pen and paper that I carry. "Do you like to draw?" I ask him. He looks at me shyly. Silently. Just at that moment, a seed-pod falls from the tree under which we sit. Steven breaks it open and a world of microscopic beauty shows its face. "¡Que magnìfico!" I say expressively. "We should draw it." Steven watches. Silently. Still. I begin to draw. He follows along like an apprentice, curious about the way the pencil moves and leaves a trail of seed-pod details. "Now it´s your turn," I say. This time he accepts. First he draws a house. The house has windows and a door. When I ask him where his room is, he looks at me questioningly. There are no individual rooms in the house. One shared space. When he tires of the house, he draws a bus. Lots of windows, four wheels, a busdriver, an overhead rack where people can put their luggage and market goods. We talk about the bus as he imagines it, delicately touching the pencil to paper. What a fortunate encounter. Afternoon in the park with Steven drawing pictures of the life around us. The afternoon does not feed Steven´s hungry belly. But perhaps it feeds his hungry eyes just a little bit. Perhaps it feeds his smiling spirit just a little bit. This I hope. Hope for Exchange. That the gift he has given me with his deliberate, careful pencil marks and youthful resilience are somehow felt on his end too. We share a parting smile. He runs proudly, drawings in hand, to show his mother how he has been passing the time.

Exchange. The perfect segue into my next step here in Guatemala. Tomorrow morning, I return to San Marcos La Laguna on the shores of Lago Atitlàn to work with El Proyecto Cultural La Cambalacha. "Cambalacha" means Exchange. "Arte para Todos," dice el sitio web. "Art for All." At the beginning of our travels together, Rachel and I were lucky enough to work with this project for a week. I fell in love with the children immediately. After teaching my first yoga class, I walked around the room, where the children lay in Shavasana, corpse pose, with eyes closed and muscles relaxed. I was speechless. Overcome by the joy and honor I felt being there, with them, in those peaceful morning moments. Beginning the day together. Greeting the sun together. And they followed me so sincerely. A few beautiful giggles because our spirits like to laugh. Otherwise, careful, honest attention. Wow.

El Proyecto Cultural La Cambalacha was founded on the belief that children have the right to creative education. In Guatemala, there are many children who do not have the opportunity to attend school at all. Those who do certainly do not have the suerte to learn music, art, dance, or theatre. I was lucky enough to meet an educator in the Guatemalan Highlands, a woman who also studied music, who helped me understand a bit more about the education system in Guatemala. "Less that 1% of public schools in Guatemala offer arts to students," she says. With 60 children in one classroom and few resources, art does not make the list of important courses for students to learn. As a person who believes that all children are born artists - imaginative, creative, curious - and that art -- poetry, music, theatre, dance, fine arts have an important place in this world, I am feeling called to dedicate myself to La Cambalacha for more than just a passing breath. INSPIRATION is what this world needs. There is enough INFORMATION flying around for a thousand universes, but without INSPIRATION, we wander like robots, ghosts, looking for wholeness rather than creating it. Looking for wholeness among the piles of books, texts, phones messages, emails, advertisements rather than painting it, dancing it, growing it, speaking it, feeling it in the very wind that strikes the morning chimes. And so I go. And so I go to San Marcos La Laguna. Dance. Yoga. Theatre. Music. Acrobatics. Clown. Fine Art. Community. I will go and collaborate with other beautiful people who believe that living art has a powerful place in the lives of children, in the lives of us all. I will begin to understand the ins and outs of El Proyecto in more detail. I will teach what I know of the artist in me and open myself to learning from the Human Exchange of each passing day. Children. Elders. Plants. Animals. Mothers. Fathers. They will all be my teachers. Now is not a time to worry over money. If I am meant to stay here with these INSPIRING children, I will find a way. Mother Earth agrees. Walking through the garden of La Escalonia today, this quote jumped out at me from the friendly horsetails, "Cuando haya pescado el ùltimo pez, envenenado el ùltimo rìo, talado el ùltimo árbol, el hombre se darà cuenta que no puede comerse el dinero." You cannot eat money. One day we will learn this. One day soon.