New Beginnings

Excerpts from today´s journal:

7:30 a.m.

Today´s Angel Card: Birth. The last four days, my Angel Cards have been alternating between Compassion and Birth. I suppose it´s appropriate - Cristie leaves this morning for Guatemala City (and home on Tuesday), so after 10:00 today I´m on my own, beginning my solo adventure. It is a kind of rebirth, and I´m sure it will take compassion and patience.


10:18 a.m.

Well, I just walked back to the hostel after getting Cristie onto the bus for Antigua and Guate. I am now officially on my own, and I need to spend some time working out how I feel about it. There are parts of me that are sad, nervous, excited, reflective, tired, anxious, eager, tentative, jubilant, calculating and recalculating in turn. But I woke up alert and joyous this morning - "awake and ready!" as they would say at Ananda - and I want to focus on that feeling and remember that sensation.


1:30 p.m.

Cristie admonished me not to hole up in my room by myself after she left, and with good reason - that´s definitely going to be a tendency I´ll have to work on overcoming. I took a (hot!) shower and spent a couple of hours sorting through photos, reflecting, and thinking about next steps, and then, when I finally felt like I really needed food, decided to venture out for lunch and an afternoon of uploading photos at the internet café (yes, still a very solitary activity, but it´s a start). I´m treating myself to a licuado de fresa with lunch, and it´s delicious - with actual chunks of fresh strawberries! On the other hand, the sopa del día that was just brought out bears a remarkable resemblance to Campbell´s vegetable soup. :P

It´s funny, walking down Calle Santander (the main drag here in Panajachel) is an entirely different experience without Cristie. We spent almost two days walking around Pana together, mostly on this street, and it´s odd now to walk it alone. I noticed a definite tendency to walk faster on my way to find lunch, but almost immediately realized that doing so created a shell around me - I wasn´t really looking at what was going on around me, wasn´t noticing details or watching faces or admiring goods for sale. There was a definite dulling of my perception, which has felt so keep these last few weeks, and I didn´t like it at all. It was as if I´d suddenly become more vulnerable and was trying to protect myself by withdrawing into invisibility. All of that hit me in the space of a few blocks, and gave me a sharp reality check, a taste of what I´m going to be up against in traveling with myself. I need to practice presence and attention, with "constant vigilance!" to full experience. It is okay for me to spend time alone, but when I´m out and about in the world I want to be fully present.