October 2003
I had forgotten my camera that day. I was disappointed I could not capture the beauty of the lake we visited, but, and it was probably a suggestion from someone in the group less brooding and with fewer visions of grandeur, the idea was raised to photograph it in my mind. To use the absence of a camera to force me to notice with greater focus what I was seeing.
I thought of the Indigo Girls song which invites, “Don’t you write it down / Remember this in your head / Don’t take a picture / Remember this in your heart.” That’s what I did. I looked intensely, I was fully present, I captured details in clean, crisp memories that I can recall even now, over 20 years later. I wrote the poem below inspired by the experience. But even without these words, I can still see in my mind’s eye the silver bowl of Lake Suchitoto.
Bob Marley is playing on the bus that will carry me
from where I said,
“I want to be married in the middle of this lake,
on a spinning machine,
so we can see every side as we kiss,”
away to the capital,
where I will eat what is given me at a proper table
and get enough sleep
so I can ask smart questions at the embassy in the morning.
As evening winds its way into Suchitoto
and I follow it up the red earth-cobbled road,
I would rather take your hand, run down and miss the bus.
We’d sit in the middle of this lake and watch the sun
kissing every side of this big bowl of silver
rimmed with tortoise-back hills,
draping shadow over lilies and spiked palm leaves,
black in relief to the marbled sky.
And it would rain and we’d laugh
at the sky full of black and white birds,
handkerchiefs on trees- I’d invite them to the wedding.
Faces shiny with drops of sea sprites
awakened by our flight back to shore,
we’d hike the hill to town and find
two plastic chairs,
one florescent light,
a black stove and a crinkled flower of a woman,
stuffing masa dough with beans and cheese.
And we would stuff our shiny faces with curtido-piled pupusas.
We’d wrap around corners,
drinking in the night spiked with neon carts of
“Churros! Nieves! Tacos Mejicanos!”
sip liquados and not ask if the water’s pure.
We’d slosh into those folks they call “characters”
and make riotous conversation in our crinkled espanol.
But I have been safe.
I’ve browsed glass-cased El Salvador
through twinkling lights of
meetings and pages,
question and answer sessions,
quick forays to el campo with one-day families
carefully arranged to highlight every angle of this gem.
(I still don’t know how it feels on my hands.)
I have walked upon ruled lines,
not gone out after dark,
prepared my questions in perfect past subjunctive
and taken notes on testimonies shared in tidy hour-slots.
Obediently, I am present as we depart from Suchitoto
but looking back, there are worse things to miss than a bus.
