I am home for a week before I head back to Nica for the rest of the summer. And because when I'm over there my ears are full of Spanish reggatone songs I can't even begin to understand (but do genuinely love) I get a little homesick for some quality (and by quality I mean trashy) Amurrican pop music. This one is so good that when Doogie picked me up from the airport last night I made us listen to it three times in a row. Crank your volume and solo-DP it up! :)
la luz
Yesterday we drove in the early night down the gravel road that leads into the heart of Casa Bernabe, an orphanage where many of my favorite children in the world find a home here in Nicaragua. There are fields that follow you along this drive, square plots of land where unknown vegetation is planted and grows up beneath the hot sun. During the day, you may be able to guess at what is growing there - plantains, young trees that will bear some sort of fruit. But in the night, when a darkness falls, unhindered by street light, it looks more like a sea of tall grasses, vast and very quiet.
Last night this field I pass with frequency looked as if it were sparkling with fire - hundreds of lightening bugs were hovering right at the grass line, blinking on and off like flashes of glitter in the sun. It was a gorgeous sight: in a still blackness we could follow these lines of light all gathered in a similar space and all their own, and we could sit and watch, amazed at their volume.
When we come here to love, we do it in small ways - we braid hair after English class, kick a soccer ball, hold a hand, make our shoulders sore and tried from piggy-back rides. They are small things, and alone they can feel small, and the glow of them might to our eyes seem dull and incomplete. We can grow sad that they are small, until we remember that they are love,
and when we know that, we know that each of these things are glimpses of something bigger,
we can know that each hand we are holding is a blinking light in a dark field, floating in a sea of glitter, illuminating a kingdom where the blackness is forgotten and you can stop and stare at the beauty, only able to think of the light.
