Chasing Away Our Days

First, some context.  I am on a train headed west named the Empire Builder, a nod to the cobbling together of failing railroads by private funding into a transcontinental gem. Now operated by heavily subsidized Amtrak my first leg from Indianapolis to Chicago on the Cardinal is not a daily as my fellow Hoosiers aren't alwayd keen to such subsidies. Our politicians are keen to subsidize conventions, pro sports, and themselves. But more about that later.

Unlike other means of transportation train rides provide a window into the soul of others aboard.  There is a communal aspect inspired by design. Air passengers are seated too close. Buses do not have space for mingling except outside at stops to smoke. Ever engage in conversation with another driver at a gas pump? Me either. The Empire Builder has a lounge, observatory, and dining car. All opportunities to strike up a conversation.

I started out at sunrise at Union Station in Indianapolis with the notion of hopping on a rented bike some thirty hours later at Glacier National Park to pedal as far up Going to the Sun Road as snow plowing allows. It has been cleared as far as Avalanche Creek where there are reports of bears. I plan to coast back down one handed and legs akimbo.  My other fist shall be gripping bear spray. Joy.

Starting out was not joy. I shuddered at the Union Station station locals as if vermin that I might otherwise celebrate as authentic were I in a foreign nation. My vanity is a version of Hoosier pride. I judge fellow citizens in ways I praise strangers. The station sits between our convention center and where Matt Ryan will soon take snaps for our Colts. Tubes connect all these facilities so visitors won't experience unpleasant weather. I too want a postcard setting. Subsidized. What I get is a poodle skirted floozy in a red leather jacket adjusting her huge wig asking everyone for a dollar. I decline as does everyone else. Finally, she secures a bill and buys a Pepsi. 

Once on board a top-pony-tailed woman with a plaid shirt tied ramshackled over her face is calling ahead for a Fire Marshall to report a level three hazmat situation as she fears vapors are escaping out a roof hatch. I discern no mist or smoke.

Her commotion does reveal she overslept her stop in Peoria. So, she is put off in Gary, Indiana tasked with somehow returning to Indy. I spy her outside the train taking nervous puffs off her American Spirit cigarettes silhouetted by an empty modern concrete block transportation terminal named after a congressman, which is next to an empty modern concrete block convention center named after another9th politician, which is next to a gloriously restored ancient brick Mayor's office, all encircled by rusted former steel making contraptions. I envision Gary's Mayor tilted back in a leather chair, feet on desk, puffing a cigar, and winking.

Desire and Disorders

It is afternoon in Guatemala. I have climbed to Cerro Tzancuil just next to my hotel to rest at the Mayan Altar, Kab 'lajuj Ee, and gaze at "the place where the water gathers," Lake Atitlán. It is deep. Near me a youthful German says to his shaggy sunburnt American companion, "It is deeper than the North Sea." Much deeper.  It hides a lot. On its shores gather distant folk who taint its pristine wonders.

And always in the afternoon Xocomil, Atitlán's strong wind, arrives with a demon’s fury, as it has across three millennia of civilization, most of it brutal Mayans, but also five hundred years of brutal Spaniards, as well as thirty years of brutal civil war. Catholic syncretism morphed Xocomil to mean the wind that carries away sin. The indigenous I meet are joyful and engaging.  And so that spirit draws outsiders with whom sin persists. San Marcos La Laguna, where I stay, is known for meditation, masseuse, yoga, and mindfulness.

My first night supper of a delightful hearty tomato soup on The Terrace at my hotel, Lush Atitlán, was often interrupted by an attractive American thirty-something woman coaching her pursuing Italian twenty-something man on life lessons she has gained from desire and disorders.  She cannot set her desire aside and so has settled in on the anxiety of open relationships. So, she travels the world setting up lectures and seminars to coach this need. She wants the Italian to lend his place in Italy for a seminar.  He wants her.

I was grateful to be rescued in overhearing this conversation on The Terrace by San Francisco native, Steve, who expatriated to Quito, Ecuador but is visiting with the idea of taking up in Antigua, Guatemala. I am agreeable to that quest. We converse.

Others with quests have visited Lake Atitlán. Aldous Huxley visited. His "Brave New World" traces our anxiety to our belief in technology as a futuristic remedy for problems really caused by disease. Huxley famously compared Lake Atitlán to Italy's Lake Como which "touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque." Atitlán, however, "is Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing."

Active volcanos surround Lake Atitlán: San Pedro to the west; Toliman to the south; and the largest volcano Santiago. Atitlán is the caldera of a much older volcano now filled with water, five thousand feet above sea level.

I took a water taxi in the morning across glassy smooth waters to the town of Panajachel for a covid test to be able to return to the U.S. There, I bought Guatemalan chocolate intending to repatriate it but desire immediately led to me know it's sweet existence as soon as I got back to the hotel.

For the flight back I have downloaded David Mohrman's "Xocomil: The Winds of Atitlán," about Luanne from San Francisco who has no idea who she is until a near death experience makes her a seer--sometimes of things she would rather not know.

I am glad I now know a little of Guatemala.