एंड थें वहत हप्पेनेद?एंड टी

वेल थें and then what happened? Imagine violins and more violins.

Returned very late from the clinic and the trip is trecherous with Brigitte at the wheel of the TOyota FOrrunner with no headlights. Even in this darkness, people are walking along the roadside with sticks bundled on their heads. How many miles did they have to walk to find sticks? They will be sold for $.25 a bundle in the market tomorrow or used to warm their beans tonight. A days journey for whole families...even babes... for a bundle of sticks and returning home so late on such a dangerous track. From my hotel on the hill you can see over the landscape and the hills are stripped bare outside of the town. Ten years ago the landscape was a fantasy jungle with mahogany, ebony, teak of astonishing porportion....i know because you see one now and again...but the lumber giants of the world cut/stole virtually all of them in just ten years...now they are going after the atlantic coast of Nic and then environmental minister of Nic has asked me to help. they "attack" from boats off shore...puttling roads into the Misquito peoples' wilderness and haul out the wood and slip away. piracy of another kind. I am hoping to get on to this soon. the mosquito's 200,000 acres of ecologyical tapestry need an international champion...hoping the nature conservancy or tpl will have an interest.

back to the night. mural done and i could not sleep ..a feeling not unlike when peter and merrill were born. my nerve endings were so stimulated i did not sleep for many days. so i was up writing, thinking of things to share with and learn from V about art, mural work and life. loved the sleepless time and the exhilleration of creating and the time to revel in experience and freedom. Do I reallyu leave tomorrow?

My last coffee in the garden with my spanish work sheets and the birds and flowers and the gracious gentle staff and proprietors babies at play. Morning stroll...V and I explore/share favorite haunts - mine being the saddle-making shop which you reach by steep stone steps so narrow and inside dim but the aroma of leather and the fine tooling, stitching and craft absolutely lovely. Warm hand shakes and my elemental spanish conveys my appreciation and admiration. How i honor the work, textures and craft...V is deeply involved in craft conservation internationally...

Oxen, horse carts and pulsing humanity fill the streets. the L'englasia - church and cappucino, exploring learning, feeling so one with this life and these people. i want to be part of this fabric where there is interdepencance yet every one closes their own loop....from earth to table to earth,...the responsiblity for each element is one's own here...everything has a purpose and meaning.

COnvergence at hotel of Help for Nic and G and P and Javier. I am off with Brigitthe for play time and pleasure time together. She is 29 and I am older than her mother yet we have spent the most delightful week together with shared passions, easy dialogue, insights that make communication so rich...love her so so much. We dine with her mom and sister on the sizziling beef and onions that i so love in the traditional nic,style on the plank.,..a few beers and we are so so happy and fulfilled/

B goes to collect my gear while i linger in town and drift toward the park where a ceramic collection has caught my eye these past days...A tidy elderly lady is selling piggy banks. Her story: she lives in the mountains. there she gathers clay (and there are NO shovels...so how does she do this?( and carries it to her casa and mixes it with sand with her feet in a pit and then expertly crafts these charming crittters hen, ox. goat. pig...some painted...some just fired and natural...all alive with her energy.., she fires them in a kiln of her making with heat from wood she collects and them when the multi firing process is done she hauls them to a road to catch a bus to matagalpa, because the roads are so ragged, over fifty o per cent of her art is broken by the time she reaches matagalpa. wherer she sets up shop on ths sidewalk. she sleeps here on th sidewalk next to her wares..they are easily five pounds each...big and she sells them for 2.00 each.. imagine...