Images, September 23rd 2011

Jetlagged, overdosing on homebaked apple pie, listening to your music, Colombia I’m missing you.

All my clothes are on the washing line and with every piece I took out to hang, I remembered when I was last wearing it.

Going to La Boquilla, San Diego, Santo Domingo, Getsemani, Las Murallas, Manga, La Matuna, Las bovedas, Bocagrande, Laguito, the beach…and I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t nostalgic, I was glad, glad to have been able to share more time in your bewitching Cartagena. Glad to have bathed in your lovely warm waters, glad to have walked on your streets, glad to have bitten in mangos and drank more lulo juice. Glad to have been, felt, heard, smelled, touched, seen you again.

When I first got back and stayed at the hostal, I felt jealous of every tourist I was meeting. It seemed they could also feel what I felt being in Cartagena, they hated the heat, the trash and the piropos but loved the music, the sea, the colonial buildings, the sights. I felt they were stepping on my feelings and making them sound common and weak. Slowly I moved away from being jealous and built a little nest in Los Balcones, with old and new friends, feeling uncommon and strong, because I was writing the fourth chapter of my Colombia, different from the first three.

I was scared of disappointment, scared of being spat out by what I used to see as my lover of a town. It had mistreated me in the past and we had patched things up, but things always remain uncertain and that uncertainty was daunting.

I felt I had become insensitive to its charms and that it had become part of everyday life, of a routine. Had I grown loving from afar and couldn't feel the same passion close to it? And I stopped thinking, I started feeling with my 5 senses, forgetting about reason and regaining passion. I made do with what my charming lover of a town offered and there wasn’t a struggle, it was smooth. It was different and I was moving away from that time warp, I enjoyed the present.

My head like a kaleidoscope, images and images, all stuck together, all turning in front of me, turning and turning, strong minded children, loving and caring teachers, the sea turning silver under the sun, girls plaits and braids, friends, smiles and tears, empty glasses and full bottles, white sand, schools of neon coloured fish, storms turning the sky dark blue, more friendly smiles, more gentle words, fuschia bougainvillers, lazy Sundays at the beach, pretty streets, fruit and veg vendors, trash adorned street corners, tired men, hyper active kids, a wild looking guitar, children’s somersaults on the beach, a drunk man serenading outside our balcony, outrageously violent toddlers, pigs running wild, drawings, sand castles, sand flowers, sun hats, our lounge, paper planes…

I left you Colombia with a tighter heart, a head full of heartwarming memories, a wider taste for beer with a twist of lemonade, a love for live champeta, a suitcase full of Wayuu bags, tons of pictures of your smiley kids, a slimmer waistline, your sun in my blonder hair, a green manicure and pedicure, images of my friends being there and then, I left with a greater will to live at your rhythm, I left with plenty more images…

Images caught in the light of the here and now, slowly entering the past, safely locked in my box of memories, no sadness, no nostalgia, serene, here and now, waiting for the next tide, whether it’d be high or low...

Love to all