Let’s Talk Guatemala.

The air right there smelled like dust, water, incense, and soot; the air over there smelled like mangoes, just mangoes, maybe wood too. Whatever it was, I want to smell it forever. Right in that place. Right between those two enormous walls that used to be even more enormous before an earthquake 300 years ago. There are little bits of these walls that have been taken out by time or by earthquakes or by restoration accidents. Little tiny holes dot these walls and bright blue pierces through the stone, as though dozens of sapphires spangle the rough surface.

Gardens spring up capriciously throughout this churh; there is a lovely flower garden where the bishop used to live, a palm tree oasis near the ancient altar. There are less traditional gardens, a sand garden for example, the likes of which I have only seen at a kitschy Japanese botanical garden in suburban Chicago. There are patterns in the sand, like the faux Japanese one, but these patterns are not created by rakes; instead, by human fingers indulging in one of life’s great unspoken pleasures–plunging one’s fingers into a patch of thick warm sand.

There were two little gravestones by where I was sitting, forcing me to recall Chicago, a place at least 50 degrees below this one. I remembered the cold cemetery by my old apartment encased in slabs of concrete and that grey train passing over the Art Nouveau mausoleums. I didn’t want to think about all that greyness. It felt overwhelmingly heavy in a place so light and airy.

I ran my finger along the tops of the gravestones, little stubs coming up from the dusty earth. I tried to imagine the people underneath these stones but it was nearly impossible; we were too far separated by time and place. How far below the ground they must have been, after so many earthquakes and so much time and so much rain. So much rain that all the walls smelled like it, even on that day when rain seemed to only exist in far-distant memory. The walls kept the memory of rain for the city, just in case they needed it; perhaps to kindle a feeling or spur a bit of hope, or maybe because they just like the smell–I don’t know.

A man passed me by–I initially guessed he was a carpenter, judging from the hammer in his pocket–and he greeted me “Hola.” I smiled at him and replied in greeting, very conscious about the lack of self-consciousness with which I replied. Perhaps Spanish was getting in my blood!, thought I. I do not want to learn it; I want to know it; I want it to get into my bloodstream so it is a part of me. I want to be so intimate with it that I can’t remember if I’m speaking Spanish or English. I want it to be just another way I express myself. Sometimes I express myself through art, sometimes through poetry, sometimes through Spanish.

Only then, after a brief surge of confidence, I came back down as I tried to mentally name the things I saw around me–plant, stone, dirt, church…but I could not think of the word for hammer. Nope, no idea. I had never even consciously heard that word. And I came back to the reality of how little Spanish I know and how much I have to learn, how little I understood of the carpenters, how I could not remember how to say “I smell…” which is exactly what I wanted to be thinking about. “I smell dust.” “I smell mangoes.” I did remember the word for mangoes.

My relationship with Spanish is one of fickle nature; I feel like I’m dealing with a tall, dark, dashing Flamenco instructor who is sexy and intimidating on the dance floor but then takes me out to dinner and dazzles me with his gentleness, and gentlemanliness. Spanish is nearly terrifying out on the streets of Antigua, where I don’t understand the directions I’ve been given or do not know how to communicate that my passport is missing…then there are moments like this, surrounded by dusty sapphire-spangled walls and palm trees and the smell of mangoes, and Spanish is this close gentle friend, whispering in my brain these elegant sounds depicting elegant things, and I feel happy to be with it and happy to let it run through my brain, through my blood.

Man. I really want a mango.