desde nicaragua

Very Tall Cliffs (final post)

My uncle likes to tell me that all roads lead to Rome, but I don't know if I believe him. So many of us seem to have taken paths that lead to the edge of very tall cliffs. Now is when we learn whether we're brave, whether we leap off into the Unknown. Respect to my friends.

• Andrés quit his job yesterday. He heads back to Argentina.
• Eliett moves to Spain in three weeks, and is saying her goodbyes to Nicaragua.
• Adam just returned from Portugal and decided against visiting Poland this year.
• Rachel takes her GRE today (suerte, amiga) and leaves for France in three weeks.
• Nathan, who recently finished a job in Colombia, waits for her there.
• Jaweed and Yuxing will see ruins, beaches, cities, and me in Guatemala and El Salvador later this month.
• David is nearly done in South Africa. I don't know where he goes next.
• Rosarlin met a guy last month in Germany and plans to see him in Peru this December.
• Anthony passed the bar and is thinking about France again.
• Jessica and Otto will stick it out in Nicaragua for another year, then maybe head for Spain.
• Lole is finally nearly done with his thesis. His eyes light up when he talks about seeing his Hungarian girlfriend in Argentina.
• Megan completed her year in Guatemala and will follow her heart to Spain.
• Daniel is broke but he looks happy. He stays in Mexico indefinitely.
• Clavo is making things happen in El Salvador.
• Tabatha says she'll travel to Central America to prove her family wrong.
• Héctor is somewhere in Spain or Italy right now.
• Megan, my former roomate, wants to be in Nicaragua by January.
• Jorge still talks about France.
• Lauren no longer talks about Italy.
• Eric says he'll be happier in Panama, and I believe him.
• Devin is feeling restless again.

For now I leave Mexico to finish some reporting in Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. And at the end of the month, I head back to the States, to Unknowns, and to possibilities. My friends make me more brave.

a rush, a muddy neighborhood and a coffee

¨¿´Pa dónde vas, vaga?¨

The evening is cool and the streets slick and tranquil. It´s the calm after a storm and I returned to a black, black home. The power was out, so I ran down an eerily calm Carretera Sur in my rain-soaked jeans to here, a crowded cyber café in Monte Tabor. My landlady asked where I was going and she laughed when I told her I need to figure out how to get myself to Liberia, Costa Rica, by tomorrow afternoon.

Details: It´s been a complicated day. The morning intense because I thought my laptop was dead. How do I function without my beloved MacBookPro? It´s seriously my best friend and companion in this country. What happened to its battery? Is this some sort of punishment for using it extensively for things that have little to do with my work here? I moped in bed. Outside the rain pounded down.

For hours I slept, unsuccessfully attempted to fix the computer, ate, slept, read, unsuccessfully attempted to fix the computer, stared at the rain, ate, slept, watched my still-wet clothes clinging to the chairs near the fan not get any drier, unsuccessfully attempted to fix the computer, slept, ate, waited for a bus outside that never passed, shivered in my wet clothes in my lonely cabin, slept. Finally, sometime before noon, the computer decided to come alive again and my connection to the world reopened and:

The rain outside was something important. A tropical storm, or maybe a hurricane, depending on who from government was talking. I was outside now, robbing a wireless signal from my neighbor´s house, learning under his covered porch. The sky was dark and the branches whipped violently and the rain still pounded down. It was frightening, and as I looked at storm-tracker maps on my laptop screen I thought about doing the brave thing that somebody like me should do automatically. And then I thought about putting on dry clothes again and hopping into my sleeping bag with a cuddly book. But a friend set me straight, so I made a few inquiries, then tied up my hair and stepped into the storm.

Again, no buses passed and I got soaked. No taxis. I needed to get into the city to find real people whose houses were undoubtedly flooded, where streets were muddy and impassable. I had wrapped my laptop in two plastic grocery bags and its sleeve and tucked it into my cheap thin messenger bag but I still figured I would kill it this way, in this rain, as angrily I waited for transportation to not pass on Carretera Sur. You have to be kidding me, the transportation strike is over and where are the taxis, the buses? Now, when I actually have something important to do?

So I hitchhiked down, made more inquiries, and eventually found myself in the Hugo Chávez barrio near the airport. It´s poor and houses here are made of discarded things -- squares of metal and plastic and cardboard, pieces of cement, plastic bags. The streets were flooded or muddy and inpassable. People were everywhere, unsurprising since they´re mostly unemployed, but children were everywhere too because school got canceled. Almost immediately I drew attention because I walk like a chela and who did I think I was walking into here carrying a steaming cup of coffee in a paper cup? Did I really do that? Walk in as if this was just some thing I had to cover, please Mr. Taxi Driver, do you mind if we stop into one of the only chain coffee joints in the city so I can buy a wake-me-up?

Um, I guess I did do that. I probably deserved the jeering and taunts my first five minutes in the barrio.

But I learned once from a driver in Matagalpa how to talk to people in a place like this, and so I waltzed into random shacks yelling ¨buenaaaas.¨ And people told me their stories, and one 16-year-old boy guided me for an hour through his neighborhood, considered one of the toughest in the city. Don´t think I don´t realize how lucky that made me, carrying more than $1,500 worth of shiny computer in my deceptively ratty bag.

You know the feeling you get when you are doing a job that you like and you feel confident and happy? I miss that rush. I did my work, my job, and fast, and then I remembered later that I haven´t had a real job in nearly two years. I haven´t done regular reporting in nearly two years. All of the sudden I was afraid that everything I submitted was incomplete and badly organized or worded wrong and not quality. I guess the good thing about having a job and rules and a framework is you get used to expectations and to meeting them. The bad thing about being so loose and free like I have been these past eight months is you forget what those expectations were once and begin to doubt whether you still know how to meet them.

There is good and bad to everything, I suppose.

The storm may be a hurricane by now, I can´t be sure. The internet in this café is terrible and it takes about 5 seconds for every letter I type to appear on the screen. Don´t even ask how long it takes to load a page. But they play tecno remixes of such American classics as Joan Osborne´s ¨What if God was one of us?¨ so it´s not so bad and I won´t complain.

I told Lorena the landlady I was going to Costa Rica because I will go, tomorrow, hopefully on a hurricane-free road to meet two beautiful people I know making their way into Nicaragua specifically to visit me. This is amazing, having friends who like you enough to come visit when you live thousands of miles and several countries away. Since I´ve been down here I´ve gotten to see one two three four five six seven eight and now with Q and C 10 people here on visits. Three more coming next month, one a month after, my bro and his friend perhaps the next month, upcoming visits with other folks in neighboring countries, and it´s not that I like to brag or anything, but ...

my friends are the best.

I´m frequently encouraged to write more personal stuff in here so the above is an attempt to do that. People tell me it´s boring to read about political stuff, please update us on your adventures and love life and that time that kid tried to rob you and we really don´t care about everything else. Well, let me know if this was interesting.

For now, it´s back into the dark, back to my black black cabin and the clothes that isn´t yet dry. And to my bed, where I have little doubt that I´ll be able to sleep for 10 to 12 hours. Be jealous.

Because this is living.

a six-hour hike in the outskirts of cusco, perú

I think this might be my favorite place to visit. It's totally wonderful to go to new cities in new countries and make new friends and discover the how and why things work the way they do. But coming back to some place that you know you love, to visit people who are like family, well, that is unbeatable.

Ometepe, and my place in the world

I meant to write in this earlier, but several friends have been coming in and out of Managua on visits, and it's been hard to juggle everything the right way. Recently, I'd written about a trip into Ometepe, and I wanted to add a couple of photos from the trip.

This is a tree in front of the Morales family house in Las Pilas, Ometepe. This is the family whose children I live with in Managua. Past this tree, where my friend Devin is gazing out one coolish morning, is the village's central plaza, a large square of dirt with a couple of soccer posts and a pretty school at the end.

Devin, Mason and I know each other from university. They stopped in Nicaragua for about a week on a longer, Central America agriculture tour. (I hope you guys made it to Guatemala safely!) The family cleared out a bedroom for us that the three of us shared. "Bedroom" is an abstract word. There's the idea of doors, of walls, in order to deliniate spaces and provide a degree of privacy. But sound travels through thin boards and over the top. And the animals, including a large sow jokingly called a relative, freely roam in and out of the walled spaces.

All of our meals there were the same: sweetened coffee, beans, rice, cheese and plantains. Everything they eat comes from products they grow themselves on the island. Even the fish a nephew brings for stew or to fry comes from his morning's catch, which he sells to other villagers.

Here, my friend's mom squeezes the stuff that soon will become a salty, traditional Nicaraguan cheese. She makes every night when her husband comes home from their mixed-crop finca, bringing home about a gallon of fresh cow milk. The family grows several varieties of bananas, oranges, mandarins, cucumber and other fruits and vegetables — for export or internal consumption, via el Mercado Mayoréo.

You are easily in shape by living on Ometepe. Incer, one of the brothers in the family, used to live in my house in Managua, but returned to the island a month ago when he couldn't find a job here. Since then, he's lost a solid 10 pounds and his muscles are more defined. All you do is walk, and he walks fast. He hurried us (I had to beg for him to slow down) to and from his father's finca, about an hour away, up and down dirt paths, pausing to grab interesting fruits or tree "products" along the way: oranges, mandarins, tamarindo, these sponge things they use for bathing, a coconut-like fruit the size of a strawberry.

It was a good trip, and on the way in and out. The Kapuzcinski book has me thinking about doing journalism and writing about the world you see, and what it means or feels like to do that job now versus 50 years ago, when the famous Polish foreign correspondent did, or even versus a couple thousand years ago, when Herodotus did. Check this:

Man does not obsess about memory today as he once did because he lives surrounded by stockpiles of it. Everything is at his fingertips — encyclopedias, textbooks, dictionaries, compendia, search engines. Libraries and museums, antiquarian bookshops and archives. Audio and video recordings. Infinite supplies of preserved words, sounds, images — in apartments, in warehouses, in basements, in attics. If he is a child, his teacher will tell him everything he needs to know; if he is a university student, he will be informed by his professors.

Of course none, or almost none, of these institutions, devices or techniques existed in Herodotus's time. Man knew as much, and only as much, as his mind managed to preserve. A few privileged individuals started to learn to write on rolls of papyrus and on clay tablets. But the rest? Culture was always an aristocratic enterprise. And wherever it departs from this principle, it perishes as such.

In the world of Herodotus, the only real repository of memory is the individual. In order to find out that which has been remembered, one must reach this person. If he lives far away, one has to go to him, to set out on a journey. And after finally encountering him, one must sit down and listen to what he has to say — to listen, remember, perhaps write it down. That is how reportage begins; of such circumstances it is born. (p.75-6)

...

I want to keep copying down the words from the book, but hopefully that gives you a good enough idea of what this is about. Travels with Herodotus is a book that is making me think very hard and profoundly about my job, about foreign correspondence in 2008 and beyond, in my place in the world.

A story with pictures.

We started slow. Somoto is a quiet town and the weather is cool, and we savored the morning. After breakfast, conversations with kind people and packing our lunch/adventuring gear, we made our way to the bus station.

The 9:30 a.m. bus took us to Soni, a tiny town on the Panamerican with an entrance to the canyon. Twenty minutes later we were off, chattering animatedly and wondering how to turn the spike-y nopales along the dirt road into delicious meals.

We were happy, energized and ready.

That's Javier, my dance partner and fellow adventure seeker. He carried the backpack. I carried my camera.

That's me. The sun wasn't very high yet and we were still dry.

We paid 10 córdobas to a kid sitting under the shade of a tree at the beginning of the canyon. He said it was for the alcaldía, or the city. There's some sort of conflict between the folks who live along the canyon's edge and the city about who should keep the admission, and what that money gets spent on. One thing the alcaldía is definitely not spending the money on is signs. Besides one on the Panamerican (sponsored by Palí, the country's Wal-Mart chain), there weren't any signs or helpful directions/ information on the way in.

Although, this guy on the horse did offer to guide us for a price. We politely declined his services.

In the beginning we were careful. Nobody wants to slosh around in wet hiking boots, so when the sides of the river ran into unhike-able boulders, we looked for stepping stones and gingerly hopped across the ankle-deep water. But the walls began to narrow in, and the depth of the water rose.

We reached a point where climbing along the sides of the river got dangerous. A few guys offered to take us in a boat and we scoffed. Obviously, we were brave. We then reached a point where the guys were now were unloading people from the boat and transferring them onto life rings. We couldn't go any farther without getting the backpack wet, so we asked for one. They gave us two, and we were pulled across by a brown-skinned guy who swims like a fish.

The water was cool.

A couple of kilometers later we were alone again, and breathing heavily. It was getting hard to hop across the stepping stones without slipping. We stopped for lunch (tomato-and-cheese sandwiches) and a 20-minute nap. We walked in our swimsuits and hiking boots. Javier's skin began to burn.

It started to get cool and I put on my T-shirt. Then I fell in the water. Then the sides got impossible again and the water was higher than ankle-deep. Then knee-deep. Then belly-deep and chest deep and oh my god it reached my neck and Javier is shorter than me and I hope he can keep the backpack out of the water.

It was around 4 p.m. and I was tired and it was cold and wet and getting dark and we didn't know how far it was to the bridge at the Panamerican. I felt like a mountain goat. Some boys sitting against a boulder eyed us suspiciously as we scaffeled the walls behind them. I think they wanted us to fall in.

Finally, some women washing clothes in the river told us the bridge was just ahead. We pranced up the side of a hill, threw on our wet clothes and entered a totally different landscape.

I don't know if it was less beautiful.

heading out, canyon time

I´m starting to feel some frustration with the whole freelance thing. I now plan to talk with Spanish or Mexican papers instead of ones based in the U.S. I guess I got lucky with my first couple of attempts; my journalist friends say to get used to this. Oh well.

In a couple of hours I head out to Somoto, a city in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras. Fairly recently the rest of the world learned about its incredible canyon, which is now a popular (well, as popular as stuff gets down here) tourist attraction. The city was once populated by the Olmecas and Aztecs, indigenous groups from Mexico, and is also the birthplace of the legendary Nicaraguan musician family, the Mejìas Godoy.

My friend and I are in for a 3.5 hour-long busride there, hopefully in time to set up camp and catch tonight´s lunar eclipse.

A few quick notes:

* I just discovered this page that might be useful for folks coming into Nicaragua soon to visit: Mundo Latino: Nicaragua.

* Instead of just going to Venezuela in late March/early April, I´ll probably be stopping in Cuzco, Peru, too. I want to visit a lovely family there, eat delicious food and climb old stuff. Anyone interested in coming along, let me know. A week later I´m going home (home!) and, depending on certain things, I might go to Mexico for a bit before returning to Managua.

sounds on a breezy managua night

We were running late and running out of the house, in typical Nicaragua fashion. I'm walking out of the gate, following Menchú, who will shortly be playing a show at the chill Sandinista bar Antología. Abruptly, he turns around and starts running back to the house to grab some cables he'd forgotten.

In the middle of the street, it looked like he'd forgotten something else: his mother Feliciana.

A receptive, cheerful crowd turned out for the performance by Ecos del Sur. The band played the requisite Sandinista popular anthems, sung by the blushingly shy bassist whose low and powerful voice makes him sound like a fierce guerrilla warrior.

But Ecos del Sur is an Andean folk music band, and the majority of their songs were traditional hymns from South America. By far, the best part of the evening was when Feliciana, an indigenous Guatemalan wrapped in a colorful reboso, began dancing alone on the floor. Everybody in the bar stared in amazement, clapping. "Tengo 78 anos," she tells me later, "pero bonitos mis pies." ("I'm 78 years old but my feet are pretty.")

My gringo friends and I cut out early. We told the cab driver to take us to Traffic Bar, where an electronic music dance party had begun an hour earlier with DJ Revuelta Sonora and Clara Grun. "Está full," he tells us, pronouncing it "fool." By "full" he really meant "full," as the English word is preferred here to the Spanish "lleno."

I'm not a music critic, but the sound was fantastic, and backed up by cool mod-art videos on a giant screen on stage. I'm going to see these kids again next week, I think, at the hip Fresh Hill Bar.

The only weird thing about dancing there, or wanting to dance there, is that the guy-girl ratio was about 5:1, and the average age was 16. I learned this the embarrassing way, eventually getting into laughable conversations with beautiful 20-year-old boys who insisted they were old enough to be my boyfriend or offered their numbers should I ever need the opinion of a Managua youth for a story.

Of course, no age restrictions or ID checks at the door. Simply a 50 córdoba cover (around $3).

Like Managua itself, there was no continuity, nothing that obviously connected the hundreds of people there together. You had the pot-smoking hippies and ninja-style dancers, the hipsters and fresas, the gangsta thugs and rockeros, the club goers and sk8Rs. I guess what connects them all is money — these were the children of Managua's middle to upper classes.

Later we ran into the kids from Bluefields Sound System and blueEnergy, where in the back of a Scooby-Doo Mystery machine plans were made for further adventuring tonight.

En la ciudad, tranquila

(Okay. Okay. Okay. Tranquila, Melissa. Tranquila.)

Una tarde perfecta.

En Managua para mí los momentos perfectos son los más inesperados, cuando te encuentras con gente que no pensabas ver, y haciendo cosas que no te imaginabas haciendo.

Uno:
Dos abogados en un vehículo lujoso andan en Los Robles, una zona de alta clase. Nos ven, frenan, y bajan la ventana. Quién somos? — Mi compañero, un señor harapiento caminando con bastón, y yo, una chela (obviamente) con pantalones apretados y una mochila celeste. Saludan a mi compañero. Es famoso por estas partes (este país).

No estamos perdidos, pero estamos deorientados, y nos ofrecen llevar. Entro yo primero sin saludar. Me siento mariada, y conozco este olor en el aire. Chava sube, tranquilo.

"Les molesta que fume?" pregunta el hombre en tacuche que está manejando.

"Por supuesto que no." Mi compañero saca sus Marlbolo Reds.

Este olor. Tengo meses sin ... pero este hombre está en tacuche ... no puede ser que ... Nos ofrece la mota.

Otra vez, mariada, y la conversación pasa por encima como una cobija. Algo de no poder encontrar suficientes indígenas para hacer una película sobre la colonización y que los tuvieron que traer amarrados y ser abogados es solo para sobrevivir y en dos minutos llegamos a la popusería.

Dos:
"Me sentí tan mal la otra noche. Te quería explicar. Es que mis amigos estaban canzados. Quería salir contigo. Te quería conocer."

"Tranquila, tranquila."

Me dice que no cree en destino. Nomás en buenas notas, buenos ámbitos, buenos momentos. Buena gente.

Los dos somos.

Había salido perdida de la embajada brasileña, moviendo mis labios en un diálogo en portugués conmigo misma, poniendo poca atención a la calle y lamentablemente escogiendo un camino para los babosos más babosos de Managua. Bonita muñequita chelita flaquita coman mierda hijos de puta todos. Llego al bus, tranquila, encuentro asiento y cierro los ojos. Cuando los abro lo veo.

Este maje. El del saco inseparable.

"Me bajo en la próxima parada."

"Entonces yo también me bajo."

Tres:
Qué oficina más bonita. Y esta cosa, como se llama en espanõl? El cuadro, sí, eso. Quién lo hizo? Él, el chavo que nos trajo aquí? Es tu hermano? Lo vende? Y qué significa la sábana? Es sábana? Escribió un poéma en la sábana? Es suyo el poema? La verdad escribió que el semen es rico? Eso es lo que dice la sabana quemada y pintada y doblada y clavada en el cuadro.

Gracias por la invitación. Pasado mañana es la exhibición? Nos vemos el jueves entonces.

Cuatro:
I tell him what my dad tells me, that good things fall down on me from the sky. I am so happy right now, so fortunate. Yesterday was an amazing day; today is better. I make audacious proposals and they're accepted and if this is living then living is so, so good. These moments. These moments.

"Ojalá que sigan para siempre pero yo he vivido la vida y te cuento que hay momentos oscuros que no quieres vivir cuando la gente es mala o todo para y entonces disfrutelos ahora y que siguen pero guarda algo en tu corazón y materialmente en una caja sí yo tengo una algo para que en esos momentos que no puedes ver nada por lo oscuro que son puedes tener una luz brillante una memoria de estos momentos. Envíatelos. Ahora en un sobre los escribes y te los mandas para que en 25 años cuando todo es oscuro lo recibas."

Cinco:
Gente como tú no había visto en Managua. Te quiero decir algo. Te quiero llamar la atención. Necesito valor.

Bueno, hasta que lo encuentre te sigo. Te sigo te sigo te sigo a pie hasta que llegues a ... la parada. Bueno, yo puedo ir a algún lugar también. Hola. Qué ruta esperas? La 114 o la 120. Mmmm pués yo también. Mire, ahí está la 14. Nos subimos. Yo me siento por la ventana si tú ... aaaah pues exactamente. Tú te sientas a mi par.

Pues te contaba, o me contaba en mi cabeza, no escuchas las locuras que pasan por ahí o sí? Mejor que no. Pues te contaba que no había visto gente como tú en Nicaragua, con tus, como se llaman en español? Esas cosas que tienes por las orejas. Plugs. Que chistosa la palabra suena en español. Sí. Plugs.

Una pregunta: Qué tipo de música escuchas? Esa carita porqué la haces?

No sabía que se escuchaba eso aquí ... Nos vemos en CTS el 16 de febrero. Un placer.

(Ahora dónde es qué originalmente quería ir?)

* * * * *

Quiero escribir cada palabra.

Long hours on a bus to León, and the ocean

I seem to have many random encounters, particularly in airports or on airplanes. The night I arrived from Mexico City I met a very nice guy from Los Angeles who'll be living in Granada for the next few months. We've hung out a few times since, and I invited him to come with me to León on Wednesday night for a concert by Philip Montalbán, a reggae artist I wrote about recently.

We accidentally took the wrong bus.

Well, not exactly the wrong bus. I mean, we got to the right city. But we took a cheap bus (5 córdobas less for the ride — or about 25 cents US) without realizing the cheap bus goes down the "old road" to León. The old, very bumpy, very tiring road. At least it was a beautiful sunset.

The streets were quiet when we arrived, sometime after 7 p.m. León isn't as suffocatingly hot at night, so we walked for a few hours and ate chilaquiles (how I miss Mexico) at a Spanish tapas bar before heading to La Olla Quemada for the show.

It'd be a nice bar/restaurant/venue ... except for the people there. Montalbán seemed pleased with the crowd, and I'm pleased for him. But they made it hard for me to enjoy the performance.

There must have been 150 tourists. Good people, I'm sure, because it takes a certain kind of adventurer to come to such a disjointed country like Nicaragua, blah blah blah. Everybody is fascinating and beautiful and drunk and trying to dance and confident they look good while they're doing it (they don't). I didn't take any photos, but the scene reminded me of one my friend Daniel recently described from Oaxaca. You can look at his and laugh.

Early the next morning, yesterday, we took another bus to the beach.

The woman who sat in front of us packed her four children next to her. When the bus attendant comes to collect their fare, she pays only for her own.

"Can you pay the fare for at least one of the kids?" he asks her, pleading.

"No," she declares and it sounds like a challenge.

He rolls his eyes, smiles and walks back to the front.

We got off the beach town of Las Peñitas. This sign advertises tortillas and cuajada, a salty white cheese that used to gross me out and is now a staple in my diet.

The locals didn't seem interested in going deep into the water, at least not for swimming. They're the sane ones. The waves were scary big, perfect for surfing and looking at.

After a nice run on the hard sand, a quick dip in the water and a traditional Nicaraguan breakfast (greasy rice and beans, cheese, and bananas), we left. This time, we took the right bus down the "new road" back to Managua.

Would you pay to see this?

Another 10K run yesterday morning in El Crucero, a mountain village directly west of Managua. Actually we discovered it's 11.4K. It's kind of fun to measure in kilometers because the numbers seem so much higher.

The sign says, "A thousand flowers for sale. 5 córdobas each." A thousand flowers aren't actually for sale. That's the name of the flower.

Marlon doesn't own a pair of running shoes. This pair belongs to his brother, who bought them used at the Mercado Oriental. They are a couple sizes too big for Marlon, and, as you can see, the soles are nearly worn through.

We were walking back and I was shaking my head because some military guy had been taking pictures of me with his cell phone when this animal stepped in our path. I started laughing. My knees fell to the dirt in front of this noisy creature and Marlon just stared at me. Laughing, still, uncontrollably, and dirty now, like this pig. Am I really this easily amused?

Would you pay to see this? Would you pay to go on runs like this in a country you don't really understand with someone who can't find a job? I'm sort of helping Marlon, who has a university degree in anthropology, start a business doing what he does with me — only with people who will pay him. Here's the flier we created. Thoughts?

* * * * *

"If you're not telling yourself whoa now," my friend Devin tells me, "then you're not really living."

So many days I don't know anything, or I feel confused about what I'm doing professionally, or I worry about where I will be in some distant future, or I fear never knowing when I've found satisfaction.

Today I feel sure I'm living. Today I'm telling myself "whoa."