Rain

August is wilting away on the vine. It might be winter here but, we are rounding out the planting season. Until two days ago, my local bus was more efficient at generating dust than transporting people. Luckily it rained ending a month dry spell and heat wave that felt like summer in Chicago.

This month, rain came like a breath, slowing the pulse, releasing frustration, and making time out of nothing. Life stops when it rains. In my hurry up and wait Paraguayan life, I needed that break. The respite I did receive was all to brief. And like the fields of FarinaCue, I need more rain right now.

This past month has been marked by melodrama associated with the formation of my women’s group, a quixotic-esque quest for telephone service, bureaucratic bullheadedness by the PC administration, and the resurrection of the dead by the visits of past volunteers. Each one these short scenes engender its own irritations, its own moments of alleviation. And inn the end, they all passed.

Somehow they seemed to have left me more alone then when I started. My Guarani has improved. But more then ever, I am aware that I am cut from different stock. My allusions go unrecognized, jokes frizzle, and I hold back. To no one else it is hysterical, that I am riding in the back of a 1940s ford pick-up with a 20 meter piece of bamboo hoisted over its front end like a jousting stick. No one else sees the humor. This month I am tired for laughing alone.