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my blogging muscles are rather withered and not audience ready, but it`s just been too long to keep waiting. so here i am. i feel more and more embarrassed to start writing each time it has been this long. i dont really know why.

there is obviously a lot that has happened. many minutes have ticked by, many minor things have been undone and redone and overdone, etc, many meals and conversations and projects and ups and downs to be had. including a wedding, beloved visitors, a finish of one semester, a move, a new winter settling in.

but i just can`t do all those tiny moments justice by clumping them into a quick pasted together story. nor do i want to. so i`ll just share the following story that has stuck with me as i travel in the cramped bus down the misty hill and in my quiet moments in the mornings.

the sun poked out every once in a while as i sat at my pollo asado post, waiting for 2 o clock to come, when I could abandon my duty of putting together plates and chasing away starving dogs. i had a date for the evening with my husband and i was tired of just sitting, sitting, sitting at our church`s bazaar. the kids that kept begging a coin were beginning to get restless and all the good used clothes had been sold off. Moises toiled over the last two measly chicken breasts, hawking them off on all the passerbyers, 2 for 30 cords! he proclaimed, winking over at them, inviting them to come and enjoy the obviously great deal. I meandered through my mind, the memories and sensations of the day lolling upon me. It was then that my attention was diverted. A local drunk and possibly crazy man had wandered over to our bazaar. He is a man that everyone knows and yet doesn`t know. He is well-known for being passed out on sidewalks or begging money or just talking to himself, but as far as his family, his favorite color, or the endless wonderings of why, are unknown...at least to me. He was hunched over, slowly making his way to the barb wire fence we were using as a display rack for hats. He gently fingered the cloth of one, turned the bill of another, finally decisively pulling off a blue one. I stayed still, curious as to his next step. He then reached into the depth of his worn pockets and pulled out several 1 cord coins, counting them carefully in the weathered palm. Then he circled carefully up around my station and into the back of the area, where Lester was receiving money. He placed those 10 shiny coins into Lester`s hand, only to be surprised with the five that were returned, winking up at him. He then stood beneath the playful sun, adjusting his new possession until it fit just so over his ears. away he shuffled, down the lane and back to the street.

as we went to managua for our date that night, i asked moises if he knew the name of this man...which of course he did and said, ¨i was going to let him take it if he took it. but look how quick he is. no one told him the price or where to pay or anything. he`s not as crazy as many think.¨ and he switched the radio channel.