Heartbreak Hostel: Fly away, fly away from Iquitos, Peru

Guillermo and Maria are leaving my place in some moments from now for a few days away in the jungle, and not long after they return here they will leave for good back to Spain to resume their more settled academic lives after finishing their research project in Peru, based mostly in Belen Market of Iquitos. I could be heartbroken at their departure, and normally I would be close to tears at their leaving. But I have lived a long time and I have lived a life of leaving, each passing and parting tearing a piece of me and keeping open the wound of loss till I spent some time with Paula, my French lady friend, a school teacher and lifetime exile like myself, she long since resigned to living in nations other than as that of the Pied Noir she had assumed would be her natural native life. Paula, school teacher and exile; Paula, a French girl who loves living even when it is bitter and she is depressed; a smiling and beautiful girl who sees children growing up daily as she tries to make them one step above where they were when she met them first; she tells me and I understand that her charges are not hers to keep but hers to send away.

Go into the world. Live your lives.

Preparing Dinner

So we had a dinner party, Maria and Jo doing much of the cooking, Guillermo and Paula pitching in with John and others to make a meal we all shared for our last night together.


Maria and Joe made some dinner...

 And Guillermo did some preparation for out meal as well.

John got a lesson in making ceviche...

Joe made himself at home in the kitchen, a pro.

And I gave thought to Paula's look at loss.

 

 Life is too short to think about loss.

 We eat, we talk, we part.

Now, at this long-past-time date I see those I have lost as having gained themselves, and I having had some short time of joy in knowing and sometimes loving.

Seals and Crofts have a lovely song called "Hummingbird" that came to mind when I finally understood the nature of leaving, but the song turned into another, one pretty, one calm, one I will pass on to readers here, nothing about birds flying or not flying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsW8rXPcnM0

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html