The Space Between

I sit in candlelight and watch smoke curling from the glowing tip of a joint. It dances in the air, every direction at once, gathering and spreading and contracting in white drifts. As I watch the ember I watch my mind. Ever moving, ever grasping. Never stopping.

The only addiction I've ever had is to weed. They say it is the only classified drug not to be physically addictive, but the mental addiction can be crippling. I used to smoke every day, when the routine and caffeine of my life formed walls and wide-open pits in which to wallow. But I like to think I left that habit in London.

These days, I rarely explore that hole. I prefer to live my life in clarity. But as with any vice, it can still get out of hand. The spiral into that blurry other dimension happens quickly, and usually signals the need for reform.


I have been stoned for two weeks. For whatever reason, I know profoundly that that little farm over the lake is no longer my home, and yet I cannot leave; not yet, for I have made a commitment to hold space here for the next month at least.


To feel something so deeply and yet not act on it throws me sideways. I almost cannot bear the lie.


And so I retreat as always, away, away, back to my zone, where I try to sift through the swirls of emotion currently de-rooting me, read patterns in the drifts in the air.


Before I even go back there, I begin to say goodbye.

I spend a lot of time staring. Mainly at the lake's surface, swept into white peaks by an incessant gale that completely cleans the skies, pushing November's cold deep inside. In my head the loop is playing. "It's time. It's time. It's time." I hold on to things, tightly, to keep myself from being blown away.

The smoke and the wind blur the edges. They slow things down, spread them out, until I can see the spaces between. I push myself into the cracks and wait it out.

In mid-November I return from a El Salvador, leaving friends and my sister behind. A course has descended on the farm and I have to pull myself out of my stupor. The girls fill every space with their laughter and self-exploration. I alternate between getting drunk on their raw spirit and hiding away in my kitchen, putting all my energy into their meals. But for the first time ever, my heart isn't in it.


I visit my man in Santa Cruz. His face is so familiar and yet somehow so far away. Our connection strings through lifetimes, but I fear that in this life, our current paths are too erratic.


I sit on his bed, with its wide-open view, and close my eyes to the blustery day. "The wind is blowing too hard," I say, without really understanding my words.


In my head the sentence continues. Too hard to be grounded here by such a tiny little thread. When I walk out that day I feel like I'm walking out forever. But I do not doubt I will see him again.


At the end of November Nico, last member of my farm family, leaves. With his departure my roots finally retract.


I begin to get my belongings in order.

Earthquake awakes

The moment I arrive back at the farm I realise it is time to leave.

I cannot explain what it is that changed my mind. I have lived here for nine months; eight and a half months longer than expected. I have grown comfortable, collected things. I had envisioned staying here for a while longer.

And yet I feel totally displaced. It is as if my energy has exploded and is dispersed, hanging together just gently. It spreads wide over Central America and the lands I have just travelled, the spirits of my sister and my friend Sacha echoing from opposite ends. I have no doubt that my urge to leave is connected to this; to the fact that they are both unexpectedly in the area.

But there is something else. I look on the lake with a new awareness. An understanding, somehow, that Lake Atitlan could never be the one I am looking for.

Perhaps it is the remoteness. The contrast between here and the beautiful beach in El Salvador where I just left my sister. Or the people, the divide between native and traveller. There is a dark side lurking under every corner and a history steeped in blood.

Or perhaps it is the quaking of the land, a shaking that wakes me up at night. Sometimes I lie in bed and I cannot tell if it is the earth or my heartbeat that moves me.

In a sense I am disheartened. This was a real contender; this gorgeous lake that ticks so many boxes. I try not to look into it too deeply; apparently, I can only ever be loosely tethered to this earth.


The land around me slides. The lake before me rises. And in the middle there is me, shifting and moving, ever wandering.

I will follow through with my commitment the the farm. But inside that wind blows strong. I look at the water's surface, whipped into white peaks, and brace myself.

Sister Sun

This is the kind of evening I live for. The window presses patterns into my elbows and the metal of the car edge burns. In the wind my hair feels sharp.

We ascend a slight incline and the low sun snipes my eyes in a flash of intense orange.

Leaning back I enter the grey pleather world of a minibus, occupants occupied with books and white earphones. I lever my head and shoulders back out of the window. Insert myself back into the land flying past.

The difference is stark. The lid comes off the sky and I morph from the observer to the observed. My heart feels like it is expanding. Somehow this evening shows everything as it truly is.

I think of my sister, waving from the side of the road where I left her an hour ago, and have to resist the urge to jump out into this golden world.

It is hard to believe I have just spent two weeks with Emily - they seem to have passed me by in a whirl of activity, pierced through with the clear light of the new dry season.

Just a week ago she ripped up her ticket back home. For whatever reason, she felt the same pull taking her away from our homeland. Now, like me, she is dislocated. Thanks to destiny's fine work, Central America now houses two wandering Randalls.

Separated for years by winding lives, once more brought back together under this metalled sun. For the first time we find ourselves together in our abandon, and the focus shifts to our similarities instead of our differences.

If I hadn't needed to return for work I would have skipped down the Pacific with her. But instead I am on a bus back to the lake.

The coast of El Salvador marches along the sea in dramatic cliffs and endless lines of surf. Fields of sugar cane and coconut palms flaunt highlights in sprays of green.

Everything is on fire.

Ahead of me lie eight weeks of hard work. Beyond that… only this sun knows. The swelling inside reminds me not to stay away too long.

The wind teases tears from my eyes. I miss her already.

The other side

The lake is swirling. She spreads her weedy reach wide, trailing watery fingers over unsuspecting shore. I cannot stop looking at all the land she's claimed.

Sometimes the lake is paradise. Sometimes far from. I suppose that is the case with anywhere.

I arrive home from a night away to find our puppy, Bear, missing from the farm. He is absent for the first time since he was born in the greenhouse in June.

A few local women are fishing from the lake's edge near our dock. They stand bare-footed in the murky weeds, colourful wrap skirts sodden at the hems. I ask them and they giggle, waving their hands vaguely down the path.  Esteban, one of the farm hands, tells me Bear was violently sick all afternoon.

My heart starts to beat. Hard.


I furiously search the coffee plantations either side of our land, but little Bear appears to have vanished.

At a certain point the next day I give up.

Esteban finds the remains of poison in the field next door. Ironically, it seems the owners meant to target Bear's stray mother, who darts out from the spot looking perfectly, frustratingly healthy, her again-pregnant stomach tauntingly swinging. Full with Bear's brothers.

A couple of days later a fisherman paddling his kayuko in the shallows finds a puppy's swollen body floating in the weeds. Evidence, discarded. I think of the laughing women, who were standing right… there.

I do not look. Nico and Esteban remove it and lay the remains out for the vultures. Within a week there is nothing left but teeth.

I release my grief in a quick burst.

It is stupid -- I know deeper pain than a dead dog -- but I feel dislodged by the poignancy of it all. Somehow floating too, weeds catching in my hair.
For me and my farm family, a rainy summer. For another, a life. In a strange way I feel honoured to have seen one from beginning to end.

I'm not sure what to learn from it other than to remind myself of the edge, so easy to forget when surrounded by beauty. It feels balanced to be presented with the other side, if only for a moment.

To me, his body, swollen and floating in the shallows, is just a speck of an indication of the lake's power. For how many countless villagers lie under her surface?

I am surrounded by the terrible beauty of Atitlan.

She surges over the shore.  Claims her own with ease.

I sit and watch, quietly.