Corrinne blows a goodbye kiss from the airport.
Good morning from Nicaragua’s capital. The heat is starting to build and it looks like another scorcher, and I’m still not quite sure where I’m going to go today. Maybe Leon. Maybe Jinotega. Scorching volcano heat or high mountain mists. Might flip a coin and go where it tells me.
Today is my first day of solo travel on the trip. Corrinne flew out at 2:30 this morning, and should be touching down in Providence a couple hours from now. She’s going to go get us an apartment, start her job, and take care of the Baron. I’m going to wander the country for a couple more weeks.
I can hear planes coming and going from said airport right now, as I’m right across the street from it. We took the bus down here from Esteli yesterday, got off in front of Augusto Sandino International, and walked into the Best Western that sits on the other side of the road. Had dinner, slept a while, then walked over at about midnight so she could catch her plane.
After she walked past the point I was allowed, I started back over to the hotel. Managua has a rough reputation, but you’d never know it standing in the middle of the Pan-American Highway after midnight across from the airport, gazing up at a cloud-covered moon. It was incredibly beautiful here last night, and I probably spent a good ten minutes just taking in the moon and wondering why I wasn’t flying home as well.
That’s a big question for me right now. Worry and doubt were regular meals before I came down here. I was nervous about travel in a way I never have been before. And now, with Corrinne headed home, it’s as though I’m starting an entirely new trip. And for some reason, I feel paralyzed by this. I have no idea where I’m going today, and I can’t seem to summon the excitement I should be feeling about that.
I rolled this around in my head quite a bit last night. And as I did, I began to think about the people that have disappeared from my life over the years. And I began to think about New Orleans, and how I’m not going to be living there when I go back to the States. And I thought about the novel I finished almost three years ago, and how I haven’t been able to make it go anywhere, and how I haven’t completed another book since. And all of it makes me feel like I’m losing something, or many somethings. Time. Opportunity. People. There’s this drive in me right now to try to control what I might be losing, and to bring back everything that’s gone away. And with that need to control things completely out of my control comes fear. I’m afraid of losing more than I have in the last year and a half.
That’s a hard nut to crack, and it’s going to be a while doing it. Right now, I’m sort of scared of being alone, and even though I’m a highly nomadic person, the idea of traveling by myself in a country where I barely speak the language has me sort of stuck in neutral. I can’t seem to muster any excitement for the things I wanted to see just a few days ago.
There’s really no solution to this except to go directly at the things I’m afraid of. I’m going to go have some kind of adventure today, end up in some new and strange city, and try to shake off this stuff that isn’t really mine. The idea is to get stronger. I hope I’m doing that.
Corrinne should be landing in Providence any time now. I like that we’ll be watching the same moon tonight. That’s a good thing to go on.