The many colors of Antigua

Preface: Travelling comes with a slew of emotions, especially for an extended amount of time. Antigua is a truly beautiful city, full of life and soooo many wonderful colors and languages and tastes and lives. It is an amazing place to be and my overall experience really is a positive one. My brain has been pounded for hours on end every single day for the past week though, and at times I really have been tired but reassured by the colors and things around me. This post is not really about anything. It was me forcing myself to be a little more creative, and to give the language-learning part of my brain a break. It’s not necessarily a finished, polished work but it’s a practice in association and observation and just putting general feeling on paper without regard for a lot of rules. So here it is. Enjoy.

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Grey, a sad color to start with, maybe, but a good one. It means rain. It reminds me of home. Not in a sad way, but in a way that tastes like love. The clouds and thunder roll in in the afternoons, building around and in front of the volcanoes. Grey cobble stone streets in every direction, could trip you up, but can take you back to a time you can’t remember. Slow down! It’s easier on the eyes and the spirit. Grey, an easy color, and tired—or maybe a different word, pleasantly cansada. Yes. Not quite seeing in the colors of the rising sun but not tired or weary of the world.

Red!  Sudden salsa, a beat you want to swing your hips to, or maybe just tap your toe today. Maybe it’s a little much, like too much picante in your rice. But then, a little bite never hurt anybody too badly. We live in a red house at the end of the street and we stand on the roof to see the rest of the world while the laundry billows or something like that on the breeze that rolls down of the backs of those volcanoes. Fuego. I guess you could erupt…and I carry my books in a bright red bag but that doesn’t mean anything. I haven’t felt much like dancing anyway.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not azul—I’m not the blue that you might think of lonely. I’d like to say I’m the blue of the Café Sky, or the sky above as we walk to class each day. Oh, or maybe the color of that one house just down the block a bit. There is no blue like the one I left behind, no blue like mountain lakes but that’s ok. I’ll lift my proverbial glass of “Agua Pura” and may it ever be half full, overflowing with a hope the color a song I heard in a coffee shop one time.

Augusta sings in the streets and the trees, green, lean in to listen. This is life. It’s Guacamole, or the avocado picked right off the tree. Green like the parks and the pictures on postcards. Here’s what you’re missing out, not going yourself. Gringo in a foreign land. I want to learn this language so, but I’m still green you might say. Verde. Verdad. Pais de la eterna primavera. My green eyes shining in the rain.

Amarillo, not a town in Texas. I’ve never loved the color yellow before, and no, I don’t love it now. It belongs here though. The arch, La Merced, so many beautiful buildings in shades of marigold and golden rod. See, now I’m smiling, lighter at just the thought. Sonreír. Such a word for smile, you have to smile to say it. I’ll make it here, just fine, between gold-plated decorations and a hint of yellow thread woven through the tapestries.

Purple. A funny color. I feel like the color purple sometimes, or like the word “purple”. A little awkward, like nothing quite rhymes with me but I’m not completely cast out of the color wheel. Woven purple earrings, purple bags in the crowded market. It’s a rich color, and full of flavor like the food we are fed each day. It can stutter though, and trip up like my Spanish. It’s endearing right? It’s meeting new people from around the world, a mix of red and blue. What’s a rainbow without it?

White. A blank slate. Starting over again in a whole new place. All the colors are here to fill my soul and make me whole. Welcome to Antigua, Guatemala.