Lately I've been dreaming about food. Mostly because I am up here in the mountains of Morelia at Zapatista Peace Camp and I eat once a day. Today as I was reading, once again, Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver I started thinking about that restaurant Beau Jo's. I envisioned their pizza pies with the mountainous delicious crust, warm bottles of honey, and glorious melted cheese and I wanted it so badly. I have been getting lost in food dreams. Yesterday it was the three cheese grilled cheese sandwiches and strawberry milkshakes of Gunther Tooty's. The day before that it was the Saag Paneer, Daal, and bottomless cups of Chai at India House.

I used to think that if I had to lose one of my senses and could decide which I would choose taste. But thinking about food is too real, too home. How could I sacrifice that? I can't stand to think of losing any sense. What gifts we have that we don't even recognize. At least not until they depart from us.

My biggest fear is that you are more precious to me than I am to you. Being here, away from everything I know, makes me guard my memories and my loved ones fiercely. You are like my favorite foods, I crave you so profoundly and cannot find you here. Then when we are together I devour you and feel full, appetite sated. But once one of us leaves I am hungry again and no matter how I stuff myself with you when I can I still starve and crave you later. There is no way to take that feeling of being satisfied, of being whole, with me. Yet I still drive myself way past crazy in the trying. Sometimes life is so futile I wonder why we even bother. Though of course we do, we must.

My personal challenges feel so small compared to this great lucha we are involved in. I miss food and friends, meanwhile there is a serious lack of justice and freedom and peace in this world. Why do the tiny stones in my shoe matter? At least I have shoes, no? One of my favorite quotes from Animal Dreams is:

"What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallways and touching the walls on both sides." (P 299)

Yeah, that is about it. Enough for everyone, that is this great struggle, can you believe it? Doesn't seem like it should be so complicated.

The power goes off every few days here. They say se fue la luz, which means the lights went away. When there are no lights I sit outside the small cafeteria where I eat my once a day meal and I have the pleasure of watching nighttime fall, slowly creeping in and resting on the shoulders of the mountains. First the pinkish orange of the sun's goodbye and then the blue of coming night. The blue darkens and darkens until there is no light left to read by, only enough light to breathe in, thanking whomever for the existence of all the green trees surrounding us. Blue becomes cobalt and gray and then, finally, if you wait there long enough, black. If your patience persists the stars begin to peek out. Shyly at first, a glimmer, a coy wink. And then before you know it the heavens are full and heavy and if you stand on your tiptoes you can almost just touch the sky. It embraces you without touching, but kinder than unrequited love.

The moon comes too. She is somewhere near full, maybe just past. She shines so bright that she illuminates the sky, a hazy cloud of brilliance. She is my sister, my soul, my womb. In all the places my feet have touched my head has turned up and my eyes have smiled into her great, calm being. She understands. I can see her eyes looking down on us and watching all these tragedies, both great and small. But she also bears witness to the love. Imagine to think what would happen if we had no love to show her, if this gift was absent. I suppose she would turn dark and crumble away. But no, she is our guardian and she stays on. I don't think I would have the strength to watch this world of ours. She saw us, humans, arrive, and maybe she is waiting for us to go. But no, I think she is enduring it all with us. An act of solidarity, a life of solidarity, from our compañera. The moon, la luna, dioula.

And so, this is how I leave you, in the company of our moon. Zapata vive, la lucha sigue.