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FILM INTRODUCTION

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We have a need for certainty. So we presume that we know. That we control. That we’re in control.

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But perhaps it’s our assumption that we’ll be here tomorrow that keeps us from our capacity to live.

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And from our capacity to smile without reason.

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FILM INTRODUCTION

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‘ … Doña Chona seems tired but she isn’t frightened. And by frightened I mean the frightened you see deep in the eyes of most human beings.

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A frightened that hides itself well. A frightened that quietly shouts its assumption of isolation, and of loneliness.’

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‘ … Doña Chona seems tired but she isn’t frightened. And by frightened I mean the frightened you see deep in the eyes of most human beings. A frightened that hides itself well. A frightened that quietly shouts its assumption of isolation, and of loneliness.’

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I have remade this film which was screened only once. Last year. It was the first time I ever recorded my voice. And came after translating the most subtle of experiences. An experience which led me to realise how easily missed life can be.

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I look forward to Monday. As always. See you then.

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‘Perhaps the soul of a nation is what lies within. Beneath the surface yet always there. Evident in its people, if you care to gaze in the right fashion.

Perhaps the soul of a nation is what it is capable of being.’

(words by Nic Askew)

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FILM INTRODUCTION

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‘Perhaps it’s our superiority that keeps us from our own life. And our capacity for humility that leads us to it …’

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Occasionally you sit in a room with someone and are certain that your experience of life is better for it. This probably best describes Carlos Cabarrus.

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He is a Jesuit Priest but I have to admit that I am not entirely sure what a Jesuit Priest is. And as usual, the label we seem to like to put on a person is of little importance.

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(pictured - the marimba, the sound of this astonishing nation).

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the marimba - (48 seconds)

[CLICK TO DOWNLOAD MARIMBA MP3]

captured at a festival whose name I couldn’t pronounce. I just discovered it hiding on a recorder.

listen and lose yourself in a place where for just a moment nothing seems to matter.

originally posted on monday9am.tv on 7th December 2007.

originally posted on monday9am.tv on 14th October 2007.

‘… the soul of this country’.

It is becoming obvious to me. The more I experience. The more I listen beyond the words I seldom understand.

But my sense of perspective has taught me that space is required to write the words and make the film/s that might do justice to such a simple yet complex challenge. And space is something I have had little of in the last few weeks.

To give you a sense of this last two weeks, it might be fun to list the more obvious detail of the trip so far; the characters we have spoken to and filmed along the way. Those the wind has blown us towards. Many who see with similar vision.

… a midwife, a bone healer, a jesuit priest, a baker, an anthropologist, an entrepreneur, a former US Ambassador, a waiter, a weaver, a teacher, a storyteller, a cook, a karate teacher, a mayor, many many schoolchildren, a musician, a woodsman, a fisherman, an interpreter, a sculptor, a mayan priest, a cooperative, a photographer and perhaps even the soul of the country herself.

Later today I believe Edwin and I are to spend time with the national football team, then to a city prison, and soon to LA to film Carlos Peña, the Guatemalan winner of Latin American Pop Idol. He was in Mexico yesterday but appears to have moved on. Where else : )

And with a week to go on this leg of the journey I wonder where else the wind might blow us?

We remain wonderfully lost in the uncertainty of quite where to look. Just more capable in how to look.

And it becomes more obvious quite what might happen when a country regains the ability to see itself in the clarity of focus.

Here’s to the wind. And the clarity of focus.

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originally posted on monday9am.tv on 14th October 2007.

We are just back from the prison. A totally arresting ’story’ of the observation of life, which I will write about once I can lay my hands on an accurate translation. And make the film.

originally posted on monday9am.tv on 13th October 2007.

There are a group of youths sitting against of a tomb, laughing to a soundtrack groaning out from an over-used CD player.

Elsewhere entire families picnic on burial plots.

‘How irreverend… ‘

Or is it?

Perhaps the colourful way this nation celebrates its dead lies in its deeper understanding that death might not be as final as it might appear to many.

And then I wonder, when the time comes for me to shuffle off my perch, how I might wish for visitors to break with the silent tradition encouraged by the colourless, dare I say lifeless, cemeteries I have previously stood in.

I am just imagining the scene in a quiet English country churchyard.

But this might just be me & my soul : )

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We inadvertently stumbled into paradise in the most unobvious of places.

How could a community experience such joy and simplicity?

How could these people, despite the hardship of owning less than little, continue to focus on that which is truly important in life?

How could a nine year old girl volunteer that nothing on earth could take her away from this place?

How could the fisherman be so certain?

A short film is etched into my imagination. When I get a chance to breath I will make it. I believe it to be the soul of the country shining through.