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.