and what am i looking for and will i know when i find it?

here's a little gem i encountered today, though who knows if this is what you´re looking for--

"Life is hard" signifies a certain degree of fatalism, it must be admitted. But as an all-purpose saying, "La vida es dura" soaks up a variety of meanings, a range of nuances. The vagueness and abstraction of "life" is set against the concreteness of "hard." Most certainly, such a phrase is the simplest possible strategy for linking the particular to the general, the personal to the social. But is this equation an assertion that things must necessarily be so? Or does it not carry the possibility, the implication, that things might be otherwise? As a coda set to the rhythm of life's frustrations, this maxim can relate the duress of social and economic crisis experienced as personal conditions. It marks, too, the duration of the crisis that renders life so very hard. Its pessimism, its fatalism, can plainly serve as a sort of alibi, and excuse that relieves the individual speaker of the consequences of his own actions...at the same time, this proverb can bring to light the strength and endurance of the people who survive life's hardships. It marks, by turns, the banality of suffering, the intimacy of power, the comfort of resignation, and the resilience of the oppressed. (from p. xvi of "Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua" by Roger Lancaster)

oh and me, i was stranded on an island yesterday and today i'm back in a town that, given the options in this country, feels pretty familiar--
becoming-familiar like sweaty shoulders and bug bites
becoming-immune to bug bites.
i go in and out of being uncomfortable with being on vacation. so many feelings (always feelings!) about white tourists, whether anything in my pockets would serve a too-skinny begging boy well (chapstick receipts bandanna..?)...
it's probably been good to become reacquainted with boredom, to miss, to commit wholeheartedly or at least mostheartedly to sticking around for the flourishing of a little familial culture, to think and think about projects i want to be working on without a pen to write anything down--
what is traveling for, again? and am i heavier or lighter now, and does it become easier or harder to recross a border once-crossed? and how much am i seeing, and how much do i want to see?
anyway, little bubbles of thoughts and loves have been flourishing in this faraway,
little messages that aren't quite drowned out by the market flies
relearning rethinking pride and humility, probably not through seawater
but i did see a BRAINCORAL and a blue fish. (life is hard, and not so hard.)

anyhows, i'm missing the sticky sweaty communtarian raw-haven of the bao, looking forward to seeing some of you tomorrow evening and most all of you in my dreams.