I went to Nicaragua just before Covid hit. Still had the house in Antigua but with my interest in coffee, with my fascination for this place in the northern mountains of Nicaragua, I set off for a few months. Turned into almost 3 years in this little house, high up above Matagalpa - a cowboy, farming, and working man’s city about 2 hours drive up from the capital, Managua.
I got my dogs to the house with me, they enjoyed the freedom, chasing all the animals and wading through the river below the house. It was really here, in Nicaragua, I decided to go “all-in” as a writer, giving up all my other consulting, running a company and what in retrospect was a souless enterprise trying to reform Harvard fat cats who only saw $ signs and financial bottom lines for education.
You’ll find a lot of earlier posts on this substack about Nicaragua and my time there. The archive is now fully open, accessible to all, free or paid subscribers.
I wrote a few books of poetry there, many essays but most of all had the time to just exist and think. Sure, I became poorer and poorer by the day but I didn’t care and still don’t care. I want to pursue life naked and alive, raw and uncooked. I’ve given up on the smoke and mirrors of materialism - I’m not making a virtue out of poverty, just saying there is more to life than loading up a grocery cart with many things you’ll never truly eat but just consume and get fat on. It’s the adventure and the time to be at peace with your soul that counts.
I’d sit in my hammock and the view, you wouldn’t get any finer. I’d have good, valuable, salt of the earth people over for beers, good food. I slowed down. I became full and rich with time and love.
Here’s a poem on this topic that I wrote during my time in the little house and on the mountain.
Time And Love
I’m poor as the morning wind
and live alone in a house
at the end of a road that
nobody wanders up except for
each morning, a hooded boy
and his 5 cows.
My dog is buried out back.
The grass grows thick between him and the house.
I’ll get to it one day
when the rain stops and my head clears.
I hope the snakes will forgive me.
I know my dog will.
My books are asleep in boxes
in many different countries.
I hope the are enjoying their rest.
It is just as well, I need time to think for myself
and hollow out a place for my soul
that demands I be true to itself.
My poems are restless and scream
from the corner of my bedroom where they lay
piled up, in notebooks of wanted attention.
However, I’m busy with new ones
that fly about my head
and which keep me from sleeping
most nights as they conspire
to fight imaginary revolutions.
That about sums up, where I’m at.
This little place on a mountain
doesn’t have much
in the way of comforts
but come and visit,
I’m here with loads of
time and love!
I'm writing a novel about a fictional Nicaragua-like country in Central America set in the 70's during a rebel uprising with it's guerrilla warfare. While I've travelled a lot when we were sailing in the area, and I'm headed to Costa Rica soon, I'll have to check out your archives. Although I imagine the country has changed a lot from then to now. Or maybe not, Ortega having turned into Somoza. So sad.
I loved my time in Matagalpa. Hope my health allows me to get back!