Shit stains

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(This is the final installment of the 3 part reflection on nature and man. Bonito was a fun story in the middle and a way to slide a little paraguay premonition in.)

On the bus leaving Brazil, I still kept my smile and my warmth deep within. But then everything changed as we crossed the scarred dirt road into Paraguay. I was filled with dread as Tim´s tales rattled in my head. It was only 5 minutes since i left, but I yearned to run back to the beaming Brazilians and their beautiful land.
But I didnt. I boarded a cold bug infested bus heading to the heart of Parguay. As the lights switched off, my thoughts turned dark as well. Poverty I reckoned was a symptom of ill begot stewardship.
-(To me, poverty is not merely the lack of money, but a poverty of the soul. It is a loss of happiness, a loss of self, and a loss of direction. There were plenty of poor Brazilians squatting in plastic shacks along the highway, but they smiled alongside their countrymen. Yes they were poor, but they were not impoverished.)-
A curse brought onto ourselves when the balance between man and nature takes a turn for the worse.

These thoughts grew stronger as I disembarked from the bus in Asuncion. I stepped over children sleeping uncovered on the hard concrete. I saw breakfast being cooked above a barrel in an abandoned shoe shine shack. I saw large groups of men drinking stiff beers at sunrise. And I saw a woman defecating. Defecating abreast from the main square unabashed in the morning light. My fears had been confirmed.

This is the peril that persists when nature is a forgotten friend laid to rest with no mourners to cry above its unmarked grave as earth is piled high above. Because when that happens, man has lost his natural soul. And without that soul, all there is left to do is shit serenely into a plastic bag on a street corner in Asuncion as tourists walk by and gawk.

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