First World Disaster

Hiding in the rubble of every First World tragedy, there is someone secretly happy.  At every funeral, among the rows of heads bowed in sorrow there is a faint grin under the brim of one black hat.  At every natural disaster, as the crowd murmurs prayers crying out to heaven for help and mercy, there is one mouth whispering silently, “Thank you God.”  Even in wartime when all people wish for peace, a morbid delight permeates the collective subconscious, secretly relishing in the fame and drama of violence. 

Despite their furrowed brows and hands placed in delicate distress on their foreheads, despite their frantic phone calls, text messages, Facebook statuses and emails, despite their cries of anger and disbelief, the people of Colorado Springs loved the Waldo Canyon fire. 

When the horizon turned dark grey behind the valley we emerged from our picket-fenced Egoverses to take photos on our iPhones from our balconies. When the top of the ridge glowed orange against a black sky we drove our SUVs westward to get a closer look.  When the ribboning flames dropped down the mountainside like a billowy velvet curtain falling at the end of the final act of a theater play we gathered in the streets to revel in our presence at a “moment in history.”  And when the Old Testament ash cloud descended upon the city, blinding, asphyxiating and mighty, we tossed our golf clubs and coin collections in our pickup trucks and hightailed to the nearest friend’s house with WiFi and a TV.

The 24 hour commentary was a ceaseless stream of sensationalist hymns singing the woes of the helpless citizen victims.  The news broadcaster, the radio announcer, the Walmart cashier, the dentist... all reciting some version of the chorus involving the words: “horrible,” “crazy,” “homes,” “evacuation,” and “you can see...” That was the biggest thrill of all: the fact that we could see before our own eyes an apocalyptic scene that before had only been witnessed from our recliner sofas on plasma screens in the DVDs we ordered from Netflix.  In this feast of real live interestingness--unprecedented in the history of suburban pleasantville--we gorged on gossip, updates and information. “I heard that the wind gusts--“ “But my neighbor told me that the firefighters--“ “I just saw the press release--“ “Did you know the President is coming?!?”  The cherry on top of the disaster fudge sunday.  

A radio reporter, speaking in a tone that she learned from Anderson Cooper reporting from civil wars in Uganda, said, “We’ve been told that there have been 346 homes destroyed.”

“346...” we repeated out loud in the car, tasting the magnitude of the number. 

...”and so for there have been two reported casualties.  The bodies were discovered early this morning.”

“Oh my word...”

We pretended to hate the news but we were so anxious to see the arial photo showing our neighborhood, our cul-de-sac, our driveway leading up to a white pile of ash where our house used to be. On the phone, “Well we haven’t heard anything yet so it very well might be gone!”  The mayor announced he would hold a meeting for the people who lost their homes.  The exclusive invitations were hotter than tickets to Christmas dinner at the White House. They would be checking IDs for proof of addresses at the door.  Who made the cut?  Will we get to go?  As the broadcasters listed off the streets that were included on the guest list, we held our breath like American Idol contestants waiting for Ryan Seacrest to reveal the results of the text-in votes. 

On the phone: “No, it looks like our area is ok for now, praise the Lord, but we know lots of people who live in those neighborhoods.  The Morrisons, the Franklins, didn’t they live up there?  My hairdresser is in that area too.  346 homes have been destroyed.”

But let’s be honest.  People like us would love nothing more than a socially acceptable excuse to suddenly un-posses all of our stuff (and be compensated for it by insurance, of course).  We squeeze our eyes shut and wish for the fiery demise of the stack of old birthday cards, the keychain souvenirs from our friends’ vacations to Europe, the kids’ little league trophies and trinkets that only Americans and Pharaohs collect until we die.  We are burdened by our own inability to stop consuming, we fantasize about the idea of something consuming us. 

First world problems

I’ve never loathed flip flops more than I do right now. 

And moving walkways and automatic cars and fat white people and the letter R over-pronounced in a southern drawl.  Even things I used to love, like smartphones and sunglasses, now just seem so ridiculous and unnecessary and... American.  Everything is too perfect, too organized, too efficient.  People stand to the right on the escalator to let other people pass.  A forgotten purse sat on the airport train seat, untouched.  

I think I offended the customs official in Houston when I approached the desk and, noticing that his badge read “Gonzales” I said, “Hola, buenos días.”   He responded, “Hello, good morning” in a Latin accent, but a stern voice. I didn’t mean to make it seem like I thought he was incompetent, I was just desperate to speak in Spanish to anyone.  

I had a four hour layover.  Four hours to hang by metal hooks from my soul over the abyss of nonbelonging.  As much as I already missed Bogotá, I wouldn’t Dream Of Genie myself back to Colombia even if I could.  I have no place there anymore (and after five different Despedida parties it would just be awkward).  And as much as I wanted to curl up in my bed at home, I felt asphyxiated just thinking about being back in suburbian sprawl.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now preparing for descent into Colorado Springs.  Local time is 12:46pm.”  The words pushed me off the cliff of denial I had been clinging to with clenched eyes and white knuckles and I felt my heart rise to my throat from the G-force of my plummet.  The plane dropped down a latter of air currents into the cookie cutter world of square front lawns and slanted shingled rooftops.  I was exhausted.  My eyes were dry and my cheeks were salty.  I couldn’t even wallow in my sorrow gazing reflectively out the window because I got stuck with the stupid aisle seat, so I stared instead at the seat back and tray table in front of me in their full upright and locked position.  I turned on my portable electronic device (sorry Mr. Pilot Captain, you can kiss my...) hoping the music would calm my accelerated heart beat and tightening esophagus, but the “Shuffle” setting on my iPod turned out to be a playlist of “Songs that will remind you of everything that you just left behind.”

The tires stuck the runway and I hit the ground at the base of the cliff like Wylie Cyote after the descending tone whistle, a puffy cloud of dust rising from the hole shaped in the outline of my body.  As the plane taxied to the gate, I took a deep breath, crawled out of the hole, dusted off my shoulders, and prepare myself to embrace my hometown (flames and all).

Not a speck of dust had changed in my house.  Yes, the sinks had been replaced, the upstairs bathroom repainted and my parents had acquired some extra furniture from my grandma’s house, but to me everything was exactly the same: the magnets on the refrigerator from the library, the stack of newspapers on the corner of the kitchen counter, the box in the pantry of plastic grocery bags to be recycled.  It was as if the 336 days that had passed between my departure and my return had never even happened.  

And it was picture perfect.  There were cherries in the refrigerator and a ziplock bag of chocolate-covered toffee on the table, boxes of multi-grain cereals, trail mix, vanilla almond milk, bottled orange juice, whole wheat tortillas, Greek yogurt...  Everything was so pretty and packaged and effortless and free and abundant and, frankly, overwhelming.  I didn’t understand how it was possible that one week ago I would have died to have any of this and now I see it all and I lose my appetite. 

And I just... can’t... throw... the damn toilet paper in the bowl.

Are we human or are we dancer?

A butterfly lands atop a wilting flower.

A message from God, a sign of hope and revival in a time of despair?  Or an insect instinctually attracted to primary colors?

Two strangers meet on a train and fall in love.  Fate or coincidence?

Farbstudie Quadrate by Kandinsky.  “The hand that plays the strings of the soul’s piano” or oil circles on canvass.

There are two players on opposite sides of the ping pong table in the game humans play to make sense out of life volleying back and forth over the question (in the words of rock star Brandon Flowers) Are we Human or are we Dancer? 

Italian Renaissance philosopher and part-time rock star Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (stage name Pico)  answers: Both!   Humans are part animal, part spirit.  We exist in a physical reality of appendicitises, pandas, SUVs and a million other things that make no earthly sense, enduring the chaos only by assembling the random glass shards of our lives into some sort of logical mosaic we call our “story.”   Survival is quite literally impossible without constructing this frame of meaning around ourselves (see suicide statistics and Absurdism).   

We need to believe in something grand: God, Love, social justice, raising a baby, painting a picture... anything worth loosing sleep over, worth skipping lunch for.  “I can’t brush my teeth right now, I have to think about [insert existential idol here].”  Magnitude is exhilarating.  When checking the weather forecast and listening to voicemails become the most important tasks of the day, it’s a slippery slope down to depression and insanity.  We crave something that inhibits us from writing emails, watching the news or making our beds, something so important that it overrides our trivial worries, we want an escape from and--at the same time--a reason for life.  

But what is God without our vices?  How can we know Love without contrasting it to the myriad of inch-deep acquaintances we collect at office parties and book clubs?  What is Art if not an expression of daily experiences?  If everyone were a martyr for a cause who would be left to enjoy its benefits?  What does it serve to achieve our highest ambitions if we cannot find happiness in simple pleasures?  

We are creatures of cycles, of seasons, of change oscillating between work and rest, comfort and struggle, joy and sadness.  In our existential psyche, we perpetually walk the tightrope between the need for The Big and The Small.  In one moment, our arms tilt and grasp for signs of meaning--be it a butterfly landing on a wilting flower--to make us feel part of a larger, more mystical universe.  And in the next moment we bend and flail towards anything ordinary and normal to remind us that we are humans, mortals, flesh and blood. 

Because sometimes butterflies land on flowers for no reason at all.

And sometimes you have to burp in the middle of a prayer.

Sometimes kisses taste more like garlic than rainbows.

Heroes fall, saints sin, people fall out of love.

It’s nice to carry fairy dust in your pocket to sprinkle on certain special moments of our lives, lest we become hardened cynics desensitized to romance and miracles.  But it’s also refreshing to dig our fingernails in the wormy dirt of the real world every once in a while. 

ETA Bogota 101