Sister from another mister

We point our left index fingers to the sky.  We strain our faces and squint our eyes to emote the painful effort of reaching the high notes in the autotuned vocal section of "Some Nights."  We are driving to the city for the weekend.  It is the fifth time we've heard this song on the radio since leaving work.  We don't change the station.

"You go first."

Me, hand flat and pushing slowly outward, guiding, "So come onnnnnnnn…"

Her, an octave higher, "Come onnnnn….."

Me, an octave higher, one eye squinting, "Come onnnn…."

Her, at the top, fingertip heaving up an invisible heavy ball, "OOH come onnnn!"

Nailed it. 

It reminds us of the time back in high school when we tried to hit the long high note singing "I Believe in a Thing Called Love."  It was winter in Colorado, the roads were icy and the car started to slide out of control.  Jackie was driving and she screamed but we thought she was just singing along.

That was seven years ago. 

"Do you think we ever would have guessed we'd be here now?"

"No way, we are so much cooler that we ever thought we'd be."

It's true, we are extremely cool.  We are the urban youth of America.  When we are together, there is no stopping us.  We cannot be stopped.  We are mighty.  (Or she is mighty and I bask in her electric glow.) The city is ours.  We breathe in its smoke haze and exhale life into its streets.  Our ideas are made of feathers and hollow bones and talons.  They seek to land, seize and take hold of reality and swoop it up into flight.  We want action.  Music.  Dancing.  Travel.  Motion.  We are welded wires, running on the same current, feeding off each other's energy.  When we fight charged sparks fly but, alas, we are fused together.  There is no choice but to mend. 

We know things about the world that other people just do not understand.  Like the art of living on leftovers and free food.  Or like how, when fatigue sets in, there is a time to surrender and there is a time to martyr yourself and rally for the sake of the party (when in doubt, chose the latter).  We know that the 20s will be, hands down, the best decade of our lives and we pity the fools who squander those years with too much ambition or complacency or money chasing or drama.  They key is to have a healthy dose of all of the above.

She knows things that I forget without her.  Like the appropriate length of a political, religious or philosophical conversation--just enough to stretch the mind without slipping into existential oblivion.  Or like how to not give a damn about impressing unimpressive people.  She knows how to talk about literature and science without sounding like a prick and how to tell a good story whether it's happy or sad. Her blessing is worth more to me than a letter from the President or a thousand "Likes" on facebook.  I would feel sick if she was ever ashamed of a choice I had made or an action I had done.

She crawls into my bed at one in the morning and feeds me the last slice of leftover pizza which I do not want but I eat because we both know that letting something edible go to waste is an unforgivable sin.
She reviews my text messages to analyze the meaning between the lines that I completely miss.
We tell each other when to stop complaining and remind each other how lucky we are in life. 

Ali, (if you ever read this) you're my sister from another mister.  You know I'd walk a mile in heels for you or give up cheese for the rest of my life.  Don't you ever forget it.

The dating game

"I don't even want a boyfriend.  I just want someone who wants to hang out all the time and thinks I'm the best person in the world and wants to be with only me." --Hannah from Girls

I don't know if there is universal plague among 20-somethings or if it's something about Californians or if I am buying the brand of shampoo that releases pheromones repellant to normal men, but being single in the Bay Area is like being a Mormon at a poker table--everyone else seems to know what they're doing (or at least can bluff), there are too many rules to keep track of and the chances of being dealt a good hand at the right moment are slim to none.

My standards are not unreasonably high, I'll give pretty much anyone at least a chance.  But the life-of-the-party types are usually gay, the fly-on-the-wall types are usually taken.  The Europeans are flirtatious but when they save your number in their phone by your physical features instead of your name, they come off as a little too... goal-oriented.  The grad students are interesting enough but their schedules are impossible.  (It also doesn't help that I live in the Peninsula--the armpit of the dating world.)

I don't mind the commute to the city for a date, but I cannot do long distance between Earth and the celestial world of intellectualism where many a San Franciscan reside.  "No, I haven't heard of [insert obscure indie band name here] either.  But keep asking, this is fun!  Tell me more about that time you read all of Tolstoy's novels on an airplane.  We could also talk about something that would not make me feel like an idiot, but then you'd have to walk down all those steps of your ivory tower... You're right, let's stick with game where I guess how many degrees you have!"

But even with a solid hand, a straight or a flush--a nice software developer at Google or a handsome business student from Greece--the odds of a win are still low when you don't know how to play the game.  Apparently, green canvas boots with a purple striped dress from Goodwill don't have the "sexy" vibe guys look for in a girl these days.  Who knew that commenting on the hotness of other women in the room might be an awkward conversation topic?  I am still trying to nail down the correct equation for appropriate text response time post initial encounter: TRT = (Average response rate ÷ number of texts/day) x (number of smiley faces as a percentage of number of winky faces).   No one ever told me that dance moves stolen from a full body workout video probably isn't the best way to nonverbally communicate romantic interest.  They just console me after it's all blown over, "Forget about him, he had no personality."


I always ask the "How'd you meet?" question when I meet coupes--the cute ones, not the obnoxious ones--because the variety of responses fascinate me.  Almost invariably, the stories starts with "It was pretty random..."  The best  ones take place on trains or at bus stops or in lines at the grocery store (if you believe in that sort of thing).

Perhaps the proper metaphor for this whole business isn't poker but a game of craps.  Just casting dice. 

Dare I Eat a Mango?

If the Silicon Valley is populated by the creme de la creme of western progressive social society, I am blending in about as well as a cheese curd in a bowl of whipped cream.  Out at the bars, the standard "resume" around town is a mile long on average and generally includes two to five fluent languages, musical or artistic talent, athleticism, involvement in some sort of social or environmental cause, biracial or otherwise interesting family background and a few other quirky hobbies on the side like tap dancing or fire fighting or vintage camera repairing (and that's just the 26 and under crowd).

If you're a white kid making less than $60k who enjoys watching movies and going to the gym, you might consider chopping off your thumbs to beef up your bar talk content material.  It's that or face a sea of uninterested heads nodding at you with their lips sipping from cocktail straws and their eyes darting around the room searching for someone to talk to about underwater photography or 17th century African transgender literature. 

I mean, I studied abroad!  I have an obscure major!  My brother is an athlete and I took piano lessons as a kid so… I've always considered myself a fairly well-rounded person.  But it turns out that blonde liberal arts girls who are into jogging and saying "Gracias" to waiters at Mexican restaurants went out of style in 2009.   I'm thinking about wearing an eye patch out next weekend…

Last Friday, I stole a knife from the office kitchen, memorized Google bike directions to the nearest green spot on the map and walked out the door at 6:00pm sharp.  All of my two friends were busy so I made a date with myself for the evening.  The first stop was a wardrobe makeover at Goodwill.  Knit grandma sweater, wire rim glasses, floral collared blouse: $4.  Taking a vacation from your identity: priceless.  The second stop was Chase Bank.  Turns out the green spot on the map wasn't a "park" per se, but a crab grass lawn between the bank and the parking lot.  Good enough.

I set up camp a safe distance from the dried dog turds and had myself a party-of-one picnic using the office knife to peel and slice a mango I had bought that morning.  (I always have fruit on hand these days now that I go to the supermercado every morning in hopes of making friends with the Guatemalan cashiers.)  I was ensconced in peace, using the crab grass to clean my sticky hands.  I always thought that Prufrock should have asked "Dare I eat a Mango?" because in my opinion, the juice combined with the fibers and the impossibly-shaped seed make it a much more awkward fruit than a peach. 

If the passerbys were staring at me I couldn't tell because the +1.25 glasses slightly inhibited my far vision.  The faulty street lamp hummed behind me in the parking lot like a buzzing locust, the crosswalk chirped like a morning bird signing to a metronome.  The dog poop didn't smell and neither did the exhaust from the cars--just crab grass and mango juice and suburban sterility.  No one but myself to impress and if I were me, I would totally be into the girl sitting on the side of the road with sticky orange strings dripping from her ear lobes.  Oh yeah. 

The Land of Milk and Money

There is no amount of free Costco snacks that could make this OK.  I never thought I'd say this but I don't care about dried blueberries, cashew almond trail mix, peanut butter stuffed pretzels, Nutella, organic breakfast bars, juice in glass bottles and Red Bull.   Don't get me wrong, I love free breakfast bars.  I've run 15k's just for the free breakfast bars at the end.  But a mountain of Sweet n' Salties does not make up for the fact that we are living in one of the most ideal climates in North America and spending over 80% of the daylight hours between Monday and Friday with our eyeballs glued to LCD screens.

I guess you could say that I'm still adjusting to office life.  

It's strange…. Throw me into any foreign isolated tribal community mud hut village, and I will change colors faster than a chameleon on a snake-skin rug and smile about it.  But stick me in a temperature-controlled, warmly-lit, high-ceilinged Silicon Valley office and suddenly I'm frantically searching for a brown paper bag to breath into. The 'Desk Job' has been so deeply stigmatized in my mind that I can't help but see every perk of my new job as tiny crumbs of organic breakfast bars desperately trying to fill the void in our stomachs where our souls have been sucked out by computers. 

We sit in lumbar-supported swivel desk chairs or bounce with good posture on colorful fitness balls behind computer monitors the size of window panes.  In between the clickity-click-click of our multi-tasking fingers on keyboards, we chat about the latest articles we've read on thenewyorker.com and crack racist jokes (not jokes about any particular race, literally jokes about racists).  Every day there is an Android v. iPhone debate at lunch which is generally at some trendy fast-casual health food restaurant.  On Friday, my ears perked up when I overheard someone mention Asian street food.  Finally!  I'd been dying for something cheap and greasy that I could eat standing up on the sidewalk.  I invited myself along but my enthusiasm curbed when we walked through glass doors into a wood-floored dining room and I saw the artsy backlit sign above the register: "Asian Street Food."  

The skinny girl ordered a huge rice bowl, took a few bites, declared it to be delicious, took a few more bites, then threw the rest away.   If I had a dime for every time I saw a perfectly edible piece of food in the trashcan, I could buy myself Starbucks on a daily basis (which is the equivalent of feeding a family of seven in many parts of the world).  If I had a penny for every time I heard a random person on the street use

 the words "market test", "angel investor", "online community", or "Is it native on the iPad?"  I could buy an iPad (without the plan).  If I had 1/3 of the cars my roommate has, I would have a really nice Mercedes motorcycle.  

I haven't figured out how to handle this lifestyle.  So I crouch behind the bushes with my anthropologist's notepad and observe this strange people.  How do they all have bodies of Nike Store mannequins when they spend all day emailing and sipping macchiatos?  Where are all the children and the elderly?  So much to learn...   

Hello Dream, Meet Reality

I packed up the car with a suitcase of clothes, a box of books, some snacks and two mormon boys going out to visit their mom in California. We all fit comfortably enough in the sedan until my iPod decided to turn the Shuffle setting into a playlist themed “Songs for Sinners” including hits like “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground, “Get it on Tonight” by L.L. Cool J and “Cocaine” by Eric Clapton (none of which, for the record, have played on my shuffle since 1999).  As Cee Lo Green belted “F**k you!” over the suddenly too-quiet air conditioner, it started to feel a little cramped in the car.  I was trapped in the backseat unable to reach the Skip button so I took a fake nap to avoid the awkwardness and prayed a silent prayer to Jesus/Brigham Young to forgive me for leading his flock astray. 

Once I had dropped them off in Sacramento, I was free at last to shamelessly sing along to the music which, of course by that point had lost its mojo and was only in the mood for the Juno album and Carla Bruni (which I sang along to using a combination of mumbled French words I learned from Beauty and the Beast).  Then I came around a curve and I saw it.  The Golden Gate Bridge.  I had made it.  Hello dream, meet reality. 

This was a moment fit for a proper soundtrack.  Windows down, sunglasses on (upside-down because the curvy part was hurting the bones behind my ears), “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangster”: play.  On repeat. 

The city!  Celestial in its splendor!  White sails dotted the sparkling water below and golden buildings gleamed in the setting California sun like the shiny new toy they were to me.  The hazy sky was cloudless and rose-tinted like an Instagram photo in real life.  The palm trees and stucco houses were so classically picturesque, my vision seemed to be bordered by a vignette and I saw the world through the lens of an antique video camera. I held it all--the skyline, the bay, the sailboats--in the palm of my hand.  Mine, all mine!  My fists on my wrists, my cape flapping in the wind, my shadow cast long and wide across the entirety of my kingdom. 

Blink, head shake.  Shoot, where am I going?  Missed the exit.  No worries, I’ll just take the next exit… nope.  This is a bridge, I am confused, especially when I see a sign that says, “Exit towards Golden Gate Bridge.”  (At that point I didn’t know that I was not, in fact on the Golden Gate but on the Bay Bridge.  It did seem strange that it wasn’t red like I had always imagined…)  

My GPS told me to “Turn right and then left then take the onramp onto I-80 West” which took me off the bridge and then put me back on it going the opposite direction.  I then spent the next two hours making U-turns, paying tolls, getting stuck in the middle of intersections, nearly rear-ending four different cars and one pedestrian and feeling an Alice-in-Wonderlandish sensation of shrinking to the size of a pea while the world I had stepped over just a moment ago rose mighty and ominous around me.  I was suddenly swallowed by a labyrinth of six-lane highways, overpasses and one-way roads all conspiring to trap me inside their bowels and poop me out in a sewer underground.

I eventually made it out.  I was not in the sewer, but in East Palo Alto (which Palo Alto yuppies don’t distinguish between).  I pulled into the driveway at my new house--well, the room that is new to me in someone else’s house--and took a breath of fresh California air.  

I’ve arrived.  And by “arrived” I mean just beginning. 

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

Caño Cristales, Part 3

Like ET following a trail of Reese’s Pieces, we were lured farther and farther downstream.   Each bend in the river seemed to be hiding an even more spectacular treasure.  But even in our childlike enchantment, we remained vigilant--not for soldiers or paramilitaries lurking in the jungle surrounding us, but for the tourist guides.  We kept our eyes peeled and our voices low, lest we be caught and forced to listen to a walking lecture on photosynthesis. 

But in spite of our best efforts to keep to ourselves and be left alone, by the time we trudged back into town, sunburned, rain-drenched and happy, we had gained semi-celebrity among the locals.  Our walk down the main road pulled inconspicuous glances like magnets from bar tables and restaurant windows and our shadows were followed by discreet whispers.  A random woman walked up to us when we were eating dinner:

“I was worried about you two all night.  I heard that a young man and a pastusa went out alone in the day and never returned in the evening.  I thought you might not make it back!”  (Good grief, where is the sense of humor in this place?  I am clearly not from Pasto.)

There may only be electricity for six hours a day, but that little town has an information sharing network faster than 4G WiFi.   We never knew if it was the soldiers at the port who spilled the beans about our “nonexistent” conversation, or if a rumormonger had been spying on us from the trees, but our movements were definitely well observed.  Who knows what the people must have thought when we set up our tent on the public basketball court that night.  I can only imagine the diner table stories spinning around the sighting of the two of us in the early morning following a local teenager through a mud-swamped pasture out to the countryside (we met the side-banged high schooler called Emo at the pick up game on the court the night before and he told us he knew a short cut to another swimming hole).   What would they say about the giant bag of mangoes we were carrying when we came back that afternoon?

As the rickety Red Baron Cessna sputtered off the runway later that day lifting us (with an unsettlingly grand effort) over the thick green jungles below back to civilization, we left our curious whereabouts up to the speculation of the gossipers back in La Macarena.  We landed in Villavicencio started looking for a lift back to Bogotá, standing on the side of the highway with our thumbs out in the rain.   Just when we thought we couldn’t cause any more scandal, the first car to pull over had a familiar face inside: the random lady who worried about us all night.  She didn’t have room for both of us so we politely declined her offer for a ride.  The poor woman is probably still beside herself fretting about those two crazy kids who seem incapable of doing anything the normal way.

Caño Cristales, Part 2

There were indeed a pair of armed officers at the port who asked for our names, ID numbers and the name of our guide.  When they asked where I was from, eyeing me from blond hair to sunburned ankles, I went for my go-to crowd pleaser: “Pasto.” (The Mobile, Alabama of Colombia).  It got the expected chuckling reaction and once everyone was humored and relaxed, all we needed was a little smooth talking, eye batting, hand shaking and it was agreed that they had never seen us and we never had any conversation.  

So we did not walk down to the dock, we never paid the boy in the motored canoe $5 to take us across, and we certainly did not walk ten kilometers down the trail without a guide toward the caño.  

Just when the forks in the road were starting to inspire worst-case-scenario jokes (our laughter tinged with nervousness), the sun gleamed in a curiously bright reflection around the corner.  An illusion?  A mirage?  A metal roof!  A sign of human life!  

It was shading a posse of uniformed soldiers with their arms crossed looking like bored cowboys waiting for the cattle to come home.  They did not threaten us with their weapons or interrogate us with spotlights and handcuffs, as the people in the town made us think would happen if we dared enter the territory without a guide.  In fact, they seemed impressed.  For all the trials they must suffer living out in the sticks for months at a time with nothing to do but stare at each other, I still don’t understand why they were so awed by our low-budget vacation.

“You came alone?  You’re carrying everything in your backpack?  You’re just going to put up a tent and sleep in it?”

Yes, it’s called camping.  And yes, girls do it too.  We were fine!  Two healthy young adults, well-prepared with rain gear, flashlights, bug repellant and hiking shoes.  There was only one small detail we had forgotten: food.  

But this is Colombia and in this country where there are people--albeit two old farmers in the middle of nowhere--there is almuerzo.  Next to the army shed, there leaned a rickety wooden house, overflowing with cats, dogs and chickens.  The old man called us in for coffee and after serving each of us a plate piled with plantains, almojabana and a mug of hot chocolate, he leaned back in his wooden chair resting his gnarled hands on his belly.  With only three teeth in his mouth he said out loud to no one in particular, “Thanks be to God we’ve never suffered from hunger.  And I don’t care too much whether the person who shows up at our door is a rich man or a poor man, if he is hungry we will feed him.”  

The rest of the afternoon was spent bathing in the river that they say escaped from heaven, with fluorescent pink and green algae blooming below the surface of the Disani clear water.  If mermaids had dreadlocks they would be just like those algae, waving in the current, soft and bright.  

...to be continued...

Caño Cristales, Part 1

It was too dark to really see anything, but the sound of combat boots trudging through the grass toward our campsite was unmistakable.  Two armed soldiers approached the tent where Saul and I had set up for the night near a small farm house in the boondocks of Meta, Colombia, a region swarming with army types thanks to the land’s infamous fertility for certain not-so-legal crops and the consequential presence of not-so-governmental military groups.  

Honestly, I was relieved that someone had arrived to relieve the impending awkwardness when Saul and I would run out of conversation topics.  We had already spent the entire day together traveling and hiking, going through our stories and jokes like a tube of Pringles and we were reaching the last crumbs of interesting material.  So when the camouflaged men arrived in the night, we both greeted them enthusiastically: “Hey!  How’s it going?  Hot day today, no?  It’s cooling off now though.  Did you guys walk far?”

Despite what the townsfolk had warned us about the scary soldiers of the backwoods with their big guns and their bureaucratic rules about trespassing, these two turned about to be normal friendly humans.  Within two minutes, we were all chuckling and chatting it up in the near-pitch blackness of the starlit jungle evening, swapping adventure tales about their boot camp and our travels a La backpacker.  Eventually they fessed up why they had come to pay us a visit in the first place:

“Some people from the town called us on the radio and said they had seen two young folks walking by themselves out to the caño.  They said one was a pastusa (a person from Pasto, Colombia) with a funny accent and a fake ID number and it seemed fishy.”

Saul and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.  It seemed a simple joke had gone a little too far.

Let me back up a bit...

When we arrived to the town La Macarena, guides fluttered around us like moths to a lantern.  Tourism from the renowned Caño Cristales river is the only thing keeping the economy afloat out there in the middle of war-torn cocaine land.  But Saul and I had come with heavy backpacks, light wallets and a hankering for adventure.  We were simply not interested in paying $50 per day to be herded around with a flock of sun-screened families listening to a local in blue jeans calling off names of the plants and the birds.  

The people in the town told us there was no other way, that only the guides had permission to access the caño, inferring that the jungle soldiers would pounce on us from behind and tear our throats out with their fangs if we didn’t have the proper paperwork, which was coincidentally only available through their outrageously overpriced services.  We smiled, nodded, thanked them for their advice and continued walked to the port of the Rio Magdalena which separates the town from the road that leads to the caño.  

...to be continued...

I believe dreams can come true

Oh I get it, I thought, they’re going to ask me for money.

At first I was flattered to receive an email from a pair of Singaporean women inviting me to an event for their documentary.  They had heard about my website (when I read that I fanned myself lightly with my hand to calm my blush of famousness).  They wanted to hear my story and include it in their film.  I looked up their project and saw they were biking around the world talking about dreams.  

A little cliché, but still kind of cool...

Then I saw the part about them not having any money and my eyes narrowed.  Living in the world of Liberal Arts hipsters for too long unavoidably results in desensitization to the girl/boy-next-door hero types who come up with completely nonprofitable ideas, create a blog and set up PayPal accounts for all the suckers sappy enough to throw cash donations at their projects called “Knitting for Peace” or “Photography for Women’s Rights.”   Yeah, yeah, yeah, wouldn’t we all like to save the world by posting mini-memoirs about our hobbies (and make a living at the same time).

But my inflated ego at the mention of my website was a stronger force that my cynicism... so I went. 

And that’s when I met Tay. 

Tay is a highly successful and award-winning film director who left her job, her company, her home and her family to pursue something she wasn’t even sure how to define.  She is not a cyclist.  She’s not a hipster.  She’s just a girl who found something worth risking everything for and she went for it.  She’s a storyteller.  

At the meeting, she spoke for an hour and a half and it felt like five minutes had passed.  Story after incredible story of the journey she embarked on with her partner Val two years ago captivated everyone in the room.  Nothing too dramatic, just accounts of random adventures, failures and lessons learned, all told with the intention to inspire us to follow our own dreams.  It sounds cheesy, but somehow--in spite of my jaded bias against all things humanitarian--it got to me.

She presented me with a romantically simplistic version of life: do what you love and share it with others. 

Although it won’t likely have the same effect to read about it online, you can see more about their project (and yes, how to support them) here: 

http://www.ibelievethatdreamscancometrue.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ibelievethatdreamscancometrue

Happy Mother's Day!

A Short Story

A Short Story, by Katie Williams: 

No work, no Skype dates or lunch meetings, no phone calls to make or errands to run; the whole afternoon was wide open.  Just her and the sun in the clear blue sky with nothing to do... except salvage the remains of a relationship she’d shattered into a thousand tiny pieces the day before with just one fist.

It wasn’t a punch but rather the unclenching of her hand that did it.  When she released her grip on a bouquet of flowers and let them fall to the sidewalk, a silent mushroom cloud rose from where they struck the ground filling the air with a gas so toxic that the only thing left to do was walk away before tears started falling.  And that’s what she did.  She walked away.  He had intended them as a gift and she, in her childish pride in an act of defiance, abandoned them on the side of the road as if they were a smoldering bomb spewing poisonous fumes.

She didn't throw them down, she simply refrained from intervening with gravity.  It was typical of her to be so blameless and detached, merely allowing nature to take its destructive course while shrugging her shoulders and claiming uninvolvement.  The worst enemies are the ones that do not fight.  You cannot wrestle a dove.

                                  *                                    *                                   *

The key to productivity is finding something you want to do even less than all the other things you have to do, thus rendering the To Do list a selection of relatively appealing procrastination alternatives.  In her nothing-to-do afternoon, she managed to bus across town, leave her business card with several potential clients, sit in the park, listen to an entire Pink Floyd album and write a poem on the back of a napkin.   Every time she reached for her cellphone to make The Call she would remember that email she had to send or the garbage that hadn’t been taken out or that granola bar she’d been wanting to eat.  The entire day slipped though the cracks of a chain of distractions.  She leapt from one to the next like stepping stones in quicksand. 

She decided she couldn’t just call.  She needed to think, to plan, to organize.  She needed a five-section outline with bullet points, a flow chart with arrows and boxes to make sense out of the scrambled Rubik’s cube that was her brain: the red angry squares next to the orange guilty square; the self-righteous green squares lined up on the same side as the blue regretful ones; the white apathy square appearing randomly and inconsistently on all sides. 

So she took out a piece of paper and a pen and started to write.  Then she crossed out what she had written and started over.  Then she traced over the word “Stressed” until it was too ominously bold and black and she had to scratch it out and write it again normally.   She eventually reached the edge of the page and declared it good enough.  

She dialed.
"Hello?"

“Hi.”
"Hi."

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“Ok.”

Mayday.  That was not included in the script.  They both knew this was about more than just yesterday's incident.

“Maybe we can talk about it later?”

“I’m free now actually.”

Bite the bullet, she told herself, just get it over with.  

She read her script from her notes and that’s exactly what it came out sounding like: a recital of a dry monologue on an empty poorly-lit stage with a bad microphone and no one in the audience.  He listened... or rather, he didn’t interrupt.  Once he started talking she realized he hadn’t heard a single word.  Thus the conversation spiraled in toilet bowl circles, rapidly decreasing in circumference as they approached the abyss of their fatal end.  

“So what now?” he asked clinging to the slippery porcelain surface.  

She couldn’t open her mouth for fear that the small animal nesting in her throat would escape.  So she curled her lips between her teeth, raised her eyebrows and shook her head slowly.  

I don’t know. 

The things we do for free t-shirts...

My foot kicked at the steering wheel but my back was already pressing into the corner of the passenger side door as two zombies crawled up on the hood of the car, blood dripping down the glass every time they beat their gnarled hands on the windshield.

“Now scream out loud,” the photographer instructed me.  It was awkward but I obeyed, letting out three high pitched wails in the abandoned junk yard lot wondering what the pedestrians on the other side of the wall might think was going on.

But then again, I wasn’t really sure what was going on.  Several months ago (Halloween, to be exact) some friends and I heard about a zombie parade happening in downtown Bogotá.  We went, got our faces painted, and groaned our way down the central avenue with 5,000 other living dead people, claws outstretched, feet dragging.  For kicks, I uploaded a short video slideshow on Youtube and (I must have been the only one because) last week an email appeared in my inbox from “zombiesbogota@gmail.com” telling me that I’d won the video contest.  I was unaware I had entered, but who’s going to complain about a free t-shirt?

This morning I showed up at the cemetery entrance at 10:00 sharp, as instructed, to receive my prize.  I waited for a half an hour until I heard a voice behind me, “Katie?”

A high-class Colombian Dracula wearing patent leather shoes and Louis Vuitton sunglasses greeted me.  Expensive gel held his dark wavy hair off his face that was framed by the pointy collar of his knee-length leather trench coat.  His hand retracted early from our handshake to grab his vibrating cellphone in his pocket and after a brief one-sided conversation he slipped the phone back into his jacket and muttered to me and to no one, “I can’t stand it when people are late.”

I refrained from commenting.  

We entered the cemetery and it was explained to me that we were going to take a few “action” photos and I would receive the prints as a part of my prize.  OK no problem, I thought, it can’t take too long...

The Count was accompanied by two similarly sinister sidekicks also sporting sunglasses and leather jackets, one with a silver stud in his left earlobe the other with a pencil-thin beard stenciled across his chin connecting his sideburns.  While the four of us waited in front of the mausoleum for the zombie models to arrive they puffed down about three packs of cigarettes, guffawing smokey comments about last night’s rager between inhales. 

“It was intense man, I almost got my lights knocked out.”

“Yeah dude, I didn’t get back until like four in the morning.”

“Smoke?” the Count asked looking at me behind his dark lenses.

“No thanks,” I said, occupying my hands with my cellphone debating whether or not it was worth the effort to wedge my way into their semi-conversation with a hilarious joke about hangovers or an intriguing question about where the party had been.  

Thankfully my mental coin toss was interrupted by the cemetery security guard who came to kick us out.  No vampires allowed, or photos for that matter.  The begging didn’t work.  The bribe didn’t work.  The explanation about being with the blonde American tourist didn’t work.  So they trudged their fancy shoes back to the entrance and decided to go to the junk yard. 

The zombies and the apocalypse cop met us there and I spent the next two hours being chased after, grabbed at, stabbed, axed, bitten and rescued--all in freeze frame.  It was awesome.  Not exactly how I had planned to spend my Sunday afternoon but with free lunch and a glass of whisky included, it wasn’t so bad.  

And, of course, the free t-shirt. 

Apocolypse

I have a sneaking feeling that my roommates think I’m insane...

...which, as of late, may not be such an inconceivable diagnosis. 

I can’t imagine what life on earth would be like if everyone really believed in the 2012 apocalypse because living in a world with a definitive end does bizarre things to the human psyche.  When you have your existence (your job, your house, your friends, your daily routines) and you have a date (June 20th) on which all of those things will cease to be a part of your life, things look different.  It feels like swimming across a reservoir that is being drained.  You can keep striving, keep pushing, keep giving everything you have... or you could just float.  The end will be the same: you standing, wet at the bottom of an empty pit wondering where to walk to next. 

Apathy.  Detachment.  Futility.

I’ve stopped eating meals (unless it’s for a restaurant review).  I just snack compulsively throughout the day because indulging in the millions of sweet and salty treats that you can’t find in the States seems like the most valuable way to spend my time.  I’m too embarrassed to be seen eating a bag of fried plantains at 8:00 in the morning so I sneak them into my room, close the door and eat them next to the window so that the traffic noise will drown out the crunching (sign #1 for my roommates’ diagnosis).  Cups of cereal have quickly descended in rank from a luxury to a habit to an addiction.  What before I only enjoyed as a guest in someone else’s house now I consume as a prerequisite for any form of productive work: preparing class, writing a review, editing photos, updating websites... all must be performed with mug and spoon in hand.

I’ve become anti-social.  The thought of going out or meeting new people sounds about as appealing as going for a jog in a hamster wheel.  

Every time I climb the steps to my apartment I am praying that there won’t be light shining from the crack under the door.  Coming home to an empty apartment feels like biting into a melty bar of dark chocolate--I am torn between wanting to just sit and savor the stillness or to feverishly devour the opportunity, throw my bag on the floor, my coat on the chair, raid the fridge,  spill the milk and not wipe it up right away, listen to Lady Gaga on the loud speakers while making phone calls while checking my email/facebook/couchsurfing/twitter/and reddit accounts.  That way, when my roommates come home I can be doing something “chill” like drinking tea while writing in my journal or watching my goldfish eat the rainbow flake food floating at the top of the tank.  

Walking into an inhabited apartment feels like getting into a hot tub that’s only luke warm.  Your body anticipates something relaxing (coming home) but once you’re in it’s actually kind of uncomfortable.  It’s not bad enough to make a fuss over but it’s just unpleasant enough that you can’t really focus on anything and you feel constantly distracted or in need of a distraction (like a cup of cereal, for example).  Sparking a conversation feels like sparking a fire on a desert island.  Too much work.  I’d rather be cold.  Of course if one of them initiates a conversation, I play along--engaged, smiling, participating, sharing.  And then afterwards I feel like I need a nap (or a cup of cereal). 

There are three common reactions to apocalypses:

1. Crime

2. Depression

3. Carpe Diem

(I refer to the end of my Fulbright year as an apocalypse not to be dramatic but because it is, essentially the end of my present world and reality as it exists right now.)

I’m over shoplifting and I don’t want to spend my last two months in Colombia being a gluttonous introvert so I think it’s time I move on to option number three and seize the day! That may or may not involve eating plantain chips at 8:00 in the morning, but it’s the new attitude that counts.

I'll know it when I see it

I will skip through more than thirty songs on my iPod’s shuffle mode before finding something I want to listen to.  

In the past three days I’ve visited four different gourmet restaurants, none of which I am going to include on my website for innovative gastronomy in Bogotá. 

In the market I buy one of each fruit, even though it’s more expensive than buying a pound of just one or two varieties. 

I don’t watch movies because the thought of dedicating two hours to just one thing overwhelms me with indecision. 

My boots have holes in them and my purse has a broken strap but, despite dozens of fashion retail stores on my street, I haven’t found adequate replacements. 

I have a problem.  It might be ADD.  Or just general neurosis.  There are two general ways of diagnosing this psychosis:

A.  Fear of failure.  The word “settle” makes me sick to my stomach and the thought of precious minutes of life being vacuumed away by something less than amazing is depressing.  This phobia of making the “wrong” choice or “wasting” time renders me incapable of choosing any one thing and makes me a compulsive mind-changer. 

B. High confidence in my own judgement.  I am guarding an inexplicable nugget of faith in the existence of the Ideal (and my ability to find it).   I cannot seem to outgrow the romantic--perhaps naïve--notion that somewhere out there, there is the perfect song, the best movie, the coolest restaurant and the Cinderella shoes.  Until I find it I will go buzzing about my life picking and poking sporadically at a little bit of everything like a bumble bee on amphetamines.

I could claim that my lack of emotional attachments results from a pursuit of Nirvana through the Eight Fold Path of disassociation with the material world... but I am actually just a robot.  Where normal people feel grief and anxiety when separating from familiar environments and relationships, I see each opportunity as a California roll on the sushi conveyor belt of life, to be taken (if appetizing enough), experienced and enjoyed until moving on to the tempura and edamame.  This is not easy to explain to humans.  

My friends are confused as to why I would want to leave an amazing city with fabulous people and move to a state where I don’t even have any family.  My colleagues wonder why I would abandon the opportunity to make a more-than-decent salary in order to go to a place where I don’t have a job (yet) and will likely pay over $800 in rent.  A person who I care deeply for doesn’t understand why I seem unaffected by our impending separation.  I ask myself what it is, exactly, that I’m looking for... 

The answer is I don’t know.  But I’ll know it when I see it. 

Third time's a charm

(This will reflect poorly on me...)

In Colombia phones like mine are known as flechas (arrows) because "cada Indio tiene uno" (every Indian’s got one).  (That might be racist.)  My phone is the cheapest you can find, but it is trustier than a Swiss Army knife.  Transitioning from my emailing/scrabble-playing/mind-reading smart phone was hard at first, but I have grown to love my little flecha.  Although recently I’ve been a little careless with her...

INSTANCE #1: The Nameless Hero

Shoot, I’m going to be late, I realized when my watch alarm went off and I was still in my house.  I reached into my jacket pocket to send a text apologizing for my delay and my fingers grasped at empty fabric.   My other hand instinctively went through the routine patting sequence: jeans pockets, back pockets, backpack side pocket.  No dice.  My eyes were simultaneously executing Operation Cross-Check darting from the dining table, to the desk, to the pile of laundry on the floor.  Nada. My brain was replaying the previous two hours in reverse, scanning the mental recordings for clues as to the last known location of my phone.  To no avail.

So I asked my roommate to call my phone to see if I could hear it ring somewhere and to my surprise, someone answered.  It was a boy, or a man, or an adolescent-ish male.  It was pouring down rain outside but I told him I would bike to the gas station near where he was to recover the phone.  On the way I bought a giant chocolate bar and some other candies and prepared myself to even flirt a little with the kid for being the savior of my social and professional communication life.  

I waited on the corner, getting drenched by passing buses until he appeared, phantom like, on his bike.  I hardly let him get a word out before I started gushing my thanks and appreciation.  He shyly accepted my gifts and then pedaled away, disappearing silently into the rain. 

INSTANCE #2

I don’t particularly like malls, but I needed some alone time outside the house and it was 9:30pm on a Sunday so everything else was closed.  Other than the fluorescent lighting and echoey music, the lounge couches set up outside the stores are comfortable enough, if for nothing else than their anonymity.  The mall-ies are so entranced by the lights and colors gleaming from the store fronts that my sofa island in the middle of the wide hallway is like a room of two-way mirrors, me looking out and everyone else seeing right through me.

I had been ensconced in my invisibility bubble for almost an hour before a middle aged man strode right up to me and popped it.  

“Excuse me,” he said with a strange grin, “Are you American?”

Really?, I thought.  Here I am, minding my own business on a mall couch at 10:30 at night and this guy is going to come ask me to give his daughter English classes. 

“Yes,” I said, smiling in a plastic way that I hoped was conveying polite noninterest in this conversation. 

“Do you speak English?”  

I knew it. “Yes...”

“Do you have a cell phone?” 

This guy meant business.  “Yes...”

“Did you use the bathroom on the second floor a while ago?”  

Now I was confused, and slightly creeped out.  How long had this guy been stalking me just to ask me about speaking English? “Um, yes... Why?”

“What is your phone like?”

All of the sudden a light bulb went off in my head.  I saw the flashback of me setting my phone on the back table of the bathroom stall.  I suddenly became much more friendly with the man, who--although dressed in normal clothes--had a curly chord coming from an earpiece that I hadn’t noticed earlier. 

“Oh, yes! It’s small and black and really cheap looking.  Did you find it?”

He explained to me that a woman had found it in the restroom and turned it in.  He noticed it was all in english so he reviewed the security cameras looking for a gringa (apparently I was the only blonde person in the mall that night) and he tracked me down. 

After signing a few forms and chatting--recounting the events leading up to our encounter, talking about Colombia, etc--he gave me the phone and I said if he or anyone in his family ever needed English classes that he had my number. 

INSTANCE #3: El Sequestro

I dialed my number and listened hopefully for a vibration sound to buzz from a hidden corner somewhere in my room.  The ringing tone sounded flatly in the speaker, but the room was silent.  I felt a drop of dread.  Then suddenly,

“Hello?” 

“Hello, hi!” I stammered, caught of guard.  “Um, I think you have my phone.” Stating the obvious. 

I was immediately relieved that the voice was an older woman, surely a mother.  I imagined her in a pair of clunky Latin grandma heels walking with quick short strides down 13th street where I had been riding my bike that morning.  I imagined her taking a second glance at what could have been a black rock on the sidewalk and then bending over to see that it was actually the phone that had slipped from my back pocket without my noticing. I imagined her fretting over the pour soul that had lost it and pondering all morning of ways to find the owner.

I asked her where I could meet her to take it off her hands, feeling so lucky and grateful I was already thinking about inviting her to lunch.  She sounded a bit confused about what the next step should be, but then out of the blue she asked, “But how do you plan on thanking me for my honesty?”

“Excuse me?”

“I am a very honest person.”

“Oh.”  I didn’t feel like taking her out to lunch any more.  “You mean money?”

The image of the concerned grandmother in my mind's eye evolved into a Disney villain with a crooked nose and a wart. 

I offered $10.000 pesos which offended her.  She suggested that I take the next hour to reflect and consider what my phone really meant to me.  Click.  

The Disney villain image evolved into a Matriarch Mafiosa smoking a cigar in a dark room, empty except for the leather chair she was sitting in, a table with an old rusty phone, and my cellphone--tied up, gagged, black eyed and bloody nosed.

Sixty minutes later I called her back, with the desire to plead for her to set off the ring tone of my phone so I could hear it, so that I knew it was alive and OK.  

“$15.000.”

“$20.000.”

“Fine.”

We arranged to meet on a public corner in twenty minutes.  No police.  I arrived first, scanning every 50+ female that walked by until finally I saw her--hair perm, nice purse, designer sweater.  You can’t judge a book by its cover but this lady certainly didn’t look like she was in desperate need of $20.000 pesos.  She came accompanied by her crony, another elderly woman, tall and thin with short grey hair and a dignified steel glare that said, “What we are doing is perfectly fair and noble.”

“Do you have my phone?”

“Do you have the money?”

“Show me the phone.”

“You might run away with it.”

And that would be within my right, I wanted to say.  But finally they Crony backed up a few steps, reached into her deep bag and gave me a peek of the ransom victim. 

Then they had the audacity to whip out a handwritten contract promising not to go the cops.  It didn’t mention anything about the black mail fee.  I took the paper and wrote, “This is bullshit and extortion” (in English) on the bottom and put my big official John Hancock underneath. 

We made the exchange.  Before we parted ways I said, “I just hope that if the same thing happens to you someone does you the same favor.”

But, to be honest, the person who needs to learn the lesson is obviously me.  But I think the third time’s the charm. 

Close Encounters of a different kind, part 2

In the morning at Halem’s house I tried to sleep as long as I could to put off the inevitable morning hug but my bladder, full with the water from the infamous chalice and the four herbal mates we drank during the ceremony the night before, was not collaborating.  In the bathroom there were only two items: a strangled tube of toothpaste and a bottle of "Intimate Feminine Cream" on top of a lidless seatless toilet.  I did not even want to know.

Halem prepared breakfast: a plate of papaya and cucumber arranged in a precise crop circle formation served with cold coffee water (presumably to avoid brain scrambling from the microwave radiation).  He prayed.  We ate.  And then I sneezed.

His atenas perked up like a metal detector over a gold mine.  "Hmm, you are unwell.  I have a present for you.  Come."  Back to the Ceremony Room.  

The curing therapy started with rhythmic finger taps on my face, shoulders and back.  “Is there some pain in here?" he asked, jabbing his pointer into my kidney.  

"Yeah."  Now there is.

"Hmm... I had a feeling."

The tapping evolved into a full body massage.  At that point I was 100% certain that Halem was weird and 95% certain that he was not going to rob, rape or murder me, which are the three most important characteristics of a masseuses.   So despite the apparent awkwardness of the situation, I mentally shrugged my shoulders and enjoyed the free spa treatment.  

“I have another present for you,” he said afterwards.  His abounding generosity was starting to overwhelm me.   He handed me his backpack, grabbed his guitar and signaled for me to follow him as we power-walked to the bus station.  On the bus, I was privileged to listen to conspiracy theories about Princess Diana and stories about chatting it up with Viggo Mortison and hanging out with Manu Chau.  I refrained from asking which of the stories took place in this dimension and which of them occurred on other planets.  

Suddenly: “Close your eyes.”  He huddled me with a side hug and started mumbling something to the universe about love and plants.  Thankfully my previous involvement with evangelicals of the Charismatic flavor has desensitized me to random public prayer. 

Once we arrived at our destination (a little mountain town above Pasto), we convened with a small band of flowy-pants earth people, dreadlocked and pierced, carrying miniature instruments and a box of arroz con leche to sell in the plaza.  Before introducing me to each brother and sister, Halem ceremoniously squirted all of us with his travel-size spray bottle of eucalyptus water.  We sat in a powwow around the table and sang two-chord songs about our product.

“Arroz con leche...Arroz con leche... It’s so delicious and good... For only 1.000 pesos you can have it...”  Conventional poetic rhyme is against their beliefs.

“I like your friends,” I lied at the end of the day. 

“Yeah, they're better when we’re all in the stars together.”

And that is my problem with drugs and religion (in excess). 

In the minds of the hyper-spiritual, the Utopian world takes precedent over this one.   The present reality becomes an inconvenient stepping stone, a mere portal, to the perfect celestial realm.   This world is a boring and sinful place from which one should desire escape.  It is unpsychedelic and unholy.  It is a trap, an illusion, a cage.  And all of the unenlightened people who live within it, unaware of the other-earthly Paradise, are tragic prisoners that need to be rescued.  If the poor souls do not wish to be rescued they are to be pitied, or even condemned. 

But I am not convinced that the addicted or the dogmatic are any more free than the nonbelievers.