Ode to Alice

I don’t think I ever actually got the joke about the birds that shit in the priest’s hand, but the best part was watching my parents helplessly wince at their elementary-aged children hearing the “s-word” from their Grandma.  She paid no mind to their rolling eyes and just watched us with a belly-bouncing laugh.  

One could never be sure what sort of dirty (and sometimes racist) jokes, gossip stories, local scandals, or reports of recent deaths would be told upon arrival at 2215 Crescent, but there were certain things that could always be counted on at Grandma’s house:

A bowl of strawberries or grapes on the table.

Dr. Pepper in the fridge.

A bowl of mixed nuts on the counter.

A loaf of white bread in the drawer. 

An item of supposedly vastly underestimated value recently excavated from the basement on the dining table, ready to be reappraised and sold for a great fortune.

Rosaries stuffed in between the couch cushions. 

At Christmas time, a dancing Santa doll that would moon the unsuspecting button-pusher at the end of his jingle.

It was those simple acts of mischief--naked Santas, the jar of nuts with a coiled snake, the fake cockroach under the donut--that never ceased to amuse Grandma.  Reminiscing the glory days with neighbors and visitors was the highlight of her day.  Uncle Bob’s friend leaned over the kitchen table, raising his eyebrows over his down-tilted nose in true George fashion: “Well shoot, we was just sittin ‘round smokin ceegars when ol' Clark sawr one of them brown recluse spiders and he up and killed that thing right der with his shot gun."  Grandma sat with a close-lipped smile, shaking her head and laughing from her shoulders through the entire retelling.  

The epic tales of police run-ins, pranks, and trouble-making are never fact-checked and they often wear a tone of the “And he caught a fish that was this big” kind of story.  But it doesn’t matter.  If your versions contradicts Grandma’s, she’ll just shake her head disappointedly, feeling sorry for your misguidedness.  And then the subject will return to what’s for dinner. 

Real Life

“This feels like real life,” he said looking out at the traffic from the window of my fourth-story apartment.  I was cooking pasta in the kitchen and we were listening to The Killers on the living room speakers.

Granted, my brother has lived in somewhat of a bubble for the past 24 years, but I knew what he meant.  I don’t know what it is about the four bolts I unlock every time I come home, or the dusty stairwell in my apartment building, or the cigarette lighters on the counter I use to light the gas stove,  or my goldfish, or hailing a bus on a street corner, or sticking the phone bill to the door with a magnet..... But it does feel like real life. 

It is romantic because it is concrete.  After graduation and liberation from the academic machine, the over-thinking under-feeling non-acting intellectuals are lusting to inhale any air that is not theoretical.  We crave the nonabstract.  Something as mundane as making tea with leaves pulled from a plant on the balcony feels almost photo worthy.  Like a kid riding his bike without training wheels, we want to shout, “Look mommy!  I’m doing it by myself!”

Ironically that sensation of so-called reality comes from a construction people like my brother and I have contrived from television advertisements and Hollywood images.  This is what people in the “real world” do, right?   They change their lightbulbs and buy sponges for the kitchen.  They water their plants and go to the bank. They walk anonymously down busy streets and make calls from pay phones. 

The even bigger irony is that this year of my life is probably the farthest from “reality” I could have gone, in that I will likely never live another year with as little responsibility as I have now.  My salary is enough to cover the bills (and some splurges on the side) and my work schedule has yet to impede the social caprices and personal whims that spontaneously pop into my cravings.  I never worry about making ends meet and I spend an embarrassingly little amount of time thinking about my future. I just bustle around in my make believe universe where there is only the present moment.  My life is a theater, a masquerade of adulthood.  

And I’m ok with that.   

Why not me?

Felipe is what they call a guerrero (literally “warrior,” more accurately “hustler”).  He swaggers through the labyrinth of the San Victorino street market like Jerry McGuire strolling through a floor of office cubicles--high-fiving and fist-pounding the watch makers and the shoe salesmen, not once losing his sense of direction in the dizzying mayhem of tent stands and food carts.  The streets are in his blood. 

For a middle-class suburbanite, his skateboard and tattoos might as well be a pedestal and superhero cape.  He is all that is cool.  Real.  Legit.  Street.  He’s worked at every rip-off clothes store and cigarette outlet, he knows all the tricks, he’s heard all the lines, he’s seen all the types.  

I found myself rummaging through my catalogue of memories in search for a credential-boosting scar story to tell him as he led me across the plaza, shielding me from the oncoming zombie attack of vendors with a light saber arm wave.  Being picked on by my older brother?  Too juvenile.  Surviving on only potatoes during a motorcycle trek in the Andes?  Too “study abroad”ish.  Losing a battle with my insurance company?  Too First World.  Losing my religion? Too existential. Losing a friend in a car accident?  Too personal.

There hasn’t exactly been a lack of silver platters in my life thus far.  The poor performance of my mutual fund is hardly considered a tribulation.

The philosophical “Question of Suffering” concerns coping with the meaninglessness of futile injustices.  But while the suffering of innocents is the most infamously senseless of life’s mysteries, statistically speaking it is exactly the suffering that seems to give life meaning--or at least perceived value.  There are hardly any Third World countries at the top of the global suicide rankings.  The top 15 includes countries with some of the highest standards of living in the world (including Japan, Finland, and South Korea).  It is those who do not suffer from life’s basic trials that lose the ability to see purpose in living.

For We The Privileged, the question sounds less like “Why me?” and more like “Why not me?”   If it is scars that make someone “legit,” if it is battles that strengthen the soul, if it is suffering that gives life meaning, if it is death that inspires life... where does that leave the white LIberal Arts girl?  

Felipe smiles at me like Gandalf smiling at a hobbit--wise and amused.  I will never see the world through his eyes. 

'Tis a gift to be simple

I was only slightly concerned when Juan Sebastian purchased the same plane ticket as me to Medellin.  I prefer to fly alone.  Sitting next to someone you only kindof know on an airplane is like being stranded on a desert island with only one kind of food.  What if it tastes bad?  Or what if it’s ok but you get sick of it?  You might want to ignore it but there’s nothing else to do.  Thankfully, the flight was less than an hour and Juan is terrified of airplanes so there was plenty of entertainment to fill the time.

First tourist stop: Parque Explora.  Disneyland meets Bill Nye the Science Guy.  If my high school physics class could have involved a fraction of the interactive pulley systems in Explora, I might have actually enjoyed it.  Little uniformed school kids ran around playing with gravity magnets and centripetal force wheels, happier than Charlie in Willy Wonka’s factory.  Did you know that if a face is upside down, the human mind does not register if the eyes and mouth are inverted?

Next stop: Fútbol.  OK, I admit, I was bored at the game (I’m sorry, I’m a gringa and I’m just not into soccer). But afterwards, Juan, myself, and a posse of other gringos and Bogotanos went to a corner store and got our dance on with some other local fans.  When the stadium hotdog and cheap beer started their own dance party in my stomach, I was disappointed--but far from discouraged--to hear that there was no bathroom.  [READER DISCRETION ADVISED]  I found my way to a tree in the dark and took care of business.  A few minutes later I'm back in the buzz of the store front patio with the crew when I see Juan talking with a police officer who is motioning to me with his finger.  Turns out that tree in the dark wasn’t as hidden as I had thought...

Slight public humiliation and minor legal run-ins aside, the Medellin weekend was delicious.  I confess that by the end, the desert island food was turning a little sour and I began to see Juan’s flaws glaring brighter than a burning ant under a magnifying glass.  Extended amounts of shared time + sleep deprivation = hypersensitivity to the faults of others.  
But on the flight back home I stroked his arm as he hyperventilated through the turbulence, and I realized I had quite a happy situation.  He was telling me to put his ID in his mouth so the police could identify his body after the crash and I was laughing to myself at the simplicity of life.  I may be deluded, but as far as I can tell not all relationships have to be complicated.  Maybe there is such a thing as a mutually casual date.  Hallelujah.

Under a fish tank in Parque Explora, a plaque explained that the fish--although seemingly swimming around in random directions--were actually following specific and predictable patterns.  It read: 

“Nos muestra que la vida, llena de complejidad, en el fondo oculta simplicidad, matemáticas y tal vez un toque de azar.” (This shows us that life, full of complexity, deep down is rooted in simplicity, math, and maybe a touch of chance.)

Back to the races

Just when the Vi Boheme was seducing me deeper inter her bosom of carefree-ness, somehow my overachieving tentacles managed to tangle themselves in the web of the Rat Race once again.  I remember that a mere week ago I was marveling at my overabundance of time to surf through all the articles in my Google Reader news feed, watch The Daily Show, and sit in my apartment blowing bubbles out of a plastic bottle.  And suddenly I find myself slapping sticky-note To Do lists on the mirror: 

-Meeting with the Ministry of Education (if nothing else, I might get free lunch out of it)

-Prep classes for next week and grade/edit the essays I assigned (what a stupid idea)

-Make 20 PBJ sandwiches and update PBJ website/facebook page 

-Read/respond to 15 unread emails

-Coordinate weekend travel plans

-Write a blog post for the nonprofit organization’s webpage 

-Clean the apartment before germaphobic brother arrives

-Either buy stronger laundry detergent or buy new socks

Up the stairs, down the stairs, on the bike, around the corner, on the bus, in the line, and on and on and on.  When did this happen?  Not to mention, just when I thought I would be a permanent member of the Society of Intermittent Recreational Exercisers--where a brisk walk counts as a work out and days off are as frequent as days on--I up and joined the university track team.  I happened to meet the coach one day as I was doing my bi-weekly 30 minute jog and before I could say “out of shape” I was doing sprints on the infield.

I find myself scarfing down burned beans doused in hot sauce for dinner and I haven't made my bed in a week.  Pero hay que aprovechar la juventud (you're only young once).  Carpe diem!

And then there was one

RIP Karl, Chimichanga, and the other goldfish that never received a name because it died after two days. 

I confess that I did not feel any particular emotion (other than inconvenience) at the deaths of my new pets, but their passing did heighten my awareness of my own youth.  Goldfish are infamously poor at surviving, but it it shouldn’t be that difficult to keep a few of them alive for at least a month.  The fact that 75 percent of mine didn’t last longer than a week was just one of several indicators I’ve noticed recently of my general lack of maturity.  I’ve never claimed to have “things all figured out”, but lately I am especially cognizant of the mountain of basic life skills I have yet to acquire. 

It took me a week to install Christmas lights in my apartment because I was trying to hammer the screw-in hangers into the ceiling without making an indent hole with a nail first.  I make fake phone calls to avoid awkward social situations.  I still haven’t perfected the art of water-efficient dishwashing.  I laugh when my roommates talk about their romantic escapades but (let’s be honest) I can hardly relate.  I put a plastic plate in the toaster oven.  When I’m by myself for too long I lose the capacity to read my own mood and I can’t tell if I’m lonely, bored, tired, or hungry.  I wander to the fridge and pass up leftover quinoa squash for crackers and chocolate. 

But other than dead fish and a burned plate, being young also has its perks when living abroad.  First of all, your roommates forgive you for your lousy cooking and strange eating habits because, after all, you’re just a kid.  What’s more, your waistline will forgive the late-night munchies too as long as you throw in a few days of exercise.  Got company at your house Friday night until 9am and a trip on Saturday?  No problem.  Fatigue from two days without sleep is cured by one night of rest followed by one dose of pancakes. 

I’m no Peter Pan, but I’m in no rush to move out of my temporary Neverland--even if I have to endure a few goldfish burials while I’m here. 

Friend me

“We become who we are in conjunction with other people becoming who they are... People don’t develop first and then create relationships.  Relationships create people.”  --David Brooks, The Social Animal

In the Facebook Era, the term “social networking” has taken on a different connotation, but the concept of people creating webs of relationships is as old as Homo sapiens.  These internets of humans once emerged primarily from family or tribal groups, then commerce allowed for new connections based on economic interactions, and today the world wide web has made friend-making as easy as mouse-clicking.  But the phenomenon of globalization has created unique environments for social networking in more ways than just a boom for online communities.  Today it is possible (and common) for a young person to move half-way across the globe without previously knowing a single soul in the destination.  How is she--a foreigner, a nonnative speaker, an outsider connected neither by family nor economy--to cultivate her social network? 

The truth is, I don’t have many friends yet.  

I spent my first month in Colombia bonding with one of my roommates who moved back to the States last week.  

I spent the day after her goodbye party regretting that a few of my students had been in attendance (and had seen me in a less-than-professional state) and therefore I spent last Friday feeling cautious and reserved when I was out with a group of students from English Club.  

I spent one evening on my doorstep explaining to one of my few friends why we would never be more than friends (and realizing that we would now be much less so).  

I spend my days preoccupied and happily independent and I spend my nights debating whether I would rather be alone or in less-than-inspiring company. 

I tease my two roommates for their menageries of women that would rival that of Casanova.  The contrast of their love lives to my own could not be more stark.  But I feel neither envy nor reproach.   I’m just casting out my social net where I can and waiting to see what kind of catch I can get.  I hoping to reel in some nice girls (I’ve found myself in too many precariously platonic relationships recently), maybe some runners or climbers...   I’m not desperate enough yet to latch on to whatever comes my way, but I admit I am widening my gaze.