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