Essay Two

It would be the first time I was to leave the country without my family: A week in a small town 45 minutes south of Tijuana. I don't recall what inclined me to sign up for the trip - possibly the need to fulfill my volunteer requirement or the overwhelming desire to fall in somewhere now that the last of my friends had graduated. More likely a combination of the two that, in either case, resulted in an experience that would go on to radically change the perception of my entity and the strength it possessed. 


It was a nine hour drive to the border, another two after passing through customs. It was dusk when we arrived at the camp sight, a wide open expanse of land encapsulated by a sudden thrust of mountain range, purple now in the early evening light. We spoke little as we set to work on our tents, tired from a long day and the anticipation of what was to come in the morning. 


Waking to the sound of our director banging a steel pot, I dressed quickly, filling my thermos with instant coffee before heading out. We traveled parallel to the city's limits, the horizon faded with air pollution, as we weaved in and out of motorcycles and horse-drawn coches. Turning into our family's neighborhood, my nervousness settled in my lap like an old dog. How would we be perceived? A group of mostly white high school kids from Marin? I could feel what little Spanish I knew drifting far above the tin roofs until it all but disappeared.


"...It's a young married couple with two young girls and their third on the way." My director managed before the van came to an abrupt stop. Unpacking our tools, we surveyed the area where we were to build: a small, 8 by 10 space of dry and fleeting earth. 


Those five days would become the most physically strenuous I had ever encountered. Hours were spent beneath a high sun mixing and pouring cement by hand, bathing with the rain water collected in large plastic drums by night, arms blistered and burned from cheap insulation. All moments briefly accentuated by a quick game of tag with the barrio's countless children before adding a coke to our growing tab at the local convenient store. 


The house was more a shack with four walls and a tiled roof, but it was a house. I was painting alone when he approached me. I had been introduced quickly to our family when we first arrived, shaking their hands before turning away embarrassed that I couldn't communicate like I wanted to. The girls would grow to like me, shouting my name as they raced along the street, and their father noticed, laughing gently as I passed. 


"I wanted to thank you." he started, eyes following my slow and tired strokes. "At first, I thought all Americans were the same. That they didn't care for us, looked down on us from up there." He pointed upward, toward California. "But I've seen how hard you've worked for me and my family. Strangers to you. But you built us a home and I'm grateful for that..." I had stopped painting, and turned to face him. I tried to smile, faltered and instead began crying.


"I knew you understood me. You see, your Spanish isn't so terrible." He patted my shoulder and turned to leave me as I half sobbed, half laughed. 


That night, we ate dinner together as a family within that little house, now a home. We took turns recounting the highlights our journey, the girls on either side of me, picking at what little arroz y frijoles I'd left behind. It had never mattered that I couldn't speak fluent Spanish or that I came from a world they may never see, but that I had ultimately been successful in whatever it was that drove me to sign up for that trip - working on something far larger than a house in a small town 45 minutes south of Tijuana. Something much larger than myself, and that I would forever be remembered for. 

Little Fists Inspired

In this moment, I'm grateful he's a sound sleeper and doesn't notice me turn from left to right, stomach to back before deciding I can't sleep. That I need some sort of mental evacuation. 

I've been here before, this in between, where I know what lies ahead. Know what needs to be done, and yet I continually drag my feet in the hopes that something will change and someone else will be put in charge of making my decisions for me. 

This in between where days are half spent dreaming of what may come, half in fear or what will. 

On June 7th, I'm running into Her open arms. I catch myself slipping into what it will be like. Its been two years since I've run my hands through the flowers of Her hair, let myself wander among the hills of Her body. It will be a moment of liberation when I can kneel at Her feet and kiss Her yet again. 

I told him I'd be gone for two, maybe three weeks. I won't be in California for six. That's nearly two months. But I have to go, break this cycle once and for all. I'm going to lose Indi. 

I'm going to lose a lot of things. 

I'm making a mixed CD for when I go. Something to write to, to paint to, to forget to I suppose. 

I hate my body, I hate that it's proof of what I've given these last two years and what I'll take away. 

I'll never forgive myself for not taking the risk and moving to Boulder the summer after I graduated. 

I wish someone who find some undeniable talent within me, let it unfurl in their hands and encourage me to do better. I've lost that ability.

I hate my writing. I hate the feeling that it will surmount to nothing.

I pray that I get accepted into the Peace Corps, that I have a reason to disappear and lose touch with everyone for two years. And, more importantly, to have a somewhat legitimate reason to shave my head.

I can't stop listening to Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada.

I want desperately to be the next face of Puerto Rican politics in someway. 

I'm ready to stop breathing a little and calling it life. 

Ulrich Schnauss - Monday Paracetamol

Essay One

When I was young, my mother would often tell me stories of her life as a professional dancer in Spain. It had been an arduous journey at best - one filled with loneliness, heartache, disappointment and poverty. But among those moments of despair were triumphs, so swift and severe, that they were enough to keep my mother in Madrid for 16 years. Even today, at 64-years-old, my mother can look back at her career and see how she alone was the driving force behind what would become an exceptionally beautiful life, accentuated by the pain that goaded her to action.

And at 24-years-old, it is that understanding of myself and my path that I seek. Growing up in a military family, I wanted nothing more than to find a place to plant a widespread set of roots and let myself fall into the monotonous and comfortable routine that only a native could appreciate. And I thought the bay area was that place. I had graduated from college here, become familiar with her twisting veins of inner city, come to fall in love with her rolling hills carpeted in tulle fog, only to realize that my life had become just that: monotonous and comfortable.

Today, at this moment, I turn the stone that is myself over in my palm. If I look closely, I can see the rivets of where change has come, left its mark, and evaporated only to resurface at a later time and date. And although I am proud of where I've come in my life, I'm ready to see where it is I will take myself. Will it be a life that held purpose? That allowed me to grow to my fullest potential, in all aspects? Will I have exhausted all opportunities given to me so I may continue to turn that stone and read the story of an incredible woman? It will, and I believe the Peace Corps can help me achieve this.

As a Corps member, I know that I can once again begin my search for that desire and passion my mother only obtained after enduring an onslaught of difficulties. I would embrace my 27 month commitment and the Peace Corps' 10 expectations as the vessel that will carry me through my transformation. And although it will be incomprehensible at this moment to leave what I have built for the last two years, it will be exactly what I need: the chance to have lived once and lived to the fullest. It will let me commit to improving the quality of my life by improving those of the world, it will allow me to break in the face of hardship and find within myself the strength to continue on, it will grant me the tools to build a successful and sustainable self in the midst of my host community and culture, it well give me pride, and it will forever stay with me as what was, single handedly, the most influential 27 months of my existence to date.

Iguazu

What is this place, and how did I get here? This gray mental in between that has seemed, in the last three years, to dominate my frontal lobes and overall vision of this world? 

Sitting on the couch that separates a narrow excuse for a living from a dining room, eyes tired from one hell of a day, I couldn't tell you. I can't tell you what I've been doing with myself for the last three years or really any of them for that matter. Because, what do I have to show?

This is a lie. Everything. From the photographs fighting for space on coffee tables, down to the thread bare coats lining the hall closet. This home isn't mine, nor has she been since I stepped out of her front door in Novato, California in 2005. And although I've tried to sit beside her, to reach out on those nights of desperation and take her hand in mine during some misguided attempt at consolation, it's clear how alone I am. Her skin cold to the touch, face turned south bound in search of where she may flee next knowing that I will follow like Alice down the rabbit hole. 

Only, it seems, there is no pill to make me larger again. 

I should have prepared myself better, I'm ashamed to say. When I came back to the states from my previous trips to Europe, I slipped into this...this hollowed state, for lack of a better explanation. Its easiest to blame it on missing Europe's general state of mind or architecture or nightlife, but really its the isolation. It didn't make sense that after years of searching of where I wished to find my people, that what I would miss the most was not existing. Walking through the streets of Barcelona, standing on the beaches of Normandy, sitting in the dirty light of Temple Bar, carving holes through the underground belly of Prague, who I was held no weight. I was given permission to be my most disgusting and beautiful self to date, and so I was. I was a child discovering herself in the mirror only moments after learning she was not her mother, but another thing all together. And my god, what a thing to behold!

Staring out the gratified glass of the yellow line, I stepped onto the Můstek platform and braced for the January wind slipping from the streets above like some unforgotten thought lingering at the base of your neck. I was in that moment, completely and utterly in control of my entity. It didn't matter that I spoke no Czech or that I failed to memorize the stop's countless entrances. All that mattered was that I remembered my pass, and, most importantly, that I stood to the right of the escalator lest I wished to be pushed aside by the afternoon rush. In those few hours, I could disappear into a curtain of snow and wander, if I decided I was not in the mood to be lost. I could trace a chapped hand over the front doors of the apartment where Kafka was born and with that same hand make a wish on the St. Charles Bridge without so much as a second glance, because it had been done before and it would be done again. I was unoriginal and yet found solace knowing this. There was no struggle to be anything more than a 23-year-old woman desperate to find herself in that moment, and so I let myself be just that. 

I couldn't describe the loneliness and empowerment I felt during those 30 days. I had never in my life fought so blindly for a goal as I did that certificate nor had I ever wanted something so more than to stay within that struggle. I fought daily with myself and as a result bloomed a bruised flower wrought with anger and a self-awareness only possible within such an environment. And as a result, as tired as I was, as frustrated and overwhelmed, I had finally been liberated of a stagnant cycle best described as apathetic. I had purpose again, and as terrified as I am to pursue it in fear of failing, I am more afraid of staying here....locked in this narrow passage growing more bitter and resentful with each day that passes.

So what do I do? Do I stay on the platform, watching as each worm-train eats its way into the darkness before it ripe with possibility? Or do I dare take hold of her pocket watch, and follow her into that rabbit hole once again?

Fotka

American cheese and strawberry yogurt

And after months of not blogging (like she promised to herself) she was risen up and made to walk the city of Prague...

Okay, whatever. I haven't been about keeping up with this thing, like that comes as any surprise (that was mostly rhetorical, but if you know me than you'd understand). But here I am again! Like an ex who never got rid of the spare key to your apartment, just showing up unannounced like maybe if they hold a boom box over their head and stare passionately into your eyes that all will be forgiven.

A bit of a stretch, but work with me. 

So I arrived into the Czech Republic a day later than originally planned and, like most women, cried profusely over it. I had missed my flight coming into from DC to JFK over an hour late and was forced to stay in a motel nearby (out of pocket, I might add. Delta is seriously the Walmart of flying now - I HATE YOU!), complete with mirror ceiling and ladies of the night outside the lobby door. Awesome.

8 hours flight later, I arrived. Found my ride after attempting to speak Czech to a man my age carrying an ak-47 in the airport and took off for my flat. Fast forward through a full day of classes and taking the metro home, I rummaged through my suitcase and took the hottest shower of my life. It is absolutely freezing here, but the city is charming in its own way and the long walks are made tolerable by smiling faces (most are smiling faces anyway) and simply knowing wherever you look, there's something new. Something foreign worth drinking in and attempting to remember to include in this stupid blog. My flat isn't much larger than a sardine can, but it's warm and inviting. I share it with a young Mexican girl, Fran, who is a veteran traveler and personable. 


And aside from discovering my suitcase had been torn through, now missing some of its contents (seriously, Delta? ::grumble::) I'm starting to relax. I had to teach today. A group of Czechs my mother's age on an article discussing ironworkers in New York of all things, but I did well. I was thrown to the sharks and survived round one. Tomorrow will most likely be harder as my students will supposedly know little to no English, but this is it. This is really testing me for moving abroad and doing this for a living - that is, if Teach For America doesn't have me. 


But for now, I will bathe and attempt to organize my room. Tomorrow I will write again.