I have a really serious case of tartingles this morning. “Tartingles” – a term coined by a friend of mine – is embarrassment felt for another person. This morning that person is Dani, a well-dressed young woman from Kansas. She wears all black except for a green, blue, and purple scarf; her hair recalls the style of Uncle Jesse from Full House. She is dressed in her job interview best because no one has told her that, as a native English speaker, she could show up in ripped jeans with an exposed thong and a marijuana leaf t-shirt and still get the job. The fact that she speaks English and wears clothes makes this guest teaching a mere formality.
I sit in the back and watch her teach my fifth graders. As the person she will replace, I am ostensibly here to evaluate whether or not she is a capable, qualified candidate. It's a farce. I know that unless she kills a student – or I tell her the awful truth – she'll be doing my job on Monday. I wonder if I have a moral obligation to say to Dani, “Run for your life! Save yourself!” Do I run back into the burning building for her? I'm not a firefighter. If the school can't replace me by Monday, will they return my passport? (The school's lawyers have been in possession of my passport, visa, and birth certificate for over a month as they try to make me a legal resident.) Which one of us do I save?
Should I tell her that we have no text books, no paper, and no dry erase markers because doing without them means more profit for the owners? Errr... I mean because we're a “green” school. Should I tell her that, even though we are an environmentally and financially conscious school, the classrooms are encouraged to make their Halloween decorations as obscenely extravagant as possible because the owners have declared a contest and the best class wins a trip to Six Flags? Should I calculate how many dry erase markers could be purchased for the price of the brand new iPhone that will be given to the teacher who wins “best costume”?
Dani teaches her trial class on the “global village” and fills the students with facts and figures regarding the world's population. To check the students' English counting ability, she writes the number one on the white board and points to it. “One!” Cries the class. Dani writes a ten and the voices call “Ten!” She writes again. “One hundred!” And again. “One thousand!” The students count all the way to one hundred million, at which point Dani pauses. “Or” she explains, “another way to say that in English is one billion.” She writes “one billion” next to 100,000,000.
I try to catch the eye of one of the two other teachers in the room. Did they hear that? Do they see the board? Am I making this up? No one says anything. I feel the onset of tartingles. Dani asks the class if anyone knows the population of the world. No one does. The guesses range from a few thousand to incredible invented numbers. Then the boy who waits to be called on when he raises his hand – which is why I still don't know his name – guesses six hundred million. Dani looks amazed. “Yes! Six hundred million... or six billion. Wow! Did you know that or was it just a good guess?” Now I look amazed.
Six billion and six hundred million are not the same number! Are you sure? Completely, one hundred percent sure? Yes, of course I'm sure. She sounds so confident though. And she's said it twice. I can't believe I'm even thinking about this. Am I going crazy? Maybe this is an act. Maybe she's not a real teaching candidate. Maybe the school is trying to make me feel so badly about abandoning the students to this new teacher that I'll stay.
Six hundred million people in the world? I've seen six hundred million people since breakfast. That's like half the population of Mexico City, right? As if reading my mind, Dani asks the kids if they know the population of Mexico City. For eleven year olds estimating the population of their home town, the students make surprisingly poor guesses. None, however, miss the mark as badly as Dani, who responds, “Nope. Good guesses, but the population of Mexico City is actually twenty-five thousand.” Twenty-five thousand? Greenfield, Massachusetts has nearly twenty-five thousand people. Mexico city has twenty-five million. I am so embarrassed for her I feel myself blush.
Do I interrupt to correct her? She would be mortified. She already looks nervous. Her back is touching the white board; her hands move like babies' feet the first time they try to support weight. But what if the students are actually paying attention? They appear mildly alert. What if this is the one piece of information they remember from my class? I see Sebastian climbing into his Hummer this afternoon and proudly showing off his new knowledge, “Did you know that twenty-five thousand of the six hundred million people in the world live in Mexico City?!” The chauffeur laughs so hard that he loses control of the recreational tank and causes a sixteen car pile-up in the school's parking lot. Various children are killed, and when the chauffeur explains to the authorities what caused the accident, they release him and charge me with involuntary manslaughter. The schools' lawyers represent me and agree to a plea bargain of ten years house arrest and community service, which I will serve by working unpaid for the school.
Back in reality, the class is ending and I am standing up. There is Sebastian, obnoxious as ever and wonderfully alive. In the hallway, Mary Carmen – the supervisor of English instruction – touches my elbow to have a word with me. “What did you think? Do you think Dani can handle them?” No, of course not. Nobody can. But if she thinks she can, then hire her quickly before she knows any better. She might be the perfect person for this job. She seems to have some sort of delusional super power that allows her to magically reduce massive numbers by moving decimal points. Perhaps she looks at a classroom of twenty-five fifth graders and sees only two and a half. I respond to Mary Carmen with a question, “What does she think?” I think that the school will hire her no matter what I say and no matter what Dani says – as long as she says it in English.
viernes, 17 de octubre de 2008
lunes, 13 de octubre de 2008
Goodbye, Shepherd's Pie!
I hate shepherd's pie. I have always hated shepherd's pie. It's like the radio love songs say, “I've loved you forever. I loved you before I met you. I loved you before the beginning of time.” Just replace “loved” with “hated” and “you” with “shepherd's pie”. These pop music sentiments may seem impossible - outrageous hyperbole inspired by too many nights alone with too much to drink - but in the case of my aversion to shepherd's pie, I suspect there may be an actual genetic predisposition. They say that human beings crave sugar, salt, and fat because they have been scarce for much of our evolutionary history. Thus, in order to ensure that we eat them at every opportunity, our taste buds tell us that things like Ben & Jerry's, cheesecake, and chocolate covered pretzels are delicious. My forebears lived primarily in the British Isles, where shepherd's pie (at least the meat and potatoes part) was so abundant that my body weight is probably 75% water and 25% shepherd's pie. No wonder my taste buds tell me not to eat it. Given my genetic history, eating shepherd's pie in this lifetime would be like eating another turkey dinner the day after Thanksgiving.
Various people have tried to convince me that I should like shepherd's pie. Do you like ground beef? Yes. Do you like potatoes? Yes. Do you like corn? Yes. So what is there not to like? They're all things you eat. I like ground beef in hamburgers. I like potatoes as french fries. And I like corn on the cob. That doesn't mean that if you mix them all together I will like it. Give it a chance. Don't say you don't like it before you've even tried it. Of course you're going to hate it if you expect to hate it.
I wanted to give this beast a fair chance. I thought that if I scraped off one of the layers, the remaining two might taste better. Unfortunately, meat and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the corn. Meat and corn taste like shepherd's pie without the potatoes. And corn and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the meat. Trying to solve the problem of shepherd's pie with meat, potatoes, and corn does not work. As Einstein warned, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” The solution to shepherd's pie is not a little more meat, a little less corn, or a layer of ketchup. The solution might be shrimp, mushrooms, and tomatoes in a curry coconut milk sauce over pasta. The solution might be a salad of spinach leaves, walnuts, bits of apple, and dried cranberries.
The meat, corn, and potatoes all begged me to give their dish another chance. What if we make it with fresh corn instead of canned? We'll serve it with a “luna llena” stout from Beer Factory. It's delicious with a little bit of grated cheese sprinkled on top. Have you tried eating it with a spoon instead of a fork? What if you only had to eat it once a week? And what if you only had to eat half as much? And what if you ate it under a tent with fried dough for dessert? It would be like a carnival! You could wear a costume, whatever kind of costume you want. And we'll pay you to do all of this. How much do you want? We just want you to be happy and tell everyone how much you love shepherd's pie!
No, no, no! Don't you get it? I hate shepherd's pie. Call it whatever you want. Dress it up however you like. Tell me why I should like it, why I need to like it, why even if I don't like it that's actually a good thing because it will make me a stronger person. Give me less to make it more palatable and try to wash it down with beer and cash. It's still shepherd's pie. And I'm not eating another bite. I am old enough to know how to feed myself. I quit shepherd's pie.
Also, shepherd's pie = my job.
Various people have tried to convince me that I should like shepherd's pie. Do you like ground beef? Yes. Do you like potatoes? Yes. Do you like corn? Yes. So what is there not to like? They're all things you eat. I like ground beef in hamburgers. I like potatoes as french fries. And I like corn on the cob. That doesn't mean that if you mix them all together I will like it. Give it a chance. Don't say you don't like it before you've even tried it. Of course you're going to hate it if you expect to hate it.
I wanted to give this beast a fair chance. I thought that if I scraped off one of the layers, the remaining two might taste better. Unfortunately, meat and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the corn. Meat and corn taste like shepherd's pie without the potatoes. And corn and potatoes taste like shepherd's pie without the meat. Trying to solve the problem of shepherd's pie with meat, potatoes, and corn does not work. As Einstein warned, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” The solution to shepherd's pie is not a little more meat, a little less corn, or a layer of ketchup. The solution might be shrimp, mushrooms, and tomatoes in a curry coconut milk sauce over pasta. The solution might be a salad of spinach leaves, walnuts, bits of apple, and dried cranberries.
The meat, corn, and potatoes all begged me to give their dish another chance. What if we make it with fresh corn instead of canned? We'll serve it with a “luna llena” stout from Beer Factory. It's delicious with a little bit of grated cheese sprinkled on top. Have you tried eating it with a spoon instead of a fork? What if you only had to eat it once a week? And what if you only had to eat half as much? And what if you ate it under a tent with fried dough for dessert? It would be like a carnival! You could wear a costume, whatever kind of costume you want. And we'll pay you to do all of this. How much do you want? We just want you to be happy and tell everyone how much you love shepherd's pie!
No, no, no! Don't you get it? I hate shepherd's pie. Call it whatever you want. Dress it up however you like. Tell me why I should like it, why I need to like it, why even if I don't like it that's actually a good thing because it will make me a stronger person. Give me less to make it more palatable and try to wash it down with beer and cash. It's still shepherd's pie. And I'm not eating another bite. I am old enough to know how to feed myself. I quit shepherd's pie.
Also, shepherd's pie = my job.
domingo, 5 de octubre de 2008
The Circus
Hey, Michael, you wanna hear a joke? I don't know. Is it a good one? Are you asking whether or not I'm a funny guy? Yes, of course, it's a good one. Ok, then, I could definitely use a laugh. What do you call a place where wild animals are tamed under a tent? Oh, I should know this. I'm pretty sure I've heard this one before. The circus is the obvious answer but that wouldn't be funny. It's not the circus, is it? Is that your guess? No, that's not my guess. I was just asking. Well, what's your guess? A place where wild animals are tamed under a tent? I give up. What is it? English class. Oh, ha ha ha, I get it. Very funny. English class. Because I teach under a tent and the students are like wild animals. Good one. A joke is like a magic trick. Trying to explain it ruins it. That joke was not at all like a magic trick.
I do teach under a tent now. Or I will starting on Monday. This is the result of a failed attempt to quit my job. When I walked into Mary's office on Wednesday, it was to be for the last time. Had I needed any reminders of my dissatisfaction, they were all around me. The white office looked half-finished, half-moved-into, the hotel room equivalent of an office. An improv teacher once told me, “Never play in a white room. It's boring and lifeless. You have to create a space the audience can see.” In this case, the audience would have seen nothing but me and Mary squatting to create the illusion of chairs, whose white color – providing no contrast against the white floor, white walls, white desk between us, and white iMac upon the desk – rendered them invisible.
The only visible objects then were the tall case, like a grandfather clock with a glass door, which protects the Mexican flag within, and the school mascot – a stuffed, black Scottish terrier floating in midair. It was in this pretend office that I sat down to quit my pretend job. I had been hired to teach acting. I had assumed that meant drama, not teaching literature without books. I could not, however, accuse Mary of lying; my job was certainly acting. And I had grown tired of it.
Days before, in a full faculty meeting, Mary stood and announced that she did not intend to scold us – a clear sign that we were about to be scolded. “I am deeply concerned. We are only five weeks into the school year and we have already lost four students. This reflects poorly on our teachers. Your attitude, commitment, and professionalism are essential to our success. It is difficult to have parents come into my office and say I sold them a school that doesn't exist.” A school that doesn't exist. I had to wonder whether this was our fault for not living in her fantasy, or her fault for not living in reality. Who has the courage to tell the emperor that he is, in fact, naked?
The entire school is naked. And when the faculty gathered to watch the slideshow of a visit to another private school in Mexico City, I could clearly imagine the moment when Adam and Eve looked at themselves and realized, “Hey! We're not wearing anything!” This other school was the apple. Its beauty eclipsed and embarrassed us, made us suddenly self-conscious. Stunning artwork covered everything. An enormous purple dragon crept from the ceiling down one of the walls. And endless vine snaked its way across the halls, and from it sprang drawings of characters from the literature the students read in real books. The walls were hidden behind beautifully decorated bulletin boards. An awed teacher raised her hand and asked, “Can we have bulletin boards like that?” To which another – not at all under her breath – turned around and replied, “What would you put on it? We don't have any paper!”
In the center of the playground – a small, fenced-in square covered in astroturf – stood a tree. “Oh! The tree!” Someone gasped. The auditorium gilled with murmurs of wonder. “The tree!” It was the scene in “Wall-E” where the robot returns to the spaceship with a sprout growing in a boot that he discovered on the otherwise dead planet Earth. This is how disconnected my school is from the planet it aims to save. No wonder it's so hard to separate the recycling. It is fall in New England, and here I am working at a school where a photo of a tree that looks like a houseplant makes a room full of teachers gurgle and coo like babies. If only we had a tree!
This is the life I was more than ready to leave behind when I walked into the pretend office. “I don't want to do this,” I told Mary. I chose my language carefully – not “I can't do this” because I didn't want to be convinced otherwise. It's hard to argue with “I don't want to.” Not impossible, though, as Mary proved by interrupting me to ask, “What can we do? How can we make this work? Tell me what would make the situation better.” I had not even yet told her what was wrong with the situation. Mary's m.o. is to skip information gathering and go straight to problem solving – the old “measure once, cut twice” approach. This is perhaps why I found myself squatting over that imaginary chair for the second time in eight days. Solutions that don't bother to understand the problem tend to be short-lived and moving me from 8th grade to 2nd and 3rd (in addition to 4th, 5th, and 6th) had been one of those solutions.
“Please don't try to fix my problem before you understand it,” I said. Would I have spoken so boldly if I weren't so certain of my departure? “There's nothing wrong with what you're doing” – it's important to balance boldness with restraint – “but my vision and your vision...” I made that gesture of hands passing from opposite directions without meeting. “For me, relationship, knowing the kids, is fundamental to good education. I teach thirteen groups of twenty-five students once a week each. It'll be Christmas before I even know all their names.” This was only one of the many reasons I was quitting and I chose it as my opener because it seemed the least disputable. I had expressed a fact and my personal opinion. Mary's brow furrowed as much as possible given how taut the slick, black bun pulled it, and her eyes narrowed like bird of prey ready to dive. “Now wait a minute.” She said this is the voice that she calls “not scolding”. “There isn't any class larger than twenty-three.”
My piece of evidence had been defeated, invalidated, thrown out. The fact that trying to quit felt more like a legal proceeding than a conversation only strengthened my conviction to do so. Mary then used that most odious of all tactics; she played the “when I was your age”/“you don't know how good you've got it card” card. “I routinely taught classes of fifty or more students. So believe me when I say that these are small classes.” I told her of a school where I taught classes of ten to fifteen students – a school I love but never dreamed would attain the near-utopia status it now enjoys in my delusional reminiscing.
Then Mary did something I had thought impossible. She suggested that we split the classes in half. I could work with eleven or twelve students for forty minutes instead of twenty-five for eighty minutes. And I could do whatever I wanted. “It doesn't have to be literature,” she said. “What matters to me is that they speak English with a native speaker. That's it.” This change would drastically improve my life but win me no friends with the colleagues who would now be forced to do something with the other half of the class. “Don't worry,” Mary began with her favorite words. “We'll say it was my idea. We'll call it differentiation.”
“Differentiation” is the buzz word that permeates the school's pedagogical jargon. While it refers in theory to a complex educational model, it seems to function in practice as a convenient justification for any decision. And because “differentiation” is such a sacred cow, arguing against any decision based on it could be grounds for immediate dismissal.
It was at precisely this moment that I realized how badly Mary wanted or needed me to stay. And though there was a voice in my head, which I'll call “integrity”, that complained, I decided it was also in my best interest to stay. One problem remained: where to teach my class. There is not one empty classroom or space in the entire school. Mary suggested various hallways – the one outside her office, the one across from the art room. I refused. She suggested dividing the classes but keeping all the students in the same room. Again I refused.
For a moment it seemed that she was out of ideas and I would have to quit after-all. And then she suggested the tent. We could have class out in the playground under a tent to protect us from the sun. (Remember that there are no trees.) “I know just the corner,” she said. “No one ever goes there. And it's far enough away from the basketball courts that it should be pretty quiet.” She watched me expectantly. “If the owners don't approve the expense, I'll buy it myself this weekend. So what do you say?” I say when you're living in the circus, it makes sense to work under a tent.
I do teach under a tent now. Or I will starting on Monday. This is the result of a failed attempt to quit my job. When I walked into Mary's office on Wednesday, it was to be for the last time. Had I needed any reminders of my dissatisfaction, they were all around me. The white office looked half-finished, half-moved-into, the hotel room equivalent of an office. An improv teacher once told me, “Never play in a white room. It's boring and lifeless. You have to create a space the audience can see.” In this case, the audience would have seen nothing but me and Mary squatting to create the illusion of chairs, whose white color – providing no contrast against the white floor, white walls, white desk between us, and white iMac upon the desk – rendered them invisible.
The only visible objects then were the tall case, like a grandfather clock with a glass door, which protects the Mexican flag within, and the school mascot – a stuffed, black Scottish terrier floating in midair. It was in this pretend office that I sat down to quit my pretend job. I had been hired to teach acting. I had assumed that meant drama, not teaching literature without books. I could not, however, accuse Mary of lying; my job was certainly acting. And I had grown tired of it.
Days before, in a full faculty meeting, Mary stood and announced that she did not intend to scold us – a clear sign that we were about to be scolded. “I am deeply concerned. We are only five weeks into the school year and we have already lost four students. This reflects poorly on our teachers. Your attitude, commitment, and professionalism are essential to our success. It is difficult to have parents come into my office and say I sold them a school that doesn't exist.” A school that doesn't exist. I had to wonder whether this was our fault for not living in her fantasy, or her fault for not living in reality. Who has the courage to tell the emperor that he is, in fact, naked?
The entire school is naked. And when the faculty gathered to watch the slideshow of a visit to another private school in Mexico City, I could clearly imagine the moment when Adam and Eve looked at themselves and realized, “Hey! We're not wearing anything!” This other school was the apple. Its beauty eclipsed and embarrassed us, made us suddenly self-conscious. Stunning artwork covered everything. An enormous purple dragon crept from the ceiling down one of the walls. And endless vine snaked its way across the halls, and from it sprang drawings of characters from the literature the students read in real books. The walls were hidden behind beautifully decorated bulletin boards. An awed teacher raised her hand and asked, “Can we have bulletin boards like that?” To which another – not at all under her breath – turned around and replied, “What would you put on it? We don't have any paper!”
In the center of the playground – a small, fenced-in square covered in astroturf – stood a tree. “Oh! The tree!” Someone gasped. The auditorium gilled with murmurs of wonder. “The tree!” It was the scene in “Wall-E” where the robot returns to the spaceship with a sprout growing in a boot that he discovered on the otherwise dead planet Earth. This is how disconnected my school is from the planet it aims to save. No wonder it's so hard to separate the recycling. It is fall in New England, and here I am working at a school where a photo of a tree that looks like a houseplant makes a room full of teachers gurgle and coo like babies. If only we had a tree!
This is the life I was more than ready to leave behind when I walked into the pretend office. “I don't want to do this,” I told Mary. I chose my language carefully – not “I can't do this” because I didn't want to be convinced otherwise. It's hard to argue with “I don't want to.” Not impossible, though, as Mary proved by interrupting me to ask, “What can we do? How can we make this work? Tell me what would make the situation better.” I had not even yet told her what was wrong with the situation. Mary's m.o. is to skip information gathering and go straight to problem solving – the old “measure once, cut twice” approach. This is perhaps why I found myself squatting over that imaginary chair for the second time in eight days. Solutions that don't bother to understand the problem tend to be short-lived and moving me from 8th grade to 2nd and 3rd (in addition to 4th, 5th, and 6th) had been one of those solutions.
“Please don't try to fix my problem before you understand it,” I said. Would I have spoken so boldly if I weren't so certain of my departure? “There's nothing wrong with what you're doing” – it's important to balance boldness with restraint – “but my vision and your vision...” I made that gesture of hands passing from opposite directions without meeting. “For me, relationship, knowing the kids, is fundamental to good education. I teach thirteen groups of twenty-five students once a week each. It'll be Christmas before I even know all their names.” This was only one of the many reasons I was quitting and I chose it as my opener because it seemed the least disputable. I had expressed a fact and my personal opinion. Mary's brow furrowed as much as possible given how taut the slick, black bun pulled it, and her eyes narrowed like bird of prey ready to dive. “Now wait a minute.” She said this is the voice that she calls “not scolding”. “There isn't any class larger than twenty-three.”
My piece of evidence had been defeated, invalidated, thrown out. The fact that trying to quit felt more like a legal proceeding than a conversation only strengthened my conviction to do so. Mary then used that most odious of all tactics; she played the “when I was your age”/“you don't know how good you've got it card” card. “I routinely taught classes of fifty or more students. So believe me when I say that these are small classes.” I told her of a school where I taught classes of ten to fifteen students – a school I love but never dreamed would attain the near-utopia status it now enjoys in my delusional reminiscing.
Then Mary did something I had thought impossible. She suggested that we split the classes in half. I could work with eleven or twelve students for forty minutes instead of twenty-five for eighty minutes. And I could do whatever I wanted. “It doesn't have to be literature,” she said. “What matters to me is that they speak English with a native speaker. That's it.” This change would drastically improve my life but win me no friends with the colleagues who would now be forced to do something with the other half of the class. “Don't worry,” Mary began with her favorite words. “We'll say it was my idea. We'll call it differentiation.”
“Differentiation” is the buzz word that permeates the school's pedagogical jargon. While it refers in theory to a complex educational model, it seems to function in practice as a convenient justification for any decision. And because “differentiation” is such a sacred cow, arguing against any decision based on it could be grounds for immediate dismissal.
It was at precisely this moment that I realized how badly Mary wanted or needed me to stay. And though there was a voice in my head, which I'll call “integrity”, that complained, I decided it was also in my best interest to stay. One problem remained: where to teach my class. There is not one empty classroom or space in the entire school. Mary suggested various hallways – the one outside her office, the one across from the art room. I refused. She suggested dividing the classes but keeping all the students in the same room. Again I refused.
For a moment it seemed that she was out of ideas and I would have to quit after-all. And then she suggested the tent. We could have class out in the playground under a tent to protect us from the sun. (Remember that there are no trees.) “I know just the corner,” she said. “No one ever goes there. And it's far enough away from the basketball courts that it should be pretty quiet.” She watched me expectantly. “If the owners don't approve the expense, I'll buy it myself this weekend. So what do you say?” I say when you're living in the circus, it makes sense to work under a tent.
martes, 23 de septiembre de 2008
Psycho Dancer
For two weeks I’ve been anxiously waiting to write an entry called “Psycho Dancer” - ever since I first stumbled upon the course “psicodanza” on the university website. The mere title of the course intrigued me so deeply that I paid my $160 for the semester (an unbelievable bargain by U.S. standards, right?) without any further information. There was no description of the class, no bio of the professor, no testimonials from past students. Just the one word: psicodanza - apparently a registered trademark. Was that really necessary I wonder? Registered trademark? Is there a lot of competition for that name? I haven’t been able to tell anyone about it with a straight face. And frankly I bet the name scares off way more people than it attracts. Psico + danza = the opportunity to delve into painful, embarrassing, and scary parts of ourselves + the possibility to look utterly foolish while doing it. That’s not my perspective, of course. To me, psico + danza = jumping, screaming, and hitting the floor (while imaging one of my co-workers), and calling it dance. That’s what I was hoping for anyway.
The class was partly what I had imagined. I did scream and hit the floor. However, the ratio of "psico" to "danza" was pretty high. We cooperatively recreated a supernova explosion and individually re-enacted our births while the rest of the group sat in a circle and watched. And the teacher talked and told us what she saw. She critiqued our births, told one student she was trying too hard and another that she wasn’t trying hard enough. I guess it’s a good thing that our mothers did most of the work for us or we’d all still be stuck in wombs somewhere. It’s no wonder really that we struggled so much in birthing ourselves. If I have a choice between the womb and a makeshift dance floor in a rundown gym in one of the most polluted cities in the world, I’m choosing the womb. Better get another dancer to play doctor and drag me out of here because I’m not coming willingly.
Julia, the teacher, claims to be eighty years old, and, while her physical appearance makes the claim seem dubious, her resume is so long that, if she’s only eighty, she can’t have slept a night in her life or ever taken a vacation or even once called in sick. The resume reading was a highlight of the class. Julia, presumably to preserve her modesty, did not read the two page document herself but rather passed it to the woman to her left. The woman in the brown corduroy zip-up onesie (which was a tail short of a halloween costume and footies short of pajamas) delivered the information with a reverence and solemn intensity that made me feel underdressed in my little blue shorts and my “May the Forest Be With You” t-shirt. The proceedings were interrupted often by Julia cutting across her sycophant to correct a typo or a mispronunciation, which were frequent as Julia has worked with some of the greatest unpronounceable names in the world.
Julia then asked us to introduce ourselves, which immediately divided the room into two categories: those for whom a self-introduction would suffice, and Julia. It went something like this: we told her who we think we are and then she told us who she thinks we are. My introduction was too short, insufficient. “How are you feeling right now? A bit of nostalgia? It looks like you might be missing home, no? Is this your first time outside your country?” She asked all at once. “Oh no,” I answered. Like a sandwich that needed to be cut in halves if not quarters, her question was too big to even know where to begin, but I knew that the answer was basically, in a word, “no”. “I lived in Santiago de Chile for five months and I’ve spent much of this year traveling in Spain, Chile, and Peru before coming here.” She needed to know more before she could make her proclamation, her decision, her diagnosis.
“And what did you do in Spain?” I had noticed the golden crucifix around her neck, so I took a smug pause to build suspense for an answer I expected would please her, “I walked for two weeks.” I watched a smile form and let her have the satisfaction of saying, “ah, el Camino de Santiago.” I nodded. Still she asked, “And what did you do in Chile?” Given that I had lived there, I thought this needed no explanation. “Well, I have friends there.” With the exasperation of explaining something incredibly obvious to a child, she said, “yes, but what did you do there? How did you fill the hours of the day?” I tried again, “I wrote.” That was the answer. “Ah, you’re a writer.” She said it as if she had been the one who had known this all along and was, in fact, telling me.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m a writer. Not a published writer yet.” She wanted to know what I write. “I write about my life.” It sounded awful, too small, too self-interested. “I mean, I write about life, from my perspective.” Ah, that’s better. All the difference in the world. Life from my perspective. I loved the sound of that. I was busy turning the phrase over in my head to make sure it was as brilliant as it first seemed, and to store it for later use, when Julia interrupted my self-satisfaction by declaring, “You think ‘I’m young, I’m good looking, I’m writing.’ Do it. Write something already. What are you waiting for? To be eighty?” I broke like a dam. My self-importance spilled onto the floor around me, leaving behind nothing but a red face. Julia asked me about my blushing. I blushed so many times during the three hour class that she began to call me “my red-faced friend”. It was endearing in a way but also a vicious cycle because I blushed every time she said it. By the end of the class, my body felt great but I had developed a headache from all the blood coming and going.
I’m afraid that in my attempt to exploit the humor in the situation I may be giving the impression that psicodanza is dreadful. Yes, there were uncomfortable moments, frustrating moments, and “you want me to do what?!” moments. But I actually enjoyed it. If I try not to label the emotions or experiences as “good” or “bad”, and instead simply ask myself whether I felt more or less alive at the end of the class than I did at the beginning, the answer is clearly more alive at the end. I’ve been complaining and blaming a lot recently, and - as recently as Wednesday - checking expedia.com for the price of a one-way ticket out of Mexico. The fantasy of going home appeals because Mexico is hard and I like home, and because fantasy is, well, fantasy. The home of my expedia.com daydreams is not so much better because it’s not here but because I’m not there. To break the power of the fantasy, I now consciously choose to be here every morning. I can choose. I could leave tomorrow if I wanted to. So I let myself choose. Not fantasy but a real choice. Do I want to be here today? If the answer is yes, then I can’t very well complain about being here, can I? I’m not a victim; I’m here of my own free will. I wasn’t dragged out of the womb and onto the floor of the Mexico City airport. I signed up for this psycho dance.
The class was partly what I had imagined. I did scream and hit the floor. However, the ratio of "psico" to "danza" was pretty high. We cooperatively recreated a supernova explosion and individually re-enacted our births while the rest of the group sat in a circle and watched. And the teacher talked and told us what she saw. She critiqued our births, told one student she was trying too hard and another that she wasn’t trying hard enough. I guess it’s a good thing that our mothers did most of the work for us or we’d all still be stuck in wombs somewhere. It’s no wonder really that we struggled so much in birthing ourselves. If I have a choice between the womb and a makeshift dance floor in a rundown gym in one of the most polluted cities in the world, I’m choosing the womb. Better get another dancer to play doctor and drag me out of here because I’m not coming willingly.
Julia, the teacher, claims to be eighty years old, and, while her physical appearance makes the claim seem dubious, her resume is so long that, if she’s only eighty, she can’t have slept a night in her life or ever taken a vacation or even once called in sick. The resume reading was a highlight of the class. Julia, presumably to preserve her modesty, did not read the two page document herself but rather passed it to the woman to her left. The woman in the brown corduroy zip-up onesie (which was a tail short of a halloween costume and footies short of pajamas) delivered the information with a reverence and solemn intensity that made me feel underdressed in my little blue shorts and my “May the Forest Be With You” t-shirt. The proceedings were interrupted often by Julia cutting across her sycophant to correct a typo or a mispronunciation, which were frequent as Julia has worked with some of the greatest unpronounceable names in the world.
Julia then asked us to introduce ourselves, which immediately divided the room into two categories: those for whom a self-introduction would suffice, and Julia. It went something like this: we told her who we think we are and then she told us who she thinks we are. My introduction was too short, insufficient. “How are you feeling right now? A bit of nostalgia? It looks like you might be missing home, no? Is this your first time outside your country?” She asked all at once. “Oh no,” I answered. Like a sandwich that needed to be cut in halves if not quarters, her question was too big to even know where to begin, but I knew that the answer was basically, in a word, “no”. “I lived in Santiago de Chile for five months and I’ve spent much of this year traveling in Spain, Chile, and Peru before coming here.” She needed to know more before she could make her proclamation, her decision, her diagnosis.
“And what did you do in Spain?” I had noticed the golden crucifix around her neck, so I took a smug pause to build suspense for an answer I expected would please her, “I walked for two weeks.” I watched a smile form and let her have the satisfaction of saying, “ah, el Camino de Santiago.” I nodded. Still she asked, “And what did you do in Chile?” Given that I had lived there, I thought this needed no explanation. “Well, I have friends there.” With the exasperation of explaining something incredibly obvious to a child, she said, “yes, but what did you do there? How did you fill the hours of the day?” I tried again, “I wrote.” That was the answer. “Ah, you’re a writer.” She said it as if she had been the one who had known this all along and was, in fact, telling me.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m a writer. Not a published writer yet.” She wanted to know what I write. “I write about my life.” It sounded awful, too small, too self-interested. “I mean, I write about life, from my perspective.” Ah, that’s better. All the difference in the world. Life from my perspective. I loved the sound of that. I was busy turning the phrase over in my head to make sure it was as brilliant as it first seemed, and to store it for later use, when Julia interrupted my self-satisfaction by declaring, “You think ‘I’m young, I’m good looking, I’m writing.’ Do it. Write something already. What are you waiting for? To be eighty?” I broke like a dam. My self-importance spilled onto the floor around me, leaving behind nothing but a red face. Julia asked me about my blushing. I blushed so many times during the three hour class that she began to call me “my red-faced friend”. It was endearing in a way but also a vicious cycle because I blushed every time she said it. By the end of the class, my body felt great but I had developed a headache from all the blood coming and going.
I’m afraid that in my attempt to exploit the humor in the situation I may be giving the impression that psicodanza is dreadful. Yes, there were uncomfortable moments, frustrating moments, and “you want me to do what?!” moments. But I actually enjoyed it. If I try not to label the emotions or experiences as “good” or “bad”, and instead simply ask myself whether I felt more or less alive at the end of the class than I did at the beginning, the answer is clearly more alive at the end. I’ve been complaining and blaming a lot recently, and - as recently as Wednesday - checking expedia.com for the price of a one-way ticket out of Mexico. The fantasy of going home appeals because Mexico is hard and I like home, and because fantasy is, well, fantasy. The home of my expedia.com daydreams is not so much better because it’s not here but because I’m not there. To break the power of the fantasy, I now consciously choose to be here every morning. I can choose. I could leave tomorrow if I wanted to. So I let myself choose. Not fantasy but a real choice. Do I want to be here today? If the answer is yes, then I can’t very well complain about being here, can I? I’m not a victim; I’m here of my own free will. I wasn’t dragged out of the womb and onto the floor of the Mexico City airport. I signed up for this psycho dance.
domingo, 14 de septiembre de 2008
Don't Worry
At 12:12 pm on July 21st, I received the e-mail that confirmed my hiring and my subsequent move to Mexico. At 12:13 I began a daunting “to do” list of everything that would need to happen before my flight on August 24th. I’d need to sell my Subaru, cancel my cell phone service, get out of jury duty on December 17th, purchase international health insurance, plan a 7th & 8th grade drama curriculum from scratch, find a place to live in Mexico City, purchase plane tickets, obtain an FM3 work visa, say goodbye to friends and family, pack my life, and then the scary part: do all the stuff that I didn’t even know to put on the list. It was the vast expanse of unknown that really worried me. My “to do” list was Columbus’ map to India.
I expressed these concerns in an e-mail, which I hoped would come off as proactive and professional, rather than paranoid. “Mary” (to protect the true identity of my boss) answered my 463 word missive with a mere 86. Apparently I had come off closer to paranoid because the gist of the message was don’t worry; “I have lots of work to do before the teachers training week start, but do not worry I have asked the Kindergarden Headteacher to look for an apartment near the school,and tomorrow I will ask our lawyer about the visa and the contract.” This quickly became the overriding tone of our online communication. On July 23rd, “I forgot to tell you that someone will be at the airport, don't worry.” On July 30th, “I have asked our lawyer, he says you can come to México,using a tourist visa,and here, the school would do what it is necessary. Do not worry. We are looking for the apartment.” On August 14th, “Do not worry, we had to do some changes due a teacher who resigned. As soon as you arrived, we´ll let you know, exactly, which grades you´ll be teaching.”
Being told “not to worry” again and again and again produced quite the opposite effect. In fact, her relentless insistence that I not worry served as my first clue that I ought to be very worried indeed. As if the complete denial of worry weren’t enough to freak me out, there was the news that a teacher had resigned before the start of classes, and that I could no longer cling to even the illusion of an idea of what I might be teaching. What if I got to Mexico and the school had not found me an apartment? What if they asked me to teach quantum physics in Spanish? What if I too wanted to resign after one week? What if I packed in such a hurry that I forgot all of my pants? There were so many “what ifs”, so many disastrous futures to imagine, so many ways to be unprepared. So I worried. And a little validation would have been nice. Where was the e-mail that said, “You should be worried. Your worry tells me that you understand the magnitude of the challenge you are undertaking. Your anxiety speaks highly of your sanity. Clearly you take your responsibility as an educator seriously. In fact, that’s why we hired you.” I never received that e-mail.
Instead, my worries have been validated by my experience. The school has not put me an ideal position for success. We don't have or use textbooks because text books are the old paradigm, which promotes top-down knowledge and rote memorization. We don't have photocopies because it's a green school. There is one photocopier in the library which I can use, if I can find paper. To discourage photocopying, the paper is kept locked in an office on another floor on the other side of the building where one must first stun the troll who stands guard, then whistle the Mexican national anthem - perfectly pitched - to open the door, then present a requisition signed by the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources. So without textbooks, without photocopies, we've got the computers. The MacBooks are our primary (and only) pedagogical tool. And if the system were fully operational, that might be enough.
Unfortunately, students - and their parents - demanded that they receive their computers immediately; preparedness be damned. One day, when “Remote Desktop” is ready, we will be able to monitor the use of the computers in the classroom and efficiently deliver assignments and educational resources. In the meantime, I spend most of my time and energy asking the students to close the computers, remove their headphones, and look this way, please. If I’m lucky enough to find a dry erase marker, whose scarcity makes paper seem abundant by comparison, I write a note on the board, “Class will begin when your computers are closed”, and I wait.
Frustrated, I wrote an e-mail to Mary. I bemoaned the lack of foresight required to distribute computers before having any means to put them to productive use. And she told me, “Don’t worry.” Don’t worry? I’m not worried. I am upset. Worry is what I felt a month ago when I lived in an imagined hell. Now I walk into a very real classroom, where the only things imaginary are paper, makers, and the much heralded “platform”, which will convert these sleek, white weapons of distraction into laboratories of self-discovery (in the words of a co-worker, “so that the monitor is no longer just a monitor but a mirror that reflects how each student thinks.”) Somebody please pinch me because I seem to be stuck in Steve Jobs’ wet dream. But maybe I should have more faith in the school. All of the worries that afflicted me a month ago were quickly resolved. They did meet me at the airport, they did find me an apartment, and they did inform me which grades I’d be teaching on my very first day at school. So why should I doubt that a month from now, I’ll be able to teach something?
I expressed these concerns in an e-mail, which I hoped would come off as proactive and professional, rather than paranoid. “Mary” (to protect the true identity of my boss) answered my 463 word missive with a mere 86. Apparently I had come off closer to paranoid because the gist of the message was don’t worry; “I have lots of work to do before the teachers training week start, but do not worry I have asked the Kindergarden Headteacher to look for an apartment near the school,and tomorrow I will ask our lawyer about the visa and the contract.” This quickly became the overriding tone of our online communication. On July 23rd, “I forgot to tell you that someone will be at the airport, don't worry.” On July 30th, “I have asked our lawyer, he says you can come to México,using a tourist visa,and here, the school would do what it is necessary. Do not worry. We are looking for the apartment.” On August 14th, “Do not worry, we had to do some changes due a teacher who resigned. As soon as you arrived, we´ll let you know, exactly, which grades you´ll be teaching.”
Being told “not to worry” again and again and again produced quite the opposite effect. In fact, her relentless insistence that I not worry served as my first clue that I ought to be very worried indeed. As if the complete denial of worry weren’t enough to freak me out, there was the news that a teacher had resigned before the start of classes, and that I could no longer cling to even the illusion of an idea of what I might be teaching. What if I got to Mexico and the school had not found me an apartment? What if they asked me to teach quantum physics in Spanish? What if I too wanted to resign after one week? What if I packed in such a hurry that I forgot all of my pants? There were so many “what ifs”, so many disastrous futures to imagine, so many ways to be unprepared. So I worried. And a little validation would have been nice. Where was the e-mail that said, “You should be worried. Your worry tells me that you understand the magnitude of the challenge you are undertaking. Your anxiety speaks highly of your sanity. Clearly you take your responsibility as an educator seriously. In fact, that’s why we hired you.” I never received that e-mail.
Instead, my worries have been validated by my experience. The school has not put me an ideal position for success. We don't have or use textbooks because text books are the old paradigm, which promotes top-down knowledge and rote memorization. We don't have photocopies because it's a green school. There is one photocopier in the library which I can use, if I can find paper. To discourage photocopying, the paper is kept locked in an office on another floor on the other side of the building where one must first stun the troll who stands guard, then whistle the Mexican national anthem - perfectly pitched - to open the door, then present a requisition signed by the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources. So without textbooks, without photocopies, we've got the computers. The MacBooks are our primary (and only) pedagogical tool. And if the system were fully operational, that might be enough.
Unfortunately, students - and their parents - demanded that they receive their computers immediately; preparedness be damned. One day, when “Remote Desktop” is ready, we will be able to monitor the use of the computers in the classroom and efficiently deliver assignments and educational resources. In the meantime, I spend most of my time and energy asking the students to close the computers, remove their headphones, and look this way, please. If I’m lucky enough to find a dry erase marker, whose scarcity makes paper seem abundant by comparison, I write a note on the board, “Class will begin when your computers are closed”, and I wait.
Frustrated, I wrote an e-mail to Mary. I bemoaned the lack of foresight required to distribute computers before having any means to put them to productive use. And she told me, “Don’t worry.” Don’t worry? I’m not worried. I am upset. Worry is what I felt a month ago when I lived in an imagined hell. Now I walk into a very real classroom, where the only things imaginary are paper, makers, and the much heralded “platform”, which will convert these sleek, white weapons of distraction into laboratories of self-discovery (in the words of a co-worker, “so that the monitor is no longer just a monitor but a mirror that reflects how each student thinks.”) Somebody please pinch me because I seem to be stuck in Steve Jobs’ wet dream. But maybe I should have more faith in the school. All of the worries that afflicted me a month ago were quickly resolved. They did meet me at the airport, they did find me an apartment, and they did inform me which grades I’d be teaching on my very first day at school. So why should I doubt that a month from now, I’ll be able to teach something?
lunes, 8 de septiembre de 2008
Independence Day
Why do we celebrate Independence Day? The cynical - ok, very cynical - answer is that we love beer, burgers, and sales events. Have you ever noticed the size of the flags flown by car dealerships? If it weren’t illegal for the star-spangled banner to brush the ground, you could drape one of them over a Hummer and make it disappear. In fact, this might be the perfect celebration of America: buy a Hummer on credit, cover it with an enormous flag, and drive it blindly into traffic - daring everything to get out of your way. Sometimes, with our vision obstructed by the stars and stripes covering our windshield, we forget that we USers are not the only Americans. The Americans of the United States of Mexico celebrate their independence on September 16th, and, as I walked to school today, I passed a luxury car dealership and discovered how very much we have in common. The showroom was full of Hummers and Cadillac Escalades wearing enormous sombreros with the words “Viva Mexico” painted in red across the brims. Apparently, buying American cars is patriotic in Mexico too. Somehow this doesn’t make me feel any closer to home.
And home is, for me, central to Independence Day. I have never celebrated the fourth of July by imaging all the ways my life would be worse if I were a subject of the British Empire, instead of a citizen of the United States. But I do try often - and not only on the fourth of July - to remember all the reasons for which I am grateful to call my country home. Twelve days ago I unpacked my suitcases in this new apartment, and nearly every item I pulled out brought a fresh wave of tears because each belonged to some other place, some place that was home, and to bring them into this foreign space of bare lightbulbs and not-quite-dry carpet felt wrong.
The photographs Jamie took of my M.A.S.K. figures belonged both to the apartment in Macy where the prints first hung and to the duplex in Newark, Delaware where I first watched the cartoon that inspired the toys. The lavender-scented eye pillow belonged to the hardwood floors and high ceilings of Green River Yoga studio where my tired body, mind, and eyes escaped the adolescent hum of Eaglebrook for an hour and a half on Thursday nights. The boxy black sunglasses belonged to 91 Sanderson Street and Greenfield Middle School. The first pair of sunglasses that I purchased with the intention of making myself cooler, they are only cool if you wear them with an air that says “I know how ugly these are and I don't care”. Confidence is cool. That is not how I wore them in sixth grade. The point is that every item I pulled out my suitcase was a memory that reminded me of what I'd given up to be where I was standing, in a box of thin white walls daring me to make it home, while cars that didn't care drove past and beeped because they were in a hurry to get to houses where people and pets and food might be waiting for them.
Today I moved in. For nearly two weeks, I've been sleeping in this bed because Felipe Villanueva 12a is the door my keys open, and I'm exhausted at the end of the day. Today I decided to live here by choice. I hung Jamie's prints in the kitchen. I hung the water color of 146 Buffalo Bay over the toilet. I taped “Peace: it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” to the mirror. There's food in the fridge and dish-soap by the sink, and there are things in this apartment that have never known any other home – the French press that will help me survive mornings that start in the dark, the lamps that dull the edges of my bedroom with soft light, and the teapot that ends each day with chopped ginger, honey, and boiling water. A year from now or five or ten, I'll pull something out of a box, hold it to my chest, and remember when Mexico was home.
And home is, for me, central to Independence Day. I have never celebrated the fourth of July by imaging all the ways my life would be worse if I were a subject of the British Empire, instead of a citizen of the United States. But I do try often - and not only on the fourth of July - to remember all the reasons for which I am grateful to call my country home. Twelve days ago I unpacked my suitcases in this new apartment, and nearly every item I pulled out brought a fresh wave of tears because each belonged to some other place, some place that was home, and to bring them into this foreign space of bare lightbulbs and not-quite-dry carpet felt wrong.
The photographs Jamie took of my M.A.S.K. figures belonged both to the apartment in Macy where the prints first hung and to the duplex in Newark, Delaware where I first watched the cartoon that inspired the toys. The lavender-scented eye pillow belonged to the hardwood floors and high ceilings of Green River Yoga studio where my tired body, mind, and eyes escaped the adolescent hum of Eaglebrook for an hour and a half on Thursday nights. The boxy black sunglasses belonged to 91 Sanderson Street and Greenfield Middle School. The first pair of sunglasses that I purchased with the intention of making myself cooler, they are only cool if you wear them with an air that says “I know how ugly these are and I don't care”. Confidence is cool. That is not how I wore them in sixth grade. The point is that every item I pulled out my suitcase was a memory that reminded me of what I'd given up to be where I was standing, in a box of thin white walls daring me to make it home, while cars that didn't care drove past and beeped because they were in a hurry to get to houses where people and pets and food might be waiting for them.
Today I moved in. For nearly two weeks, I've been sleeping in this bed because Felipe Villanueva 12a is the door my keys open, and I'm exhausted at the end of the day. Today I decided to live here by choice. I hung Jamie's prints in the kitchen. I hung the water color of 146 Buffalo Bay over the toilet. I taped “Peace: it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” to the mirror. There's food in the fridge and dish-soap by the sink, and there are things in this apartment that have never known any other home – the French press that will help me survive mornings that start in the dark, the lamps that dull the edges of my bedroom with soft light, and the teapot that ends each day with chopped ginger, honey, and boiling water. A year from now or five or ten, I'll pull something out of a box, hold it to my chest, and remember when Mexico was home.
lunes, 1 de septiembre de 2008
Building Character
Do you ever have that dream where you show up for the first day of school, and the teacher gives you the final exam. And somehow no one else is even fazed by this; all of the other students reach calmly into their backpacks and pull out recently sharpened number two pencils. This dream is my life in Mexico, except that those sitting in the chairs around me are equally clueless and unprepared. My Belgian friend, Dominick, for example, found out upon arriving at teacher training that he had been hired not to teach English – as he had thought – but to teach in English. He had already resigned from his English position at another school when he discovered that he would be teaching history, math, and science – all foreign subjects – not English language.
I was hired by e-mail. After missing three weeks of teacher training and a week of classes due to non-negotiable commitments, I arrived at the Mexico City airport where I found a man in a tan suede jacket, his jet black hair slicked back, looking for “Myke Sweeny”. I figured that meant me. I had never referred to myself as Mike – nor Myke - in my negotiations with the school, and, as far as I'm aware, I'd never misspelled my last name either. Considering that we'd been in touch almost exclusively via e-mail and my address is michael.e.sweeney, it struck me as unimpressive bordering on suspicious that the name scribbled on a ripped out piece of notebook paper only vaguely resembled mine. Of course, when I told friends that I'd been hired by e-mail and didn't yet have a contract, they suggested that I bring the ransom money with me to expedite the whole process. So I did wonder for a moment if perhaps a telephone call regarding my pickup at the airport had been intercepted by a kidnapping outfit. I gave the man a firm handshake and a big smile; I hoped that he'd see the likeness of God in me and turn away from his criminal past, or that he actually was an employee of the school. Fortunately for my safety but unfortunately for new professional life, the latter turned out to be true. As we climbed into a metallic beige SUV with black leather interior, Sergio explained that he was glad that my flight had been delayed because he had just received the call to pick me up about an hour ago. As Scooby would say, “Ruh-roh”. Bad sign, right? They almost forgot I was coming?! I immediately had to wonder what degree of chaos could cause a school to forget a new faculty member showing up four weeks late. I would soon find out.
I had assumed that I would not be teaching anything on my first day in Mexico. My request to spend the first day getting acquainted with the school, staff, and students seemed reasonable and had been well-received. My teaching duties would begin on Tuesday then. I quickly found, however, that a body with a pulse in its wrist and a tie around its neck will teach classes no matter how recently it was a passenger on an international flight. It started out as “observation”; that's how they got me into the classroom. There was no turning back. Maricarmen, who had also missed most of the teacher training because she insisted on giving two weeks notice at her former position rather than leaving immediately as the school had proposed, was more than happy to let me get some experience under my belt. You could introduce yourself, she suggested. And then tell them a little bit about where you're from. And then maybe they'll want to ask some questions. And then hopefully the class will be over, I could almost hear her thinking. For a few minutes I was a novelty, interesting enough to distract the students from their cell phones, nail polish, and rubber bands with paper bullets. But fifty minutes can be a long time. In Terry's class, he suggested – as we walked through the door – that we reduce the entirety of a movie to a two or three minute dialogue that we could perform for the amusement of the class. Did I have any ideas? He wanted to know. Yes, I did. If I leave Mexico right now, I bet I´ll be home in time for dinner.
But I stayed. And thank goodness, because if I had left right then, I would have missed out on the best reason for leaving: the faculty meetings. I'd estimate that I spent about ten hours of the first week in faculty meetings, but that's only a rough approximation because my internal clock shut down at least once or twice out of boredom and so I lost all sense of time. I was revived by the words of Veronica, teacher of civic and ethical formation, who urged us to end the last class of every day 5 minutes early to straighten up the room a little and to be certain that students not leave any possessions in the classroom. At that point the meeting was over two hours old and I was ready to stand up and cheer for the first sensible words that I'd heard. The disastrous state of the classrooms had already begun to alarm me as this excerpt from an e-mail I wrote last week clearly illustrates:
"As wonderful as the facility is in some ways - they didn't spare any expense here - it's not... organic, if that makes sense. Nothing is natural. No trees, no plants, no life - nothing that even looks like a derivative of life - no wood, no brick, no stone (I know that bricks and stones were never alive but they somehow feel more alive to me, warmer, more real). I love the school's emphasis on the environment and recycling (the printer paper is 100% recycled, it looks practically homemade which is cool), this space doesn't do anything (in my opinion) to foster a "sense of place", a meaningful connection to the earth. We're spending hours in a parking garage with classrooms and computers. Who wants to take care of a parking garage? People piss on the walls in parking garages and throw their gum on the ground. That's how the kids treat the classrooms here. It's embarrassing to see the custodial staff in their red and blue jump suits scrubbing the classrooms at the end of the day. The floors are just covered with pencils, pens, erasers, shredded notebook paper, wrappers, food scraps. It looks like some animals have been collecting scraps to build a nest. But I don't blame the students. This is the building we've got and our philosophy is apparently that the custodial staff take care of the classrooms because we're too busy saving the world. That's why saving the world sucks. It's a great idea, but it's too big. Let's start with the goddamn classrooms."
I was greatly encouraged to think that in Veronica I had found a partner in my crusade. We get each other, I thought. We'll make posters that say, “Think globally, clean your goddamn classroom.” Then, however, she continued to explain that while most of the custodial staff is probably quite trustworthy, leaving valuable possessions like jackets and markers in the classroom presents an unnecessary temptation. So... we need to take care of our things and our space, not because it's the right thing to do, not because it will help the custodial staff, but because, if we don't, they'll probably steal all our stuff? Huh. I mentioned that she teaches civic and ethical formation, right?
The highlight of the weekend – amidst stiff competition – was Friday, which turned out to be parents' day. I came here to teach drama. If only my students could have seen me on Friday – alas they stay home on parents' day – they would have learned more than I could possibly hope to teach them in ten months. I'll let you all know when the Mexican Oscars – that'd be the Óscares – are broadcast because I'm pretty sure I'll be up for one. Without having my final teaching schedule yet – it's tricky to coordinate because I'll be teaching 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th graders and they have different class lengths and times – I introduced myself to the parents and presented my plan for turning their children into daytime television stars. Then, knowing full well there'd be no question I could answer nor any concern I could alleviate, I boldly asked if any parent had questions or concerns. I still don't know what I'll be teaching to whom, nor when I'll be doing it, and I offered to answer their questions. I smiled my biggest, most American, native English speaker smile, and composed myself with a mantra - “butt, belly, breath” - my massage therapist taught me. I stood solidly on my feet, with my hands resting confidently at my side, and my elegant tie in a perfect knot. Look at me. I am competent, confident, and capable. Ask me a question. I dare you.
A few parents dared. Most asked simple questions, presumably to hear more of my gringo accent, but one mother wanted to know why we did not rearrange the English classes based on skill. Sitting in a chair, she gave the impression of being in a great hurry without moving at all, and her eyes said, “There is no right answer. Nothing you can say will satisfy me. But you must try, oh yes, because I am paying lots of money to send my son here. I own you, gringo.” It was somewhere in the middle of my meandering and meaningless answer that my boss snuck into the classroom behind me and interrupted me. While I was grateful to be off the spot, the defensiveness with which my boss said, “He's a great teacher. You'll see. He's very qualified.” did not improve the situation. Though I doubt she did it intentionally, Lucia had shifted the focus, the problem from the schools' placement practices to my ability to teach, which had not previously been in question. I took solace in a daydream that has supported me all week – the image of Calvin's father patting me on shoulder and saying, “Don't worry, Michael. You're building character.”
miércoles, 30 de abril de 2008
Thank You, Margaret
Since this journey has followed a circuitous path from the very beginning (flying to Spain to get to South America?), it is only fitting that it should end with a road trip from Miami to Massachusetts. It was mostly a question of cost. I found a one-way ticket from Santiago to Miami for $514. For comparison, the cheapest flights from Santiago to JFK exceeded $1000, and $1300 to Logan or Bradley. That information made me at least curious about the possibility of flying to Miami and renting a car. When I visited Budget's website, the sign there would not have been more clear if it had addressed me by name, "Special Offer: One-way rentals from Florida, starting at $4.99 a day!" For the first time in my life, an auto rental agency website gave me goosebumps. Too weird to be a coincidence, right? There's a perfectly logical explanation, of course. I imagine that between college students and old folks, a disproportionate percentage of Budget's rental fleet ends up in Florida in the springtime. $4.99 a day is a great price (it rose to $76 for six days after taxes and fees and small print), but I'm still paying them to do the favor of driving one of their cars back north. Everyone wins. Even including the cost of gas, I still save a bunch of money over the price of airfare, and I get to see the south in early May. I'll visit Florida, Georgia, and the Smokies for the first time (I know the coast of the Carolinas but not the western parts). It also seems only fitting that after four months spent exploring parts international, I should return home and discover with new appreciation the endless beauty that one can see without a passport. After I've returned the rental car in Philadelphia, my friends and Machu Picchu companions, Doug and Dave, will pick me up and accompany me on the very final leg of my trip.
The nearness of the end has me thinking about the things that I will most miss. Consistently writing for readers is something that I will miss. The positive feedback of friends, family, and complete strangers has been truly wonderful. I appreciate it. In addition to supporting and encouraging me, your comments have also helped to illuminate a shadow aspect of myself that had been invisible to me. When a particular entry garnered little, if any, praise, a self-deprecating voice was only too quick and happy to offer explanations. See? That entry sucked. Nobody liked it. It was too preachy, too personal, too impersonal. Nobody would even read your blog if they weren't being paid to sit at computers all day. Wait. How could it have been both too personal and too impersonal? Good question. That's quite an accomplishment, isn't it? You have to be a really bad writer to be simultaneously too personal and too impersonal. You did it, though. That's why only one person - out of some combination of politeness and pity - commented on that crap. After so many years of writing for grades, it's not surprising that my confidence as a writer is so dependent on external approval. And, of course, the ego is thirsty for recognition. In part because of my ego and in part because it gives me another reason to write, I'd like to maintain "el gringo andante" even when I'm no longer "andante". We'll see what happens when I have to deal with daily distractions like earning a living. Whether I continue the blog or not, I have to admit that it was a good idea and thank my mother for convincing me, with unrelenting reminders, to create it. I am grateful to her for being both the genesis of this project and such a consistent, loving voice of support.
I expect the next three days will be quite full, and so, this is likely it - my last blog entry from abroad. I'd like to take these final paragraphs to give credit where credit is due. (If I've already told this story, I apologize. It's gotten to the point now where I've written so much that I've forgotten what I've told you and what I haven't.) The inspiration for this trip came from an unexpected source - my life coach. Yes, you read that right, my life coach. If you are as skeptical of the term "life coach" as I was initially, you might be having a reaction similar to this one: "hahahahahahahahahahahaha!" I can't blame you. As part of the Semester Intensive curriculum, each student was required to work with a life coach for four hours over the course of the semester. When I discovered that the sessions had already been purchased with my tuition money, I visited my life coach's website to find out exactly how much of my money had been wasted in this way. And it was a lot of money. Then I made two decisions. First, I would make the best possible use of all four hours. Second, I would find out what it takes to become a life coach. The first time I called Margaret, my voice couldn't have contained any more skepticism if I had called Miss Cleo. I expected a conversation; instead, she assigned me an exercise, "If you had an infinite number of clones, each of whom could do whatever they wanted without worrying about making a living, what would they do? An infinite number! Think big! Go wild! Call me back. Click."
After four or five such exercises, my fingers had lost patience with the constant redialing - Sprint's 1-800 number, then 1 for English, then 1 to place a call within the United States, then my eight to ten digit PIN, then the area code and number I wished to call. "Wished to call" were Sprint's words, not mine; what I wished for was a full refund and a hand massage for my poor fingers. The exercises weren't going anywhere; each was the same as the one before it with a minor variation. Then I realized what she was up to. Margaret wanted me to think "outside of the box". My answers were all far too conservative, too safe, too boring. We would play this game of infinite clones forever or until I satisfied her with a sufficiently creative answer or until the hour was up. Pretty sure that my index finger would require amputation if the redialing went on much longer, I hatched a plan that would shock Margaret into speaking to me. I would tell her that I'd really like to travel, travel without an itinerary or agenda (how spontaneous!), from Santiago, Chile to San Francisco, California (how bold!), without flying (how adventurous!). That's exactly what I told her. She got so excited that she honked. She didn't seem to care about my idea one way or the other; what provoked her goose-like outburst was the excitement she heard in my voice. As badly as I wanted to write her off as a fraud, I had to admit it: I was excited. I actually liked the idea. I really wanted to travel, and not only so I could escape Margaret's tedious exercises. The rest of the hour flew by as we discussed the logistics of a plan that no longer seemed impossibly crazy.
By the time I hung up the phone for good, Margaret had fanned my spark of excitement into a raging bonfire of unlimited possibility. Needing either to jump on furniture or share the wonderful news with someone else, I called another Margaret, my mother. To protect my fragile infant, I gave her specific instructions, "Mom, I know this is going to sound like a crazy idea. What I don't need to hear right now are your doubts, fears, and concerns. Believe me; I have them too. I'm really excited about this, though, and I'm just looking for someone to share my excitement, ok?" I explained my "plan", and mom did her best to mask her initial reaction and support my enthusiasm. Of course, the only part of the conversation that I remember precisely, word for word, is the one sentence of reservation that escaped my mother's mouth just before she could catch it. "It sounds like another experience for the sake of experience," she said. The tone of voice left no doubt that experiences "for the sake of experience" aren't nearly as good as experiences for the sake of love, money, or professional development. Another year of experiences for the sake of money passed (honestly, I hope they weren't really experiences for the sake of money because there was precious little money involved) and in October of 2007, I decided to buy my one-way ticket to adventure. In the end, my trip bore little resemblance to the one I invented to satisfy my life coach's desire for irrational schemes and traveling clones. But I wouldn't be here without her, and I can just hear her honking with joy at the thought of flying to Miami to get to Massachusetts.
To see all my photos of Peru and northern Chile, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elgringoandante/
The nearness of the end has me thinking about the things that I will most miss. Consistently writing for readers is something that I will miss. The positive feedback of friends, family, and complete strangers has been truly wonderful. I appreciate it. In addition to supporting and encouraging me, your comments have also helped to illuminate a shadow aspect of myself that had been invisible to me. When a particular entry garnered little, if any, praise, a self-deprecating voice was only too quick and happy to offer explanations. See? That entry sucked. Nobody liked it. It was too preachy, too personal, too impersonal. Nobody would even read your blog if they weren't being paid to sit at computers all day. Wait. How could it have been both too personal and too impersonal? Good question. That's quite an accomplishment, isn't it? You have to be a really bad writer to be simultaneously too personal and too impersonal. You did it, though. That's why only one person - out of some combination of politeness and pity - commented on that crap. After so many years of writing for grades, it's not surprising that my confidence as a writer is so dependent on external approval. And, of course, the ego is thirsty for recognition. In part because of my ego and in part because it gives me another reason to write, I'd like to maintain "el gringo andante" even when I'm no longer "andante". We'll see what happens when I have to deal with daily distractions like earning a living. Whether I continue the blog or not, I have to admit that it was a good idea and thank my mother for convincing me, with unrelenting reminders, to create it. I am grateful to her for being both the genesis of this project and such a consistent, loving voice of support.
I expect the next three days will be quite full, and so, this is likely it - my last blog entry from abroad. I'd like to take these final paragraphs to give credit where credit is due. (If I've already told this story, I apologize. It's gotten to the point now where I've written so much that I've forgotten what I've told you and what I haven't.) The inspiration for this trip came from an unexpected source - my life coach. Yes, you read that right, my life coach. If you are as skeptical of the term "life coach" as I was initially, you might be having a reaction similar to this one: "hahahahahahahahahahahaha!" I can't blame you. As part of the Semester Intensive curriculum, each student was required to work with a life coach for four hours over the course of the semester. When I discovered that the sessions had already been purchased with my tuition money, I visited my life coach's website to find out exactly how much of my money had been wasted in this way. And it was a lot of money. Then I made two decisions. First, I would make the best possible use of all four hours. Second, I would find out what it takes to become a life coach. The first time I called Margaret, my voice couldn't have contained any more skepticism if I had called Miss Cleo. I expected a conversation; instead, she assigned me an exercise, "If you had an infinite number of clones, each of whom could do whatever they wanted without worrying about making a living, what would they do? An infinite number! Think big! Go wild! Call me back. Click."
After four or five such exercises, my fingers had lost patience with the constant redialing - Sprint's 1-800 number, then 1 for English, then 1 to place a call within the United States, then my eight to ten digit PIN, then the area code and number I wished to call. "Wished to call" were Sprint's words, not mine; what I wished for was a full refund and a hand massage for my poor fingers. The exercises weren't going anywhere; each was the same as the one before it with a minor variation. Then I realized what she was up to. Margaret wanted me to think "outside of the box". My answers were all far too conservative, too safe, too boring. We would play this game of infinite clones forever or until I satisfied her with a sufficiently creative answer or until the hour was up. Pretty sure that my index finger would require amputation if the redialing went on much longer, I hatched a plan that would shock Margaret into speaking to me. I would tell her that I'd really like to travel, travel without an itinerary or agenda (how spontaneous!), from Santiago, Chile to San Francisco, California (how bold!), without flying (how adventurous!). That's exactly what I told her. She got so excited that she honked. She didn't seem to care about my idea one way or the other; what provoked her goose-like outburst was the excitement she heard in my voice. As badly as I wanted to write her off as a fraud, I had to admit it: I was excited. I actually liked the idea. I really wanted to travel, and not only so I could escape Margaret's tedious exercises. The rest of the hour flew by as we discussed the logistics of a plan that no longer seemed impossibly crazy.
By the time I hung up the phone for good, Margaret had fanned my spark of excitement into a raging bonfire of unlimited possibility. Needing either to jump on furniture or share the wonderful news with someone else, I called another Margaret, my mother. To protect my fragile infant, I gave her specific instructions, "Mom, I know this is going to sound like a crazy idea. What I don't need to hear right now are your doubts, fears, and concerns. Believe me; I have them too. I'm really excited about this, though, and I'm just looking for someone to share my excitement, ok?" I explained my "plan", and mom did her best to mask her initial reaction and support my enthusiasm. Of course, the only part of the conversation that I remember precisely, word for word, is the one sentence of reservation that escaped my mother's mouth just before she could catch it. "It sounds like another experience for the sake of experience," she said. The tone of voice left no doubt that experiences "for the sake of experience" aren't nearly as good as experiences for the sake of love, money, or professional development. Another year of experiences for the sake of money passed (honestly, I hope they weren't really experiences for the sake of money because there was precious little money involved) and in October of 2007, I decided to buy my one-way ticket to adventure. In the end, my trip bore little resemblance to the one I invented to satisfy my life coach's desire for irrational schemes and traveling clones. But I wouldn't be here without her, and I can just hear her honking with joy at the thought of flying to Miami to get to Massachusetts.
To see all my photos of Peru and northern Chile, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elgringoandante/
lunes, 28 de abril de 2008
Michael's Secret
Odysseus's Secret (Stephen Dunn)
At first he thought of home, and Penelope.
But after a few years, like anyone on his own,
he couldn't separate what he'd chosen
from what had chosen him.
Calypso, the lotus eaters, Circe;
a man could forget where he lived.
He had a gift for getting in and out of trouble,
a prodigious, human gift. To survive Cyclops
and withstand the Sirens' song -
just those words survive, withstand
in his mind became a music
he moved to and lived by.
How could govern, even love, compete?
They belonged to a different part of a man,
the untested part, which always spoke like a citizen.
The larger the man, though, the more he needed to be reminded
he was a man. Lightning, high winds,
for every excess a punishment.
Penelope was dear to him,
full of character and fine in bed.
But by the middle years this other life
had become his life - that was Odysseus's secret,
kept even from himself, when he talked about return
he thought he meant what he said
Twenty years to get home?
A man finds his shipwrecks,
tells himself the necessary stories.
Whatever gods are - our own fearful voices
or imitations from the unseen order
of things, the gods finally released him,
cleared the way.
Odysseus boarded that Phoenician ship, suddenly tired
of the road's dangerous enchantments,
and sailed through storm and wild sea
as if his beloved were all that ever mattered.
Yes, it's true: Odysseus is the alter-ego of my fantasies. Twenty years... four months? Sirens... yellow polo shirt guy? Cyclops... bed bugs? Pretty much the same story, right? If only I wrote my blog in iambic pentameter, it would probably be required reading in freshman English. In my first journal entry of the trip, I literally compared myself to Odysseus, which proves that - at the very least - I have the requisite arrogance of a Homeric hero. Here are those words, written on the flight from Logan to JFK, "I expect this trip to bend me and push me into dark rooms where I will grope the walls in panic for the light switch until I realize that the point is to sit in the darkness. At times, the trip will feel like something to be endured - a test of my mettle. At times, I feel like the point of this trip is to be done with it, to say I did it, to return home triumphantly like Odysseus." Something to be endured, or - in the words of Dunn - survive, withstand. In the words of a character from "Love in the Time of Cholera", Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can because these things don't last your whole life.
I doubt that Dunn, García Márquez, or I had bus rides with Air Bud in mind when we wrote those words. In the end, though, surviving the buses was not nearly the ordeal I expected it to be. A twelve hour bus ride can seem delightful when you’ve psychologically prepared yourself for the worst experience of your life, and after "Air Bud", "Rocky Balboa" looked Oscar-worthy on the ride from Arica to San Pedro de Atacama. On the twenty-four hour voyage from San Pedro to Santiago, I was spared a Sandra Bullock movie marathon thanks to the use of headphones instead of speakers. Tur Bus even served three meals. The first two were identical - a churrasco sandwich and a snack size soda. A churrasco is essentially a steak-ums. Remember school lunch steak-ums? mmm... I loved steak-ums day because they taste exactly like school lunch hamburgers, but the line was always much shorter than on hamburger day because - this is just my best guess - steak-ums isn't a name that inspires a whole lot of confidence. It's not nearly as frightening as "American Chop Suey", but that's not saying much. A churrasco is thinly sliced beef in a hamburger bun, served with some combination of cheese, tomato, avocado, mayonnaise, and ketchup. The Tur Bus churrasco is one slice of cold beef-ish meat, served in a vaguely damp, spongy bun, and vacuum sealed in plastic. Now that is a sandwich worthy of the name "steak-ums". I washed it down with an orange Crush at lunch and a Canada Dry lemon soda at dinner. The distinction of "worst meal of the trip", though, has to go to breakfast, which earned the honor with a Nescafé instant coffee-esque beverage and an individually packaged chocolate chip cookie. Aside from hunger, it also left me with a question. What would it take to complete this breakfast? (You know how cereals always claim to be "part of this complete breakfast"...)
In the Colca Canyon in Peru, I met an Australian man named Ian, who had also been traveling alone since early January. A gregarious and likeable man with bright eyes and a self-effacing sense of humor, he entertained me with stories of his current travels in South and Central America as well as memories of his adventures in Europe fifteen years ago. In 1993, Ian was a twenty-one year old in love and away from home for the first time. He smiled as he recalled the nearly-archaic romance of the handwritten letter. "They’re at home in a box," he told me. "I haven't looked at them in a while, but I still have every one of them. I think that she might have burned mine when we broke up, though." It was not the rambling, wistful reminiscing of a man who had been alone for too long. Without judgment or desire, he compared travel today to travel fifteen years ago, and decided that the biggest change has been communication. "Then I called home once a fortnight," he remembered. "Now it's two or three e-mails a week." I tried to imagine this. No internet. Not even slow internet. Not even internet with a sticky keyboard and an overly-sensitive mouse. In 1993, travelers took photos with cameras that used rolls of film and wrote letters home. In February of 2008, when Isabel asked what my home is like, I sent Mom an e-mail requesting that she take pictures of the house, my room, Greenfield, and then e-mail them to me. The very next day I received an e-mail with an attachment of digital photos which I downloaded onto my pen drive. On Isabel's laptop, we watched the slideshow, and I saw exactly how much snow had buried my Subaru the day before. Who could have imagined that fifteen years ago? Maybe Al Gore, but not Ian.
My conversation with Ian prompted me to imagine what travel might be like fifteen years from now. In 2023, what incredible stories will I share with a future generation of travelers? The actual forms of transportation themselves will be radically different. Teleportation will have replaced the twenty-four hour bus ride and pretty much everything else. Buses and planes will still exist, of course - like ships and trains today - as quaint, nostalgia-inducing alternatives for tourists who aren't in a hurry (this will be a small market) and want to see the landscape (mostly desert obviously). This probably isn't radical enough because this vision is based on the huge assumption that there will be reason to travel in 2023. Given that television/internet (it will be the same thing) will be fully interactive by then, and given that "there" won't be very different from "here" (no matter where "there" and "here" are), the desire to travel will be limited to the young, who - lacking any other form of initiation - will go out in search of suffering in the hope that they might find something to survive, something to withstand. And, in that sense, they might not be so different from me, or Ian, or Odysseus.
At first he thought of home, and Penelope.
But after a few years, like anyone on his own,
he couldn't separate what he'd chosen
from what had chosen him.
Calypso, the lotus eaters, Circe;
a man could forget where he lived.
He had a gift for getting in and out of trouble,
a prodigious, human gift. To survive Cyclops
and withstand the Sirens' song -
just those words survive, withstand
in his mind became a music
he moved to and lived by.
How could govern, even love, compete?
They belonged to a different part of a man,
the untested part, which always spoke like a citizen.
The larger the man, though, the more he needed to be reminded
he was a man. Lightning, high winds,
for every excess a punishment.
Penelope was dear to him,
full of character and fine in bed.
But by the middle years this other life
had become his life - that was Odysseus's secret,
kept even from himself, when he talked about return
he thought he meant what he said
Twenty years to get home?
A man finds his shipwrecks,
tells himself the necessary stories.
Whatever gods are - our own fearful voices
or imitations from the unseen order
of things, the gods finally released him,
cleared the way.
Odysseus boarded that Phoenician ship, suddenly tired
of the road's dangerous enchantments,
and sailed through storm and wild sea
as if his beloved were all that ever mattered.
Yes, it's true: Odysseus is the alter-ego of my fantasies. Twenty years... four months? Sirens... yellow polo shirt guy? Cyclops... bed bugs? Pretty much the same story, right? If only I wrote my blog in iambic pentameter, it would probably be required reading in freshman English. In my first journal entry of the trip, I literally compared myself to Odysseus, which proves that - at the very least - I have the requisite arrogance of a Homeric hero. Here are those words, written on the flight from Logan to JFK, "I expect this trip to bend me and push me into dark rooms where I will grope the walls in panic for the light switch until I realize that the point is to sit in the darkness. At times, the trip will feel like something to be endured - a test of my mettle. At times, I feel like the point of this trip is to be done with it, to say I did it, to return home triumphantly like Odysseus." Something to be endured, or - in the words of Dunn - survive, withstand. In the words of a character from "Love in the Time of Cholera", Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can because these things don't last your whole life.
I doubt that Dunn, García Márquez, or I had bus rides with Air Bud in mind when we wrote those words. In the end, though, surviving the buses was not nearly the ordeal I expected it to be. A twelve hour bus ride can seem delightful when you’ve psychologically prepared yourself for the worst experience of your life, and after "Air Bud", "Rocky Balboa" looked Oscar-worthy on the ride from Arica to San Pedro de Atacama. On the twenty-four hour voyage from San Pedro to Santiago, I was spared a Sandra Bullock movie marathon thanks to the use of headphones instead of speakers. Tur Bus even served three meals. The first two were identical - a churrasco sandwich and a snack size soda. A churrasco is essentially a steak-ums. Remember school lunch steak-ums? mmm... I loved steak-ums day because they taste exactly like school lunch hamburgers, but the line was always much shorter than on hamburger day because - this is just my best guess - steak-ums isn't a name that inspires a whole lot of confidence. It's not nearly as frightening as "American Chop Suey", but that's not saying much. A churrasco is thinly sliced beef in a hamburger bun, served with some combination of cheese, tomato, avocado, mayonnaise, and ketchup. The Tur Bus churrasco is one slice of cold beef-ish meat, served in a vaguely damp, spongy bun, and vacuum sealed in plastic. Now that is a sandwich worthy of the name "steak-ums". I washed it down with an orange Crush at lunch and a Canada Dry lemon soda at dinner. The distinction of "worst meal of the trip", though, has to go to breakfast, which earned the honor with a Nescafé instant coffee-esque beverage and an individually packaged chocolate chip cookie. Aside from hunger, it also left me with a question. What would it take to complete this breakfast? (You know how cereals always claim to be "part of this complete breakfast"...)
In the Colca Canyon in Peru, I met an Australian man named Ian, who had also been traveling alone since early January. A gregarious and likeable man with bright eyes and a self-effacing sense of humor, he entertained me with stories of his current travels in South and Central America as well as memories of his adventures in Europe fifteen years ago. In 1993, Ian was a twenty-one year old in love and away from home for the first time. He smiled as he recalled the nearly-archaic romance of the handwritten letter. "They’re at home in a box," he told me. "I haven't looked at them in a while, but I still have every one of them. I think that she might have burned mine when we broke up, though." It was not the rambling, wistful reminiscing of a man who had been alone for too long. Without judgment or desire, he compared travel today to travel fifteen years ago, and decided that the biggest change has been communication. "Then I called home once a fortnight," he remembered. "Now it's two or three e-mails a week." I tried to imagine this. No internet. Not even slow internet. Not even internet with a sticky keyboard and an overly-sensitive mouse. In 1993, travelers took photos with cameras that used rolls of film and wrote letters home. In February of 2008, when Isabel asked what my home is like, I sent Mom an e-mail requesting that she take pictures of the house, my room, Greenfield, and then e-mail them to me. The very next day I received an e-mail with an attachment of digital photos which I downloaded onto my pen drive. On Isabel's laptop, we watched the slideshow, and I saw exactly how much snow had buried my Subaru the day before. Who could have imagined that fifteen years ago? Maybe Al Gore, but not Ian.
My conversation with Ian prompted me to imagine what travel might be like fifteen years from now. In 2023, what incredible stories will I share with a future generation of travelers? The actual forms of transportation themselves will be radically different. Teleportation will have replaced the twenty-four hour bus ride and pretty much everything else. Buses and planes will still exist, of course - like ships and trains today - as quaint, nostalgia-inducing alternatives for tourists who aren't in a hurry (this will be a small market) and want to see the landscape (mostly desert obviously). This probably isn't radical enough because this vision is based on the huge assumption that there will be reason to travel in 2023. Given that television/internet (it will be the same thing) will be fully interactive by then, and given that "there" won't be very different from "here" (no matter where "there" and "here" are), the desire to travel will be limited to the young, who - lacking any other form of initiation - will go out in search of suffering in the hope that they might find something to survive, something to withstand. And, in that sense, they might not be so different from me, or Ian, or Odysseus.
domingo, 27 de abril de 2008
What I've Learned
My trip is not over yet, and already I've been asked more than once, "What did you learn?" One friend even added the stipulation that I answer in one word or less. Surprisingly, I found the constraint quite helpful. With a question as open-ended as "What did you learn?" it’s hard to know where to begin. "I prefer diarrhea to constipation" might be too flippant a starting point, while "all you need is love" borders on too earnest. An answer of one word or less simplifies things significantly; I can craft a pretty convincing response with grunts, groans, moans, sighs, and a well-placed chuckle or two. I figure this is a question I will continue to hear in one form or another for a few months, so I am going to pre-emptively answer it here and now. Then I can do my best Tony Snow (is he still the press secretary? That position doesn't have great job security, does it?) impression and say, "For our official stance on that issue, I refer you to the website. Next question please." In answering, I will attempt to strike a balance between the flippant and the earnest so that, if I accomplish my goal, you will be convinced that I have, in fact, learned a few things, and that - right at the top of the list - a sense of humor complements almost any situation. I've learned that...
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Boots and flip flops do not meet all of my footwear needs. I need a shoe I can dance in. Once, at a club in
Airports are the best for yoga - lots of floor space (often carpeted), high ceilings, and people way too stressed about _______ to care that I'm on the floor gyrating. You know how airports have those glass rooms for smoking? How about yoga rooms with props and teachers and drop-in classes?
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Short hair is so easy. And it’s not only easier physically (washing it, grooming it, etc.). It’s a lot easier mentally too. Now I never waste mental energy worrying about whether or not I’m having a good hair day, wondering what is my hair doing now? It's doing the same thing it did yesterday and the day before yesterday; it’s just sitting there, looking dark brown (and in a few places gray).
Teddy has a long-lost brother in
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Being waited on hand and foot makes me feel useless and guilty. In Isabel's house, I am not allowed to contribute to the preparing, serving, or cleaning up of meals because I am a man and a guest. The guest part I understand, but doesn't guest status wear off after a month or two? She says that her goal is that I feel at home in her house and then she treats me as if I were in a restaurant. As a man, I am supposed to sit at the table and read the newspaper or watch the television while I wait to be served. This makes me uncomfortable, but (Isabel and I have had this conversation more than once) if I try to help it makes her uncomfortable, and since it's her house...
On the bus ride to Ausangate, it began to rain. The thirty passenger vehicle had struggled with the uneven dirt road before it got slippery. When the rain started, the dirt turned to clay, and the wheels slipped like fingers through hair. It was harrowing. The road, always slanted to one side (generally the left because of the gorge - an immediate and abyss-like drop-off), caused the bus to list at such an angle that my crude understanding of physics couldn't make sense of the situation; by what force did the bus remain upright? Looking down the window (rather than out), I saw that the road was narrowed by a natural drainage ditch, at least three feet deep, which would swallow the bus whole if/when its wheels slipped. Eventually, we encountered a bog of clay that covered the entire road. On an uphill. Over and over, Willy - the valiant bus driver - backed the bus up to charge the hill with momentum, and each time, amid spinning wheels and thick clouds of diesel smoke, the hill turned us away. Soon, the entire surrounding population (a small town that has had electricity for less than two years) arrived to see the bus full of gringos stuck in the mud, which is to say the best show since electricity. With pickaxes, our Peruvian guides worked with the locals to remove the top layer of the road - that troublesome clay. Wearing over $300 in waterproof gear (a Marmot raincoat,
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Hugs make people happy. We were performing a ceremony at a huaca (pronounced “waca”) - a large rock formation, sacred and powerful in the Andean cosmology. This particular huaca has a trough carved into it in the form of a serpent with the spout as its head. Waiting for my baptism, I squatted against the cold rock like doing a wall-sit and closed my eyes. The five shamans pushed against my body, held me there, pushed my head, my heart, and my belly with force, almost hitting me with their sacred stones while muttering an eerie mix of Spanish and Quechua. Red wine poured out of the serpent’s mouth, over my head, and down my back to the sounds of a rattle, someone blowing into a glass bottle, someone else into a wooden flute that only plays two notes, and then the arms - so many arms - helped me to stand. I stumbled to a spot of grass where I sat to meditate, as instructed. It was an "easy" meditation; my mind got out of the way almost immediately and I just sat. Soon - I have no idea really whether it was sooner or later - I began to hear soft voices and laughter. Children? Yes, I heard the unmistakable whisper of children. It sounded like a dozen or more. And yet there had been not one child in sight at the start of the ceremony. I suspected they might be spirits, like in the episode of the X-files where Mulder finally finds his sister and he walks with her and the other spirits of children rescued by the stars, while a Moby tune enhances the other-worldly atmosphere of the scene. Wow, this is some meditation! I thought. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see the physical bodies of many actual children, laughing and hugging the members of my group, who smiled like I had not yet seen them smile. What other possible response is there to hugs from beautiful, laughing, innocent children? Some adults giggled like children themselves as they knelt down to be closer to the youngsters, none of whom appeared older than five. Others scooped the little bundles of joy into their arms and swung them around. Everywhere was the warmth of laughter and human touch. Again and again the children ran to us for more hugs. They were inexhaustible and delightfully unaware of the prevailing social norm that people tend to hug once per occasion. Still smiling and giddy, we boarded the bus, and, as we did, the kids came over for final hugs and tips. "¿Propina? ¿Propina?" came the hopeful chorus from so many little mouths. Hugs make people happy. Money keeps them alive.
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"Heart-centered in the world" would make a nice slogan for t-shirts and coffee mugs. To actually live this way continues to be difficult for me. It requires patience and practice (read: plenty of experience of what it's not.) The trick, of course, is that I cannot get out of my head by thinking about it, nor by willpower. I continue to get closer, though. The image of my friends' pendulum serves as my metaphor for growth. The pendulum, when set in motion, swings freely across 360 degrees and traces ovals in the sand pit below. Initially, the pendulum swings far from center in all directions, drawing large, sloppy ovals. Over time, air resistance and the force of gravity slow the movement and the pendulum strays less and less from the center. The pendulum is constantly pulled toward center, toward stillness, but it is the motion itself, the straying, that brings it back. And it is precisely in the moment when the pendulum finds itself furthest from home that it feels the greatest pull to return.
viernes, 25 de abril de 2008
Another Entry About Death
Back in Santiago, I have begun the process of paring down my belongings in preparation for packing (!!!), and I can’t help but count the dollars "wasted" on unused items. Of course, it isn’t really wasted money because so many of these things are far better left unused. As I increasingly look at my trip in hindsight, rather than foresight, I realize that I have many reasons to feel grateful, and chief among those is this pile of "worst-case scenario" stuff. Still, I can’t help but feel a little taken by the commerce of fear. How much money did I give to EMS so that scarier people in other countries couldn’t take it from me instead? Pick-pockets have nothing on shopping. Shopping to the power of pop music and the fear of pick-pockets. When I think back on my mentality as I boarded Delta flight 5513 in Boston on January 10th, a line from a classic piece of children’s literature, "Tacky the Penguin", plays over and over in my mind, “The hunters came with maps and traps and rocks and locks, and they were rough and tough.”
That was me. Ready for anything. You wanna mess with me, Spain? Just try. Am I supposed to be scared of that hair-do? You think you look tough? I laugh at you and your homemade mullet. What about you, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, you want a piece of this? I didn´t think so. You guys kinda make me giggle. You know why? Because you´re small and I’ve got REPEL Permanone in my utility belt. It’s so bad-ass it says "do not apply to skin" because it would even mess me up. The world is scary, so many things to survive out there. And the airport really reinforces that idea, doesn’t it? I can’t take my toothpaste on the plane because my toothpaste could be a bomb. I have to take off my shoes because my shoe could be a bomb. I can’t have a real knife with my dinner because a real knife could turn the plane into a huge, flying bomb. And I don’t even blink at all of this. Of course, all of this is necessary because the world is fucking scary. Even my metal butter knife could turn against me. So imagine my shock when, on the flight from Santiago to Lima, dinner was served (first of all that dinner was even served on a five hour flight departing at 9:30 pm) with a full set of metal cutlery. Then I laughed because the presence of a metal knife with dinner should not cause shock, and it occurred to me how adaptable we humans are. We can get used to pretty damn near anything, can’t we? If the Department of Homeland Security were to decree that - for our own safety and national security - it is necessary that all airline meals be pureed and served with a straw, the Daily Show would make a few jokes, and within three months we wouldn’t remember solid airline food.
So it’s no surprise, really, that as a consumer preparing for major world travels, I imagined the worst. When I look at the items I purchased, and the amount of money I spent on them, it appears that I expected this journey to be routinely life-threatening. Perhaps this is why it has been so difficult to adjust to daily life in Santiago, where the greatest challenge - constant television - is far from life-threatening (some might argue me here). The ways in which my life was threatened on this trip tended to be unexpected and beyond my control, and they usually involved some form of transportation. Actually, the most dangerous activity I engaged in was surely walking. On the Camino Primitivo in Spain, I was constantly one misstep away from being stranded alone in the elements. I don’t know how soon other hikers would have passed, but I do know from the log books in the albergues that the only hikers ahead of me on the trail were three days ahead. Without further ado, here is the list of objects that I am happy to report went unused:
- "You Can Survive" - This can, the size of two tuna fish cans stacked, somehow contains a folding wing stove, hexamine fuel tabs, tea bags, candy, sugar packets, poly water bag, energy drink, survival instructions, damp-proof matches, aluminium foil, and instant broth packets.
- REPEL Permanone Clothing & Gear Insect Repellent - This aerosol spray "repels and kills ticks and mosquitoes" when applied to clothing, hats, tents, and sleeping bags (note: "Do not treat inside of sleeping bag. Spray exterior surfaces of tent only.") I purchased this item when my travel plan included high-risk areas for malaria and yellow fever. I am thrilled to have not used a product which "if partly filled" suggests that you "call your local solid waste agency or 1-800-CLEANUP for disposal instructions." I wonder whom I have to call if it’s all the way filled…
- Mefloquine (Lariam) - One 250 mg tablet per week will prevent malaria°. It’s important that the pill be taken on a fixed schedule, the same day each week. My doctor suggested "malaria Mondays". To be effective, the medication must be taken two-three weeks before entering the "malaria area" and for four weeks after leaving the "malaria area". I like the term "malaria area". The rhyme makes it sound kind of cute and kid-friendly, like a ball pit at Chucky Cheese’s maybe.
° Fine print: "If this medication is being used for prevention of malaria, it is important to understand that it is still possible to contract the disease." Whaaa?!? So without the medication I might get malaria and with the medication I might get malaria? But with the medication I get a bonus: the wackiest, freakiest, most vividly horrifying dreams of my whole life. My doctor did not even attempt to downplay this. She stopped short of saying that the nightmares would be worse than malaria, but I was concerned enough to read the fine print: "The most frequently reported side effects with Lariam, such as nausea, difficulty sleeping, and bad dreams are usually mild and do not cause people to stop taking the medicine. However, people taking Lariam occasionally experience severe anxiety, feelings that people are against them, hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not there, for example I’d like to interject here that I believe that is the definition of "hallucinations", not an example), depression, unusual behavior, or feeling disoriented. There have been reports (uh oh, passive voice, this is going to be bad...) that in some patients these side effects continue after Lariam is stopped. Some patients taking Lariam think about killing themselves, and there have been rare reports of suicides. It is not known whether Lariam was responsible for these suicides."
On a related note, I decided not to visit any "malaria areas". It strikes me as curious that Lariam is legal and marijuana (medicinal and otherwise) is illegal. If there is logic behind this, it must be that the intended effect and side effects (can death be considered a side effect?) of Lariam are deemed better than malaria, while the intended effect and side effects of marijuana are deemed worse than chronic pain. - Ben’s 30% DEET Wilderness Formula - Another weapon against those mosquitoes. And another product that will require a call to the local solid waste agency. I think that my backpack is a fuse short of being a bomb. But let’s keep checking those shoes.
- Eagle Creek money pouch - This flesh-colored, silk, fanny pack looks and feels so natural, if a pick-pocket happens to lift up your shirt, s/he might ask you where you got the cute "Eagle Creek" tattoo. This is an absurd item. I paid about five dollars more for the silk version because still think that more=better even though I know that I think that. I wore it for a few days in Spain before realizing that the constant lifting of my shirt, fiddling with the pouch zipper, and fumbling around for the right bill was A) really annoying and B) like screaming "Hey, hey! Look over here, please. I'm a tourist. Yes, I look like a kangaroo, but I swear I’m a tourist. Does anyone know how this zipper works? Gosh, this is tricky. Let’s see here, this bill is too big. This one too. Darn, another fifty. Where the heck did I put that one ten I had?" Also, after I had seen five or six tourists with identical Eagle Creek money pouches, I started to wonder where I need to be more careful with my money: foreign countries or American malls.
- Atwater Carey First Aid kit - I’m grateful to have only needed this once so far. I used a band-aid after cutting my finger on the refrigerator in Santiago. Have I mentioned that I’ve been eating like a maniac since my stomach started working again? Well, I have been. Apparently I’ve been so voracious that I approach the refrigerator as if it were prey. And it bites back sometimes.
- 2nd Skin Dressing Kit - This is remarkable. I hiked for thirteen days in new boots with 30ish pounds on my back, and did not get one blister. I am lucky, those are damn good boots, and the sock liners were a good idea.
- Bicycle lock - This was my last - and worst - purchase before leaving the U.S. The bike lock weighed a few pounds and stayed in Spain. I wanted something to lock up my backpack (my life!) and didn't feel like spending $75 on the PacSafe - a metal netting of sorts that encloses the entire pack, secures it to something, and then silently announces "Really valuable things here! Get your really valuable things here!" So I spent $20 on a really heavy bike lock which I figured would provide a similar false sense of security for a fraction of the cost. It wasn’t nearly worth its weight.
- Assorted other locks - Padlocks with combinations, padlocks with keys, padlocks with keys approved by the TSA (so they can search your bags without cutting your locks). I didn´t use any of them, especially the TSA-approved locks, which I later realized would do nothing to protect my backpack because the pack's zippers are not entirely made of metal. Only the part that opens and closes the teeth is metal, the part you pull is a cord, which could easily be cut with scissors thus rendering the lock useless.
Aside from walking, what was the greatest danger I faced? Probably the sun, especially high in the mountains of Peru. What kind of fancy, expensive equipment did I use to protect myself from the deadly rays? First, plenty of sunscreen. And second, a Burger King hat that Carmen Luz (my Chilean sister and former Burger King employee) gave me. I particularly enjoyed wearing the tribute to American fast food on the shamanic journey. I didn´t look the least bit spiritual or shamanic or Peruvian - no wide-brimmed, brown "shaman hat" (think Indiana Jones), no alpaca wool hat, no handcrafted poncho. Just me: a gringo in a Burger King hat. Appearance is not important. If only. My ego gave it importance, something like Look at me in this Burger King hat. I’m not putting on any airs here. I’m just a regular, normal guy, wearing whatever I happen to have. Yes, a friend gave this to me. Why would I waste my money on a special hat? I don’t need to "look spiritual". I’m so spiritual on the inside I don’t need to wear it on the outside. The voices in my head turned the Burger King hat into a statement, but first and foremost it was a necessity that did far more to save my hide (literally) than any of the aforementioned items. Still, you know what they say: better safe than sorry.
domingo, 13 de abril de 2008
Ways to Go
There are a lot of ways to travel, methods of getting from here to there. On this trip I´ve had the opportunity to try many of them - including ones I didn´t even know existed. Most memorable, so far, was the Machu Picchu adventure with the tarp-covered truck full of human beings and the metal box on a zip line river crossing. Those two are captured in the above photos, and it´s worth clicking on the river-crossing photo to enlarge it. The expression on my face is saying something beyond language, not quite expressible in words, but a rough translation might be, "Oh my God! I´m alive. How is this possible? Shouldn´t I be dead?" If I had died there, I wouldn´t be writing this now, but at least it would have been the kind of death that brings posthumous fame, the kind of death that produces books and films "based on the shocking true story". If I should die on one of these endless bus rides, it will be by my own hand. And it will be the fault of the on-board "entertainment". Where do airlines and bus lines get their movies? I think there must be a form of release called "direct to travel entertainment" for movies not quite good enough for "direct to video/DVD". "Films" released in this format self-destruct after one viewing.
Today I saw and heard the sequel to "Air Bud" - "Air Bud Strikes Back". That´s true. Against all odds, "Air Bud Strikes Back" exists. Bud, by the way, is a supernaturally gifted golden retriever who can do everything but speak, though I suspect he simply chooses not to because his agent read the script and advised him that a speaking role in this movie might ruin his career. "Air Bud Strikes Back" rocked my world, radically altered my cosmology; previously I had believed in a benevolent universe. On an airplane, it is possible to ignore the movie because you don´t have to listen to it. Without my iPod (which I left in Santiago), I have nothing to protect me from the bus speakers. On the plus side, though, I did discover an important mathematical formula today which I´ve dubbed the "Air Bud Theory". This formula calculates precisely how good a movie is (no more imprecision of two thumbs up or three stars or a palm d´or) on a scale from 1-100, with 100 being the top score. Quality of film = 100 - (% of the movie that is a montage set to bad music). "Air Bud Strikes Back" scores a 35. In my favorite scene (I don´t want to ruin the movie for you, but... hahahaha), the two robbers (who also happen to be plumbers... Home Alone?) have captured a talking parrot named Polly who they are using as bait to lure the heroic golden retriever into an ill-fated rescue attempt so that they can use Air Bud to steal a valuable diamond which is protected by laser sensors that only he can dodge. Anyway, the robbers are driving around town looking for Bud, while Polly - caged in the back of the truck - drives them crazy by singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" over and over. At first, I was annoyed because a parrot singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is really obnoxious, but when I realized the similarity of our situations (the robbers stuck in their truck with Polly and me stuck on the bus with Air Bud) I burst out laughing, which was embarrassing because my neighbor probably assumed that I was enjoying the movie, but I needed that laugh.
I´m grateful to that bus for bringing me back to Chile, which - though in the opposite direction geographically - feels closer to home. I smiled and nodded at the now familiar white on black street signs, listened - mesmerized - to the distinct, metallic song of Chilean coins in my pocket, and chuckled to myself "oh Chile" every time I saw or heard or smelled something that makes this country Chile and not Peru. Not that there´s anything wrong with Peru, but familiarity is very appealing right now (so appealing that I´ve been eating Oreos this week because they taste like America) and Chile is familiar. Arica has beautiful beaches which my bare feet will rejoice on tomorrow, yet I am almost as excited by the Santa Isabel - an actual supermarket with aisles and high, warehouse ceilings and harsh, fluorescent lights and products that shouldn´t be available in this part of the world or at this time of year. And I love it. As horrifying and unnatural as it is, I love the supermarket. I plan to go there again tomorrow to wander and gaze in awe and wonder. It´s like a free amusement park or a museum of life in the early 21st century. In a few decades you might have to buy an entrance ticket and be led up and down the aisles by a guide who will explain the staggering assortment of food - how many natural resources were squandered shipping it around the world, how much of it went to waste, how much of it was poison, how hard it was to choose between all the different options, and all the time that was wasted purchasing and preparing food before the complete nutrient pill was perfected. (Yes, I re-read "Brave New World" last week.) In the meantime, I´m going to enjoy some "completos" - a hot dog topped with mayonnaise, ketchup, avocado, tomatoes, and sometimes onions and mustard - because even that would be a better way to go than Air Bud-induced suicide.
UPDATE: Make sure you read my brother´s "comentario". He knows a lot about Air Bud and caught a pretty embarrassing error in this entry.
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