Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

On Sunday evening, I will be the passenger in seat 15 on a southbound bus departing Santiago at 21:41. Approximately twelve hours and lots of stiff muscles later, the bus should arrive in Tirúa, a small coastal town where a local couple operates a shuttle service - in what I hesitate to call an airplane - to Isla Mocha. The island is 14 km tall by 7 km wide and offers neither internet nor cell phone service. I will camp on or near the beach (within 3.5 km of the beach, for sure) and write - if I can find a flat surface - five or six hours a day. Between the hour-long writing sessions, I will jump rope and drink raw eggs. The most crucial part of my training regimen will be Pablo Neruda´s famous finger exercises for improved strength and dexterity. To the untrained eye, this powerful technique might resemble skipping stones. If I survive the seven nights and four cans of tuna fish, I will be ready to visit the shamans in Peru.

This writing retreat is an acknowledgement on my part that writing is of central importance to this entire trip. It may, in fact, have been the desire (need?) to write that invented this journey in the first place. My travels have given me both the time and the material to write like never before in my life. I cannot imagine taking a five month break from my "regular life" to focus on writing, but without admitting it to myself, that´s basically what I´ve done. It is essential, of course, that I call it something else ("travel" works nicely), that it have a disguise so I don´t have to take it too seriously or that - god forbid - anyone else should take it too seriously. As a "traveler", I don´t have to produce too much; people generally seem to be satisfied with a slideshow and a funny story about airports. As a "writer", though, I might be expected to ummm... write stuff. People might ask me things like, Are you working on a book? What do you write about? Written anything recently? If I, without any published work, declare myself a writer, then I become an unpublished writer. There is nothing inherently terrible about that. Billions of people are unpublished writers (unless I´m overestimating the global literacy rate), and, of those, hundreds of millions are gifted unpublished writers. For Christmas, my mother gave me her written account of my birth, which aside from being brilliant, is - to me - of more worth than anything amazon.com carries.

What´s the problem then? Why the doubt and the hesitation? Maybe it´s because even as I write this, I can´t explain what I mean. I get closer. I think I have it, and then it feels wrong again. The frustration, the solitude, the separation that drive me to write, to find the right words, never end in connection. Only slightly less separation. One morning in eighth grade math class, Mr. Reagey angered the bored, hungry masses by dismissing Jared - and only Jared - to lunch early. He let Jared leave with one provision: he could only walk to the door in increments of half the remaining distance. If the dry, mathematical humor of Mr. Reagey´s offer is not immediately apparent to you, stand up now, and try the same exercise in whatever room you´re in. Even if you have small feet, shoes are not a practical tool for measuring infititely small distances, so - if you´re like Jarod - you´ll eventually claim that you have reached the door, and deserve to leave class. But, in reality, he couldn´t reach the door. You can´t reach the door. I can´t reach the door. Even tiny robots can´t reach the door. So we´re all stuck in eighth grade math, the period before lunch, being teased with the possibility of escape. Thomas Merton writes, "Actual solitude has, as one of its integral elements, the dissatisfaction and uncertainty that come from being face to face with unrealized possibility." I wonder if he had Mr. Reagey for pre-algebra.

Merton´s words could also have been written after a visit to the supermarket. (In Santiago, the supermarket belongs to the 20th century and third world countries. Super is a new synonym for inadequate; anything less than a hyper or mega market won´t meet all of your needs. Try to find foodstuffs, school uniforms, and a flatscreen TV at a supermarket. These Chilean behemoths are outgrowing adjectives like snails discarding old shells. What will replace hyper and mega? Giga... Biga... or maybe, Wal? Wal-Mart is probably the closest stateside relative - the crazy uncle from up north who always wears a blue vest and throws a huge party the day after Thanksgiving - of the Chilean superstores.) I was talking about "the dissatisfaction of unrealized possibility", which I´m pretty sure is central to the marketing strategy of stores like "Jumbo", where I purchased provisions for my week on Isla Mocha. Even though I found every item on my shopping list yesterday, I still left Jumbo with feelings of doubt. What if 64 isn´t the right number of wheat bran crackers? I could have purchased a package of 32 or 96 instead. In fact, I initially put the package of 96 in my cart. Minutes later, while examining the ingredients of granola bars, I couldn´t refrain from "checking my answers" (after years of test-taking, this second guessing is an insuppressible instinct)... What is ninety-six divided by seven anyway? Well, seven times thirteen is ninety-one. Will I really eat thirteen and 5/7 crackers a day? That´s a lot of bran. That reminds me... I should bring my own toilet paper, just in case. I put the boxes of granola back on the shelf, and returned to the crunchy snack food aisle, where I exchanged the 96 pack for a 64 pack. I feel pretty good about the 64 pack, but then again, what does conventional wisdom say about indecision on standardized tests... when you´re torn between two answers, your first instinct is correct the vast majority* of the time. (*actual odds first instinct is correct = x + 2y, where x equals current room temperature (degrees Fahrenheit) and y equals shoe size.)

I´m joking. But you know who isn´t joking about how crazy they feel in the supermarket? The children. And the parents. Everywhere I look I see a mother, dragging the squirming body - heels digging in vain into unforgiving floor, arms desperately reaching back toward the one and only source of possible happiness in this cold, fluorescent world - of her screaming child into a future s/he refuses to even look at because it will be a wretched existence without... well, in my case it was a Matchbox car-sized version of the ThunderTank (the fierce, battleship gray tank with huge claws from the 80´s cartoon Thunder Cats). The miniature ThunderTank propelled itself forward with spring-powered wheels when pulled back, and also sharpened pencils. That it sharpened pencils makes little logical sense and may be an invention of my memory, but the point is that this was an absolutely incredible piece of gray plastic. My mother purchased it for me. I will never forget that day. I felt forever and eternally grateful because I was happy. Until we got home and the amazing tank stopped functioning properly. At first the tank zipped around on its own, without a human hand touching it, just like it did on the show! Soon the sand in our driveway - it wasn´t paved at that point - worked its way into the mechanism that turned the wheels, and the tank broke down. I´d never seen an episode where the tank broke down. My imagination struggled to maintain the integrity of my fantasy world in the face of overwhelming reality. I kicked the toy, threw it, and called it garbage. I burst into the kitchen, where my mother was still putting away the groceries, and I demanded that we go back and get one that worked. We have to go back we have to we have to. This one doesn´t work. Look. Look! It´s all... look! I want a new one. Mom ignored me, so I decided to run away and go back to the supermarket by myself. I told her. Then I left. I ran away to the end of Sanderson Street - three houses away - but couldn´t go any further because I wasn´t allowed to cross High Street. So I sat at the corner of Sanderson and High and cried. And screamed. And punched the ground with the tank - not hard because I didn´t really want to hurt it, just teach it a lesson for breaking. Stupid tank.

I see myself - desperate to cross High Street to the promised land of newer, better tanks - reflected in the miserable, whining children in Jumbo. And I want to feel compassion for them. But it´s hard because I also want to fix them. I want them to be grown-ups already so they can understand "the dissatisfaction of unrealized possibility" or at least have the shame not to cry in public. Maybe my biggest frustration is that it is no longer socially acceptable for me to throw a tantrum in public and I haven´t found a better coping mechanism to replace it. Contemplating "the dissatisfaction of unrealized possibility" does not feel nearly as good as punching the ground and screaming. As an adult, I have a greater ability to "self-medicate" because I have infinitely more freedom to choose the toys, foods, drinks, people, places, and events that fill my life. But the ability to treat the specific symptoms of my desires does nothing to heal the condition. I want. I want. I was reminded of this condition in December when a strong desire, which I could not meet given my then situation, overwhelmed me. Many nights, the fetal position on the floor was my favorite place to be. I considered quitting my job. Considered isn´t the right word though because it suggests far more rational mental activity than I was capable of at the time. The part of me that wanted to quit was the same part of me that wanted to run away to the supermarket. For a newer, better life!

Well, tomorrow I begin my newer, better life on Isla Mocha. I´ll be back when I discover it´s exactly the same, when I run out of food, or when seven nights are up.