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.

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?

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.

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.”

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/

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.

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...

• 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 Madrid, I tried to dance in my hiking boots. It was awkward.
  

• 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?

• 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 Arequipa, Peru (see first photo above). Teddy is the creepy, old wheelchair in the Bishopswood Health Hut that helps patients to regain their health by motivating them to leave as quickly as possible. I had assumed that Teddy was a one-of-a-kind relic until I visited St. Catherine's Monastery in Arequipa, where I met Francisco. This discovery sheds some light on Teddy's past, which had previously been shrouded in mystery. Since we know that the Incas did not have wheel technology before the arrival of the Spaniards, it seems likely that Francisco, and hence Teddy (short for Teodoro?), was born in Spain sometime in the first half of the sixteenth century. This theory does nothing to explain how Teddy came to be in mid-coast Maine, but one can imagine that he was captured by English pirates who brought him to their colonies in North America. In that era he may have been drawn by horses as a chariot of sorts.

• 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, EMS rainpants, and waterproof Vasque boots), I watched from the bus as men in jeans, sweaters, and sandals worked through the downpour to build us a new road. In spite of their heroic efforts, the bus still could advance no further so we were forced to set up camp there in the rain in somebody's field. (Later a woman arrived yelling and pointing at the tents; a few bills placed in her palm sedated her in a hurry.) As we the tourists continued to sit on the bus in our expensive raingear, our porters set up the tents. Then they helped us down from the bus and hurried us into the meal tent as if we were celebrities trying to avoid the flashes of paparazzi cameras (see second photo above for an idea of the chaos). Water ran from the sides of the tent downhill toward the middle where we were huddled, wet and cold and singing for warmth and distraction. "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Yellow Submarine" were at least as obnoxious as they usually are, but the Peruvian children peering through the tent windows seemed amused by the unusual spectacle. Then the hot tea and soup arrived (how they accomplished this so quickly in the inconvenient conditions is beyond my comprehension), and the children watched us the way that house pets hopefully attend dinner preparation. How can I look at these children and feel cold? How can I look at these children and feel hungry? And why do I get the raingear and the soup? What did I do for all of this? I've had a lot of opportunities to look at privilege and think about what it means to be a young white man from an upper-middle class American family. I still don't know what it means, but I do know that I want to grow in gratitude, not guilt. Gratitude gives back; guilt takes away. Gratitude is life; guilt is death.

• 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.

• "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.