Saturday Night Thoughts

I. I sit out here and I watch it get dark. I can see the mountains in front of me and my warm, light room behind. It's pretty quiet so you can here birds squeak and the spur of thier wings. There's music beyond that, music made by happy people for other happy people who are ready for it to be dark, looking for the company of others, to move easily, to know thier place and not have to worry.

The musicians, too, don't worry- thier fingers know and they aren't embarassed to whoop or shout. They are proud of the music, its patterns and shiny, spinning heaights. There's no need to end songs quickly like the scared white boys in front of guitars do so fast. People are enjoying it, it some thing to adore, so why end?

It's very different here than in Quito. I see only one layer of houses and roofs, trees, no cars or trolleys and no people. Is there daily life here? Is everyone struggling to keep floating and breathing and wear clean underwear? Yes, of course they are, you can tell from the smoke of cooking fire barbecues, from the yelps of musicians, the lights of cars on the highway below. Just as we learned that everybody's pretty much working for the same stuff when we took the bus or on our class fieldtrip to the history museum or on that golden ticket of study abroad, I know it too in Cumbayá. We're close to Quito, but with a mountain and a rainstorm in between.

II. It's not at its most obvious but the earth is most subtle and vunerable at dusk, and humans are at thier brighest on a Saturday night. At 6:35 pm July 2nd on the Equator, you can see the mountains sigh and the people squirm. At this moment, the ground is tired and loosing its sun heat. The plants are squinting critically at their stores of sugar-from-sun, stream keep going but wish they were dry. Light blints but it knows it doesnt have much left before the slide from wave to particle. Hills slope. The earth looks backwards to rest.

But the people- everyone's on the bus, putting on thier best pants, making eye contact, biting their lip dreaming of hamburgers and solace and sex. Everybody's wondering what's coming next on a Saturday night.

That future, that past, that spilling cool darkness.

Specifically

It's the first night I've felt like writing in a while, the first time I'm not up late watching TV or trying to sleep but actually just reading chapters over and over from childhood books or my old planners, months by month. I'm very tired, physically, from running a lot and stretching and doing rediculous! looking ab exercises with Emily and Abby. We all just lied on the living room floor on our backs on dirty bath towles and did thrusting motions to the beat of Ka'nan's Waving Flag. Occasionally Emily's mom or her wife (of the mom, not Emily's) would come in from the garden, laugh at us, and pick thier way to the bathroom or to get water.

After we got our exercise in, we looked at lists and things we'd made in high school. We were obsessed with making these huge (literally, we used a large roll of butcher paper and a few poster board) lists of things we loved and hated. Some things that seemed prophetic at the time now just seem banal ("I love: freedom, being right, pure sounds, being outside at night, talking to boys on the phone"). Some things seem pathetic in retrospect only ("I hate: not having enough money, that I want to be foreign" and the fact that most of the people on the I Love list were fictional characters, family members, or beloved teachers). Other things really get to the root of the problem ("I love it when someone figures out what they are trying to say, when you can understand directions as they are given"). And others you just have to laugh at (three different tries at spelling "dirreah," Sigmund Freud highlighted as "Leader #2," A certain unnamed person crossed off I Love and moved to I Hate.)

It was nice to look at the lists for giggles, but it also brought back very visceraly a time of my life three or four years or so ago. When we made them, these lists were the highlight, the pinnical, the absolute most articulate and interesting and organized and open about the things I loved and hated in this world. The free assocation, the loose placement of the words on the page, the varied hand writing: these are things that show me how I felt about making the lists. How helpful and clarifying they were. And of course the scattered and messy words themselves, how they showed what mattered to me. They brought up this very specific time in my life, the winter of 11th grade and the time I spend with Emily in those afternoons and weekends.

And reading that brown thick paper puts me there, reminds me of my motivations and how I felt and what made me mad or cheerful in that particular time. And of course seeing those things so clearly makes it easy to compare myself to my 11th grade winter self, to see the distances between the two.

Chuck Klosterman, one of my favorite opinion-makers talks about remembering a period of his life with the same eerie clarity in Killing Yourself to Live.

"What's so disquieting to me is how this kind of life- a life of going to joyless keg parties and having intense temporary aquaintences and spending most of one's time in basements and crappy rented aparements with five bedrooms- was once my life completley. Those were the only things I ever did. That wasn't part of how I lived, that was everything. But now its like those experiences never happend at all. I can recall having conversations with people in college that would seem impossible to have today (both in subject and overall tone)."

He describes meeting a girl at a party and discussing the merits of Soundgarden album and then never speaking again.

"The whole episedoe now strikes me as random and innapropriate and inexplicable. But that used to be my life, all the time. That used to be my life, all the time. That used to be normalacy, and now that normalacy is completely over. Things like that will never happen to me again, even if I want them to. And I did not choose to stop living that life, nor did I try to continue living that life, I just didn't notice when it stopped....When you start thinking about what your life was like ten years ago- and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail- its disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completley dead. They die long before you do. "

So here Chuck's talking about maybe his sophomore year in college, a time whose details I'm intimately familiar with. I used to take a nap twice a week at 11 30 AM, I ate a ton of yoghurt, there was a constant fight in my life about vacuuming the stairs. Whenever I'd see a dog I'd get innordanantly happy, and I was trying to reduce my cheese intake. I spent hours at night in those basements and apartments and I once had a 45 minute conversation centering around Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, an album I have never even listened to.

But those details are recent, and it scares me to think that they will get lost without getting caught on butcher paper of their own. For example, those Saturday nights with Emily in high school, we usually consumed huge bowls of cereal, watched two thirds of a movie, reviewed every single romantic encounter we had ever come accross, discussed how much we hated our fathers, and scared ourselveles thinking "the devil" was going to enter the room. We generally listened to The Smiths. I remember attempting to smoke weed one time, but we had made the cigarette of graph paper glued with honey, so I just ended up burning my hand and having to keep it in a bowl of ice water for two episodes of Will and Grace. And I can remember the emotions that went with those evenings, and I can judge those times objectively, but I think what's most important is those details, the little actions that pushed the clocks around.

But Chuck mentions that he doesn't notice when those things stopped and how other things replaced them. For me, I keep track of how and when habits drop away. And in my experience most of the time the changes and what cause them have been obvious. Being at college stopped the sleepovers and added the Strawberry Jam. The verbal honestly of improv made me less drawn to the release of butcher paper.

And of course, there's the geography. My life in Quito, the daily stuff you do for 20 minute periods that add up to an evening were different. I took a nap every Friday afternoon while Jimmy's metal band thrashed. I swam at my grandmother's house many day's after school and sat silently at the table while my uncles played online chess or read the paper. I read The Stranger articles that I'd opened on endless tabs. I stored money in my bra and shoes, never more than $50 in one place. I rode the bus standing up, listening to songs over and over. I ate ice cream almost daily. We'd come over to each other's houses at 7pm, eat french fries and chicken silently with host families, obsess about clothing and our bodies. We'd drink cane liquor and chase it with apple flavored soda. I'd take 2$ taxis to filthy clubs and eat shwarma. I watched hours of American TV sacked out on my back on my host mom's futon.

It's things like that, and rediculious conversations about the development of feminism with my grandma, answering "so, did you need to pee after you lost your virginity?" from my host mom, explaining Passover to a cousin, defending the fact that I looked fat to a neighbor, are things that seem absurd as I try to describe them here and I laughed at them when I pulled myself out of them and looked at it from Kalamazoo shoes. But in the situation, as it happened, it was normal, acceptable, expected. Before I went to bed that night, I'd usually be able to pull out of it to notice that that'd never happened before. But the next morning, and when I tried to write about it almost always, it was alreay old news. Of course I found an entire pig's head in the refridgerator. How else would I treat a headache besides herbs and a shower? Did it not always rain each night, was I not always afraid of being alone outside, did I not always eat hot dogs and drink fishbowls? My only home I'd ever known was on the corner of America y Caracas and the set of keys in my pocket could open the only door.

It's probably good that the brain can do this, can smooth over memories to make the past seem simple and the present seem sane. If I compare those three eras of my life, they all seem nuts to the way I live now. But as I return to any of them, as I did today, as I did for six months, and as I will once I set foot in Kalamazoo, the details will expand to normalicy and this present will slide backwards. I won't remember my interval-technobeat runs through Magruder Park. I won't remember being delighted to eat hummus again, to order a salad, to wear my green sneakers. It won't be important to me whether I drive Lester to school tomorrow or not. The snow melting, the mess in my room, should I donate this shirt to the thift store or not? will not matter one lick.

So I sit in those basements and bedrooms and do my little things, have conversations, interact, eat, prepare, study, rest, work, in the time-and-place-specific ways that we do. And most nights I'm siezed with the urge to write about it, to remember the routines that I completed, the behaviors I've been trained into. Maybe I put too much emphasis on my daily behavior. But to me, there's something important about not letting that stuff slip away. It's not so much to be remembered after I'm dead; its more to remember parts of myself that are gone while I go on living.

Field Notes from the Miami Airport

Written when I was in the Miami Airport, not surprisingly

There are a lot of fat people. A lot of very fat people. And not old-person fat, the fat that gathers around the face as it ages, but big belly backfat fat.

There are more black people and the majority do not seem to be isolated from society so taht they may be motivated to commit crimes.

No babies, only strollers and crying.

Soda tasted like syrup, like melted popsicles.

When I look at the young people I feel happy. So many of them are pretty but not in the monocrome way that imples for Quito. For girls that is Abercromibe shirt, cheap tiny jeans, and very long hair. for boys its cheap giant jeans and oily hair done into whips and dallops. Here, girls wear all black and have short hair and boys wier red cowboy boots and have wide shoulders and flipflops. And I'm no longer one of the tallest people in the room!

The shuttle bus we rode on between terminals was cleaner than the hospital I worked at .

Cellphones are just as prominant and annoying, but they are bigger.

More bookstores, more books, more varitey in food. Although I won't I didn't get my hopes up when I saw a restaurant at a distance with the same colors as Cebiches de Rumiñauai. A hotdog-and-fries place? no way.

It's silly that our first place to speak english all the time is Miami, because people here are speaking Spanish all the time. We go to a pizza place for lunch,

"Yo quisiera..... Oh shoot, I'd like"

"que querias?"

I say gracias when I get my change, Jameson asks, "what is aji in english" and the counter guy hands him the hot sauce silently.

I'm almost sure I got throught customs without a hitch because the attendant decided to test my spanish against his. But it is strange, not to be quite so noticed for my pale skin and skinny jeans. To have it be her fault and not mine that a latina lady is yelling "SKUSE ME GERL" when she pushes past me in line. It is strange to be back. Of course it is. Of course it will be.

Going to the bathroom is a way less involved, personal process. I almost feel like I'm doing some medical as opposed to personal but social and shared. I walk in the bathroom, no door to push only a bend of corridor. No one asks for my 15 cents and gives me toilet paper. The bathroom is empty and very clean. Only one person per stall, no children waitting outside, no one doing thier hair or chainging clothes or diapers.

And I put my pale ass on the seat, pee, and the toilet paper is right there. I let it drop from my clean fingers into the previously potable water below. I stand up and water from the automatic flush hits my ass as I'm pulling my pants up. The door lock is modernist plastic and slides as if greased. I stick my hands under the spigot- no guesswork, no broken handles, just clean lukewarm water. A puff of soap to kill less jerms than I've had contact with in months. Paper towels? Not my jeans?

I'm used to hitching up my pants to knock on Jimmy's door for the toilet paper- he and his friends use it for earplugs during band practice. I'm used to finding blood or beets in the toilet, there's a lot of both in the house. It's part of the routine to wad up your papel hieginico and put it in the little yellow wastebasket by the toilet, and its part of chores to take that garbage to the curb. I wash my hands with non-potable water and bar soap with cracks filled with grime. For my zits, I pour some agua oxegenada (and that is peroxide!) on some paper towel and wipe my forehad, face, back and armpits. And I shower, sure, and I wash my hair and stuff. I'm not a dirty person. But I think my higene needs have devinitely changed in Ecuador. I felt damn uncomfortable in that bathroom, not happy to be in a nice place but like I was in a place I should be, like a classroom for the very young or the very smart. Or an operating theater or a temple.

I'll have many opportunities to contemplate this. Yesterday, I ate approximately 6 servings of fruit, 4 of which were mango. I guess I will have time to reflect very FIRMLY on Ecuador REGULARLY. Ha ha ha poop.

6 Months?!?!?

I haven't written in days, I know that. I haven't really done anything in days, either, and I know that too. No huge island-hopping adventures, no food poisioning, no hook-ups or break-downs. Just things, small things, ice cream bars and taxi rides. Some days I've gone to school, some days I've woke up with every intention to be productive. I have my coffee, get dressed and fall back asleep for two or three hours.

I turned in my paper and finished school. I'll put the abstract for it (in English) up here in another entry. I don't know, whatever, I'll tell about the little things I did later, when I'm walled in by snow and culture shock.

A lot's been going on in my head lately, but much less anxiety than usual and more static intersperced with these clear, revalatory thoughts. Normally on the bus I'll fret over that they might reject my five-pennies-in-place-of-a-nickel for blocks and blocks. The last week or so I just sit quietley internally and externally, bouncing my foot incessantly. I hand over my five pennies, get grumbled at, and wonder about how fish socialize. So it's been a floaty, detached few days and I'm almost glad. I haven't been hit by the transtitions-mean-the-end-of-the-world notions I usually take up at least a week before a plane flight, and I've avoided the macabre thought that "that could be the last time I do/see/ talk to X!!!!" everytime I leave the house.

But Blanquita just came in and we talked about how six months is a long time and how it passed so fast. And it is, and it did. I came here in AUGUST. August is hot and I could barely speak and I weighed ten pounds less and my hair was short. My mom walked with me to security waving and crying. And then I met Pilar and Jimmy and I listened to conversations and I went to rediculous family gatherings. I rode the bus endlessly and cleaned my plate. I went to sleep so early each night and watched TV religiously on the afternoons when I was alone. I walked in parks and did laundry and struggeled to read academic articles. People langued at me and stared and ignored me. I socialized and sat alone, lonely or not. I wrote more often than I have in years, less whiney than forever, not particularly wonderfully but with words. Used my words that I couldn't and didn't want to all day. Let myself stay quiet in arguements and at lunch because I knew my keyboard was waiting for me. Of course, the stories and the gossip and the questions were still there, but they were easy to swallow when I knew no one else would like it. I developed much better control.

And I stayed in the same place for six months. Sure, I traveled and stayed out late and slept at Aracely's, but my life was in a time span of more than ten weeks, which is something I've beaten out of myself. I acted like a long-term liver, not just surviving from quarter to quarter, living for the next Monkapult show or DOGL or my Poli Sci presentation. I know I've talked endessly about routine but it's almost impossible how little routine my life has at K. Sure, there's the caf and then SusHouseFamilyDinner, there's Monkapult, there was the midnight boyfriendPhoneCall, but those are things that happen. Those are things to put on your calender. But the motivation, the daily life stuff that fell between those appoinments was almost irregular. Things happen often or they re-occur. But for some reason, I feel safer here in this routine even though I don't like the life as much as the fun of K.

And that's sort of shocking to me, but it also makes me understand things better. K is fun, but routine is soothing. I see why people pass up the fun, the excitement of a less steady life for a more stable one. The saftey is worth it. The calm of knowing what comes next is better than the exhileration of not being able to know. I've never really understood that feeling before, and certainly well enough to articulate it.

So we'll see, I guess, weather I can make a routine at K, with more or less fun that before, liking it more or less. We'll see what parts sobresalir as important, what melts away. We shall see how I set up my tiny life in the palm of the mitten, how I teseract home and back, where I go to, how I tell you about it. We shall see.

Nearly

I haven't written in a while. I'll put that off to the big ole paper I had to write to finish up the ICRP class, but that's not that good an excuse. Mostly, I've been doing very little and qualifying it as a lot, hoping to squeeze the final drop of toothpaste out of Quito's tube. I didn't approach the Crest with a very good strategy and there's holes in the plastic and I've still got a bad taste in my mouth but at least I'm trying. I'm hoping for no cavities as what I remember from here.

I didn't make huge travel plans, I'm not going to Colombia or the beach or the USA like some people. My sister isn't coming and I'm not going on some epic Oriente adventure with my host family. I'm watching movies and staying up late and talking spanish. I'm trying to learn how to cook all the things I've come to love. I'm on facebook chat a lot, trying to remember slang and how we communicate. I'm missing my mom. I'm eating a lot. I'm not writing every day, I'm not reading, I don't write down how much I spend, I've started taking taxis over buses and eating french fries.

It's ok, I hope, to do all this. To relish the cheapness and the conjugation while I can. To watch 30 Rock with pilar, to wash the dishes. It's ok that I'm not off having the adventure of my life. It's alright to stretch packing over 6 days of folding and rolling. I'm doing ok, I'm saying goodbye, I'm transitioning in that slow, miserable way that I do.

And it's not all going to be boring. On Tuesday (tomorrow! Only one day to slog through!) I'm going to Mindo with Aracely and her sister and cuñado to zipline and eat chocolate and see orchids and on Thursday I'm going to Otavalo to buy monstrous amounts of handicrafts. And friday? Saturday? Breathing deep, packing suitcases, hugging people, feeling anxious outside at night, and getting ready for that too-long layover that will take me home.

Sunday Survey

Hi Everyone,

I'm feeling lazy right now and don't really want to write anything that involves constructing a paragraph, so here's a survey about 2010.

30 Q’s on 2010!!

1. What was the hardest part about the year 2010?

Leaving, moving around, finishing things. Lots of thing ended or just came to a close. Sorry to be so general.

2. Pick a song that encompasses spring 2010

The Rabbit, The Bat and The Reindeer by Dr. Dog

3. Describe your spring using words that start with the letter “N”

Nighttime, Nearby, Nearly, No More Qualitative Reasonign Class Please

3. Tell three quick funny stories that happened

a. One time, the sus house was still really dirty when it was time to check out of it and we had to clean it like twice more and that was embarassing!

b. One time, to avoid doing the dishes, an unnamed friend hid all the diry dishes in a laundry basket under his bed

c. One time, my mom came to Quito and she got really oxygen deprived from the lack of oxygen (obviously) and began giggling non stop and we yelled at her

4. When you were stressed, what did you do as an outlet?

Well, I tried and got better at doing exercise and certainly writing. But there is always the tried and true favorite of complaining, eating carbohydrates and taking a nap.

5. Did any of your beliefs change?

Lots, about my self, the world, politics, other people. Not so much spiritual stuff.

6. Who was the last person you kissed?

Thats my business

7. What food did you eat a lot of?

Applesauce, veggie bugers, chinese food, soup, french fries, salads.

8. Pick a song that encompasses summer 2010

Not contrived at all, but Chllin by Wale.

9. Describe your summer using words that start with the letter “E”

Excellent, Electricity (lackthereo), Empezando el blog, Evil Boss, Eventful, Eventual,

10. Did you develop any bad habits in 2010? Break any old ones?

Well the carb-and-nap routine got pretty strong. Stopped smoking those pesky monthly cigarettes, But started eating meat which I don;t like.

11. Look back. Describe a beautiful moment that happened this past year.

Oh man seeing ma and lester at the airport was pretty wonderful

12. Who is your best friend? Has it changed since last year?

Yes, it has. But I am very blessed with best friend all over the place and in differnet capacities. I've got my train-riding best friend, my skinny-dipping best friend, my spontaneity best friends, the people I come home to, the people I grew up with. The person I said goodbye to but still keep there at the top of my list.

13. Pick a song that encompasses fall 2010

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go by Mr. Bob Dylan (the link is to a cover that's pretty different but quite nice)

14. Describe your fall using words that start with the letter “W”

Whaaaaat? Wired, Worried, Work, Worldy, Water, Waiting, Welcome, Wonderful

15. Tell three drunken stories (or just sum more funny stories)

Let's just do normal stories

a. One time, this lady was outside the house and pilar was like "Oh wow its my cousin Anita from Guayaquil, how unexpected! I have missed her so!" and let this lady in and made her coffee. But it was not Cousin Anita, it was a woman from the Eugenio Espejo mission asking if there were any disabled people in the house

b. One time, we made applesacue but convinced Brandon Bigler that it was shredded pork. The pork had come from a wild hog that was terrorizing Britta's yard and scaring her sister so her dad shot it. That was a total lie, but we just kept telling and he just kept asking.

c. One time, I wore my shirt inside out for a whole day of school and didn't realize it! How hilarious!

16. Name 5 things you’ve accomplished

a. Mucho Spañol

b. More independant

c. Awesome research paper

d. Yecuador

e. Better mental health

17. Name some things you regret

Not being able to stay up late, not taking more wild chances, not being more honest, taking Drawing

18. What was the saddest moment of 2010?

I've cried alot this year.

19. Favorite cereal!

This was the year that i discovered that I don't really like cerael that much. It's just not that good. But I guess good granola or shredded wheat or maybe rice krispies

20. Talk about your family.

Well, now I have two and I couldn't love either of them more. My mothers are both such nurturing, wonderful people who understand me so well. My USAmom is so strong and wonderful and has made me who I am. My Ecuamami understands me so much better than I could have hoped. And my ñaños? Angry, independant, brilliant people who I want to take with me everywhere. That might only be four people but its more than enough, an embarssment of riches, for me.

21. Did you take a vacation? Where did you go? Talk about it.

Well, I went to Ecuador, you know. I also went to Scientist's Cliffs with Eustice and Chicago and Up North with the fam. Pretty wonderful, beautiful places.

22. What was the nicest thing anybody has said to you this past year? Meanest?

Nicest: "Andrew Dombos 1:22am

if i had to describe you, i would say you're an charasmatic, thoughtful, empowered woman" Thanks bro!

Meanest? I think this.

23. Did you leave the country?

Yessir and I am so glad I did!

24. Pick a song that encompasses winter 2010

Regina Spektor's Carbon Monozide

25. Describe your winter using words that start with the letter “Y”

Yum, yearning, year, Yedlin, Nick, Yuk

26. What was your favorite song?

Overall? I think Strawberry Weed by the Caesars. Thanks, Daedal!

27. You have to write a biography about this past year for you, what is the title of the book?

Pasaje en la Mano

28. Talk about Hate in 2010

It was there, I tried to shut it down, that didn't work so well.

29. Talk about Love in 2010

More the "inward eye is the bliss of solitude" than the "honey lovey" kind but I'm glad that that happend.

30. Resolutions for next year?

Write bastante, get stronger, get a job, contribute to the universe in a postive manner, keep in touch, stay safe.