Suddenly, it seems almost in the snap of my fingers, I awoke to the cloudless, cornflower blue summer sky in Buenos Aires city. How did I get here? Just yesterday I was suffering through another 100 degree afternoon on the farm, swatting furiously at flies and dodging the hornet swarms. And now here I sit, once more perched on a balcony overlooking a narrow, tree-lined street in BA, as though it were once more my very first moments in Argentina. It is eerie the way life seems to constantly loop back around on itself and we relive moments thought long past.
I remember how I felt last time: overwhelmed, uncertain, out of control, reckless. My Spanish didn’t extend much beyond “hola” and the numbers 1-5. The city was huge, the people entirely unfamiliar, and time seemed to stretch out infinitely in front of me. It was a feeling of freedom so vast it swallowed me up. I remember looking over at Patrick and thinking: “Thank God I’m not alone.” I remember all this now as though it were reminiscences of an old friend: gone but not forgotten. And in a way, it is.
I was a different person then, and I can see very clearly how much I’ve changed over these last eight tumultuous months. The city is still huge but it feels manageable now. My Spanish might actually be called conversational now and I don’t get a knot in my stomach when I think about navigating public transportation or asking for directions here. I have a pretty good understanding of the culture, and I’m not so preoccupied with making some kind of ghastly faux pas. I feel safe in my skin, I almost feel saavy. There is nothing here that I can’t handle. And I am alone now, in many ways. But it doesn’t feel so lonely in this bustling city with its million entertainments and nearly 14 million inhabitants. I feel content. Maybe even excited. What a new feeling (again)!
December 29, 2010
December 19, 2010
Another Mild Case of Dysentery 12/18
Now that I know this is for my blog, I feel I should be more descriptive. What is the farm like? Well, it is smaller in scale than I anticipated. Barely a half-acre of cultivated land, including a large garden growing row upon row of the same veggies, scattered fruit trees and an assortment of housing structures. Fortunately, some of the fruit trees are bearing, namely an overladen peach tree and a few mulberry trees. The fresh fruit helped to offset my hunger pains between organized meals. The buildings are clearly works of a novice hand, most of them constructed by unskilled volunteers such as myself over the last several years. The roofs are plastic siding, artfully concealed beneath the drapery of saffron-colored saris. All except the kitchen that is, where the clear plastic reveals all manner of insects scurrying along above your head (and food).
We are living in an “ecohouse,” a rather unique construction of mud and wood hoisted four meters off the ground on palm wood stilts. The first night here, a week ago now, a fantastic storm washed out part of the mud walls, bathing our backpacks in mud and water. In the wind, the whole little house sways like mad, flexible by design on its palm stilts. Last night brought another rain shower and all day today the wind has howled through the cracks, but the sway has become second nature to me now and today I found it lulled me to sleep.
The whole park is home to an undetermined number of Hare Krishna followers, the girls and women in white cotton saris and the men in saffron kurtas and dhotis. All of the Hare Krishnas have Indian names, the food is all vegetarian and cooked in Indian style (albeit without any of the spice), and the meeting halls and public places are all decorated with stenciled images of the holy Indian cow. For the first few days, I sometimes awoke confused, thinking I was in India again as someone’s lyrical Sanskrit chant floated out to me on the breeze. But no, this is certainly not India; although that distant country is so highly revered here that I am loathe to attempt to explain my own, more mundane experience there. To the Hare Krishnas here in this remote Argentine town, India is a land of perfect spirituality, full of only temples and swamis and lifelong yogis, where everyone is on a constant search for samathi (transcendence) and no one feels their hunger or poverty or the injustice of corruption or the ineffectual nature of the crippled government system. How to communicate the rivers of human feces flowing freely in the slums? The mile upon heart-rending mile of sunken-eyed children so impoverished they have ceased to dream of school? The fourteen-year backlog of the judicial system that lets rapists, murders, and thieves walk free and unmolested through the same village as their victims for over a decade?
But they are persistent and determinedly naive in their dedication to this faith, this way of life. Nearly once a day, I am engaged in a lengthy conversation about “the philosophy.” I have noticed that those volunteers who are less adept at Spanish are generally ignored, since most of the initiates do not speak any English. They are all eager to learn, although I feel conflicted about teaching them if their only goal is conversion. Regardless, I am not teaching here. Upon arrival, the Hare Krishnas seemed eager to have a teacher, but they are set in their ways and seem resentful of any personal contributions by the volunteers. I feel like nothing more than a body, quite similar to my feelings at Trader Joe’s. I feel the volunteers here are seen only as disposable, eager manual labor that should not step out of place and who should remain distinctly separate; it is hard to believe that we are actually paying a hefty fee for the privilege of being here. I so badly wanted to be a part of a community, to contribute my unique set of skills and knowledge to the betterment of the whole, but always the answer here is NO: no cooking, no English classes, no art, nothing out of the ordinary. I feel so frustrated and unappreciated.
What’s more, I have been sick for three days now. Another mild case of dysentery, I believe. Again, I think the culprit is the unclean state of the kitchen here. Helping prepare food this week, I observed countless flies, left to swarm over the cooked food sometimes for hours before it was served. There are also cockroaches, fleas from the various animals on the property, and a general lack of soap for proper sanitation. This too, brings back images of India, but I don’t think it’s any excuse. Five volunteers have been felled by this sickness in the short week we’ve been here. Those aren’t great odds. I am aching to leave. I don’t like it here and that conviction only gets stronger every day. But now I am too weak to travel, and I have to eat more of the food until I can get my strength back. I have been working on a small bowl of rice for over an hour now.
But Patrick seems reluctant to leave. Despite the inconveniences, he is in love with this stark, empty countryside, with the novelty of performing manual labor everyday, with the quaint charm of the thousands of fireflies that swarm the garden at night. It is beautiful at night, with the moon hanging huge and milky white and those thousand blinking lights among the vegetables. But it is not enough for me. I hate feeling so underutilized when I can see easy ways to improve many things here. I hate the banality of the daily labor, always the same and always hot, hard work. I hate the attitude of the Hare Krishnas towards outsiders, even if they seem peaceful and loving to one another. I hate the isolation, the lack of sanitation, and the idea that I am paying for it all. With the little amount of time I have left in Argentina, I want to find a better place. I need to.
We are living in an “ecohouse,” a rather unique construction of mud and wood hoisted four meters off the ground on palm wood stilts. The first night here, a week ago now, a fantastic storm washed out part of the mud walls, bathing our backpacks in mud and water. In the wind, the whole little house sways like mad, flexible by design on its palm stilts. Last night brought another rain shower and all day today the wind has howled through the cracks, but the sway has become second nature to me now and today I found it lulled me to sleep.
The whole park is home to an undetermined number of Hare Krishna followers, the girls and women in white cotton saris and the men in saffron kurtas and dhotis. All of the Hare Krishnas have Indian names, the food is all vegetarian and cooked in Indian style (albeit without any of the spice), and the meeting halls and public places are all decorated with stenciled images of the holy Indian cow. For the first few days, I sometimes awoke confused, thinking I was in India again as someone’s lyrical Sanskrit chant floated out to me on the breeze. But no, this is certainly not India; although that distant country is so highly revered here that I am loathe to attempt to explain my own, more mundane experience there. To the Hare Krishnas here in this remote Argentine town, India is a land of perfect spirituality, full of only temples and swamis and lifelong yogis, where everyone is on a constant search for samathi (transcendence) and no one feels their hunger or poverty or the injustice of corruption or the ineffectual nature of the crippled government system. How to communicate the rivers of human feces flowing freely in the slums? The mile upon heart-rending mile of sunken-eyed children so impoverished they have ceased to dream of school? The fourteen-year backlog of the judicial system that lets rapists, murders, and thieves walk free and unmolested through the same village as their victims for over a decade?
But they are persistent and determinedly naive in their dedication to this faith, this way of life. Nearly once a day, I am engaged in a lengthy conversation about “the philosophy.” I have noticed that those volunteers who are less adept at Spanish are generally ignored, since most of the initiates do not speak any English. They are all eager to learn, although I feel conflicted about teaching them if their only goal is conversion. Regardless, I am not teaching here. Upon arrival, the Hare Krishnas seemed eager to have a teacher, but they are set in their ways and seem resentful of any personal contributions by the volunteers. I feel like nothing more than a body, quite similar to my feelings at Trader Joe’s. I feel the volunteers here are seen only as disposable, eager manual labor that should not step out of place and who should remain distinctly separate; it is hard to believe that we are actually paying a hefty fee for the privilege of being here. I so badly wanted to be a part of a community, to contribute my unique set of skills and knowledge to the betterment of the whole, but always the answer here is NO: no cooking, no English classes, no art, nothing out of the ordinary. I feel so frustrated and unappreciated.
What’s more, I have been sick for three days now. Another mild case of dysentery, I believe. Again, I think the culprit is the unclean state of the kitchen here. Helping prepare food this week, I observed countless flies, left to swarm over the cooked food sometimes for hours before it was served. There are also cockroaches, fleas from the various animals on the property, and a general lack of soap for proper sanitation. This too, brings back images of India, but I don’t think it’s any excuse. Five volunteers have been felled by this sickness in the short week we’ve been here. Those aren’t great odds. I am aching to leave. I don’t like it here and that conviction only gets stronger every day. But now I am too weak to travel, and I have to eat more of the food until I can get my strength back. I have been working on a small bowl of rice for over an hour now.
But Patrick seems reluctant to leave. Despite the inconveniences, he is in love with this stark, empty countryside, with the novelty of performing manual labor everyday, with the quaint charm of the thousands of fireflies that swarm the garden at night. It is beautiful at night, with the moon hanging huge and milky white and those thousand blinking lights among the vegetables. But it is not enough for me. I hate feeling so underutilized when I can see easy ways to improve many things here. I hate the banality of the daily labor, always the same and always hot, hard work. I hate the attitude of the Hare Krishnas towards outsiders, even if they seem peaceful and loving to one another. I hate the isolation, the lack of sanitation, and the idea that I am paying for it all. With the little amount of time I have left in Argentina, I want to find a better place. I need to.
First Impressions of the Farm 12/11
I ask: what am I doing here? In this little “treehouse” in the middle of nowhere, Argentina. Which is different, slightly, from nowhere, Oregon or nowhere, Hawaii or nowhere, India. They each feel different, but only slightly. Perhaps this is why these sorts of places make me uncomfortable. It is the sense of unending, inescapable sameness that makes me feel lost. My first impression is that I don’t like it. I have an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach which feels like anxiety. I also feel out of place, and I don’t like that either. I feel like the teenage heroines of those stories I read when I was young, hardened city girls who get sent to their cousin/uncle/grandfather’s farm for the summer, where they learn the value of hard physical labor, and weekly showers, and that real beauty doesn’t require (or accept) heels and make-up and sparkly decorations. Was it only last night that I dressed up to join similarly dressed up girls at a downtown bar? Where I drank a slick cocktail on ice and chatted about such inanities as the best sushi in town?
December 6, 2010
Losing It
It only seems appropriate that this blog should come full circle. I just re-read my very first post here and it really broke my (already broken) heart. Let's reminisce for a moment:
"I am so grateful to have Patrick, my love, to share this experience with. I feel that from this point on, we are bound together in a way I have never tethered myself to another in the past. Now, we share the bond of having done something, together. Now, we are not only together, but making our way forward, establishing memories of a great experience (or awful, who knows?) that will last a lifetime. Now, no matter what we become in the future, we will always be each other's partner in this moment of extraordinary experience."
After months of struggle together, suddenly we are no longer together. And although it is tempting to say that this recent development has made the experience awful, it is not true. This experience has certainly made me stronger, just as this break-up inevitably will. But the end of my relationship with the man I truly loved and treasured and counted on and trusted in- my so called PARTNER- has definitely made the entire purpose of this trip seem more obscure. Why did I come here, to the end of the world, if not to live with my love and build a life together? What was the point in sacrificing so much if the end only brings... the end?
When I think about those first hazy, humid moments in Buenos Aires when I wrote those lines almost 8 months ago, I see that for me, the experience was always about being together. Because of this unwavering conviction that our love was the first priority, I allowed our relationship to consume about 95% of my time and energy here. I have spent so many- countless- hours loving and loathing and pleading and pacifying Patrick that I often felt like I didn't even know where I was. In those moments of pain and elation, we might have been on the moon or maybe Timbuktu. We might never have left home at all.
Unfortunately, I think that Patrick would have preferred it that way. From the beginning, he was afraid and reluctant to try nearly everything: making friends, teaching, applying for jobs, taking classes, finding an apartment, finding any sort of happiness. He has been determined to live like a tourist- always looking toward the flight home and his comfort zone. Over the last few months, it became frightening clear that my love was willing to do almost anything to get out of this situation. Very quickly, I was the only reason to stay, and so all his anger and frustration with himself and his circumstances were unleashed on me. Suddenly, I was the culprit who was ruining his life, instead of the lover and friend who he began this journey with. And in the end, I was left with that old clique: "It's absolutely not you, its me." But is this ever really the truth? And does it really matter, since I lose just as much (or more)?
I feel betrayed in many ways. I feel that Pat betrayed me by agreeing to embark on this adventure and then never actually committing to live it. I feel that he betrayed me by convincing me to quit my job and leave Argentina several months before we agreed upon, and then breaking up with me anyway. I feel betrayed by his behavior in the end, when he chose to make me his enemy. But I also feel that I betrayed myself. I fought for this life and this dream for a long time. It was a changeable dream that started as Africa and the Peace Corps and a solitary adventure, and after much revision, finally ended up as a delayed arrival in South America with the man I unexpectedly fell in love with while waiting to leave. But I allowed this dream to dilate into a single pinprick: my relationship. I allowed myself to ignore so much, to not experience so many unknown facets of this place, because of my stubborn conviction to be in love. And so this is the reason why this break-up feels doubly painful: because I am losing both the dream and the love.
Yet, the trip isn't quite over. We still have nearly two months before the first available flight leaves for home. Two months that just happen to include Christmas, New Year, and our would-be two year anniversary. Two of the hardest months to be suddenly, oh-so-painfully alone. And despite all his best efforts to leave, Patrick is stuck here too. So now we are faced with the momentous task of starting a new kind of relationship: friendship. In three days, we leave for the organic farm where we have committed to six weeks of work. Separate beds, but not separate lives just yet. I challenge myself to spend this time neither wallowing in depression nor obsessing about how to be friendly, but simply soaking up as much of the present as possible. And I guess I have to ask myself: would I do it again? How can I learn to balance love and my seemingly impossible, unreasonably huge dreams of living a different kind of life? Will I ever be able to find a true partner who can help me live the dream instead of reducing my world to a single ambiguous space?
I am still searching: for love, for my dream of a different sort of life, for a way to love myself, even when I'm alone. It is the search that brought me here and I guess it is my purpose in life. But from now on I think my priorities will be different: Love myself, love my life, love another.
"I am so grateful to have Patrick, my love, to share this experience with. I feel that from this point on, we are bound together in a way I have never tethered myself to another in the past. Now, we share the bond of having done something, together. Now, we are not only together, but making our way forward, establishing memories of a great experience (or awful, who knows?) that will last a lifetime. Now, no matter what we become in the future, we will always be each other's partner in this moment of extraordinary experience."
After months of struggle together, suddenly we are no longer together. And although it is tempting to say that this recent development has made the experience awful, it is not true. This experience has certainly made me stronger, just as this break-up inevitably will. But the end of my relationship with the man I truly loved and treasured and counted on and trusted in- my so called PARTNER- has definitely made the entire purpose of this trip seem more obscure. Why did I come here, to the end of the world, if not to live with my love and build a life together? What was the point in sacrificing so much if the end only brings... the end?
When I think about those first hazy, humid moments in Buenos Aires when I wrote those lines almost 8 months ago, I see that for me, the experience was always about being together. Because of this unwavering conviction that our love was the first priority, I allowed our relationship to consume about 95% of my time and energy here. I have spent so many- countless- hours loving and loathing and pleading and pacifying Patrick that I often felt like I didn't even know where I was. In those moments of pain and elation, we might have been on the moon or maybe Timbuktu. We might never have left home at all.
Unfortunately, I think that Patrick would have preferred it that way. From the beginning, he was afraid and reluctant to try nearly everything: making friends, teaching, applying for jobs, taking classes, finding an apartment, finding any sort of happiness. He has been determined to live like a tourist- always looking toward the flight home and his comfort zone. Over the last few months, it became frightening clear that my love was willing to do almost anything to get out of this situation. Very quickly, I was the only reason to stay, and so all his anger and frustration with himself and his circumstances were unleashed on me. Suddenly, I was the culprit who was ruining his life, instead of the lover and friend who he began this journey with. And in the end, I was left with that old clique: "It's absolutely not you, its me." But is this ever really the truth? And does it really matter, since I lose just as much (or more)?
I feel betrayed in many ways. I feel that Pat betrayed me by agreeing to embark on this adventure and then never actually committing to live it. I feel that he betrayed me by convincing me to quit my job and leave Argentina several months before we agreed upon, and then breaking up with me anyway. I feel betrayed by his behavior in the end, when he chose to make me his enemy. But I also feel that I betrayed myself. I fought for this life and this dream for a long time. It was a changeable dream that started as Africa and the Peace Corps and a solitary adventure, and after much revision, finally ended up as a delayed arrival in South America with the man I unexpectedly fell in love with while waiting to leave. But I allowed this dream to dilate into a single pinprick: my relationship. I allowed myself to ignore so much, to not experience so many unknown facets of this place, because of my stubborn conviction to be in love. And so this is the reason why this break-up feels doubly painful: because I am losing both the dream and the love.
Yet, the trip isn't quite over. We still have nearly two months before the first available flight leaves for home. Two months that just happen to include Christmas, New Year, and our would-be two year anniversary. Two of the hardest months to be suddenly, oh-so-painfully alone. And despite all his best efforts to leave, Patrick is stuck here too. So now we are faced with the momentous task of starting a new kind of relationship: friendship. In three days, we leave for the organic farm where we have committed to six weeks of work. Separate beds, but not separate lives just yet. I challenge myself to spend this time neither wallowing in depression nor obsessing about how to be friendly, but simply soaking up as much of the present as possible. And I guess I have to ask myself: would I do it again? How can I learn to balance love and my seemingly impossible, unreasonably huge dreams of living a different kind of life? Will I ever be able to find a true partner who can help me live the dream instead of reducing my world to a single ambiguous space?
I am still searching: for love, for my dream of a different sort of life, for a way to love myself, even when I'm alone. It is the search that brought me here and I guess it is my purpose in life. But from now on I think my priorities will be different: Love myself, love my life, love another.
December 4, 2010
Playing Tourist
Because yet another week has passed, I know I must write something here today. Because that is my promise to myself, and I've already fudged it more than once. I just don't know what to say. The truth is that my rocky relationship with Patrick is consuming so much of my time and energy that it can sometimes feel as though there is nothing else in my life. But of course, there is so much more happening, I just need a zen moment to process it all. Excuse me while I try to meditate.
Ok. So I guess I want to talk a little bit about tourists. Since Pat finally quit his hostel job with the awful schedule, we have really been trying our very best to wring the most out of Mendoza by revisting our favorite tourist activities and finally getting around to trying the ones we never had time to try before. Of course, until last week, I still had a full weekday schedule, which means that we've been playing tourist during some of the busiest times in town. But that very aspect of theatrics is what really makes our visits to tourist hotspots unique: we are "playing" at being new to Mendoza and therefore seeing the city with new eyes.
After you live somewhere abroad for even a relatively short period of time, you usually begin to exist in a sort of no-man's land: not quite tourist, not quite native. This feeling of limbo can be uncomfortable at times. Sometimes it makes me angry when local touts assume that I can't speak a word of Spanish or don't know how much the bus costs or insist on pushing some hostel on me. I mean, I walk across Mendoza several times a day, use the bus system like an old pro, and have a pretty solid grasp of the layout of the land after over 6 months here, and no: I don't care that your hostel has "free friend day", whatever the hell that means. Unfortunately, the local tourism industry is just kicking into high gear, and there are enough clueless travelers who are also wearing chacos and smearing on copious amounts of sunscreen to make me an easy target if I even get within range of a popular tourist destination.
In some places its worse than others, and expats all over the world usually struggle to avoid being lumped into the "tourist crowd" for their whole time in residence abroad. Yet after spending so much time trying to avoid being a tourist, I have begun to discover some of the benefits of voluntarily throwing your lot in with the tourist crowd. For one thing, it makes you feel really good about your language skills, knowledge of the area, and typically wider range of experiences in the place. It also makes me feel validated in my decision to live abroad, since for the first time in a long time people have been asking me "How do you do it?" instead of "why are you here?". And after wave upon wave of tourists who are innocently clueless, completely lacking any knowledge of Spanish, or just plain rude or unengaged, the tour operators are only too happy be able to show us around in their native tongue and share anecdotes about living here. Occasionally, this even translates into discounts or free stuff!
But probably the best part about playing tourist in your own town is that you get to interact with an incredibly diverse range of people who are so awe-inspired by the place you are currently living, they have traveled around the world just spend a day or a week in your stomping grounds. It is humbling and fascinating to see Mendoza all shiny and new, through the eyes of the tourists who are just passing through. And at that moment, it really feels great to be able to say: "yeah, I live here."
As our time in Mendoza comes to a close, I feel honored to say that I called this place home, even for a little while. And I can appreciate all the amazing Mendocinians who constantly make me feel like a novice as much as the tourists who make me feel like a hero, because in different ways they each challenge me to be a better individual and appreciate this unique experience more.
ps*** Now that we're on the move again, I've allowed myself to begin dreaming of all the things I am looking forward to in the US. And sad to say it, but Tillamook cheddar cheese is still number one. Perhaps I need to play tourist in Oregon too, so that I can get some perspective on this growing obsession...
Ok. So I guess I want to talk a little bit about tourists. Since Pat finally quit his hostel job with the awful schedule, we have really been trying our very best to wring the most out of Mendoza by revisting our favorite tourist activities and finally getting around to trying the ones we never had time to try before. Of course, until last week, I still had a full weekday schedule, which means that we've been playing tourist during some of the busiest times in town. But that very aspect of theatrics is what really makes our visits to tourist hotspots unique: we are "playing" at being new to Mendoza and therefore seeing the city with new eyes.
After you live somewhere abroad for even a relatively short period of time, you usually begin to exist in a sort of no-man's land: not quite tourist, not quite native. This feeling of limbo can be uncomfortable at times. Sometimes it makes me angry when local touts assume that I can't speak a word of Spanish or don't know how much the bus costs or insist on pushing some hostel on me. I mean, I walk across Mendoza several times a day, use the bus system like an old pro, and have a pretty solid grasp of the layout of the land after over 6 months here, and no: I don't care that your hostel has "free friend day", whatever the hell that means. Unfortunately, the local tourism industry is just kicking into high gear, and there are enough clueless travelers who are also wearing chacos and smearing on copious amounts of sunscreen to make me an easy target if I even get within range of a popular tourist destination.
In some places its worse than others, and expats all over the world usually struggle to avoid being lumped into the "tourist crowd" for their whole time in residence abroad. Yet after spending so much time trying to avoid being a tourist, I have begun to discover some of the benefits of voluntarily throwing your lot in with the tourist crowd. For one thing, it makes you feel really good about your language skills, knowledge of the area, and typically wider range of experiences in the place. It also makes me feel validated in my decision to live abroad, since for the first time in a long time people have been asking me "How do you do it?" instead of "why are you here?". And after wave upon wave of tourists who are innocently clueless, completely lacking any knowledge of Spanish, or just plain rude or unengaged, the tour operators are only too happy be able to show us around in their native tongue and share anecdotes about living here. Occasionally, this even translates into discounts or free stuff!
But probably the best part about playing tourist in your own town is that you get to interact with an incredibly diverse range of people who are so awe-inspired by the place you are currently living, they have traveled around the world just spend a day or a week in your stomping grounds. It is humbling and fascinating to see Mendoza all shiny and new, through the eyes of the tourists who are just passing through. And at that moment, it really feels great to be able to say: "yeah, I live here."
As our time in Mendoza comes to a close, I feel honored to say that I called this place home, even for a little while. And I can appreciate all the amazing Mendocinians who constantly make me feel like a novice as much as the tourists who make me feel like a hero, because in different ways they each challenge me to be a better individual and appreciate this unique experience more.
ps*** Now that we're on the move again, I've allowed myself to begin dreaming of all the things I am looking forward to in the US. And sad to say it, but Tillamook cheddar cheese is still number one. Perhaps I need to play tourist in Oregon too, so that I can get some perspective on this growing obsession...
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