Saturday, 26th o September 1998
Hurricane news: We're fine... well if you count being without electricity and water for a week. It was just like camping. NOT!! Civilization doesn't lend itself to camping very easily. What I wouldn't have given for a tent, a campfire, and a hole in the ground (for you know what). Cities just weren't made to be without water and electricity.
What can I say. It was very impressive. I've not seen anything like it in my life. Right now it looks like winter has struck this Caribbean paradise. What trees ARE left don't have any leaves. Normally urban sprawl is just barely kept in check by the jungle seeking to reclaim the constructs of man. Now, I look out and it seems that humankind has won, our defenses have certainly proved themselves over natural selection.
It's really sad, but all you see is concrete. "My God, is there really this much city?" Condado window has 43 cargo containers worth of glass on it's way from New Jersey ready to install this coming week. Soon the skyscrapers will have their quick repairs, electricity will come back, and we will be on our feet completely by the end of the year, while the jungle will limp slowly back within years. That is if we don't find something to do with the bare spots in the meantime. "Hey I never noticed that nice spot over there. Won't that make a nice McDonalds."
In reality the humans here have lost very little. Perhaps we have had a bit of inconvenience. And maybe we will finally learn to put the electrical system underground, as the power poles took heavy a heavy toll. Then the next hurricane might just pass us by, and we won't even notice it was here.
In truth, it threw everything it had at us, and we're still here. I think there were only a couple of deaths (heart attacks I think). The important lesson here is that this horrendous force of nature was thrown at us almost as if to say, "Hey you!! Pay attention, I can still kick your ass, " and it almost got overlooked. What people really worried about was the rotting food in the fridge, the unflushed toilets, the unshowered bodies, and long lines at McDonalds (they had power generators).
While I'm glad we live in the twentieth century and the loss of life wasn't worse, and most people can weather an event like this pretty well, I just wonder if we're missing something. Is the abstraction almost complete now. Will the bubble of urban life sustain us so completely and exclusively that we'll lose all connection... and just float away.
I know this is a weird way to portray a hurricane, but I can't help but feel like it's all in slow motion, no big deal, just going on outside the bubble. It's all so surreal.
But not to worry, today the electricity and water came back on. Looks like we'll have air conditioning tonight.
Saturday, 19th o September 1998
I'm talking to myself more and more these days. I have this Puerto Rican friend that keeps me company. He's in there with all my other voices. There are these personalities that I have inside of me, different voices that rise to meet different situations. There's African-American Jim, the one that feels comfortable in African-American culture using the vocal cant the hand mannerisms and the manner of so many of the people I've grown up with. There's blue collar Jim, the one that can listen and understand why management (or officers in the military) are such know-nothings/know-everythings that do little but live in air conditioned offices and fuck with the guys who do the real work. I can understand why people buy lottery tickets, complain about their jobs, scrape by, harbor the thought in the back of their minds that they don't measure up, that someone else has the power. I listen to their conspiracy theories and after putting Skeptic Jim away, I actually learn quite a bit. I walk away with new respect, new understanding, and a greater appreciation for Blue Collar Jim and all the things he helps me with. I've come to realize the past few days that I've got the heart of a blue collar guy and the mind of an intellectual. I love good wine, fine music, art, and philosophy, but I really love it all. I don't use them as talismans to protect myself from the rest of society, the part that actually makes it move.
So there's Puerto Rican Jim, the one that calmly soothes me in the mist of small minded Puerto Rican drivers, or store clerks, or while people are shoving past you in line. I let forth a silent scream, the internal battle clearly visible on my face, "They are so small minded. You've got to have order, forethought, planning, organization. Rules are made to be followed, not bent into invisibility. Why even have them then? Arrghghghhh!!!!" my brain screams at me flooding the reasoning processes.
"Listen, Jim, my Puerto Rican voice says, in a somewhat irritated voice, "What is it that you have in your world? Do you have order, productivity, and prosperity? But how often do you socialize with people. How often do you show compassion for those around you. You see someone on the side of the street with car trouble. Do you help or do you think that AAA will take care of it? You think of consequences. Who is this person? Do I know them? What if they rob me? You plan your savings, squirrel it away for a rainy day that never comes. You hold yourself inside guarding it from the outside, saving it for some eventuality. Your feet are slower to dance, your voice reluctant to sing, your arms heavy to show affection, and your heart is hard and skeptical. Such is the nature of your Protestant country. It's your work ethic.
We, however, live life with immediacy. We don't save money. We spent it. We dance, we sing, we say "buen provecho" (bon appetit) to complete strangers. We stop to help, we listen to the problems of a hurrying father and respond with our hearts rather than with our heads. Yes, we get burned, and people scam us. They lie to get ahead, take advantage of our good nature, but it's who we are and we are willing to pay the price. It's just a different way of thinking, Jim. Live now or live later. It's all about what you chose. Sure we drive like crazies, and we'd cut off our own mother to get ahead a couple of seconds, but that's just our passion talking. Sure there are things to work on, but in general you've got to look at it with an open heart and mind. It can't just be in your American context. You've got to see our context and realize the good things that come from our manner our culture and our Puerto Rican soul.
I must admit the first time he startled me with that in the car, I felt really bad about all the curses I was mentally issuing to my fellow drivers. He shamed me, and I hope he keeps my blood pressure down.
It was really in that moment that I began to feel what I had already thought. Total chaos is never productive, but neither is total order. Americans err on the side of order sanitizing life to a point that it's as tasteless as a Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast. Puerto Ricans run the dangerous gauntlet of disorder to the point of overwhelming positive productivity. However, with the right mix, chaos brings unexpected delights, serendipitous relationships that you might not have chosen consciously, parts of yourself that you might not have known. I might never have met Puerto Rican Jim, even though he lived inside me from birth. With order as well comes an ability to deal with those pieces, make sense of them, put them in their context and not be swept away by them.
I guess, it was a bit rocky there for a bit, but I am continually reminded of how beautiful lack of control actually is. It's shaping me in ways I would never have suspected. It's hard, but believe me, vale la pena (it is worth the effort).
Saturday, 19th o September 1998
Unai, Oroitz, Me, and Iker in the train station leaving The Basque Country |
We left our friends and the Basque Country with heavy heart. I think in the end it was harder on them though, because their place is so tranquil, so unchanging. We swept in with a whoosh, created a world around us, made friends, changed the landscape so to speak and then we were gone. My friend, Iker, has written to me that when he and his girlfriend go by our old place they always lament that they can't stop by to say hi, or have a meal. Their lives are the same, Iker still an electrician, Mari Fran and Oroitz students, and Unai an engineer. The hole stays there in physical form, leaving only our own to be carried around in our hearts.
Mari Fran, Laura, and Arantxa in the train station |
In truth, it's been very difficult and tiring these past few months. I haven't felt like corresponding, writing, talking. I've felt like just leaving everything behind, shuck off all the responsibilities of a new life and just... hell, I would've been happy being homeless for a while. I don't know if any of you have had an exchange experience, going abroad for a year or two and then returning home (or in my case another foreign country), but with all the changes and challenges, treading water, swimming against the current, when you pull yourself up onto the surf of something familiar it's all you can do to lie there and heave. In our case lying there couldn't be an option because the tide was coming in quick and we had to move... but through it all the tiredness didn't go away. I think even as I sit here I find myself fatigued. I've been sleeping long hours, feeling drained during the day, having little will to write or communicate myself in an emotional way. Too many times my emotions have been exploding in anger (sorry Laura), frustration, and empty fretting.
I think that women have different release mechanisms. The most common is crying. We men find it difficult to do sometimes. I have to admit that I usually feel better after a good cry, but perhaps because of our socialization, we tend to lash out on the offensive. Crying is such a simple personal release. It tends to invoke in those around you empathy and a call to action. Anger and frustration tend to just make everyone feel like shit. That's true, but I still find it hard to cope sometimes with emotions that I'm not used to. You've got to have control of your life. You've got to understand it and know your place in it, shape it and make it your own. When you've been away from what you might have called your "regular" life, it's difficult to cope in this new place that you've come to call your "temporary life."
I remember a time when I was in the military doing my basic training which consisted of no sleep, crawling through the mud, being yelled at, carrying forty pounds of gear, being cold wet and basically miserable. Quickly, a time arrives when it's not so bad when a simple truth reveals itself to you that "this is your life." It's really so simple, and a smile comes over your face. Even though you haven't bathed in more than a week you're eating it up and asking for more. In intense circumstances such as military training, you get to meet the challenges in a very visceral and immediate manner. The lesson then becomes, "your life is here." You've got to suck it up or quit and how can you quit your life?
I guess the lessons of trial are the very same whether they are emotional or physical or both. It's just that things in the emotional world are so very much harder to get a handle on. The enemy isn't so toe to toe with you on the emotional battlefield. He's snipes at you from a shadowy grove of trees, sets booby traps that you trip over and over and over.
Monday, 7th o September 1998
Laura looking very content in Michigan at my grandmother's house.
Where to start, where to start? It's been a while I know, but life can be so demanding (as I'm sure you know). We've been getting our consulting business under way for the past four months. Looks like things are going well there (but I don't plan to bore you with the details...actually, it's myself that I'm not ready to bore yet, besides there's not much to tell as of yet.) First, a picture of mama Laura.
And I'll leave it there for now. You know how it is getting back under way. I've got to start small and work up. Let it be known that I will update on a more regular basis (now that I've got a fast and convenient desktop computer again.
Wednesday, 1st o April 1998
Howdy from atop an old military fort in Barcelona
Hey it's been a while. Now that we're back from vacation, and Tom Chen's visit has ended, I have a bit of time to put together my thoughts and get it all down here for you to enjoy. First, I left you hanging with my thoughts on sloths. Eh? Yeah, that's what I said, "sloths," the sweetest creatures living. There it was climbing the branches, very slowly, very carefully. It seemed not to want to molest the branches not even one bit. It was moving with such care, not what we're taught in the popular culture, that sloths are just lazy. We even have a name for lazy people, "slothful." But for me, there couldn't be a description more beautiful in my book, more reverent, more respectful than to say someone is like a sloth.
So there's this sloth, climbing the branches with such deliberation, and care. She reached out to pass from one tree to another, gingerly edging her way, using her weight to bend to the next tree. Little by little, she was able to grasp one of the shoots from the adjacent tree. She slid quietly further up and out, edging, easing, ever so gingerly. Our sloth grasped the ajoining branch better as she moved her weight to it. Once she had made her way to the new branch, she continued up maintaining her grasp on the one that she had passed from, up and up and up she went until she could release it with the least amount of spring. When she finally let go, it swayed back into place as if brushed by a gentle breeze.
And the sloth winked and smiled, her face shining with sweetness and peace while above the monkeys screeched and leapt from tree to tree, howling and rending leaves and branches.
How funny to think that we are descended from those noisy irreverent little creatures.