This phrase is probably the running joke in a million job sites around the world. It's that catch-all for the things you can never IMAGINE being called on to do in the course of a work day...but yet they happen.
I had one today. Friday afternoon is rec/PE and crafts day for the kids; the older ones have rec while the little ones work on some arts and crafts, and then the two groups switch, and then we all have a snack and go home. It's a great day. Despite the pretty strong wind today, 99% of the rec time went without any major incident, barring the usual "so-and-so cheated!" accusations and someone getting pegged a little too hard by an errant ball. We made the mid-afternoon switch-off, and Escuelita I came outside. They, too, played well, and barring having to chase the occasional kid and bring them back to the game (which isn't exactly out of the normal...), it went spectactularly.
And then, just before snack time, it happened. The kids had to make an attempt at shooting a basket in the basketball hoop before going to wash their hands, and on the last person, the ball got caught up on the ledge, exactly behind the hoop and goal board. Somebody had to go up and get it...and I'll bet you can guess who ended up with the job.
Fabiana: "Kevin, you don't mind going up there and getting the ball, right?"
Me: "Sure, no problem - where's the ladder?"
Fabiana: "Oh, we don't have one. You have to climb up the back door onto the roof and walk from there."
Me: "WHAT?!?!"
Suffice it to say I had never been asked to climb up a door onto the roof of a building before, and I was a little unsure as to how this was to work without me falling and breaking a tibia. Fabiana and I went around the other side of the building to the aforementioned back door, and the plan was laid out for me in more detail. Fabiana would hold the door still (taking care of concern number one: "how is the door going to stay in place while I'm climbing it?"), and I was to use the deadbolt as my first foothold. From there, it was a matter of climbing up the metal bars across the window of the door and grabbing the lowest part of the roof, then getting myself up onto the roof from there.
I am not necessarily the world's biggest fan of climbing up things. I had a near-phobia of ladders/climbing as a child, and the phrase "acrophobic" HAS been used to describe my relationship with heights in the past. I've gotten past a lot of that, in no small part thanks to certain African situations in which my options were "climb up this ladder that doesn't even look like a ladder and sleep on the roof on top of a cliff" or "certain death." Nonetheless, I was still a smidge nervous during the execution of this feat. However, I made it up to the roof, and walked over to the ledge: step one, complete.
Step two: get the ball out of the wire cage behind the basketball goal, without sliding off the slanted ledge, with an audience of 6-10 year olds yelling "don't fall!" I, carefully, walked across the ledge to the goal, and discovered that the ball was in the dead center of the cage - just barely in my reach. I managed to snake my hand into the cage and, with a finger tip, roll the ball close enough to get a hand around it, pulled it out, tossed it down, and step two was accomplished.
However, much like every other mission in life, this one wouldn't really be over until I got "home", and as any fan of movies knows, this is without fail the hardest part. If climbing up a door onto a roof was a little tricky-seeming, climbing down was doubly so, as the gap between the roof and door required a blind, backwards, "I hope to God my foot is going to find the top of this door" step of faith off the roof. I even prayed a short, but exceptionally earnest (and not fit for ELCA blog publication) prayer as I got ready to make my descent...and it went off without too much problem, other than not being to find the deadbolt with my foot and saying "oh well, I'm close enough" and jumping down off the door a few inches higher than I'd have liked.
My Lilliputian crowd was already there, waiting for me. They even chanted my name as I helped usher them in to the dining room for snack-time (whether for my rooftop heroics or snack-time, I don't know). I felt like a war hero, or an astronaut returning from the moon. All in a day's work, kids - just doin' my job.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Focus, Che, Focus
The very fact that I am writing this sentence is proof of how difficult the theme of this entry is. Winter has arrived, not spectacularly with thunderings and a deluge, but humbly and slyly. It just showed up one night, fog-bearded and already tired of itself, and decided to stay. It brought us a few presents, too – the flu, the need to buy a space heater (in part a response to the first gift), gray skies, winds blowing out of the south. The sky today makes me think of Seamus Heaney’s comment on the old Icelandic epics – “the poetry of the North Atlantic.” Perhaps the poetry of the South Atlantic, or at least its winter incarnation, is the sense of late May restlessness in the wind, in the way people fidget and pull their jacket in just a little bit tighter at the bus stop in the morning, in the moments spent daydreaming about places with a little more momentary appeal.
Mali has been on my mind a lot. It’s the anti-Montevideo – desert, endless skies, timeless indigenous cultures from the Dogon (who’ve been living on the same cliffs for a thousand years) to the Touareg (desert nomads fighting, often literally, to maintain their lifestyle in the face of modernization and globalization), and a lot of sunshine. Sometimes, when I look out the window, my mind tries to convince me that there are camels just beyond my view, or a hawker waiting to sell me mudcloth or indigo from his family’s village.
In other words, it’s been hard to stay focused for the past week or two. Suddenly, those things I didn’t have to devote that much time to a few months ago – seminary, the Peru trip in July, arranging visits with family, friends, and supporting congregations – have become real issues in need of time and attention. The catch: I have fewer than six weeks before I leave my site to travel to Peru and meet up with the group from TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod. I am running out of time. That sand, that glorious Saharan sand, sent straight from Timbuktu to my daydreams, is passing through the hourglass on its way to my mind. Every day when I go to mark the finished day off my calendar, I’m reminded of just how quickly my year here is coming to an end.
Yesterday, Wilma and I were talking in the church office about this. I remember how slowly the first few months passed. My brain was still desperately trying to recall how to piece together coherent sentences, and then conversations, in Spanish; I didn’t know how to do anything work-wise; I didn’t know anyone, and the language struggle was only making that harder. Time dragged; every day felt like a week. Then, sometime in early November, the ice in my brain thawed and the water began to flow again. Carrying on a conversation in Spanish no longer felt like a torture devised by the Inquisition (perhaps “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!” is the best tagline for my language struggles of September and October), work frustrations became “this isn’t going to plan” as opposed to “what IS the plan?” and I began to feel surrounded by friends rather than just sympathetic strangers. And, just like a river, the time began to flow – first a trickle, then a slow-moving stream, and then the Amazon, forcing its way on to the sea.
And now, I can practically see the breakers – Texas and my pre-Uruguay life, Chicago, who knows what surprises. I find myself asking myself the question – “what now?” How do I make these last few weeks count?
The answer came to me, as it often has this year, on Wednesday afternoon with the kids. One of the young ones, Federico, has glommed on to me. He always saves the spot next to him on the bench for me, and without fail, always ends up resting up against me within 15 minutes. There are the others, too. We always have a greeting/welcome song at the start of our time with the kids, and between the verses we go around and shake hands, joke around a little bit with the kids, etc. One of the girls, Gretel, has March acted very afraid of me since she joined us in March – I’ll stick out my hand, and she’ll shake her head no and look away. But last week...she shook my hand with a big smile on her face. After the welcome song, we listened to a story that came with a song (a monkey cumbia). We all got up and danced to the song (yes, me too), and everyone, every single kid (and the three adults, and even Milton when he popped in the room to see how things were going), danced like a goofball and belted out the song (and occasional monkey noise) with gusto. Everyone danced together, too – people took turns spinning others and being spinned, we had a conga (erm, cumbia) line at one point.
I guess that’s the answer to my question. When the monkey cumbia is blaring, you dance. When the students show up with English, North American or African Geography, History, Chemistry, Music, or Computer Science/Information and Research Skills homework, you work with them. When the cook is looking bored in the kitchen, you chat and joke around with her. When the big life questions come up in Bible Study, you talk. When the time is running short, you don’t just watch the sand slip away and feel poorly about it. You accept, reluctantly at times, that such is life, and you make the most of what you have, and you save your Dogon Country daydreams for later
Mali has been on my mind a lot. It’s the anti-Montevideo – desert, endless skies, timeless indigenous cultures from the Dogon (who’ve been living on the same cliffs for a thousand years) to the Touareg (desert nomads fighting, often literally, to maintain their lifestyle in the face of modernization and globalization), and a lot of sunshine. Sometimes, when I look out the window, my mind tries to convince me that there are camels just beyond my view, or a hawker waiting to sell me mudcloth or indigo from his family’s village.
In other words, it’s been hard to stay focused for the past week or two. Suddenly, those things I didn’t have to devote that much time to a few months ago – seminary, the Peru trip in July, arranging visits with family, friends, and supporting congregations – have become real issues in need of time and attention. The catch: I have fewer than six weeks before I leave my site to travel to Peru and meet up with the group from TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod. I am running out of time. That sand, that glorious Saharan sand, sent straight from Timbuktu to my daydreams, is passing through the hourglass on its way to my mind. Every day when I go to mark the finished day off my calendar, I’m reminded of just how quickly my year here is coming to an end.
Yesterday, Wilma and I were talking in the church office about this. I remember how slowly the first few months passed. My brain was still desperately trying to recall how to piece together coherent sentences, and then conversations, in Spanish; I didn’t know how to do anything work-wise; I didn’t know anyone, and the language struggle was only making that harder. Time dragged; every day felt like a week. Then, sometime in early November, the ice in my brain thawed and the water began to flow again. Carrying on a conversation in Spanish no longer felt like a torture devised by the Inquisition (perhaps “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!” is the best tagline for my language struggles of September and October), work frustrations became “this isn’t going to plan” as opposed to “what IS the plan?” and I began to feel surrounded by friends rather than just sympathetic strangers. And, just like a river, the time began to flow – first a trickle, then a slow-moving stream, and then the Amazon, forcing its way on to the sea.
And now, I can practically see the breakers – Texas and my pre-Uruguay life, Chicago, who knows what surprises. I find myself asking myself the question – “what now?” How do I make these last few weeks count?
The answer came to me, as it often has this year, on Wednesday afternoon with the kids. One of the young ones, Federico, has glommed on to me. He always saves the spot next to him on the bench for me, and without fail, always ends up resting up against me within 15 minutes. There are the others, too. We always have a greeting/welcome song at the start of our time with the kids, and between the verses we go around and shake hands, joke around a little bit with the kids, etc. One of the girls, Gretel, has March acted very afraid of me since she joined us in March – I’ll stick out my hand, and she’ll shake her head no and look away. But last week...she shook my hand with a big smile on her face. After the welcome song, we listened to a story that came with a song (a monkey cumbia). We all got up and danced to the song (yes, me too), and everyone, every single kid (and the three adults, and even Milton when he popped in the room to see how things were going), danced like a goofball and belted out the song (and occasional monkey noise) with gusto. Everyone danced together, too – people took turns spinning others and being spinned, we had a conga (erm, cumbia) line at one point.
I guess that’s the answer to my question. When the monkey cumbia is blaring, you dance. When the students show up with English, North American or African Geography, History, Chemistry, Music, or Computer Science/Information and Research Skills homework, you work with them. When the cook is looking bored in the kitchen, you chat and joke around with her. When the big life questions come up in Bible Study, you talk. When the time is running short, you don’t just watch the sand slip away and feel poorly about it. You accept, reluctantly at times, that such is life, and you make the most of what you have, and you save your Dogon Country daydreams for later
Thursday, May 22, 2008
May Newsletter Entry
This month´s topic: simplicity.
It´s amazing how often we use, and hear, the word "simple." Keep it simple, stupid. The simple life. This whatchamacallit is simply amazing. Simple minds, simple pleasures. Simply irresistable. Plain and simple. For the older or old-fashionedly polite, there's talk sometimes about the "simple" aunt or cousin who has the mind of a child in an adult's body. The word "simple" is so used that we sometimes forget what it really means - simply put, simple is simply meaningless to the average person in the U.S.
So, you can imagine the sort of questions I had in my mind when I was asked to live "simply" during my year as a YAGM. How simple is simple, after all? Was this mandate to live simply a rigid rule, or a set of basic guidelines and principles? Is simple what the poorest people I work with would consider what's needed to live, or a middle class person? Is there a universal form of simple living, or does it depend on social and cultural context?
The simple life of this YAGM has been a journey. In order to play it safe, I began the year living as simply, or perhaps more accurately, as cheaply as was feasible. Why take a bus when you can walk, even if it IS 10 C and raining? No, I don't need to buy meat - beans have plenty of protein and are better for you anyhow. My own mate and associated items isn't necessary - everyone else has them, and in the morning at work, the yerba is just a part of operating costs, so it's not even as if I'm taking advantage of people. Sampling local goodies, like beer, pizza with cheese, alfajores...not that necessary. New clothes? Naw, don't need those, either, even if my wardrobe isn't suited to the climate.
Six or seven weeks into this sort of simple-to-the-point-of-monastic-vows lifestyle, I faced my first simple living crisis. For our choir concert in Colonia, I was expected to have black pants. I didn't own any. I either had to buy pants or else throw off our groove and, let's be honest, be the subject of jokes from Seba and Fafre. So, I bought pants...I paid more than I would've really liked, but so it goes. I took care of an honest need, and did it in a fairly budget-friendly way...and I didn't feel bad about it afterwards, or like a total rich yanqui. I did what an Uruguayan would've done if they didn't know anyone their size to borrow from. Simple life lesson number one: Living simply isn't being a skinflint; it's being a wise, thoughtful steward.
I started to wonder if I was REALLY living the right sort of simply after the pants episode. After all, even the just-scraping-by doorman in the building was able to spring for a pizza now and again, and the broke college students always seemed to have bus fare, plus ground beef and cerveza in the fridge. Of course, things were seldom done alone - my grupo de jóvenes friends would never spend 300 pesos on a meal for just one person. That amount of money would be spent to make one or two big dishes of insert-your-favorite-food-here, and then the whole gang would come over and bring a drink or bag of chips - everyone brought something to the table. Then, the next weekend, someone else would have a party, and the person who'd shelled out the most bucks and effort for last week's just brought a 20 peso bag of chips, and ya está. There were (well, are) the meals, too, where one person would do the grocery shopping, save the receipt, and after dinner, divide the amount by the number of guests and ask for, say, 30 pesos a head. From all of this, I learned simple life lesson number two: living simply means living in community - sharing, giving, and trusting that other people will share and give, too.
Life got more fun after that, suffice it to say. Then, the holidays rolled around, which raised two new themes - gift-giving and traveling. I decided to try my hand at making Christmas gifts; after all, you always hear of people doing it and then talking about how much more rewarding it was than just buying a gift card (much less an ugly sweater or fruitcake), and what better time to try it out than while living in another country? I made salsa for Wilma and Milton's families, picture cds for family and friends back home, and "free-dinner" coupons for my housemates. I'm not likely to go back to the world of just buying a quick gift and calling it done. I felt connected to the people I gave gifts to - it wasn't a soulless card, for a change. It wasn't safe, though - after all, a $20 giftcard to your favorite store is guaranted to please, unlike "hey, I'm making you the dinner of your choice - hope I know how to cook it!" I learned lesson three: living simply is being willing to take a risk now and then.
Then, it was time to travel. How does one travel simply? I did what I normally did - stayed in hostels. You meet cool people and save money - so long as there's not a snorer in the room, it's great. I looked for free, or at least cheap, things to do - I went on day-hikes, walked around the towns I was in, hung out with people from my hostel. That enabled some sharing of costs for things like, say, a beer, or a pizza at a restaurant. I tried to figure out the free museum days for various place I visited and planned, within reason, accordingly - why pay today to get into a museum you can go see for free tomorrow? As for food, eat where the normal people eat - the food's probably better there, anyway. I also found bus services that included food, so I got transportation and a meal for one price. For those days spent hiking, there's nothing wrong with packing a sandwich, some fruit, and a bottle of water. And, you know what? My two big trips in South America, plus my African travels and Eurobackpacking-on-a-bidget have been way more fun than the three, pre-packaged, live like a tourist excursions in Europe I did in high school (well, 2 in high school, and once chaperoning for my high school as a college sophomore). Lesson four - living simply when you travel lets you see the world in much richer ways, and brings you closer to the people you meet along the way.
So, that all was some time ago, and besides, we all know that nobody has four lessons on their list - it's three lessons, or five lessons. Not four - either shut up early or talk until we come full circle. The summer (well, MY summer) rolled on without simple life difficulties, and then came fall. We were blessed in that the fall was long, warm, and sunny...but I knew winter was coming. Short, dreary days, lots of rain, plenty of cold. I mentioned, several lessons ago, that my wardrobe wasn't suited for the end of the Montevideano winter. That didn't magically change during the spring and summer. I had to go clothes shopping. I combined my shopping with a trip to Argentina, since clothes are cheaper there. I didn't go to boutiques and hit up large, bargain-friendly stores...and the Salvation Army for a coat. So, we're set for winter...but there was one thing lacking. Many people who know me also know that, perhaps, my feet tend to sweat a lot when they get closed up inside shoes. Wthout going into a ton of detail here, this results in rather odiforous feet, socks, and shoes, and the latter item just perpetuates the cycle. In summer, this isn't a problem - I wear sandals, my feet air dry, and no problem is had. However, in the winter, when wearing sandals outdoors would probably result in a lot of cold, wet foot discomfort, they get closed up all day in my boots, and así viene el problema. So...I bought the Uruguayan equivalent of Gold Bond powder to dry my feet and shoes while wiping out odor. And so, I learned lesson five, which is really just a corollary of lesson one: simple living doesn't come at the expense of self-care; you yourself are an asset to protect and care for, not simply a valueless blob of matter. Being a good steward means being a good steward of your body, too.
Living simply isn't always the easiest path. After all, it does require sacrifices - not buying this book I want today so I can get produce at the fair tomorrow. It requires budgeting, and (that hardest of things) self-discipline. But...it pays off. Sure, it saves money. You learn what you need to live, what you want to make living easier, and what you want simply because it's a luxury and you want it, and you learn how to prioritize those things. You learn that yes, you can in fact use empanada shells to make tortillas for 1/3 the price you'd have paid for the imported tortillas at the store. Even better, you learn to be part of a community. You learn that life is people and your times with them, and not the things you have or the money you spend.
It´s amazing how often we use, and hear, the word "simple." Keep it simple, stupid. The simple life. This whatchamacallit is simply amazing. Simple minds, simple pleasures. Simply irresistable. Plain and simple. For the older or old-fashionedly polite, there's talk sometimes about the "simple" aunt or cousin who has the mind of a child in an adult's body. The word "simple" is so used that we sometimes forget what it really means - simply put, simple is simply meaningless to the average person in the U.S.
So, you can imagine the sort of questions I had in my mind when I was asked to live "simply" during my year as a YAGM. How simple is simple, after all? Was this mandate to live simply a rigid rule, or a set of basic guidelines and principles? Is simple what the poorest people I work with would consider what's needed to live, or a middle class person? Is there a universal form of simple living, or does it depend on social and cultural context?
The simple life of this YAGM has been a journey. In order to play it safe, I began the year living as simply, or perhaps more accurately, as cheaply as was feasible. Why take a bus when you can walk, even if it IS 10 C and raining? No, I don't need to buy meat - beans have plenty of protein and are better for you anyhow. My own mate and associated items isn't necessary - everyone else has them, and in the morning at work, the yerba is just a part of operating costs, so it's not even as if I'm taking advantage of people. Sampling local goodies, like beer, pizza with cheese, alfajores...not that necessary. New clothes? Naw, don't need those, either, even if my wardrobe isn't suited to the climate.
Six or seven weeks into this sort of simple-to-the-point-of-monastic-vows lifestyle, I faced my first simple living crisis. For our choir concert in Colonia, I was expected to have black pants. I didn't own any. I either had to buy pants or else throw off our groove and, let's be honest, be the subject of jokes from Seba and Fafre. So, I bought pants...I paid more than I would've really liked, but so it goes. I took care of an honest need, and did it in a fairly budget-friendly way...and I didn't feel bad about it afterwards, or like a total rich yanqui. I did what an Uruguayan would've done if they didn't know anyone their size to borrow from. Simple life lesson number one: Living simply isn't being a skinflint; it's being a wise, thoughtful steward.
I started to wonder if I was REALLY living the right sort of simply after the pants episode. After all, even the just-scraping-by doorman in the building was able to spring for a pizza now and again, and the broke college students always seemed to have bus fare, plus ground beef and cerveza in the fridge. Of course, things were seldom done alone - my grupo de jóvenes friends would never spend 300 pesos on a meal for just one person. That amount of money would be spent to make one or two big dishes of insert-your-favorite-food-here, and then the whole gang would come over and bring a drink or bag of chips - everyone brought something to the table. Then, the next weekend, someone else would have a party, and the person who'd shelled out the most bucks and effort for last week's just brought a 20 peso bag of chips, and ya está. There were (well, are) the meals, too, where one person would do the grocery shopping, save the receipt, and after dinner, divide the amount by the number of guests and ask for, say, 30 pesos a head. From all of this, I learned simple life lesson number two: living simply means living in community - sharing, giving, and trusting that other people will share and give, too.
Life got more fun after that, suffice it to say. Then, the holidays rolled around, which raised two new themes - gift-giving and traveling. I decided to try my hand at making Christmas gifts; after all, you always hear of people doing it and then talking about how much more rewarding it was than just buying a gift card (much less an ugly sweater or fruitcake), and what better time to try it out than while living in another country? I made salsa for Wilma and Milton's families, picture cds for family and friends back home, and "free-dinner" coupons for my housemates. I'm not likely to go back to the world of just buying a quick gift and calling it done. I felt connected to the people I gave gifts to - it wasn't a soulless card, for a change. It wasn't safe, though - after all, a $20 giftcard to your favorite store is guaranted to please, unlike "hey, I'm making you the dinner of your choice - hope I know how to cook it!" I learned lesson three: living simply is being willing to take a risk now and then.
Then, it was time to travel. How does one travel simply? I did what I normally did - stayed in hostels. You meet cool people and save money - so long as there's not a snorer in the room, it's great. I looked for free, or at least cheap, things to do - I went on day-hikes, walked around the towns I was in, hung out with people from my hostel. That enabled some sharing of costs for things like, say, a beer, or a pizza at a restaurant. I tried to figure out the free museum days for various place I visited and planned, within reason, accordingly - why pay today to get into a museum you can go see for free tomorrow? As for food, eat where the normal people eat - the food's probably better there, anyway. I also found bus services that included food, so I got transportation and a meal for one price. For those days spent hiking, there's nothing wrong with packing a sandwich, some fruit, and a bottle of water. And, you know what? My two big trips in South America, plus my African travels and Eurobackpacking-on-a-bidget have been way more fun than the three, pre-packaged, live like a tourist excursions in Europe I did in high school (well, 2 in high school, and once chaperoning for my high school as a college sophomore). Lesson four - living simply when you travel lets you see the world in much richer ways, and brings you closer to the people you meet along the way.
So, that all was some time ago, and besides, we all know that nobody has four lessons on their list - it's three lessons, or five lessons. Not four - either shut up early or talk until we come full circle. The summer (well, MY summer) rolled on without simple life difficulties, and then came fall. We were blessed in that the fall was long, warm, and sunny...but I knew winter was coming. Short, dreary days, lots of rain, plenty of cold. I mentioned, several lessons ago, that my wardrobe wasn't suited for the end of the Montevideano winter. That didn't magically change during the spring and summer. I had to go clothes shopping. I combined my shopping with a trip to Argentina, since clothes are cheaper there. I didn't go to boutiques and hit up large, bargain-friendly stores...and the Salvation Army for a coat. So, we're set for winter...but there was one thing lacking. Many people who know me also know that, perhaps, my feet tend to sweat a lot when they get closed up inside shoes. Wthout going into a ton of detail here, this results in rather odiforous feet, socks, and shoes, and the latter item just perpetuates the cycle. In summer, this isn't a problem - I wear sandals, my feet air dry, and no problem is had. However, in the winter, when wearing sandals outdoors would probably result in a lot of cold, wet foot discomfort, they get closed up all day in my boots, and así viene el problema. So...I bought the Uruguayan equivalent of Gold Bond powder to dry my feet and shoes while wiping out odor. And so, I learned lesson five, which is really just a corollary of lesson one: simple living doesn't come at the expense of self-care; you yourself are an asset to protect and care for, not simply a valueless blob of matter. Being a good steward means being a good steward of your body, too.
Living simply isn't always the easiest path. After all, it does require sacrifices - not buying this book I want today so I can get produce at the fair tomorrow. It requires budgeting, and (that hardest of things) self-discipline. But...it pays off. Sure, it saves money. You learn what you need to live, what you want to make living easier, and what you want simply because it's a luxury and you want it, and you learn how to prioritize those things. You learn that yes, you can in fact use empanada shells to make tortillas for 1/3 the price you'd have paid for the imported tortillas at the store. Even better, you learn to be part of a community. You learn that life is people and your times with them, and not the things you have or the money you spend.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The capital of Maryland is still, after all these years, M
One of my projects in Centro de Estudios, when there aren´t students with English homework (or other things that I can help with), is putting together a presentation about the fifty states of the United States, giving a little basic information (capital, major cities, population, products/industries, and of course, state nicknames awkwardly translated into Spanish - have YOU ever had to translate "The Tarheel State" and make it NOT sound really weird?), a map, and a couple of nice pictures of the state.
This is harder than you´d think. No, not getting the information - my U.S. geography is pretty good, and for the things I don´t know ("umm, what are the major products of Nevada other than casinos and prostitution?"), there´s always Wikipedia. The hard part - pictures. I´ve done a decent job of keeping personal biases about certain states out of the mix, but sometimes, it´s hard to present certain states in a nice, pretty "gee, if I ever go to the United States I have to go there" sort of way. You have not truly been challenged until you´ve had to find attractive photos of, for example, New Jersey on the internet. For real - YOU try to make Bayonne look nice. I dare you. Other states have surprised me. It was not hard to find, go figure, nice shots of Kansas, which had pretty much defined "flat, boring fly-over state" in my mind since childhood.
I´m almost dreading the photo hunt for Texas. How can you boil a state that is more than 5 times the physical size of Uruguay, with almost twice as many people living in Greater Houston alone as in the entirety of Uruguay, into some basic facts, a map, and two photos? The photos will be hard - what do I show? A sweeping (and stereotypical) desert scene? Mountains, just to prove that yes, we do have them? The hill country, because it's the land of my soul? The gulf coast, because I grew up there? A cityscape since 3 Texas cities rank in the top 10 largest in the country? Cows? An armadillo, possibly with a yellow rose in its mouth and a Willie Nelson and/or Kinky Friedman bumper sticker slapped on its shell? Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes? Chuck Norris, since everyone here watches "Walker, Texas Ranger" dubbed in Spanish? On a sidenote, one of the drivers of the 112 bus looks freakishly like Chuck Norris - my friend Fede has photo evidence to prove this.
It's also helped me become even more aware of the sweepingly huge country which I call home. I've been to over 30 states; I've seen first-hand a lot of the diversity. However, it really begins to hit home when you try explaining the regions of the U.S. to someone from a country where everything is pretty much the same. THAT'S a challenge. Add to that the ethnic diversity, religion diversity, political viewpoint diversity, and for that matter, the fact that we can´t even make chili the same way from state-to-state (and we all know who does it best..), and the fact that the United States even exists as a single, functional state becomes almost miraculous. It´s not, of course - this could become a springboard for a great historical discussion about modernization and its uniting effect on U.S. society after the Civil War...but I'll spare you. Ask one of the people who came to my S.I. sessions at TLU instead!
I´m even thinking of making this a true multimedia extravangaza, Uncle Sam style, and adding a song (or at least a snippet of a song) about each state...also easier said than done. If YOU know any good songs about, say, Connecticut or Delaware, please feel free to fill me in.
This is harder than you´d think. No, not getting the information - my U.S. geography is pretty good, and for the things I don´t know ("umm, what are the major products of Nevada other than casinos and prostitution?"), there´s always Wikipedia. The hard part - pictures. I´ve done a decent job of keeping personal biases about certain states out of the mix, but sometimes, it´s hard to present certain states in a nice, pretty "gee, if I ever go to the United States I have to go there" sort of way. You have not truly been challenged until you´ve had to find attractive photos of, for example, New Jersey on the internet. For real - YOU try to make Bayonne look nice. I dare you. Other states have surprised me. It was not hard to find, go figure, nice shots of Kansas, which had pretty much defined "flat, boring fly-over state" in my mind since childhood.
I´m almost dreading the photo hunt for Texas. How can you boil a state that is more than 5 times the physical size of Uruguay, with almost twice as many people living in Greater Houston alone as in the entirety of Uruguay, into some basic facts, a map, and two photos? The photos will be hard - what do I show? A sweeping (and stereotypical) desert scene? Mountains, just to prove that yes, we do have them? The hill country, because it's the land of my soul? The gulf coast, because I grew up there? A cityscape since 3 Texas cities rank in the top 10 largest in the country? Cows? An armadillo, possibly with a yellow rose in its mouth and a Willie Nelson and/or Kinky Friedman bumper sticker slapped on its shell? Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes? Chuck Norris, since everyone here watches "Walker, Texas Ranger" dubbed in Spanish? On a sidenote, one of the drivers of the 112 bus looks freakishly like Chuck Norris - my friend Fede has photo evidence to prove this.
It's also helped me become even more aware of the sweepingly huge country which I call home. I've been to over 30 states; I've seen first-hand a lot of the diversity. However, it really begins to hit home when you try explaining the regions of the U.S. to someone from a country where everything is pretty much the same. THAT'S a challenge. Add to that the ethnic diversity, religion diversity, political viewpoint diversity, and for that matter, the fact that we can´t even make chili the same way from state-to-state (and we all know who does it best..), and the fact that the United States even exists as a single, functional state becomes almost miraculous. It´s not, of course - this could become a springboard for a great historical discussion about modernization and its uniting effect on U.S. society after the Civil War...but I'll spare you. Ask one of the people who came to my S.I. sessions at TLU instead!
I´m even thinking of making this a true multimedia extravangaza, Uncle Sam style, and adding a song (or at least a snippet of a song) about each state...also easier said than done. If YOU know any good songs about, say, Connecticut or Delaware, please feel free to fill me in.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Word to your mother
Sunday was, in both the U.S. and Uruguay (and probably a number of other places, too), Mother´s Day. Last night, as I was cooking dinner, I suddenly realized how much more I appreciate the work the world´s mothers do after this year. I was making gnocchi (don´t judge me), completely from scratch - we´re talking boiling the potatoes, then mashing them, then adding the flour and making a dough, then rolling it out, then cutting it, then forming the gnocchi with a fork, and then cooking them. As you can guess from the description, this is not exactly a quick process. To cook a kilo of potatoes, you have to bring a LOT of water to a boil first, and then boil a lot of potato in it...it takes time. Then, you have to mash them...it takes time, and a little bit of physical exertion. Then, making the dough - you get some seriously sticky hands when you mix together flour and mashed potato (plus a little salt, black pepper, and oregano), and then get them stickier when you roll the dough (and it´s a lot of dough to roll). From there, it´s cutting several dozen gnocchi and forming each and every one of them by sliding them up the tines of a fork. I started at 6 PM; it was 8:30 PM when I ate my gnocchi al pesto. I made enough to eat for the next several days, but still - it´s plenty of work to make things from scratch.
Mothers have done this, every day, for milennia. Our kitchen at the church is about on par with an early-20th century kitchen for level of technology...not much in the way of time-saving gadgets, but even then, I still have pre-made pastas, canned foods, and a variety of other little aids at my disposal. My several-times great grandmother in Italy, however, wouldn´t have - she would´ve been making her gnocchi by hand, cooking all of her sauces from scratch, stoking a wood-burning stove to do everything. I can´t imagine cooking for families of 6 or greater every day like this. It´s a full-time job, especially when you add clean-up to it. Plus, then there´s laundry to do, houses to clean, the grocery shopping, and...the kids.
Working with elementary age children, even for just a few hours once or twice a week, takes plenty of energy. They´re sweet and delightful bundles of energy at their best; willfull, taxing little wildebeests at worst. To be able to run herd on the kids, AND cook, AND clean, AND shop, AND do a million other little things and stay sane - THAT is some hard work...if I were offered my pick of a Herculean labor or being a stay-at-home mom for the rest of my life, I´d say bring on the Hydra or the Augean Stable.
AND, this being 2008, many moms work, at least part-time, many full-time. My God. That´s a full time job on top of another full time job.
So, moms of the world - here´s to you. You do an amazing job, every day, and hardly ever get thanked for it. Thank you for your dedication, work, and above all, love, and (if you´re in the neighborhood)...have some gnocchi on me.
Mothers have done this, every day, for milennia. Our kitchen at the church is about on par with an early-20th century kitchen for level of technology...not much in the way of time-saving gadgets, but even then, I still have pre-made pastas, canned foods, and a variety of other little aids at my disposal. My several-times great grandmother in Italy, however, wouldn´t have - she would´ve been making her gnocchi by hand, cooking all of her sauces from scratch, stoking a wood-burning stove to do everything. I can´t imagine cooking for families of 6 or greater every day like this. It´s a full-time job, especially when you add clean-up to it. Plus, then there´s laundry to do, houses to clean, the grocery shopping, and...the kids.
Working with elementary age children, even for just a few hours once or twice a week, takes plenty of energy. They´re sweet and delightful bundles of energy at their best; willfull, taxing little wildebeests at worst. To be able to run herd on the kids, AND cook, AND clean, AND shop, AND do a million other little things and stay sane - THAT is some hard work...if I were offered my pick of a Herculean labor or being a stay-at-home mom for the rest of my life, I´d say bring on the Hydra or the Augean Stable.
AND, this being 2008, many moms work, at least part-time, many full-time. My God. That´s a full time job on top of another full time job.
So, moms of the world - here´s to you. You do an amazing job, every day, and hardly ever get thanked for it. Thank you for your dedication, work, and above all, love, and (if you´re in the neighborhood)...have some gnocchi on me.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
La comunidad de profetas, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Prophets
As I´ve mentioned in previous entries, one of my jobs at the church has been to help with the Old Testament Bible Study. We have been working our way along in a combined chronology of the children of Israel and chronology of when texts were believed by experts to have been written (i.e. the study started with the Exodus story, not in Genesis, and followed the historical books up through the Golden Age of Solomon...and THEN we did Genesis), and since roughly Christmas, we´ve been in the prophets, including Elijah and Elisha. Those two might be bookless, but they´re still WELL worth studying. In with the prophetic books, we´ve had some historical interludes - the fall of the northern Kingdom after reading Hosea and Amos, Josiah´s reforms and the fall of Jerusalem right now after selections from Isaiah, as well as Joel. Once we finish with the fall of Jerusalem this Tuesday, it´ll be on to Jeremiah, and then the exilic prophet Ezekiel.
Reading the prophets is never an easy task. You have to get who they were (biography), where they came from (geography), and when they lived (history) before trying to tackle what they wrote (literature) and the spiritual significance of their ideas (theology and spirituality). That is a LOT to communicate, even if you´re just working with a relatively short book like, say, Micah. We spent two weeks on Micah, and could´ve spent more if the overarching aim of this Bible Study was deep understanding of the prophets rather than familiarizing people with the more complicated of the two testaments.
To be honest, studying the prophets has probably been as new and difficult for me as for the participants in the Bible study who are just reading them for the first time. This is a shocking confession, but...I´ve never really LIKED the Old Testament prophets that much, at least up until lately. Let´s face it - they´re a scary bunch. Elijah and Elisha did miracles of the sort that can inspire as much terror as awe, most psychologists believe that Jeremiah was probably manic-depressive, Ezekiel had visions that would´ve blown Timothy Leary´s mind (and cooked his food over his own excrement), and if you read them in King James English, the word count for "smite" and "slay" is pretty impressive. This is the stereotypical Old Testament God of wrath, where every day is Dies Irae, you´re just dust in the wind and probably doing something to tick God off, and birds will get to eat the guts from all the slain.
That´s the stereotype, and it doesn´t exist baselessly - there is a lot of judgment of the smiting/destroying the guilty parties variety. However, reading only with eyes for violence is, in my opinion, to miss the point, to miss the Good News in between the hordes of locusts and rampaging armies. The prophets cared about two things above all else, uniformly and without fail - God and justice. If something went against these two, they denounced it, and in the strongest terms possible. Since Micah has been my example already, let´s keep on with it. Micah denounces unjust rulers who abuse their subjects - in this case, the ruling class in Israel. He proposes a just image, God´s way of doing things - instead of working for nothing but the benefit of other, already rich people, Micah presents the image of very person having their own vine, turning their instruments of war and violence into instruments of peace.
Why do we never grab hold of this? We always tend to do one of the following with the prophets: not read them because they´re scary, use them to scare people, or dismiss them because they present God as violent and we don´t want to go there. The first is understandable - they ARE intimidating, especially without any sort of background knowledge. A good biblical commentary or teacher/preacher is essential to explore them and come away strengthened. The second is reprehensible - how sad it is that, sometimes, we turn God´s Word into a weapon against our own brothers and sisters. The Word might be the sword of the spirit, but I don´t think God gave it to us so we could slice ourselves apart and terrify anyone who dare defy us.
The third point is much more complicated, and worth a book (or two, or three, or four) to discuss...and I really don´t have a satisfactory answer yet to the God-as-warrior versus God-as-peacemaker dichotomy that so often is presented, oversimply, as Old Testament God vs. New Testament God. Perhaps, though, the point (at least in most of the prophetic tradition) is not to present God as violence-loving so much as God as being serious about justice...God WILL act in favor of justice, and because of how thoroughly corrupt the world it is, the process of its renewal will not be pretty, or particularly pleasant. Of course, that is a pithy, two-sentence attempt at resolving one of the key theological issues in Christian dialogue, and is nowhere near adequate enough to address the matter, but...this IS a blog entry, after all.
Maybe, then, rather than construct detailed theological frameworks for how to deal with the prophets of old in our time (Borges-esque images of paths bifurcating endlessly into an infinitely complex web of simultaneously existant universes is what came into my mind as I even tried to consider how one might do that, especially in a blog entry), the best thing for us to do, in the non-academic world of "so, what´s all this theobabble got to do with my life today?" is ask ourselves the simple question: so what? What do a bunch of (presumably) bearded (presumably) men from thousands of years ago have to say about who I am, where I am, and the world I live in?
I think the answer I´ve found for myself to those questions is two-fold. One aspect is the aforementioned devotion to God and to justice. This world still fails to honor God and still fails to do justice - not much has changed in thousands of years, really. God´s call to seek God and do the work of the Kingdom in the world is as fresh and important as it was from the first time it was sounded.
I think, also, that a phrase that struck me from the stories about Elijah and Elisha has something to say to us, too. There are various texts talking about communities of prophets in various cities. We had a couple of good chats about this in Bible study, and we came to the conclusion that these communities still exist. They´re called churches. God has placed us, all of us, where we are to serve God and other people...that, at the end of the day, is the point of prophecy. It´s not telling the future, or calling down fire and brimstone, or even having radical visions...I won´t deny that these things can be part of it, God´s way of speaking to people, but they´re details. A prophet speaks God´s word for today. Every Christian is, in a way, a prophet. There are some people more equipped to do it, and some people who feel a stronger call to it, but it´s our duty to proclaim the Good New of the Kingdom in word and in deed.
I don´t think that the message need always be delivered in the same way, either. I remember a dream I had a week or two ago. I was in a murga, one of my favorites - La Mojigata. We were singing at a huge concert - La Catalina was there, Queso Magro, all of them. Every murga is different - different voices, different focii, different presentations. But, the point - to bring attention to what´s going on in society and in the world in a dramatic medium - is the same between every group. Maybe we´re all in our own prophetic murgas, singing to the world, and to ourselves always, doing the same work in different ways and with different words so that EVERYONE with ears to hear and eyes to see might have a chance to see God in what we do, hear God in what we say.
Reading the prophets is never an easy task. You have to get who they were (biography), where they came from (geography), and when they lived (history) before trying to tackle what they wrote (literature) and the spiritual significance of their ideas (theology and spirituality). That is a LOT to communicate, even if you´re just working with a relatively short book like, say, Micah. We spent two weeks on Micah, and could´ve spent more if the overarching aim of this Bible Study was deep understanding of the prophets rather than familiarizing people with the more complicated of the two testaments.
To be honest, studying the prophets has probably been as new and difficult for me as for the participants in the Bible study who are just reading them for the first time. This is a shocking confession, but...I´ve never really LIKED the Old Testament prophets that much, at least up until lately. Let´s face it - they´re a scary bunch. Elijah and Elisha did miracles of the sort that can inspire as much terror as awe, most psychologists believe that Jeremiah was probably manic-depressive, Ezekiel had visions that would´ve blown Timothy Leary´s mind (and cooked his food over his own excrement), and if you read them in King James English, the word count for "smite" and "slay" is pretty impressive. This is the stereotypical Old Testament God of wrath, where every day is Dies Irae, you´re just dust in the wind and probably doing something to tick God off, and birds will get to eat the guts from all the slain.
That´s the stereotype, and it doesn´t exist baselessly - there is a lot of judgment of the smiting/destroying the guilty parties variety. However, reading only with eyes for violence is, in my opinion, to miss the point, to miss the Good News in between the hordes of locusts and rampaging armies. The prophets cared about two things above all else, uniformly and without fail - God and justice. If something went against these two, they denounced it, and in the strongest terms possible. Since Micah has been my example already, let´s keep on with it. Micah denounces unjust rulers who abuse their subjects - in this case, the ruling class in Israel. He proposes a just image, God´s way of doing things - instead of working for nothing but the benefit of other, already rich people, Micah presents the image of very person having their own vine, turning their instruments of war and violence into instruments of peace.
Why do we never grab hold of this? We always tend to do one of the following with the prophets: not read them because they´re scary, use them to scare people, or dismiss them because they present God as violent and we don´t want to go there. The first is understandable - they ARE intimidating, especially without any sort of background knowledge. A good biblical commentary or teacher/preacher is essential to explore them and come away strengthened. The second is reprehensible - how sad it is that, sometimes, we turn God´s Word into a weapon against our own brothers and sisters. The Word might be the sword of the spirit, but I don´t think God gave it to us so we could slice ourselves apart and terrify anyone who dare defy us.
The third point is much more complicated, and worth a book (or two, or three, or four) to discuss...and I really don´t have a satisfactory answer yet to the God-as-warrior versus God-as-peacemaker dichotomy that so often is presented, oversimply, as Old Testament God vs. New Testament God. Perhaps, though, the point (at least in most of the prophetic tradition) is not to present God as violence-loving so much as God as being serious about justice...God WILL act in favor of justice, and because of how thoroughly corrupt the world it is, the process of its renewal will not be pretty, or particularly pleasant. Of course, that is a pithy, two-sentence attempt at resolving one of the key theological issues in Christian dialogue, and is nowhere near adequate enough to address the matter, but...this IS a blog entry, after all.
Maybe, then, rather than construct detailed theological frameworks for how to deal with the prophets of old in our time (Borges-esque images of paths bifurcating endlessly into an infinitely complex web of simultaneously existant universes is what came into my mind as I even tried to consider how one might do that, especially in a blog entry), the best thing for us to do, in the non-academic world of "so, what´s all this theobabble got to do with my life today?" is ask ourselves the simple question: so what? What do a bunch of (presumably) bearded (presumably) men from thousands of years ago have to say about who I am, where I am, and the world I live in?
I think the answer I´ve found for myself to those questions is two-fold. One aspect is the aforementioned devotion to God and to justice. This world still fails to honor God and still fails to do justice - not much has changed in thousands of years, really. God´s call to seek God and do the work of the Kingdom in the world is as fresh and important as it was from the first time it was sounded.
I think, also, that a phrase that struck me from the stories about Elijah and Elisha has something to say to us, too. There are various texts talking about communities of prophets in various cities. We had a couple of good chats about this in Bible study, and we came to the conclusion that these communities still exist. They´re called churches. God has placed us, all of us, where we are to serve God and other people...that, at the end of the day, is the point of prophecy. It´s not telling the future, or calling down fire and brimstone, or even having radical visions...I won´t deny that these things can be part of it, God´s way of speaking to people, but they´re details. A prophet speaks God´s word for today. Every Christian is, in a way, a prophet. There are some people more equipped to do it, and some people who feel a stronger call to it, but it´s our duty to proclaim the Good New of the Kingdom in word and in deed.
I don´t think that the message need always be delivered in the same way, either. I remember a dream I had a week or two ago. I was in a murga, one of my favorites - La Mojigata. We were singing at a huge concert - La Catalina was there, Queso Magro, all of them. Every murga is different - different voices, different focii, different presentations. But, the point - to bring attention to what´s going on in society and in the world in a dramatic medium - is the same between every group. Maybe we´re all in our own prophetic murgas, singing to the world, and to ourselves always, doing the same work in different ways and with different words so that EVERYONE with ears to hear and eyes to see might have a chance to see God in what we do, hear God in what we say.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
A Day Without A Mexican, Who´s Not Really A Mexican, But Everyone Thinks He Is, Anyway
Cinco de Mayo 2008 has come and gone, and what a day it was. I decided to celebrate with two separate activities – making tacos for several friends, and, for the first time in 8 months, speaking Spanish without a Rioplatense accent.
The tacos proved to be much easier. I bought entirely too much meat, bought empanada shells to cook up as tortillas, and a Spanish rice mix. And hot stuff. Dear Lord did I buy spicy condiments. The food in Uruguay is many things, but hot-n-spicy is 99 times of out 100 not one of them…this has been a challenge for those among us whose favorite food toppings back home include chipotle powder, Sriracha chili sauce, and jalapeños. So, I bought the closest Mercosur-produced equivalent to Tabasco for those of us with the need to feel a little bit of after-burn with our Tex-Mex dinner, and found some mild barbecue sauce for those who wanted something with some zest, but without the heat. Two hours of chopping onions, browning meat, and crisping up empanada shells later, we were ready to go, especially since José, our doorman and honorary roommate, came downstairs to the ugly kitchen to wash and chop the lettuce and tomato, little knowing that the fruits of his labor would not be sweet. But more on that later.
Wilma, Álvaro, Seba, his girlfriend Andrea, and Karin showed up with wine and canned peaches for dessert in hand, plus a corkscrew. Ordinarily, the memory of a corkscrew would not be making me laugh as I type this…but this was no ordinary day for corkscrews. I had asked José earlier in the day if he had a corkscrew – a “sacacorcho” in Spanish….but that´s not what I said. I said “sacacorcha” instead – a fairly minor mistake, except that José misheard my misspoken word and thought I said “sacaconcha.” “Concha,” in Latin American Spanish, is slang for something other than a seashell on the beach, suffice it to say. There was a lot of laughter that followed the confusion, as you can imagine.
But yes, Wilma and her family arrived “sacacorcho” in hand, and a few minutes later, Kirsten and her friend Matt, who is visiting this week, joined us. Martín had come down to the kitchen a few minutes after José, and so the ten of us sat down in our ugly kitchen, dance class in full swing in the rec space just beyond our door, and ate a very impressive quantity of tacos. Daniela, our doctor friend who lives in the building, came once she got off work and ate what was left…which was a lot, because I had grossly overestimated how much meat would be needed. Fortunately, the leftover taco meat has proven to be a great empanada stuffer…but more on that later.
Somewhere during the after-dinner chatting and hanging out, Daniela mentioned mariachi music, and so I fetched my mp3 player and a set of speakers and put on Los Lobos´ “La Pistola y El Corazón” album. Martín, however, was not a fan, and so we ended up switching over to Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix afterwards – not necessarily traditional Cinco de Mayo jams, but nothing quite says “cultural exchange” like listening to Jimi Hendrix wail “Ah´m a voodoo chile, voodoo chile baby, LAWD KNOWS Ah-ma VOODOOO CHILE!” with the music from a salsa class in the background.
I mentioned, in the first paragraph, that the taco dinner was only one part of my celebration, and that I had decided to revert back to my previous, bien Mexicano, accent. It required conscious, continuous thought to do it, and even then I still wanted to talk like a Montevideano. About the only way to guarantee that words came out the right way was to lapse into my Speedy Gonzalez-esque joke-Mexican accent. I struggled to put the emphasis on the correct syllable for Mexican Spanish, as well – after 8 months of using “vos” instead of “tú,” it felt absolutely bizarre to hear “quieres” come out of my mouth instead of “queres,” or “¡CAyate!” instead of “¡cazhAte vos!”
Somehow, it felt symbolic yesterday when I dragged the leftover meat out of the fridge and began making taco meat empanadas. People have joked for 8 months (well, ok, for 23 years actually) about my secretly being a Mexican – I´m from Texas, I have dark hair and darker skin than most “white” people, I took to Spanish quickly in school and speak it without too much of a gringo accent (people here normally, but not always, can tell that I´m a foreigner and non-native speaker, but they almost never think I´m a native English speaker – I get French, Italian, or Brazilian most of the time). I got asked on a near-daily basis during my first semester at TLU if I´d joined the Mexican-American Student Association yet, my friends nicknamed my moustache “Dirty Sanchez” last year because of its “Mexicanization” of my appearance, and nearly everyone I´ve met for the past 4 years has confessed that, at first, they thought I was Mexican-American…and this includes people in Africa, Europe, and South America, not just Norteamericanos.
But now…the Spanish that comes out of my mouth isn´t Mexican. It isn´t entirely Rioplatense, either. It´s something between the two with, ok, a certain English-tinged twang to it. It´s something unto itself…it´s become a part of my identity as much as my weird, “where´s he from?” accent in English, or my “I look Latino, but I´m really not” appearance. I´m a taco empanada – neither here, nor there. I think of a line from the Luther movie – “People think I´m a fixed star, but I´m a wandering planet.” God only knows what Chicago´s going to do to me…and you only think I have a funky accent now.
To end on a less pensive note, I alluded to José meeting a fate worse than taco breath after dinner. I had made the taco meat with some packets of Old El Paso´s mild taco seasoning – it´s the only kind you can get here, after all. José ate the tacos without any of the sauces, just meat, veggies, and cheese…and it was still too spicy for him. Mild seasoning. The level of heat than the biggest spice wimps in the U.S. can handle…and he said it was “like eating poison” for his digestive tract. He said it felt like he “had a volcano in his stomach.” He also ended up with a fever, so I suspect he has a virus and it just so happened to hit at the same time as some taco indigestion. Guess the next time I cook Texan cuisine, it´ll have to be something a little more Anglo-Saxon…biscuits and gravy, perhaps?
The tacos proved to be much easier. I bought entirely too much meat, bought empanada shells to cook up as tortillas, and a Spanish rice mix. And hot stuff. Dear Lord did I buy spicy condiments. The food in Uruguay is many things, but hot-n-spicy is 99 times of out 100 not one of them…this has been a challenge for those among us whose favorite food toppings back home include chipotle powder, Sriracha chili sauce, and jalapeños. So, I bought the closest Mercosur-produced equivalent to Tabasco for those of us with the need to feel a little bit of after-burn with our Tex-Mex dinner, and found some mild barbecue sauce for those who wanted something with some zest, but without the heat. Two hours of chopping onions, browning meat, and crisping up empanada shells later, we were ready to go, especially since José, our doorman and honorary roommate, came downstairs to the ugly kitchen to wash and chop the lettuce and tomato, little knowing that the fruits of his labor would not be sweet. But more on that later.
Wilma, Álvaro, Seba, his girlfriend Andrea, and Karin showed up with wine and canned peaches for dessert in hand, plus a corkscrew. Ordinarily, the memory of a corkscrew would not be making me laugh as I type this…but this was no ordinary day for corkscrews. I had asked José earlier in the day if he had a corkscrew – a “sacacorcho” in Spanish….but that´s not what I said. I said “sacacorcha” instead – a fairly minor mistake, except that José misheard my misspoken word and thought I said “sacaconcha.” “Concha,” in Latin American Spanish, is slang for something other than a seashell on the beach, suffice it to say. There was a lot of laughter that followed the confusion, as you can imagine.
But yes, Wilma and her family arrived “sacacorcho” in hand, and a few minutes later, Kirsten and her friend Matt, who is visiting this week, joined us. Martín had come down to the kitchen a few minutes after José, and so the ten of us sat down in our ugly kitchen, dance class in full swing in the rec space just beyond our door, and ate a very impressive quantity of tacos. Daniela, our doctor friend who lives in the building, came once she got off work and ate what was left…which was a lot, because I had grossly overestimated how much meat would be needed. Fortunately, the leftover taco meat has proven to be a great empanada stuffer…but more on that later.
Somewhere during the after-dinner chatting and hanging out, Daniela mentioned mariachi music, and so I fetched my mp3 player and a set of speakers and put on Los Lobos´ “La Pistola y El Corazón” album. Martín, however, was not a fan, and so we ended up switching over to Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix afterwards – not necessarily traditional Cinco de Mayo jams, but nothing quite says “cultural exchange” like listening to Jimi Hendrix wail “Ah´m a voodoo chile, voodoo chile baby, LAWD KNOWS Ah-ma VOODOOO CHILE!” with the music from a salsa class in the background.
I mentioned, in the first paragraph, that the taco dinner was only one part of my celebration, and that I had decided to revert back to my previous, bien Mexicano, accent. It required conscious, continuous thought to do it, and even then I still wanted to talk like a Montevideano. About the only way to guarantee that words came out the right way was to lapse into my Speedy Gonzalez-esque joke-Mexican accent. I struggled to put the emphasis on the correct syllable for Mexican Spanish, as well – after 8 months of using “vos” instead of “tú,” it felt absolutely bizarre to hear “quieres” come out of my mouth instead of “queres,” or “¡CAyate!” instead of “¡cazhAte vos!”
Somehow, it felt symbolic yesterday when I dragged the leftover meat out of the fridge and began making taco meat empanadas. People have joked for 8 months (well, ok, for 23 years actually) about my secretly being a Mexican – I´m from Texas, I have dark hair and darker skin than most “white” people, I took to Spanish quickly in school and speak it without too much of a gringo accent (people here normally, but not always, can tell that I´m a foreigner and non-native speaker, but they almost never think I´m a native English speaker – I get French, Italian, or Brazilian most of the time). I got asked on a near-daily basis during my first semester at TLU if I´d joined the Mexican-American Student Association yet, my friends nicknamed my moustache “Dirty Sanchez” last year because of its “Mexicanization” of my appearance, and nearly everyone I´ve met for the past 4 years has confessed that, at first, they thought I was Mexican-American…and this includes people in Africa, Europe, and South America, not just Norteamericanos.
But now…the Spanish that comes out of my mouth isn´t Mexican. It isn´t entirely Rioplatense, either. It´s something between the two with, ok, a certain English-tinged twang to it. It´s something unto itself…it´s become a part of my identity as much as my weird, “where´s he from?” accent in English, or my “I look Latino, but I´m really not” appearance. I´m a taco empanada – neither here, nor there. I think of a line from the Luther movie – “People think I´m a fixed star, but I´m a wandering planet.” God only knows what Chicago´s going to do to me…and you only think I have a funky accent now.
To end on a less pensive note, I alluded to José meeting a fate worse than taco breath after dinner. I had made the taco meat with some packets of Old El Paso´s mild taco seasoning – it´s the only kind you can get here, after all. José ate the tacos without any of the sauces, just meat, veggies, and cheese…and it was still too spicy for him. Mild seasoning. The level of heat than the biggest spice wimps in the U.S. can handle…and he said it was “like eating poison” for his digestive tract. He said it felt like he “had a volcano in his stomach.” He also ended up with a fever, so I suspect he has a virus and it just so happened to hit at the same time as some taco indigestion. Guess the next time I cook Texan cuisine, it´ll have to be something a little more Anglo-Saxon…biscuits and gravy, perhaps?
Friday, May 2, 2008
Let´s Get Metaphysical, or, The Volunteer In His Chambers
With the weather more-or-less cold and staying that way, the heady days of mate at La Rambla have run their course, and in their wake come the books and the fragments of thoughts left aside to age in the summer, new distractions for those times when I´m not at La Obra, the church office, or with friends.
In my books, I´ve visited some old friends and made some new ones, in English and in Spanish. In the past month, I´ve re-read The Scarlet Letter, and felt it resonate deep inside me, feeling it in a way I never could as a high school junior. I´ve read La Casa de los Espíritus (The House of the Spirits) en español, and after seeing La Moneda in Santiago, I could imagine the surreal horror of the climax - the spectacled president, besieged in his own home, watching his own country´s army open fire on him. I´ve read some Borges and had my brain twisted about in every which-way possible; libraries, lotteries, imaginary books, and gardens that somehow are all universes in and of themselves...and each less than 20 pages of dense intricacy. A slow day at La Obra, I pulled out a copy of Horacio Quiroga´s (the Uruguayan Edgar Allen Poe, more or less) Cuentos de Amor, de Locura y de Muerte and read two stories I read in Spanish III in high school, El Almohadón de Plumas (the feather pillow) and La Gallina Degollada (the beheaded chicken). A little part of me jumped inside when I remembered the admittedly-gory ends of the stories halfway through each one.
I´ve been thinking about the idea of the Hegelian dialectic a lot in all of this reading - thesis, antithesis, synthesis, the never-ending spiral in which we encounter a text, come away from it changed, and later come back to it and find it to be different because of how we´ve changed. Take The Scarlet Letter. When I read it as a 16 year old, it made me think about how we all have our own scarlet letter, be it internal or external, and its somehow this sense of mutual sinfulness that ought to unite us, one people broken and in no position to judge the other. I went some years with this thought in my head, and then came back to the novel...and it wasn´t the same. This time, it told me about grace beyond our human comprehension, grace so foreign to us that accepting it is nearly impossible - we become Dimmesdales who´d rather torture ourselves and sorrow in our inadequacies, or else Chillingworths who, incapable of receiving grace, become equal incapable of extending it to others. Hester Prynne´s quiet strength and frankness about her inability to understand the strange, wild Pearl which she was given somehow speaks volumes about how to live...we are broken, but we don´t have to stay that way, even if we don´t understand the means that allow us to be mended into something not whole, but reconstructed.
I think, too, about the different experiences I had with The House of the Spirits, having read it a few years ago in English. In English, it was a haunting and compelling novel, at turns foggy and summer clear...but I didn´t connect to it on an emotional level. In Spanish, during and after a trip to Chile, it was one of the most profoundly moving works of literature I´ve read...I think the image of me, sitting on my rooftop at sunset, reading the description of the 1973 coup and fighting tears (of sorrow, of anger, of shame) is one that will stay with me for a very long time. Context makes a difference, language makes a difference.
I wonder how I´ll find Borges in a few years, or maybe longer, when I make my way back to the stories in El Jardín de los Senderos que Bifurcan (The Garden of the Forking Paths): the death of a pagan priest who painlessly burns to death in a fire and realizes, as he´s dying, that he´s just a dream in the mind of someone else, just like the young man he himself created in a dream; the Babylonian lottery in which everything is a result of a game of chance, even down to errors in public documents; the garden which is a novel in which all possible events happen simultaneously, creating a universe in which multiple timelines exist and meander through each other like a cosmic plate of spaghetti.
I even wonder how I´ll feel at the end of Anna Karenina, which I´m reading now, seeing how much has changed since my senior year in high school when I read it in 5 days over Christmas break. Books, to me, exist on a level on slightly below sentient beings - they have personalities, they have individuality, and, just like us, they never change in that they´re constantly changing...the same essence, the same words and pages (just as we´re the same cells and organs and bones), but never failing to grow right along with us, if we care enough to pay attention.
Or maybe I just read too much.
In my books, I´ve visited some old friends and made some new ones, in English and in Spanish. In the past month, I´ve re-read The Scarlet Letter, and felt it resonate deep inside me, feeling it in a way I never could as a high school junior. I´ve read La Casa de los Espíritus (The House of the Spirits) en español, and after seeing La Moneda in Santiago, I could imagine the surreal horror of the climax - the spectacled president, besieged in his own home, watching his own country´s army open fire on him. I´ve read some Borges and had my brain twisted about in every which-way possible; libraries, lotteries, imaginary books, and gardens that somehow are all universes in and of themselves...and each less than 20 pages of dense intricacy. A slow day at La Obra, I pulled out a copy of Horacio Quiroga´s (the Uruguayan Edgar Allen Poe, more or less) Cuentos de Amor, de Locura y de Muerte and read two stories I read in Spanish III in high school, El Almohadón de Plumas (the feather pillow) and La Gallina Degollada (the beheaded chicken). A little part of me jumped inside when I remembered the admittedly-gory ends of the stories halfway through each one.
I´ve been thinking about the idea of the Hegelian dialectic a lot in all of this reading - thesis, antithesis, synthesis, the never-ending spiral in which we encounter a text, come away from it changed, and later come back to it and find it to be different because of how we´ve changed. Take The Scarlet Letter. When I read it as a 16 year old, it made me think about how we all have our own scarlet letter, be it internal or external, and its somehow this sense of mutual sinfulness that ought to unite us, one people broken and in no position to judge the other. I went some years with this thought in my head, and then came back to the novel...and it wasn´t the same. This time, it told me about grace beyond our human comprehension, grace so foreign to us that accepting it is nearly impossible - we become Dimmesdales who´d rather torture ourselves and sorrow in our inadequacies, or else Chillingworths who, incapable of receiving grace, become equal incapable of extending it to others. Hester Prynne´s quiet strength and frankness about her inability to understand the strange, wild Pearl which she was given somehow speaks volumes about how to live...we are broken, but we don´t have to stay that way, even if we don´t understand the means that allow us to be mended into something not whole, but reconstructed.
I think, too, about the different experiences I had with The House of the Spirits, having read it a few years ago in English. In English, it was a haunting and compelling novel, at turns foggy and summer clear...but I didn´t connect to it on an emotional level. In Spanish, during and after a trip to Chile, it was one of the most profoundly moving works of literature I´ve read...I think the image of me, sitting on my rooftop at sunset, reading the description of the 1973 coup and fighting tears (of sorrow, of anger, of shame) is one that will stay with me for a very long time. Context makes a difference, language makes a difference.
I wonder how I´ll find Borges in a few years, or maybe longer, when I make my way back to the stories in El Jardín de los Senderos que Bifurcan (The Garden of the Forking Paths): the death of a pagan priest who painlessly burns to death in a fire and realizes, as he´s dying, that he´s just a dream in the mind of someone else, just like the young man he himself created in a dream; the Babylonian lottery in which everything is a result of a game of chance, even down to errors in public documents; the garden which is a novel in which all possible events happen simultaneously, creating a universe in which multiple timelines exist and meander through each other like a cosmic plate of spaghetti.
I even wonder how I´ll feel at the end of Anna Karenina, which I´m reading now, seeing how much has changed since my senior year in high school when I read it in 5 days over Christmas break. Books, to me, exist on a level on slightly below sentient beings - they have personalities, they have individuality, and, just like us, they never change in that they´re constantly changing...the same essence, the same words and pages (just as we´re the same cells and organs and bones), but never failing to grow right along with us, if we care enough to pay attention.
Or maybe I just read too much.
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