Cold

San Salvador, November 12 2009


Could be her could be her could be her could be her could be her could be her
I text this into my cell phone waiting for the girl to show up. My first blind date ever.
Barbed wire and pigeons top tile roofs, office buildings, and the San Salvador sun sets,
Bringing in the cold.

I am waiting for a girl. Lorena Beatriz. It is a blind date. Did I say that already?
(This all ends so not awkwardly anyways)

Bus horns and neon lights take hold of the night, the flower venders know I am waiting for a woman and the dirty kids, dirty on purpose, approach me. I buy a yellow rose and stuff it in my backpack, just in case it doesn’t go well, and a hat because the wind, sign of a coming summer, whips through these broad avenues, each one with a brass statue of a general mounted on a horse, palm fronds swaying.

I am waiting for her to show up exactly where, six months ago, our mutual friend, the break-dance champion of El Salvador, was waiting for me and a friend.
Metro Center, the most well-known mall in the country. People spending more on a pair of shoes than my family makes in a month.

She comes. Calls first, picks the gringo out of the crowd, and comes over. I wanted her to be pretty. Not that she isn’t. Tall, blond hair (dyed), active eyes. Energy! We get coffee and she is so alive, speaking her mind, making fun of me, laughing at herself.

After a coffee, she called her dad letting her know she was going out with a girlfriend and we went out to get some Chinese. We went into one restaurant, too expensive!, and walked out, saying nothing. Entered another a block down, empty except for a drunk Asian woman smoking with her eyes closed and a 50-something Salvadoran man in a long sleeve blue shirt and glasses, laughing, pointing at her to us as a mariachi guy plays a tune. The mariachi guy is also cold, hooded jacket up over his curly hair. We ate, too much food, and I hardly stomached it. Not hungry.

I knew, at first sight, it couldn’t be it. She seemed to know it, too. But when was the next time I’d see her? Talk with her? A young, confident, attractive woman and she was mine for the night! Not for me, forever, but we tried to have fun. I drank jasmine tea, freezing, and we talked.

She lives in Apopa (dangerous neighborhood) with her parents. Dated a man, John, from the US Navy for two years. Works as a paralegal. College graduate. Has a law degree.

We went to our friend’s house in a cab to drop her off, end the night. Standing outside his house (the break-dancer’s), whose nick name is Gufi, I saw giant gang graffiti, police doing a house search, the guy outside with hands behind head. We didn’t kiss. Obviously.

And this morning I want to be alone. No more couples on park benches, sad goodbyes with wet cheeks and runny noses. I want to…what? Do my thing? Run wild? I just didn’t even see it as fun, last night, running around with her. What if she had been beautiful to me? What if she had been somehow right? Would I want to be alone in this airport waiting for a flight to Panama the morning after?

I board planes, talk to strangers, travel, make friends, work hard. I think about my almost loves: Jaime, Jackie, Samm. I think about the Dutch woman in San Salvador telling me it is dangerous to travel alone because you can’t share anything with anyone. I wonder if I am willing to love someone. Because I cannot stay still.

I felt last night like I had a thousand stories to tell her—this is so much to learn about me!
Let me tell you about the time I almost drowned in my grandmother’s creek when I was four years old! But there was no time and I was cold and I couldn’t find the right space or words in Spanish or maybe I am too young. I told the taxi driver this morning
“Don’t run” when he said he didn’t have a girlfriend. “You’re so young,” I said. I had four years on him.

Our hands touched, took flight, landed on the table with exasperation, trying to tie themselves to something! Our knees rubbed. In the taxi, our shoulders.

I am a good boyfriend, or would like to be. I am attentive. But I have so much to do! So much to share. Who can keep up with me?

This morning, on the way to the airport, I had the taxi driver stop at an ATM in a gas station. 4:00 AM. Dark, still cold, the gas station a haven with awake souls in a city still sleeping off the alcohol. A girl, an absolutely beautiful girl, was outside freezing. She was a prostitute. Young, long black hair, gold hoop earrings, a tiny black purse (what fits in a purse that small?), and eyes like a doe, but glassy now with the hour, the cold, the sex, the lies, the truths (I bet poverty) which are harder and colder than all of these.

She sees me, enters the store, gives me the eye and pretends to buy something. I thought of taking out an extra $20 and telling her to go home. Next time. There were two more on the next corner.

The plane turns into Panama City and I see the thousand skyscrapers and wonder what next. A cigar? A beer? I invite the taxi driver to lunch and he shows me a great place to eat and we drink beer and eat fried squid. It has rained here, now late afternoon and I am showered and clean but still so cold.

3-11-2009

Two days ago I was sitting in Chalchuapa with a friend drinking chilate, a steaming corn drink, out of a gourd, watching the rain fall late evening. Flower venders are taking down their stands, all the food carts wheeled away, the umbrellas folded up, all of this packed into old houses with long windows and high ceilings. One day before Day of the Dead, which might be one of the most beautiful days in Latin America.

The next day I am on a bus back to my tiny village, packed full of farmers, crying children, and little old ladies, leaving the city at night. Supposedly they killed this guy close to my community. And would you believe they did this with a machete? Chopped off his hands, a huge gash from spine to collarbone, and a stab mark in the chest. I am going back for the vela, where we will stay up all night drinking coffee, eating sweet break, singing songs, bored, talking, tired. The poor family. Can you believe it?

I walk home late at night and from a hillside see the city lights blinking. Ahuachapán, Santa Ana, Atiqizaya. These places are far away. I reflect back on the States, my family, how these years give me time to step back and re-examine my life, but also death. What a crazy way to die. Poor brother—he was the one who found him in the fields. Could you handle that? I would die too, seeing my brother, dead.

But today is a new day. And I am going to Panama soon.

Three Words -Spanish

this resulted from a little activity i did with the women in my house--el salvador in three words and the usa in three as well. cool to see what they put down. mine is the last one. of course, it´s in spanish. oh well.

Tres Palabras 28 enero 2009

ESTADOS UNIDOS

Los humanos son muy ricos
Compran los alimentos
Los humanos de El Salvador se van a la USA a ganar mucho dinero para venir a ver a la familia

Más oportunidad de trabajo
Más población
Más ingresos económicos

Hay trabajo
Todos son ricos

Hay mucha riqueza
Hay más oportunidades de trabajo
Tiene oportunidad de emigrar y que Dios le ayuda para poder llegar

Orden
Recursos
Insostenible


EL SALVADOR

Es un país pequeño y muchos habitantes
Un país con mucha pobreza
No hay mucha oportunidad de trabajo

Hace falta trabajar
Hay agricultura pero poco cosecha se saca
Pero toca emigrar para conseguir el dinero

Aquí no hay mucho trabajo
Aquí cosechan alimentos

Pobreza
Menos Empleo
Mucha emigración

Desigualdad
Potencial
Lucha

Privelege, Intelligence, Happiness (Thoughts from February 2009)

Privelege

What does it mean to not talk about where I come from? How do they think of me, honestly? Because they know I come from money and power, however relative it may be. It may as well be fair to talk to them about it, to tell them who I really am, to share my stories, to be me. It is part of who I am, and I think it lets me be real and genuine. I am, in fact, where I come from. That´s why, I realize, it is hard sometimes to have discussions with these people, these campesinos who have been exposed to so little. I have been exposed to so so much. I have been exposed to more than 99.99 % of the world, I would say. In terms of population, in terms of the human race, I am the most priveledged person in the world. I have to talk about. I want to talk about it. I want to mix the two worlds. I want them to be one.

Intelligence

I have to talk to these people as if they were my absolute equals intellectualy. Even if they have not been exposed to the university classes and textbooks and internet that I have, I believe that each person can think critically about the world and their place in it. I have to believe that. I have to believe that if I push hard enough, that if I set them up for success, we can do this. They can do it. Armida can do it. I have to set them up for success in my questions, and the questions have to be real. I have to be more transparent in everything, more than ever before. I have to be real and honest and critical and open to sharing my perspective, even if it comes from privelege, with these people because this is the only way it will help. I have to believe that they know, that they know their lives and their struggles and their hopes and their dreams. I have to trust that. I have to trust that my questions, if they are guiding, if I am wise, can help.

Happiness

Today I felt happy after emailing with my sister and thinking about a crush on a girl and communicating and accessing the information that I wanted to. I felt good. I felt so good. And then when I left the ciber I felt guilty, like I wasn´t supposed to feel good about anything here, like these two years were years of punishment and that my privelege of going to use the ciber was too much and that that is just one more sign that I am not the same as these people.

But then I thought that this is not a guilt trip. It is not a walk in the desert. I am here on Earth to love and be loved. By my family, my friends, regardless of what country. I have the opportunity to have these people in the USA, and they are my family, and I refuse to not love them because doing so is a privelege. I have the right, the absolute fundamental human right, to be as happy as possible.

Sometimes I feel like I must suffer. The world does not need one more suffering person. The world needs happy ones. The world needs people willing and daring to love.

When Will You Come Home?

WHEN WILL YOU COME HOME?

Tia Elena gives me instant coffee in the mornings, no sugar
Steam rising from the cup in the cool of the morning after the night´s rain, birds chirping, the neighbor´s radio singing reggaeton, the bus to pueblo will pass by soon. She lives alone.

For me, she and her daughter, and I know this is dangerous to say, are my El Salvador.
She lives alone in a small adobe house next to mine.
We use her former Carolli Fruit Preserves barrel, from Chile,
As a water tank and each morning I bathe there because
The lamina roof over our barrel is too short for me, the foreigner, and I bump my head.

Her only daughter is 27 and lives and works in San Salvador in a kind of bad neighborhood
Cleaning house, raising a kid, cooking meals for a middle-class family.

Tia Elena works the land, normally she´s already gone these days by the time I get there.
She leaves at dawn to tend crops of sugar cane, beans, corn.
She warns me not to walk alone at night, to never walk alone.

At night I see her 8” TV, black and white, flashing images of murders, gangs, Chavez
Onto her walls. She goes to bed late.

She married once to a man who beat her. He carried her away to another place.
She lost four children with him and when the youngest, the one who lives in the capital,
Who is called Roxana, was born, she left him and has not talked to him since.

Roxana has six years of schooling and comes back every Saturday with a new
Haircut, acrylic nails, navigating half the county. She is alone, single, confident.

Tia Elena and I sit talking in the mornings about simple things: rain, family, our favorite foods, Her chickens, and our favorite: her flowers.
Her face marked with sun, a bright smile. She has roses, herbs, and others I don´t know the names of, all kept carefully fenced in with thorns and wire to keep the chickens out.

How the new generation of women will change this country
I do not know, but how Roxana and Tia Elena move together is beautiful.
She does not work if Roxana´s home. Roxana mainly sleeps, or visits friend´s houses or talks with a bus driver who has been her boyfriend for four years now.

In the weekday Tia Elena stops by often, helping us here at the house. She makes tortillas, Sweeps the patio, will wash clothes. She feeds a family of five who walk from a village an hour away to sell salsa, green peppers, tomatoes, and blankets a few times a week.
When she went to San Salvador once to see her daughter´s place, she had never been to the capital before.

When will Roxana come home?
They are two birds, two tall leafy trees, two brightly colored threads of silk intertwined.

In another country far away, after fifty nine years of marriage
My grandma died at the age of 74 and I wonder if my grandpa feels like Tia Elena.
He lives with my mom and step-dad now, drinks instant coffee.
I wonder how he thinks of himself without her, how Tia Elena thinks of life without Roxana.
Waiting.

Ocean waves on the Salvadoran beach erased my footprints on an October evening
When I was alone, getting used to here.
I remember how the water felt so good, warm, like home
And we carry on, the ocean salt in the air always on our lips.