Thursday, November 1, 2007

hiatus

Remember back when I wrote about "plans"? The gist of that entry was that these plans we make are very likely to change. Well, mine continues to be an ever-evolving plan, and evolved it has over the last month.

The fact that I haven't written a substantial entry since early October is testament to this. I feel I've undergone a transitional month (of course, this was post transitional-September in Brazil, which was after a transitional summer in Paraguay... but I digress). One of the most recent changes of mind I had was realizing that I love living in Chicago. The city and my job at the music school have moved way up on my list of priorities. Another thing that has occurred to me is that I thrive on distractions; that is, if I have several different little projects, I complete all of them at a much higher level.

A couple of thoughts...

This morning I read through the introduction of my Princeton Review GRE Prep Workbook. It explains how the computerized test begins by giving you a question of medium difficulty - if you answer it correctly the next question is more difficult, and if you answer it incorrectly, the next question is easier. You go through the test getting knocked from easy questions to harder questions and back like a pendulum until the computer hones in on your final score. (Note: I always find the strangest things metaphoric. Please bear with me.) This image - bouncing back and forth between narrowing extremes until you finally squeeze into something that fits you "just right" - seemed appropriate for today, for the past month, and for the months and years to come. We're all honing in on something.

I have also been thinking a lot about the film (and book, which I just serendipitously found at a thrift store for 50 cents) High Fidelity. This month I took several short trips to visit friends and family in various parts of the country. I started at my mom's in Arkansas, then passed through Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, and finally made a trip home to Minnesota for a few days. It reminded me of the way the main character in High Fidelity feels this need to check in with all of his old girlfriends before he can settle down and get on with things. It feels good to find those various points of "center" and figure out how they all connect, which ones held significance for different reasons. It was a wonderful luxury I had to be able to re-connect.

Forgive my rambling entry. I have been working on a few non-blog pieces of writing, and am a bit more focused on their coherence than I am here in this space. Until next time.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

the panic of real life

Back in Chicago after four months, I am cognizant that my preoccupations are different now, after being away, re-evaluating my direction, working with awesome kids. This is all really good, of course, but caused me a bit of a panic yesterday.

Walking down Lincoln Avenue, past my old haunts - half-wanting to see a friendly face, half-praying that no one would recognize me - I had to catch my breath. I realized my forehead was furrowed beyond relaxation, and I was sweating in the perfectly pleasant autumn breeze.

I had a few metaphorical images flash before me - my subconscious's attempts to capture the feeling of starting this journey. The first one is of myself squeezing into a narrow channel or tube, shedding every excess that will not fit, adjusting, letting myself move through it with no sure sense of when it will end, but a hopeful certainty that I will land in some beautiful place, stretch out, and breathe - someday. The other image is perhaps partially stolen from some recently-seen film... I see myself standing on the corner of Lincoln and Lawrence, when the scene begins to spin around me, becomes a blur, turns a full 360-degrees, and stops in its original place again. I stop for a moment to let this happen with obvious fear on my face, then I straighten my posture, fix my gaze, and cross the street.

Last night I spoke with a friend who this week began her first year as a medical intern (after 3 years of medical school and rotations). She mentioned that we had some catching up to do, about the overwhelming reality of starting one's "real life". It's not just me.

There should be a word that means both exciting and scary. That's how real life feels. The sense that all of your questions - the main ones being "can this actually work?" and "what am I doing?" - could, conceivably, remain unanswered for twenty years or more.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

parking lots and baseball diamonds

... my introduction to the U.S. from the airplane window at 5:45am Tuesday morning. Later that day... french toast and scrambled eggs. Welcome home.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

when a picture's worth a word or two

'I have been desperately trying to understand why I feel so restless and miserable in Brazil. This is Brazil! This is the place that everyone dreams of visiting. The Northeastern coast has world-famous music and dance, beautiful scenery, and cosmopolitan cities with rich history. The people are interesting, hailing from many different backgrounds and living a wide range of lifestyles. I am amidst an gold mine of topics to think and write about – so why have I felt so completely bored?

This morning I copied all my Brazil photos onto a USB drive and brought them over to Laura’s apartment to exchange for digital copies of her photos. As I was going through her collection, I realized that most of our pictures were of the same things – historical sights, beach vistas, the skyline of Salvador, etc. I could give a one-sentence description of each of these places, having faithfully read my Lonely Planet. “This church is historical…”, “this plaza was significant…”, “this statue is of a famous colonial leader…”, and on and on. As I scrolled through one identical photo after the other, I realized these places held little meaning for Laura and me. We were here, we took a photo, then continued on our way.

It occurred to me that pictures are supposed to be “worth a thousand words” and these, sadly, are not. At the moment each photo was snapped, I had waited patiently for souvenir-vendors to move out of the way in order to compose the picture and capture the angle I wanted. Afterward I would have to say “no, thank you” (in broken Portuguese) as they offered me bracelets, earrings, sunglasses, and what-have-you. That group of pushy middle-aged French tourists who attended the Folkloric Ballet with Wendy and me last Thursday were a small handful of the innumerable humans who pass through Salvador each year – capturing the same photographs, saying “no thank-you” to the same street vendors, and stepping into the same attractive, air conditioned high-end souvenir shops.

In an economy that relies heavily on tourism, it is difficult, as a foreigner, to avoid being a tourist. In all honesty, I did want to see all of these things; it gave me something to do each day, and saw first-hand some of the places I had read about in my college history courses. But formally or informally, so many Brazilians work in the tourism industry that everywhere I went, every time I asked for directions or stopped to look at a restaurant menu – despite how sincerely I cultivated my Portuguese accent – the Salvadorans I encountered saw me through a single lens. (I admit I was rather obvious at times, with my foreign hair-cut, sun-deprived skin, relatively long skirts, and un-made-up face.)

I’ll elaborate on one experience. Something I have been working on since I arrived in Salvador is learning how to take public transportation. At this point, I can get myself pretty much anywhere, thanks to the advice of friends and people at the bus stops. However, my understanding of the system relies heavily on a limited number of bus- lines that exist primarily for tourists. These are smaller air-conditioned buses, which cost twice the regular bus fare. Essentially, all of these people who have counseled me on which bus to take to get here-or-there have almost exclusively directed me toward the “tourist buses”.

Last night, Laura, Wendy, and I were attempting to find our way home from the city center after our boat tour (yes, we took a touristy day-trip to two of the islands in All Saints Bay). We took the Lacerda Elevator up to the Municipal Plaza and went to the usual stop where there are always a few buses waiting for passengers. We climbed on the double-fare tourist bus, went through the turnstile next to the driver’s seat, and seated ourselves in the ice-cold AC, waiting for the driver to return. At that moment I noticed another non-tourist bus parked in the loading zone that was actually headed closer to my apartment (and cost half the price). I alerted Laura and we got off the tourist bus, going through the turnstile on our way out. As we stepped onto the other bus, our driver caught up to us from behind and tried to explain that we had to pay him the full fare for having gotten on and off the tourist bus – despite the fact that we didn’t go anywhere. We were both upset and indignant, but the driver called a policeman over to explain to us that the driver has to pay the bus company for every flip of the turnstile – that’s the way fare money is controlled here (Brazilian buses don’t have the little cash box that we have in the US).

The experience served to top off my frustration with my inability to avoid being a tourist in a country where each tourist’s money carries such large significance. Whether it is a street vendor selling one 50-cent bracelet or a bus driver getting punished and fined for letting two girls change their minds – so many Salvadorans are dependent on the whims of foreign travelers for their livelihood. At first it is nice – there are lots of things to do and see, and it is relatively easy to get around the city. But I realized I can’t live day to day paying people to show me their culture, their history – there is something that feels exploitative about it all.

Having realized these things – after three excruciating weeks of being “entertained” as opposed to inspired, being a tourist when I wanted to be a “traveler” – I do have some idea of where I would start if I were to stay here to work or write. But I am ready to be back in the U.S., to do a bit more research and to have something in mind, something I want to learn, before I travel to the place to find it.