Hello! And a belated Boston cream pie birthday cake
12 years ago
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Nice
"Sometimes it's nice to have the best first because it's when your taste buds are the most active. Once you are full from eating dinner, dessert just doesn't pack the same punch...I think at 27 years old, the time for eating vegetables in order to eat some cake is over." - Andrew Shin, JD, MS, MPH
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Time passing
The funny thing about time is that it is like a vacuum: always somehow filled up by...stuff.
I had a discussion once with someone about why we see rain/snow/anything drifting/falling from the sky as beautiful. We (or more like I) decided that it was because it made us take notice of the space between our eyes and the next thing we see - the space that we take for granted and forget is there most of the time.
I guess we also take notice of time by the stuff that fills it up - like the many hours of today for example, by my obsessive work on this blog...
I had a discussion once with someone about why we see rain/snow/anything drifting/falling from the sky as beautiful. We (or more like I) decided that it was because it made us take notice of the space between our eyes and the next thing we see - the space that we take for granted and forget is there most of the time.
I guess we also take notice of time by the stuff that fills it up - like the many hours of today for example, by my obsessive work on this blog...
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The beginning...
Today I start a blog...yes, the sign of the continued deterioration of human relationships in an increasingly piecemeal world forcing us to reach out into cyberspace for companionship and reaffirmation of self-worth...
I thought it would be cool. Why not?
I thought it would be cool. Why not?
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Place
“[People] are linked to that environment through three key psychological processes: attachment, familiarity, and identity. Place attachment…is a mutual caretaking bond between a person and a beloved place. Familiarity refers to the processes by which people develop detailed cognitive knowledge of their environs. Place identity is concerned with the extraction of a sense of self based on the places in which one passes one's life.” – Mindy Fullilove
After the episodes of traveling and the supposedly scientific paper writing about the topic, only now am I becoming cognoscente of how I come to know a place. I walked through el Parque Fundidora and afterwards along the canal Paseo de Santa Lucia to the downtown plaza one afternoon. The park is a large, flat stretch of land dotted with random structures of industry – rusty iron flumes penetrating the sky, bright yellow painted half-cars of trains, skeleton towers that once supported God-knows what at one time. At one edge of the park lies the sleeping giant – the Fundidora, or iron plant – dark and ominous with spikes jutting out of its unkempt mane. It breathes when I’m not looking. Its insides have been converted into a modern museum of the science and history of iron-making, a tribute to the industry that suckled and made fat the city. For the time being, it allows the human parasite to linger in its belly until the day it decides to awaken and do unto the petty squatters what it pleases. The poems and incantations of the long passed workers and servants give worship to the turbulence and majesty of its being: the heat of its insides, the fumes of its anger, the turbulence of its temper. It provided for them and toyed with their fragile corpses and hearts as all gods do.
It was the first time I was alone with the park and I decided that I needed to find a place within it that I would call my favorite to make it my own. I came upon a small clearing in which the cement pavement was replaced by a patchwork of square metal platforms. The patchwork was missing several pieces, the gaps revealing the vertical twigs of water spewing from rusty iron pipes running below: a chessboard made by a drunkard. On one edge of the patchwork sat an old metal piece of machinery whose function I realized was no longer worth understanding. It was now to be honored for its shape, its scars, its age, like an old woman in a black and white photograph. It matters not what it has gone through and suffices to say that it was ‘a lot.’ I chose this to be my favorite spot. It was to be mine and mine only to sit by and love as others walked by, once in a while stopping to marvel at its curious constitution. I suppose this is love: we decide that one is to be our favorite and stay by him, as the rest of the world strolls by in occasional admiration.
There were several more things I made my own that night – the chocolate and caramel filled churros from the small shop by the canal that consistently delivers the same crispy, gooey, sweet surprise; the bridge shaped like a rotary highway that allows you to descend to the side you seek only once you’ve followed its circumference; the sugar-sprinkled mini empanadas wrapped in clear plastic that inhabit the small bakery in the alleyway behind the flashy duplex mall; the mariachi band singing on a boat forever anchored to the bank of the canal being paid by whom to do so, I will never know; the aging man from Argentina guarding his telescope with a sign saying “Venus - free” showing passers-by his pet planet to whom we all feel obligated to give a few coins; and the lovers embracing and kissing proudly under the many milky pools of lamp light. I walked and sat until I was satisfied that I had collected enough belongings in this place. Yes, I can say I know Monterrey – or my little bite of it – for now and for eternity. Yes, these things now belong to me and in exchange, my sentiments, my tears, and a small serving of my heart now belong to it.
But I was wrong about knowing Monterrey. I didn’t then – not the Monterrey that I would come to remember.
In these foreign places where I resort to the sound of P. Diddy to remind me of who I am, I find myself even more sensitive to the stages of friendship: its growth and its expiration – stages that change rapidly and unpredictably with each passing day. I spend my hours here awaiting her silence that tears apart our fragile conversation, the drowning of my mind by an exclamation of undecipherable sounds containing the secrets he has finally decided to share with me that I will never know, the eventual loss of her gaze first intermittently and then forever as I spew out all the thoughts I know how to say, hoping that one of them would capture her interest, and finally his smile insufficient to cover the annoyance once he realizes that it just isn’t worth trying anymore. But today it occurred to me that this disappointment is all too familiar to be only due to my being here. This feeling of throwing darts at the hearts around me, hoping that one would stick, hoping that one would stay and accompany mine – it’s been my companion all along.
And the moment I had decided that I actually needed my inevitable solitude to grow complete and wise, one stuck – after just one throw, just one word, or perhaps even before then. And I recognized in that moment that this too was a familiar feeling. I have made a friend – in the way that I had always made a friend. It did not matter that I spoke in wrong tenses, needed him to explain his jokes, or was raised where there were never palm trees. It never mattered. And it will always be a mystery why we were chosen to have found each other.
It would remain a mystery why I was assigned to Maricela: 44 yo, with a twin sister, and >4 sets of twins on her own, making a total of 10? 14? 16 children? No one knew exactly at first because she could only stutter “ba ba” when she first arrived. The right side of her face remains drooping like a Dali painting, but she is now able to toss out words one by one like ping-pong balls: a speech resembling that of a mentally disabled child, but coincidentally the kind that I can understand best. Each day, she tells me the same simple things again and again, also just like a child and also so perfectly adjusted to my needs like a good teacher would have chosen to do. She tells me her face fell and her tongue became tied when she was making tortillas the way she does every day for her children, she tells me her babies are crying at home because they think she is going to die, she tells me her strength is improving but her face continues to droop, she tells me her husband is attempting to work enough days to earn the money for the last study she needs (an MRI arteriograph), she tells me she worries that her household is becoming unkempt and that she misses cleaning it, she tells me to take care and be well in my future.
My final night here I spent with my freshly made friends and their long-time friends in a Ranch in the mountains where many people owned rustic homes. I expected the ranches in the movies, but there were no wide-open fields, horses, or cowboys. There was a medium sized empty house and a mildly unkempt backyard that terminated with shrubbery overflowing a wire mesh fence. Under a large tree, surrounded by sparse bags of chips, coolers overwhelmed with ice and canned beer, packs of tortillas and bags of cheese, and of course the now all too familiar sound of Mexican music, there sat the relievingly familiar faces and shapes in the bendable breakable plastic chairs. This was to be the place where we would sit and drink and dance and laugh until the sun set and the night revealed the stars. In the air there were mosquitoes, chatter, and the strong regular beats of reggaeton. Inside, my heart gushed with the sparse memories of the few days in a life of many we have shared. I heard on replay the conversations we have had and the ones we will never have. I took in the feeling of being by each one of them: sometimes the feeling that there is nothing left to exchange but our giggles and head-bobs to the music, sometimes the feeling of satisfaction and camaraderie, and rarely, the feeling of severe insufficiency to ever exchange all that could be.
I like the music!
It was great meeting you!
I think you’re really nice!
Thank you for everything!
You should come to the US!
We parted like we always have with a touch/kiss on the cheek and transient hug – far too silent for the gushing of my heart.
This was to be the Monterrey that I will remember. Just like the China I remember, the Indonesia I remember, the Korea I remember, the Maine…the Troy…the Boston…the New York…
I soothe myself to sleep with the promise that I will slowly exchange all that needs to be exchanged through the pieces of text in cyberspace over time, all the while knowing that it will only be the need that will dwindle rather than the exchanges be fulfilled. But this is what I have signed up for, knowing that this happens every time, knowing that I have always been so greedy for closeness, knowing that I will always have to let go of those words never spoken and the potential I work so hard to build, knowing that I will always leave again. It’s a masochistic habit, this traveling. Maybe one day I will stop tormenting my own heart, trying to teach myself the lesson of forgetting that I know I will never learn. Maybe one day – but not yet.
After the episodes of traveling and the supposedly scientific paper writing about the topic, only now am I becoming cognoscente of how I come to know a place. I walked through el Parque Fundidora and afterwards along the canal Paseo de Santa Lucia to the downtown plaza one afternoon. The park is a large, flat stretch of land dotted with random structures of industry – rusty iron flumes penetrating the sky, bright yellow painted half-cars of trains, skeleton towers that once supported God-knows what at one time. At one edge of the park lies the sleeping giant – the Fundidora, or iron plant – dark and ominous with spikes jutting out of its unkempt mane. It breathes when I’m not looking. Its insides have been converted into a modern museum of the science and history of iron-making, a tribute to the industry that suckled and made fat the city. For the time being, it allows the human parasite to linger in its belly until the day it decides to awaken and do unto the petty squatters what it pleases. The poems and incantations of the long passed workers and servants give worship to the turbulence and majesty of its being: the heat of its insides, the fumes of its anger, the turbulence of its temper. It provided for them and toyed with their fragile corpses and hearts as all gods do.
It was the first time I was alone with the park and I decided that I needed to find a place within it that I would call my favorite to make it my own. I came upon a small clearing in which the cement pavement was replaced by a patchwork of square metal platforms. The patchwork was missing several pieces, the gaps revealing the vertical twigs of water spewing from rusty iron pipes running below: a chessboard made by a drunkard. On one edge of the patchwork sat an old metal piece of machinery whose function I realized was no longer worth understanding. It was now to be honored for its shape, its scars, its age, like an old woman in a black and white photograph. It matters not what it has gone through and suffices to say that it was ‘a lot.’ I chose this to be my favorite spot. It was to be mine and mine only to sit by and love as others walked by, once in a while stopping to marvel at its curious constitution. I suppose this is love: we decide that one is to be our favorite and stay by him, as the rest of the world strolls by in occasional admiration.
There were several more things I made my own that night – the chocolate and caramel filled churros from the small shop by the canal that consistently delivers the same crispy, gooey, sweet surprise; the bridge shaped like a rotary highway that allows you to descend to the side you seek only once you’ve followed its circumference; the sugar-sprinkled mini empanadas wrapped in clear plastic that inhabit the small bakery in the alleyway behind the flashy duplex mall; the mariachi band singing on a boat forever anchored to the bank of the canal being paid by whom to do so, I will never know; the aging man from Argentina guarding his telescope with a sign saying “Venus - free” showing passers-by his pet planet to whom we all feel obligated to give a few coins; and the lovers embracing and kissing proudly under the many milky pools of lamp light. I walked and sat until I was satisfied that I had collected enough belongings in this place. Yes, I can say I know Monterrey – or my little bite of it – for now and for eternity. Yes, these things now belong to me and in exchange, my sentiments, my tears, and a small serving of my heart now belong to it.
But I was wrong about knowing Monterrey. I didn’t then – not the Monterrey that I would come to remember.
In these foreign places where I resort to the sound of P. Diddy to remind me of who I am, I find myself even more sensitive to the stages of friendship: its growth and its expiration – stages that change rapidly and unpredictably with each passing day. I spend my hours here awaiting her silence that tears apart our fragile conversation, the drowning of my mind by an exclamation of undecipherable sounds containing the secrets he has finally decided to share with me that I will never know, the eventual loss of her gaze first intermittently and then forever as I spew out all the thoughts I know how to say, hoping that one of them would capture her interest, and finally his smile insufficient to cover the annoyance once he realizes that it just isn’t worth trying anymore. But today it occurred to me that this disappointment is all too familiar to be only due to my being here. This feeling of throwing darts at the hearts around me, hoping that one would stick, hoping that one would stay and accompany mine – it’s been my companion all along.
And the moment I had decided that I actually needed my inevitable solitude to grow complete and wise, one stuck – after just one throw, just one word, or perhaps even before then. And I recognized in that moment that this too was a familiar feeling. I have made a friend – in the way that I had always made a friend. It did not matter that I spoke in wrong tenses, needed him to explain his jokes, or was raised where there were never palm trees. It never mattered. And it will always be a mystery why we were chosen to have found each other.
It would remain a mystery why I was assigned to Maricela: 44 yo, with a twin sister, and >4 sets of twins on her own, making a total of 10? 14? 16 children? No one knew exactly at first because she could only stutter “ba ba” when she first arrived. The right side of her face remains drooping like a Dali painting, but she is now able to toss out words one by one like ping-pong balls: a speech resembling that of a mentally disabled child, but coincidentally the kind that I can understand best. Each day, she tells me the same simple things again and again, also just like a child and also so perfectly adjusted to my needs like a good teacher would have chosen to do. She tells me her face fell and her tongue became tied when she was making tortillas the way she does every day for her children, she tells me her babies are crying at home because they think she is going to die, she tells me her strength is improving but her face continues to droop, she tells me her husband is attempting to work enough days to earn the money for the last study she needs (an MRI arteriograph), she tells me she worries that her household is becoming unkempt and that she misses cleaning it, she tells me to take care and be well in my future.
My final night here I spent with my freshly made friends and their long-time friends in a Ranch in the mountains where many people owned rustic homes. I expected the ranches in the movies, but there were no wide-open fields, horses, or cowboys. There was a medium sized empty house and a mildly unkempt backyard that terminated with shrubbery overflowing a wire mesh fence. Under a large tree, surrounded by sparse bags of chips, coolers overwhelmed with ice and canned beer, packs of tortillas and bags of cheese, and of course the now all too familiar sound of Mexican music, there sat the relievingly familiar faces and shapes in the bendable breakable plastic chairs. This was to be the place where we would sit and drink and dance and laugh until the sun set and the night revealed the stars. In the air there were mosquitoes, chatter, and the strong regular beats of reggaeton. Inside, my heart gushed with the sparse memories of the few days in a life of many we have shared. I heard on replay the conversations we have had and the ones we will never have. I took in the feeling of being by each one of them: sometimes the feeling that there is nothing left to exchange but our giggles and head-bobs to the music, sometimes the feeling of satisfaction and camaraderie, and rarely, the feeling of severe insufficiency to ever exchange all that could be.
I like the music!
It was great meeting you!
I think you’re really nice!
Thank you for everything!
You should come to the US!
We parted like we always have with a touch/kiss on the cheek and transient hug – far too silent for the gushing of my heart.
This was to be the Monterrey that I will remember. Just like the China I remember, the Indonesia I remember, the Korea I remember, the Maine…the Troy…the Boston…the New York…
I soothe myself to sleep with the promise that I will slowly exchange all that needs to be exchanged through the pieces of text in cyberspace over time, all the while knowing that it will only be the need that will dwindle rather than the exchanges be fulfilled. But this is what I have signed up for, knowing that this happens every time, knowing that I have always been so greedy for closeness, knowing that I will always have to let go of those words never spoken and the potential I work so hard to build, knowing that I will always leave again. It’s a masochistic habit, this traveling. Maybe one day I will stop tormenting my own heart, trying to teach myself the lesson of forgetting that I know I will never learn. Maybe one day – but not yet.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Dust
For days I’ve been trying to identify the substance that I inhale here from the gusts of wind, that upon contact dries up the back of my palate. It is tasteless, colorless, and ever-pervasive in these parts. It makes me want to escape it by crawling into my windowless, vent-less dorm room with fluorescent buzzing lights. As we rode out of the city and into the arid lands today, I opened the window of the taxi cab that smelled of exhaust, only to find myself suffocated with more of the stuff from the wind. I realized then, that of course – it is dust.
Like most places, there are two kinds of people in the hospital here: the doctors and the patients. But I have yet seen a place where the two differed so much. I have yet to see as good looking a group of young people as the medical students and doctors here: the young girls with their hair pulled back, makeup neatly lining their lips, clothes formal but tight-fitting and flattering; the young men with their hair slicked, dark eyes and intense eyebrows.
The patients, on the other hand, blend in with each other as though they are of a slightly different skin-tone altogether. They are browned by the dust. They come with their various colored blankets and small bags of belongings that somehow all appear brown in the distance. They come with young and old attached to them and it’s often difficult to tell who is the sick one. Their skin is grooved like dried mud, and they pile together along the walls, against the pillars, and overflow to the outside sidewalks and curbs like the inevitable and relentless brown that stains a corner, unable to be reached by the dull tools and the strained cleaning schedule available to the hospital’s caretakers. The area of the stain waxes and wanes but it is always present. People are always waiting. It’s as though the caretakers have given up and decided to continue sweeping only the areas that is most convenient, leaving the grooves to continue browning.
The patients remain just as different, just as brown once moved onto the hospital floor. Some still have hands and feet caked with dirt, only rubbed off along with gel used for the echocardiogram that marked a spot finally deserving to be hastily wiped with toilet paper. There is Martin, the 68 or so old man who has curly gray hair and particularly dark skin, lying patiently with a distorted right arm now in the shape of a banana after some accident long gone in the past. He is aphasic now, after a stroke, but smiles when I tell the other medical student in broken Spanish about how I warn my younger sister not to choose medicine if she can be happy doing anything else. There is Miguel who is only 23, and near possibly the end of his life with AIDS and presumed toxoplasmosis encroaching on his brainstem, making him appear cross-eyed and forcing his hand to dance its way to his nose when he is asked to touch it. A woman sits by him most of the time, presumably his mother. She feeds him and a matter-of-factly instructs him to follow God’s Words as she points to the cross on his chest. Finally, there is Juan, someone’s name I don’t hear called often. He is 60 but appears the size of an 8 year old child since most of his flesh is wasted away and his right leg has been shortened by an amputation. He is strapped to the bed with various make-shift restraints created from sheets and torn cloth. His eyes wander freely about the room as he is in a state of coma, and his voice is only heard as the spasms of wheezes and coughs that produce bursts of projectile sputum from his tracheostomy, landing as far as the bed across the room.
Perhaps the only items that penetrate the brownness are their eyes – framed by wrinkles, even in the young. They remain bright and flickering, grateful and content. They are eyes that have learned not to be surprised by disappointment, eyes that have seen what things can happen in life, eyes that now patiently accept the random and meager rationing of God’s gifts. They do not disapprove of the professor’s daily request to tap their fingers together to demonstrate their perhaps permanently disabled coordination, nor of being fully exposed amidst the crowd of doctors for the changing of the fluid-stained and odorous sheets beneath them. It’s as though their spirits have already become detached from their bodies and their physical frames are but the beaten vessels that shield them from the harsh sun and dust. They have transcended to a place I’ve only known through the writing of philosophers. I am envious of their freedom.
There are also two kinds of prices here – probably for the two kinds of people. There’s the two-hour bus ride to the outskirts of the mountains for 8 pesos (50 cents), and there’s the bottle of Herbal Essence for 100 pesos (8 dollars). It makes me imagine the two worlds that these two kinds of people might traverse in, the two universes of goods and culture, perhaps never needing to interface each other except at the hospital – but even there, we are divided by spaces we occupy – between beds or on them, gliding through the center of the hallway or clinging to the walls.
Today there was a man who was in a coma from Guillam Barre syndrome. Alongside him was a medical student, squeezing the balloon “ambu” bag every few seconds into a tube that fed into his lungs, supposedly keeping him alive. Another student came by and took over, but not until the next changing of the guards did I realize that there was no machine on its way – this was the way things were supposed to be. I offered to help for half an hour, both appalled by the use of manual labor in such a hasty, risky way, and empathetic towards the dire conditions it must mean we are all in. So I gloved and took over the bag, warmed by the hands of the medical students before me. I was a personal ventilator. If I stopped or malfunctioned, he would slowly drift away.
I tried to talk to Martin who was in the bed across the room. His dense mutism has melted a bit into a grumbling and I felt proud of him. I asked if he could read the sign on the wall and he walked up and read part of the first word – the name of the patient who I was keeping alive for the moment. I told him he was improving and he nodded. I asked him what had happened to his arm, and he grumbled back gesturing some object falling from the sky. For a moment, he looked longingly at his banana arm but then quickly resumed his usual content nature, shaking his head and smiling as if to say “tis is life.” I chuckled at the situation, realizing for a moment I was trying to understand a man whose language I barely spoke who is aphasic and just learning how to grumble again. But then the others in the room were catatonic and comatose and strangely we were the two that had the most to say. Several times, I looked down at the patient I was ventilating and wondered whether he was still alive. Once I even checked his pulse just to be sure, but quickly resumed bagging, fearing that he would expire without the next puff. This may have been the biggest role I played in a patient’s life for a while.
Most of my friends are other exchange students here from other countries. It makes it difficult to say that I know what it means to be Mexican. It’s much harder to write this time around. I believe it’s because I’m not so lonely. I find that the more I know about people, the less I have to write about them – they become too real for words. Maybe my writing is only limited to simple things – things I can paint with my dullish fingers. Perhaps I’m just scared that I won’t get it quite right as there are so many more mistakes to be made.
My only conclusion had been that Mexicans are very kind. I told a taxi driver this and he responded ever so wisely, ‘there are good people and bad people everywhere.’ I have been told this in many places of the world and it is a lesson I should have known by now: that culture and place runs only so deep, and underneath, people are really all the same everywhere. There are ones who give and ones who cheat, ones who worship the truth and ones who lie when it’s more convenient. It’s funny that I think I am writing to capture the flavor of different parts of the world, when in the end, below different colors of candy coating, it is all just the taste of humanity.
So far I don’t know what else to make of this place. I have shared the few thoughts I have. But I feel comfortable with this. I have learned from a friend recently that not everything makes sense at every moment, although it all may in time.
Like most places, there are two kinds of people in the hospital here: the doctors and the patients. But I have yet seen a place where the two differed so much. I have yet to see as good looking a group of young people as the medical students and doctors here: the young girls with their hair pulled back, makeup neatly lining their lips, clothes formal but tight-fitting and flattering; the young men with their hair slicked, dark eyes and intense eyebrows.
The patients, on the other hand, blend in with each other as though they are of a slightly different skin-tone altogether. They are browned by the dust. They come with their various colored blankets and small bags of belongings that somehow all appear brown in the distance. They come with young and old attached to them and it’s often difficult to tell who is the sick one. Their skin is grooved like dried mud, and they pile together along the walls, against the pillars, and overflow to the outside sidewalks and curbs like the inevitable and relentless brown that stains a corner, unable to be reached by the dull tools and the strained cleaning schedule available to the hospital’s caretakers. The area of the stain waxes and wanes but it is always present. People are always waiting. It’s as though the caretakers have given up and decided to continue sweeping only the areas that is most convenient, leaving the grooves to continue browning.
The patients remain just as different, just as brown once moved onto the hospital floor. Some still have hands and feet caked with dirt, only rubbed off along with gel used for the echocardiogram that marked a spot finally deserving to be hastily wiped with toilet paper. There is Martin, the 68 or so old man who has curly gray hair and particularly dark skin, lying patiently with a distorted right arm now in the shape of a banana after some accident long gone in the past. He is aphasic now, after a stroke, but smiles when I tell the other medical student in broken Spanish about how I warn my younger sister not to choose medicine if she can be happy doing anything else. There is Miguel who is only 23, and near possibly the end of his life with AIDS and presumed toxoplasmosis encroaching on his brainstem, making him appear cross-eyed and forcing his hand to dance its way to his nose when he is asked to touch it. A woman sits by him most of the time, presumably his mother. She feeds him and a matter-of-factly instructs him to follow God’s Words as she points to the cross on his chest. Finally, there is Juan, someone’s name I don’t hear called often. He is 60 but appears the size of an 8 year old child since most of his flesh is wasted away and his right leg has been shortened by an amputation. He is strapped to the bed with various make-shift restraints created from sheets and torn cloth. His eyes wander freely about the room as he is in a state of coma, and his voice is only heard as the spasms of wheezes and coughs that produce bursts of projectile sputum from his tracheostomy, landing as far as the bed across the room.
Perhaps the only items that penetrate the brownness are their eyes – framed by wrinkles, even in the young. They remain bright and flickering, grateful and content. They are eyes that have learned not to be surprised by disappointment, eyes that have seen what things can happen in life, eyes that now patiently accept the random and meager rationing of God’s gifts. They do not disapprove of the professor’s daily request to tap their fingers together to demonstrate their perhaps permanently disabled coordination, nor of being fully exposed amidst the crowd of doctors for the changing of the fluid-stained and odorous sheets beneath them. It’s as though their spirits have already become detached from their bodies and their physical frames are but the beaten vessels that shield them from the harsh sun and dust. They have transcended to a place I’ve only known through the writing of philosophers. I am envious of their freedom.
There are also two kinds of prices here – probably for the two kinds of people. There’s the two-hour bus ride to the outskirts of the mountains for 8 pesos (50 cents), and there’s the bottle of Herbal Essence for 100 pesos (8 dollars). It makes me imagine the two worlds that these two kinds of people might traverse in, the two universes of goods and culture, perhaps never needing to interface each other except at the hospital – but even there, we are divided by spaces we occupy – between beds or on them, gliding through the center of the hallway or clinging to the walls.
Today there was a man who was in a coma from Guillam Barre syndrome. Alongside him was a medical student, squeezing the balloon “ambu” bag every few seconds into a tube that fed into his lungs, supposedly keeping him alive. Another student came by and took over, but not until the next changing of the guards did I realize that there was no machine on its way – this was the way things were supposed to be. I offered to help for half an hour, both appalled by the use of manual labor in such a hasty, risky way, and empathetic towards the dire conditions it must mean we are all in. So I gloved and took over the bag, warmed by the hands of the medical students before me. I was a personal ventilator. If I stopped or malfunctioned, he would slowly drift away.
I tried to talk to Martin who was in the bed across the room. His dense mutism has melted a bit into a grumbling and I felt proud of him. I asked if he could read the sign on the wall and he walked up and read part of the first word – the name of the patient who I was keeping alive for the moment. I told him he was improving and he nodded. I asked him what had happened to his arm, and he grumbled back gesturing some object falling from the sky. For a moment, he looked longingly at his banana arm but then quickly resumed his usual content nature, shaking his head and smiling as if to say “tis is life.” I chuckled at the situation, realizing for a moment I was trying to understand a man whose language I barely spoke who is aphasic and just learning how to grumble again. But then the others in the room were catatonic and comatose and strangely we were the two that had the most to say. Several times, I looked down at the patient I was ventilating and wondered whether he was still alive. Once I even checked his pulse just to be sure, but quickly resumed bagging, fearing that he would expire without the next puff. This may have been the biggest role I played in a patient’s life for a while.
Most of my friends are other exchange students here from other countries. It makes it difficult to say that I know what it means to be Mexican. It’s much harder to write this time around. I believe it’s because I’m not so lonely. I find that the more I know about people, the less I have to write about them – they become too real for words. Maybe my writing is only limited to simple things – things I can paint with my dullish fingers. Perhaps I’m just scared that I won’t get it quite right as there are so many more mistakes to be made.
My only conclusion had been that Mexicans are very kind. I told a taxi driver this and he responded ever so wisely, ‘there are good people and bad people everywhere.’ I have been told this in many places of the world and it is a lesson I should have known by now: that culture and place runs only so deep, and underneath, people are really all the same everywhere. There are ones who give and ones who cheat, ones who worship the truth and ones who lie when it’s more convenient. It’s funny that I think I am writing to capture the flavor of different parts of the world, when in the end, below different colors of candy coating, it is all just the taste of humanity.
So far I don’t know what else to make of this place. I have shared the few thoughts I have. But I feel comfortable with this. I have learned from a friend recently that not everything makes sense at every moment, although it all may in time.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Meulaboh, Indonesia Entries
Summer, 2007:
The Road to Calang 7/1/07
The Road to Parapat 7/9/07
The Road to the Market 7/21/07
The Road Home 8/16/07
January, 2008:
The Traffic Light 1/8/08
The Camp 1/13/08
The Last Night in Meulaboh 1/23/08
The Road to Calang 7/1/07
The Road to Parapat 7/9/07
The Road to the Market 7/21/07
The Road Home 8/16/07
January, 2008:
The Traffic Light 1/8/08
The Camp 1/13/08
The Last Night in Meulaboh 1/23/08
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The Last Night in Meulaboh
Dear Friends,
This is my last night here. The rain is pouring harder than I have heard it yet. It is a relief. I will miss the rain here, the untamed tears that come gushing at unpredictable times of the day…so loud that it drowns out the music from my lap top on full volume. It waxes and wanes…in indecision of whether there are more disappointments to complain of for the moment.
Clara said to me at our last dinner tonight…'try not to be such a perfectionist, Bev,' in the way she says Bev frequently interjected into short sentences she likes to use. 'you're already doing everything with your heart, Bev…you know you have to enjoy every moment of the processes…of life.' That's really all she said…she never says much, but I think I will remember this.
I ate 5 dishes of sauce with my squished chicken today…like an appropriate last time. Record breaking really. I know I will be back. But not for a long time I know. This place has gotten sweeter and softer than I remember it to be. Perhaps that is what friendship feels like…with people, with a place.
All in all I feel quite lucky this time…actually, amazingly lucky. Things somehow fell into place for the time being. Perhaps God was watching over me this time around. Perhaps I finally learned not to set my goals too high.
My professor toasted me today. It meant a lot to me but somehow not too much. I didn't really feel the need for the affirmation. I consider that a big step for me.
There was a big dinner party at the office for the departure of Dr. Rizal yesterday. I finally felt part of the family like never before. I bought the girls in the office silly headbands with pom poms on them. They thoroughly enjoyed it for every bit of the 5,000 Rupiah they were worth. Giving gifts are by far what makes me the happiest out of all the things I could do. I often forget that.
I will miss Faras, the granddaughter of my landlords here. She is one of those children who exemplifies everything good and beautiful about childhood…innocence, curiosity, mirth, spontaneity. Children are even harder to describe than adults probably. Perhaps because words are invented by adults. She named the stuffed cat I gave her Susie, but the first name was inevitably Animal.
I finished inputting the data from the census of the village. I'm so proud of the women of this village to have contributed so much. Mostly though because I'm so impressed that they actually managed to administer most of the questionnaire correctly, a process I doubt they have ever encountered before…a stream of Boolean logic so routine for our overly-educated scientific minds, so artificial and awkward for what nature intended.
I am impressed by this place: the people, their challenges, their inevitable flaws, and their energy that flourishes here in the exhausting heat and extinguishing rain. I could not live here, but I wouldn't want to ever stop coming back.
Bev
This is my last night here. The rain is pouring harder than I have heard it yet. It is a relief. I will miss the rain here, the untamed tears that come gushing at unpredictable times of the day…so loud that it drowns out the music from my lap top on full volume. It waxes and wanes…in indecision of whether there are more disappointments to complain of for the moment.
Clara said to me at our last dinner tonight…'try not to be such a perfectionist, Bev,' in the way she says Bev frequently interjected into short sentences she likes to use. 'you're already doing everything with your heart, Bev…you know you have to enjoy every moment of the processes…of life.' That's really all she said…she never says much, but I think I will remember this.
I ate 5 dishes of sauce with my squished chicken today…like an appropriate last time. Record breaking really. I know I will be back. But not for a long time I know. This place has gotten sweeter and softer than I remember it to be. Perhaps that is what friendship feels like…with people, with a place.
All in all I feel quite lucky this time…actually, amazingly lucky. Things somehow fell into place for the time being. Perhaps God was watching over me this time around. Perhaps I finally learned not to set my goals too high.
My professor toasted me today. It meant a lot to me but somehow not too much. I didn't really feel the need for the affirmation. I consider that a big step for me.
There was a big dinner party at the office for the departure of Dr. Rizal yesterday. I finally felt part of the family like never before. I bought the girls in the office silly headbands with pom poms on them. They thoroughly enjoyed it for every bit of the 5,000 Rupiah they were worth. Giving gifts are by far what makes me the happiest out of all the things I could do. I often forget that.
I will miss Faras, the granddaughter of my landlords here. She is one of those children who exemplifies everything good and beautiful about childhood…innocence, curiosity, mirth, spontaneity. Children are even harder to describe than adults probably. Perhaps because words are invented by adults. She named the stuffed cat I gave her Susie, but the first name was inevitably Animal.
I finished inputting the data from the census of the village. I'm so proud of the women of this village to have contributed so much. Mostly though because I'm so impressed that they actually managed to administer most of the questionnaire correctly, a process I doubt they have ever encountered before…a stream of Boolean logic so routine for our overly-educated scientific minds, so artificial and awkward for what nature intended.
I am impressed by this place: the people, their challenges, their inevitable flaws, and their energy that flourishes here in the exhausting heat and extinguishing rain. I could not live here, but I wouldn't want to ever stop coming back.
Bev
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Camp
Dear Friends,
I was reading through my journal from this summer…it’s the same journal I’m using now because I didn’t quite fill it up last time. I was reminded of the tensions I experienced that no longer haunt me here. I think I have changed a lot…perhaps during that summer, perhaps after.
I found this excerpt that was the last one I wrote from Meulaboh before I left for Bali.
What it is that I cannot even confess here is my own fragility. My uncertainty that what I believe and see and feel is even what I really believe and see and feel – or should I be feeling something else? Perhaps I enjoy writing because it does not let me change my mind. Such that for once, my thoughts are still and eternal. In reality, every thought is a quiver and every belief just a trembling stumble into a certain direction.
Yes, that feeling lasted all summer…until I finally reached Bali I think…and even then, not until the third day. It was my birthday. I bought myself a drink and sat at the bar of a hip restaurant listening to a band that played international new-age music. I think I told myself I had arrived at something I could call my own accomplishment – probably one of the first in my life that wasn’t invested in, demanded, or deemed important by someone else. It was my own choice, one of my first choices I really owned.
This time around, such choices seem more natural to me. I guess I’m growing up.
It’s incredibly hot outside today. There are so few clouds in the sky such that there’s just no avoiding the sun. These days I would rather work in the airconditioned office than be on vacation out in the heat.
We had a large meeting with the community leaders yesterday along with the boyscouts. It was a major milestone and crucial step: the response from the community really makes or breaks this project. There were 16 block chiefs, one village secretary, and one village chief. I was most impressed by the village chief who is also the religious leader in the village. He was a short man, maybe only a couple inches taller than I am, and he had one of those faces that seemed to have found everlasting peace. He wore a plain white garment and white pants and a hat men here wear for religious activities. He spoke very softly throughout the meeting and really spoke very little at all. Every motion and word had a sense of finality and deliberateness. He’s one of those leaders that upon the first glance, one could immediately understand why he was the chosen one. I am looking forward to meeting with him again.
It was Professor Azrul’s last day today. He is the national boyscout leader in Indonesia. He was to leave at 6am this morning. I happened to be awake then due to my sluggishness in overcoming jet lag so I rushed out to say goodbye to him. He came out of his room to sit and chat for a while. He leaned back in his chair and spoke as he gazed off into the distance – his usual posture while telling tales of his life past. Just looking at the way the light glazes over his dark leathery skin, one senses the many lives he must have lived: writing books on everything from romance to biostatistics, serving public offices with various titles, traveling around the world giving lectures on public health, being shuttled from place to place by an entourage of young scouts. He says to me ‘I pray to God and ask Him to not make me too wealthy…it’s the wealthy ones that have the problems…why do you think all those men have mistresses these days?’ I joked to him that I will make sure I don’t find a husband who is too rich.
We visited a scout camping event last evening. It was held at the school where the children go. There were 7 or 8 tents of various shapes and sizes set up in the school courtyard. Most of the children were eating in one of the classrooms. They had cooked the food themselves. We asked the boys who were better cooks, the boys or the girls, and they responded quite seriously that it was one of them in particular, as though there was no question. One table of girls were singing a song as we entered. I fumbled to switch my camera to the video function but failed to capture it on time as the room was lit only with a few small candles on the tables. The children’s families had donated the materials for them to cook: the rice, some chicken and vegetables. It was simple but the children seemed content. This was the first camping event the scouts in this city have had since the tsunami, the scout leader said with pride. We congratulated him. I felt very excited for the children, to imagine what it must be like to be the first to have this experience in years in all of Meulaboh (although nearly invisible on the map, it’s a big place for the children here). I remembered the sheer bliss that small events out of the ordinary had brought me when I was younger: the unquenchable excitement of what could happen, of sleeping in a tent outside of home, of being surrounded by my friends past dinner time, of staying up past curfew…these are degrees of excitement I no longer reach…I again recalled that these peaks of happiness have been eroded by the sands of persistently lingering worry and disappointment that comes with age. The happiness I know now is one of contentment, a warm glow with tapered edges. Only through watching the children do I come close to feeling that kind of happiness again.
It’s time for me to move on with my day. Hope everyone is well at home…don’t take cold weather for granted!
Bev
I was reading through my journal from this summer…it’s the same journal I’m using now because I didn’t quite fill it up last time. I was reminded of the tensions I experienced that no longer haunt me here. I think I have changed a lot…perhaps during that summer, perhaps after.
I found this excerpt that was the last one I wrote from Meulaboh before I left for Bali.
What it is that I cannot even confess here is my own fragility. My uncertainty that what I believe and see and feel is even what I really believe and see and feel – or should I be feeling something else? Perhaps I enjoy writing because it does not let me change my mind. Such that for once, my thoughts are still and eternal. In reality, every thought is a quiver and every belief just a trembling stumble into a certain direction.
Yes, that feeling lasted all summer…until I finally reached Bali I think…and even then, not until the third day. It was my birthday. I bought myself a drink and sat at the bar of a hip restaurant listening to a band that played international new-age music. I think I told myself I had arrived at something I could call my own accomplishment – probably one of the first in my life that wasn’t invested in, demanded, or deemed important by someone else. It was my own choice, one of my first choices I really owned.
This time around, such choices seem more natural to me. I guess I’m growing up.
It’s incredibly hot outside today. There are so few clouds in the sky such that there’s just no avoiding the sun. These days I would rather work in the airconditioned office than be on vacation out in the heat.
We had a large meeting with the community leaders yesterday along with the boyscouts. It was a major milestone and crucial step: the response from the community really makes or breaks this project. There were 16 block chiefs, one village secretary, and one village chief. I was most impressed by the village chief who is also the religious leader in the village. He was a short man, maybe only a couple inches taller than I am, and he had one of those faces that seemed to have found everlasting peace. He wore a plain white garment and white pants and a hat men here wear for religious activities. He spoke very softly throughout the meeting and really spoke very little at all. Every motion and word had a sense of finality and deliberateness. He’s one of those leaders that upon the first glance, one could immediately understand why he was the chosen one. I am looking forward to meeting with him again.
It was Professor Azrul’s last day today. He is the national boyscout leader in Indonesia. He was to leave at 6am this morning. I happened to be awake then due to my sluggishness in overcoming jet lag so I rushed out to say goodbye to him. He came out of his room to sit and chat for a while. He leaned back in his chair and spoke as he gazed off into the distance – his usual posture while telling tales of his life past. Just looking at the way the light glazes over his dark leathery skin, one senses the many lives he must have lived: writing books on everything from romance to biostatistics, serving public offices with various titles, traveling around the world giving lectures on public health, being shuttled from place to place by an entourage of young scouts. He says to me ‘I pray to God and ask Him to not make me too wealthy…it’s the wealthy ones that have the problems…why do you think all those men have mistresses these days?’ I joked to him that I will make sure I don’t find a husband who is too rich.
We visited a scout camping event last evening. It was held at the school where the children go. There were 7 or 8 tents of various shapes and sizes set up in the school courtyard. Most of the children were eating in one of the classrooms. They had cooked the food themselves. We asked the boys who were better cooks, the boys or the girls, and they responded quite seriously that it was one of them in particular, as though there was no question. One table of girls were singing a song as we entered. I fumbled to switch my camera to the video function but failed to capture it on time as the room was lit only with a few small candles on the tables. The children’s families had donated the materials for them to cook: the rice, some chicken and vegetables. It was simple but the children seemed content. This was the first camping event the scouts in this city have had since the tsunami, the scout leader said with pride. We congratulated him. I felt very excited for the children, to imagine what it must be like to be the first to have this experience in years in all of Meulaboh (although nearly invisible on the map, it’s a big place for the children here). I remembered the sheer bliss that small events out of the ordinary had brought me when I was younger: the unquenchable excitement of what could happen, of sleeping in a tent outside of home, of being surrounded by my friends past dinner time, of staying up past curfew…these are degrees of excitement I no longer reach…I again recalled that these peaks of happiness have been eroded by the sands of persistently lingering worry and disappointment that comes with age. The happiness I know now is one of contentment, a warm glow with tapered edges. Only through watching the children do I come close to feeling that kind of happiness again.
It’s time for me to move on with my day. Hope everyone is well at home…don’t take cold weather for granted!
Bev
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The Traffic Light
Dear Friends,
Hope you all had a great New Years. I just arrived here in Meulaboh again yesterday afternoon. I’m staying in the same room I stayed in last summer. The office got some new furniture and the guest house lost some furniture, but I suppose gained more space.
I’m listening to that same calling for the prayer I heard last summer, sitting in my bed, wide awake at 4am. So strange being back to a place so foreign yet so familiar. I suppose I am just as foreign, just as familiar to myself as well. The way I appear in the rusted, mildly distorted mirror on the cabinet in the corner of this room…the shape of my thighs, the blemishes on my face, the waves in my hair…all strangely not quite the same as before. It’s a bit like time-lapse photography, revisiting a place after a while has passed, seeing it and myself in juxtaposition with the way we were in my memories. Even the feeling of mosquito bites that awaken me in the middle of the night reminds me of how things remained the same and have changed in an unmeasurable way.
Perhaps most of it is me that has changed: my goals, what I long for at home, my feelings about this place – from one of discovery to one of nostalgia.
It’s actually quite chilly here at night…I had to put on a sweater to go outside! What a concept. It rains several times a day here these days. It reminds me of the relief I felt over the summer whenever rain fell from the sky. And yet it’s all so plentiful now. Another thing that is the same yet different I suppose.
Time is a funny thing. It changes so much. Just time alone. The big talk of the office is that there’s now a single traffic light on our street. The first and only one in Meulaboh. It’s shocking to see the traffic actually obey something. That particular intersection was previously policed by 4-5 men and women but mostly operated under the rules of first come first serve/who can honk the loudest and most persistently.
It’s funny to imagine I was just walking around the Magic Kingdom 5 days ago. It’s amazing how we traverse time and space these days.
I think I can learn a lot this time around about how to get things done. It’s a bit overwhelming since there’s about 6-7 people in the office alone who is working on this project and several other projects at the same time. So many people to coordinate with. I’m still unsure who is ‘my boss.’ It appears that it might be this new officer, Dr. Rizal. He seems very organized and experienced. He’s also very polite, almost to a point that makes me uncomfortable. I hope I can learn a lot from him. I think I will make that one of my goals. The meetings are going to involve several more people than I expected, which will make it much harder to predict how they will go. It’s a different feeling than anything I’ve tried to accomplish before. It’s a bit like trying to stay on the back of a bucking bronco…so many times you just want to give up and fall onto the hay, but you just have to keep pulling yourself onto the saddle despite feeling like you never quite get on it before falling off again. I’m hoping things will settle a little bit after this first week once the major introductory meetings have taken place. I’m just trying to give a good first impression – be humble but not seem too disorganized so that I earn some respect.
It’s hard to predict what will happen in the next two weeks. The only thing I foresee is that it will be a lot. Nothing will be routine this time around. I’m hoping I can take a minibreak to the city for a couple of days, but it will have to depend on what God wills.
I will write again soon,
Love, Bev
Hope you all had a great New Years. I just arrived here in Meulaboh again yesterday afternoon. I’m staying in the same room I stayed in last summer. The office got some new furniture and the guest house lost some furniture, but I suppose gained more space.
I’m listening to that same calling for the prayer I heard last summer, sitting in my bed, wide awake at 4am. So strange being back to a place so foreign yet so familiar. I suppose I am just as foreign, just as familiar to myself as well. The way I appear in the rusted, mildly distorted mirror on the cabinet in the corner of this room…the shape of my thighs, the blemishes on my face, the waves in my hair…all strangely not quite the same as before. It’s a bit like time-lapse photography, revisiting a place after a while has passed, seeing it and myself in juxtaposition with the way we were in my memories. Even the feeling of mosquito bites that awaken me in the middle of the night reminds me of how things remained the same and have changed in an unmeasurable way.
Perhaps most of it is me that has changed: my goals, what I long for at home, my feelings about this place – from one of discovery to one of nostalgia.
It’s actually quite chilly here at night…I had to put on a sweater to go outside! What a concept. It rains several times a day here these days. It reminds me of the relief I felt over the summer whenever rain fell from the sky. And yet it’s all so plentiful now. Another thing that is the same yet different I suppose.
Time is a funny thing. It changes so much. Just time alone. The big talk of the office is that there’s now a single traffic light on our street. The first and only one in Meulaboh. It’s shocking to see the traffic actually obey something. That particular intersection was previously policed by 4-5 men and women but mostly operated under the rules of first come first serve/who can honk the loudest and most persistently.
It’s funny to imagine I was just walking around the Magic Kingdom 5 days ago. It’s amazing how we traverse time and space these days.
I think I can learn a lot this time around about how to get things done. It’s a bit overwhelming since there’s about 6-7 people in the office alone who is working on this project and several other projects at the same time. So many people to coordinate with. I’m still unsure who is ‘my boss.’ It appears that it might be this new officer, Dr. Rizal. He seems very organized and experienced. He’s also very polite, almost to a point that makes me uncomfortable. I hope I can learn a lot from him. I think I will make that one of my goals. The meetings are going to involve several more people than I expected, which will make it much harder to predict how they will go. It’s a different feeling than anything I’ve tried to accomplish before. It’s a bit like trying to stay on the back of a bucking bronco…so many times you just want to give up and fall onto the hay, but you just have to keep pulling yourself onto the saddle despite feeling like you never quite get on it before falling off again. I’m hoping things will settle a little bit after this first week once the major introductory meetings have taken place. I’m just trying to give a good first impression – be humble but not seem too disorganized so that I earn some respect.
It’s hard to predict what will happen in the next two weeks. The only thing I foresee is that it will be a lot. Nothing will be routine this time around. I’m hoping I can take a minibreak to the city for a couple of days, but it will have to depend on what God wills.
I will write again soon,
Love, Bev
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