Reflections

Words define our experiences in a place where most of us know very few. They toy with us, misshaping our mouths and under-expressing our feelings. Sometimes we are seen as ignorant, other times, overly intense, however most frequently, we are the tourists, the short-timers, the “gringitos”. Even the translation of our most common label starts the relationship with this foreign world on uneven footing. Our stays are filled with knitted alpaca sweaters, church photos, harrowing bus rides, and moments of connection to the world behind the translators. We cannot see these places for long enough to know them, long enough to find the words, so we jot cryptic mental notes to decipher at a later date. Later will come dripping on the back of time, slowly, incomplete. After spending weeks in and around a world unlike ours in all respects, the only things we can hold onto are the glimpses. A glimpse of poverty, sideways glances of smiles and firm handshakes, crying babies and scared old ladies; these are the images we unravel. The challenges are not slight. The tears are real. Forgetting the act of survival is to forget the act itself, but forget it we do at the sight of joy in everyday things. Joy of reunion, of progress, of introduction. Acts that need no translation, no lengthy explanation. We know without the hurtful sounds of words. We did not come to gain knickknacks, to experience pictures, to meet memories, but rather to remember that we are all alike.

At the moment of great discovery,

all things are like a flash of lightening,

a drop of dew.

– Unknown

Day 3

Between swings of the make-shift hammer, I relish the sideways glances of the Ecuadorian landscape. The vistas of lurking volcanoes and unmasked hardship sit coupled in my mind as uniquely Ecuadorian, though this part of the world in undoubtedly wrought with both. According to our evening tour guide, these volcanoes don't erupt in Pompeii fashion, killing/preserving in a flash, but rather, there is a mild explosion of rocks followed by a massive cloud of vapor. Rarely is there ash. And you call yourselves volcanoes!

I am living in 3 languages. English translations of my simple Spanish thoughts, English, and Old English. My days are spent in total immersion of all three simultaneously. The weight of my impending school year leaves a dulling effect on mind, honing the edges of experience. I am mostly here in the moment...expect when I am not. There is little to be done about this weight, only breathe and drink more. One of those things will help.

Day 1

Sitting in a room fighting colonial roots and third-world conceits, we start our adventure despite not having read the manual. From left to right sit Eric, Lane, Nardin, Sandra, Christie, Dave, Joanne, Natalie, Erin, Jennifer, and Kate. Between the furtive glances and fumbled foreign phrases, we start. We listen, we giggle, we joke, we dream of change. There is little to support that dream but the people in the room, the strangers in the room. They can't be trusted, such is the nature of strangers, but they linger in the periphery as strangers often do. It takes time. Which is all we have. Tomorrow won't be so strange.

This is my life

Hello and welcome...to my life. I should say it is my new life. I didn't buy it, just waited till it came to me. I haven't had a day off in the last 5 months...and the list pictured to the right is the extent of my world now. Clearly my handwriting hasn't improved. Strange...I miss it already. I ended on Friday and now, on Weds., I miss it. For all of you interested, here is a list of shows we performed:

Taming of the Shrew
The 5th of July
A collage of scenes from The Seagull and The Glass Menagerie
A Trapeze Movement Show
The Admirable Crichton
The Grapes of Wrath (only 2 1/2 weeks of rehearsal)


There is very little to say, but according to the faculty of my school, I am not funny. So please make note.

Murky Waters

I feel like I am walking the plank, yet the topsy-turvy ocean below does not scare me completely, only it's deepest darkest crevices...and the first 50 ft. However, unlike in most scurvy pirate plank scenarios, there is no wind weathered ne're-do-well prodding me with his half sober sword. Just me, walking the plank, as if I were taking a quick dip in a late summer afternoon. I have chosen to walk the plank. Chosen to dive into my fears and short comings, and quite frankly, I don't know what I will find, beside my fears and short-comings. I don't know what I want to find. Buried treasure I suppose, to stick to the metaphor. Enough treasure to make me infamous.

Fighting with Plumbing...

When I envisioned remodeling our bathroom, my mind did not immediately go to my unborn children. Truth be told, my first thought was of pictures of our finished bathroom on the cover of Sunset's remodeling issue. On the list of grand fantasies regarding a basic bathroom remodel, my future children were admittedly pretty far down the list. How I might permanently scar them didn't even make the first draft of said list. Now, I don't have any children yet, but as a man in his late twenties, recently married, I spend increasingly more time planning, day-dreaming, and worrying about the kind of father I will be and by proxy, what kind of kids I will raise. So, as I took crow bar and enthusiasm to tile and dry rot, I felt confident not of my handyman aptitude, which is admittedly lacking, but surely confident my children’s psychological well-being was not hidden in the sub-floor, fragile and impressionable. Yet, in the midst of debris and second hand tools, during an extended battle with a stubborn pipe, my father and the father I would become entered the room and scared me to death. I slammed a wrench down, screamed awfully at the inanimate object, and stood, ready to physically fight a ¢46 pressure fitting that would not come off. My cats sprinted for cover while my wife avoided eye contact and turn to leave. Later, after my heart rate dipped and fury receded, she said simply “I just don’t want our kids to be afraid of you”. And there it was. She was not worried about the broken wrench, not worried about the bathroom, or me …she worried that I would be the monster hiding in the closets of our children. Maybe I would be better served to lose sleep over that rather than my choice of tile colors. So, my new remodeling “project” might be me, using more patience than rage and less of my father’s plumbing. You never know, I might just be able to break the cycle of loss when it comes to emotions vs inanimate objects.

Answering for the Lack of Rhythm,

Witty retorts aside, you’re right, I can’t dance. I don’t lack desire, I don’t lack feet, one left and one right over there, I don’t lack for much but a beat slow enough to work with...which doesn’t make for good dancing. Yes, I know. In my head, I am smooth, gliding across the floor like silky Astaire before he got old and died. In my head, I feel the music in my soul, thumping out my angst like hedgehogs at a carnival. Then again, in my head, I am much taller and my teeth much whiter. I can’t escape middle school formals, when I still thought I could dance, just didn’t want to. Sitting in my memory in a pod of prepubescent men, forming my views on this whole dancing thing, I still haven’t found the right girl with which to dance. Maybe my wife can help me find her. The sad part is, I just found out. Nobody told me, not with furtive glances or screaming stares, “STOP DANCING, YOU TWIT”. Nothing. I found out in the midst of the middle aged, thinking myself better, only to find out that it is I who has no rhythm. So, you’re right, I can’t dance, but I can whistle. So there.