Papaw

Le mal reste avec l'on.
L'on ne peut pas s'evader d'eux, même si l'on veut.

So much is happening so fast, and it's hard to keep up with telling you all about everything. And maybe some things I've been putting off. Like how my grandfather passed away last month. I had decided that I needed to write about this almost two weeks ago, and I kept putting it off and putting it off because well, I didn't know what I could say exactly. And once I had figured out what to say I put it off some more because it was painful. When my sister told me that Papaw was being taken home on hospice care, it came as such a shock in one respect and in another, not at all. I've learned from my Aunt Andrea's and my step-father Walt's passing that being on hospice care doesn't mean they're going anytime soon. They can hang on for quite a while, though I think I knew in the back of my head that this meant he would likely pass before I got home in May, if I was even going home in May. (For reasons we'll discuss later, I'd like to stay here longer. I already had that in mind before I came, but now I have... extra motivation.)

Trop est arrivé très vite et il est difficile de vous mettre au jour sur tout. Et peut-être il y a des nouvelles que je remisais à plus tard. Par exemple, la mort de mon grand-père. J’ai décidé que je devais écrire sur cela il y a deux semaines, mais je l’ai reporté à de plus en plus tard, car bon, je ne savais exactement que dire. Une fois que j'ai compris que dire, je l’ai encore décalé, car c’était douloureux. Quand ma sœur m’a dit que mon grand-père était emmené chez soi pour des soins palliatifs, d’une façon, il m'a choqué, mais d’une autre, pas de tout. J’ai appris à cause du décès de ma tante Andrea et mon beau-père Walt que le soin palliatif ne signifie pas une mort soudaine. Ils peuvent continuer à vivre pendant quelque temps, bien que j'aie su dans un coin de mon esprit qu’il signifiait qu’il mourrait avant que j’arrive aux États-Unis en mai, si je rentre aux États-Unis. (Grâce à des raisons dont nous parlerons plus tard, j’aimerais rester en France pour plus de temps. Je l’avais en tête avant de partir en France, mais maintenant… J’ai plus de motivation.)  

I remember when I saw him last. It was at my sister's wedding. He showed up using a cane and had lost some hair due to the chemo so he covered his head with a cap. He was in as good of spirits as always, but it was strange to see him using a cane. My grandparents are old, as grandparents generally are. I know this in the way most people know intellectual facts. Water is made of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Plants perform photosynthesis to make their food. Sound is the vibration of waves through a medium. But if I were to go on how I experience these things, water is just a thing to drink, plants grow without effort, sound is when things go bang, and my grandparents have been frozen at the same age for my entire lifetime. They seemed to never age, always lively and active, always happy and positive, and have always been the clearest source of unconditional love in my life. So to see my Papaw using a cane was strange, but he said he was coming off chemo and I chalked it up to that more than anything. I didn't ask if this meant he had given up fighting the cancer, choosing quality of life over quantity. I also didn't ask how long he was expected to have. In a certain way, I didn't feel it was my business. In another way, I didn't really want to know. Doctors are never really right about those sorts of things.

Je me souviens de la dernière fois où je l’ai vu, le mariage de ma sœur. Il est entré en utilisant une canne et a couvert ses cheveux perdus à cause de la chimio avec un casque. Il était de bonne humeur, comme d’habitude, mais c’était bizarre de le voir avec une canne. Mes grands-parents sont vieux, ce qui est la tendance des grands-parents. Je le sais comme on sait des faits intellectuels : L’eau est composée par deux atomes d’hydrogène et l'un d’oxygène. Les plantes font la photosynthèse. Le son est des ondes à travers un médium. Mais selon ce que je ressens : l’eau est un liquide clair, les plants poussent tout seuls, le son est quand mes oreilles écoutent un bruit est mes grands-parents sont congelés au même âge pour toute ma vie. Il semblait qu’ils ne vieillissaient jamais: ils étaient toujours vivants et actifs, toujours contents et positifs. Ils sont la source plus évidente de l’amour inconditionnel dans ma vie. Alors, voir mon grand-père utiliser une canne, c’était étrange, mais il a dit qu’il allait arrêter la chimio et je l’ai remporté à cela. Je n’ai pas demandé s’il signifiait qu’il a abandonné de lutter contre le cancer, qu’il a choisi la qualité de vie sur la quantité. Je n’ai pas demandé combien de temps on croyait qu’il aurait. Dans un sens, je croyais que ce n’était pas mon affaire. Par contre, je ne voulais pas savoir franchement. Les médecins ne sont jamais corrects avec leurs estimations.

Papaw, my sister, my niece, me, and Mamaw
Mon grand-père, ma soeur, ma nièce, moi et ma grand-mère

At the end of October, it's "All Saint's Vacation" here, and I was off of work when my sister sent me a Facebook message to tell me he had passed. It was unexpected, but then, when is death ever expected. It's never marked down in your agenda for tomorrow. It happens on its own schedule.

À la fin d’octobre, c’est la vacation de Toussaints en France, et c’était cette période quand ma sœur m’a envoyé un message sur Facebook pour me dire qu’il était mort. C’est inattendu, mais quand est-il la mort attendue ?

There was shock and there was sadness, but it was cut short by the business of trying to figure out a plane ticket. My mom offered to help, so I needed to find the cheapest possible. And then I just had things I needed to get done. I was still in the middle of doing a lot of administrative stuff for immigration. When I had finally found time, the grief had hid itself. I lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe it was because I didn't see the real decline, but it might have been good that I wasn't there. My sister said he was very out of it in his last days, and I think my presence could have been upsetting for him. The death of my father had always weighed very hard on Papaw. I don't think he ever really got over it, which is natural. Parents aren't built to handle their children's death; evolution didn't provide the skill. I look a lot like my father, and sometimes Papaw would accidentally call me David, my father's name. In fact, at the wedding, he told my Mamaw, "Didn't David do so well up there?" referring to the service I wrote for my sister and her husband. So if he has Freudian slips of the tongue while he is fine, I can't imagine what would happen if he were fading. I think my presence would have just caused him pain.

Il m’a choqué et il m’a attristé, mais tout cela était écourté en essayant de trouver un billet d’avion. Ma mère m’a offert d’aider, donc j’avais besoin de trouver le voyage le moins cher. Et aussi j’avais beaucoup à faire. J’étais en train d’arranger des affaires administratives avec le bureau d’immigration. Enfin, quand j’ai trouvé du temps, le chagrin a disparu. Je l’ai perdu au long du chemin. Peut-être, c’était parce que je n’ai pas vu son déclin, mais il a pu être bien que je n’aie pas été là. Ma sœur m’a raconté qu’il était désorienté pendant ses derniers jours, et je pense que ma présence a pu être perturbante pour lui. La mort de mon père pesait beaucoup sur mon grand-père. Je crois qu’il ne se l’est jamais remis, ce qui est naturel. Les parents ne sont pas faits pour se remettre la mort de leurs enfants; l’évolution ne leur a pas donné la capacité. Je ressemble beaucoup à mon père et parfois, par accident, mon grand-père m’appelait David, le nom de mon père. En fait, au mariage, il a dit à ma grand-mère, “David l’a bien fait, n’est-ce pas ?” en faisant allusion à la cérémonie que j’ai écrite et réalisée pour ma sœur et son mari. Donc, s’il avait des lapsus quand il était bien, je ne peux pas imaginer ce qui arriverait s’il était plus malade. Je pense que ma présence le ferait souffrir.

In the end, I didn't go back to the United States. It was one of his wishes to not have a big service, and I felt guilty asking my mom for so much money to go back. Mamaw did end up having a small gathering where the family spread his ashes in the woods surrounding their home in the woods. It's times like these that being abroad feels the most selfish, but at the same time, I know that Papaw would want me to be here. He was always curious about things, especially science, but really, he just loved learning. When I talked to Mamaw to ask her how she was doing, she told me that he was always proud that I had grown up to be so curious too, to be out exploring the world, always wanting to learn more. And hearing that made me sad and happy all at once because he understood me. And I made him proud.

Enfin, je ne suis pas retourné aux États-Unis. C’était un de ses souhaits de ne pas avoir une grande cérémonie et je me sentais trop coupable pour demander à ma mère trop d’argent pour y retourner. Ma grand-mère a fini par avoir une petite réunion où la famille a saupoudré des cendres dans le bois autour de leur maison. Les fois comme celle-ci sont quand on dirait qu'être à l’étranger est égoïste, mais à la fois, je sais que mon grand-père voudrait que je sois là. Il était toujours curieux, spécialement concernant la science, mais vraiment, il aimait apprendre de nouvelles choses. Quand j’ai parlé avec ma grand-mère pour lui demander comment elle allait, elle m’a dit qu’il était toujours fier que j’aie grandi en devenant aussi curieux, que j’explore le monde, que je veux toujours savoir plus. En l’écoutant, j’étais triste et content à la fois, car il m’a compris. Et il était fier.

Ceux qu'on aime ne sont jamais absents.

We interrupt this story for.... a fucking poem.

This week, I really wanted to continue along with the story. Yet motivation was at a low all last week (hence the lack of entry) and right now, I'm just not feeling it. I've also been reexamining the creative side in my life and it's varied endeavors to see how to make it a bit higher quality, for both you all in the capacity of enjoying it and for me in the capacity of generating it. Part of that is taking to heart what Elizabeth Gilbert's said in her TED talk and listening to my daemon. So today, I do what the little genius in the corner wants and not what I'm trying to force out of myself. So good or bad, this entry is all his fault.

Cette semaine, je voulais vraiment continuer avec mon histoire. Cependant, ma motivation était basse pendant toute la semaine (d’où le manque d’entrée de l’autre semaine) et maintenant, j’ai pas trop envie. Aussi, je réexamine le côté créatif de ma vie et tous les efforts qu’il comprend afin de voir comment les rendre plus amusants à la fois pour vous, comme ceux qui les consomment, et pour moi, comme celui qui le fait. Une mesure est de prendre à cœur ce que Elizabeth Gilbert a dit pendant son TED Talk et écouter mon daemon. Alors, aujourd’hui, je fais ce que le petit génie dans le coin veut et pas ce que j’essaie de forcer à sortir de moi même. Bon ou mauvais, cette entrée est entièrement de sa faute. 

This entry is also a bit of an experiment. I want to start writing in both English and French because:

1) I wish I were Samuel Beckett. (We all wish we were Samuel Beckett.)
2) I need the practice writing French
3) I need the practice translating French
and lastly, 4) It seems like another way to further embarrass myself in a foreign language.

Cette entrée est également une expérience pour moi. Je veux commencer à écrire en anglais et en français parce que :
1) J'aimerais être Samuel Beckett. (Nous tous aimerons être Samuel Beckett, n'est-ce pas ?)
2) J'ai besoin de pratiquer l'écriture française
3) J'ai besoin de pratiquer la traduction du français
et finalement, 4) Il me semble encore une autre façon de m'embarrasser en une langue étrangère.

If you're wondering why I didn't do Spanish while I was in Colombia, a brief glance at those entries will suffice to inform you as to a few reasons: I basically had no Colombian friends when I was living there, something you'll see is quite different here in France... when I get around to telling you about it. If you're asking yourself why I don't do it now, well, it's a bit of work to put together these entries in one language. It's a lot more work to write it over again in another language. And doing it in three.... Well, I have to draw the line somewhere.

Si vous vous demandez pourquoi je n'écrivais pas en espagnol pendant être en Colombie, un coup d’œil à ces entrées suffit à vous informer de quelques raisons : en résumé, j'avais pas d'amis colombiens pendant mon séjour là-bas, une différence entre Colombie et France que vous verrez…. Quand je retrouverai l'envie de vous dire. Et si vous vous demandez pourquoi je ne le fais pas maintenant, bon, c'est pas un petit travail créer ces entrées en une langue. C'est encore plus en deux. Et en trois… Il faut poser des limites.

Anyway, today the genie demands a poem. So it's a poem you all get. Enjoy. Or don't. I didn't write it. That genius over there did.

Quoi qu'il soit, aujourd'hui, le génie exige un poème. Alors, vous allez recevoir un poème. J'espère que vous l'aimez. Ou pas. C'était pas moi qui l'a écrit. Ce génie-là, c'est lui qui l'a fait.

Jambi made me do it.

Litany of Lost Things

Lost my keys

Lost my wallet

Lost my cell phone

Lost my patience

Lost my hat

Lost my gloves

Lost my scarf

Lost my temper

Lost my chapstick

Lost my nailclippers

Lost my toothbrush

Lost my mind

Lost my cat

Lost my dog

Lost my gerbil

Lost my marbles

Lost my heart

Lost my spirit

Lost my soul

But you found them.

(Litanie des Trucs Perdus)
Perdues les clés
Perdu le portefeuille
Perdu le portable
Perdue la patience

Perdu le chapeau
Perdues les gantes
Perdu l'écharpe
Perdu le courage

Perdu le baume
Perdu le couple-ongles
Perdue la brosse
Perdue la boule

Perdu le chat
Perdu le chien
Perdu le cobaye
Perdus les moyens

Perdu le cœur
Perdu le moral
Perdue l'essence
Mais tu les retrouves toujours.

In Russia, You Don't Ride Plane. Plane Ride You.

I left you last at my journey from my home that wasn't feeling homey to France, but first: A stop in Russia. I'm not sure why I needed to stop in Russia. If you look at a map, it's pretty out of the way, but it was the cheapest ticket, and I wasn't going to argue with that. Unfortunately, you do get what you pay for. As I walked down the little bridge connecting the airport to the plane, I heard a sound that I hadn't heard since I worked at Bright Horizons Family Solutions: The sound of a Slavic kid going apeshit.

"Slavic kids going apeshit."

The last time i had the distinct pleasure of watching a kid of from Eastern Europe completely lose it was back when I was working at the daycare. I normally worked with the older kids there, and while they can freak out, the normally cling on to some level of rationality. But this fateful day, I was working in the preschool room, and there was a relatively new kid. I don't remember his name, so we'll call him Boris. Boris had come somewhere from Eastern Europe because his parents had gotten some job in New York. He was still technically in the process of learning English, but he seemed to communicate pretty well with the other kids. I remember watching him for a while, more as a social experiment than anything. I was interested in seeing what happened with this kid who supposedly didn't speak a lot of English had to engage with a bunch of people who didn't speak a lick of his language. Anyway, when no interesting situations presented themselves in the first fifteen minutes, I got bored and played Legos with some of the kids.

Cut to about six minutes later when this kid is suddenly hulking the fuck out on the other side of the room. He's like knocking over chairs and stuff, screaming "I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK ENGLISH ANYMORE!" (in English) and occasionally biting himself. And sometimes the furniture. When that started up, I had to get on the phone and call for backup. I mean, I wasn't trained for that situation. Eventually, his parents came and picked him up, and that was the last I saw of him.

"(in English:) YOU CAN'T MAKE ME SPEAK ENGLISH!"

Now, before my very eyes, this kid was freaking out. He wasn't biting anything but he was fighting tooth and nail to not get on that airplane. He was probably about eight years old and pretty big. But his dad was wrestling him, carrying him upside down, over his shoulder, just about any which way he could move a few steps with him. Really, after the initial shock, I felt bad for him and his parents. I asked the flight attendant, "Is he scared or something?" (assuming she could speak whatever that kid spoke), and she said, "Yes, and so are we." I chucked and sat down.

But guess who decides to plump his chunky ass down next to me? I'll give you a hint: It's the same person screaming bloody murder. Yep, it was that kid. And it was hours before he stopped. But he did stop. And I kept reminding myself that for the four or five hours till we finally touched the ground, and I was finally in Europe. Back after five years.

Oh Jesus Christ, Where To Begin?

Well, after a month-long break, the blog is back! And so much has happened in that month that it feels like it's been so much longer. My hopes of catching you up in a single entry are probably a bit foolish, so for the next couple weeks, these entries might be all over the place in space and time. Like a Doctor Who episode. But let's start start where we left off:

Before arriving in France, I stopped in Chicago before I headed off to New York. The MegaBus from Chicago to New York is ten dollars if you schedule it well enough in advance, so I couldn't really pass up the opportunity to visit a few old friends before I crossed the ocean. In Chicago, I met up with Marko and Paul. But after two days in Chicago, it was off to New York.

The ride to New York took a long time. A really long time. It was eighteen hours of molasses-class purgatory. I got on the bus at midnight, and I arrived in New York at seven pm. Eighteen hours on a bus wasn't as bad as you'd think though. They had plugs for your computer and phone, and there was rudimentary wifi service. But my sense of reality had started to warp a little bit, and soon I began to believe that there was only the bus, there could only ever be the bus, that there was never anything before the bus and there's nothing after the bus. The bus was the end and the beginning, the alpha and the omega, all that there is. So when I saw Frank's familiar face waiting for me when I got off in my once beloved home, it was surreal.

There is only the bus.
The bus is all there is.
The bus is everything.

After I had gotten rid of the suitcase of what was to become my only belongings henceforth, I cleaned myself back up into something resembling a sane human, and Frank and I feasted on the delicious vegetarian meatballs of Meatball Shop and headed to The Eagle for Jockstrap Night, because there really just aren't cultural activities like that in Indianapolis. Or Colombia. Or really anywhere else. At the end of the night, I came back to Frank's feeling like I had started the visit out right and that I was getting to see the arts of New York I loved without that pesky rent issue.

That feeling started to change the next day. I had no real plans lined up, so I decided to just go out into the city and see all the places I missed. Then I realized that there were no specific places (that still existed) that I actually missed. Try as I did, there was just nothing I could come up with that I felt like I needed to see, besides Central Park, which was closed because of the president or the pope or both. And then it started to set in again: The feeling that my time there had ended, that the city that once welcomed me with open arms as the bizarre, vagrant creature I was had changed and I woke up one day to realize it was no longer the same place at all. But now there was something new, an emotion with which I have little acquaintance: jealousy. I was jealous of all the people walking up and down the streets, hurrying to get to this place or that place. That's when I realized that the only thing I missed about New York was living there, feeling like I was, in at least some small way, part of the machinery that moved the world. I didn't miss any specific place or thing, just living there, just the rhythm of the city and the interesting people everywhere. Everyone had a story and a motivation. Few people there are just moving through life without trying to leave their mark or achieve some goal. And I do miss some people I know there, yet slowly but surely, my friends are also fleeing, branching out to other parts of the country with lower rent and less stress. That visit was sad but necessary, perhaps particularly then, right before another adventure. So it was with a heavy heart and with the perpetual forward motion that having no home brings you, that I got on an airplane that took me from New York to Russia and then from Russia to France.

Being Gay in Indianapolis, Indiana

Well, I said I'd do it, and here it is: a follow up to my second most popular entry to date. When I was in Colombia, I lamented how Colombian gay culture lacked the welcoming vibe I found in Spanish and US gay culture and how it had been Stockholm syndromed by straight culture. And here you definitely do find both of those things here, though their manifestations are different. Some places are more welcoming than others, of course. Greg's being the first to come to mind and Tini's being the last, because that place is bougey as hell... But coming into gay culture in New York City has left me eternally spoiled by what I expect from gay and queer culture, and Indianapolis is no exception. While the welcoming vibe almost certainly has to do with it being a smaller city, that also presents problems as well.

I know, I know. Keep it in mind as you read.

The first and most striking difference I notice is how a lot of people are obsessed, to a greater or lesser extent, with looking like a whore or not looking like one or they can't decide which they want to be. So many sexual stories I'm told, especially by people who I may not know well, start with a disclaimer: "I'm not a whore, but..." I don't care if you're a whore. Sleep with everyone. Sleep with no one. Whatever. Why is this even an issue? Why are we making this a thing? We're humans. We fuck. We're gay men. We fuck double because we don't have to worry about pregnancy and until recently marriage wasn't really in the cards. In New York, by and large, this is something we pay little attention to. Everyone kind of manages their sexual life in whatever way they want to without much of a hang up one way or another. Much like how you can throw into a casual conversation you smoke marijuana and take for granted the listener either smokes too or doesn't really care what you do with your own lungs. Here, however, the judgement level is high. Pun intended. Better not mention you manage your health responsibly and take PrEP, regardless of how many sexual partners you plan to have, or it's the scarlet letter for you.

As in I am awesome at not letting my Puritanical upbringing shame me
into making bad health choices.

This is a product of two things: a smaller gay community (to where, unlike New York or Madrid, you can actually call it a community) and mainstreaming. The latter is something that gay culture has been verging toward ever since marriage equality became the major political push. I think in a public sense, mainstreaming is good. It's unrealistic to expect straight people to really get us, despite the opposite being possible. They surround us. You either get it or you just get the world. It is not, however, reciprocal. Mainstreaming in shared and public spaces allows us to find common ground, but the problem is when it infiltrates gay spaces and becomes an end rather than a means to an end. There are things about gay culture that deserve and need to be preserved. It pushes the envelope; it shows that gender binaries and roles in relationships are arbitrary; it shows us alternatives to marrying your high school sweetheart and reproducing copiously: You can get married and have an open relationship. You can not get married and have a closed relationship your whole life. You can have a relationship between three people. You can do whatever works for you, which has been the amazing thing about gay, and especially queer, culture. But what's happening isn't this wonderful melange, but rather, assimilation. Gay life, for many, is becoming extremely suburban, and if that's what you really want, I'm not going to stop you. Part of this whole post-modern queer utopia I'm dreaming up is trying to let everyone do their own thing, but I think that a lot of those people are just looking at their straight counterparts and painting by numbers rather than forging their own identities and exploring who they are with the freedom they've been given. Being gay is no cakewalk just about anywhere in the world, but if that's the cards you've been dealt, play them the best way you can, which is not going to be the same way as your straight neighbor with their full house. See I made another pun. (That one was about babies.)

Stephanie Tanner!
What did I just say about shame and sexuality?

Last but not least, misogyny takes a whole new form here. I'm not going to pretend that misogyny isn't a problem in gay male culture everywhere (also, sometimes, a result of mainstreaming), but there's something that makes it a bit different here. I've noticed big, loud reactions of disgust from a lot of guys whenever anything female and sexual is mentioned: vaginas, periods, sex with women, whatever. Women, while not my preferred gender, are still beautiful; their bodies are beautiful; and there is nothing inherently displeasing about them. I'm willing to admit that maybe if you're a full-tilt six on the Kinsey scale that you don't really find a naked woman's body appetizing, but I think you can save the deliberately loud and deliberately public declarations of your disgust especially when you're in the company of women. One of the reasons I'll admit that the New York gay scene is more misogynistic toward women is that you don't see nearly as women (whether they be gay or not) in male gay bars (despite, I am told, their not having many of their own). Here, it's not completely uncommon to see women in a gay bar. So, can we all make a little agreement? If a woman is in a gay bar and she's totally acting chill and being cool, could you not go on a rant about how you find her body or parts of it disgusting? I talked last entry about straight people being good guests in gay spaces, but that goes both ways. We need to be good hosts.

That's about the long and the short of it, my friends. Oh, and stop reading gayguys.com. That site is the worst.

Louisville with the incomparable Neill and Bachelorettes

Last week I took a trip to Louisville to visit one of my dearest friends, Neill. Neill and I became friends in New York. We went to the same theatre school, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, but didn't become friends until one summer when we both worked at the New York Renaissance Fair. It was then that he pitched an idea for a staging of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and that was the start of a string of many plays we worked on together through Haberdasher Theatre, the company I was once the managing director for.

"Reminisced fondly"

I left for Louisville directly after the Business English class I teach Friday nights, and after I arrived, we spent the rest of the night catching up. We reminisced fondly over our days in New York and how sometimes we feel tempted to return but then remember that what we miss isn't there anymore. Our time there was this perfect combination of factors that made that decade great: the amazing support network of friends, the luck Haberdasher had in getting by on such a small budget, being young and in a big city after living your life in the midwest, that feeling of discovery and adventure, getting into trouble and barely getting out of it by those certain miracles that are only afforded to the young. "It was this moment in time," he told me. And what a glorious moment it was for all of us.

The next day we tried to do a few things around town. We had breakfast and went to the Science Center. "It smells like a daycare in here," I said as we were about to pay our entrance fee, and as we went through the museum, it turned out to be basically that: a daycare. Everything was geared toward small children, and while that's not too much a problem in itself—I can easily revert back to the mentality of a six year old at the drop of a hat—I would feel like an asshole when an actual six year old is there waiting. "Oh, you wanna play with these building blocks? Fuck you, toddler, I'm Indominus Rex and I rule these lands! RAWRRRRRRRRRRRR!" Fortunately, the guys at the ticket desk were gracious enough to refund our ticket fee, and we shuffled along to take in other sights and sounds around the city.

"The giant bubble maker is MINE!"

After a short gaming break, we went out into the night. We started at a pretty swanky bar called Proof with an art exhibit below it and some really good cocktails. Then we hit up a few gay bars, including Chill Bar and The Connection, where a drag queen pulled my shirt off as I tried to tip her for her back-to-back set of Alanis Morisette's "You Oughta Know" and Evanesence's "Bring Me to Life." (I'm not sure who got more out of it: her with the dollar or me with the ego boost.) However, we didn't stay long at the first bar we went to, Nowhere, because it had become invaded by bachelorettes. I absolutely hate when bachelorettes have their parties at gay bars. I know I really should be inclusive, but gay bars are where gay people go to relax and feel normal. Most bachelorette parties run in there expecting things: they expect the atmosphere to be a certain way; they expect all the gay men to be their automatic best friends and ready with a quick comeback and snaps in Z formation; they pound their hands on the bar if they feel like they're not being served fast enough. Basically, they come in and act as if the bar belongs to them and that we're all circus animals whose purpose is to entertain them. I understand it's someone's special day, but really, you're a guest in this territory: be considerate, slow your roll, treat us like normal human beings without the assumption that we're supposed to be great dancers and want to paint your nails, and you might just find we can be very welcoming.

The night ended with dancing on a light up dance floor, and the next day I had to drive back to Indianapolis to go to work. Life resumed, and in my last hour of work, I looked at the calendar. Twenty-one days until I arrive in France.

Back in The Shire

Bonjour, mes amis! Here we are again. Gearing up for another season abroad, this time in France. I'll be in the city Le Mans, which is to the southeast of Paris and about an hour travel time by high speed train. The city is famous for having a sports car race called the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in which cars go fast in a circle without stopping for twenty-four hours straight. This is beyond ironic because I've been in Indianapolis, my hometown, since I got back from Colombia, which is also famous for a race: The Indy 500.

In a way, I've always felt a bit like Bilbo Baggins and Indiana is The Shire. It's a place whose people, like the Hobbits, often don't leave. They are born here, they stay, sometimes they go away, but then they often return. And when they do go, they don't go too far: Chicago, Cincinnati, someplace like that. And many of them, also like Hobbits, are quite content in that. They don't need to leave; they're perfectly fine being here, living their lives day to day, raising families, and growing old. But there are a few of us, the Bagginses of the bunch, that are born with a desire to go out and see the world, to see how far we can go, and it's only a matter of time before our destiny catalyzes it and off we go, off to have adventures, and sometimes write about them.... and apparently also dabble in translating "several works from the Elvish." (Or Spanish or French or Japanese or whatever, right?)

When I left Indiana, over eleven years ago, I thought I'd never return beyond a visit here and there. For a long time, I thought I'd stay in New York forever. But one day, I realized it was time to go, even if I didn't know exactly where to, and that's what I've been trying to figure out ever since. To my surprise, it has taken me back here, where, I guess you could say, it all began.

I'm not really as happy here as I had secretly hoped I would be. Though I grew up here, coming back was almost like going to a new place. I had, blessedly, forgotten most of my childhood, and what I can remember was all confined to just a small corner of the city. So when I got off the plan at Indianapolis International Airport, it was as if I were arriving in a new place. Whenever I go somewhere new, I always hope I'll land in a place that makes me think, "Yes, I could stay here for a while," but Colombia wasn't that place—though if I ended up in Medellin or Manizales, maybe things would have turned out differently—and Indianapolis isn't that place either.

On top of remembering so little of it, Indianapolis has really developed a lot over the last eleven years. The city is really coming into its own, or at least trying, and the visits I would make here and there allowed me to make and stay in contact with a great group of friends who have really made these three months worth it. People are really happy to see me here, and I'm happy to see them. They ask me about what I saw and did while I was away, and I tell them stories. Sometimes some of them had the chance to visit me, and then we made our own stories. In any case, it's been nice to share my experiences. I've always been motivated in life by the goal of acquiring experiences, like how other people collect bottle caps and thimbles. But it's never been just to have them. It's been to share them. It's why I was in the theatre, why I write, and why I teach: to share the knowledge and experiences I gain in my life. I don't want all of it to disappear when I die. I want it to live on through other people, through the words, through their memories which maybe they might even pass on to others in an unbroken chain through the generations.

But in the end, it just doesn't have the things I need. There's no real language school, except for the one I work at, and enrollment is low enough that many languages are placed on hold, sometimes for up to a year, before a class opens for them. It lacks the multiculturalism and opportunity I got used to in New York and took for granted. Now that I've been almost a year and a half without it, I see how much it was important to me. At least when I'm abroad, even if where I am is pretty homogeneous, like Colombia was, it's still new to me; it's still something I can explore and learn from, whether the things I learn be about them or about myself.

I guess going to France is just the next step of that search though, to find that place where I feel like I belong again, to see if I can find an environment that can help me deal with a certain kind of loneliness I've felt my whole life, which has only become more obvious to myself now that I'm not really from anywhere. How am I supposed to answer that question now? I've been gone from New York too long to really say that's where I'm from, and Indiana's not home; it's just where I was born. So how do I answer that question now?

Or do I just belong to the world now? Yes, I think that's it. I am of the world, and it's time to go back into it once more.

Signing Off

Well, folks. This is it. I leave for the United States Wednesday, and tomorrow is my last day with access to a computer for a week or so. I've decided not to continue writing while I'm in the US. Just too many other projects that I want to be able to focus on. I will be back mid to late September with entries from France most likely, so it's not really good bye, just see you later.

Speaking of good-byes, I had a giant round of them two weekends ago when a lot of us in Fulbright got together, rented a country house a few hours from Medellin, and hang out. It was one of the most fabulous weekends in Colombia yet. Good times were had by all. There were much merry-making and fun, and I'm glad that it was my last trip in Colombia. Highlights included a day trip to El Peñon, a swarm-of-locus-like invasion of bugs which some helpful, neighborly toads came by and cleaned up for us, monkeys dancing on power lines, and a game of King's Cup in which I realized I have incredibly poor reaction time. Also, there was wine. It was the first time I had wine in about a year. It was delicious.

But really, that was just the beginning. This whole week has been about good-byes, and I realize how much I hate them. It always feels like you're leaving something unsaid or undone. The good-bye never feels real until years later when you look back and realize that you never did see them again and you probably never will. Until then, it's just another see you later, like the end of any other day.

I prefer to just disappear, and really, it's what I would do if I had my way, but I know that other people want to say good-bye, that sometimes they need to, and so I do my best. But for me, that's life. People are here today and then, suddenly, they're not. Sometimes you get to say good-bye and sometimes you don't. It doesn't make too much difference: There's always something left unfinished. There's always something you wish you said or learned or experienced. Even here, even now, there are reasons I wish I were staying in Colombia. Are they enough to keep me from leaving? No, but I have them all the same. There were still things to explore, about the country, about myself, but the tragedy in life, at least for someone with my sort of outlook on it, is that you can't experience it all in one go. You do your best, and when it's over, it's over and you just hope you did it as completely as you could. Do it completely, burn it up, leave no trace.

So, to those of you who have been faithful readers, how do I say good bye to some of you?

The Good-Byes Have Started

Like really in your face...

Well, last weekend I took a trip to Manizales to say good bye to one of my friends here, Julián. He's the one Colombian person that I felt like I really connected with and a good deal of why I believe that paisas are the best Colombian regions and cultures. In most areas, Colombians tend to be very-in-your-face: loud, brash, intrusive. Julián was none of these things. He's the only person in the country I've met that I could describe as gentle and kind. Most of my encounters with Colombians, especially caleños leaves me viewing them as bulls in an emotional china shop: very clumsy and brash, which I think comes from not really considering how their actions or words might impact someone before they say or do whatever they probably shouldn't say or do. It's a kind of ignorance. I don't mean that in the sense that they're stupid, but more that they are unaware. It's that kind of ignorance that brings bliss, which I suppose answers why they're considered to be one of the happiest countries in the world.

Julián, on the other hand, exhibited all the characteristics I value in a person: intelligence, thoughtfulness, tranquility, humor, playfulness. He was a reminder of all the good things in Colombian culture: hospitality, curiosity, and national pride. Colombians are generally very proud of their culture, but instead of his pride leading him to think that it was some unique snowflake whose dimensions I would never fully grasp, it lead him to want to share it with me as much as he could, through typical dishes he would make me and bits of history and background he would share with me here and there as something came up. I only had the opportunity to visit it him twice since the time that we met back in my tour of the coffee region, but every time I made it out there, he brought me back from he edge when I was dangerously close to writing the whole country off. So when he messaged me and asked if I wanted to come visit for the holiday, I took him up on the offer.

The weekend was a super fun time. Friday night, we went to a kind of cutre gay bar and got drunk as hell on the open bar. (Yes, I know. I'm kind of mixing Spanish words with talking about Colombia, but that's how I do.) The music was shitty and we kept telling each other that, but we danced to it anyway because it was better than the alternative. On Saturday, we took a nighttime trip to the hot springs just outside the city and chilled out while some boxing match was on. Although Facebook and all its munchkins kept trying to tell me it was the event to see, we never figured out what the big deal was. Sunday I returned to Cali, but before I had to make the five-hour journey back home, we went to ride horses. While he got up on that horse like he had been born on it and was riding all-around, it and my first time and took me a little bit to feel comfortable. I was on the back of a powerful living animal with its own brain and everything, and I find that nerve wracking. Unfortunately, I think the horse could smell my fear and was not willing to work with me in an equal partnership of mutual understanding. This became clear whenever I tried to steer him out of the pin to go along a path and he kept shaking his head and making sounds and occasionally spitting out grass. (Rude!) He felt lazy, and I can respect that. But it was only going to be for like fifteen minutes. So when Julián asked if we should keep the horses past the thirty minutes we originally asked for, I said no, and we went back to his house to eat.

Speaking of which, he's a fantastic cook.

Listen, basically you need to know this and only this: Julián is Colombia's gem, a veritable diamond in the rough, which is why it was hard when I realized I would be saying good bye to him within a few hours. I don't leave until June 3 from Colombia, and this was happening on May 3, a whole month beforehand. I didn't realize the process of saying good-bye would start so soon, but here I was, in the middle of it and with the person that I would find the hardest to say goodbye to because I might never see him again. Sure, there's others I'll have to say good bye to. (I'm looking at you, fellow Fulbrighters! Especially you Caitlin Strawder!) But it's well within the realm of possibilities that I'll see a lot of them again. The chances of me ever setting foot in Colombia after I leave is very minimal. Though not impossible, I can't think of why I'd come back. I definitely don't want to live here, and I think my bitter experiences are going to repel me from visiting for vacation. After all, would a vampire go to the Vatican for its vacation? You see my point.

So how did I handle this very difficult moment? I just said good bye and went off to the bus station. I'm not sure how to really deal with good byes other than to say them, but I'm always left wishing I had said something I didn't, even if I don't know what that was. So that's it, first and probably hardest good bye down.

Why I Haven't Been Writing

Dramatic reenactment of me finding my computer

Well, all, if you follow this blog regularly, you'll notice that lately I haven't been writing. There's a couple reasons for that. The main one is that my computer is dead. I woke up one day and it wouldn't turn on. I thought perhaps it was just the adapter, which had been blinking and acting weird over the last few days. I took it to the computer store to test a new adapter, and it wouldn't turn on. Then I brought it to a repair shop. After several visits and phone calls, they finally told me that it was unrepairable. That there was a short circuit on the mother board, and if you know anything about computer hardware, you know that is like certain death for a computer. Finito. Nothing's bringing poor Kwami back. I can only imagine what his last moments could have been like. Gasping for breath, feeling a throbbing in his processor, thinking "this can't just be heartburn" before he closed his eyes for good. He's up in the sky now, with Alan Turig and Ada Lovelace.

My computer being dead also means that I can't travel or do much of anything except stay home and study languages and watch South Park on my cell phone. I have to save what's left of my last month a stipend to buy a computer for job searching when I get back to the US. Oh, and also those translations of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's poems that keep getting shelved for one reason or another. That's kind of an important goal for Indiana too. On the bright side, I'm getting a lot of Japanese practice in, and my Coursera courses are getting a lot of attention.

Bonjour, mes petits. Je suis venu pour vous enseigner anglais.
Hello, little ones. I've come to teach you English.

But suffice it to say, if I can't go out into the world, I don't really have too much of interest to write about, and truth be told, I'm pretty sure I'm over Colombia and more excited for things to come anyway. I found out a few weeks back that I was accepted into the Teaching Assistant Program in France, and so sometime in mid- to late September, I'll be going to France. I don't have too many details yet, but I know I will be in the académie of Nantes and that I'll be teaching in a primary school (or potentially schools, plural, despite only working an official 12 hours a week). And I'm pretty excited about that. Word's still out on whether I'll blog about France or in the Midwestern interim. It really just depends on how well I can balance commitments that I should start putting first, like making money so I can travel while I'm in France since TAPIF is not quite as generous as Fulbright with their stipends and paying off credit cards so I don't have to worry about transferring money between banks to pay off US bills. Oh, and finishing those damn Bécquer translations. I'm really disappointed with myself for letting it take so long because there's some other writing projects I'd like to move on to. Particularly the novel that's been haunting me for the last two years, begging to be written. You know, the one that I originally wanted to make as a musical set to the music of English rock band Muse but abandoned that idea when I realized: 1) I would never get the rights to Muse's music to actually produce the thing and 2) It started to get too dark to be a musical. It was originally, as a musical, supposed to have a Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of sensibility. A bit of horror, a bit of soap opera, a bit of humor. But as a book, I'm not sure if that would work as well. Oh, it's about the apocalypse. That's all you get for free, bitches.

But as for now, things are good, even though I think my tolerance for all the things I've found annoying in Colombia has dropped pretty low in these last thirty-ish days that remain. I think maybe I'm just anxious to get back to the US and then on to France. But although I look at the three or four months in the great state of Indiana as a bit of a waiting period, I am actually excited to be back home int he place I'd never thought I'd call home again. It feels nice to know that I'm going to a place where a bunch of people are excited to see me; it feels good to be welcome someplace, to be liked for who I am instead being seen as a free chance to practice English or as some kind of bizarre, otherworldly creature. As much as I'm in a period of my life where I want to travel and see the world, these little breaks are necessary because one of the best things about traveling abroad, especially as a disgruntled expatriate, is that you appreciate things about your own culture just a little bit more.

A Love Letter to (Part of) Colombia

For Semana Santa, I spent a whole week in Medellin. My second time. And I've already made a few trips to the coffee area as well. I've gotten to know the region a bit, and it's been my favorite place in the country. So while I was there, I thought, why not right a love letter to the paisas of Colombia for my blog? I should, after all, say something nice about Colombia for once.

You win. Congratulations. You're my favorite, and I hope you can accept this simple token of my esteem: My undying love. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

First, you have Medellin, and Medellin is by far the most fun and pleasant major city in Colombia. The metro is a dream compared to Cali's MIO and Bogotá's TransMilenio. It gets crowded, but after the other two systems, anyone would take crowded over squished-like-a-god-damn-sardine. It's also pretty darn clean. I could eat off those floors. Well, as far as public transportation goes. So not really, but thanks for making me think that I maybe kind of could if I were homeless and I had to.

Medellin also has all sorts of fun stuff. That Universidad stop is action packed with touristy goodness: First off, there's the Parque Explora, which is the first thing I have ever encountered that could rival the Indianapolis Children's Museum--I hope you understand what kind of compliment that is because that museum is the shit. I suggest taking my niece sometimes just so I can go and enjoy it myself. There's also a planetarium, an amusement park (Parque Norte), and botanic gardens that you could lose yourself in complete with wandering iguanas and a butterfly garden.

And even if you're not the city type, right outside the city but still accessible by public transportation, there's Parque Arvi, which is a village-park combo that's perfect for getting away from the city if you need a breather. The ride there in the cable cars is kind of an attraction in and of itself. But if you wanna party it up at night, you can do that too. The bar scene and especially the gay scene in Medellin overshadows what little they have in Cali. WannaIce beats the heck out of Queens with its more open space and alcoholic icees. And that's probably not even what most people in Medellin would even list as a "good" gay bar. There's more open social spaces in general, such as Parque Lleras, which makes it easier to meet strangers to talk to... or hook up with, whichever. I suppose the San Antonio Church is a bit like that, but Caleños are too busy trying to force their English down your throat and acting like their cultural is some sort of mystical thing you will never begin to understand and then something about salsa.

Wait. Positive. We're staying positive this post.

But, I know, mis paisas, there's more to you than Medellin. There's the coffee region, with lovely farms, towns, nature, and people to see. And the people are the best. That's why I'm even writing this! Paisas are the most polite Colombians I've met. Not once is some asshole trying to talk broken English to my face or responds back to me in English when all I want to do is buy a damn empanada and go about my business. They're not exempt from the things about general Colombian culture that most Americans find bothersome, but at least it's turned down from eleven to a manageable six. I think this is because I've seen signs of, get this, people actually thinking about what they're going to say before it just steamrolls out of their mouths and over your face, leaving you feeling violated and bruised. You treat me like a normal person, paisas, instead of like an animal that you want to poke and examine and then ask for free English lessons from and maybe get to buy you lunch. You make a guy feel special, mis paisas. You make him feel welcome, and you share your culture without assuming that it's beyond me to understand how good a bandeja paisa is (the perfect combination of flavors for lunchtime, by the way). You are, in comparison with Cali, completely unimpressed than I'm foreign, and that totally impresses me. You don't make me feel special but normal, and that's what I appreciate most of all.

I just wanted to let you know that, mis paisas. You're super groovy, and someone needed to hold you tight in the night and whisper sensually in your little ear, "Thank you, mis paisas, for being you. Thank you."

I'll visit you soon. Once more before I go.

All my love,
Adam

Sociopathic Tendencies

Well, the time is nearly upon us... The time when everything is going to come to a close. In two short months, I'll be back in the United States, and I'm pretty excited about it. I'm still trying to nail down the exact date I want to come back, but June 7th seems pretty likely. I'll be sad to leave my job here, and there's a few people here I would have liked to have gotten to know better, but that's life. At this point in my personal journey in these eighty or ninety years that I've been gifted, I'm no stranger to loss or separation, and truthfully, it worries me a bit sometimes.

I think it's good to be able to handle separation in all its forms: death, moving to a new place, being laid off, breaking up, whatever mask it wants to wear. But sometimes I wonder if this comes at the price of not forming deep, meaningful relationships with people. When I look back at my life, I do think of loss as being a huge shaping factor. I'm not necessarily saying I've lost more than anyone else, but when I think back on life, it's what stands out to me: who's no longer alive, relationships and friendships that didn't become what I had envisioned them to be, dreams that no longer seem possible or even desirable. But I've learned a small secret. However, it's preventative, not curative: Do it completely, burn it up fully or completely, and leave no trace, not even its ashes.

Before coming to Colombia, my boyfriend and I broke up, and he found it upsetting how little emotion I showed over it, or at least showed him. I was upset, but I did it in private. If I'm upset around others, I feel the need to perform, and then I no longer worry about experiencing the emotion fully. I'm worried about trying to keep it together for the other person or not embarrass or bother them. But alone, I'm free to feel what I need to feel.

It reminds me of my Aunt Andrea's funeral. When I saw her body for the first time, I left the room and found a corner where I thought no one would find me, and that's where I broke down and cried over this woman who had taken care of me as if I were her own son. My mom discovered me, and I, through sobs, yelled "GO AWAY!" "Well can I at least get a hug?!" So we hugged, and then she left me to do what I had to do. The same thing happened at my step-father's, Walt's, funeral, except that funeral home had better hiding places.

But this is just another way to enact that same idea: Do it completely, burn it up, leave no trace. Feel the sadness or the loss completely so it doesn't linger, so it doesn't set into your soul, so it doesn't poison you. This way your memories can stay untainted. When they're stained by your unshed tears, they blur and distort, but if the feeling is felt completely, it burns itself up. It's like trying to purposefully forget something. You can't, you have to dive deeper and deeper until you come out the other side.

We're trained by movies, novels, and anything with a narrative format to think that endings wrap up perfectly, that unfinished business is rarely if ever left behind, that our life is like chapters in a book or levels in a video game, these complete units that have little effect on one another. But we all know this is bullshit. Here in Colombia, I've traveled a lot, I've learned a lot about teaching, and I've met new people and learned about a new culture, even if it wasn't exactly a perfect fit. I saw beautiful things and met beautiful people. I made memories, and who I am will always be marked by my year here. But the experiences were had, they were complete, and when it is time to leave, I will leave completely too.

So does this make me slightly sociopathic or well-adjusted? Does this prevent me from experiencing things meaningfully, or does this actually encourage me to experience them fully? I don't really have an answer. But it's something I think about, as my thoughts drift more and more toward what it life will be like in Indiana... Governor Pence signs the religious freedom bill

Being Gay in Cali, Colombia

I've been out of the closet since I was 13 or 14 years old, and for the first time since, I've had to inch back into it. I came out about a few minutes after making the realization that I was gay. I mean, I didn't scream it in the middle of a class, but when it came up, I told people. Or if they made an incorrect assumption, I corrected them, no more and no less than I would do if someone called me by the wrong name or thought that maybe I didn't eat asparagus. Always the same axiom: Just live life like everyone already knows.

So imagine my surprise when after the first time I was seeing a "special someone" off at the MIO station, they stuck out their hand for me to shake it. I mean, I just fucked you, but we're saying good-bye by shaking hands? A gesture that, occasionally, is meant to express a certain distance and formality (at least in US culture)? I understood immediately of course, but on the five minute walk back to my apartment, I turned the experience over and over in my head, like I was trying to solve a riddle whose answer I already knew.

Most of the time when I'm in a new place, I have a two-pronged plan of attack: 1) Find the artists and 2) find the gays. Both groups tend to be open and accepting groups because they tend to find themselves a bit on the outside of society. There's the sense that we should stick together. Up to now, this has been a pretty decent plan, but in Cali, not quite so.

First, there's no gay neighborhood to really hang out. And while there are gay bars here, you can't go out alone. I mean, you could; it's not illegal. But no one is going to want to talk to you, and no one else has gone out alone, so you're not going to find that other guy who's got the same plan you do: to go out and make a new friend. (And no, I don't mean necessarily pick someone up, you horndogs.) This ends up leaving bars feeling a bit like the cafeteria from Mean Girls. Everyone's sitting with their friends, and no...

As for the online route, there's only Grindr. I had Scruff and Hornet at first, and but I exhausted them in a few days. Everyone's on Grindr, and that makes it hard to weed out the people with bad social skills who just want to send you explicit pictures from someone with half a brain that could be interesting to have a beer with, regardless of the outcome (be it sex, friends, or just the stimulation of meeting someone new). And just like the US, the vast majority on Grindr are the former. I've been trying to use it, but it comes and goes. I have about a week where I tell myself I'm really going to try, but then I realize all it does is bring frustration and stupidity into my little bubble and it's uninstalled once more.

So in short, the gay community functions more or less like the straight community here. Groups and circles and you're not getting in unless you know someone. I acknowledge that the US tendency to be gushy and over the top in our attempt to include and welcome new people might come off as insincere, and sometimes it is, but at least the door is open for you to maybe have a chance. Here, if they don't know you, they're not interested.

So while I have a few gay acquaintances here, I don't have many gay friends. But I've talked about my loneliness and why that is ad nauseum, so if you're interested, check back a few entries and catch yourself up. But long story short, to get a Colombian to stick to a plan and show up on time is a rare thing indeed, like planets aligning, Bigfoot sightings, and winning lottery tickets. In any case, it's the first time that I haven't felt part of a group here, particularly one that included other gay people to some degree. For as much as I like to style myself as independent and like "I am the one man who is an island," I'm finding it rough, guys. Real rough.

Now combine that with having to feel like you have to, in some situations, hide who you are. For some reason, I'm asked if I have a Colombian girlfriend or if I like Colombian girls. In the past, I never thought twice about saying, "I don't date girls" or "I prefer men" or "I'm not straight." The one time I mentioned it in French class--because the teacher in the context of discussion gender roles asked me if I would date a woman who drove a taxi--was met with stares that were a swirl of interest, disbelief, and confusion. ("Did he really mean to say that? Gringos are bad with Spanish/French.") Ultimately instead of asking another version of the question, the discussion was diverted onto another topic. I wasn't embarrassed to say I preferred men in front of a group of people, but their reaction was what embarrassed me. No embarrassed laughter, no apology, no anger, no "okay" or "you're going to hell" or... anything. Just a blank look and then a complete change of subject. I was on the outs again, but this time I wasn't the outs with all the rest of society's freaks. It was just me.

Hi ho the diary-o.












The cheese stands alone.

My Job Keeps Me Sane

Here's another thing to file under, "I'd never thought this would happen in my life": I really enjoy my job.

Don't get me wrong. It has its annoying moments, but I never dread going to work, I never wish I could just leave and go home, and I never think about quitting or daydream about something else I'd rather be doing. I am pretty darn content, and when people ask me why I'm still in Colombia if I'm so annoyed by everything, it's the first thing I answer with.

As you all know, Colombia has not been an easy place for me, and the answer to that is complicated. It's been hard to find many people that I feel like are like me, which is to say gay, quasi-counter culture 20- or 30-somethings who are estranged from their families (whether that be by distance or beliefs). Then there's also this summation of my cultural frustrations: It's like when you're in highschool, trying to get to class on time, and there they are, a group of people walking five feet deep blocking the width of the hallway. There's no choice but to walk behind them, grumbling, "Well, I guess this is the speed I'm walking now..." And really I should resign myself to that, I know, but it, like most things, is easier said than done. In certain ways, I've tried to be flexible. I'm eating meat again, most notably, and it's helped, to a degree, and I'm getting better at guessing when someone is going to flake out or plans are going to fall through because things were poorly organized. There's been progress.

But work has kept me going. I never thought I'd reach a moment in my life when I enjoyed my job so much and it was the thing motivating me rather than my escape from it to something else. I love education, and I love participating in it as either student or teacher (I consider the line between the two to be a fine one). I love languages, whether it's English, Spainish, French, Japanese, Esperanto, or any other in the known universe. I love communication and exchanging ideas and seeing the personal growth each student makes. And when I see how much fun they have when I design a really good activity or discussion topic, I feel really happy to be making a difference. Perhaps the better question is what's not to like?

Well, there are a few things not to like, specifically how my job can be at times, like everything else in Colombia, poorly organized. Sometimes my classes with other professors are suddenly cancelled, students don't show up to their tutoring sessions, or teachers tell me what they would like me to prepare for a class visit less than twenty four hours in advance. In some of these situations, I can push back and say no, sorry I should have been told earlier if you wanted this to happen, and sometimes I have to suck it up and just realize where I'm at again. Oh, and I have to get up at five am to teach seven am some days. Yes, all these things, out of context, are unpleasant, but when you like your job, when you like what you do, it gets easy to look past. There's a moment of frustration, but it passes because oh it's two o'clock and it's time to go teach an advanced level conversation club full of people who want to be there.


So in writing about all of my problems so often, I thought it'd be good to remind you all why I came here, why I'm staying here, why I have no intention of leaving early, and why, if I knew then what I knew now, I'd still had chosen to come here all the same.

The Dark Face of Mother Nature

I'm changing it up this week. I don't feel like writing about Colombia because I'm hella over it right now. I love my job, but the country is driving me full metal crazy. So to take my mind off it, I wrote a story. In French. This is only the second real attempt to write something besides a journal entry in French so bare with me. I translated it to English afterward for the French impaired. It's definitely got a bit of a Lovecraft vibe or at least it started there and then transformed into what I like to think of as the dark face of mother nature. Not my most impressive piece of writing but doing it in the same week a paper and model lesson plan are due for two different classes on top of all the bullshit of life, I'm not that displeased, especially considering the barrier of thinking in your third language. Anyway, enjoy.

Sous terre, je dors et les gens n'ont pas d’idée que j’existe et que j’attends. Je suis tellement vieux comme leurs histoires, mais je ne suis pas un personnage dans leurs contes. En fait, je suis leurs contes. Je suis l’ambiance, l’inspiration et la fin de leurs intrigues. Je n’ai pas de parents ni d’amis. Les humains ont oublié ma forme. J’en suis sûr, car moi même je ne m’en souviens pas, ici, en l’obscurité. Certains m’ont appelé démon et d’autres m’ont donné le nom de Ténèbres et le reste n’ose pas le dire. Ce troisième groupe est le plus intelligent parce que des cultures anciennes et sages savaient qu’en déclarant le nom d’une personne, on donne pouvoir à son propriétaire, de la même façon que répéter des ragots peut les transformer en réalité. Faites attention, mes simples humains, à ce que vous direz: Je vous écoute, ici, dans mon domaine souterrain.

J’existe et j’attends. J’attends le moment parfait pour me révéler à tous, pour m’approprier cette planète et tous ses habitants. Et quand il arrivera, vous n’aurez autre choix que vous rendre parce que cette roche est prête à accueillir son nouveau maître. Vous l’avez trahie et les arbres, les oiseaux, les lacs et les nuées qui auraient été vos amis seront ceux qui vous rendront à la ruine. C’est pour ça que j’y attends, au centre de la Terre, en communiant avec les vers, les asticots, les racines des chênes et les sources des eaux. Ma voix est de la musique. Elle est miel et nectar. Elle est irrésistible quand je désire qu’elle le soit, bien que vous n’ayez pas rendu difficile mon travail, et c’était une prouesse simple, les convaincre de me joindre.

Et maintenant, nous attendons ensemble, les créatures de la Terre et moi. Quand vous regardez le paysage, rempli de paix et de beaux animaux et avec des cieux bleus et quand vous sentez que tout est bon dans le monde, la vérité est que ses bêtes sont en train de comploter votre chute. Il n’y a pas de paix pour vous, il n’y a pas de fuite. C’est le destin que vous avez créé et je crains qu’il n’existe pas d’autre remède. Vous n’avez pas d’alliés. Tous vous ont abandonnés.

En attendant, je vous donne mon sang, noir et collant, pour alimenter vos machines et votre avidité et, maintenant, en si peu de temps, vous avez devenu des toxicomanes, mordus de cette destruction qui semble le progrès et retourne votre propre planète contre vous. Vous buvez cette liqueur et ainsi vous vous rencontrez ivres de la colère que je faisais fermenter pour des siècles dans mes veines, avec ma haine pour vous. Et pourquoi vous détesté-je ? Parce que vous vous croyez forts, invincibles, éternels et vous êtes tout sauf ça.

Ici, je reste, pour le moment, vous donnant ma vie et même si j’ai besoin de vider la dernière goutte pour accomplir mon but et régner comme un simple esprit sans forme dans mon nouveau royaume, je n’hésiterai pas, je n’hésiterai pas...

Underground, I sleep, and no one has any idea I exist, waiting.  I am as old as their stories, but I am not a character in them. In fact, I am their stories. I am the ambiance, the inspiration and the end of their tales. I have not parents nor friends. Humans have forgotten my shape. Of that I am sure because even I don't remember it, here, in the dark. Some have called me demon and others have given me the name of Darkness, and the rest don't dare to say it. This third group is the smartest since ancient and wise cultures knew that speaking the same of a person gives power to its owner, the same way that repeating rumors can transformer them in reality. Be careful, little humans, of what you say: I'm listening, here, in my underground domain.

I exist and I wait. I await the perfect moment to reveal myself to everyone, to dominate this planet and all its inhabitants. And when it comes, you will have no other choice but to give up because this rock is ready to welcome its new master. You have betrayed her, and the trees, the birds, the lakes and the clouds that would have been your friends will be who bring you to ruin. That's why I wait, in the Earth's center, communing with the worms, the maggots, the roots of the oaks and the waters' sources. My voice is music. It is nectar and honey. It is irresistible when I wish it to be, even though you have not made my work hard, and it was a simple feat to convince them to join me.

And now, we wait together, the Earth's creatures and I. When you look into nature, full of peace and beautiful animals and blue skies, and when you feel everything to be right in the world, the truth is that these critters are plotting your downfall. There is no peace for you, no escape. It's the fate you have created and I'm afraid that there's no other way. You have no allies; they've all abandoned you.

I give you my blood, black and sticky, waiting, to feed your machines and your greed, and now, in so little time, you've become addicts, hooked on that destruction that seems like progress and turns your own planet against you. You drink that liquor and thereby find yourselves drunk on the anger that I've fermented for centuries in my veins, with my hate for you. And why do I hate you? Because you believe yourselves to be strong, invincible, eternal, when you are anything but.

Here, I stay, for the moment, giving you my life, and even if I have to drain my last drop to accomplish my goal and rule as a simple, formless spirit in my new realm, I will not hesitate, I will not...