I Just Gave My Last Fuck

AM I PRETTY YET?

My life is finally starting to take off here, everyone. And it's about fucking time! My job at the Pontifica Universidad Javeriana is now in full swing with all conversation clubs, office hours, class visits, and private coaching sessions are set in a routine. But that's not all, folks, I've got all sorts of fun things happening: The Test de Connisance du Français is coming up this Friday, and I'm studying really hard, like four hours a day hard, and actually noticing a big improvement in my listening comprehension and speaking abilities! On the physical fitness front, I'm running pretty regularly again, saving Abel Township from zombies as the one and only Runner #5, and you would be surprised how good some zombie busting is for relieving stress. I've also decided to start doing bar workouts because I'm getting a little bored with plain old weights these days. Besides, all the hot guys in the park I run at are doing it, and I want to be one of the cool kids too. I'm also trying to wrap up the translation of The Russian Nights, which fell into purgatory amidst all the life changes. God bless patient authors. And last but not least, I'm starting to feel comfortable living in Cali, which is leading to less withdrawn, hermit-like activity and to getting out of my apartment more.

A big part of why I'm feeling more adapted here is because people have stopped trying to speak to me in English as much. You might recall a past entry in which I expressed some frustration about this, particularly when I speak to someone in Spanish and the response (of a few different people) is been, "No hablo inglés." I started noticing a few weeks ago that this hasn't been happening, and I've been trying to think of why that is.

Wisdom from the RDJ

I think a good deal of it has to do with confidence. I'm a lot more confident about my Spanish skills than when I first arrived. It's funny because for the few months I've been here, I don't feel like I've really actually improved all that much, just that the rust that has accumulated since Spain has finally been dusted off. Ironically, my nervousness, in part, was due to fearing that they would respond to me in English, which I think created a self-fulfilling prophecy. My nerves made me speak poorer Spanish than I'm really capable of and because of that they would speak to me in English. I was also afraid that I would use words they didn't use or that they use in a different way than I've been taught. However, you can only give a shit about these kinds of things so long before you're just like what the fuck ever man. And I think it was the moment that I didn't care if an accidental tío or vosotros slipped out or that some ignorant Colombian would respond to me in English or tell me they didn't speak English was the moment that things started to improve. Just goes to show you how pointless worrying is.

Now flash forward from the basket case of nerves I was to last week when I was ordering something at my school's cafeteria, and some guy was like, "Where are you from?" (in Spanish). And of course, I was in my head like, "oh shit, here we go again...."

"The United States."
"And what are you doing here?"
"I teach English."
"What level?"
"No level. Just conversation clubs, private lessons, visits to other classes, things like that."
"Ooh, how long have you been here?"
"About two months."
"And you already speak this good of Spanish?"

"Oh, thank you.""Where did you learn it?"
"Oh, I studied mostly in high school and college. And then I lived in Spain a little bit, but not very long."
"Oh wow, and your parents, where are they from?"
"Indiana. The US."
"Oh wow." To the girl at the register: "And look what a nice accent he has."

And me in my head: "Well, that's a first."

That had never really happened before. Normally the only people who tell me I speak Spanish well are guys that are hitting on me, and of course, I don't really believe them because, you know, sex. And then it came to me: I didn't give a single shit that whole conversation. Like not even a little dried up turd that has stayed too long in your intestines so your body reabsorbed all the water from it. Not even a fart.

So beautiful, so free....

And that's when I realized that almost no one speaks to me in English anymore except my advanced students and the other English teachers (for obvious reasons). All because I couldn't be bothered to care anymore, because I gave up. Paradoxically, like a Chinese finger trap, the moment I stopped struggling was the moment that it all started working out.

Don't get me wrong. It still happens here and there. There are still people who have made up their mind that I can't speak their language simply because of the way I look or because I made a tiny mistake when my mouth is moving a little faster than my brain, but it's at an acceptable level and I don't walk around constantly feeling like an outsider. It's not that I "feel Colombian," like some other people claim when they move to new countries. I will never feel Colombian. I will never be Colombian, but I feel allowed to participate, and that's all I wanted all along.

I'm a fake

Since I started talking about psychology last entry, I thought I'd stick with it for one more week and talk about impostor syndrome. Every time I feel like I've take a step forward in my aspirations in life, I get a sudden attack of this mental malady. When I was in acting school, my first semester scene study teacher, the infamous Nicholas Martin-Smith, said that some people are afraid of failure (me) and, even worse, some people are afraid of success (me too as it turns out). I didn't really understand what he meant by that second bit, but years later it dawned on me exactly what that meant. I just like to call it by its fancy name.

I'm not stranger to impostor syndrome. It happened back when I was first asked to evaluate translations for the ¿What's in a Nombre? edition of phati'tude literary magazine and then again when I was asked to be the head translator for Jesus Papoleto Melendez's ¡Hey Yo / Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry for 2Leaf Press. I can remember thinking, quite vividly in the latter case, "It hasn't even been a year since I graduated. What do I know? Why are they even listening to me? Why do they have any confidence at all? I'm still a student!" Of course, what I didn't pay attention to was the other voice in my head that tried to say, "Because you graduated valedictorian of your class of a giant college in the City University of New York system. Because you came highly recommended by the head of Hunter College's translation program. Because you know you're going to work with that poetry for hours to make sure its translations are perfect." But of course, that voice never gets any airtime.

Why do I even let that voice think it's in charge?... It ain't Meryl!

So here I am now, chosen as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, and as I hear more and more about my potential responsibilities, I feel it. You see, that "assistant" part has a varying degree of weight. Some people end up running a conversation club, and others end up teaching full classes; it just depends on what the university--in my case the Pontifica Universidad Javeriana--wants to do with you. It's a private university, and I am told that that increases the likelihood of being less of an assistant and more of an independent teacher of my own classes. On one hand, this is great! It's what I want: the more independent the experience, the better. One of the reasons I applied for this fellowship was to let it be a test run for teaching in a university setting. On the other hand, independence is always a scary thing. Implicit in independence is the potential to be lost and confused (yet to find yourself), to be unsure (yet to gain self-reliance), to fail (yet to have a chance at success that is completely of your own making).

There's a lone of thought that always pops up in impostor syndrome. It's what defines it: "Why do they believe in me?" "Why do they listen to me?" "Why do they think I'm of any use?" And it's thought that impostor syndrome occurs from an inability to internalize accomplishments. I'm not sure how one goes about doing that really. What does it mean to internalize an accomplishment? That my identity and the accomplishment are somehow entwined? Maybe that makes sense to you, dear reader, but I can hardly wrap my mind around that beyond that other than what the words mean. However, I do know this: In the end, questions like those actually insult the person or people who have chosen to work with you. The idea that I've some how tricked someone says that they're gullible, stupid, inattentive, or some combination thereof, and I know I don't believe that. When I confront these implications, I can't help but to see how illogical it is.

Sidenote: I love the phrase "reductio ad absurdum" and
try to fit that little gem in whenever I can.

Reductio ad absurdum: I can't both think that these people are as qualified as I do and that I can pull a fast one on them. By seeing that what I'm thinking can't be true, my head gives my heart a helping hand out of the black morass that they wandered in to, and I'll push those voices back into the dark corner they came from. Until next time. Again and again until the time that I can greet them as an old frenemy who has just stopped in town for a visit.

Traveler's Manifesto

"Peculiar travel suggestions are
dancing lessons from God."
- Kurt Vonnegut

So this week I've decided to take a break from Fulbright related things and talk about travel in general. Last week I got back from a bit of an adventure I've been wanting to do for years. I left Thursday morning straight from work to Penn Station and rode to Washington DC to visit my friends Mike Davis and Jose Neuman and met his friends Adrian Moncini and Brandon Fitzgerald. From there I went to Chicago on a night train. I was supposed to leave at the end of the day to go to Indianapolis, where I'm from, but my friends Marko Loncar and Paul Helfen convinced me to stay a bit longer and I left by bus next day. (Big shout out to Amtrak who refunded my full ticket on such short notice!) Then I relaxed in Indianapolis staying with my sister, Samantha; her boyfriend, Danny; and their kids, Jada and Eric. I also reconnected with my friend Luisanna Rodriguez (who I met in high school Spanish and have stayed friends with since) and met her friends Daniel Gillespie and Paul Levy, who are now my friends too. In addition to, of course, visiting my mom, her husband, and some other family.

As you might be able to sense by now, I love meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends while traveling. I even met up with Aleks Sierakowski, who I met at last year's American Literary Translators Association conference in Bloomington, Indiana, and met his friend M Echeverria. On the train, I had interesting conversations with my next door neighbor, a cute construction worker from Wisconsin who talked like he was from Michigan; some moms on their way back from acting as chaperons on a middle school DC trip who I sat with in the dining car that night after they learned I could understand what they were saying in Spanish; and I had the bizarrely pleasurable experience over-hearing a lesson from what can only be described as the Hispanic Sarah Connor on how to select and grip throwing knives. You see, these strangely beautiful things never happen when you stay inside your house. The world has such amazing things to experience if you only just show up to them. Everyone has a nugget of truth and wonder, a piece of existence’s beautiful tapestry that they’ll willingly show you if you're open to it. These are the things that recharge me when I’m feeling a bit drained, when my job wears on me, when life has stopped being a series of discoveries and has turned into a monotonous grind.  Speaking of grind, here’s some footage of me from the security cameras at work:

I saw museums that taught me about Africa and the ice age, ate some of the best vegetarian food I've ever had at the Chicago Diner, waxed nostalgically over Spanish tapas for my days in Madrid, got sloshed on margaritas with my family, and read a bedtime story to my niece, none of which does my life permit me to do on a regular basis. It reminded me how important travel is to me, and so without further ado, I give you mon petit manifeste du voyage:

Traveler's Manifesto

This is a statement,

simple and direct:

An object at rest stays at rest,

and an object in motion remains in motion,

until some outside force acts upon it.

We’re born in motion,

entering life like an arrow loosed from the bow,

and over time, things stop us:

air resistance, friction, social mores and others’ expectations.

They tried to stop the nomadic Natives;

they tried to stop the moving sands

with grasses that root in the dunes.

They tried to put us in boxes:

houses, fences, cubicles, personality types and mortgages.

This is not without its merit,

but we should never forget

that no form of growth is without some form of motion, movement.

And that standing water often breeds disease and stagnation.

So, please, go, go, go!

because you’ll never learn anything till you see what you’re missing.

And now, I'll leave you with this, a song about people traveling on the back of a whale to different places and having adventures. (If you have this whale’s number, please send it my way!)