Mental Minimix Up

Guess what the next entry is about.....

Swimming in Stars and Water

I want to share with you a revelation I had this week, which was brought on by the mothergiver of all revalations: Nature. This week I went to the Brooklyn Botantic Gardens with Bob Choiniere and Nick Pangakos and then to Fire Island with those same cats plus Nick Lazor. The Botantic Garden was absolutely wonderful. Flowers, beautiful lawns of green, and impressive habitat-controlled rooms.

For those of you who have never seen it,
this is what happens when Bob gets around flowers.
Yeah....

Fire Island was equally fun. I woke up at the time I was supposed to join everyone on the LIRR because of the horrible decisions we make when we're tired, but I arrived only an hour behind. The sun was out but not too out, the sand was warm but not scalding, and there were plenty of good-looking guys out without feeling like they were on the same beach towel as you. When I arrived, I was told by all three of my friends that the water was frigidly cold, and if you know me, you know I can't go to a body of water without actually spending some time in it. There was only one viable solution: drink as much vodka as possible to numb the cold before I went in the water. Several drinks later, I ran down the beach to embrace Poseidon for the first time this summer. I had prepared for ice; what I got was a pleasant chill. After I got out from the water, I admonished Nick Panagakos for losing the tolerance for cold water we had built up back when we were training for Tough Mudder, and soon we all went to eat and drink and dance before catching the last ferry home.

Those were the days, Nick...

But while I was out swimming by myself in the water everyone else preferred to be out of, all of these little tastes of nature caused me to remember my most recent megadose: the stars from the night of Christen Madrazo and Jason Williamson's wedding upstate in the Catskills two weeks ealier and what wonderment I was filled with at seeing so many stars in the sky. It was among the most I'd ever seen at once, and it was enough to make you wonder which end was up and down, which was the sky and which was the ground. Add a little wine and you've got a borderline mystical experience, my friends, and I began to realize how much of the second half of my life I've spent living in and traveling to urban areas, and how little I've spent going to small towns. When I take a vacation or want an adventure, it's always DC, Chicago, Indianapolis, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam--you know, cities whose names you recognize pretty easily--and I realized that in my insatiable quest for more adventures in unfamiliar places (the emerging theme of this third stage of my life) doesn't always mean going to these giant places. They're exciting, for sure, and there's adventure to be had there, of that there's no doubt, but there are plenty of adventures to be had in Centralia, Taos, Ash Fork, and other places you and I have never heard of. The adventure doesn't come from social caché of the locale nor from the attractions it offers. In fact, I think attractions are often in the way of people having adventures when they travel. Adventure comes from talking to people you never would otherwise and seeing things you wouldn't see if you stayed in your comfort zone. It's the stimulating conversation you have about Galicians sharing ancestry with Celtic people or the assault of the millions of stars on your eyes that leaves you standing literally starstruck while a bonfire blazes a few yards away. It's can even be watching a flower bloom if it strikes you the right way at the right time. Or it can be waiting for your friend outside Burger King when a group of strikers forces it to close on the spot and lock everyone inside. (Think I'm kidding?.... Click here and see a video.) Adventure is everywhere, and I'm only now realizing that ignoring these smaller towns is doing myself a great disservice on this quest I've set myself on.

That being said, I've got to figure out a way to harangue Samantha Wier and Danny Monteith, my sister and her boyfriend, in to taking me to somewhere in Indiana where I can see all those stars again..... They're calling to me just as strongly as the ocean these days. Poseidon, meet Asteria...

"Poseidon meet Asteria" Minimix

Thanks is much deserved to Jose Neuman for introducing me to two songs on this week's minimix tape, albeit different versions.

Now go splash around, kiddies.

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.

Wanderlust: Am I running away from something?

Because I can't take you seriously
with all that Kool-Aid on yo' face...

Hey, people. We're gonna get a little heavy this week. Just a little. We're going to talk about wanderlust and its psychological underpinnings. I mean, I have to at some point: It's the namesake of this blog's URL.

Let's start by quoting some interesting stuff I read on Wikipedia's "wanderlust" article:

Wanderlust may be driven by the desire to escape and leave behind depressive feelings of guilt, and has been linked to bipolar disorder in the periodicity of the attacks. Or it may reflect an intense urge for self-development by experiencing the unknown, confronting unforeseen challenges, getting to know unfamiliar cultures, ways of life and behaviours.
In adolescence, dissatisfaction with the restrictions of home and locality may also fuel the desire to travel.

Interesting, right? And as one of the affected, I have to wonder: Does this apply to me? Let's start with the easy part. Yes, in my adolescence I was dissatisfied with my home and locality. This is no secret. As a gay, liberal, Pagan in Indiana, it doesn't take much to explain how out of sync I was with so many people around me. I also think that if I weren't so dissatisfied, I wouldn't have moved to New York at the tender age of seventeen. Considering I left my adolescence behind ten years ago and I'm pretty much as over it as I can get, I'm not sure that applies to me beyond mere coincidence. Besides, what person wouldn't say they were dissatisfied with their "home and locality" in their childhood? I'm not sure it's that unique.

Being chased by the "depressive feelings of guilt" monster?

Now, what I do find interesting is this: It's both possibly an attempt to run away from "depressive feelings of guilt" but also "reflects an intense urge of self-development." I've had a few people in life who I trust and whose opinions I value posit that perhaps I am running away from something. And maybe they're right. The only problem is I can't think of what that would be really. Perhaps it's the hard city life of living in one of the most expensive lands in all the land, New York City? If that's it, sure, I'm doing that, but once the shine wears off from living here, which it will do after ten years, why stay? Unless you're making theatre or a lot of money (I'm doing neither), there's not really any point for the needless struggle. I don't really think this is what they're talking about though.

But, let's pretend I am running away from some sort of emotional issue. I think this might be the symptom and the cure all at once. Why? Well, the second part, of course! Could these intense urges for self-development be the kind of thing that someone running away from their feelings might need? If you're having trouble accepting something about yourself, going through the trials by fire collectively known as "culture shock" might be just the thing to help you figure out what to like about yourself, to develop a positive sense of self that can help you face the things about yourself that you feel unable to face. The challenges of culture shock are really internal challenges of adaptation and flexibility masked as external challenges. It's about becoming a more flexible, open, and accepting person, and guess what: That applies to your own self just as much as to anything else!. It's interesting that if you're doing it for the right reasons, then this can be the thing that helps you through the problem that causes it to begin with.

I, however, like to believe that I'm not running away, but it's undeniable that I have an intense urge for self-development. Hell, I have an intense urge for career development. There's a lot of solid reasons why I'm leaving the country and taking this amazing opportunity, but I wouldn't be so motivated if I didn't think that the world didn't have a lot to show me, to show all of us who are willing to go see it. It's only by leaving your comfort zone that you really see who you are as a person. It's then that your mettle is tested, and tests--the kind that aren't graded--can be some of the best learning experiences. Like I talked in my previous post, I don't expect it to be easy, but it will undoubtedly be rewarding.

By the way, you should check out the Wikipedia article about wanderlust for more interesting tidbits about the phenomenon from the etymology of the term to how its view in sociology. It's a short but nice read!