The Courageous Act

For your collection of Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul in “Small Changes” brought to us that side in which we decide (most of the time) not to show. To show the backstory of personal experiences it’s hard, well for most of us. I can only admire how he had the courage to tell and remember his origins. 

The origins of each and everyone of us are sometimes hard to come by because in life most of the things that happen to us in life turns always for the worst and to bring back those feelings and thoughts is hard. Most of those memories of my origins are outweighed by bad things that I have been through. Let me make something, I have good memories which I cherish, but at this time most of them are blurred out from my current vision. It’s not that I don’t want to travel through the valley of happy thoughts, it’s that there are things that are more pressing (the bad memories) and to think of them, it would darken my goals (which are to resolve what made them bad - if they can be reversed - to something good). 

That courage which I have for him trascended to the point in which I used one of his skills to explain a subject which was, well is, to utmost importance for me in the past and the present. Such devices, as the one I used to express a part of something which doesn’t have words, left me wanting to explore that side (or device) much more until I can explain and find out what that situation meant to me in a bigger sense. 

To be or not a tourist?

Range of Toruists

“A tourist is an ugly human being. You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day. From day to day, you are a nice person. From day to day, all the people who are supposed to love you on the whole do.”Small Places, Jamaica Kincaid

Miss Kincaid dedicates the first part of her novel to tell those who are considered foreigners in her land to tell her how disgusting they become when they turn from an ordinary person to a(n) ugly tourist.

In some sense I can’t deny that she’s right, tourists are ugly. To this point i’m becoming kind-of undecided of what is right or what is not because to being may diverge into two different forms, the one which portrays them as guests of honor and the one which places them as individuals with an attitude of growth. 

In a sense, to be a tourist it means to be someone who enjoys visiting another country with the hopes that there he/she are supposed to be treated as “kings/queens”; all they want is only a phone call away. We tend to go out into different countries hoping to relax and leave that life we commonly know from day-to-day. So, leaving your country is becomes a symbol of letting go that which holds you down week-by-week hoping that the days to come will only be filled with euphoric experiences that leave you wanting to return the moment the airplane lifts of or ships leaves port. The moment you arrive to your home, the thoughts of that trip begin to resound in your head to the point you believe that there was a new switch which was turned on in your sub-conscious, but you can’t really put your finger on it. This is what the second form of tourists do, they believe that traveling with purpose is the best way to do it.

Those who travel with purpose are the tourists which believe that traveling outside your borders - in this case physically - makes the individual appreciate the power that lies behind traveling. To travel is to find euphoria where it is not placed, I’ll explain. To live with a preset mind is to become another John Doe from the street, but to live with the notion that each day there is a new lesson to be learned, makes you transcend from the position of incompetent to whatever level you want to place yourself. Traveling with respect and compassion may make you into a completely new individual which you may not recognize at the end of such trip. Curious Journey Photo

As I mentioned, I can;t deny that she is right, most of the tourists are intrusive and egocentric individuals; but if we deny the access of these individuals to our place of origin, we deny the possibility of people getting to know who we are and why we are in such a place (economically, socially, and politically). Maybe one of them can make the change that they might be yearning to. 

The Confused Stub

Random Stub

On a dark night when the wolfs were waiting for the moons signal to begin to howl all into the night, a group of individuals decided that it was the perfect night to go out and try their luck in the roulette of courtship, but since it’s Puerto Rico and the climate is trying new styles, so the original plan ceased to exist and they chose to do something a little bit more dangerous and savy, but the nothing came to their minds. “Where to?” thought Paco and Sebastián, but then after about five or then minutes, the idea came to Paco like a moth to a flame. They both go to Plaza las Américas and see the movie “The Martian”, one which Paco had tried and failed (countless times) to see and in the process he would do it as a tourist for his English Lit class (it was the perfect opportunity to kill to birds with one stone).

They arrived to Plaza and Paco began to rehearse in his mind the accent he had to pull of to seem like an american. As Sebastián went along first to buy the ticket stub, he waited out his turn. Then it came, the moment of truth, he had to act out everything he thought of in the past few minutes between the car ride from his house to the last moment he had to himself. First he was stuttering trying to get the words out of his mouth, but then as she understood the angle from where he was coming from, she made a weird face and he politely turned to his friend (which was sticking right beside him) and showed to her his stub. 

To be fair I tried to make the most out of the situation, even tried to do it with the women at the counter inside the movies, but it was all to confusing and I could see the confusion in those who tried to attend to my wishes to receive that all-so-good-popcorn. I felt bad, as if I was trying to make a fool out of them, so they best thing to do was to come clean and explain the purpose of my touristy actions. 

It’s not that I can’t deal with people talking as if I were a tourist, but I feel weird to do it when people try to communicate so desperately with me just trying to get across some point for my benefit. If it were a mutual benefit, I would (maybe) continue to do it, but if people begin to get frustrated as it happened in both occasions, I would most likely get all red as a tomato and come clean just to relieve them of a stress of not having a good client-cashier relationship

The Metamorphosis of Beto

Metamorphosis

Beto, a young fragile boy whose only goal at his age was to experience life in the most invigorating way possible, within his limits of course. He decided at a very early phase of his life that those who were brothers and sisters were only slowing him down. The only logical reason to resolve this internal to leave that community (from which he was raised into) to explore, live, to “take it all in”. Without hesitation the community began to take notice in this sudden change of heart and slowly, as the months went by, they began to accept/respect his decision. They began to recognized that changes are common in people so feeble as him, so (out of respect) they let go all of him. 

After a a year or so (of wandering through his wanderlust) he found another community whose goals in life where similar to his. From his position, they all wanted to reach for the stars in anyway possible. Day-by-day Beto felt as if he was standing among peers, people who would carry the same cross of his, if he were to be carrying one at some moment in their friendship. 

As the years went by, he felt as if those new peers were only platonic. The feeling of emptiness began to fill him up until the point in which those around him were there, but at the same time they weren’t there. He continually told himself that “it was a weird feeling,” something he would never expect to feel at his young age, but life gives spins at such a fast rate that well, he fell into a depression - it was never confirmed, but the symptoms were there, “feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and/or helplessness; feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism; insomnia; ‘empty' feelings;” and others. 

Life felt not very pleasurable as he had envisioned before, that wanderlust feeling had faded and their was no trace of it in his being. Several months passed and each symptom became heighten until a one summer day when he came across a lost flame. That moment when he first heard that voice (which was faded in his mind), he began coming back to reality. She brought upon light to that dark corner which was consuming him and turning him to a being of indifference. After the first initial contact, their relationship grew strong to the point in which most of the things which caused him worry began to dissipate. Up until this point, it’s hard to give those emotions felt a specific word to express that felt. He has tried many times to explain, even to himself on paper, what that persona means, only coming to the conclusion that the only word capable of carrying any emotion is gratitude because every time he thinks of that dame he knows that if she wasn’t there at that specific moment in his life, he wouldn’t have passed through the right metamorphosis.