Semi-Last Post

Throughout summer I experienced that which Mrs. Kincaid thought to be the most dreadful thing a person can be in their lifetime, a tourist. The journey or the decision to take this trip around the globe (literally) came to the mind of my sister when she told me that if my internship application - specifically speaking of the Brazilian visa - didn’t come through she would like me to go out and travel to a land which has history incrusted in their soil from years of war and years of suppression, it was Vietnam. 

The purpose of the trip was to accompany my sister to one of her best-friend’s wedding in Ho Chi Minh - the girl is from Chinese descendence and her mate, now husband, is from Vietnamese. The trip sounded as exciting as you can imagine. Visiting Asia was never in my plans, but as soon as the days came to be, I realized that it was really going to happen and I was going to be in a continent whose culture has been revered as one of the most influential in human history.

First thing (right of the bat) is that I hated the ride over there, it was something of 20+ hours to get to where were going to go. Once we arrived in the city of the day/week (we changed the venue of ours to see more in less time, started in Hanoi, then Da Nang, then Ho Chi Minh and we finish of in Hanoi (once again). During the trip there were certain patterns that were always present. In the streets you could notice that they were always packed with food carts and a lot of people, so much that even when you had to cross the street, you had to do it with your heart in your mouth because people really don’t stop their destination for you, instead they go around you carefree (this includes both on foot and on motor). To believe it you have to live it, pictures won’t be sufficient for this experience. Since money was limited we tended to fend off from restaurants and live the country first hand by going to from cart to cart eating anything that seemed within our limits. This mentality landed me a bacteria in my stomach from which I was in bed from 11pm at night to 11am of the other day, only getting up to go to the bathroom and back (hands-down one of the worst experience in my life). 

From a tourist’s point of view, people there are very incrusted with their families, usually living all of them together. They live for them and stay connected with everybody from the little ones up until the great grandmothers. It too beautiful to expound on paper the feeling you get just from viewing this first-hand. 

The tourist act I know it’s hard to live by because in a place where all of the people are asian, you are kind of an outsider, so they will stare (just in case you were planning a trip there). It made me feel somewhat uncomfortable, like an outsider that people don’t want there. I could say that this and the bacteria have been sufficient for my first (and maybe) last time in Asia. Maybe in the future, I’ll go back and try to relive everything done there to see how my view has changed. All-in-all, I think that my next (far) trip will be something in the Africa region, but then again I’ll be in the same uncomfortable place of a tourist who people don’t to be there and that’s hard mentality to surpass. 

The Ending

To make a blog, it’s something kind of personal. People most of the time don’t do them because of this silly notion that having a blog is something of a luxury, well that's what I thought at the time. To understand better what I meant, I’ll tell you about my experience with the blog I had to create for my english lit class in my second year of my bachelors degree:

It all started back in September if my memory serves me right. I was sitting in the same spot, with my new group members - we call ourselves the Freelancers now - discussing about something that my memory can’t bring into a whole, but it was something worth talking about (as we always think it is), when suddenly the class started and the professor told us about the new long-term assignment that would replace our beloved journal, it was a blog.

Confusing Image

Hearing the word “blog” made me reminisce about the one I did elementary school, but this one was not going to be as easy as it was way back then. She started showing us the different features we can do now a days with blogs, like customizing every inch of it as much possible ... if you put the time and effort. The time and the effort was used, but the simple blog which I knew now was a complex system that only made me lose my pretty straight forward attitude in my head and the thought of sympathy began to arise for my mother (when she began to tell me in the early 2000’s how does “x” thing work - when the “x” standed for anything that possessed a digital screen)

The Photographer

Now that I’m almost in the end of this “blog journey” I can recall that the only problem I had with this process was the interface with Blogger. I know, it may sound stupid, but I still don’t get how is it possible that I use the same font and font size with each post and some of them come out looking way smaller than the other, it’s just not logical to me. After 10 to 11 posts I can only say that Blogger is still a mystery to me, much like the universe. Those completed posts are ever-changing. Why? It led me to free my mind, much like the journal assignment; but the only difference of this one was that I had the opportunity to chase my fellow Freelancers journey in their blog. It made me understand different points of view from people who were basically strangers to me by the end of September. It kind-of united us to the point in which we communicate just for the fun of it or we go out just to spend time together. My fellow members did such a journey almost a month ago in which they went hiking to see the sunrise, I couldn't participe in such event because of commitments that were just not as flexible as originally thought. It may be weird to say, but this blog made us grow closer to each other by letting us enter some intimate part of their minds and I'm ever grateful. 

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. 

The Journey

Curious Man

These past two months were based on two parts, completing 40 journal entries and 12 life compasses. This space which was suggested, was a(n) area were all shades were drawn, making the place where no voice of judgement would be heard. 

Now, to be part of this place of euphoria (in the journal phase of the project), the individual had to liberate their strains - those were the ones which made a person fill up with such bountiful emotions that it’s close to impossible for the words to just roll out of the tongue. To keep ourselves in check, there was time frame (10 minutes). Those minutes counted as a intermediary between me and my subconscious. They had the job to tell him to let all that befuddles me at that time to get out. Since we’re human and life is (most of the time) fairly complicated, not all days are a “ray of sunshine”, so when that time of day comes and screws your emotional balance, it means that the time to take out that not-so-dusty journal of yours and start writing. 

That’s one part of this two month journey, the other is fairly simple. Each week the journal must have been filled with two life compasses, each of which measures your chakra (if you will) in the ranges of 1 through 3 in the categories such as physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Those 40 journal entries were kind-of arduous for me, being a person who dedicated close to six months to learn how to write correctly and coherently. Truth be told, it was difficult to get on that road, trying to compress my preoccupation’s on a blank page for 10min a day or to even find a jugular to which I could cling onto. So, in most of the entries written, they revolve around different subjects that in a broad view may seem that they have conflated one with the other; most of them show at a single glance: anger, love, lust, desire, ambition, pain, curiosity, joy, disappointment, hope, and other which I can’t really recall at this precise moment. I’m not saying that most of my day’s are filled with those specific subjects, but I’m the type of individual who forgets easily events, names, mostly superficial things; but in terms of what was felt at that moment, it’s hard to forget. 

When the time came to write unconsciously, my mind went directly to that which has been on my mind, but my conscious-self has decided to block it. Can’t lie that some of them had brought up pain from the past, but those reflecting words placed where the key to another door which leads to liberation. Which (in a sense) brought me to grow as a writer. Those precious moments in which you unlock the tombs of your mind for a short time, may make your face cringe in one way or the other and blow past-things up in proportion, but it also helps come to reason or become not numb to it, but grateful for it. Let me explain, facing things that have punctured you in some way is one of the most profoundly difficult things to do (at least for me). To re-read those wounds, which become open after reading, makes you wonder and relive them once again. To fall into that pit (once again) may crush you, but if you re-read it multiple times (while holding your cup of coffee) in the morning, you’ll see that all you’ve traveled was not in vain, in fact it’s metamorphosis. Going from one stage to something totally better, a new place. So, without further a do, I’m grateful for all the manure swam to get here and these journal entries and the life compasses done have showed me that, once again.