Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The Return
(and other difficulties)

15 June 2002

Sometimes dryness reveals cracks in the deepest parts of ourselves and reserves of water seek home like magnets calling each other. Each part taking care of itself as the whole is dusted clean -- sand and water achieve the same ends as they move across the earth, shaping and reshaping the physical and mental landscape to fit patterns of action. Each contained in perfection. Dry and wet are opposite ends of the same circle. And we are always caught in the middle somewhere in our pitifully human attempts to seek the balance we come from. In coastal Chile, where the driest desert in the world meets the Pacific, it is clear the two are the perfect symbol of harmony and conflict. This desert is so dry that the only cactus in it grows no higher than a few inches off the ground. Their scarcity a lesson in minimalistic and monumental beauty. I've been paralyzed of late, cracking into a million tiny pieces. Amazed at my ability to push my experience of South America into such non-space. I think about it only in these quiet moments when no one in my house is awake and I am alone. It is then that tears surprise me on the edge of my eyes and only then that I can even begin to glue the pieces back together. But these moments are so rare in my american daydream full of working importance and the need to find companionship of any kind which finds me drinking in bars more often than not – a bitter salve for those deepest wounds. Alternately I desire more alone time and then when alone I find myself staring into the chasm of my loneliness. Still adjusting I guess as I tread new ground with baby feet.

3 months later:

“Maybe I’m paranoid?” I ask myself this question as I sit in my room in Dayton, Ohio on this miserably hot August day. I have just picked up my reprints from my recent trip to South America. All the pictures I wanted (and had clearly marked) were there, except two. The two missing pictures were of graffiti in Lima, Peru and Cuenca, Ecuador. They said “Bush = Hambre y Terror” (Bush = Hunger and Terror) and “USA Terroristas”, respectively. In their place were reprints of the two nondescript photos that came before the desired photos on each roll. Included in the reprints were several other graffiti photos: “Yo Soy Libre” (I Am Free) and “GAP: Levantar . . . Grupos Acciones Populares” (GAP: Rise Up Popular Action Group).

I have been home now for four months, which is the same amount of time I spent traveling the Southern America. Being home has been a deadening and lonely experience of readjusting to my own culture which has become increasingly empty, unappealing and alienating to me. This is in large part due to the ultra conservative and overly aggressive political climate of G.W. Bush and friends that I was only vaguely aware of during my four months abroad.

I took Tom Robbins’ book, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates with me on this trip. Part of his book takes place in the Peruvian Amazon. The word he used throughout the book to describe South America was “vivid”. He is exactly right. I keep coming back to that word over and over again as I try to describe my experience. There is an energy there that is raw and mostly uncompromised. It comes from the people, from the mountains, from the buzz of economy, from the clash of governments and people, from the hurtling buses, from the tamed or untamed growth of plants.

In retrospect – and it must be noted that I contemplate this experience from a specific place which is a medium sized city in the mid-western United States almost 1 year to the day after September 11, 2001 – I believe the vividness of South America comes mostly from a lack of the security that has come to be associated with American style freedom. The security I speak of is not military security, but a sense of entitlement that comes from presenting ourselves as the sole beacon of freedom and democracy for the rest of the world, at least according to Bush and Co. It is the idea that not only is it our God-given right (literally) to have everything we want but it is also our right to not have to think about how those wants impact the rest of the world. In South America that sense of entitlement is lacking. There is no safety net, ideologically or otherwise. The people there are painfully aware of the tenuous nature of what small bit of security they do have.

While I was traveling I was constantly amazed at the sophistication with which people were able to distinguish between me as a United States citizen and the actions of the US government, which claims to represent me. (I have since come to hear this same sentiment echoed by many other American citizens who travel abroad). There was no wholesale blaming of the entire populace of my country despite the war Bush is waging against the entire populations of Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the US funded War on Drugs in Colombia. People were often simply curious about my opinions and openly expressive of their anger at the Bush government. After the rabid post-September 11th cry for revenge that came howling out of the US, this was an eye-opening experience.

I came back to the US feeling very vivid – more so than I ever have before. I felt alive with experience, open to emotion, and most of all aware, in a real visceral way of something bigger than my life. Another world is possible, I believed, as I stepped off that plane and onto North American soil for the first time in one third of a year. I still believe another world is possible despite the idiocy of my government and the ignorance, complacency and selfishness of so many of my fellow US citizens. I have tried to hang on to that vividness. I often use it as a shield to ward of cynicism.

Kalle Lasn in the book Culture Jam defines postmodern cynicism as “rage that can no longer get it up. It is powerlessness, disconnection and shame. It’s the loneliest kind of rage there is, different from the kinds of rage we’ve known in the past, which were born of injustice and nurtured by a clearly identifiable enemy.” Cynicism is the hallmark of my generation. It is how we deal with the world we live in, the world we will soon inherit. We are coolly cynical, joking about the power of the media, violence on television, GI’s getting drunk in Afghanistan and the supreme fucked-upedness of it all. We acknowledge that the world is fucked up – even really fucked up and then we laugh about it, feeling justified and confident that our cool acknowledgment of a fucked up world is a sufficient replacement for action, politics, beliefs or lifestyle choices that would mean personal change.

Americans are so privileged, like the rich kid in high school who got everything she wanted. Like that rich kid, we take for granted the things we have, precisely because in our collective consciousness we believe we no longer really have to work for them. Women and blacks already gained the right to vote.

Feminism became a political issue and token women make it look good for the rest of us. “Racism” doesn’t affect us anymore because we have divided our cities strictly on racial lines. We can find any product or service we could possibly desire. We believe we have freedom of speech and freedom of press. We fight bloodless, distant wars that blend seamlessly with reality tv shows. We ignore our homeless, our poor, our battered women, our mentally ill veterans because they don’t jive with the image of the greatest democracy in the world. And to top it all off, we present ourselves to the rest of the world as the coolest kids on the global block. No matter what people in many other (especially developing) countries think of our government, they still want a piece of American pop culture.

As I revisit this story from 4 months’ distance, I realize how much of a journey it really was, both geographically and personally. It is a story of fulfillment or at least awakening. Before I went to South America, I was sleeping. I was aware of the world around me but I was busy – working, paying bills, hanging out with friends, cynical. I was disconnected, isolated, alone in my awareness and paralyzed into simply acknowledging the world around me and going on about my business. I felt totally uninspired and incapable of affecting change in the world. The attacks on September 11 validated some of my deepest beliefs about the unjust world I lived in, the problems I sensed below the surface, but they did nothing to make me feel less isolated. Instead, I clung with renewed energy to the idea of leaving the country – maybe I was feeling like I could run away for a while and not think about anything. Instead, my travels woke me up – the dots were suddenly connected and I not only learned how to articulate my rage at and love for the world, but I also found out I wasn’t alone. Together, these things have propelled me to act in the world in a way that finally, thankfully reflects my beliefs. This journey was like walking into my own skin, then finding myself there with eyes wide open, amazed at the complexity and beauty of the world I had been sleepwalking through for 26 years.

This story feels important because it occurred at a pivotal moment in American history – directly after the 9/11 attacks – and it documents an international adventure within the culture of fear that was created and that is continuing to be used so tortuously by GW in his attempt to fuel the economic fires of war. It is my hope that this story can subvert some of this bullshit while also just telling the story of a west coast boy and a mid-west girl who barely knew each other but decided to fly to the equator in search of something anyway. Despite the fact that this story is based on my experience, my friend and traveling companion Jacob’s presence was hugely important.

This story feels important for other reasons as well. I am a poor, white woman who spent most of my early twenties in a state of depression. I had made many atypical and interesting choices about my life and work, but I was often buried under the weight of loneliness and was unable to see a way out of this hole. As a woman, I had spent several years working in a field dominated by men. I felt I had made bad choices about the relationships I had pursued and was confused about my inability to maintain those

relationships. I was at odds with my femininity. While this trip did not resolve those issues, they surface here in my words.

Later I began to realize that my loneliness and confusion were not my own unique experiences but were shared by many girls and women, though they’re not reflected in popular language and images used to describe “the female experience”. After reading a part of this manuscript, a friend and fellow writer told me that my perspective was both tough and pretty. He thought it was important for girls to hear female voices that could get beyond the candy-coated corporate version of what it means to be a woman today. He had a young sister and was frightened at the kinds of female role models presented to her by our culture of glossy magazine covers and ridiculous television shows in which women are simply trying to get a man. I didn’t get this right away. Later, as I began to look around for female images and stories that were both tough and pretty, I knew he was right. There were practically none.

As I began to look back on my trip to South America, I realized one of the biggest lessons I had taken away from the experience was this: alternative realities can be accessed by simply suggesting there are possibilities that differ from the way you normally do things. This seems deceptively simple. But in a world where media, images and words are being increasingly controlled by the same corporate giants and where people are increasingly isolated from each other, this simple possibility becomes a little more complicated. The assumptions that underlie our realities do more to constrain us than most governments. We self-censor and do not even consider certain possibilities simply out of habit rather than some inherent inability or lack of access. If we assume something is impossible, it is likely to become impossible.

I managed to escape the assumption that it was impossible (or at least highly improbable) that a poor, white, depressed American woman could simply quit her job and travel with a stranger to South America. Jacob opened the door for me by asking “Hey,

what would you think about hitting South America this winter?” My greatest hope for sharing this story is that some young woman will read it and decide to follow her dream of traveling to China, against all odds. Or that this story will simply open some dusty, squeaky doors for someone who reads it.

I am no longer depressed. I am still poor. I am definitely still a white woman. I’m no longer at odds with my femininity. And most of all, I’m excited to share this story with you.

(By way of context: Jacob and I left Dayton, Ohio on January 1, 2002 to fly to Quito, Ecuador where I had been previously on a study abroad program a few years before.)