I am at a loss for words, trying too hard to be brilliant, too hard to have an “experience”, too hard to force pieces of the puzzle so I can make sense of the bigger picture.
There’s something about traveling that is utterly exhausting. It breeds some kind of laziness as if traveling itself were the hardest job you ever had. It is so present, so immediate, so vivid; whereas daily grind is stuck in thoughts of the future. Where will this day’s money go and is there enough food in the house? And memories -- associations of sense make the mind’s eye forever aware of what has come before. But traveling brings new stimulants, it opens the present wide, not knowing what to expect we live in this moment. Carpe Diem. It sets memories aside in order to make space for new sensory perceptions, new memories of this vivid moment and this and this. This is especially true traveling in a place where a different language is spoken. The mind is split open like a coconut, the juices stirred and mixed with new . . . everything and then resealed but with a slight hole, a crack that will grow wider the longer the immersion lasts.
El Universo newspaper reports 56,000 people dead in Afghanistan. Victims of my government’s war on terror. And I am a jobless tourist. I’m here to spend my US dollars so I can do my part to make the world go round. It’s sick. Disgusting. How can I make my stand? How can I show the world or at least myself that I have something to give back besides money? I feel like I need to prove that I am not just what my country represents but a person who cares about those 56,000 people, each of them and their families too and all the other people who have been killed around the world in the name of my flag. My freedom. People die, starve and suffer so that I can hear George Bush assuring me that my freedom will not be compromised. I don’t want his bloody, evil freedom. 56,000 is so many people. 3000 people killed in the September 11 bombing. 3000: 56000. Even if Universo is exaggerating and this is very likely true, still one quarter this many (14,000) is too many. One is too many.
No wonder people want me to say something about this war. When Ecuadorians ask me about it, they can probably see their own vulnerability as a nation. They can probably see how easily their little country could be (and already is) colonized by our government. It’s different but no less scary. Afghanistan is not so much colonized as demonized, pulverized.
And I’m here telling people that I have no job and no reason to go home. But I do have money to spend and a passport that can get me anywhere. Not everywhere safely but almost anywhere. Money to spend. Money to burn. Money to choose. My choice. Money.
I feel a need to mourn these people and others. I feel a need to mourn them actively by doing something, by being more than a tourist with money to spend. I’m out of practice. Or was I ever in practice? Life seems so full now, so necessary – pregnant with possibilities and ready to burst. I feel a need to realize my SELF in a fucked up world. To honor my desire to be part of something different, something not of selfish capitalistic gain as in its essence tourism is. “Travel” seems to offer a different possibility. Time to re-evaluate. Re-instigate.
When I return to the US I will fight to change US foreign policy. I will fight so that I do not feel so implicated – so guilty. I will fight so that my life can represent my beliefs. I will fight because I am selfish in my desire for meaning. And I am tired of passive choice. I am tired of being so god damn ironic.
People are still crying all over the world.
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