Daze Learning

"Where have I been lately?" I ask myself. I don't feel quite here. I often feel distant or distracted. Present to many people and processes to be sure, but at the same time preoccupied by some unseen thought. What is it, this blank force, that steals my attention?
On one hand lots of "stuff" is going on. The other volunteers and I just held our end-of-the-year concert last weekend to celebrate the completion of our various talleres, or workshops. The kids' harp group performed to kick things off, then Ariel's children's chorus joined with the harps to play a pair of beautiful Christmas songs. Two brilliant poets from my poesia class performed solo before a packed house of aobut 100 people or so in the Center's cathedral. And then the adult choir took the stage to sing "Dona Nobis Pacem" and "Capilla Celestial" before joining with Paul's guitar class and the children singers for the grand finale, "Somos el mundo". (A video is out there somewhere, I'll have to track it down...).
It was such a special night. As fledgling as our efforts are here in Suchi, the mere commencement of a celebratory movement of art amongst Suchitoto youth is exciting and important. I am proud of all of our students for stepping into uncharted territory (just ask Ariel- singing in scale and semblance is way unexplored land for these kids), and of my fellow volunteers as well for putting so much positive energy into making it happen.
One especially potent image from the night for me was seeing Delmy, one of our office-mates at the Center, behold her lovely son Cesar playing lead harp with the rest of the harpists. Her reserved joy and hand-clenching anticipation recalled to me the nervousness of my dad at one of my brother Chris' figure skating competitions. What love is expressed in such anxious witnessing. To behold part of your very own heart performing the magic of their soul in front of so many others...

Apart from the immense preparation for the concert, the volunteer team has been living "as usual". We are unfortunately without our beloved Christy, who is at home now with her family to accompany them (and be accompanied in return) through a difficult familial reality. Our prayers go out to her, and our trust in her loving nature.

So computer and English classes go on, as do long days spent half-babysitting, half regressing to childhood, in our skatepark. We eat some meals together, have community skate sessions, and attend to the various needs of the Center and our various communities. Speaking of which, I just cannot spend enough time out in my campo home with my brothers and abuelita. But I did have the chance to watch a movie with Chomingo (my older "campo brother") a couple nights ago.
This was a great time. Even though the movie was an excessively violent Guy Richie film (called "Rock'n Rolla" I believe), it was good bonding time for Chomi and I. Huddled alongside him in front of David's mini laptop, sitting in our cold campo patio in the night, I felt a certain lax proximity with Chomingo and my El Bario home that I just don't think I could get without doing "frivolous" things like watching movies. I also recall with nostalgia the of hours of fun wrapped in blankets in front of a Disney Classic, Discovery Channel special, or any one of the old Star Wars VHS's with my siblings: beach towel spread across the low, wooden coffee table to receive steaming hot Pizza Hut pizza boxes, and absorb errant swigs of root beer or ginger ale. Ah the joys of the big screen....


So Big Change is happening in life. I think part of my distance, which by the way is fading interestlingly enough as I probe deeper in thought, is due to the sheer stress inherent in changing environments. All semester I've been moving- from the Center out to El Bario, then to Antiguo Cuscatlan to visit Alicia every other weekend or so, and as far as Honduras to take a few days' vacation- and now the move home for Christmas is upon me. I packed up my El Bario home last Thursday, we held our last Yoga class for the year, and all the volunteers and Peggy saw Ariel off until January. Fortunately we were able to get a skating sesh in before her departure. The picture below is from last week's session...
That was great fun (Dad and Will: I can't WAIT to play hockey when I get home!).
One thing I notice: the more I realize how close my return home to the States is, the more I cherish and long for the relationships I've developed here. With my volunteer team and Peggy; with my extraordinary campo brothers, Chomingo the artist and David the prophet, and their grandmother, "La ingeniera" (the engineer). With the members of my yoga class, Luis Felipe especially, as well as all the young and old folks we know around town with whom I could spend whole days just hanging out and getting to know. With Nina Candalaria, Gladys, Nina Cruz, Nico's family, all from El Bario; Margarita in the mercado, and all the other sacred Salvadoran women who share with me their most intimate memories and joys. Heck, the vigilantes at the Center, the first Salvadorans and the first guys I befriended here in Suchitoto... Thank God I will be seeing everyone again in January. Primero Dios.
It is a mirror-effect then, and I am doubly grateful for the relationships I'll be entering back into in the States. A month at home appears to me as a wide open window in which I am invited to re-enter parts of my home-identity, share in the changes in life I and my family have seen, and exuberate in the glory of winter. To breathe cold air in my nostrils once again- oh, and to drink-in the snow-cold humidity of an enclosed hockey arena....

All these reflections save me from the mounting cloud of confusion I've been feeling in my forehead. The confusion of the future stubbornly begs my attention: a pending job application that vacillates in my heart between being the single most important thing ever, hanging in front of me to decide the rest of my future... and later settling down into the truth of a mere possible step on a blessed and insoluble journey. The confusion of the present: I'm headed home this week, I just returned back to Suchitoto from Alicia's program's despedida or goodbye ceremony this morning in the capital, and not to mention- crap, Salvadoran reality is freaking rough!
I think part of my stress is due just to receiving so many sad stories over the past weeks. I barely flinch when I hear a woman who is innocent and old tell me about the 3 children she lost in the war, or when a man who is old and charming shows me the 3 bullet wounds he received from U.S. guns while trying to protect his people's meager livelihoods. Puchica, it certainly makes an impression on me, but sometimes I feel like I've just checked-out of the world, despite being engaged and taking some things in.
One way I think I've expressed this phenomenon is using speaking a foreign language as a comparison. I feel sometimes as though not only the words are of a different tongue, but also that the experiences themselves are sewn of a strange and scary fabric that just does not allow people's experiences to land anywhere fertile in my brain. Rather, stories of the war and current hardship just clobber down against hard areas of my mind that don't want to accept suffering, injustice, and most of all cruel design, as components of the world I love. And hard parts which furthermore don't understand what it means for these unfortunate things to go on existing anyway.
Is this me not being able to relate personally to the people I am living with? Certainly that must be part of it, for my experience of life is so different... Is my "daze" also the accumulation of some truly stressful life events like moving around and living in a foreign country, and planning on returning home soon? I think so...
I think I am also just getting closer and closer, despite feeling shell-shockedly distant sometimes, to the frequently stated fact that "estamos jodidos" (more or less: we are screwed). I wish for every "es un perro" (life's a *$*%#), "asi es" (that's how it is), "la lucha siempre sigue" (the struggle always continues), or estamos jodidos I heard, a son, or daughter, or mother or father could rize from the grave. It's just not the way I'm used to concluding things: estamos jodidos. I'm used to thinking that sometimes I suppose, heck in my darker times I'm used to feeling that. But it's always been a thought or feeling accompanied by something more, a promise or vague intimation of a future that could still yield good unions. And this is not to say that I'm losing hope in such a reality, nor that the Salvadorans I've been speaking with are doing so either. Rather, faced with the bold expression that "we are screwed" emanating from the lips of people who seem to be pretty good authorities on the ups and downs the gamut of life has to offer, my perspective is changing. My idea of what it means to be human in this world, and to live a life of intimate hurt and small lustrous joys, is changing radically.
I don't think I'm "jodido". And I think half the reason some people say they are comes from a legitimate need to relate or give expression to an un-utterable dimension of suffering. The loss of a part of your family, a part of your body, a part of your human nation. I guess I'm coming up uncomfortably close to the question: "How do I invest in a world that breaks my heart?" Because it truly does. How do I keep finding energy to love the rebirth in every moment, and to love the people who form us, amidst so much death in the hearts of people I know and love? ...And it is not only people from El Salvador I have in mind...
I picture my friend and neighbor Nina Cruz's face after telling a story of recurring nightmares last week. She is sitting on a red plastic chair looking ahead, her one arm perched on her side as she hunches slightly forward. She's not staring, but her eyes are fixed intently, and tiredly, on something far far inside... It is like seeing the aftermath of a forest fire. Or a land-roving human fire. Large chunks of human fleshy being have been mangled and disintegrated to the ground, and Nina Cruz sits. She is not mad anymore, for the fire is out. Instead she just sits. Among the ashes.
I cannot wait to see my family this week. And I cannot wait to see Alicia on Thursday. And I cannot wait to see Korla, Paul, and Cassandra, the other volunteers, and Sister Peggy tonight... I cannot wait to see Nina Cruz again, possibly this evening, and David and Chomingo, and my El Bario neighbors... I cannot wait to see Wiliam the friendly vigilante at the Casa program, and to give him a mini soccer set I received when I bought my cell phone months ago... I cannot wait because these are the people with whom we stand amongst the ashes. The people from whom I receive the love to share with people and myself when we are down, when there is nothing for us to do but to be there with each other in the aftermath.
It is what we do in the aftermath, says Father Mark Ravizza, that truly matters. It is what we do together, with what we've got amongst ourselves, that counts. After all, it is what I do in El Bario, and what El Bario-ans do in El Bario, and what Nina Cruz and her family do with what we've got, that determines our present, our reality, and our future... Shoot I don't mean to pull everything together happily at the end here, but I am darn happy to be standing in this world amongst so many worthy, loving, deserving, and generous-capable people...

How to love in a broken world, "how to live out of the truest place within", says my friend Grace. This is what I look to my family and friends to help teach me... And I bow to all those finding out.

Peace!