To Belong or not to belong?

My friend Luis used to tag along with me everywhere because he liked going to different settings he wouldn’t know in life otherwise. Many times, even if he wasn’t sure how the event will end, he agreed on going with me or joining me. That’s how I got him into trouble that time we were kick out from a gated community for rich people because I took a swim in the middle of the night. We also ended up dancing on the stage of Teatro Giratablas, among the volunteers who worked at the international festival of arts this year. Luis often recalls with some pride these and many other settings he’s been once, just by chance or fortune; places where he shouldn’t simply be, a paradox in time and space. I didn’t acknowledge that to him at the moment, but that was really adventurous of him.

I, even if I have traveled some, played very safe until this last year. I always knew where I was going, for how long, all calculated. Although I cannot take any credit for it, life and work have given me that one time of being in places where I clearly do not belong. Italy, right now, is fully of those.  Since my bosses over here are taking my apprenticeship even more seriously than I am, they have taken me along a lot of places I clearly do not belong. I’ve been attending meetings with politicians, lawmakers, heads of foundations, and more recently, commissions of professors of the University of Cagliari. I’ve shaken hands with lots of people I was never meant to. I have been introduced as a colleague from Costa Rica when I never studied Politics, Human Relations, or anything related. I, who have somehow made a way in the global NGO world, keep on being pushed to a world I don’t belong. It took me some getting used to, but I’m loving it. There were instances before when I didn’t fit in and enjoyed: filming a commercial because no one else wanted the green man role, translating for an impromptu real state meeting in Panama, that time my family got lost in a guided tour on a Peruvian Naval Ship and we ended up using the captain’s private toilet (it seems to run deeper in the Lopez Aguilera .) All this shall pass, and I’ll be left behind with the picture of me taking a coffee on the legislators café, 3^rd of 4^th floor of the Sardinian local government, laughing a bit to myself because I am immature like that and enjoy the irony of being out of place when only I, a simple language laureate, get to sit on all these tables I was never supposed to sit on on first place.

I’ve been giving some insider privilege I don’t fully finish to comprehend. I am a paradox over here, and I continue to be so. It took me by surprise that the president of the organization asked me in confidence why I had come here if my profile really didn’t fit what a volunteer/intern does. He sees me a bit of a paradox. I clearly do not belong to the world of meetings where words fix the world, but I’m there anyway. My suspicion is that he takes me as the good kind of paradox. Still, the prospect of not fitting right in took me aback. From all the places I don’t belong, I was surprised work, such an essential part of what I do in my new life, is a place I have to yet learn how to belong.

When I go to the streets, I get the same feeling of not belonging; just the frustrating type. Of course I don’t speak Italian natively, and my attempts to do it so remain poor. This morning, I said “permesso” (excuse me) to two girls who blocked my way on the side way. It might be that I came too close and spoke too gravely, but I never expected them to jump.  This is just the first of so many awkward situations I’ve been exposed to recently. I have redefined awkward pretty much. The signs of not belonging continue every time I phrase does not come out as it should have and with every social convention I step on, unaware or simply too feed up to care about for the day.

See how complicated the matter has become. Under a different approach, though, I can see the places where I belong. I came with some volunteers who have embraced me (in the extent that one can embrace a stranger.) With them, working and cohabitating, I’ve felt I’ve belong. We speak the same language of feeling disoriented and a similar broken Italian that has made us team up somehow.  The universe got crazy enough to make me landing with people who are actually interesting in writing and creating art. I’m being constantly challenged by other people talking about their stories, and I can’t stay idle (oh, and this weekend alone, I’m attending a Queer Film festival and a Fantasy Book convention: hard not to want to belong in there.)  I left a pen pal in Costa Rica, and mailing with him ignites my creativity and helps me exploring my feelings in a carefree way. It seems I belong or rather was meant to experience this at this time. My flatmates eat healthily and speak of exercise, which goes with the changes I wanted to implement in my life for good. The cold is an issue to stay close to the sea all the times, but that color blue washes away any of my worries. It hypnotizes me and makes me feel good. This proximity to the sea, beautifully juxtaposed to old stone towers and churches uphill stand as my newest source of inspiration. … 2 out of 10 times, a conversation flows wonderfully in Italian, and I’m even able to make Sardinians laugh. The whole world could tell me I was out of place at that moment, that I wouldn’t believe it.  It’s going to be a month since I came here soon, and there’s a war between the experiences that make me feel that I don’t belong in a negative way and those who reconcile myself with the choice of coming here. I’m starting to miss home now, but that’s when the world gets complicated. In the simplicity of the smell of the sea and the sound of the seagulls and people speaking an euphonic language, I’m more than content.  Maybe in the future I’ll look back to this and decide I didn’t really belong, but the bets are on that being one nice memory of not belonging, like being kicked out of a gated community, drenched and half-dressed but having the best time. 

A Glimpse of Cagliari

“Once my father gave me a necklace with a ship’s steering Wheel. It was one trinklet, he must have got it in a Chinese shop. It was some cheap pendant, but twenty five years later, I discovered it was a metaphor, so I felt compelled to write a song about it.”

I don’t even know what I’m doing in this underground club of independent artist, but I’m here, listening to all in Italian and trying to understand how this guy just sang a song about poo that ended up with a message about human feelings.

Such are the sights of Cagliari. My friend Claudia was telling me the story of this guy who stands at the exit of the docs when the tourist season is at its best. He just stays there and asks for money for him and his pets, a bunch of kittens now laying on his feet on a box, kittens that are cuddling with about three times their number of white mice, all of them sleeping in perfect harmony. Claudia tells me the trick: the animals are drugged enough to be sleepy, still the guys pulls the trick on many tourists who believed he was a kind soul that solved the enmity of two species with love.

Such are the stories of Cagliary. Here, I can speak to a security guard to get entrance to an exportation dock, and he allows it by just trusting me. Here I lost my phone and got it back from the bar staff a few days after. Here I go to class with two classmates from Pakistan who later go their parents’ shop to help out in the family business. I’m in a city in which my bubble speaks English all day, but when they go to sleep the rest of the world keeps on going in a romance language.

Such is the magic the foreigner gets in Cagliari. However, what we get is the rumor of it. This beautiful city, far from being a stage of elaborated and simple everyday plays as I first thought of it, has a beautiful spirit that comes from its everything. I’ve fallen not only in an old city one third castle-one third fortress-one third chaos. I’m tangled now in a beautiful lifestyle that weaves itself around food,  drink, chatter, and wonderful social conventions that demand to be followed.

I’m tempted to go outside and eat it all at once. I have discovered, though, that unless I care to implement a few changes in my life, that spirit will hardly bruise me.

To mention:

-Learning Italian has become a must. The language carries far more culture that what one would think. Italians are very comfortable in their Italian self – and I can see why. More specifically, Sardinians enjoy their Sardinian flesh and have a hard time leaving it. To successfully integrate with them one should then shed its own skin and identity and mimic others. One has to adapt its sense of humor and the topics of conversation – as well as the scale of priority certain stages of life have, to the socio-cultural context. Sure there are some curious souls that speak English or Spanish to you there and there, but they are to be taken as extremely curious individuals, never as people who are seeking for an identity in foreign values. Being Sardinian requires no further search to be anyone else in life, so it seems.

- Fitness is important. I’m already making note of working out and closing my mouth because the body difference of people around here it’s not even funny anymore. I feel is extremely unfair they have these free complete dinners in bars and all this gastronomy and yet they seem to have developed a genetic immunity for fat around the waist line. That, sadly, does not apply to foreign me.  They are naturally blessed with health, and God has to be a bastard with favorite people on Earth.

-I should refrain from just having an 8 hour shift, plus 2 hours classes and still think I’m presentable for a club. Not grooming properly only puts me 3 hours and a salary of cosmetic and hair products behind the average Italian. My current stipend money does not really allow me to catch up, so an effort seems to be only in place.

-I should never underestimate the generosity of the people over here. To give over here is natural. They make it seem like is nothing. I find myself constantly overwhelmed and in debt with these giving people that exercise a hosting spirit that I once knew in the old Costa Rica. I’m sure this welcoming spirit still exists in essence in remote corners of the country, saved for a few explorers if compared to our tourists; well, over here it remains immaculate.

I would be a liar if I said I haven't almost felt blue sometimes this week, but I’ve easily got distracted by the constant highs the discovery of new places and experiences give me. I’ve been in an overall high that I’ve found hard to get across. It’s easier to look at Abi, the Indonesian guy who came with us, who seems to be in a constant and more notorious high, even in his more notorious lows. Stil, this city whispers to me. This city is my current lover.  I just realized today that my only fear for the future is finding out that I’ve signed up for a limbo: Quitting to many experiences I could have lived in Costa Rica just to discover after ten months that nearly one loop around the sun is not enough to enjoy the scent of this surreal and wonderfully conflictive island in the heart of the Mediterranean.

The story goes on. 

Closing One Huge Chapter

It is not until I'm now sitting at the airport, waiting to board the plane to my new life that I truly realize how much I've enjoyed my life in Costa Rica. In my former apartment, I truly had a home. I lived with my best friend, spent much time socializing with awesome friends and acquaintances. In the last days, I was even dating someone crazy enough to want to spend time with me knowing I was leaving. My family was being more than over supportive, and my 6 month old niece smiled at me and played with my hair like I was her new favorite person in the world. However, I think it is all very romantic because I'm leaving. Once I told everyone I had decided to go to Italy for 10 months, life became this romantic tale that ends today, the moment I step on that plane.

It does not matter what little could change on the surface: life is not going to be the same when I come back. I'm ten months apart from it, exposed to new stimuli daily, and there's no way my new environment does not leave a scratch on me. I should confess, I want Cagliari to leave me scarred, not in the same way London did, but hungrier for life, even more adventurous and far more human. I am going to Italy and allowing the Mediterranean and its lifestyle to make love to me, and refine my appreciation of life itself. Other than learning Italian, seeking to spend as much time as possible at the beach, and a few previously arranged trips, I do not have this new part of my life scripted. I believe is much better that way. My friends tell me I'll get fatter for eating all the wonderful food. It might be so. My friends also say I will come back showing off my Italian. I hope I learn better than to flaunt my new romance tongue, but I do hope I acquired good communication and writing skills. My friends say I'll fall in love, only if the guy has a yacht and a beach house, I joke, My friends say I'll be really different when I come back, if I come back at all. There they are partially wrong, as I know now no matter where I am, I haven't given up in Costa Rica and the people I called mine just yet. Life will show itself to me. The lady at the Italian embassy in Costa Rica told me I couldn't go wrong with this experience, and I want to cling to that. 

I don't want to go to my new life carrying regrets, though. What I’ve done to myself is forgiven, but I’m concerned to the cracks I never got to fix as a result of my interactions with others. I want to confess the things that still bother me about the last chapters (the loose ends sort of) and truly get a blank slate. These are situations that should have been addressed privately, but I'm a fool, and I'll just confess them in public, hoping that they reach the right ears (eyes?) sometime.

-Once I told someone that The Kill were opening Pink's concert, but when I got there, it turns out it was the Kin opening for Pink. I had read the name wrong, but I had posted on her FB wall that I was going to see them both and think of her. She probably found out that the Kill never opened for Pink and must think I'm an idiot now. I never got to clarify the situation out of embarrassment. Sorry, Ale. I've learned to double check info now before being overly enthusiastic now.

-I created this event for meeting up with people I only had met briefly socially, and there was this guy who said he was up for it. We met in a workshop for publishing books, and at the time he seemed pretty congenial. From all the list, he was the one I never called, and I even missed his birthday. Once I saw him in a bar, and I attempted to say hello to him, but he - no surprise- turn his head to pretend he hadn't seemed me and even looked annoyed by my presence. It hit me I had been a douche with him, and I never got to say sorry because I thought at the moment I'll just let it pass. But it haunted me a little, until today. Sorry, Diego. Truly good people aren't always treated fairly, but I'm trying to be more aware of others around me now.

-Kiara, I'm sorry I'm going to miss your first words and your first steps. Maybe I can make it up to you by teaching you your first words in a foreign language and guiding you in your first steps in a foreign country?

-Karo, I owe you that takoyaki. I honestly don't know where you get those in San José. Next time around. Brian, I'm sorry I wasn't the friend you expected in your tough times. We need to learn how to start anew, but I'm willing.

-I'm sorry for not spending more time with the last bunch of volunteers who arrived in the country. They are very likeable people, but my head was somewhere else, and they found me wishing for freedom. I hope one day they understand it wasn't that I didn't like them or my job. They arrived when my heart was somewhere else and my gaze upon the future, I'm hippie like that.

-Tell Kevin I cared for him more than I never told him, fucked up games and all. He should have kept my Disneyland mug. Tell the other Isaac I wish I had told him how attractive I thought he was and how I made a fool of myself by playing all cocky that night we spent together. I can only watch him from distance now thinking I'll turn to stone waiting for a second time that it won't happen.  Don't tell Jonathan and Manuel anything. I still have to learn that attraction is not always reciprocal, and they probably had to deal with me more than they never wanted. Tell Alo he was the right person by my side at the end, and how I hate that I could have spent more time with him than I did, but I was just trying not to get too attached to someone who has handsome and cute, and probably insane for seeing me growing fat and saying only he still thought I was one hot guy.

-Luis, I'm sorry I left some material stuff behind knowing you'll get rid of them for me. Expect a big time apology (food) when I'm back.

As for the rest, I think I've made my peace with everybody else, and look forward meeting new people in a more socially responsible way. The lights go off on this stage, and the curtain is falling. I'll take a nap some thousand meters above the ground, and reach a destination far away to open yet another chapter of my life, hoping I mess up a little less, and get a step closer to the person I aspire to become.

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