Farewell Note

I’m closing down this blog, because it no longer serves a purpose. I opened it many years ago because I felt I wanted to write and discover myself through words. That I keep on doing, but on a different level, and I no longer feel I have anything worth saying until I have a finished work that sparks a real conversation. This space was an honest yet slightly lacking medium (I rarely stuck to coherence or proofread, I exalted many traits of my personality I no longer like that much,) and I’d like to move on to new platforms where I can present a bit more of quality along insight. I might not be ready for taking that step yet, but the magic of life is that one is seldom ready for any experience and yet there is some unknown forces that help emerging victorious from it.

The nicest experience I got through ranting on this space was connecting to people. In a way, people that cared about me felt closer and less inhibited by reading my entries, even at times when I was doing a really bad job at keeping in touch or at breaking the initial ice. If I  hadn’t had this blog, I wouldn’t know what was like to feel encouraged to keep on writing. Friends from unlikely corners of the world (Finland, Malaysia, Iceland, U.S., Austria) quoted the blog when talking to me and that felt amazing. I was able to meet the new people and tell them: “well, you know, I have a blog, but I don’t think it’s that great” and then I would get the surprise later that they read most if not all of the entries. They noted I had changed, and when I go back and read how “matter-of-fact-ish” I was (you know, when everything in your life is such a huge event that OMG) I feel the temptation to find a way to travel to the past and slap my former past out of it. With this blog also came much valued criticism such as that of English native speakers correcting grammar mistakes, idiomatic expressions that sounded obscure or unnatural. A guy in the UK read some entries back in 2011 and thought it was mostly ok but “it had that pedantic tone” he would get rid of. I had to start by truly understanding what he meant by pedantic, and then apply myself to watch the tone from that moment on. It was an incredibly valuable lesson that proves of relevance even today.

This blog is many disperse things because that’s how life is, and I wanted to depict myself naturally that way. The problem (?) with writing is that, for it to be taken seriously, it has to have coherence; writing has to have a goal or some much needed boundaries to appeal to an audience and to build up on a series of related topics – even if is for entertainment.  We revere literary genres, which makes sense because an critical reader wishes to obtain specific knowledge or a sensation while reading and not to be left entirely to the imagination and whimsical designs of the writer. In the process of shifting from humanitarian to mundane, from queer-oriented to travel blogger, I feel like I entertained but couldn’t really develop much. When I was building up an audience, a certain post on a different and radical direction would throw them off. And you know what to say: Jack of all trades, master of none.

Through this space, something beautiful happen that I never dreamed to live. I earned the respect of my close friends. I might have pushed some to start reading in general. It got to a point in which those same close friends were the only ones writing to me, all very excited about the latest entry and even willing to share their feelings and opinions about it in an intimate way they never expressed before. There isn’t a bigger reward than having one of your best buddies telling you “how do I do to write as beautifully as you?”

My mom told me this morning that if I believed this was a serious job (staying home finishing my novel) I should treat it as such and not yield to the anxiety of feeling I’m wasting oxygen or to the thought that people around disapprove. Those words are a gift, especially because writing is an often solitary and misunderstood path when you have not published yet. My mom’s words give me even more courage to keep on going.

In short, closing this blog is not giving up on my writing at all but rather take a break from not taking it as seriously as I want my writing to be. Do you see those bloggers/columnist people follow? I could become one of those, but I need time and more dedication, maybe some research and learning of trades even. Have you heard about novelists promoting their books and people taking them seriously? That’s my new life goal. So until I come up with a blog that can also serve as a catalogue of how seriously I take writing this little baby off.

It was a fun ride. And thanks to everyone who ever read and made me feel my words were worth something.

Ugandan Drums and Gully Queens

June’s such a queer month:2015 has been such a queer year. Soon after I decided to mount my own online PRIDE with some of the stories I’ve been meaning to make available and said I wanted to focus on Uganda and then Jamaica for their homophobic reputation, I started to get distracted by all the places where there’s some sort of gay breakthrough going on.  The world’s talking about transgender identity; that I could cover on time more or less.  Africa is completely out of the radar because more significant movements seem to be going on elsewhere. Ireland is giving their first steps in a more open minded nation after the referendum to approve marriage equality only showed they already were. Mexico had some sort of legal instrument to validate same sex unions in the central state that is now extensive to all the country. The U.S. marriage equality approval is about to be decided in congress at a national level instead of the current state by state reforms.

If I wanted to focus on my current two countries, Italy and Costa Rica, I would have tons to say as well. I could tell the story of how open the Sardinian local government is about supporting equal rights campaigns and how ARC the local queer organization has had much support in their local activities at the island level. On the other hand, Italy remains the country in the EU with the most conservative politics on gender equality and where the conservative side is really making things difficult for the queer movement: Pride in Rome ended up with some hate fights and countered with a pro-traditional family demonstration where some big shots showed their adhesion to the defense of the traditional family. Costa Rica, on the other side, continues with the battle of the sinners against the holy representatives in congress: a medieval story of hate, deceit, irony, and absurdity. But while some politicians still recite the Bible in congress, our biggest cookie company just dropped a TV ad that talks about diverse families and that features a man-man couple. This is happening not even a month after the first and only gay couple recognition was granted in the country.

With all these events going on, staying fixed with the inequality for queer people in Africa and Jamaica seemed unfair. It’s not that their stories matter less; it’s just that their struggles have been outstaged by the victories and conflicts on the matter in much closer latitudes. My interest in Uganda was born after having clashes but also dialogue with people from there and after working on a project and seeing through footage how beautiful the country really was; unless you were gay that is: you’re not welcome if you are queer.  Then two years ago, when I had the idea of making the anthology of short stories “Pride Disguised as Shame”, homosexuals were being chased and killed in Uganda and not very soon after the world was outraged by their “kill the gays” bill: a legislation that rendered homosexual acts punishable with death. The law was dropped in August last year due to international pressure, but the homophobia of the nation remains.

I kind of included Jamaica in the planning of the discourse because both the land of Reggae and Uganda share the rank as the most homophobic places on earth (Russia’s bad, but not even Russia can compete with these two countries). I also had the opportunity to attend a conference with Christopher Geoghegan, a British journalist/photographer who went into the heart of the low neighborhoods of Kingston to portray the realities of one of the most struggling gay community in the world: The Gully Queens.  It makes sense to showcase both scenarios as they share some the historical past of being British colonies where the Buggery Act (law that penalized sodomy) was enforced (and in the case of Jamaica still is) and because both nations have seen an increase of the evangelical faith, and have had hate speech being widespread from the pulpit in the form of religious speech.

 The video for Gully Queens, Geoghegan’s work, is embedded  (above) to this blog entry. The following rant is a little prose I called “Ugandan Drums.”

Once again, thanks for reading.

Isaac wearing the rainbow flag.

Ugandan Drums
by Isaac López

Hear the beat of the Ugandan drums. Come to a safe country in Africa where locals welcome and praise the Mzungu people who are willing to pay to hear the Ugandan drum beat, to see the dance of the tribes in an amphitheater. Come to see the milky smile of the African mother, the innocent laughter of the mob of children on the street celebrating your arrival. Hear the man who offers you a safari talk about the most exciting adventure of your life. Travel the country by jeep, bike, and ferry. Hear the call of the elephants, the beating heart of the Ugandan drums. Hear the voices of women celebrating the sun. It’s still Africa out there! You can drive to outside Kampala to see the sun setting big and red over the savannah skyline. You can climb the Mount Speke and throw snowballs to the side where Congo starts. You can hear the drum playing for you in the heart of the red soil, a heart that beats like yours. It is hard to believe you were not born among those jolly people that, even when they are charging double prices to the naïve foreigner, they intend you to enjoy the beat of the Ugandan drums to the fullest.

                Unless you are homosexual. Ugandan drums do not play for people who have put their asses to rot.

Ugandan Women like gays no more than they want a cobra in their backyard. They are dangerous. They pose a threat to the kids and their image of what they need to become to keep the Ugandan drum beating as it always had. “Gays are evil people” and I hear concerned in this woman’s remark: “They will take your husband,  get him drunk and then turn them. Gays steal good husbands” – and she has no clue she is even talking to one. What is to become of the country if they didn’t chase down gays? Their marriages will be in a constant threat; no woman, in Uganda or elsewhere, wants to feel less before the seductive devil that the gay man represents. Besides, the pastor said last Sunday that gay people were going to hell, and that’s probably where they should be heading already instead of threatening the sanctity of the Ugandan family.

                The Ugandan drums play for easygoing men outside the market, for the tourist in a kanzu and flip flops, and for whoever makes women the center of the conversation and a source of admiration. Men are not worried gay people exist. They just want them to keep their deviant practice private. Jokes come and go about those who now have their ass rotten “I knew that guy before he went gay. I see how he is walking now. It’s hard to think he will stop walking soon because all the damage his ass has suffered.”

                A gay mzungu is a white devil. They come here because they know some Ugandans will bend for the right amount of money. “It’s very sad!” - says  Bombo. “You have friends; you think they are ok. One day they start showing up with money, but they walk weird: that’s how you know they have sold their asses to the white man, and their soul with it.” Love is out of the question for Ugandan homosexuals. If they lay with men, it is because their lives have lost track, because they cannot control deviant thoughts or because they have yielded their bodies to the money of the white man.

                The drumbeat goes faster. Let Ugandans decide for their countries and don’t give us that human rights crap” the men in the crowd seem very comfortable accepting that their government plans to punish homosexuality with death. “Let them do what they want when no one sees them, but do not allow them to come on the public.” The man who is giving me the speech seems infuriated. “If the government passes the law, then they will stay hidden. If they don’t have a law controlling them and are allowed to show their horrible behavior on the streets, we’ll have to come and put them to death so that they stop threatening our people.” How sad, I think, the Ugandan drums are instruments of joy for the straight people and war drums for the homosexual.

                Just like the charm of a good, spicy alcohol, I’ve allowed myself to become inebriated of the bum bum bam bam of the Ugandan drum. Bum bum, and the sound of zebras. Bum bum, and the screams of a lynched black brother with some make up and glitter under his teary eyes. Bum bum bum, and then I’m drunk with Uganda. Bum bum bum bum bam. I woke up covered in my own drool and thinking that’s some alcohol I never want to have again; that’s an instrument that sounds similar to noise right now.

Extravagant

Extravagant

from the ongoing project "Pride Disguised as Shame: Queer Stories of the Western World"

Yesterday, I looked in the mirror, and I saw myself as a drag queen. I was standing tall and proud, admiring my fine jaw line and how it combined with my strong cheekbones. My eyes, heavy with black eyeliner smiled, as if they had life on their own, and I had the femininity of Catherine Z Jones trapped in a torso of wide shoulders and  long and strong neck muscles. I was as good as a model, just taller, a little more built: more fabulous! There I stood, queer and extravagant. I turned around and the reflection of my whole body shined in the mirror. I put my hands in my waist and leaned over to wink to my own reflection. My legs, shaved: What a wonderful length to be covered in sequins and feathers and improved with sparkly shoes!  All of the sudden, I saw myself with the posture and the dress of the Spanish “Maja,” tapping firmly with the shiny red high-heel shoes. My dress was red, like the color of passion, of sin, and lipstick. I could feel the fiery taffeta wrapping my best curves with zeal, and I feel the embroidery at the end of the skirt like a divine aura.  I allowed my imagination to keep on beautifying my inner queen, and then before I knew, this woman in the mirror was not only dancing for herself but   moving, flowing under a spotlight in the middle of a stage.

People praised her – praised me! What a show I was putting. First, I could tap my feet gracefully and harmoniously with the music of guitars. After a transformation, I had curly and abundant blonde hair, and I could lip-synch perfectly to the sound of Cher and Kylie.  My performance put to shame the regent drag queen in the back of the bar. She grabs the microphone and mocks my leather leggings in return for her humiliation. She calls me a cheap slut. I grab the microphone and reply that I wish I knew the brand of the strap she uses to hide her penis since I’ll try to avoid it at all costs. “And guuuurl, I hope the bar has a regent psychologist because what a trauma we all have from seeing that thing sticking out. Ew.”  I’ve burned her deeply since the audience is uniformly mocking the slight protuberance she shows in her groin. I’ve won. The night and the crowd are mine. I am a queen and I have become extravagant. 

The daydream takes me to an unwanted place. It takes me behind curtains, once the show is over. I am getting rid of the wigs and the makeup, just that nothing really comes out. I had to stay as a woman. I do not really care, and I take all the glam of the scene into the streets. I notice people giving me dirty looks. I’m not deaf, and I can hear the slur on the streets. Oh, lucky me! The sound of the high heels pounding the floor with a regal rhythm makes the music of the march of an empress. Commoner’s opinion are to be dismissed; oh honey! They wish their woman walked like this, with the stride of a Victoria’s Secret Model and the swagger of a siren.

When the time comes to go back to the scene, I see how many people greet me with a smile, but butcher me with their eyes once they think I’ve stopped looking. Some others show their contempt for my shape right on my face, which I at least appreciate. “Bitch, you wish you were this fabulous.” I know these things happen. You would expect the scene to be all rainbows and smiles, but here I’ve been hurt even stronger than outside. Some gay guys like us when we make really mean jokes. Some others only approach when we show up with free shots or when I’m on the stage giving free dinners in a fancy restaurant to whoever loses the most clothes – it should concern the sponsors, not me. It’s yet another shift as a courtesan in straps and glitter, as the one who lights up the carnival at the cost of a bit of her own spirit every time.

This woman comes to a life of her own, and I am just witness of her doings.  After every show, she doesn’t loose her wig or remove her make up. She’s gone home now and she’s got someone waiting for him. She opens the door for a man shorter than she is. She allows him to get out of her life during daylight, while she goes back to be a male but only in the outside, as she looks herself in the mirror as woman most of the times. And she dreams of love, she dreams of her lover in pictures bright with sunlight and the invisible aura of happiness in them. She dreams of something she does not want to pursue, however. She dreams of waking up with him every day but in reality, she dismisses him every night just with a wave under the light rain that gives golden sparkles to a tingly road in a pale blue alley. She belongs to the stage. She belongs to the scene. She belongs to her newly found womanhood which allows her to be the queen of the night: the most extravagant.

She has made up memories to cover the bullying and the scorn of the first years of life. She remembers a school girl in its tiny flowing dress and high socks wanting to prance around instead of walking, the waist reduced some sizes and the hands gesticulating and spreading fairy dust. And the street was inclined and the girl grew up to become as regal as Beyonce, wearing a very tight sleeved golden dress; and I am, again, her, running down the runway.  This woman I see is extravagant, and it is me, and it lives not on the spotlight but in the cage I have built for her.

Now, again, it is me, stoned in front of the mirror, playing with some eyeliner some female guest might have left behind.

-What a bunch of crap! – I protest.

I removed quickly the eyeliner. Without looking again at the mirror, I got out of my restroom and rejoined my friends in the living room. We picked up the conversation where we left it: guy’s stuff.  

Powerless and Powerful: a Human Manifesto

Becoming a citizen of the world comes with no shortage of downsides. Never in my life have I felt so powerless. Being in the middle of a fast lane of communication/human interactions make me feel like all the pain going on around me is too much for me to even make a difference. Our world is in decay, our humanity being tested every moment… and we are failing.

If you know something about what’s happening in the world, you know that in the last two months, we heard about a group of Islam extremists that came into a university in Kenya and killed around a hundred fifty students. This was only the tail of many more crimes by extremist groups we decide not to pay attention to. Given that education was a door for social mobility for the 150 families behind the murdered, the event is such a crime and a tragedy on so many levels I dare not to look closer afraid I cannot stand the truth. Last week a friend wrote me to translate a statement for humanitarian help for Yemen.  For me, it’s been even hard to help him spread the message because I’ve been far more worried about a cause next to me: hundreds of African humans are dying just trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea I see from the terrace of my building. I’m bathing on these waters, and I feel I’m somehow an accomplice of the overall indifference to the people crossing and dying trying. This week, I went to retire my residence permit in the Italian police department of Cagliari, and it is heartbreaking to see how all foreigners are treated, like scum, like lowlifes. Some people propose “let’s receive them in Sardinia and make of the island a multicultural laboratory that could potentially boost the economy of the region,” but you have to see the contempt of the majority of Italians to this idea.  My Nepalese friend here got the news that an earthquake hit her city today, and that parts of Kathmandu are now in ruins, hundred presumed dead.  I just wrote her a message on Facebook. What else can I do? To all of these things happening around me, what can I do, really?

I want to look back on my country, then, to see if choosing a cause over there would make me feel less overwhelmed and more focused, but the headlines on the news make me feel hope. There’s a cultural regression. Most people seem to be under a spell, blinded to the dialogue that pushes the country forward and absorbed in their “Game of Thrones-like” political plotting and backstabbing. The media hardly focuses on what’s important. Feeling environmentally responsible is the new placebo for well-being, and people have turned a blind eye to social problems. Costa Rica disappoints me because it has all the potential to step up its game and export models of integral development, yet there we are, having a discussion on race that has been taken out of context, tolerating the airs of grandeur of the Catholic church and being petted by its invisible hand, and seeing how the government has no clear north.  Not a lot of hope coming from my homeland.

It’s so much pain and there are so many just causes, I’m lost and powerless. I don’t know what to show solidarity for, which cause to embrace. I’m on a personal environmental crusade over here. Last week I had to present Costa Rica to a group of kids, and the teacher was not amused to see how strongly I pushed the cause of ecology and sustainability through the explanation of Costa Rica’s fauna. This is my cause, right now, from picking up trash on the nature to separate my trash, reusing paper, giving a new life to glass containers, no longer taking plastic bags at the supermarket.  I try to make people aware that sustainability is the future; that solidarity should take part of our time and efforts. It’s all very vague, but I hope that it all makes sense at the end.

In the middle of all the awe, I have found that I also want to speak out. I might not be Malala, but if I keep on writing is because I feel that is my responsibility to speak out for the world that I want for me and for others. The need of speaking out comes, after all, when you feel no one is shouting loud enough. I feel like I have some lung strength, and that’s when I feel powerful.  I see how others want to relate to me on these terms, and I feel empowered by this little Earth Army that want to make a difference.  The fewer people around you that seem at ease with what’s happening, the more people would feel something’s not entirely ok. This is a healthy kind of anxiety people need to wake up to. We need to make other feels the uneasiness for the suffering of others and understand that when we allow other humans to suffer, nothing can really guarantee we are not going to be next.

There’s a book called “The White’s Man Burden” by William Easterly, in which the author says human aid in Africa has failed because all we learn to do is to send money, not to guide them to construct better models of development. It applies to all contexts in need. The “white man”, the alien, would never become a savior: people should learn how to save themselves and all foreigners can do is helping providing the tools they may need that the developed world has and they don’t. We’re also very comfortable keeping Africa poor and alienated, bleeding from afar so that we can send ban aids to perpetuate the idea that we are compassionate.  I am only a wanderer here, I’m passing. I cannot tell Europeans how to react to their neighboring continent’s problems, but I can speak, hoping that they start changing their mentality and their indifference to African problems.  By now, people around me should now that I’m not happy about the injustice in the world, and that’s a start.  Being a global citizen starts with understanding humanity is one, and that I should spread kindness to all the people around me. I may not be superman, but as long as I have the power of one, it’s in my hands to try to make a difference.

Taking things out of my chest

I should start by saying Italy has been a blessing. It is way more than what I imagined, and I often feel overwhelmed by everything that is going on. However, this sense of great awe comes with a great deal of confusion and disorientation. I’ve been accumulating a few things, and since writing is the only way I know to acquire some catharsis, here I go, in a manner of a random confession that may at least reach some of the people that I feel I had to talk to.
I should start this paragraph also by saying that I’m very lucky to have many friends in Europe. Since I started this trip, the invitations to visit them have not been short. And although it is true that once in Europe the possibilities of traveling become easier with low cost airlines, it has not been so cheap as I expected. When I started this trip, I had savings that I brought with me and allowed me to start with my door to door campaing, but I’ve been here 5 months and last week an account balance by mail gently informed me that I’m poor. The implications of this are very simple: traveling outside Italy is no longer a possibility (unless I get a crazy offer on a direct flight that is). I should also feel very grateful that when I have promised friends to do my best to go and visit them, they have believed me. That means they regard me as reliable. This is an unfortunate time because I cannot be reliable. Be it for the nature of the work I have here and simply because now I am absorbed by the impromptu “Italian way” of doing things, I will continually disappoint if I keep making promises. Right now, I have a one way ticket to London for June and a bag full of ideas of what to do to buy the ticket back. Apart from that, I’ll be here, in the island, living a life that lacks no imagination but counts with only 265 Euros a month to make some magic happen.
I have also been very frustrated because of my foreigner status, and I’ve been thinking really to what extent I should continue fooling Italians around me with the impression that I will try to blend. I won’t. As a matter of fact, one of the best days I’ve had here was a Friday when all volunteers embraced their “alien” status and we went to dance under the sunset in the port of the city. We didn’t care how people looked at us: people looking at us is the rule. I am strange, and I don’t think I can change that. I learned their language just to discover that I cannot connect to their mainstream humor; that alone is a mood killer, especially in the island where people joke with you all the time when they are in a good mood. I can see myself enjoying with Italians in a context when they show tolerance to my strangeness, but never outside of it. This is so far the most crushing finding for me, who have dedicated a good part of life and career to understand interculturality and cultural adaptation and failed to integrate into his hosting environment. Back in Costa Rica, I’ll be strange, I promise; way more than I have been. But at least in your own country you can say your right of being strange is equality valid to the others’ right to follow society’s rules without questioning them.
I have also become very anxious by reconnecting with people from the past and meeting new people. For the people of tha past, sometimes I wish facebook could add a disclaimer that says “the person you are trying to add occupies the same body but no longer is the person you used to know”. It’s like all of the sudden I have to open my life to criticism from people who think they know me when they have missed in average, the last ten years of my life, the period when I constructed most of what I am today. Here in Italy I have my share of anxiety coming from the new people too. Every new circle I come in means that I have to eventually "come out". This is particularly shaming for me because I simply have lost the ability or even the desire to come out. Some people approach me because “wow, a Costa Rican” “wow, a latino”. Then they find out I’m gay and the smooth interaction is over. They start treating me like they feel cheated because I didn’t state it at the beginning before they got ideas of me being their next wingman – or date, and I feel terrible for those girls. Excuse me? Why did you even assume on my sexuality on the first place? I am embarrassed with myself because in my head, I am an out gay man, and one who wants society to be more accepting of difference. It was really hard to move to a new house a month ago because that meant finding the space to come out to new people again and then wait for the implications of it in my life. I’m sick of it, so sick. I wish it wasn’t a big deal, but when I have some recurrent nightmares of my mom kicking me out of the house again for being gay, I know it is. I’ve been trying to call her and ask her: “do you know that I remain gay, right?” just to check if she does not believe that overtime I’ve changed my mind about it. I’ve been waking up, gasping for air, wishing to reach out the phone just to know before going back if the distance has not made for her more comfortable with pretending she’s never had a gay son and she’ll rather have me stay somewhere else where my sexual identity cannot bring her shame. It's like I want to know if the progress we've made in acceptance is still there. This whole gender thing has been particularly frustrating because I come from a place when my friends attend Pride with me and where being self-sufficient gave me the room to make my own choices and defend them aggressively, but now I’m in a house I don’t rent, in a strongly heteronormative country that is not my own, somehow disconnected from any gay social bubble, and so far away to ask my family for hugs and understand through their actions and not to words that they whole fight’s over, that I can rest my case because their love is unconditional… this was getting to my head so much that I felt that if I did not put it at least into words, I was going to go crazy. I got drunk last weekend, and I told the flatmate I get along with the most that I was gay. He's completely cool with it. One anxiety less.

Oh, man. Confessions. Catharsis. A cry to the wind (the cyberwind.) I feel better already.

Italia: sei una storia di amore!

Buonanotte, Italia! Sei una storia di amore. Una storia che si scrive piu tendera con ogni giorno che trascorre.

Damn! I’ve fallen hard for Italy. I’ve been trying to put my feelings to words for the last weeks, but just when I think it can get any better, it does. I sit down just to find my words painted with emotion and my mind deluded by wonder. I am slowly descending from that cloud as I get back to work and reality, so it is either now or never to blog about it; chances are the next high is just around the corner.

I’d lie if I said I haven’t spent some time in an exercise of self-congratulation. I’m really happy I jumped into the unknown once more. It sounds cliché, but my life was not short of people that told me I was being stupid for leaving stability and for the first two months here I believed I had made the wrong choice. Fortunately I had a shift of attitude and one event after another, like domino pieces falling, has brought an amount of goodness into my life I cannot understand. I attribute that to making the right choices and surrounding myself with the right people in this marvelous setting. I’ve have grown, and the universe felt like rewarding me for doing so.

At the beginning of this experience, I sabotaged myself a lot. I fixed myself in not allowing the people over here to be as awesome as my friends back in Costa Rica, and I was skeptical this time could be better than those 6 months I lived in London in 2011. In just 4 months, I’m certainly positive this experience will be better. London was a teenage dream; Cagliari and all of Italy are a grown up, constructive love. I already told my friends here, in a manner of confession, that I didn’t think they were going to be special at the beginning.  I arrived with the resolution of keeping my circle small. Now I kind to want to shame myself for bearing that stupid thought. When I get to the office and my girls give me hugs, when they grab me to dance in the club, I know I’m being loved. I also have dudes here, the way I like the dudes around me to be: rough, slightly vulgar, honest. This is what a year abroad should be about: memories and friends. Career development can wait a little longer.

I pictured my stay here so differently. I saw myself being a start player for the NGO, super fluent in the first two months, incredibly fit and balanced. Instead, I am contributing with bits of work because I am not that exceptional after all, learning Italian at half of my normal learning capacity because I’m too lazy to study as often as I should, and my body hasn’t really changed much. I dreamed of a writing break, instead I got travels to write about. I longed for stability; instead I’ve got uncertainty and constant change: even now I’m not sure where I will live the next six months. I thought I was tougher because I had lived abroad already but still got a horrible month in which I even looked for tickets to go back to Costa Rica because I felt on the breaking point. It’s all in the past now. I’ve accepted my powerlessness, and I live more at ease with myself now that just go with the flow. But oh, is the flow good!

Fortunately, the last month has been a story of love. Italy is simply amazing. Every city I’ve been in tells me a myriad of stories and allows me to feast my eyes as much as I want. The food is a dream. The language hasn’t stopped surprising me. I keep on stumbling on people talented in arts, photography, words, languages: people like me that haven’t really succeed much financially but are connected to the most quintessential energy wire of this life.  I’ve kept myself away from choices which could potentially ruin everything, and that’s why this time is so different. I am learning to build instead of creating chaos.

Goodness gracious, the amount of times I will sigh in the future thinking of this times. As for my roots, I still have them back in Costa Rica, but since I know I’ll be back and I’ll be back for good, I feel entitled to just disconnect from all the problems there and enjoy this moment that taste like artichoke in olive oil, that smell like freshly baked pastry and freshly served cappuccino, and that are filled with the color of the Mediterranean, that sea that is the mirror of my soul and blue like my dream of calm infinity. I’ll be back to seeing the time pass from a hammock on the beach, and the nights fade in the lights of la California. All the same, this dream will last for six more months, and I don’t want it to last a day less.

Buonanotte, Italia. Grazie per l’accoglienzia. Grazie per essere così bella che mi hai lasciato vivire un sogno meraviglioso che non potrò dimenticare mai piu.

When Your Building Crumbles

When the unexpected knocks on your door, what do you do? I wish that was more of a trope and less of a literal situation.

Two nights ago, the residents of our flat plus a few friends were having dinner and a long talk when the doorbell rang. I went to open the door and surprise! Two policemen. One of the officers is holding an eviction order from the local goverment and the dire news that we should leave the building as it is in a risk of crumbling. It takes me one second to realize they are being serious. Some of the neighbors of the same building are outside, so I decide it's not a bad prank. They ask me if I'm the tenant of the apartment and how many people live with me. I answer "no" and "five" respectively, still unable to ask/answer for more. I give out my passport and sign the notice. I then ask the police if we should leave now or if we have time to pack. He replied, with the Italian face expression of "none of my business": from now on you decide under your own risk when you leave. I nod and go to the living room to drop the bomb for everybody.

 I wish I had recorded every reaction. At first, people we skeptical. Maybe out of stress I was smiling like an idiot. "No, really guys. The police is at our door and it is the whole building. We have to move out tonight." We packed our stuff in the blink of an eye, revealing some of our darkest materialistic side, and moved to the other volunteers house with swiftness thanks to the organization’s help. The next course of action was the most natural: we went to a bar and got drunk to laugh over the matter.

It was pretty scary. I don’t usually give in to panic (except for that time a tornado blew up our roof) but I can’t help getting shaky. The police officers in our door speaking a foreign language, the whole commotion in the alleys, the risk of 6 stories falling on your head: I was nervous, and so were my flat mates. It was a fortune that some of our friends were there to help us pack, give some encouragement, and bring a lot of humor. There are now pictures with the eviction paper, everybody’s luggage in the alley, and one of me packing with a piece of Ice cream cake we just did not want to leave behind. We evacuated alright, and then the real reason for the eviction surfaced.

 The building was not really crumbling. An inspection done last year commanded a repair in the two main columns, and the landlady implemented most of it, leaving some minor modifications incomplete but enough to get some of the neighbors complaining and the local government to issue the eviction for safety reason. The next day we were allowed to go in since the problem should have been solved by some paperwork being signed, but hello Italian bureaucracy: the papers did not
arrive. By the end of the day, we were again on the street with our luggage, the streets around the building closed, and every single person who could move on the road with a suitcase; the police officers at the entrance discussing how to move the two residents who are severely disabled elderly and whether the Chinese on the building understood what was going on or not.

Viale Trieste 56, the place I’ve called home all this time, has temporarily closed its doors to us. It’s good this situation is finding me with full support from our superiors, with empathetic friends, and with an incredible, almost unnatural, good mood. We’re sure I’m going to tell this story in the future like that one of “oh, once an idiot forgot a suitcase in a double decker in London and we were evacuated by the possibility of being targeted by terrorism” or “a tornado blew up half of the roof of our house once while I was showering” (still fucking scary). Tonight offers a new place to stay (couchsurfing in your own town, a friend called it,) but it’s all good. Just this week I had started a serious diet/exercise plan that got disrupted the minute this happened. I had work and writing goals that reached a momentum, and then crashed into the ground. I am trying to see the lesson in this and not to leave my “hyperproductive/time-managing addict” taking over. It’s hard to be mad or let this get too much into my brain when so many people are in this with you and so much more giving you a hand. I guess the lesson is that life is bigger than me, and that I can only hope to have things under control, but never be too sure of it. It’s ironic that my last blog entry was about having a home, and now I’m yet again deprived of a sense of one. However, things could always be worse (like a building falling on your head or having no place to go.) Sometimes, when the unexpected kick us out of our comfort zone, we have to learn to look on how to make the best moving forward. If I was not appreciating many things over here, this has shaken issues off. I’m ready to have a new provisional home wherever I go, holding more appreciation for what I like about my stay.

Home

Once I dreamed with traveling to Japan and living there for a year. Then I shortened it to six months. Then I said I would only do it if it was in the company of either my best friend or my significant other (strictly selected to leave everything and go on this trip with me). Now I’m thinking I’d stay there 3 months tops and that I’d better work my ass off so that I can travel with enough money to foresee an early return.  My wanderlust only seems shunned by the prospect of other concept that I didn’t seem to yearn for much before: home.

Months away from finishing my internship in Sardinia, I’m already cherishing the idea of “home”.  It has nothing to do with how much I am enjoying my time here since I can now see how much I’ve grown professionally and amuse myself with how much Italian I can actually understand. The social part is going well: I have Italian people I care about, and I already have my “dudes” who bring a lot of warmth in the displeasing Mediterranean winter with no heating.  The need of home is a calling from the inside; my inner voice is telling me my big next project is that if I haven’t found my place in this world it is about time to start building one.

I don’t think I’ve solved most of my issues in life, and the concept of home remains one. I had a wonderful house in my hometown, and the happy memories of my dad, my mom, my brothers and sisters and a full house abundant in laughter and love. In what it seems a blink of an eye, my older siblings moved out and started their lives. Then in the brink of the adolescence, my father dropped the bomb that we were moving to the capital, and hence starts the darkest chapter of my life yet. San José never felt like home, in spite of all attempts my family made to make it so. Life was all about work and society for my dad, my sister made friends, I made some friends, my mom had the hardest time finding a footing in the shadow of my dad’s social success. We drifted apart, and that’s how my dad’s death found us: separated, unknown to each other, and without having been able to make our San José residence a home. It took us a long time to pull together all the pieces as it seems we were new to life itself. My dad could have lost his way a bit toward the end, but he provided shelter. By ourselves, we made a great advance reconstructing our lives, but I remember feeling lost. I travel countless times to my hometown during that period, trying to see what remained of the home feeling for me, but there was no attachment, no familiarity, nothing. There I was in life, pushing forward with my studies and searching for a path, but homeless.

Whenever I dream about past, present or future events involving a home, my unconscious always recreates my first home as the setting.

The next episode of my life is written on a much happier note. I started traveling and discovering the world was immense. For nearly five years and heading towards the sixth I have not stopped moving from one place to the other and neglected the need of a home for the thrill life was giving me. I grew unaware of simply indifferent to my sense of homelessness. That is until I moved in my best friend and we made our rented apartment a home in equal proportion. That place provided me with warmth I only vaguely remembered, and it was until I decided to take this internship in Italy that I realized I had a home again. I’m happy I did realize because then I spent all the time I could inviting friends, throwing parties, organizing evenings of movies and popcorn or simply curling with a book or a video game in the beanie bags of the living room. After all these years, I felt amazing to have a home again. And then I took a plane, and this is how I keep on destroying whatever stability I find in life in the belief that that’s how I push myself to be better.

Now, however, life finds me like Bilbo Baggins, craving for home and the annoyances of the relatives after a great adventure.  I’ve seen enough to decide on the kind of future that I want, and the focus is hardly what society would expect from someone young who has proven to be productive. It’s hard to get the idea across because most of my friends are still in the adventure stage, wanting to eat the world and building their careers. I have noticed a big divide between them and me: they feel like they will always have a place to return to if plans in life didn’t go that well. I, instead, cannot say the same.

I have suffered  a dramatic priority shift, , and all I can think of now is the pleasure of building  some walls and see them slowly turned into a reflection of who I have become. I want to think what color I want to decorate my room. I want to plant a tree and watch it grow. I want to build a tree house. I have often felt so disappointed on where this world is heading that I’d much rather start building a shelter where all this race for money, fame, and success is worth nothing: a place where I can feel safe and make the people that really care feel welcomed. A place where freshly made coffee and chocolate cookies are never in short supply.

So many popular sayings weave the complexity of the home idea in very simple terms that I’ve disregarded them as overrated my whole life: “Home is where the heart is” “There’s no place like home”. For very long, my rebellious side associated this as an American imported value for the working class to build their cages and remain comfortable while productive for the bigger machine of capitalism. For a very long time, I associated home with the Christian values of raising a family. Now I think I see things on a different light. It’s not an universal truth, but I, I that have been given this life, need a home to cure my soul.  

I am taking the next few months to make the best of the youth and the carelessness that I still have left, but soon after I’m done with Italy, I’ll start building my kingdom in this world, one brick at the time.

First of 2015

2015 has arrived, and my most realistic resolution so far is not holding back. Last night, I overcame a headache and finished one more chapter of the fantasy novel I am writing. There is no certainty on when I will publish it, but this is the year I will take my main character to his long anticipated final destination. Mostly, last night I reminded to myself that if I put my mind into it, I can do it.

I had a few entries scrapped in the last months because they were a little depressing and hardly reached any point; there lies the very reason on why I’ve left this blog idle for such a long time. I wrote a grim note on the “every man is an island” idea: one is isolated, one is limited. Being on an island seemingly left behind by the world was stirring all kind of dark clouds in my mind. I decided not to continue making metaphors on that line because they were not really helping my mood and focus, and I’m glad I did. One can also be an island that dances; one can be an island that remains in one piece after the most wondrous storm.

Rather than become an island drifting astray, I’m a sturdy one that will endure time.

I wonder when this need of proving myself to others will end. I grew up in an environment when my every day behavior was a subject of not only my parent’s approval but also the church’s. Over the years, I have come to love that time of my life for the good it left me, but I’ve come to blame it for the dependence of other’s say on my life that if left. Ironically, every new chapter is the same: there’s always something about my looks, my social status, my inexperience, my age that makes people believe they can underestimate me. In my century, people often talks about bullies as an archetypical manifestation in one person, often overlooking how often they assume the role themselves. I’m tired of being bullied by people with big names, much more so by people who have accomplished nothing. Right now, I’m in the middle of a social experiment where I can see on people’s faces all the tags they –consciously or unconsciously- put on me. I have come to be in terms with it. Nothing no one says truly defines who I really am. Those who perceive me as something I am not are simply too blinded by their own ignorance. The people that are ok with who they are and truly accept others make me very comfortable. They are too busy building dreams on their own to invest any energy in putting others’ to test. I’ve come to learn that the animosity they direct to me and others says more about them that what it says about me.

As soon as I started working in my Italian over here, some people told me that I needed to “avere fiducia in me stesso”, to trust myself. The meaning of that instruction has grown immensely lately. In the first days of this year, I made the promise to myself that I was going to trust my abilities and my judgment more. Now, I will add to that the adamant determination of not leaving room for others to undermine my history of personal success. Partially orphaned while still a teenager, I had to learn all by myself how to find opportunities to grow. Next time someone is against what I stand for, all I have to do is remember that it has been 11 years of fighting, but not only fighting: winning.

I really despise that self-vindication remains a topic.  Something is terribly wrong with this society that demands that you show that you are funny, that you are happy, that you are socially successful, that you’re in a never-ending row of achievements. It serves as a poor consolation that even famous people have to explain their success. If the world is cruel enough to bring someone down from a pedestal, not much sympathy can be expected toward you when you climb up one step.

I don’t need to be on the so called “top of the world” to know that I’ve made it. I may not have found the key to the door to success, but I have found the knowledge to build one for myself. I share Thoreau’s fondness for simplicity but an eye for the shiny things of the world. Somehow, I’ll find my way to get both… or die trying.

This is where the change of calendar finds me: not in a corner intimidated, but in a constant ascend, one that remains invisible to others. I might as well start rapping about knocking bitches down! Dear world, I’m not consulting you anymore. I am not asking for your permission either. I’m celebrating the best legacy of the evolution of the human intellect and exercising my free will.

I also learned another little cheeky phrase in Italian: What people have to say about me “non mi frega niente”, and as Taylor Swift sang “I’m just gonna shake it off”.