Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
New Year’s Eve
Tomorrow the world will awaken to the year 2009. Today is the last day of the year 2008 and, like many people, I look back at the year that is closing. What have I done? What has happened in the world. What has been lost and what has been gained? How have I grown? What did I want from this year and how much of it did I take, how much did I leave on the table?
Last year at this time I was looking forward to an evening with friends, and with my new friend Jimmy Danko, with whom I had not yet fallen in love. I was planning to move out of the country and start a business. I was planning to learn a language really well and to learn about a new culture. I was planning to do all of these things alone. Today I sit on the terrace of an apartment I own with my love Jimmy Danko and we are planning an evening with friends. I am learning acceptance of a new culture. I am far from speaking Spanish really well, but I’m getting my message across. I have decided that owning a business in Buenos Aires is the last thing on Earth I want to do. I am far from alone.
The world did not yet know, on this day last year, that global financial collapse was imminent or that a black man with an arab sounding name would soon be president of the United States. In some ways we were more hopeful then, in other ways more cynical. So much has happened this year. So much has changed. We have all learned so much. We have lost much, and are not yet sure what has been gained. This is a moment for the world that requires trust, patience and hope. We can not even begin to understand the impact of all that has happened yet. The same is true for me.
Jimmy and I moved in to our new apartment this week. We watched the sunset the first night on the terrace and woke the next morning to the sun coming up over our bedroom. With a 250 degree view of the city from the tallest building in the area we are always bathed in natural light. Even at night the lights of the city give our space a warm glow. Our apartment is not finished. We don’t have a shower or a kitchen yet, concrete floors, only 3 lights that hang from wires in the ceiling. The space is covered with concrete dust and during the day with workmen, doing what they do. Though I struggle with the dust and disorganization I am comforted to be home at last. Jimmy and I left our home in San Diego at the beginning of May and have not since unpacked our suitcases or lived anywhere of our own. This space belongs to us and while I don’t believe in the concept of permanence, there is still part of me that longs for a place of my own from which to go out and greet the world.
It was from this vantage point that I finally found a perspective from which to build a working relationship with Buenos Aires. Other people say Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, metropolitan, elegant even. I do not find it so. What I do find is that as I look out over the city from my terrace in the sky at all the ugly concrete buildings and the smog my eye will land on a 100 year old building with a beautiful dome and spire, all colored glass and lead. I think to myself as I look at it that nowhere in the world do they build things like that any more. It is unique, not another on the planet is just the same. The man who built it is long since dead and yet it stands there between two ugly concrete block buildings looking as delicate and artistic as it did when it was built.
There are beautiful things about Buenos Aires and it is good to be able to see it. In some ways I envy the people who only see the dome and miss all the rest. It is not my way of seeing the world though. This is the magic of the city for me. It is a busy, crowded, hurried, ugly place of concrete and smog, filled with rude people. Still, every once in a while one of those people will smile kindly and offer their heart to me. Every once in a while I will look up from the decay and see something that refuses to give in to the ugliness. Every once in a while Buenos Aires will surprise me. San Diego is a beautiful, comfortable city, but it never surprised me.
Somehow the Universe has conspired to have us here for a while longer, no telling how long. Buenos Aires is not the place I want to live the rest of my life but I find I am not unhappy to be “stuck” here for a while. I am still working on that language thing. When I left the states I imagined that I would learn about another culture. Learning about a culture is something you do by reading and talking to people, by studying its history. Accepting a culture is something you do by living there. My Argentine friend Gabriel submitted, during a discussion about the differences, that people everywhere are the same. I concede that we are the same in many ways, but if we were the same in all ways no one would travel or go to live in another culture. I am here, as all the extranjeros are, because it is different here. Knowing that is one thing. Accepting it is something else altogether.
I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions because every day of my life I am growing and changing, and the world changes around me. Still, as I look ahead at the coming year I imagine there will be things I will reach for. I want to communicate meaningfully in Spanish. That will require studying Spanish, but it will also require that I understand that words are not the only tools for deep and meaningful communication. I want to find my way back to financial security and that is going to require doing some things differently in this changing climate. I want to continue to make a difference in the way people see things and understand the world. I want to grow as a Leader and as a woman, as a friend and as a human, in a changing world. As I sit here in the warm sun of a South American summer day I wish you all hope, peace and joy in the coming year, but mostly, I wish you growth...
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Shoe On the Other Foot*
An Open Letter to President George W. Bush.
President Bush,
You have worked, as you promised America and the world, to bring Democracy to Iraq. On your last state visit there a young Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at you. You're fast on your feet for a guy in his 60s! You ducked. He didn't hit you. No harm. No foul. You joked afterward that, in part, this happened because of the freedom you brought to Iraq. Your legacy, as it were.
If you truly believe Iraq to be a Democratic country, freed by the war we brought to the land, then insist that the shoe thrower be freed. It is your duty as the self appointed "Spreader of Democracy" to show Iraq how to practice freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to have an opinion. Yes, the man threw something at you, but he gave you a shout out for several seconds before launching the 1st shoe. He pulled back in a stance any major league pitcher would be proud of. They were good throws, but they were not dangerous for a guy as agile as you are. You are used to ducking.
News groups report that your comments, post shoe throwing, were recorded over his screams from the hallway as he was brutally beaten by Iraqi security forces, apparently for embarrassing them. He is, as of this writing, being held without bail and without formal charges. In a democratic country a man could not be publicly beaten "until he cried like a woman", as one witness stated, even for lobbing a couple of size tens at a foreign dignitary, and missing entirely. If the incident happened at home the police force would be sued for damages in court, the officers reprimanded, civil rights groups would weigh in.
If you are to be remembered as you hope, as the liberator of Iraq, liberate the man who denounced you. Sticks and stones can break your bones but shoes hurled across a 10 foot divide after ample warning will serve only to let you know that the Iraqi people are suffering from the price of freedom. I know it is not your right to dictate what the government of Iraq will do to this man but if you ask, publicly, they will set him free. They may take his press pass or do some other fascist thing to silence him. They may yet find a way to use him to teach people that such statements will not be tolerated.
Much worse than that will happen if you don’t act. This man could spend 7 years in prison for expressing his opinion in a country you say is free. That would be a sad day for Iraq, but it would also be a sad day for all of the American soldiers who’ve lost their lives and their limbs fighting for freedom for Iraqis. It would be sad for their families. It would be sad for all Americans, because we have paid so much and so much damage has been done.
Ask for his freedom President Bush, and you will know that one Iraqi citizen, one single man, was not killed or imprisoned for daring to take advantage of the freedom you say they now have. The final thing you can do for Iraq, before you retire to Texas, is to help teach them what a true leader does with dissent. A true leader uses dissent to prove his point.
Annie Ory
American Citizen
Former Child Radical
*The title of this blog post is an ode to my mother, Marie Cecilia Ory, a powerful woman who taught me to never let my voice go unheard.
When I was a child my mother was a civil rights organizer and liberal lobbyist in Washington DC and parts South and West of there. During our years in our nation’s capital my mother lobbied for, and won, an opportunity to speak before the Senate/House Finance Committee. The Committee Chairman at the time was a hardline fiscal conservative who had helped to sponsor a bill to cut federal food stamp aid to working single mothers. My mother had only 30 minutes to present her case against the bill and she knew that if she just talked at them she would get no where. As part of a campaign that would include a children’s march on Washington, press coverage, and one on one lobbying of Senators known to be undecided, she needed this presentation to really make an impact.
Mama decided she needed them to be involved with their hands and minds, with thier competitive spirits, not just listening to some hippy organizer blah-blah-blahing so she designed a board game called Shoe On the Other Foot for them to play in order to help them to understand the impact of their decision on the day to day lives of these women and their children. The premise of the game is that you are a low income working mother on food stamps and you have to make it through a month while encountering all of the economic difficulties standard to such a life, without running out of food. She used limited funds from local and national women’s and children’s organizations to purchase basic craft supplies and gathered together a bunch of food stamp mothers and their kids, including her own, to construct the games in the basement of the local Unitarian Church. There was a mimeograph machine (if you are under 40 that is a very old fashioned printer) and big tables and chairs. I was on the dice committee, we made dice out of clay and painted dots on the sides. Some of the children were quite young and so some of the dice didn’t have the correct numbers on all the sides and weren’t perfectly square, but we let that be OK. We glued the mimeographed images of the game board to pieces of card board, put spinners made of binder clasps in the middle and stuffed each envelope with a game board and a set of dice.
A couple of days later, wearing a dashiki (if you are under 40 that is an African style shirt fashionable with hippies during the 60s and 70s) and with my brother (9), sister(6) and myself(8) in tow she walked in to the Committee Hall and when it was her turn to present she had us begin handing out games to each Committee member. The Chairman immediately insisted that she cease and desist but she was ready for him. She read off Committee Regulation #ABC123 (or something like that) and it clearly said that the presenter could use any means of discourse they chose as long as it was not illegal or immoral and that the Committee members were required to participate if needed to advance the demonstration. I hope they never changed that rule.
Each Committee member set up his board and we all began to play. Mama would have everyone roll and move together and she went down the line asking each person to read one of their plays out loud for the Committee. When it was the Committee Chair’s turn he read his place on the board. It said:
It is the 25th of the month. You have $5 in cash in your wallet, no money in your bank account and you don’t get paid until the 1st. Your food stamps are gone and will not come again until the 5th. You have just enough food in the house to make it until payday if neither of the children gets sick and has to eat breakfast and lunch at home for the day. You are cooking dinner and a cockroach falls into the stew.
Do you a) pick it out and eat it anyway? b) leave it in for extra protein? c) throw the stew away and spend your last $5 replacing the food, knowing it will leave you without emergency funds for 6 days?
The Chairman, after reading this said that he did not believe these were his only choices. My mother, excited that she had hooked the big one, said to him that she would be interested to hear what he thought his other choices might be. He said family would help, or neighbors. She said that if you had family with money or lived in neighborhoods where people had money you wouldn’t be on food stamps. He said you could borrow it from your boss, or somewhere... of course, in the end, he had to admit defeat and choose from the list she had given him. He chose to eat the food. He was a fiscal conservative after all. He wasn’t going to end up at the end of the month with no money.
My mother considered it her greatest single victory as an agitator, demonstrator, organizer, lobbyist and over all pain in the administration’s ass that the Chairman of the Senate/House Finance Committee later withdrew his support from that bill. It was his own bill. The bill was defeated by a narrow margin in a strongly republican administration. All because he had to walk in someone else’s shoes for just 30 minutes.
President Bush,
You have worked, as you promised America and the world, to bring Democracy to Iraq. On your last state visit there a young Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at you. You're fast on your feet for a guy in his 60s! You ducked. He didn't hit you. No harm. No foul. You joked afterward that, in part, this happened because of the freedom you brought to Iraq. Your legacy, as it were.
If you truly believe Iraq to be a Democratic country, freed by the war we brought to the land, then insist that the shoe thrower be freed. It is your duty as the self appointed "Spreader of Democracy" to show Iraq how to practice freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to have an opinion. Yes, the man threw something at you, but he gave you a shout out for several seconds before launching the 1st shoe. He pulled back in a stance any major league pitcher would be proud of. They were good throws, but they were not dangerous for a guy as agile as you are. You are used to ducking.
News groups report that your comments, post shoe throwing, were recorded over his screams from the hallway as he was brutally beaten by Iraqi security forces, apparently for embarrassing them. He is, as of this writing, being held without bail and without formal charges. In a democratic country a man could not be publicly beaten "until he cried like a woman", as one witness stated, even for lobbing a couple of size tens at a foreign dignitary, and missing entirely. If the incident happened at home the police force would be sued for damages in court, the officers reprimanded, civil rights groups would weigh in.
If you are to be remembered as you hope, as the liberator of Iraq, liberate the man who denounced you. Sticks and stones can break your bones but shoes hurled across a 10 foot divide after ample warning will serve only to let you know that the Iraqi people are suffering from the price of freedom. I know it is not your right to dictate what the government of Iraq will do to this man but if you ask, publicly, they will set him free. They may take his press pass or do some other fascist thing to silence him. They may yet find a way to use him to teach people that such statements will not be tolerated.
Much worse than that will happen if you don’t act. This man could spend 7 years in prison for expressing his opinion in a country you say is free. That would be a sad day for Iraq, but it would also be a sad day for all of the American soldiers who’ve lost their lives and their limbs fighting for freedom for Iraqis. It would be sad for their families. It would be sad for all Americans, because we have paid so much and so much damage has been done.
Ask for his freedom President Bush, and you will know that one Iraqi citizen, one single man, was not killed or imprisoned for daring to take advantage of the freedom you say they now have. The final thing you can do for Iraq, before you retire to Texas, is to help teach them what a true leader does with dissent. A true leader uses dissent to prove his point.
Annie Ory
American Citizen
Former Child Radical
*The title of this blog post is an ode to my mother, Marie Cecilia Ory, a powerful woman who taught me to never let my voice go unheard.
When I was a child my mother was a civil rights organizer and liberal lobbyist in Washington DC and parts South and West of there. During our years in our nation’s capital my mother lobbied for, and won, an opportunity to speak before the Senate/House Finance Committee. The Committee Chairman at the time was a hardline fiscal conservative who had helped to sponsor a bill to cut federal food stamp aid to working single mothers. My mother had only 30 minutes to present her case against the bill and she knew that if she just talked at them she would get no where. As part of a campaign that would include a children’s march on Washington, press coverage, and one on one lobbying of Senators known to be undecided, she needed this presentation to really make an impact.
Mama decided she needed them to be involved with their hands and minds, with thier competitive spirits, not just listening to some hippy organizer blah-blah-blahing so she designed a board game called Shoe On the Other Foot for them to play in order to help them to understand the impact of their decision on the day to day lives of these women and their children. The premise of the game is that you are a low income working mother on food stamps and you have to make it through a month while encountering all of the economic difficulties standard to such a life, without running out of food. She used limited funds from local and national women’s and children’s organizations to purchase basic craft supplies and gathered together a bunch of food stamp mothers and their kids, including her own, to construct the games in the basement of the local Unitarian Church. There was a mimeograph machine (if you are under 40 that is a very old fashioned printer) and big tables and chairs. I was on the dice committee, we made dice out of clay and painted dots on the sides. Some of the children were quite young and so some of the dice didn’t have the correct numbers on all the sides and weren’t perfectly square, but we let that be OK. We glued the mimeographed images of the game board to pieces of card board, put spinners made of binder clasps in the middle and stuffed each envelope with a game board and a set of dice.
A couple of days later, wearing a dashiki (if you are under 40 that is an African style shirt fashionable with hippies during the 60s and 70s) and with my brother (9), sister(6) and myself(8) in tow she walked in to the Committee Hall and when it was her turn to present she had us begin handing out games to each Committee member. The Chairman immediately insisted that she cease and desist but she was ready for him. She read off Committee Regulation #ABC123 (or something like that) and it clearly said that the presenter could use any means of discourse they chose as long as it was not illegal or immoral and that the Committee members were required to participate if needed to advance the demonstration. I hope they never changed that rule.
Each Committee member set up his board and we all began to play. Mama would have everyone roll and move together and she went down the line asking each person to read one of their plays out loud for the Committee. When it was the Committee Chair’s turn he read his place on the board. It said:
It is the 25th of the month. You have $5 in cash in your wallet, no money in your bank account and you don’t get paid until the 1st. Your food stamps are gone and will not come again until the 5th. You have just enough food in the house to make it until payday if neither of the children gets sick and has to eat breakfast and lunch at home for the day. You are cooking dinner and a cockroach falls into the stew.
Do you a) pick it out and eat it anyway? b) leave it in for extra protein? c) throw the stew away and spend your last $5 replacing the food, knowing it will leave you without emergency funds for 6 days?
The Chairman, after reading this said that he did not believe these were his only choices. My mother, excited that she had hooked the big one, said to him that she would be interested to hear what he thought his other choices might be. He said family would help, or neighbors. She said that if you had family with money or lived in neighborhoods where people had money you wouldn’t be on food stamps. He said you could borrow it from your boss, or somewhere... of course, in the end, he had to admit defeat and choose from the list she had given him. He chose to eat the food. He was a fiscal conservative after all. He wasn’t going to end up at the end of the month with no money.
My mother considered it her greatest single victory as an agitator, demonstrator, organizer, lobbyist and over all pain in the administration’s ass that the Chairman of the Senate/House Finance Committee later withdrew his support from that bill. It was his own bill. The bill was defeated by a narrow margin in a strongly republican administration. All because he had to walk in someone else’s shoes for just 30 minutes.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Skin Deep...
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
I am an oddball. No, no, it’s true. I am a strange duck. I don’t often share the perspectives of the crowd and I like things other people don’t, and vise versa. That’s OK with me, I like it that way. I don’t fit in to any standard variation either. For example, I am not a “girly-girl” but I am also definitely not a “tom-boy”. I don’t climb trees but I hate going to the salon and prefer to shop on line to skip all the social aspects of shopping for clothes. I don’t like shopping with friends who try to influence my choices and take too long looking at things and trying things on they never buy. I shop for clothes because I like clothes. I go to the salon because I need a hair cut. I like to look pretty, feminine, but I don’t like the stuff you have to do to get there.
I used to get my nails done in a fancy salon because I was convinced (by the nail girl at the fancy salon) that the cheaper ones would leave me with a gangrenous nail that would cost me a leg, or at least a toe. Then I got an infection under my nail at the fancy salon and decided that the extra hour it took to procure shiny red finger and toe nails at that salon, not to mention the additional $35, was no longer in my best interest. I took to utilizing the place across the street where many cute, young Vietnamese women wearing fashion knock offs from WalMart and wearing shoes two sizes too large did nails in a quick, efficient manner for all of $30 including a generous tip, hands and feet. Mostly they were cheap because they were fast. They buffed, clipped, polished and did a rigorous hand and foot massage in under an hour and with a minimum of socializing. In fact they seemed to like it that I preferred to read or listen to my music, or both, while they worked. Multi-tasking rules.
Here in Buenos Aires I have lost all interest in such things. First, there are few shops here that sell clothes I like and so I have not bought a single item of clothing since our arrival in July. I have been to the hair dresser four times and the nail salon once. My experiences in these places have led me to abandon formal nail care completely and to shave my head. I now file and buff a little at home, no polish and have Jimmy take an electric clipper to the places around my ears where my hair sticks out so that I can maintain some sort of “style” until it is long, straight and without variation from my natural color, which, it turns out, is a much darker brown than I remembered and has less gray than I imagined.
There are a number of reasons for this change and the salons here are only the beginning, but let’s start there. Salons for Argentine women are, apparently, a social event. They go, they sit, they talk, they have coffee, they wait (Argentines are immeasurably patient people) and they spend endless hours having their hair styled. Being able to do good color or cuts is not at a premium here. Being a “stylist” who can take long, straight, dark hair and make it look momentarily glamorous though, that is an art form that is treasured. It is also exactly the type of thing I have no patience with. If I want my long, straight hair wavy I’ll take a curling iron to it at home, I am certainly not wasting four hours (yes I said four hours) in a salon to come away with a result that will disappear when next I sleep or bathe, or if it happens to be humid outside, not an uncommon thing here, when I walk out the door of the salon. My only alternative is a very good Canadian stylist who does hair in his ever changing apartments and charges ever more for it with every visit as he tries valiantly, bless him, to do hair of the quality he likes with the tools available in a somewhat backward place. The inconsistency was too much for me. I have had all of four hairdressers in the last 25 years so going to a different location and not getting the same product, service, price, etc. for each visit was just not working for me. The one time I went to the nail salon I was there for almost five hours and when I left my cuticles were wounded, I was frustrated and stressed out and all my polish chipped off within five days.
It is no wonder that since going to the salon takes so much time, most Argentine women don’t do it. The sight of a painted nail is odd enough to inspire particular notice and anytime I see a woman with anything other than long, straight, hair of her natural color, hanging as it fell straight out of the shower, it stands out. As summer comes that is changing. The south of the equator combination of summer time and the holidays beginning at the same time seems to inspire the women here to dress up a little, add some color to their wardrobe, even wear a smile to dress up an otherwise city hardened face. And just when I was getting used to going au naturel.
So, what’s a girl to do? Well, what I am going to do is to learn to adjust my self, sometimes, to the truth of the economy and my current situation. What is cool about living in a place where fashion, as I have known it, doesn’t exist, is that I don’t have to dress up much to look really cool here. My hair is growing in a little bit at a time and it is “long” enough now that men are starting to look at me as some sort of exotic creature from afar instead of a strange threatening sort of alien. Women ignore me, mostly, though I get the feeling some Argentine women are scared of me, but that is another story.
The people I know here, expats and natives alike, are simply not all that interested in outward appearances and so it is a time in my own life when I can simply do what feels right and is easy and free. No doubt there will come a time when I step back in to the playful world of fashion and go to a salon to get my hair done and my nails painted. By the time that day comes I may have learned to have a little fun with it, if only from missing it a bit.
I am an oddball. No, no, it’s true. I am a strange duck. I don’t often share the perspectives of the crowd and I like things other people don’t, and vise versa. That’s OK with me, I like it that way. I don’t fit in to any standard variation either. For example, I am not a “girly-girl” but I am also definitely not a “tom-boy”. I don’t climb trees but I hate going to the salon and prefer to shop on line to skip all the social aspects of shopping for clothes. I don’t like shopping with friends who try to influence my choices and take too long looking at things and trying things on they never buy. I shop for clothes because I like clothes. I go to the salon because I need a hair cut. I like to look pretty, feminine, but I don’t like the stuff you have to do to get there.
I used to get my nails done in a fancy salon because I was convinced (by the nail girl at the fancy salon) that the cheaper ones would leave me with a gangrenous nail that would cost me a leg, or at least a toe. Then I got an infection under my nail at the fancy salon and decided that the extra hour it took to procure shiny red finger and toe nails at that salon, not to mention the additional $35, was no longer in my best interest. I took to utilizing the place across the street where many cute, young Vietnamese women wearing fashion knock offs from WalMart and wearing shoes two sizes too large did nails in a quick, efficient manner for all of $30 including a generous tip, hands and feet. Mostly they were cheap because they were fast. They buffed, clipped, polished and did a rigorous hand and foot massage in under an hour and with a minimum of socializing. In fact they seemed to like it that I preferred to read or listen to my music, or both, while they worked. Multi-tasking rules.
Here in Buenos Aires I have lost all interest in such things. First, there are few shops here that sell clothes I like and so I have not bought a single item of clothing since our arrival in July. I have been to the hair dresser four times and the nail salon once. My experiences in these places have led me to abandon formal nail care completely and to shave my head. I now file and buff a little at home, no polish and have Jimmy take an electric clipper to the places around my ears where my hair sticks out so that I can maintain some sort of “style” until it is long, straight and without variation from my natural color, which, it turns out, is a much darker brown than I remembered and has less gray than I imagined.
There are a number of reasons for this change and the salons here are only the beginning, but let’s start there. Salons for Argentine women are, apparently, a social event. They go, they sit, they talk, they have coffee, they wait (Argentines are immeasurably patient people) and they spend endless hours having their hair styled. Being able to do good color or cuts is not at a premium here. Being a “stylist” who can take long, straight, dark hair and make it look momentarily glamorous though, that is an art form that is treasured. It is also exactly the type of thing I have no patience with. If I want my long, straight hair wavy I’ll take a curling iron to it at home, I am certainly not wasting four hours (yes I said four hours) in a salon to come away with a result that will disappear when next I sleep or bathe, or if it happens to be humid outside, not an uncommon thing here, when I walk out the door of the salon. My only alternative is a very good Canadian stylist who does hair in his ever changing apartments and charges ever more for it with every visit as he tries valiantly, bless him, to do hair of the quality he likes with the tools available in a somewhat backward place. The inconsistency was too much for me. I have had all of four hairdressers in the last 25 years so going to a different location and not getting the same product, service, price, etc. for each visit was just not working for me. The one time I went to the nail salon I was there for almost five hours and when I left my cuticles were wounded, I was frustrated and stressed out and all my polish chipped off within five days.
It is no wonder that since going to the salon takes so much time, most Argentine women don’t do it. The sight of a painted nail is odd enough to inspire particular notice and anytime I see a woman with anything other than long, straight, hair of her natural color, hanging as it fell straight out of the shower, it stands out. As summer comes that is changing. The south of the equator combination of summer time and the holidays beginning at the same time seems to inspire the women here to dress up a little, add some color to their wardrobe, even wear a smile to dress up an otherwise city hardened face. And just when I was getting used to going au naturel.
So, what’s a girl to do? Well, what I am going to do is to learn to adjust my self, sometimes, to the truth of the economy and my current situation. What is cool about living in a place where fashion, as I have known it, doesn’t exist, is that I don’t have to dress up much to look really cool here. My hair is growing in a little bit at a time and it is “long” enough now that men are starting to look at me as some sort of exotic creature from afar instead of a strange threatening sort of alien. Women ignore me, mostly, though I get the feeling some Argentine women are scared of me, but that is another story.
The people I know here, expats and natives alike, are simply not all that interested in outward appearances and so it is a time in my own life when I can simply do what feels right and is easy and free. No doubt there will come a time when I step back in to the playful world of fashion and go to a salon to get my hair done and my nails painted. By the time that day comes I may have learned to have a little fun with it, if only from missing it a bit.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Crossing the Divide...
Tuesday December 9th, 2008
There is a small peninsula town just off the coast of San Diego called Coronado. The residents of the area call Coronado an island, though it isn’t. It can be reached directly from downtown by a bridge or from the south by way of the strip that runs from Imperial Beach. There is also a ferry, a holdover from before the construction of the bridge. In a beautiful place on the sea it’s a shame to get rid of a ferry even if it really isn’t necessary any longer.
The downtown area of San Diego is only 5 minutes drive across the bridge from Coronado. Still, the bridge is a mental barrier. I can distinctly recall a day when, living in Coronado, I had crossed the bridge to the city and done some business. As I was crossing back, headed home, a friend called and invited me to dinner downtown. It would have taken me 10 minutes to get back downtown, but somehow the simple act of turning my car around and traversing the bridge again, then again after dinner, seemed too much. I asked my friend if she wanted to come over the bridge and eat with me on “The Island”. She felt the barrier too. Only a 5 minute drive, coming over was too much bother. We would do it another time, we agreed.
There is a similar barrier when it comes to staying connected with friends and family from here in the Southern Hemisphere. There are actually barriers to communication. One is the time difference, not great during some months, significant during others. Not long after the US times zones “fall back” Buenos Aires “springs forward” and suddenly we are 6 full hours ahead of San Diego where most of my friends and family live, and where I still do business. That is a long time, 6 hours. I get up, have breakfast, read the news, do my yoga practice, take a shower, run some errands, eat lunch, take a break before starting to work. I check the time so see if I can call someone in San Diego yet. No. Wait longer. It is only 8am. The office isn’t even open yet. They are still eating breakfast. If it is a business call and it requires the person get an answer for me and call me back I am often in bed by the time they call back. When businesses close in San Diego between 5:00 and 6:00 pm it is already 11:00 or 12:00 pm here in Argentina. By the time my friends and family get home from work or their daily wanderings I am often sleeping, or they think I am, or they aren’t sure.
Time is not the only barrier either. Though Jimmy and I have both worked very hard to be certain our friends and family know how to reach us, to make it inexpensive and simple, it can seem difficult to them. We both have US phone numbers that ring directly into our computers and have been clear that our friends need not worry about waking us because we shut down at night. We also have Skype.com and can be called, even with video sometimes, for free on our computers any time we are at home, which is most of the time. I notice that even emails don’t come as often as they did when I was in the city with my friends. I can only imagine the reasons. Perhaps it seems so far that it is hard for them to feel connected. Perhaps there is a part of them that simply doesn’t see me as a part of their lives any longer. Perhaps there is even some resentment that I have moved so far away. My son has expressed to me that if I wanted to move away I could have chosen Mexico, so much closer. No matter he has never gone to Mexico of his own accord and wouldn’t if given the opportunity. The simple truth is that technology can make the world smaller but it takes our minds time to catch up.
I recently wrote to a friend:
A long hot summer is just beginning in this place in the Southern hemisphere, far from the cooling breezes of the Pacific Ocean. The body has a clock and mine is still turned upside down a little. My sense of direction is also lost here, without the constant presence of the visible mountains to the East and the Pacific to the West I don't know where I am in either space or time and that disorientation leaves me wondering about many things.
In years gone by, before jet planes became the way people moved from one place, one coast, one continent, one hemisphere, to the other, the long slow journey gave the mind and body time to adjust. As they moved slowly across the miles, walking or riding something, they watched day by day as the landscape changed and the movement of the sun, moon and stars helped to show travelers where they were, one day, one mile at a time. By choosing a direction they gave themselves a solid footing for understanding where they were. They moved slowly enough that there was no word to express the way a person feels when they have not adjusted to the time and space they are in. There is a reason it's called "jet-lag". It didn't exist before air travel.
I too feel the disconnect. Strangely, I have a friend who is living with her new husband in Egypt and I noticed recently that I feel very close to her. Shared experience is apparently just as meaningful in the psyche as is shared space.
My relationship with my son has been tumultuous for years now. In the past 2 months we have been in a mutual struggle to accomplish a task that was financially necessary but difficult and distasteful to both of us for numerous reasons. All of the anxiety seems to be able to stretch across the miles while none of the tenderness, love and caring of a personal meeting makes it that far.
During a recent phone conversation via Skype.com Alex asked me to stop yelling at him. I wasn’t “yelling” at him. I was speaking loudly because I could barely hear him and projected that he might not be able to hear me either. I speak loudly when I talk to someone on the computer anyway and I notice that when we speak on the computer Alex doesn’t look at the screen. He tends to sit or stand far from the computer and to look away as he speaks. I could go all psycho-babble on you and explain my guesses as to what that is about, but I would only be guessing. He probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it let alone why. What is remarkable is that if we were talking in person I could see him look away, ask him to speak up, notice if he was looking away, step around in front of him so that I could hear better. All the technology we have doesn’t make difficult relationships easier. It is still hard and the distance makes it harder.
It is a miracle that we can talk for free to our friends and family thousands of miles away, that we can even see them if they have a camera and the band-width is good. It is a selective miracle though. The miracle only works if the connection was already strong. It also deselects anyone who is naturally uncomfortable with technology. One friend recently told me she had been saving for a web-cam so that she could talk with me. She simply assumed that a piece of equipment that could do such a miraculous thing must be expensive. That a web-cam was a $20-30 expense was a surprise to her and we laughed at how we had been missing one another but not connecting because there was an assumption that it had to be hard. Some people don't do written word well or don't like to talk on the phone. You know them. They want to have coffee or lunch or go for a walk on the beach. I can't do that.
The friends I have down here are wonderful people, and there is an immediate warmth and connection because of that shared experience thing. We are interested in one another and we long for connection so the social web is large and active. The Argentines and expats Jimmy and I have connected with have been a big part of the joy and learning of this experience. They are the reason I am glad I came.
There is an understanding though, that we are not permanent here and in some instances that has us keep one another at a certain distance. There is a risk involved in growing close to someone who might not be here in 6 months. Of course, there is a risk that anyone we love might not be here in 6 months so...
There are people in my life who have remained in contact and whose presence I still feel. I have friends who love me and who make the time, buy the camera, notice the resistance and then call me on the computer anyway. I am deeply grateful for these friends. They keep me grounded and they help me remember that I am not where I live.
There is a small peninsula town just off the coast of San Diego called Coronado. The residents of the area call Coronado an island, though it isn’t. It can be reached directly from downtown by a bridge or from the south by way of the strip that runs from Imperial Beach. There is also a ferry, a holdover from before the construction of the bridge. In a beautiful place on the sea it’s a shame to get rid of a ferry even if it really isn’t necessary any longer.
The downtown area of San Diego is only 5 minutes drive across the bridge from Coronado. Still, the bridge is a mental barrier. I can distinctly recall a day when, living in Coronado, I had crossed the bridge to the city and done some business. As I was crossing back, headed home, a friend called and invited me to dinner downtown. It would have taken me 10 minutes to get back downtown, but somehow the simple act of turning my car around and traversing the bridge again, then again after dinner, seemed too much. I asked my friend if she wanted to come over the bridge and eat with me on “The Island”. She felt the barrier too. Only a 5 minute drive, coming over was too much bother. We would do it another time, we agreed.
There is a similar barrier when it comes to staying connected with friends and family from here in the Southern Hemisphere. There are actually barriers to communication. One is the time difference, not great during some months, significant during others. Not long after the US times zones “fall back” Buenos Aires “springs forward” and suddenly we are 6 full hours ahead of San Diego where most of my friends and family live, and where I still do business. That is a long time, 6 hours. I get up, have breakfast, read the news, do my yoga practice, take a shower, run some errands, eat lunch, take a break before starting to work. I check the time so see if I can call someone in San Diego yet. No. Wait longer. It is only 8am. The office isn’t even open yet. They are still eating breakfast. If it is a business call and it requires the person get an answer for me and call me back I am often in bed by the time they call back. When businesses close in San Diego between 5:00 and 6:00 pm it is already 11:00 or 12:00 pm here in Argentina. By the time my friends and family get home from work or their daily wanderings I am often sleeping, or they think I am, or they aren’t sure.
Time is not the only barrier either. Though Jimmy and I have both worked very hard to be certain our friends and family know how to reach us, to make it inexpensive and simple, it can seem difficult to them. We both have US phone numbers that ring directly into our computers and have been clear that our friends need not worry about waking us because we shut down at night. We also have Skype.com and can be called, even with video sometimes, for free on our computers any time we are at home, which is most of the time. I notice that even emails don’t come as often as they did when I was in the city with my friends. I can only imagine the reasons. Perhaps it seems so far that it is hard for them to feel connected. Perhaps there is a part of them that simply doesn’t see me as a part of their lives any longer. Perhaps there is even some resentment that I have moved so far away. My son has expressed to me that if I wanted to move away I could have chosen Mexico, so much closer. No matter he has never gone to Mexico of his own accord and wouldn’t if given the opportunity. The simple truth is that technology can make the world smaller but it takes our minds time to catch up.
I recently wrote to a friend:
A long hot summer is just beginning in this place in the Southern hemisphere, far from the cooling breezes of the Pacific Ocean. The body has a clock and mine is still turned upside down a little. My sense of direction is also lost here, without the constant presence of the visible mountains to the East and the Pacific to the West I don't know where I am in either space or time and that disorientation leaves me wondering about many things.
In years gone by, before jet planes became the way people moved from one place, one coast, one continent, one hemisphere, to the other, the long slow journey gave the mind and body time to adjust. As they moved slowly across the miles, walking or riding something, they watched day by day as the landscape changed and the movement of the sun, moon and stars helped to show travelers where they were, one day, one mile at a time. By choosing a direction they gave themselves a solid footing for understanding where they were. They moved slowly enough that there was no word to express the way a person feels when they have not adjusted to the time and space they are in. There is a reason it's called "jet-lag". It didn't exist before air travel.
I too feel the disconnect. Strangely, I have a friend who is living with her new husband in Egypt and I noticed recently that I feel very close to her. Shared experience is apparently just as meaningful in the psyche as is shared space.
My relationship with my son has been tumultuous for years now. In the past 2 months we have been in a mutual struggle to accomplish a task that was financially necessary but difficult and distasteful to both of us for numerous reasons. All of the anxiety seems to be able to stretch across the miles while none of the tenderness, love and caring of a personal meeting makes it that far.
During a recent phone conversation via Skype.com Alex asked me to stop yelling at him. I wasn’t “yelling” at him. I was speaking loudly because I could barely hear him and projected that he might not be able to hear me either. I speak loudly when I talk to someone on the computer anyway and I notice that when we speak on the computer Alex doesn’t look at the screen. He tends to sit or stand far from the computer and to look away as he speaks. I could go all psycho-babble on you and explain my guesses as to what that is about, but I would only be guessing. He probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it let alone why. What is remarkable is that if we were talking in person I could see him look away, ask him to speak up, notice if he was looking away, step around in front of him so that I could hear better. All the technology we have doesn’t make difficult relationships easier. It is still hard and the distance makes it harder.
It is a miracle that we can talk for free to our friends and family thousands of miles away, that we can even see them if they have a camera and the band-width is good. It is a selective miracle though. The miracle only works if the connection was already strong. It also deselects anyone who is naturally uncomfortable with technology. One friend recently told me she had been saving for a web-cam so that she could talk with me. She simply assumed that a piece of equipment that could do such a miraculous thing must be expensive. That a web-cam was a $20-30 expense was a surprise to her and we laughed at how we had been missing one another but not connecting because there was an assumption that it had to be hard. Some people don't do written word well or don't like to talk on the phone. You know them. They want to have coffee or lunch or go for a walk on the beach. I can't do that.
The friends I have down here are wonderful people, and there is an immediate warmth and connection because of that shared experience thing. We are interested in one another and we long for connection so the social web is large and active. The Argentines and expats Jimmy and I have connected with have been a big part of the joy and learning of this experience. They are the reason I am glad I came.
There is an understanding though, that we are not permanent here and in some instances that has us keep one another at a certain distance. There is a risk involved in growing close to someone who might not be here in 6 months. Of course, there is a risk that anyone we love might not be here in 6 months so...
There are people in my life who have remained in contact and whose presence I still feel. I have friends who love me and who make the time, buy the camera, notice the resistance and then call me on the computer anyway. I am deeply grateful for these friends. They keep me grounded and they help me remember that I am not where I live.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The Holidays are here (and we're still at war) - Song Lyric, Brett Dennen
27th of November, Thanks Giving Day, 2008
My first Thanks Giving Day in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanks Giving Day. I went to the grocery store this morning and bought a small turkey (which I hear they didn’t even have here a couple of years ago). I found sweet potatoes, no yams. I made my own bread crumbs for stuffing and found sausage but no oysters. The thing I really missed the most was homemade cranberry sauce (cranberries are a fall fruit and it’s spring time here so there aren’t any). Jimmy most missed pumpkin pie (same issue). Our menu read as follows:
Roast Turkey
Mashed Potatoes
Brussels Sprouts
Sausage Stuffing
Biscuits
Giblet Gravy
Argentine White Wine
Candied Sweet Potatoes
We spoke of our thankfulness,
I am thankful for
A mom who taught me how to cook
A boyfriend who appreciates it
Turkeys in Argentina (no fat on it and the size turkeys get on their own without genetic meddling)
A year of growth and fun and rich experiences
A friend to walk the journey with, hand in hand
28th of November, 1 Year Anniversary of the Day Jimmy and I First Met
We slept late this morning and woke up to a fridge full of Thanksgiving day leftovers, but decided to have toast and yogurt for breakfast. Jimmy’s first words this morning reminded me that it is another special day. Today is the one year anniversary of the day we met. What a year it has been.
It is hard to hold on to the holidays here. It isn’t the warmth, because I’ve lived in Southern California all of my adult life and have seen 85 degree Christmas days before. It might be the days being so long or the lack of close people to gather with or the missing foods or something else, maybe all of the these. I notice that holidays are always strange when you don’t have a real home to live in. Taking out your own ornaments and cooking the things you know and love are the tactile and olfactory triggers that let you know the holidays are here. This new experience will give us new ways of looking at this season and no matter where we are in the years to come we’ll always have this memory of our first holiday season together here in South America in a rented apartment on the other side of the world.
To celebrate our anniversary we went to the movies. An afternoon movie with my best friend would have been gift enough but some time in the weeks before our anniversary Jimmy snuck off and had a special gift customized for me in a local store. How he managed that in his steadily improving but still somewhat spotty Spanish is a funny story and a testament to his ingenuity and his determination. He gave me my gift while I soaked in the tiny bathtub here in our temporary apartment. I remember the first time I saw the bathtub and thought it looked like something built for a child. Somehow in the months since I’ve gotten so used to it I hardly notice it’s small any more. What a luxury a normal sized tub will be. A soak in a tub full of hot water is a joy and a comfort that costs almost nothing and leaves me feeling grounded. Somehow it brings me back to myself.
Outside of the bathtub Jimmy and I have had some serious conversations lately and we had some today as well. The world is changing and our plans are changing with it. We are working everyday and doing work that is meaningful for us. The direction of that work is changing. Time will tell what direction the work and the changes will take us in, but for now it is comforting to have meaningful work that calls to us.
All in all it was a good two days, our first two celebrations here in Baires. During the next couple of months we’ll see Christmas, my son’s birthday, New Year’s Eve and Jimmy’s birthday go by. We will make each of these days special in the private, simple and quiet way that is becoming our habit here.
My first Thanks Giving Day in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanks Giving Day. I went to the grocery store this morning and bought a small turkey (which I hear they didn’t even have here a couple of years ago). I found sweet potatoes, no yams. I made my own bread crumbs for stuffing and found sausage but no oysters. The thing I really missed the most was homemade cranberry sauce (cranberries are a fall fruit and it’s spring time here so there aren’t any). Jimmy most missed pumpkin pie (same issue). Our menu read as follows:
Roast Turkey
Mashed Potatoes
Brussels Sprouts
Sausage Stuffing
Biscuits
Giblet Gravy
Argentine White Wine
Candied Sweet Potatoes
We spoke of our thankfulness,
I am thankful for
A mom who taught me how to cook
A boyfriend who appreciates it
Turkeys in Argentina (no fat on it and the size turkeys get on their own without genetic meddling)
A year of growth and fun and rich experiences
A friend to walk the journey with, hand in hand
28th of November, 1 Year Anniversary of the Day Jimmy and I First Met
We slept late this morning and woke up to a fridge full of Thanksgiving day leftovers, but decided to have toast and yogurt for breakfast. Jimmy’s first words this morning reminded me that it is another special day. Today is the one year anniversary of the day we met. What a year it has been.
It is hard to hold on to the holidays here. It isn’t the warmth, because I’ve lived in Southern California all of my adult life and have seen 85 degree Christmas days before. It might be the days being so long or the lack of close people to gather with or the missing foods or something else, maybe all of the these. I notice that holidays are always strange when you don’t have a real home to live in. Taking out your own ornaments and cooking the things you know and love are the tactile and olfactory triggers that let you know the holidays are here. This new experience will give us new ways of looking at this season and no matter where we are in the years to come we’ll always have this memory of our first holiday season together here in South America in a rented apartment on the other side of the world.
To celebrate our anniversary we went to the movies. An afternoon movie with my best friend would have been gift enough but some time in the weeks before our anniversary Jimmy snuck off and had a special gift customized for me in a local store. How he managed that in his steadily improving but still somewhat spotty Spanish is a funny story and a testament to his ingenuity and his determination. He gave me my gift while I soaked in the tiny bathtub here in our temporary apartment. I remember the first time I saw the bathtub and thought it looked like something built for a child. Somehow in the months since I’ve gotten so used to it I hardly notice it’s small any more. What a luxury a normal sized tub will be. A soak in a tub full of hot water is a joy and a comfort that costs almost nothing and leaves me feeling grounded. Somehow it brings me back to myself.
Outside of the bathtub Jimmy and I have had some serious conversations lately and we had some today as well. The world is changing and our plans are changing with it. We are working everyday and doing work that is meaningful for us. The direction of that work is changing. Time will tell what direction the work and the changes will take us in, but for now it is comforting to have meaningful work that calls to us.
All in all it was a good two days, our first two celebrations here in Baires. During the next couple of months we’ll see Christmas, my son’s birthday, New Year’s Eve and Jimmy’s birthday go by. We will make each of these days special in the private, simple and quiet way that is becoming our habit here.
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