reggae emergency: a truth-to-power story

with the urgency of 6:12pm on the Sunday before Christmas, i watched my phone ring.

i knew it was coming.

the voice on the line was frantic, if not playful.

“it’s a reggae emergency!” Marianne said, in a hurry.

i was still an hour’s drive up the mountain. Richie Spice and Israel Vibration were headlining in like twenty minutes.

desperate times called for desperate measures – i’m talking turquoise-fringed-belly-shirt-and-yellow-feather-earrings kinda desperate.

now you feel me.

my appropo hair grunge cut at least 30 minutes off my exit strategy; no time for showers or other routine pleasantries. i did what i had to, the necessary hygiene sacrifices. you would have done the same in my position. we all would have. this was more than just a read-through.

tight black leggings hugging my every curve: check.

cherry chapstick in my pocket: double check.

i was on the road in 9 minutes flat.

*******

a cacao-maca-spirulina energy-blast smoothie shared among the three of us, we picked up our fourth partner in reggae crime. navigating our way through the infamous ‘hood of San Jose’s Desamparados district, we were tough-looking white chicks with ‘don’t fuck with me’ written on our foreheads. 

so what if we walked a little faster than usual past the cat-calls from the six shirtless overweight-dudes’ porch party, the pointy end of my car key clutched threateningly between fingers of fist clenched firmly?shit man, you would have done the same in my position. we all would have. it’s life or death out there. 

we walked past the street meat smoking on the makeshift grill, nearly tripping on empty beer cans and dodging cigarette butts on the shoddy asphalt. it stunk like skunk, in a good way. yeah, you get it.

we had finally made it, our reggae heaven just moments away. so close we could taste it, the sweet sounds of ghetto girl ready to be danced and romanced by four babes from the well-paved side of the block. as our pearly gates neared into view, their mustached keepers watched us stroll to the scene. it was 8:02.

but there would be no magic red carpet to irie-land. in fact, the gates of our dreams weren't even partway open. 

not even a little. 

not even at all. 

reality: check.

“um, can you let us in please?” Christine asked the shorter-squattier of the two security guards, their collared uniforms distinguishing officialdom on the other side of the iron bars. he was everywhere we wanted to be.   

“i’m afraid not,” he said, turning his head toward the twelve uniformed police offers and three cop cars behind him. “doors closed at 8. we can’t let anyone else in. should have gotten here earlier.”

it wasn’t our first time. we knew better than to show up early to an all-day reggae-fest just to wait around for hours until the bands actually decide to show up and play something, especially when the event website listed midnight as the ending time.

one by one and two by three, a crowd of twenty or so had formed along the gates around us, the neighborhood crazy making scary dragon noises as he came to check us out, too. his liquored stench was sure to follow.

the story we got was that the organizers didn’t get the permits from the municipality to stay past 8, so they would have to shut down the show. Richie Spice and Israel Vibration hadn’t even played yet. 

people came out, but nobody went in. 

the music, hidden from view yet audible in the distance, played on.

“so if they’re still playing, why can’t you just let us in until they shut it down?” someone asked, the logic of reason strongly on our side. “we’ll leave when everyone else does.” 

Security guard A shrugged his shoulders, hands tied. now and then he used his belly weight to keep a few brave souls from entering through the opening created temporarily as tired reggae-goers trickled out.

a long-haired kid with braces and glasses was one of the last to join us, holding his ticket in hand as he approached the gate. same story, doors closed, nobody gets in.

“shhhhhhhhhh,” he sighed loudly between his teeth, Costa Rican for “what the fuck, man?” he paced back and forth along the gate, passive-aggressive in his angst. “i bought this ticket a month ago, bro. i just got off work and had to take the bus two hours to get here. there are only 20 of us out here, man, can’t you just let us in?”

Security guard B, the lankier one, pointed to the cops again, averting his eyes. “i would if i could, my friend.” we didn't blame him. he did what he had to. you would have done the same in his position. we all would have. his job was on the line; his family, his life. because that’s how that story works.

silent in socio-cultural observation, i bore witness to the scene unfolding around me, contemplating expressions of power, resistance and consent, imagining scenarios where a different sort of solution might have prevailed, wishing i’d get to share a different story. token gringa in the ghetto jungle not about to make a peep. 

not then and there, anyway.

blame was passed around between the police for raining on the parade, the municipality officials for not making an exception just this once for justice-and-fairness' sake, the event organizers for poor planning and no reimbursement policy.

empty threats were made, iron bars gripped tight by desperate hands clenched in shaking fists, angry at the immovable injustice of hollow rules left unquestioned, followed blindly to spite reason, making a fool of solidarity in the simple-pleasure pursuit of melodic mayhem in the moonlight, pitting brother against sister in nonsensical relationships of power-over.

no easy pill to swallow when you’re out thirty bucks and you can hear Israel Vibration starting their set less than half a kilometer away.

“justice! justice! justice! justice!” our chants of protest grew louder, encouraging in unison, before dying down again, all out of strategies. 

in some ways it felt silly, getting all up-in-arms about not getting into a reggae show. but it also felt important, that whole truth-to-power thing, you know.

a big black man in a Jamaica jersey spat at a little white man in a uniform. that was as heavy as it got.

eventually, a young police man, maybe seventeen from the looks of him, neared the gate.

“they’re shutting down the concert now. no one else is getting in,” he said, robotic in repetition.

“but they’re still playing!” someone yelled. "they haven't shut it down yet! let us in! give us our ten minutes of joy!"

“i’m not the one who made the decision,” he responded, displacing his guilt, his grimey inaction. for a reason i understood later, an image of child soldiers came to mind.

“i’m just following orders,” he said.

those guys in Nuremberg followed a lot of orders, too, i remembered thinking.

he was the only cop willing to speak to us that night. the rest stayed back, about 100 meters from the gate, safe from our banter and leaving the dirty work to the security guards as they chit-chatted and paced around, trying to look, or even feel, necessary.

they weren’t though, really, because once the arrangement of power is internalized by the powerless through an unwritten agreement of consent to order, acquiescence to an unjust justice, they will obey in exercising that power against one another, no heavy force required. the existing power-story was strong. our presence, our resistance, our consent to their story was all the power they needed.   

Tanya, brave in warrior wisdom, approached the security guard once more before we left, opening space for possibility.

“what would you do if i was your daughter?” she asked.

he looked at her straight, listening.

“how would you feel if your daughter had saved up to buy this concert ticket, excited as anything to see her favorite reggae star, only to get locked out for showing up two minutes past 8 on account of a meaningless technicality no one even cares about?”   

he shook his head, taking a few steps back, still looking at her through the slits of space between the iron bars. we watched from afar, ready to feel his heart in our heart.

“that’s a good question,” he said finally, hands in his pockets, gaze at the ground. in his expression, i watched the story slip-up, ever so slightly.

it was 9:07. time for us to get going now.  

“they’ve got some good reggae at that porch-party…” i joked, locking the car doors behind us from the inside. we laughed a little bit. and kept the windows up.   

not-so-ghetto girls, after all.

not by the looks of us, anyway.

******

“does that dude stand there all day?” i asked a friend as we drove past the new police stand towering high over the center of town, fresh blue paint just in time for the tourist high season.

he must be dripping sweat, i thought; long pants, long sleeves, long summer days of double revolver holsters at his hips, ready and willing to keep us safe.    

Santa brought 300 cops to our surf-party town of Jaco this holiday season. stopping traffic, searching cars, giving tickets, taking bribes. their presence, our present, felt heavy to hold.  

shiny pick-up trucks and death-defying equipment their new gifts from China and Canada, the majority of their police training is now homegrown, Costa Rican citizens and business owners footing the bill for the new National Police Academy. with security force higher-ups now freshly educated at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in Fort Bennings, Georgia (formerly called the School of the Americas, an institution best known for training Latin America’s military leaders responsible for countless citizen massacres, hundreds of thousands of instances of extra-judicial killings, disappearances, torture and cover-ups throughout the 1970’s, 80’s, 90’s and today), Costa Rican cops come equipped with a hand-me-down specialization in counterinsurgency, the fancy word for crushing internal resistance with force and suppressing civilian threats to the national and hemispheric security apparatus, by any means necessary.

following orders never felt better.  

no army since 1948. 

feels safe, don’t it?

just don’t forget your neon jacket in the jungle.   

pura vida police-state now in open season.

******

meanwhile, in mid-November, in our sleepy rural town of San Pablo de Turrubares, population 800, we learn that our friend Sara Sandi Gonzales - celebrating her 50th birthday last May, loving mother of Karla and Josue and grandmother of Jason, a woman with a laugh to light up an entire village - was found dead in the river, a slit at her throat, a bullet hole through her head.

her abusive ex-boyfriend she had done well to finally leave, however beaten and bruised he had left her, had left town just after the deed – a dead man walking, if her family had anything to say about it.

not a doubt in anyone’s mind, the police couldn’t find enough evidence to make his guilt stick, not even when they caught up to him at his cousin’s house, halfway to nowhere from here.

no guilt. no justice. not even a little bit. not even at all.

blood on his hands, unresolved grief in our hearts. his soul, safe for now, sleeps easy; faultless feet walk free.

******

in (un)related news...

on Christmas day, they found the note next to his bleeding head, dead. he would leave nothing to his wife, everything to his two children. after all, it was all her fault, he said.

the chief of police left an already-shaken town with 800 questions he’d never hear, 800 answers they’d go on living without. 

their beacon of hope for justice, order and security decided he’d rather be dead instead.

******

so that’s our story. law. justice. security. power. 

right and wrong just a matter of following orders, doing what we’re told.

and so it goes, they say. 

whether we like it 

or not.

we watch it unravel, this story of ours. the pages worn, the edges threadbare. reading it now, we’re thinking it might be time for a new plot twist, perhaps a fresh ending this read-through.

our story, we ask, 

do we like it?

or not?

will we re-write it?

or not?

right it?

or walk away?

the power is ours.

hey, hey, what do you say?

white girl problems: the end

so i still had a boatful of problems.

but at least i had wind in my sails.

…and now, the wisdom of chaos and three-year-old heart-logic to set me free.

*****

at sushi two weeks ago, i interrupted casual conversation to confess my secret to my parents.

“so i’m having second thoughts about this whole PhD thing.”

i watched my mom swallow that one, quick to offer guidance. “but you’ve worked so hard on it already,” she said. “i think you should do it.”

annoyed, i realized i wasn’t seeking her advice. but she’s a mom and moms can’t help doing mom sorta things, so i forgave her. and went on to list all the reasons justifying my cold feet, not lowest on the list the realization that i was beginning to think it was a waste of time and that my energy could be better contributed elsewhere.

a week later, awash in mixed feelings, my committee approved my dissertation proposal and i passed my comprehensive exam, the long-awaited green light somewhere near a third of the way through the endless doctoral tunnel.

‘congratulations!’ they said. and ‘aren’t you excited? all your hard work paying off.’

i sort-of smiled, thanking them for their support. 

numb in obligation, i felt resigned to duty; disimpassioned as every achievement inched me closer to a seeming point-of-no-return. the lizard-pirate walking the plank, open-mouthed crocodiles awaiting my every purpose-driven move, ready to eat me alive.

because what if your chosen purpose doesn’t really seem to have a purpose anymore?

what if a dream-come-true feels more like dread instead?

*****

head and heart suffered irreconcilable differences; divorce no easy solution.

whimsical heart said sweetly: ‘i want’ … ‘i love’ … ‘i live for…’, pulling me gently, begging me to pay attention.

but rational head kept winning with its gutturally ingrained mantras: ‘i should’ … ‘i’m supposed to’ … ‘it makes more sense if i…’

chest felt tight as i inhaled, siding with logic over love, sidelined again.

******

“1…. 2…. ffreee….  4!” proudly, my not-so-baby-anymore counted the sides of a pentagon-shaped block. i observed the scene in wintry Connecticut from my screen in summery Costa Rica.  

“and what about this one?” patiently, his mom pointed to the fifth side he had overlooked. at this point in the conversation, he was wearing no pants.

“one!” he said, pitter-pattering little legs in excitement.

“okay, so four plus one, how many is that?” lovingly, my sister awaited her son’s calculated response.

pausing for just a moment, he threw his arms in the air, exuberant in mathematical solution:

“twentyyyy!”  he yelled, all the confidence in the world a shrieking trill of delight. that feeling you get in algebra class when x = 2 and y = 3, and you can’t help but gloat in the satisfaction of tidy completion; the joy in knowing you’re right.

we all laughed as i watched his cute little buns shimmy into the kitchen, a thousand miles away.

how wonderful, i thought, to live in a world where 4-plus-1 can equal 20. to be three and naked in your living room, before they’ve had a chance to tell you that 4 + 1 = 5, always and forever no matter what day of the week. when your world is so full of possibility that the solutions are infinite. where today 4 + 1 equals 20, and tomorrow 4 + 1 might equal ‘banana’ or ‘helicopter’ or any other piece of magic you can conjure in the depths of your enthusiastically untainted soul. where you are the creator of your own particular universe of endless possibility. when you know you’re right, just because you’re you.

he came back into view belly first, the collar of his shirt inside out and stuck just above his forehead.

“look at you!” i said. “you look like a nun! Gavin, the naked nun man!”

“waaaaaahhaahhaaa!” he giggled loudly as he pulled his shirt all the way off now, tossing it to the side. free as the day he was born.  

with a little help from mom, he squirmed his naked mini-body into pastel purple butterfly wings. he flew around the room like it was his first instant emerging from the cocoon. he climbed on the coffee table fluttering his wings, bouncing onto the couch and soaring down low to kiss his little sister crawling on the floor.

i admired his unique flight pattern, entirely unpredictable. intricately his, and his alone.

now that is a human being who knows who he is and what he wants, i thought. so overwhelmingly comfortable in his own bare skin, he flies with the wind in his wings. no second thoughts. he was the most authentic creature i’d ever seen.

the magician mathematician naked-nun butterfly man.

god was i jealous.

*****

in attempt to address my existential angst of late, i had been surfing, and writing, and taking care to surround myself with only those whose presence brought me joy and offered support in this tedious time of transition. as a practice i had grown familiar with over the years, i tuned in to listen to my body, and to my higher self, and to my heart intelligence as my trusty inner compass. i listened hard.

their impossible silence was slow in insult, deep in injury. plastic picnic cutlery making a meal out of my flesh, desperately worn in indecision.   

the stuck, idle stillness grew unbearable. there was so much to do. deadlines loomed with a sense of urgency, begging me to pay attention. i couldn’t be less motivated to do what i was supposed to.

hours turned into days into weeks in my office. i was bored as hell, and my back was hurting from all the sitting. all the to-do list not-doing .

still, the plight of the chameleon weighed heavy on my mind, my soul.

******

post-exam, i went on surfari to celebrate, and re-evaluate. i sought guidance from the experts. in Charles Eisenstein’s new book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, he writes of non-doing as the only antidote to overcoming the uselessly constant sense of urgency propelling ineffective, often counterproductive action, particularly when we haven’t found clarity on what the cause of the problem is or what to do about it:

‘there is a time to act, and a time to wait, to listen, to observe. then understanding and clarity can grow. from understanding, action arises that is purposeful, firm, and powerful.’

i had arrived at that place of not knowing what to do. and i had somehow gotten so good at denying my own sense of self, albeit in true chameleon fashion, by adapting with such ease to my surroundings that i could no longer trust habit or judgment to make the right decisions for me. so i sought to embrace the inherent intelligence of the “rhythm of the phases of action and stillness” in order to re-discover the gift of my own volition i had buried at the corner of ‘should’ and ‘supposed to’. my prescription was more non-doing, but this time with a purpose other than avoiding my oppressive to-do list. in essence, i was attempting the impossible: betting on heart, the underdog, to prevail over head in the battle for uncontested reign over the kingdom of my own, innately impassioned free will.  

as i got deeper into the mind-fuck of it all, i realized there was a lot of social conditioning there that made so many of these internal tensions more complex than i had ever imagined. but i’d have to sort through them if i was going to get down to the bareness of my naked chameleon skin, the fancy-free deep in me.

my tasks were two-fold: 1) reversing social conditioning into linear rationality, and 2) overcoming my own personal story of scarcity, both at the core of my discontent.

so first, i had to somehow divest my thought patterns of the stifling conditioning of linear rational logic that informed my every decision, with its message that there are only certain appropriate solutions to our specific challenges, and that any aberration is simply incorrect and therefore impossible.

4 + 1 = 5 (correct).

4 +1 = banana (incorrect).

i recognized that this conditioning into linearity was at the heart of my predicament, because in my attempts to cast-off the shackles of my ‘shoulds’ in exchange for the freedom of my inner guiding wisdom, i would have to also abandon the socially ingrained sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ those shoulds represented and protected as a form of social contract.

--i should finish my PhD because it is the natural progression of my linear personal path to individual self-actualization, and thus my greatest potential contribution to society (correct).

--i should do something totally radical that has nothing to do with linear logic or academia but embraces my unique gifts because it makes my heart sing with joy and my soul shake with the passion of a thousand desperate lovers conjoining in wild, orgasmic embrace (incorrect, and a little pervy).

with the shoulds on the table in direct confrontation with the social dictates of rational linearity, listening to my heart meant disavowing one of the biggies in life’s cardinal rules of engagement, of existence as we know it. 

it felt lonely out there.  

******

nauseous and small-feeling, the lizard-pirate bobbled in his sailboat, deep at sea; alone, thunderous skies raging.

at last, he sought solace in a strange companion. 

chaos. 

his spot of sunshine on the otherwise grim horizon.

******

chaos theory, to be more specific, offered a way out of the storm of unilinearity, a colorful space between right and wrong where a plethora of unpredictable realities existed in limitless, beautiful multiplicity. the infinite complexity of it all imbued the sky of nonlinearity with a magical, rainbow-like quality where disorder and turbulence and incongruity were meaningful and vital to the creation of a new order, making possible the most important advances otherwise ignored or feared for their inconsistency with the normalcy of linear-rational logic. chaos made it okay to be in an ever-changing process of becoming, exposing the fantasy of deterministic predictability and celebrating the messiness of creativity as both completely normal and unfathomably beautiful, so much so that you could hardly wish for anything better. 

in fact, as a science, chaos theory flips our understanding of normal completely on its head by proving chaos as both stable and certain, whereby solvable, orderly, linear systems are then the aberrations from the norm. James Gleick, author of Chaos: The Amazing Science of the Unpredictable, explains how periods of predictability considered ‘normal’ through the lens of linearity give way to chaos not as random occurrence but rather as consistently unpredictable fluctuations that never settle down, with only windows of seeming stability we misinterpret as enduring, however fleeting in their predictable return to chaos.

embracing the nonlinearity of nature in his soul, the lizard-pirate nearly flipped off the starboard side, crying tears of joy as he looked toward the ever-expanding light before him: the infinite rainbow of exquisite possibility.

it was a powerful realization, the inner knowing that chaos is both normal and intrinsically life-giving. that the longer we try to abide by the shoulds of our social conditioning into linearity, the longer we deny the beauty in diversity that exists uniquely within us all – the chaos in our souls that when we allow ourselves to pay attention, gives birth to unfathomably beautiful creations – that the longer we resist that inner knowing, the longer we suffer in the angst of our otherwise beautifully unpredictable existence. it’s not the chaos we should hide from. it’s the resistance to that chaos, the resistance to allowing that chaos to thrive, that brings anguish, tumult in our souls. our awareness and welcoming of that chaos sets us free.

so thanks to the chaos in non-doing, instead of heart-fighting-head in a battle for the acknowledgement of self, situated on the seas of life, the whole thing shifted into something much more accessible. it stopped being a war against linear logic and became a proactive practice of letting, of allowing heart desires to be heard and acknowledged rather than bopping them on the head without so much as a peep. when linearity itself no longer reigned supreme and unquestioned, i found peace in the chaos of sitting in my own skin, opening to the wild beauty within.

and in a way, we might also consider the lizard-pirate of chaos as the embodiment of what Gleick calls “a nomad by choice, a pioneer by necessity”. he chooses to live a life considered ‘other’, yet in his nomad wanderings he, as a necessary part of charting his own ‘abnormal’ path, is forced to blaze new trails, opening all of our eyes to previously unconsidered possibilities once rejected as outside the rational norms of linear existence. bless such nomad chameleons, for without them, there would be no radical change, no beautiful diversity. and we'd all have to live forever in a depressing world where 4 + 1 will always equal 5 and not 20, and where it most certainly will never equal banana.

and how terribly boring a reality is that?

******

so now after single-handedly undermining my conditioning into linearity, i was on to superhero task number two: overcoming my own story of scarcity—the inner voice of urgency and self-judgment that says ‘i’m not enough, i don’t do enough, i’m not good enough.’

again, non-doing was my only hope for resolution.

so i decided to take advantage of my post-exam vacay, confronting my scarcity conditioning and compulsion to act out of urgency head-on. i lazed at the beach and laughed with friends and was entirely unproductive for a week. i surfed for hours and drank wine and ate bleeding-rare steak for dinner and salty-sweet dark chocolate for dessert. i glowed in the good fun of good life gluttony we’re taught to disavow in exchange for humility, austerity, dedication to duty in the service of others who can’t afford to live as frivolously as we. that’s the scarcity mindset i had internalized in my attempts to live a meaningful life, based on a subconscious belief that if not everyone could live a privileged life, no one should – especially me if i wanted to be the change i wished to see. in a week of play, i felt that mindset beginning to unravel, not least, i’m sure, because it made absolutely no sense: withholding my own simple pleasures in the misguided hope that it could somehow contribute to the joy and vital wellbeing of others? pretty fucking stupid when you think about it.

still, i felt guilty admitting i felt better after my week of non-doing in the pursuit of joy for the sake of clarity and direction. i felt embarrassed admitting i felt more like me than i’d felt in a while. my chest had begun loosening into lightness again. i felt creative and inspired by new projects i wanted to put energy into. i felt scared, in a good way. i felt strong enough to abandon old ‘shoulds’ and patterns of logic that no longer imbued my life with joy and meaning. my heart felt happy that i was listening again.

i watched my chameleon colors blend beautifully into sunkissed surroundings as i surfed into sunset, smiling at the serendipity in my circumstance, changed only by a change in vantage point, ever so subtle; reality itself transformed by a shift in perspective alone – the subjectivity in relativity. 

i didn’t have to decide yet whether i’d abandon my sense of duty to purpose-driven obligation in exchange for following the dreams my heart felt free to imagine. it wasn’t quite time for all that just yet. it was still time for non-doing and just be-ing. yet i found solace in imagining the possibilities of the what-if’s.

*****

i thought about the chameleon again. and this time it brought me peace. the kind of peace you find in realizing that you’re still you no matter which of your colors are on display - today, tomorrow or yesterday. being a chameleon needn’t be a denial of self, but a soul-felt integration of feeling, knowing, being, and discovering that embraces the union between self and society, both in an ever-changing process of becoming: chaotic flow. 

acknowledging his situated reality, the chameleon chooses from his vast repertoire of own-skin colors to ever-so-subtly blend into the environment around him; he is at home in comfortable surroundings, on the road in the freshness of unfamiliarity, or in the turbulent transitions of the in-betweens, because at the end of the day, he knows his colors are still his and his alone.

your colors change and adapt to your surroundings in a seemingly unconscious display of ego-lessness, yet they are always a reflection of you, however brilliant in possibility you happen to be in any magical instant in the infinite universe of you in the here and the now.

because maybe, when the chameleon is all by himself, he’s not so worried about what color he should be. maybe he’s embracing the non-doing, sitting comfortably in the bare-skinned stillness of transition, patiently waiting in his lizard-size pirate ship for that perfect moment to catch the wind in his sails and flutter his brand new butterfly wings in a world where 4 + 1 = banana, awash in the magnificent glory of the uniquely chaotic, vibrantly diverse colors he feels proud to call his own - here and there, today and always.      

…in other words: 

surfer-writer-academic nomad-nerd Costa Rica-gringameleon.

(that is correct).

...at least for today, anyway.  

white girl problems: part 2

yes, that's a lizard dressed up as a pirate. 

don't worry, we'll get there. 

****

so now i was making pros and cons lists of my dueling dual identities, appealing to my logical mind as an attempt to bring deeper clarity to my deeply troubling predicament.

it went a little something like this:

Gringameleon

Pros (+)	Cons (-)
-intellectually stimulated	-materialistic / consumer self emphasized
-relatable sense of humor = lots of laughing	-judgmental of self and others
-makes time to nurture relationships	-unhealthy lifestyle habits
-productive and efficient	-disconnected from spiritual self and natural environment
-able to cultivate sense of community among like-minded people with shared interests	-creativity stifled by social confines = resigned to complacency

Costa Ricameleon

Pros (+)	Cons (-)
-strong connection to nature	-actions often based on feelings of obligation rather than personal needs/desires
-sense of freedom and endless possibility	-disconnected from sense of community as ‘outsider’
-healthy, active lifestyle	-transient, constantly on the move = lacking stability
-strong spiritual practice and simple living aligned with personal values	-often feel insecure, anti-social and introverted
-creative toward soul purpose and meaningful life	-tendency to deny authentic self to fit-in

okay, so that was fun, but now what? 

yes, it was an eye-opening practice to identify the light and dark parts of me as lived in each reality; yet, still uncertain where the influence of my environment ended and my true-self colors began, the limits of my logic brought little resolution to my chameleon conundrum.

most of all, because i had done well to unconsciously cultivate such distinct versions of self so as to be mutually exclusive in their overwhelming difference. i couldn’t just mesh all the pros together, ditch the cons and call it a day. nope. my selves were so separate from one another that any attempt at reconciliation would be like chopping up a T-Rex and a baby polar bear, smushing their pieces together upside down and saying ‘voila’ without even a whisper of an abracadabra.

i mean let’s be real.

Costa Rica self spoke Spanish with an indistinguishable accent, danced to the moon, sweat to the earth, prided herself on freedom and flit, lived to be barefoot in the jungle, refused plastic bags and paper products, and dated beardy men with long hair and aversions to cities, socks and capitalist pursuit. 

gringa self could be found shopping and debating politics, dining on fancy Peruvian or greasy Mexican while refusing to speak Spanish to anyone – not because she didn’t want to, but because she somehow couldn’t phrase a coherent sentence in a language out of context--, drinking beers and laughing at fart jokes, and even wearing high heels on occasion to attract the attention of clean-cut surfer babes with collared shirts and clever pick-up lines.

…still think i’m joking about the T-Rex / baby polar bear thing?    

on Friday evening, i went to crazy-awesome Enrico’s free yoga class at Aurora. before our three OMs, he talked about the difference between unity and unison. he explained unity as the coming together of two separate parts, pressing his palms against one another as if in prayer, hands touching but each still distinct from the other. he then described unison as something beyond unity, interlacing his fingers now to symbolize integration, the intermingling of the parts in such a way that divisions are blurred and oneness is experienced as an expression of harmony and wholeness.

his words and hands spoke volumes to my slithering distress, omnipresent down my spine.

unison of parts through integration, wholeness; harmony in the oneness of divisionlessness.

well, if nothing else, at least now i had a goal. if only i could blend my colors in such a way that their divisions ceased to exist, i might begin to discover the authenticity of my own-colored skin. 

now i knew where i wanted to go, but how was i going to get there? i was a mid-grade pirate on a makeshift sailboat teetering at high seas; my destination distant, treasure map out of reach.

...but "ahoy there matey! can't ye feel me wind in me sails? arrrrrr..."

christ, now i'm a T-Rex baby polar bear lizard who thinks he's a fucking pirate. 

how's that for an identity crisis? 

white girl problems: part 1

the transition back to life in Costa Rica hasn’t felt as smooth this time around. not least because i left my heart in San Diego. 

but also because i left a lot of other parts of me there, too. it turns out i’m discovering this whole slew of identity crises coming at me all at once in this interim phase between being there and being here. the no-man’s-land of transitioning from one reality into another where you don’t feel grounded in either because you don’t quite know who to be or how to be in one or the other. unsettled. incomplete. 

yep, white girl problems. this time, of the lizard-like variety.

see what i mean? it doesn’t make any sense.

i got back on a Monday after nearly four months away, working as a writer, living as a lover, and settling into SoCal sunshine. without my noticing, it had grown comfortable, being there. my heart barely reacted to the once anxiety-ridden commutes down the 5 in morning traffic; now i’d be eating my breakfast banana, curling my eyelashes and talking on the flip-phone on speaker in my cleavage, switching lanes like no big deal. i’d stopped missing bugs. i’d remember to bring a sweater to work and take sunny phone-call breaks instead of freezing my skin off in the office’s centrally controlled air conditioning 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. i’d suit up in 4 millimeters of neoprene and paddle out into 2-foot slop with a smile on my face instead of grimacing at the frigid, swell-less thought and going back to sleep. i’d stopped writing poems about the sensationalized fear-driven news programming i had no choice but to watch from the treadmill; now i’d just try to keep up with the closed captioning as my eyes bounced in rhythm with my worn-out sneakers, forgetting to judge all the things i hated about living in the USA. i’d gained 5 pounds of consumer culture on my hips and thighs. and i didn’t really care. i was my gringa self in all of her glory. and i kinda liked her. other people seemed to like her, too.  

“he’s like a chameleon.” years ago, i overheard a friend criticize someone he knew for a unique character flaw. “it’s like he changes his personal identity depending on the company he’s with or the scenario he’s in.” hmmm, i thought. that sounded familiar. but i didn’t think it was such a bad thing. i actually thought it was admirable, perhaps the embodiment of an evolved, ego-less being, who makes himself at home in any given situation by adapting to the circumstances. an acceptance of the subjective interrelationship between self and society. that image of the chameleon has stayed with me as i go about my wanderings, adjusting to my realities as my environment dictates. so far, it’s been easy-breezy and excitingly unpredictable. my colors often felt beautiful.     

the guitar orchestra of the University of Costa Rica serenaded us in the crowded aisle of the Jet Blue sky just before landing in San Jose. my mom waited for me longer than usual outside the airport as i fumbled to fabricate a return-ticket i hadn’t booked to satisfy Costa Rica’s now apparently well-enforced entry requirements. my foreign-feeling Spanish was unconvincing; luckily, my phony travel documents and grumpy gringa demeanor passed the test. mom and i drove home like chatty girlfriends, no beats skipped. i hugged my dad and kissed our AmaTierra family hello, catching up on life and death. i unpacked and re-packed and gave myself a pedicure and wrote in my diary and crawled into bed. i couldn’t wait to sleep. i was happy to be home. other people seemed happy, too.

but rainy season smelled uncomfortably damp on my pillow. and i didn’t quite accept the tiny spiders and their flimsy webs behind my bed frame. the cicadas wouldn’t shut the fuck up. i sort of missed the borrowed air mattress on the floor in someone else’s spare bedroom. and i really missed the man who slept on it with me.

on a Tuesday, i slipped back into life as it was as if i’d never left. making up for lost time and fulfilling work obligations i’d been sidelining by taking the job in San Diego. now i had to show i was committed to being a part of the UPEACE campus community, finding myself nearly on board with embracing my fate as full-time doctoral student, making myself worthy of the extravagant $700 a month stipend they were paying me to stay on top of deadlines and exist within reach. i read and wrote and met with smart, experienced academics who gave me tips and told me my project was too ambitious and used big words like epistemology, which from now on i will commit to memory and try to use in a sentence like ‘duh, of course i know what epistemology means, and omg aren’t you an idiot because you don’t.’ i was working on becoming my intellectual smarty-pants student self again.

on the weekend, i flailed around in head-high waves i hadn’t seen in months, wobbly on a board i had left behind, hoping my shiny new locally-shaped custom thruster would be awaiting my return. it wasn’t. i dutifully showed up late, post-surf, to the Pura Vida No-Pro, an annual volunteer beach day event for orphan kids, trying to make myself useful and force small talk among the sea of like-minded acquaintances brimming with charity, the three-to-one volunteer-to-orphan ratio slightly uncomfortable for all of us. my social anxiety felt impossible to bear, so instead of getting day-drunk and shining it on for another few hours, i slipped out and took off. i couldn’t fake another smile.

i went back to work on Monday, sitting at my desk making to-do lists and wasting time on facebook for a week. the roosters’ 5am daily alarm-clock cluck-fest was not cute; sleepless on the other side of the window, i plotted their cock-a-doodle-demise in some form of stew. somehow, i eked out a final draft of my dissertation proposal, pretending i cared which methodology made the most sense for my research project i wasn’t convinced i even wanted to do. skype-ing with my new long-distance non-boyfriend brought temporary relief, followed by bursts of reality that we live in separate countries for the more-than-foreseeable future.

and now it was Thanksgiving, and it was lovely and i played daughter to my parents and girlfriend to my soul-sisters who i love but who i didn’t feel quite at home with just yet.

it wasn’t them.

it was me.

and that was really fucking annoying. why can’t i just jump back in like i’ve always done? change my chameleon skin to adapt to the colors of my new and familiar surroundings? why was i missing a place i had been ready to leave and people i had only just begun to know? why didn’t i feel at home at home? alone time in a cave for a month wouldn’t even be enough to get my shit sorted. because how do you feel whole when parts of you aren’t where they should be? when certain layers aren’t flaking off as fast as you want them to, and new-old skins aren’t regenerating like they used to.

on Friday morning, i went to my new transpersonal psychologist for a free intro session. i whined about my white girl problems for a long half-hour. she put them into perspective in a simple instant: “you can be everything everyone wants you to be. or you can be you. it’s like that saying, ‘everyone loves you, except for you’. her message resonated with my creeping sense of new-found obligation that didn’t sit well with my ‘live your soul purpose by living the life you want’ philosophy. she asked me what i thought i needed to live my ideal life in this moment. i cried when i told her i just needed space to be me. that sounded easy enough.

but that wasn’t the whole problem. i didn’t just need alone time to process and quit my gringa reality in exchange for the person i am in my Costa Rican environment. that felt like a denial of parts of myself i actually liked and came to identify with. but i wasn’t sure if those parts were actually parts of me or just colors i wore to adapt to the cultural circumstances around me. and which of the good parts of my Costa Rica self had i denied in the process of accommodating my USA reality? how much of my gringa self was actually me? how much of my Costa Rica self?

unsure who to be in the space i thought i needed to be me again, alone time started to look like more of the problem than a strategy toward a solution.   

because how does the chameleon know what color to be when he’s all by himself?

…reptilian angst my existential crisis. 

dumped: a free-love story (the end)

1. moments misinterpreted

‘my bed smells like you,’ i texted you a week ago, our blissful weekend together still warm in my memory.

“is that good or bad?” you responded, a little joke to keep it light, always.

my winking smiley face emoticon said it all.

*****

“we’re in this undefined relationship,” you confessed unabashedly to my friend you just met, hopped-up on Red Bull and tipsy from the night. “but she’s leaving soon. it’s sad, isn’t it?” you held my knee for moral support and laughed. i smiled, a little embarrassed at the volume of your voice, but reassured that i wasn’t alone in feeling. my heart was all like ‘awww.’

“i’m really gonna miss you,” you had told me earlier that afternoon between bites of Bull Taco breakfast burrito.

“i know, i’m gonna miss you, too,” i said. we had been spending hours and days and nights together for weeks now, soaking it all up. “we don’t have to think about it yet. we still have some time.” 

we had two weeks. 

we ate our chips and guac in a few long moments of uncharacteristic silence before changing the subject and going to Best Buy.

“i really like you,” you said later that night, transparent eyes centimeters from mine. “what’s gonna happen when you leave?”

i wasn’t expecting that question. we’d done well to be living in our moments, enjoying each other’s presence, not getting attached. i had been taking cues from you, this whole modern-dating-USA thing new to me, foreign feeling. if we were in Costa Rica, we’d be living together with a dog by now. not so in the real world where people take things slow, i learned.   

“let’s just have fun and not try and make this something it’s not,” you had said six weeks ago.

sure, i thought. that’s safe enough for me, too.

i listened as you listed your priorities, your rationale for not getting emotionally involved – family, surfing, friends, work, and then everything else, including dating. you didn’t want to have to text someone every day. i lied and said that was fine with me. i wasn’t looking for anything serious with you either. how could i be? i was leaving soon, anyway; gone before you know it, another friend to stay in touch with on facebook. because that’s what this is, right? friends. anything else would just be too inconvenient.

so apparently it wasn’t the right moment to tell you i was in love with you. and it wasn’t the right moment to tell you that i felt it in the parking lot when you hugged me goodbye after you took me to surf at Blacks. it wasn’t the right moment to tell you that i felt it when you kissed me on the cliffs in the new moon after i allowed myself to be atypically vulnerable to you at the Padres game we weren’t watching, the hours drifting by as you talked about relationships of power and systems of oppression, name-dropping Foucault as my jaw dropped in awe, our parallel universe where time stood still as we sat surrounded by people who don’t get it.

it wasn’t the right moment to tell you that i felt it every time you reached for my hand or kissed me goodbye, walking to your truck after sleeping and not sleeping on borrowed air mattresses in other people’s spare bedrooms. it wasn’t the right time to tell you that i felt you feel it, too. when you took me to the airport and said you’ll be missing me. and kissed me goodbye like you meant it. when you were nervous showing me where you grew up, driving fast up the mountain to impress an adrenaline junkie like me. it wasn’t the right moment to tell you i felt that, too.

“what do you want to happen when i leave?” i asked, handing back the baton, trading heavy for light again.

you said you didn’t know. that you felt conflicted now and that this is what you were trying to prevent when we had our ‘let’s keep it simple’ conversation a few weeks back.

“we can skype…” i offered, knowing we probably wouldn’t. you started snoring on my chest as i stared up at the ceiling, wishing it wouldn’t hurt.

*******

two days later, i cooked you dinner for your birthday. we talked about your priorities again.

“but you’re my friend, and you surf, so…” now you seemed unsure where i fit in your comfortable scheme of things. i was grateful you had given me some time, for all that we shared and how special it felt to know you; honored that you had been texting me every day because you wanted to, not because you felt like you had to.

'you’re a breath of fresh air,' i told you once. you’d say things i’ve thought in my mind forever that i’d never expressed to another living soul. you spoke my language. i sometimes wondered if i created you, a figment of my imagination gifting me with your perfect blue-eyed presence in all its dark, human imperfection. childlike, we told bedtime stories and invented sing-a-longs we’d be embarrassed to share in other company. 

you’d let me in for a second, feeling safe. you’d close up again, insecure. i liked that. i felt like myself in all of my dimensions and wanted to share them with you in exchange for yours. i wanted to explore. it felt warm. and comfortable. and real.

your sense of humor felt like home. your intellect appealed to my sexuality. my heart went along for the ride.

your birthday texts started just after midnight, your ex-girlfriend among the first to wish you well. you didn’t want to talk about her. i didn’t let it go. i told you i valued honesty and openness in relationships and that i just wanted to understand.

“relationship? you’re leaving in ten days.” you turned toward the edge of the air mattress, away from me. i kissed the back of your neck in vain.

i wrapped my leg around you, trying to climb over the wall you built in that insurmountable instant.

“i like your legs,” you said. “they’re my favorite.” i let it go, probably a second after it was already too late.

i wrote you a birthday haiku you hated kindly. you kissed me goodbye and left for work. i wiped away a few tears you’d never see. that was Wednesday morning.

******

it’s Friday now, my morning headache predictable, escape by wine my Halloween poison of choice. i thought it would help me forget you hadn’t called, and probably wouldn’t.

my bed smells like you. unsure whether that was good or bad now, i rolled over, squinting into the uninvited sunlight at the window.

an hour later, i peeled myself off the air mattress, stripped the bed and washed the sheets, my hands, my heart, of you.

******

i never found the right time to tell you.

so i guess you'll never know.

i love you.

…you had me at Foucault. 

******

so this is what free love feels like. maybe in my version of it, anyway. sometimes it feels a lot more like free pain, if you ask me. but at least it's real. and honest. and maybe that's the point of this top 5 list after all. when i started writing it, i wasn't sure it even had a point (vulnerabilities exposed, frozen in time - for what?). but now that we've reached the end, it seems the openness in sharing, the rawness in authenticity, the subjective truth in real-life story, are what resonate most. when you can feel your heart through my heart. my words in the infinite abyss of cyberland finding a home in you and your story.  

the funny part about this last one, though, is that i still cry when i read it. even when i know it isn't true. even when i know he actually didn't dump me. and the four days i didn't hear from him were a mercury-retrograde mix-up of missed texts and moments misinterpreted. even when i know i created that story in my head and it isn't even real, it still makes me cry when i read it. how can it be that i got so attached to the idea and the feeling of being dumped, that even after being un-dumped and really and truly loved instead, that the story i feel is the one that isn't real?

we ascribe meaning to our experiences, to the cycles of connection, vulnerability, love, pain, letting go, healing, learning, re-creating and starting anew. our stories give life to those feelings, the lingering memories fingerprints in our hearts, minds, shaping where we go and who we let in and why. we share our truths and we feel our pain and others recognize it and feel it, too. because that's what this humanness is all about: being, feeling, sharing, healing.

falling in free-love, getting dumped in free-pain. we can feel that, so we know it's real.

right?

or maybe, in the end, they're all just stories in our head.