An exciting day! I posted my first Youtube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR1ZOqcOUgc

Please, be kind.  I didn't give the piece a title on the site, but I suppose I'll call it : la Fiebre de la kabaña *Cabin fever*.

On television I saw a Gwen Ifen interview (she is the lady that hosted the vice presidential debate). Her book is about racial politics post-Obama, and she said how her favorite headline after the election was: "Black man given the worst job in the world", by the Onion. Just like all the times before. But, that is exactly what I think makes the election even more special. It's one thing for the country to elect an African american when things are fine, and they are wary of how he might do. But this was a situation where the national challenges ahead are the most grave in 70 years, or even further back. And millions upon millions entrusted the guidance of the nation not with the elder white man and the extensive resume, but to the young black guy. So it basically means the same thing as the Onion article, but seen in a serious light it is something quite remarkable.

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I read this online:

Were I to die, no one would say,

“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full

Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes

Will greet my overdue demise;

The wide response will be, I know,

“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,

And death is real, and dark, and huge.

The shock of it will register

Nowhere but where it will occur.

— JOHN UPDIKE

This poem is taken from John Updike’s forthcoming collection, “Endpoint and Other Poems.”

I wanted to share this because it highlights what my goals for the next 8 months will be: to capitalize on what I've seen before in preparation for what is coming later. I have an academic background in languages strong enough in the exploration of the cultures of the Americas to provide me a sturdy launching point. For four years in school, I recalibrated my trajectory until I was confident that I'd land with the right impact and the least friction. In other words, I made myself into a passable PC volunteer, with the right experience to land the interview. And so before long I found myself in Bolivia. As quickly as that came to a close, my flight path cut short when all of us were sent in an escape pod back to the US (a C30 military plane, I believe).

But I see now that in the 5 months I've been home, I've left out a crucial step: I've only reflected in an emotional sense. Not in the academic one. So happily, I'm aware now that the stack of college textbooks deserve a second glance if I fully wish to understand the people among which I once lived, ate, cooked, laughed. Because I was close enough for their pain to resonate with me, though admittedly I lived still far better than they, even if I was never quite as happy as some were.

That is one of several reasons why this poem by Updike resonated so strongly with me: For life’s a shabby subterfuge, /And death is real, and dark, and huge. /The shock of it will register/ Nowhere but where it will occur.

Being so far away, even now it is easy to tune out and forget what it was that I experienced first-hand. It is quite easy to outrun large-scale suffering when you are guaranteed a seat in coach on the way home and a new passport stamp to show your family. But I was there, and need some help now by the professional minds to help make sense of what I saw.

One of the books I am hoping to read is called: Death Without Weeping, the violence of everyday life in Brazil. Living in Bolivia when one of the 200 people in my town died, spending hours with the families in the cementary above our town, now reading such a book will no doubt resonate more fully. I have faces to apply to the nameless case studies. And I would hate for the one experience to be so rich, yet not return to it in with an analytical point of view and an evaluative mindset, to mine the depths like they still do at Potosi in Bolivia. Just today I read about the mines of Potosi--single most lucrative place in the world for it--and how several centuries of the Spanish kingdom's reliance on coinage from there allowed their economy to stagnate in terms of its resilience and development. Reading the same book in school--The Ascent of Money by the Glaswegian author Niall Ferguson, I would have thought about that place for a second and moved on. But reading it now, I can remember our forthcoming plans to visit that city, ruined by our diplomatic Troubles (we were not allowed to hop around to other cities until after living in our sites for 3 months). Reading the passage aloud to my mother, I said:

-In Icla, Chris' site, the nearby river was one of the most polluted in the world.  And it's because we're 5 to 8 thousand feet directly below it down the mountain from the mines at Potosi.  And for five hundred years, they've had the runoff going straight to us. 

The same book said they'd mix the ore with mercury, then burn the mercury off to purify the silver. And mercury would destroy each person. The same author quoted an old letter, written several hundred years ago how 'each peso was created at the cost of 10 lives of the miners' .

Having been, I see now that there are so many gaps still, questions I never would have thought to ask when I was sitting in a desk and receiving this passively. While I learned how to say, 'I'm going to go walk, we will eat later at your house' in Quechua, I still lack a basis for which to understand the significance of the people behind the periodic troubles, why our roads were blockaded and what each side hoped to accomplish.

Other books I hope to revisit from school are the books of poetry, short stories in Spanish and essays.  Plus, I have John Updike on my list to read now, as well.