UPDATE: the invitation is on the way

I worked out with my mother, the 20 minute Joel Olsteen workout. And at the end I told her how this morning I checked my application status on Peace Corps' site, and it said that they have sent an invitation to me. It didn't say exactly where, or when it leaves, but that it will be here within 10 days.

Sitting on the floor, I said how it is less of a big deal now. There are important question marks, but there's none of the dread and fear of the first time, wondering if this is right for me, if I can do it. I told her how I am glad to have had 1 year home (if I leave next September), and how it is longer than if I transferred to Benin, as I had thought while still in Lima, Peru. It seems that the friends of mine that have transferred have felt like outsiders, in the fact that they have no self-identified group, no B-47, or E19. Their training for the country was an ad hoc crash course lasting less than 2 weeks. Many of the staff doesn't know their name, and they got none of the grand ouvertures meant to ease the new volunteers into a country. Not only that, but in Ecuador or Paraguay, they speak a lot of Quechua and Guarani, which none of us learned in depth. Add to that frustration of trying to accomplish something within the remainder of the 12 month agreement, and it's a sad situation made unpleasant and rendered frustrating and unfulfilling.

"It sounds sort of like going to high school and starting halfway through the year" my mother said. "No matter how many friends, you will still never fit completely with the others, or have the same experience."

"Yes, and the teachers don't recognize you, and the subjects you take don't correspond with what you have learned..." I added, 'so that you are way ahead in one thing, and completely behind the others in another class."

The benefits of going to Morocco in this way--as a person reenrolling for the full thing--I see now far surpass these concerns. So, in a way it is a relief. I'd show up at staging, just like before. We'd all fly in the same plane together across the Atlantic to North Africa. There would be diplomatic welcomings by local leaders, by the older groups who have come to town to see the fresh volunteers step off the plane. We'd stay in the same rooms at hotels and get ample opportunity to know each other and quickly reach viability. Thirty or fifty of us would come back for further refinement at the 6 month mark, and then again at 1 year meds. For three months we'd get to have lunch with the staff, and our professors, fully absorbing the Moroccan lifestyle visible in them, and adjusting our expectations. Arabic and French would become the norm, and we'd be close by each other when family and girlfriends come to visit from the States, or from Italy, giving us the opportunity to laugh together and remember when we were as fresh as they, and sharing the first views together of the dunes stretching beyond the horizon for 5,000 kilometers towards the Synai peninsula, and the Atlas stretching miles above us.

The stay might be longer, but it will pay great dividends to get to do it right. I'm proud of those volunteers that immediately jumped back into the fray. It's sad to think that a hard situation was made more demanding, but I feel that each will find their routine. Bolivia wasn't easy, and I can't forget that. I do not know how I would have done to enter a different Latin country straight from that. It would have been maddening if I had gone to somewhere so extreme from where I had been. I don't think a person could do it any way but the standard experience that I will have by going through the whole shebang directly.

It helps knowing the country already in my prior adventure there. Writing these words and thinking of what I had learned from having done PC one time in Bolivia, I will have to review what I said before. Going to Morocco for Peace Corps, no big deal? That's lunacy. While the Peace Corps process may be underwhelming the second time around--it's still very much the government--I'd be making a mistake if I were to underestimate this just because I'd known something similar in a wholly different country.

It's a slow burn. Like I wrote before while in Bolivia: the difference between tourism and Peace Corps is that you stay long enough to discern. To differentiate, to get the nuances. And so the flat whirlwind of travel is transformed into a rich and vibrant tapestry that gives more to you the more that you look at it.

And in that way, I can only expect to be overwhelmed. And that is impossible to underestimate. Of course.... at the same time, it's just Peace Corps. It's not a 150 mile ultramarathon across the toughest parts of the Sahara in Morocco.

The first viral video before we knew what viral was

The first time I saw this was in 04 with Wilson, I think, and I never laughed harder in my life.

OSCAR NIGHT

Slumdog won 8, plus Penelope and Kate, Sean and Heath. what a night!

It'll take some time to process this night.

Sweet dreams (and dream big!)

Debate about StuffWhitePeopleLike.com

I suppose this is how it feels to have all the subtlety and nuance removed from representations about you. That's a lesson that white folks don't get a lot of.

This site and the book from it seem straight forward--explanations into white consciousness via analyses of the latest fetish or trend-- and it's often very accurate.    A lot of the things on it are painful as well.  It's sort of  one part: how would you explain white people to a creature from another planet? and a second part: predictability.  To put it another way, if white people value these five things: status, wealth, independence, popularity, consumption. Then you can punch all that into a calculator and guess everything they will ever do (at least, some of the time).  

There's a risk of taking this site too seriously.  But the thing that is genuinely disturbing and unsatisfying about it is that it takes symptoms (our behavior) and then assigns every negative reason as to why we do things this way.  So you can learn every shameful cause behind our fascination of those things--girls with bangs, being the only white person around, having gay friends-- when what really happens is that many people of all varities might like the same thing but for very different reasons.

It seems to me that it's a matter of nuance.  All of these things can be cool if done with the right frame of mind, during and after.  If a person does something meaningful, then gloats excessively and so irritates everyone, then that is a problem that is not restricted to white people.  It's like taking good circumstances and ruining them by the way you act about them.  That's what I get out of the list... that I can read the list, and think, 'so what?', but I do not relate to the method ascribed to us.  Certainly, I have to continue to grow and mature in order to not be constrained by the eccentricities of a person born in White Suburbs U.S.A.  So the list is helpful in that way. But I'd like to see it saying, 

"white people like .... because some white people are assholes about it" 

but then add 

'but others do it for the right reasons, too.'

So while I qualify for many of these, I know that I don't do them in order to gain cool points. Usually not.  I'd hate if people thought I did so, but what people think is not so important as me doing things for the right reasons, ones that are true to me and that aren't arising from warped conceptions about succeeding in the rat race, mass consumption, or those five things I listed above.  I think there's a worldview that has been attached to what the site says, something sold in the marketing blitz on us since we're very small. It's destructive, but if you can overcome that then you shouldn't feel guilty about liking the things on the site because you're not coming from the same place.  Part of that is simpling enjoying things because things are enjoyable, not because it gives anything back to you.  To enjoy something without feeling the need to capitalize on it somehow:  experience for experience's sake.

Resonance and Identity

"When the wind blows to the south / hear it sing of the flat land that is mine"

Some more philosophizing, my favorite and most essential hobby:

I can't identify as a Latino, nor as an Asian person.  While I have met and eaten with Italians and with Berbers, I can't call myself one.  But I feel more completely a whole person nose because I can identify with those people.  100% of me is not much to brag about.  I am only multi-racial in the sense that I am part Anglo and part Saxon.  But I feel truly that I am greater than the sum of my parts because I have a special resonance beyond what the limits of my genetic structure attribute to me. 

I can thank Peace Corps and the many people in Candelaria for opening their homes to me during my eight months an Incan/Quechua town in Bolivia.  And the resonance of that experience was internalized in me and makes up a part of my identity.  

Likewise, my Colombian friend Cristina and my role model Shakira opened the greatest nation on the planet to me (notice here I differentiate between government and nation, as in the narrow sense 'people').  While I don't believe it's so dangerous as many people think, the biggest threat from it became true: while I was allowed to leave, my heart was kidnapped by these people.  But it was those in Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and Nuevo Colon that showed me the place it had been taken to.  Going and knowing it was the ransom I had to pay to get that privilege back.

When my guitar professor took me to a party 2 miles from my home, I discovered a gathering of 30 joyous Iranian people.   They wined and dined me and taught me the numerals in Farsi.  Now I have this piece of me that is optimistic the two countries can reconcile their differences.  

Similarly, the presidency of Barack Obama is more than just a victory for the African-American community, but a badge of pride for those in my generation, where the idea of a minority President is not such a big deal at all.  Going to college, I lived with a Mexican guy, and another guy who was half-Japanese and half-Mexican.  The only white guy besides me was one that spoke Japanese!  The parties at our house attracted people from all stripes, but luckily no world war began there. And the great part was how revolutionary it wasn't. No big deal!

I can't help but listen to Jacques Brel sing 'le plat pays' (the flat country) and think of eating gaufres, waffles with chocolate, with my Italian love Serena in the square in Brugges.  I don't consider myself Flemish or Salentino. But the song still resonates all the more deeply despite that, as it is something inside me that responds to the lyrics and not any birthright that one has to be given. While that is maybe not the label that I am allowed to write when I fill out a job application, it is rather something I identify with, and that's a lot more valuable.  

So when I listen to a good chanson, or just el son cubano, something inside of me is transported back to the wonderment of those diverse places. For a little while I am more than a WASP*.   Maybe a little bit Colombian, a little bit Brazilian and a little bit North African. And so I start to wonder whether I really ever was just that, anyway.

OK! Time to go cook some waffles and eat them, remembering Serena, my Piccolina.

*white anglo-saxon protestant

These are some notes I made before an interview I had with my school's Alumni Magazine yesterday.  When that issue comes out in April, you bet I'll link the article to here, too.

And finally, THE UNCLER trailer, something I'd actually like to see!

PEACE CORPS = endurance sport

specifically an Ironman triathlon

Rish and value come bundled in a package, usually.  TO get a lot, you have to risk a lot. Though, I'd say PC is less risky than normal tourism. But while you're more coddled by the support staff in PC, it's risky because you have to give more and suffer the physical and emotional aches and pains of being in a strange place, far from home.  Traveling is great, but at the same time PC gives you a supportive framework where you are able to actually give more of yourself.  Similarly, a race and Peace Corps both are controlled situations where you get to practice the ability to cope, and so grow. Sort of like a laboratory setting in human experience.

So, the first thing that relates the two--Ironman and Peace Corps--both make you work out and strengthen several different attributes in order to succeed each day. You're not doing one thing but a variety of things- cross cultural communication & practicing a language, the ability to evaluate a situation different than what you're used to, to speak in public in a cross cultural setting and to identify local solutions that don't require outside resources.  In getting ready for Ironman, you strengthen your mind and soul, and you're not great in any one area: you're not specialized.  But your endurance and overall strength is far superior to the specialists.  Because you're doing a little bit of everything, your  focus is on nutrition, and the panoply of swim, bike and run workouts strengthen all the muscles in your body.   Peace Corps is similar.  It's the most real form of diplomacy, I've heard people at the embassy say. And we get out into the real world, you're not stuck in a gym like they are.

Also, you are self-sufficient, you are your own boss and so nobody is herding you to the finish line. You're alone, and you have to get there yourself.  And so the rewards are more your own, both in Ironman and in PC.

The swim in Ironman is akin to training.  The first month and a half is like the first mile and a half, swimming directly away from land out into the ocean. Here you find out whether you'll float or sink. It can only be one or the other. It's a completely different environment from what you're used to, and only worse if you don't know the language (i.e., no prior swim training). Straight into the deep end.  People are around to support you, i.e., kayakers.  This seems at the time like the hardest part of the whole thing.  In the brief respites, you wonder if you can hop back in again, swim back out from land into the ocean.  You've visited your site-- that's the furthest from land that you've been--and you get to land again all the time knowing that you will very soon be going back out there again.  So it takes 10 times more effort to get out and leave the small plot of sand for the shifting waters, now more threatening in its choppy wake.  You know now how it is, and so you get to appreciate your last days in the big city, in my case Cochabamba, and soon you're living and the water doesn't work half the time and the nice family that ushered you through training and all the professors are gone.  Already you've spent more time abroad just for Pre-Service Training than all of the intl. volunteer jobs that you've done in the past.  Just like how an Ironman dwarfs all the sprint tri's that you used to do.  When you're half-way done with the first leg of an Ironman, that's more time than you spend sometimes doing an entire triathlon of the smaller distances.

The bike part then comes next.  This is equal to your first year.  You feel like you're moving quickly, but you still try to forget that you have 112 miles to do. Whatever you do here, good or bad, you have this burden of knowing that it's only the middle part, and more is to come.

You go and go but don't feel like you are gaining anything, or else you are wasting your time and think you'll never make it to the finish.  

Ultimately, you get off the bike and are surprised that you can walk at all.  The last miles were especially difficult, because between miles 70 and 100 you felt invincible.  Then it all caught up with you--i.e., you're going through the first serious serious wave of culture shock since you first arrived, and everything you thought you knew about this country you discovered was wrong--and now the miles seem to take three times as long as they used to.  

The run then is the second year in Peace Corps. You start in the confidence that the end is in sight, and you can feel progress for the first time all day. All you have to do is repeat what you did already! You're much more comfortable, on your feet now, even if you're sore and you still remember the times when you crashed your bike.  It's so long that the feeling of nausea from the ocean has been forgotten.  You can laugh about your concerns from miles 30 to 50 of the bike since that was nearly 100 miles ago, and you have enough distance that the pains then seem comical.  

But the burden of the final year, and the marathon of an Ironman triathlon, is that you get closer to the finish and start to believe you'll make it there, and so the disruptions are infinitely worse since you start allowing yourself the chance to hope all might be well and that you might actually do it, can't-believe-it-but-only-ten-miles-more.  This is especially true for those people that had to leave PC Bolivia right in the think of the work they've prepared for since they arrived, 12, 16, 18 months before.  I tell people that my having to leave Bolivia would have been infinitely easier 1 month earlier, during the first consolidation, because that was exactly when I was at my lowest point.  But the one month extra that I got to experience instead was a catapult to the top, feeling the greatest I had in the 8 months I was there and eager to be finally sinking my teeth into things.    This made it far more painful then, when I got the phone call, saying a plane ticket was waiting for me the next morning, 'be sure to pack your most important things'.

Finally, friends and family are waiting at the finish line for you. In some ways, it's the greatest part of the whole experience. You saw them briefly along the way, but you had to continue moving past them and focus on what's in front of you.  

The Dalai lama says that adversity is important because it is like a set of weights that seem so difficult to manage, but they are what allows your muscles and mind to grow and develop.

Similary with Ironman, Peace Corps is similar in that the first time I couldn't have made it through the preparation and execution of it if I didn't have the satisfaction of knowing that someone other than me benefitted from it. My first Ironman, I completely successfully because I had the motivation of the Janus Charity Challenge, raising several hundred dollars for my sponsored kids in Children International, Colombia, the Philippines and Guatemala.  

The second time I believe will be different. Just like in Ironman, I was able to go back a second time without that heavy internal debate of whether I can do this or not.  I have done it.  I've experienced the endless waves of heights and depths, and it's something I've seen myself through already.  

Unfortunately, while I was able to share in the community of the thing, I was like a person doing a competition and suddenly  bad weather intercedes and we have to stop half way, all our preparation ruined in an instant.  

It's heartbreaking because your one purpose of existence in those moments has been removed.  And I didn't know what I might have achieved.   Like with triathlon, when you enter Peace Corps there's so much that's beyond your control--an important lesson in itself--it's frustrating, especially since you thought it was this controlled environment.  In that sense, a triathlon is much more of a science lab for you to use in the discovery about yourself than Peace Corps is.  But the lesson of coping is still central to both.

You know, if I leave in late September, maybe I can sign up and do the Great Columbian tri, September 19.  Well, we'll see.Publish Post

The Uncler w/ Uncle Sam and Alyssa Milano from Alyssa Milano

Will.i.am thoughts 'Who are the colored people?'

From the huffingtonpost.com by Will.i.am, Feb 14

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william/who-are-the-colored-peopl_b_166952.html

i am so proud to have received a NAACP award by my black community...

because at one point in time i wasn't even considered "black enough"...

yes...

i am a black man...

i was raised in an all mexican neighborhood...

i attended great schools in white areas...

so...growing up i was looked at as odd...

black people didn't think i was "black enough"

white people thought i was different than other blacks...

and mexicans thought i was dominican...

life was colorful...

if it wasn't for that diversity i never would have known what life truly had to offer...

people fought for me to attend brentwood sci mag, paul revere middle school, and palisades high...

people fought for my freedoms...

freedoms i didn't acknowledge when i was younger...

i went to school with persians, koreans, native americans, french, nigerians, and indians...

another translation would be:

brown, yellow, red, white, black, and blue people...

brave people fought for that...

magnet schools...

equal education...

it was all fought for...

and i reaped the benefits from it...

the invisible freedom fighters fought...

the visible fighters fought as well...

in the 100 years of the existence of the NAACP and fighting for equality they are now victorious...

because a black man is in the white house...

built by slaves now run by a black president...

the battle was won...

and now i ask this question...

what does the "C.P. " mean in the NAACP now?

today's definition is...

NAACP:

the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

we have advanced to the highest seat in office...

the president...

we have advanced to oprah status...

we have advanced...

congratulations...

and now...

where do we go?

i know we still have to fix mississippi, new orleans and our ghettos...

but what about the other colors...

filipino?

brazilian?

indian?

cambodian?

afghani?

and chinese?

if the NAACP fought so that a black man could be president in a country that practiced slavery...

then the NAACP should now stand and represent all people of color...

and fight to unite every version of "pigment"...

and lack of it...

the NAACP should now march and protect the most important colors of all...

GREEN...

"the planet"...

and "GREY"...

the mind...

education...

equal education...

because no matter if you're black, white, blue or orange...

we all live on green...

and we all think with grey...

and what good is a united people if there is no green to live on...???

and what good is a united people if our grey is filled with nothingness...

i am so proud to have performed "take our planet back" at the NAACP image awards...

i am so proud to have use my grey and sing about green in a black gathering...

i am so proud to have performed that song on that night...

during this time in american history...

we have a new mission ahead of us...

we all have to rethink the priorities...

we all have to put our best foot forward and walk together...

all colors...

all the different versions of pigment...

and lack of it...

we all have to protect the important colors...

"green, and grey"

and i propose this new title to the NAACP...

:)

the National Association for the Advancement of Consciousness and People

let's wake up...

realize how we all contribute to the destruction of our planet and minds...

let's continue to educate and push...

and remind our government to make laws that protect our "grey"

the mind...

and force our government to make laws that protect our "green, brown, and blue home"

the earth...

let's take our planet black...

please watch this video and pass it around like a baton and be apart of the new "C.P."

conscious people...

 

Beware of the Simplifier recap

A good article was published in the local paper by Bob Caldwell.

He says that you can recognize a person as a simplifier by these four things:

1) they recognize that they have more stuff than they can use or need

2) they want to collect experiences rather than possessions.  ¨They realize that experiences, like education, is something that can never be taken away from them.¨

3) They find their stuff has become an embarassment.  

4) They are rejecting conspicious consumption, and are disgusted with retailers who turn every moment into a marketing frenzy. 

He finishes:

Will you join the ranks of the Simplifiers?  Will you embrace the thrift and savings, reject debt and consumerism?  Will you learn to shop in your own closet? Will you turn a cold and hard eye to marketing efforst?  Will you stop believing in empty promises of people who presume to know what is best for you?  Will you teach your children that, as consumers, they are targets?  

And the best part:

Will you teach your children that there is ultimately no true contentment and joy in things, but that true happiness in life comes from your relationships, experiences, and spiritual life?

He finishes saying that if you´ve learned these things, then the current crisis will make you strong indeed.

Amen!  

I enjoyed this, though as a Buddhist I would go further and say to enjoy good friendships while you have them, and don´t pin your hopes and dreams of happiness on other people responding to you a certain way.  In other words, be realistic about what you expect things will give you, as well as what people will share with you of themselves.

Nice thing, my mother shared that with me!  

Tomorrow going to DC for the Peace Corps career fair, and you can bet I´ll share what I get out of that experience with you in the coming days: two days of career workshops, and two days of federal and NGO international job recruitment, plus the chance to visit several old Bolivia friends and meet volunteers from dozens of other countries.  This afternoon I talked to my neighbor Janis Truex (partly about how the house down the street was there one day, and the next day was completely gone... looks now like they are building a new one there, though it explains why one day I heard very loud noises coming from that direction).  These things, the big RPCV--returned peace corps volunteer community-- is why I signed up in the first place!

Also especially good talking to Serena.  I will come back from Washington as fast as I can in order to spend hours and hours talking to her one webcam from Lecce, while she recuperates from her exams this week.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Well!  I was afraid that Netflix would not have this movie because it´s ad said : Only available for rent from Blockbuster.  But it came right away, even faster than my favorite Buñuel movie,  Ce obscur objet du désir. 

And it´s LMAO funny. I´m halfway done, Penélope has yet to make her entrance. But so far it´s everything that made Spanglish great, but concentrated and more diligent.  Also, more subtle.  I have to ask Serena if she caught this... maybe not.   But the lives of the girl and the narrator are so extremely white.  And Javier Bardem is so extremely real in comparison to the vapidity and tepidity of their existence.  But I wonder, would this sense of ennui and cultural flacidity translate to a person like Serena?  I´m excited to see if she picks up on it.  Maybe this is criticism is one that can only be felt from an insider.  Because there´s nothing funny about the text. Instead, it´s all presentation.  And something that is as shallow as their infatuation of cultural mileposts (Miró and Gaudí), while Vicky spends the first part totally deriding everything that is truly and mercilessly Catalá (Javier). 

I was glad to see the guitar player playing Albeñiz, but there´s far greater pieces.

But the big joy of this piece is the fact that, in relation to Morocco, I´ll be living in a part of the world that was owned by Spain until very recently.  While I´m glad that no longer is so, and I joy in the differences between the two, in a sense I´ll be living between the two countries.  You can see them from the other if the sky is clear.  It would take two hours to walk across if it was land.