Monday, July 7, 2008

"esta bueno"

some pretty great and pretty right american just wrote to me "i hope there comes a time when your stories don't feel like burdens that only you can carry."

right before that a bolivian told me in his despedida (goodbye) to me " que te vayas bien que te pisas un tren que te dejas ancho como un sarten. " that you go well, that the train smashes into you and that it leaves u wide and flat like a frying pan. it's a little harsh on first sound. however,i'm told it's a saying and it's a good thing. i just kept thinking of the train smashing into me and me dieing on impact. in english we do say "break a leg". i guess they are both to say that i hope the very best for you but instead i say the very worst to you to not jinx it.

15 mintues before I received the american saying, and 15 minutes after the Bolivian dicho, i traveled home in taxi by night and thought man, more or less, for the first time in my young life, i feel at peace with some part of my communication.

in 8 months i have sent home a lot of stories. the writing has been my processing and the receiving has been another's challenge. i have frustrated/fascinated myself and others. believe me or not, but i have learned VERY WELL (like almost to a surprising extent to me) how to communicate where i am with the people and within the things here that i experience. it comes at weird times and in weird ways, but i feel the difference.
it's weird to not talk to people from home, and then all of a sudden be talking, and then to follow hey what's up with something really pesado, complicado (heavy, complicated).. we know that we are worlds apart and i think its more the impossibility of the mixing of the worlds and finding the way to tell the difference rather than not wanting to tell or not trusting to tell the real truth.

some things happened while i was here. but i look at them and always will look at them as the challenges, the realities, the things i never knew and had i blinked at a different moment, never would have realized. anyways i feel peace for all the strange heavy things that happenen, will happen ..the tough things.. the unspeakable...the things that maybe had to pass for me to realize or enlighten or sympathize or communicate or trust in my communication and realization.

with my friends and family at distance, i haven't yet transitioned from story to telling. i told the american dont worry i wont come home a mess and i won't ask her to clean up after me. i told the bolivian... man i really hope that train doesn't hit me. now i think, but man if it does (or for however many times it already has,) i have it in me to bounce back. then i'll recount the history... not as a burden but instead to even out the weight a little.

this is what it's about right?