I have a tatoo. I have two, actually. This post concerns the second, red Zia shape on my upper right shoulder blade that I got when I was nineteen because I wanted to feel like, wherever I go, home is with me, less in the place and more in what I carry around. The cultural symbolism behind the Zia can be found
One thing that has been among the most fun parts of my trip so far is trying to explain my home situation. I even did that Cultural Anthropology project about my very large family that seemed to wow the class. More than anything though, I´ve come to the conclusion that home is a feeling even when it is a place. And so I often find myself describing home in this manner, much more subjectively than in comparative or, like demographic terms- as if it were a song, a really good laugh, a moving and beautiful picture or painting, or maybe even a really good meal with really good wine and company. People are always talking about home, this idea, or feeling with in such personal and unique ways. I think I like being the only one from NM, doing my own thing here. Not to be whiny or emo about it, but I don´t really think I have ever known even since I was a kid what it is NOT to be kind of unique, and I like it. Lots of other people are like- yeah I´m from Chicago, or Boston, or Cali, or Wisconsin (there is A LOT of Wisconsinites here). And after that they are all like Oh, yeah my grandma or my uncle or I used to go or live or fish or eat cheese and drink beer and watch football there. Or something like that. That sort of thing doesn´t really happen to me the same way. Though I usually get to be the authority on New Mexicanisms, which is cool, the locals usually think I am from some part of Mexico and lots of other people don´t know really what to say. So I try to have fun with it and highlight the food, the weather, the Governor, and especially the sunsets. It´s easy to romanticize, but sometimes it makes me homesick.
I miss a lot of things about home, the place. But the feeling can be created anywhere. And in this way, my tatoo has fulfilled its proclaimed symbolic purpose. I think it happens when people attempt to describe the feeling they get that makes them feel like they are where they are supposed to be. While I miss this strange ritual in terms of green chili, traffic and education problems, balloon fiesta and/or state fair shenanigans, I am very much enjoying rustling up that feeling while I am outside of the 505, in my most bohemian of periods. And the other thing I have learned is that there are so many different ways to feel at home- with one´s self, with one´s friends, with one´s actions, with God or religion, with loved ones. I have resorted to a number of silly things that help me to feel like I have developed this sort of ability or capacity.
Some examples:
I think it comes first, from my academic life, because it´s kind of the root of why I´m here- but it often feels like an excuse. It´s strange, school here is very serious, very difficult, but at the same time, I´m not learning how to operate on someone´s eyeballs or launch rocket messages to Fiji. My classes are as follows: Art History 303, Modern Latin American Art, Andian Anthropology 300, Literature 340, El Quijote (the biggest book EVER), Sociology 381, Design and Evaluation of Social Projects of Development, (and here´s where it get´s good) Hatha Yoga 181, and Gac 300 Enology and Mixiology. Look that one up if you´re not familiar with the terminology. It´s like, I have more papers, in harder classes, in Spanish, than I ever have, but also... no worries- I think I´m going surfing next weekend. To be honest- it´s mostly me: I love what I study, but I sometimes I get frustrated and seriously doubt myself when confronted with the workload.
Feeling Home Strategy #2: Playlisting and other types of Top Fiving. If you haven´t seen the film High Fidelity, firstly, GO RENT IT, because secondly, you won´t be able to fully appreciate Top Fiving the way it was intended. In my own head, when I wrote this, John Cusack actually narrates this section, not me.
Top Five Books Currently on the Shelf: 1. Selected Poems: Pablo Neruda, 2. Hojas de Hierba Leaves of Grass: Edicion Bilingüe, Walt Whitman 3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 4. Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes 5. Cien Años de Soledad, Gabriel García Márquez. This list changes frequently.
Top Five Hippie Tendencies: 1. Chaco´s are my favorite shoes. 2. I now have some Canadian friends who are really into sustainable things and cooking with organic stuff. 3. I often carry an old and beautifully unique acoustic guitar named Rosinante and sing songs that people like to sing along with. 4. Once, I did that on a bus and didn´t have to pay the fare because they liked it. 5. I eat LOTS of granola. Don´t worry too much about this section, I shower and don´t do drugs.
Top Five Attributes to Apartment in Guápulo. 1. It is beautiful and so is the view. 2. It has many chicken, dogs, cats, and interesting people. 3. Hot (seriously;)) water. 4. The little cafés on my street, which are known for their abundance of music and avaunt-garde readings or art shows, are often filled with transient Colombians who sing loudly and beat on drums. 5. Getting there and away. (It´s on the side of a mountain and I have good stories about that when I get home)
Top Five Travel Songs: 1. Bierut - Postcards From Italy 2. John Mayer - 3X5 3. Billy Joel - Only the Good Die Young 4. Manu Chao - Me Llaman Calle 5. The New Pornographers - Challengers
Top Five Homesick Remedy Songs: (I really don´t know if these make it better or worse)1. Fiest - It´s Cool to Love Your Family 2. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel 3. The Shins - New Slang 4. Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - You Are What You Love 5. Incubus - Wish You Were Here.
It goes like this. I´ve been asked, and I ask myself, in one way or another everyday: ¿What the hell are you doing here Michael? ¿What is going on in the world and what do we think about said going-on´s and certain happenings? ¿What is love? Baby, Don´t hurt me. I don´t often know the answer to these types of questions. ¿Will Barack Obama win the primaries and then take over the nation in the name of all things good? I think he might. You should read this and try to tell me that he´s not the man for the job. Thanks Senator Obama. You make me feel like home. I think that´s what we do - It´s much more than learning a language and some songs when your in transit. We are fighting to feel like home. I say we because I refer to the people that constantly explore this feeling together and for me, that´s everyone in this country. It is everyone in every interaction. I think that is why and how we keep ourselves busy, justifying our time with volunteering, working, developing, reading, being, laughing, and and that is why I write songs. We apply value to our efforts, actions, thoughts, and self definitions. I posted the recordings I have here with me on the blog. You have to click the link to the page LikeMikeSounds. I still don´t know how to make it work so that you can actually put them on your computer, but I´m sure anyone who really wanted them could get them from a relative of mine. What I like about them are the same things I like about how I feel like home. They are honest and yet unsure, raw and clumbsy, and yet warm and accurate, I think. Kundera, in his most amazing novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, wrote, “Schoenberg is dead, Ellington is dead, but the guitar is eternal. Stereotyped harmonies, banal melodies, and rythms all the more insistent the more monotonous they are- that is what remains of music, that is music´s eternity. Everyone can fraternize by means of these simple combinations of tones, for it is being itself that through them is shouting out of it´s jubilant ´I´m Here!´ There is no more boisterous, no more unanimous agreement than the agreement with being.” Although he is often more critical than I think I am about everyday kind of music, I find his thoughts profound in their accuracy. I feel like in my own way, in my own understanding of things, I was true to myself and this concept. What is harder to understand is why this sort of thing means absolutely everything and nothing at the same time. He also writes about this feeling as a novel writer. “Someone who writes books is either everything (a unique universe in himself and to all others) or nothing. And because it will never be given to anyone to be everything, all of us who write books are nothing. We are unrecognized, jealous, embittered...” For me, it´s like; at once both beautiful and utterly meaningless to write a song about something I think I have to say or to feel like I can understand (parts of) Cervantes´ Quixote but what the hell for- a blog post about it? Why not go surfing and enjoy the feeling of being so infinitely tiny? Who knows what it really means- for now mostly just enjoyable conversation.
If I could answer briefly what I am doing, for myself, and of course the mountains of readers, because I think it´s the single most important thing a person can (try to) do, I say it´s like trying to understand poetry or music. I get a lot of little things about it, but it´s too much to say that I really can understand all of it, absurd even. It´s too subjective, but I can fully embrace and love the entire process, the failures and successes. I will soon write lots of cool little insights about many of the things I have learned about Latin America. These epiphanies at once mean everything and nothing because I don´t usually know what to do with them. What I have learned, that has been most worthwhile and difficult, is learning about my limits and faults. So it is with this quote I dramatically and impressively close, one I have enjoyed for a long time, but am now coming to understand more, by an author I know nothing about. I like how it doesn´t matter who he was though. If he was the next savior, a grassroots campaign leader for the Obama campaign (seriously, read whats on that link), or a bum off the streets. I think what matters is the words. Like good poetry, intentions, or actions. Like the picture below.
“I must learn to love the fool in me, the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.”
Theodore Isaac Rubin
You Are.
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