new wanders

Well, it's sorta been a while, huh? I got resentful (of myself?) and resolved never to write in this blog again, but the truth is that sometimes the mood strikes and I want to write things here. I am resolving to be more consistent with writing (either here or elsewhere or in one of my twenty-eight notebooks) in 2011. Hmmph (arms crossed).

I'm in Medellín now, in my parents' apartment. I've been forcing myself to be outrageously social for weeks now, so today I decided to fill my quota of alone time. Besides, it's raining. It's supposed to be "summer" here right now, but instead it's decidedly "winter" today in a region where the season changes by the day and is only determined by the apparition of rain and perhaps a slight breeze. Don't serenar yourselves, folks. Careful!

Being here is hard. In truth, I've always had some nostalgia about certain Colombian things: my grandmothers, almuerzos they made, afternoon sunlight. But the awakeness that being here requires is dizzying, frightening. My wit is always five, ten paces behind: my tongue is tied, I don't get it, I don't like it. I've joked often that one of my most beloved skills is my aptness at being uncomfortable, but I think it's because this place is the root of all my malaise. My inability to belong, to "hang", my discomfort with class, family, gender expression: all these things live here. As long as I wander the earth, I can rest uneasy knowing that these things are in a box somewhere in Colombia, but once I arrive upon these soils, they bloom like ink in water. It's fucking exhausting.

I'm tired of being told not to go anywhere alone. I endure countless lunch dates and museum tours that inevitably arrive at the conversational destination of la seguridad. Either someone will steal my bicycle from under me or they will blow scopolamine in my face (best safety advice so far? don't breathe!) or kidnap me. There are boys on motorcycles who come around once a week asking for the cuota everyone owes them for maintaining the peace. It is pretty evident they spend most of their days on the street on more hedonistic pursuits than peacekeeping. But it's even more exhausting to be warned about abstract dangers, like "Don't go out by yourself or someone's gonna fuck with your shit!" Thanks for the warning?

I find myself myself wearing my time in Mexico like a badge--not even in the context of security, just to prove that I've crossed a fucking street by myself in my life. I daydream about walking down a street without the lurking fear that someone is totally gonna "fuck with my shit" because my inability to hang is SO visible that I am like shit-fucking-with bait.

At this rate, my lofty goal of resolving my bad feelings about this place isn't really going to get accomplished this time around, or maybe ever.

That's where I'm at today.