I came here to sit, relax, indulge in a character that may be more of myself than I care to admit. But the conversations sort of hang in the air, suffocate me until I inhale deeply and relent. A man walks in, crosses his legs in that feminine way that seems anatomically wrong. He is more nervous than her, but I think he is running the interview. And OW, that was painful, that pause and the one after that, and worse still the actual words he strings!
"My journey with God..." was how it began, and her hair was all tight curls and sweetness. "I want to change the world."
They talked at length about her family and already I know too much. Don't they SEE me sitting here? Then, they bring up Cambodia, and I wonder if she has ever felt the heat of SouthEast Asia. And she is so naive that I want to smack her and then I remember no one ever smacked me. Maybe they should have, maybe it would have roughened my flesh for what was to come.
Man, that phrase scares me: "I want to change the world". It's like it's a monster with no pupils that watches me through the window. I know it's there, even when my blinds are closed.
Are we all, in a way, trying to inflict change? I intentionally use the word "inflict" because to change the world is a violent endeavor. I don't mean to say you need a machete, per say, but you have to have an internal darkness to feed a proper erupted passion. I once went to Peru, back when my eyesight still existed and the frizz in my hair was maintained, and I thought the burnt cheeks of the street kids was almost endearing. I would spend my money buying swollen, warm rolls to them as if that one meal would be a long-term enigma. But I barely fed them, barely spoke for them without my own self-serving tongue dancing the conga. That is what was the hardest, as I showered in icy water with my hair never drying, was knowing that I was getting infinitely more out of the experience than those I supposedly came to "help". Quickly, my ability to use the Spanish language overshadowed the grabby kids that sold finger puppets at 2am in the Plaza de Armas. I, in fact, was mourning the loss of my ability to do anything worthy in the world.
But let's not be cynical; I think there is so much to do, so many things you can let yourself be used by, but you must know that you are a selfish, selfish little human.
When you discover this, or perhaps just accept it, things become easier. The women in Thailand, for example, don't become charity cases you wish to free from the grips of sexual slavery, but instead the women you sit with in the unyielding heat, and gently drape an arm around.
You can only help others when you are in a place to help yourself. When you believe that you are the savior to anyone or anything, you quickly become a demonic presence that can cripple even the most stilted individuals.
You are just as needy as anyone else, and what you give can only be quantified in what is reciprocally gained. As I watched my Thai students fall to the projections of their teachers, their parents, and left to learn with no paper, no fans, no passion, I realized that my steps into that classroom were my own selfish being wanting to FEEL something.
FEEL SOMETHING!
Isn't that what you want? I think we all want it. We are so damned numb that you could saw off our feet and we would drag the stubs of ourselves pathetically around hardwood floors. So we do things like skydive, travel, dive with sharks, to be shocked into feeling. But we forget that feeling is not something that HAPPENS to us, it is something we must BECKON. Yes, reel it in like the slimy salmon in the river, and if you're really lucky, it may jump freely into your net.
I have learned, finally, that I can feel something while I drive through the Texas Hill Country and stop and devour a fattened peach. I feel the same thing there, that I felt biking the Mekong Delta as the sun flopped from the sky and left a bloody trail.
So don't escape what already is, find a way to translate it into what you want. There are so many languages, can why not find one that slips gracefully off the tongue?
But, what do I know? Being the unemployed gal that I am, I am just in an elephant dress in some coffee shop where two streets meet, listening and writing and dreaming while the coffee powers the volatile machine that I am.
So, leave me to it, will you?
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