I like to keep in touch. Connection
I hate small talk.
I wanna talk about atoms,
death, aliens, sex, magic, intellect,
the meaning of life, faraway galaxies,
the lies you’ve told, your flaws, your
favorite scents, your childhood, what keeps
you up at night, your security and
fears…I like people with depth,
who speak with emotion from
A twisted mind.
Sometimes it happens!
Having spent three months in Oregon and Las Vegas, I have become so much more aware of the cultural differences between the north American first world and Mexico.
The first Americans were independent and forward looking. They were looking to expand and were aggressive. Their primary value is freedom and personal space. Mexicans on the other hand were subjugated for hundreds of years by the Spanish. Their primary value is respect.
Whenever a person enters the space of a Mexican individual, for example getting into a taxi, unless you greet them they will feel you are rude. Instead of just jumping in and issuing an order you say “Buenas Tardes, Senor.”
While in a restaurant, any time you pass by a table you say “Buen Provecho.” Any time you want to walk through or pass by people you say “Con Permiso.” Needing a waiter to come to your table you call “Joven!” (Young man) or Senorita (young woman.)
The smiles you get are warm and welcoming. It’s a lovely way to live.
June 4, 2015
Really enjoying Greg in Las Vegas. Weather warm but perfect for me.
Greg took me to a concert with Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin) on May 28. Love his new group. But it was at a stand only venue and it nearly killed me. We had to leave early.
OMG, the strip is the best people watching in the world!
Greg’s best friends (both single like Greg) drove out from LA to spend the weekend with Greg and I. OMG, intense conversations! Wore me out! But I ate it all up. Mostly about male/female relationships, sex and politics. Ha!
Greg is throwing one of his bash’s on Sunday. About 20 people for dinner. He cooks. Has a friend that is a sommelier helping him. He dropped off two cases of wine yesterday. Greg has become quite the wine connoisseur. (Had to look up that spelling)
Angelo, the sommelier has a fusion restaurant that we went to last night. Foie Gras and escargot for appetizers and a wonderful tenderloin that Greg and I shared. Greg spends money on me like water. Makes me nervous but I don’t say anything. It’s his life. Am looking forward to talking with Angelo at the party. His ancestry is French, Italian and Mexican and he grew up in Mexico City and Guadalajara.
Had a pedicure yesterday by some lovely Vietnamese women. Where did you live, I asked. Hue she said. You know Hue? She was surprised when I said yes. Then I had my hair tinted.
So guess I’m ready to take on Oaxaca again.
Three weeks has turned into three months in Oregon. Rain alternating with sun and hail. That’s the NW.
The CT scan, what I came up here for, showed esophageal varicies but the endoscopy didn’t. Hmmm. So more medical follow up.
Old renter moving out April 11 and I get to move into my house! Being in that little trailer at the farm with my son is getting crowded. New renter moves in May 14. Will sort and sell and give away most of my shit. Got a storage unit for stuff I can’t part with…yet. In the meantime I am coordinating contractors for yard work, roof repair, painting of the house etc. etc. before it falls down. I might need it someday.
So I’m in my little funky but cozy coffee shop with wifi where I go to every morning. Same people, sitting in the same seats…a group of about 8 retired guys sitting together for half the day and sometimes longer. They peruse the newspapers and comment. Seems like we live here. They ignore me. Curious and unusual. I wonder where the wives are. I think they think they are in a man cave. I think they are!
Starbucks?
Outside on the sidewalk is a reader board says “Because You Can Never Find A Starbucks When You Need One.” There are two Starbucks around the corner in the same block where the shop lets the homeless hang out to keep warm…occasionally coffee in hand. Having lived here for 35 years and having been the manager of a homeless program at a two- county nonprofit, I’ve never seen so many panhandlers on downtown streets. But I only give cigarettes to the mentally ill ones who are obviously off their meds…hoping it will be soothing to them.
In the meantime reverse culture shock is hitting me in the face again. You would think I would be beyond this by now.
I keep running into first world rules and regs! Got a $20 ticket for parking less than a foot over the white line. But that’s nothing compared to the hijacking of my car in a hospital parking structure because by law you can’t drive for 12 hours after anesthesia and I had to get a hotel room just because my 12 hours were up at 7:30pm but couldn’t get the parking ticket validated because the office closed at 5! F+++++g police state! Slap me silly if I complain about Mexico again!
And last year I got a $200 ticket for turning right when a pedestrian still had 2 steps to get out of the cross walk on the other side!
A traveling friend describes it as an “invisible barrier that sometimes leads to invisible, but sometimes even open conflict.” Yep! Coming or going. Culture shock is always worst for me coming back…not going. It’s just that I really notice these things more when I return because they feel so personally restrictive. I always breathe a sigh of relief when I get off the plane in Mexico or SE Asia. I thought by now I’d be beyond all this! NOT!
And another thing! I’m done with hearing “how was your day” and “have a great day” 50 times a day! Does NOT put me in a good mood! And I’m done with cold and rain. Think it’s time to go home.
I do love the NW and of course that’s the thing about culture shock. You are in one place and want to be in the other too.
The traveler’s high. You’ve no doubt felt it, upon disembarking in a realm where all is unfamiliar. Travel is a drug. It reboots reality, tweaks the senses, and becomes addictive.
I crave total autonomy, and shy away from responsibility and attachment. Every morning I arise I still breath a sigh of relief that I don’t have to be anywhere…no meetings, no phone calls…except catching that bus or train or plane. I still hate the phone. And my hand goes to sleep.
Since retirement, I like to be alone…to travel alone…free to serendipitously connect on the deepest levels in the moment. No assumptions made. No mindless chatter. No history of each other to color the here and now. No one trying to grease my purchase of a donut with “how is your day going!”
Being an expat is a luxury. No one expects you to adhere to local customs and expectations. You are released from and are free of the social expectations of the country you came from. This is as free as anyone could ever expect to be and still live in the world.
But expatriate urges aren’t just about yearning to be unencumbered, or a distaste for any particular culture, or even the lure of a particular place’s attractions.
What we expats crave, at heart, is the exhilarating thrill of foreignness. We take delight in molding ourselves as a square peg in a round country. In forever being the outsider with the ability to constantly transcend and recreate the self…indeed to come to know the self.
Only parts of us will ever
touch only parts of others.
One’s own truth is just that really —
One’s own truth.
We can only share
The part that is understood –
Acceptable to the other —
Therefore one is for the most part
Alone.
As it is meant to be
Evidently-in nature.
At best though
Perhaps it could make
Our understanding seek
Another’s loneliness out.
It was an amazing experience.
I was in my familiar Governor’s Cup coffee shop in Salem Oregon talking with my friend when I told her I didn’t know what to do with all the Indian rocks my father inadvertently dug up while tilling the soil on his sheep ranch in Klamath County. She pointed to a guy with a long pony tail and said, why don’t you talk to him. He happened to be a Native American with a doctorate in anthropology. So he contacted someone with the Klamath Tribe. It just happened that people with the Tribe were coming to Salem for a Tribal meeting a few days after David picked up the rocks. So he transferred them to the Tribal members.
The reason so many of them were broken, he said, was that when someone was buried they broke up their household bowls and pestles and buried them along with the body. So the Tribe is going to rebury them on Tribal land. David asked me to write a prayer to the Spirits and to cleanse the house with a sage smudge.
Prayer To The Spirits
I have been renting the house out in Salem Oregon ever since I retired in 2002. After traveling for 5 years I settled as an expat in Oaxaca in 2006. I return to Salem about once a year for regular medical checkups and follow up.
This February, while I was there, the renter, after 5 years, decided to move. All of a sudden 3 weeks turned into 3 months. So I took the opportunity, between renters to clean the house out of 40 years of s**t that had been stored in the basement.That was the beginning of insanity. Each item required a mental and emotional decision…get rid of it, save it or sell it. Then packing it all in boxes…taping, carrying, shoving…a pickup load at a time to go to a storage unit or Goodwill.
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Darn, saw where the teachers, on strike, closed the airport in Oaxaca. But I suppose nothing lasts very long. I fly in next wednesday. Things should quiet down a bit after the elections Sunday. Now, of course, with the bloqueos and Pemex gas stations being closed I won’t be driving much…if they keep this up.
The medical follow ups turned out better than I expected so guess I’m not going to die pronto.
It was really harrowing in Salem…trying to get everything sorted and out of the house before the new tenants moved in. And contract for roof repair, fireplace repair and house painting and buying a new stove, repairing kitchen sink faucet, sending towel warmer off to be repaired etc. etc.
I sold some stuff on Craigslist, took a half dozen pickup loads of stuff to Goodwill, gave some stuff away and still filled up the storage unit. Filled up an entire large recycling can with Greg and Josh’s college notes. All while carting Doug around town. He is preparing his “babies” for planting in the greenhouse. Rules on the new legalization supposed to come out by July 1. I stayed with him in his little trailer and saved a couple thousand dollars on hotel. But he was really crabby with me in it invading his “space.” Glad to be out of there.
Some stuff I couldn’t bare to part with…children’s books, my books, all the artifacts we had collected traveling. And of course kept household stuff I’d need if I moved back to Salem in case of health. Bob said get rid of everything of his. Just don’t tell him what it was or he would say “oh no not that!” Ha! The new tenants are lovely. Professional photographers, middle age, no children and they fell in love with the house.
It was weird to realize I was sorting with the assumption I was going to come back. But the thought came to me…I am 70. I was sorting with the assumption of course is that I have years ahead of me…
Laughingnomad 