Hurt

While skating home today I fell in front of the same two men I fell in front of yesterday. At least today I didn't face plant and my pens didn't scatter across the sidewalk. I don't know how my pens can roll over the cracks so easily and I cannot. I also met a dog wearing a sweater in the elevator in my apartment complex. I think the owner said his name was something like Salsa. I actually passed an entire shop dedicated to dog sweaters on my search for a yoga studio today.

I've been listening to a lot of music lately. Recommendations, findings... like the mastermind Jack White: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b46yzioCxPI. But "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails covered by Johnny Cash has stood true to me for years now. It's my favorite cover because of its authenticity... the injured imperfections in his voice that connect one soul to another. He somehow takes pure, rough emotions and crafts them into his words. He sings without the self absorbed restraint of needing to be accepted. Johnny claims to have "tried every drug there was to try." Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia if you're as enthralled with him as I am:

Cash noted: "I was taking the pills for awhile, and then the pills started taking me." ...Cash curtailed his use of drugs for several years in 1968, after a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave when he attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave, trying to lose himself and "just die", when he passed out on the floor. He reported being exhausted and feeling at the end of his rope when he felt God's presence in his heart and managed to struggle out of the cave (despite the exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight breeze. To him, it was his own rebirth...

Now that's raw. That's real. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aF9AJm0RFc You can have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt. That's what I say to God. My scars turn into His. The nails I pound into my own skin are what nailed Him to the cross. But that's exactly what He wants. He wants it all. It's not a barter. He wants to demolish the facade of acceptance we've built around our selves. He wants to bring us back to vulnerability, because a hard heart can’t curl up and be held, it can't be protected. I think being in that place is the closest we can be to the heart of God. And when people see that rawness, they're seeing God. But we still refuse it. We spit in the face of God by holding on to the very thing that is destroying us.

Johnny died seven months after shooting the music video.

I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure. (Trent Reznor, lead singer of Nine Inch Nails)

Authenticity is timeless... universal... pure. Johnny left a mark on the world when his goal changed from acceptance of the world to vulnerability and surrender. I went to Adulam last weekend. From what I understand (I don't know if I understand completely because my Spanish isn't up-to-par yet) it is a center that provides for people like ex-criminals and single mothers and orphans. They know pain. That place leaked with authenticity. It was real. There was no filter, no performance. I thought I was going to volunteer, but I showed up to an asado for the pastor's birthday. They served me. And I thought I knew what service was.

I want to be real. I want to be close to the heart of God. And I think every step, a song, an asado, being broken, being vulnerable, is a step to get to be more a part of the bigger picture He is creating.

P.S. Please excuse the five million fonts. I still don't really understand how Blogger works.

Adulam

A bit outside of Adulam

Some happy friends

Pencils and Suptes and the First Day of School

Today was my first day of school. It also marked the last day of the week of intensive Spanish classes. I don't really know what that means, because I feel like Spanish won't get much less intensive. I got all my books like a little school girl and had my pencils and papers ready, besides the pencil that Maddie lent to me that Cognac ate. Sorry Maddie. Yes, he comes into my room and picks an object of his choice to selfishly patter away with like a little fuzzy pack rat. My madre has told me to bribe him with food when that happens, so I went in the kitchen to find nothing but a rice puff. That's another interesting thing about Argentines, they seem to only buy the food they need for the next few days instead of stocking up for the week. I put the food on the ground, knowing the drill. Cognac drops the item. Cognac saunters over to eat the food and I have a few swift seconds to reclaim my possession. I always feel like one of those praying mantis bugs, frozen until the time of attack. But Cognac broke protocol. He managed to keep the pencil in his mouth as he picked up the puff and slid triumphantly back to his bunker under the table. I transformed from ninga mantis to a puddle of of defeat. I really hope I'm not unknowingly on some reality show about Americans who study abroad. Sorry America, but you haven't encountered this Schnauzer.

Meet Cognac, the Master of my Casa

Something I really appreciate about the Casa (that's what the students call the school) is it's secret nooks. It's like that creepy man on the street selling watches from his coat, but instead of someone creepy it's Santa, and instead of watches it's candy. It's elderly years show in the creaks of the boards and the worn copper of the doorhandles. It can be inconvenient. Like the kind of inconvenient when you realize you're in the wrong class and try to sneak out and when you reach the front of the class to discreetly slide through the door you accidentally break off the doorknob and stand there frozen with it in your hand and you stare at the class and the class stares at you and you flip through every situation in your head that could possibly reconcile yourself but your mind feels like a five-thousand blank page catalog. But beyond moments like that I feel like this building has places to recover. To recharge. An abandoned corner feels like my own personal hospital. I can almost feel the walls sprout arms to reach out and hug me. Those corners are under staircases, on top of roofs... But one of my favorites is a little wooden desk hidden above the front door entrance with a guitar leaning itself up against a wall nearby. I love those little discoveries.

Every morning I wake up happy that I'm here. I just feel so independent, like the world is mine. I walk everyday without a GPS in a big city. I'm needing to rely on memory and maps rather then just plugging my trust into an electronic. I need to rely on the Supte and busses and taxis. They continue on with or without me, and I have to choose to be a part of them. When I'm riding the Supte (the Argentine subway), I look around at the black jackets and the seams of pants and the reflections of people's fingertips clutched on the metal standing bar and I think about how I have a jacket on too and seams on my own pants and how my fingers leave prints on that same standing bar and I feel like my existing is actually functioning for something. It feels like my life is my own for the first time in my life. I feel free and more alone than I ever have. It's a hard alone. But a beautiful alone. Like the buildings that are built to be more than just a contribution to a consumer's society. Like the buildings that exist to crumble, to add to the life around them and to stand as an example of something that was worth existing. Not that they have a story. They might not have a beginning, a climax or a sudden end. It might not be exciting. But every bit of that life is still a part of them, like the fingerprints that stay on the standing bar in the subway and the little threads that fall forgotten into corners. And I'm a part of it all. Something about that seems to reach into my throat and squeeze the air out of my lungs. We're free to learn whatever we want. A language, the history of the Incas, a new song. We get to choose to be a part of that everyday. Here's to the first day of the rest of our lives and the adventures that we might fall head-over-heels-in-love into if we choose to get up and be a part of life.

We Will Remember

NO ONE skateboards here. I did see a punk girl cradling a longboard on the bus the other day. That bus was crammed. I felt like a marshmallow in the middle of one of those airtight new marshmallow bags. The ones that inflate with a breath of campfire smoke for smores. Smores. That's another thing Argentines don't have. Skateboards and smores. I had eggs mixed into my zucinni for dinner tongiht. Also in what my madre called a salad, which was carrots and hardboiled eggs. It's like finding a peanut in the middle of that air tight bag of marshmallows. You feel confused, like you don't know if you should be worried or delighted about it. Punk Girl was cradling her way-too-long stick like a date at a high school dance. I didn't see her ride it when she got off at her stop. Maybe she thought it was some kind of accessory, like an alligator purse or a pair of those John Lennon glasses.

I'm not much better though. The moment I start to feel relatively stable on these God forsaken sidewalks I eat another piece of humble pie. I seriously think that some of the cracks are going to  break open and a block or two will crumble into Middle Earth. People stare at me like they haven't seen a skateboard or a blonde before. Old men crinkle amused smiles into the wrinkles around their eyes, mothers hug their children closer, elderly ladies look at me like their eyes are shooting high beam lazers, children gape like I'm a Grecian godess and guys cat call... like how you would actually call your cat. Sometimes I sail by feeling like Tony Hawk and sometimes I feel like a bowl of spaghetti in the dishwasher.

But today was September 11th. In Argentina it's a holiday celebrating teachers so the schools get the day off. We had an asado, which is like a BBQ on steriods. But I had to stop, and remember, and cherish my life in the U.S. and the pain we still suffer through together today. I talked about it at dinner with my Madre tonight. She looked into her carrot egg hybred coleslaw and shook her head. "Que triste... que triste..." She told me that she visited the 9/11 memorial in New York and she told that she watched it on her television in her room with the floral curtains and the dark wooden headboard. Little did I know three years ago when my eyes froze on the flickering shadows under a cherry blossom tree and while I watched men collapsed in with clawed hands caught on a name on that memorial wall that I would be talking about it with my homestay madre and that she would feel it too. I'm a nine-teen-year-old from California and she's an eldery lady from Buenos Aires. We've only known each other a week but we can morn together. We can share life together. We can't always understand each other's words but we can give each other pieces of things we've felt deeply. It's all so beautiful in such a broken, humble way.

"Now, we have inscribed a new memory alongside those others. It’s a memory of tragedy and shock, of loss and mourning. But not only of loss and mourning. It’s also a memory of bravery and self-sacrifice, and the love that lays down its life for a friend–even a friend whose name it never knew."     - President George W. Bush

Hello Buenos Aires

Don't you hate those days when you've just met your home stay Madre after a thirteen hour flight and she walks out the door rolling something off her tongue in Spanish that you think means she's going to the market and when the door closes behind her you trip on a loose board in the floor gouging a hole in your foot so you make a little trail of red footprints to grapple down the first aid kit you had just put on the top shelf while trying to deter your madre's dog from licking up the little splatters of blood and fiddling around with some kind of gauze because you seem to be out of those simple little stick on band-aids when the dog grabs the gauze and runs under the table and you spend ten minutes prostrate on the ground trying to lure him out with a dried plantain chip from the cupboard?

And don't you hate it when you clean it up before she gets back but then decide to take a shower while she makes dinner and step over the toilet that is in the shower and there's only half a door so you accidentally flood the bathroom while trying to figure out how to make hot water come from random little tubes hanging like garden snakes on the wall and then have to emerge sopping wet limping on your foot to ask to hang up the clothes you used to wipe up the water and she pulls down the air drying rack from the ceiling that you have to duck under to get to your room?

I actually loved it. It was all so surreal. For those that don't know, I'm studying in Argentina for the school year. My Madre picked me up and took me to her apartment today on the fourth floor with an accordion door elevator. She showed me how to boil water and she took me to the balcony with little violet flowers and black netting around the fence so her dog can go out too. She asked if I liked tea and I said I did, so she made me a cup of something that smelled deliciously like peach with a mini spoon and tray and saucer and then sat down with a notepad on her lap and asked what I liked to eat. I told her eggs for breakfast, but apparently they don't eat eggs for breakfast here. Apparently they don't eat anything at all for breakfast. She asked if I liked milk, and I was about to tell her that I couldn't have cow's milk, but the words froze in my throat. I told her I couldn't have "leche de moo moo." She cooed over the chocolate and peanut butter and dog treats I brought her and I smiled. She makes the cutest little sound effects when she tries to communicate. I love that little bathroom, I love that Schnauzer dog, and I love my Madre. She brought me back three different crackers from the market to see which one I liked best. This year looks charmingly promising. So thankful for these little smiles.

 The view from my balcony

My bathroom

 My bedroom