Will

If you ever happen to travel to Cochabamba, Bolivia, you will collect so many fragmented adventures. The adventures will accumulate and thrive and challenge you until inevitably, you arrive at your last day. And if you happen to have a last day like mine, this is how it will go:

You will wake up wrapped in five fuzzy layers. You will reach for your glasses and pull your hair into yet another messy bun; the layers of day 3 grease will hold your bangs in place. You will walk in the rain to the main house of the farm to find the bread already cut into thick slices for you. You will slather deep purple marmalade to the edges of thin crust barriers while you let the warmth of tea awaken you to another huddled morning.

You will walk the field, the dew tossing flecks of mud on your sandaled feet. You will harvest the reddest tomatoes you can find and you will gather the darkest blackberries amongst the thorned bushes. You will pause for a moment to sit on your favorite swing in your favorite part of the field just as the sun breaks through those mountain-hugging clouds.

You will attempt to speak quechua with Don Paulino and he will laugh at all your mispronunciations. You will try to get him back by saying he should try to say the names of facial features in English, but he will suddenly become very serious about getting back to work and he will leave you in all your mispronunciated shame on the side of the hill. You will try to crack another joke to make him smile and he will laugh, but in that pitying way in which you will never really know if the laugh is a compliment or an insult. He will eventually come back to give you more branches to cut into compost, and he will start telling you of stories of condors attacking and killing horses. You will not believe him and will say that you don’t believe him with an incredulous face. He will just stare at you before sharing all of his knowledge about natural medicines. Apparently, drinking bull’s milk can ease an upset stomach. You will be secretly envious of this knowledge. It seems so human, so much more central to who we are than all the theories you could spew out if asked what you knew.

You will finish your work at the farm for the last time. You will leave down the dirt path, and nature will lend you that special kind of quiet only it can lend.

You will wait on the corner of the street for the 127. Eventually a woman will hail down this unmarked car, say a few hurried words to the driver, and announce in a bellowing voice that he can take us down Montecillo. People from all four corners of the street will converge at the same time to try to make it into this car; you will run for your life to get a seat. You will pull the door shut behind you, and some poor boy will come to the window desperate for the last seat. His face will fall as the car drives away from the town’s lights. You will get off at the corner of Avenue Reducto to hail trufi 120.

You will be squished in the last row, watching too many neon lights and grills set up on sides of street corners. You will blink in that sunset rocked air. Eventually, you’ll get off at the cross section of Avenue Santa Cruz and Avenue America. You will cross the roundabout (narrowly avoiding death) to hail the 121 back to home. You will get off at the fruit stand. You will climb those five staircases to the floor of your apartment, and you will come home to your host mom watching TV in her bedroom. You will collapse onto the bed; you will tell your host mom every pain, laugh, stupidity, joke, insight, feeling you have had since you last saw her at lunch a few days before.

Like always, she will sip her coffee and mutter, “Oh, Aly.”

You will leave to have some final French fries with Evelyn. She is and always will be wonderful. As you fade in and out of the melody of the conversation, you will wish that you could tell her how much she saved you. Actually scratch that: you don’t believe people can be saved. You will say your final goodbye and the tears will begin to fall, and you will realize that these are the first tears you have shed since that ragged tearing back in November. You were not saved back then because you were not rid of anything- rather you were too full of a whirling truth that stretched and built and thwarted you into something bigger than yourself. These new tears are happy tears, and you will see Evelyn waving for the last time in that criss-crossed splinter of fading sunlight.

You will go back home to that 5^th floor apartment for the last time. You will make a cup of coffee, feeling safe in that rounded reflection. You will save your goodbye with your host mom until the next morning. She will just say a simple good night for now. You will smile under drooped eyelids. You will pause a moment at the kitchen table, thinking.

You will be hit with this thought: am I brave enough to do what’s next?

You will not be able to answer this, and time will just propel you forward. It always propels you so so forward. You will walk down the hallway. You will close your door. You will take out the messy bun and you will slide you glasses on the side table. You will curl back under five fuzzy layers as you shut your eyes.

As always, you will go home to a million different places.

Mark

To the untrained eye, the farm looks like a hot mess.

Actually first, I must confess something. I am not working on a farm per say, but rather a chacra. I don’t even know how to describe it in English. Field, maybe? Like, think field meets untamed wilderness meets food and a few bunnies. The greenery is overwhelming. It dresses the fruit trees and sloping hill that leads to the central home with comfort and grace. I like it because it is neither clean nor neatly maintained; there is always something composting, adding to the cyclical nature of life. The chacra rests in Tiquipaya, which is a smaller town on the rural outskirts of Cochabamba. Tiquipaya is famous for growing miles of white flowers and potatoes to be later sold in the market, La Cancha (here, you really can find anything you could ever want).

The days on the chacra pass timidly and winding. Without access to Internet, I have become an obsessive daydreamer- a little splash of the past and just a pinch of the future. The rest of the time, I am happily the chacra’s bitch. To illuminate my role as ‘bitch’, here is a small taste of my myriad adventures harvesting fruit and herbs:

manzanas (apples)

A thick neon green net rests on the branches of the apple tree. I am instructed to get all of the ‘red ones’. I climb the wobbly wooden ladder with my basket in tow. As it is the season de la lluvia in Bolivia, the branches drip dollops of rain. Most of the ripe apples hang from the tallest branches, so I balance one foot on the highest rung and reach toward the sea of red. I reach, and I am so close to grabbing my first apple, so very close… The net stops me. I press harder, but my hand falls inches from the fruit. I take a deep breath, leaning my face fully into the net. My features stress in this full-fleshed half-grimace; my left eye can only open a millimeter. I lean further. I extend my right hand while swinging my left arm up to maintain my balance. At the last moment, I grab ahold of the apple. The ladder shakes harshly to the left, and in my shock, I grab a branch with my left hand. Unfortunately, I grab the branch a little too hard and so, the whole top of the tree falls toward me- pouring buckets of rainwater all over my head.

I let go of the branch. The apple slips out of my hand. Geronimo The Horse eats it.

how it will later be worth it a.k.a how it will enter my stomach: flaky apple pies, crunchy salad topping, mid-afternoon snack, warm cinnamon cider

capuli (to be explained)

Capuli are sweet tomatoes that come enclosed in yellow petals. You open the flower to find the orange fruit inside, and they grow hanging from a vividly green bush. The only way to harvest capuli is to lay flat on your stomach under the bush. It is the worst. I lay on my stomach in the mud while feeling all too vulnerable to the outside world. My head is stuck in the undercarriage of the branches as I hunt for the ripened fruit. As the cold mud seeps through my clothes, I pour the piles of fruit in my basket. I haven’t been able to exercise my perfectionist streak since my study abroad program ended back in December, and so, it makes a fierce comeback here. I squirm in the mud until every last sweet tomato makes it into the basket.

how it will later be worth it slash how it will enter my stomach: a warm capuli and carrot bread heated with melting butter drizzled on top, a capuli-banana jam, a lovely cake topper

frambuesas (raspberries)

So the raspberries demand a bit of a backstory: my family back in the States lovingly and ferociously calls me Bad Luck Aly (at DU, this name has taken off as #bla interestingly enough). I am known as Bad Luck Aly because well, my life always seems to turn out awkwardly. Just a bit off kilter. I like to think this bad luck has created a witty and attractive charm that makes me only the more irresistible- an awkward cutie pie? Maybe? No? Okay.

Anyways, I bring up Bad Luck Aly because of the raspberries. Back in December, I first fell in love with this chacra because of the endlessly expanding raspberry bushes. Raspberries are my absolute favorite. I am so hopelessly and breathlessly and permanently in love with them. Just the other day, I went with my host mother to harvest the berries and as we walked along the bushes, we came across nothing. After a half an hour of exploring through the viciously spiky vines, we finally reunited defeated. Puzzled, my host mom told me that this is the first time in 15 years that there haven’t been dozens of raspberries spreading sweetness amongst the bushes. I look down at my empty basket.

The damaging effects of climate change or Bad Luck Aly? You decide.

how it will later be worth it otherwise known as how it will enter my stomach: *tear*

oregano (um, guess.)

The most relaxing part of my work here is organizing oregano. I sit at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and my favorite playlist, pulling the leaves from the dried strands. I sing to myself while the aroma of fresh oregano grows. As I pull the oregano, I again take notice of my horrible posture. My shoulders curve deeply, so deeply that it appears I am spineless. I try to sit up straight.

Within a few minutes, my back has curved again into its horrible bend. As I pull leaves, I can’t help but see that my posture is bent like I am a walking question mark. If you were to look at me from the side, my shoulders would embody the quizzical curve, and my calves would straighten as the lower base. I walk as a question mark.

I read something recently that said life is composed of all the moments in which we try to relate with phenomena. I think the author wrote this to describe the beauty of natural phenomena, but for me, phenomena erupt in thousands of faucets. Phenomena are social and romantic and political epiphanies in life- a blurred reality in the distance. I think that we all have that phenomena we are searching for. We direct ourselves and we dream ourselves into various phenomenal spaces. And of course, we all dream of different phenomena. The phenomenal future could be an escape to the mountains or the power of change or a happy life at home. Whatever the phenomena, we all spend moments buzzing for something greater.

And while I think our searches for the phenomenal are important, I falter because we always seem to think of the phenomenal as a thing or a destination or a rupturing inner thought. When we relate with phenomena, we relate with something. We try to make something of ourselves. We place so much emphasis on defining the phenomenal as things. And I must say, that I don’t even know what my fucking phenomena are- yet, I have somehow curved under a phenomenal weight.

Maybe a lot of us have become these walking question marks. We shoulder unfathomable dreams of greatness on small spans of shoulders. We can’t breathe fully nor can we see ahead. We are so much less than what we dream to be and we are all walking question marks and no one will admit that this is very much too much to handle. It is so much that we not only walk as question marks, but also as omni-euphemisms. We try to chase these things we call phenomenal, but alone, we are forced to bundle within ourselves so that no one sees our brilliance. We shoulder uncertainty just where our voices should be screaming radiating blows of beauty.

I think we have curved because we are so caught up in finding the greatest phenomena that we forget the greatest phenomena might just exist in the people around us. We are often so driven that we envision the future phenomenally alone. I am often a walking euphemism, but you know, I want to be a confidant and a lover and a relisher in my mistakes and a little crazy and a light spun out of control.

More than anything, I want to be elation on edge.

This questionmarkcurvedtoohardbentoutofshapepressured back is overwhelming. Most times, it seems too crooked to fix. But then I realize, in the simplest shadow of my oregano, that we have the answer to all this within us. In fact, we have known the answer since we were kids. Of course we know that the best way to straighten a crooked back is to have a friend grab you around the waist and hold you tight until you hear that snap of relief. Your friend wraps their arms around you.

We know that your friend holds you as you become whole again.