Punk

I again find myself on a bus. We are five hours in, and my palms have begun to sweat as I remember that I have no idea where I am going. We pass huge expanses of rainforest, sheets of green licking valley walls in all directions. The highway is dusty and through the open windows the air turns thick. I am on my way to the Casimiro Huanca Quechua Indigenous University, traveling alone for the first time in Bolivia.

And I’ll be on my own for a month. I often hyperventilate at this realization. Well actually, I straddle two types of hyperventilation, each one threatening to take over at any given dusty turn-

Type One: GOD DAMNIT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW SPANISH AND YOU CHOSE TO GO MEET COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO ARE PROBABLY GOING TO BE SO COOL AND YOU THINK YOU’RE COOL WHEN YOU SAY ‘YOU’RE COOL LIKE A CUCUMBER’. ARE CUCUMBERS EVEN COOL?

Or Type Two, as I pause momentarily to ‘collect myself’: You came to Bolivia for an adventure, Aly. And don’t you fucking know that Aly and adventure both start with ‘A’? Isn’t that a sign? Get your shit together, loser.

So I straddle. The imaginary horse I straddle is my one strong steed of faith for my time at the university- a faith crazy enough that it just might work. A faith deliriously foolish and lavish in lunacy. It comes up in my darkest hour of hyperventilation:

Aly, you’re going to make friends.  

~

I stand in sweltering heat on the side of the road. I had begged the bus driver to tell me if this was the right stop for the university. He had grumbled some sort of throaty sniff and waved to the right. I took that as my cue.

I look up to see a taxi stand, and my heart fills with love at the thought of entering one of my beloved trufis. I drag my two backpacks and sleeping bag across the highway, dripping beads of sweat like breadcrumbs behind me. When I get to the taxi stand, I only see a series of motorcycles, or motos. I timidly ask one of the drivers if they know the best way to get to the university. He smiles and points at his moto.

I honestly believe he is kidding. I stand under the weight of my large backpacking backpack (a green monster I comically attempt to drag around with my pencil-thin noodle arms) and stare at the motorcycle. I know I am being a gringa princess, but I just think it’s physics: there’s no way a moto could really fit two people and all of my crap, right?

He grabs the backpack and throws it on the motorcycle, apparently deciding that the world has no time for my princessness. I breathe slowly and then hectically put all of my faith into this man’s motorcycle. I squeeze into the narrow space between the driver and my bag and clutch my other things tightly. Another driver tells me that I must hold onto to my large backpack, so I nervously stretch myself over the back of the moto. I lace one arm through the straps of my bag, put my small backpack around my neck and wrap my final limb around the waist of the driver.

The motorcycle leaps forward and all of a sudden wind is rushing. I scramble to plant my feet for balance and look up to see the highway caressed by sprawling canopy. I look behind me to see rows of semi-trucks rushing forward.

And even though I am scared as hell on my very first motorcycle ride, this becomes one of those moments where I can only say to life: Oh fuck yeah.

~

I chose to come to the university because I was entranced by its view on education. In the wake of centuries of colonization under the Spanish Empire, decades of violent oppression under US-funded dictatorships and years spent enduring Reagan’s horrifically cruel War on Drugs, Bolivia is now beginning to recuperate its indigenous knowledge, culture and identity. The three indigenous universities were established as centers of community learning. They offer coursework in indigenous languages and offer practical majors that will encourage students from rural areas to return to their communities in order to enact projects of change for both people and the environment. I have spent my whole life huddled in a desperate love affair with education, so I decided to fall in love once again at the university. I spend my first week attending classes, roaming the university’s forested campus and shamelessly trying to make friends (like, actually very aggressively forcing myself and my unbundled personality on a myriad of unsuspecting strangers). It’s been an adventure.

But now I sit in my hotel room weeping. Hard.

I haven’t wept like this in a long time. I am split open, cracked raggedly and relentlessly. I cry waterfalls and let the pain excavate through me, leaving me erect on the linoleum chair. I am shaking, pulling my eyes tight and breathing large, half-leashed gasps. This is when I get scared. I’ve never undone myself without the subconscious comfort that someone is waiting for me in the next room. And now I sit in this sticky heat in a hotel room very very far away from home, and I am scared. 

I know this sounds alarming. And I know that this blog is supposed to be quaint stories of my time abroad. I know that to you, I could be just a girl you knew in high school. To you, I could be an old lab partner, a dear friend, a friendly wave on campus, a sister, or a daughter. I know that you just might care about me and that this sounds alarming. So here, I offer you, whoever you are, this: my story ends in spectacular happiness. Warm and steady, it ends in happiness.

The sadness that overcomes me is an accumulation of various moments that have passed during my time abroad. But I attribute the final cracking to two people: Peter Pan and the Universe.

I sit crying with the final page of Peter Pan open on my lap. Now, the novel has its problems (namely strong racist sentiments and a rigid dependence on patriarchal gender roles), but I am taking away its thoughts on growing up. Peter Pan has a horribly sad ending. Wendy leaves Neverland with her brothers and the Lost Boys and grows up. She gets married and she becomes a mother. Peter, the forever boy, continues to visit as Wendy grows up- hopelessly in awe of her. But one day, when Wendy is all grown up, he comes and she tells him that she can never go to Neverland again. She is a woman now. Peter collapses in tears, screaming that he is so angry and confused that Wendy had decided to grow up and leave him.

You could say I am also facing a crisis about growing up. Honestly, I haven’t really thought about my life after Bolivia. As a young girl, I dreamt of middle school, and then I dreamt of high school. I made all my feverish dreams about college and finally I dreamt of making it to South America (I have always been so immensely privileged to be able to dream). But now it’s all stopped. Of course I have passions and hopes and vague ideas about my future, but they don’t take any formal shape, and I am not ready for them. And Peter Pan is supposed to be a wonderful boy and now he is crying too because he lost someone to the age-old epidemic of growing up. I am overcome by romanticized nostalgia- she greets me with a big friendly wave and tells me to come back. But I am already spiraling, every moment and every minute closer to the future that I cannot picture.

Nostalgia is met by my ruthless self-criticism and an open ‘fuck you’ to the Universe. I chose to come to Bolivia because I wanted to experience a paradigm shift. I wanted to understand the world differently- to shed light on dusty corners that are violently abandoned- but I forgot to take into account how deeply I feel things. I have seen my paradigm shift, but where others can see problems with the world and remove them to a safe distance (using their newfound understanding to harden a revolutionary resolve), I tremble while I fill my heart with them, pouring until I overflow. I picture the Universe as this kind of punk kid. He leans back in his chair with his hands clutched at the base of his neck, resting his heavy spiked boots on my heart. Sometimes this kid has his moments; he laughs and he grins and he sits back just enjoying life. During these slivers of punk-rocked sunshine, I feel elation too. But then in other moments, he becomes cold, throwing his chair to the ground and kicking a striking blow to my heart. It’s here that I become undone and scream: WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE TO SO MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD? All of my breath leaves in gasps. To this, he responds wickedly by dragging me through all of my imperfect memories, my darkest mistakes. I am left churning in reconsiderations of my own happiness.

I think it’s the heat that eventually calms me down. I can no longer tell the difference between tears and sweat, so I stop and wipe it all away. I am left with a thudding feeling, somewhere between raw and utterly hard-boiled. I realize I have been sitting in my hotel room for hours. I need to do something. I nudge the Universe awake (he’s been snoozing dreamily this whole time) and tell him we are going on a walk.

But I have already made several laps around the town’s main plaza and feel like I need something more. I pause. After a moment, it comes to me. I decide to do something so completely cliché, not even pausing to relish in the laughable douchness of my impulse.

I grab my copy of Eat, Pray, Love and rush out in search of a tub of ice cream, smiling a goddamn grin the whole way out the door.

~

I sit reading Eat, Pray, Love in the plaza while stuffing mounds of sweetness into my mouth and into my heart. A few days earlier, I had fallen during a game of soccer on campus. My wound was kind of oozing and now small buzzing insects were feasting on it. I didn’t even care because I was eating ice cream and reading about Elizabeth Gilbert’s first pizza experience in Italy. I had kicked my punk Universe out for the moment. Told him to go for a walk.

After about an hour of reading, my attention starts to wane. I start wading in and out of daydreams, kind of wishing the Universe would come back now as I meet my first itches of loneliness. I lean back and decide to nap for a bit. I try to be one with the wind.

Just as I begin to drift off, I feel the shadow of someone standing over me. I wink one eye open and see Deborah. I met Deborah a few days ago, and she quickly became one of my closest friends at the university.

“I’ve been looking for you,”, she smiles.

And I can’t even begin to tell you how good it felt to be found.

~

My time here has mostly been characterized by small and plentiful highs. Maybe it’d be good to share a few. I know I got a little intense there, so if you’re still here, I’d like to thank you for sticking with me. You are really sexy.

Okay, well. To start, the campus and the residence halls at the university are separated by a large expanse of forest. I walk through the forest every day and have found a small wooden desk nuzzled in all the greenery. It is all so hauntingly beautiful, and I am so lucky to wander through it in my day-to-day life.

Next. The food at the residence hall legit rocks. The other day I was eating warm arroz con leche and chuleta, which is a T-bone steak over rice. I was trying to cut through the steak with a spoon and was completely failing. My friend Elizabeth had already eaten her steak to bits and was now licking the bones clean. I attacked my steak even harder, spurting piles of rice all over my shirt. Elizabeth took my plate from me and promptly began to cut my steak into small pieces. I felt like a toddler. A hot-mess toddler. She handed it back, and I was so thankful and also kind of in awe of her magic because I mean, how the hell did she just cut that steak?

Then, I just need to tell the world how completely lovely my advisor Evelyn is. She is one of the most intelligent and caring people I have ever met. During my first few nights at the university, she let me stay in her room. I had only met her once before, and yet, she let me, sweaty and crazed after that motorcycle ride, stay in her home. As I slept that first morning, Evelyn woke up at the crack of dawn. I heard her soft morning sounds and continued to doze. When she left the room, she pulled another blanket over me, tucking me in and smoothing my hair back. Evelyn, you deserve all of my millions of thank you’s.

And finally, I have found a group of friends through one of the classes I have been attending. I ate dinner with them the other night, and after, my friends Rolly and Paola offered to drive me back to my hotel on their motorcycle. The three of us climbed onto the moto and then Rolly rushed us onto the dark highway. I looked up for the first time to see a breathtaking expanse of stars. The sight of them smacked me hard in the chest. They hit my heart so hard that I could only raise my hands high in the wind. In this moment, I appreciated, loved, ogled, basked, bathed, admired, breathed in… Yes, that’s the word!

I breathed in the Universe.