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.  

Tea

I am nose-to-nose with Geronimo, my ‘gateway animal’.

I palm a peach, cupping all its bruises between my wrinkled lifelines. I edge closer and take a deep breath. Geronimo The Horse is the self-induced beginning of my journey to love animals. I like him because he mirrors splattered art- a flank of poured white patches and a deep cream brushstroke down his nose. I edge a little closer. My eyelashes flirt together the tiniest bit as fear squirms my face into a nervous grimace. I meet his nose with my peach, and he breathes warmth into my hands. Then he licks it.

I jump back as he grabs the last bit of the fruit, and I am gasping. He slurps on the juice while I retreat to the swing. My calves huddle in the tall grass as I watch him; we are getting better at this. The other day I went with my host mother, Claudia, and Geronimo to climb a mountainside in search of wild mushrooms. This was no hiking trail. It was steep and rocky and rugged at the seams. Geronimo followed us boldly, learning to place his hooves in strategic places. After we reached the edge of our property (70 freshly picked wild mushrooms in tow), Geronimo froze at the small canal of water. He is only a year old and has not learned to jump. When I saw Geronimo scatter back in fear, I felt a pang of something. I remember being shocked at myself: was I feeling empathy for this horse?

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of empathy. When I was traveling back home from La Paz the other week, my friend Evelyn started that she believes empathy may not exist. A professor once told her that it is impossible for empathy to exist. We may feel pain at the pain of others, but it is nearly always a manifestation of our own memories. It’s just like that one time. Or, it’s basically the same as this. It is impossible for us to know other contexts, and so the best we can do is refracture our own pain into attempts at comfort- incomplete and uneasy.

Of course, this theory leaves us both unnerved. No one likes to think that there might be limits on the power of love- it’s supposed to be infinite. A world without empathy reminds me of a theory in the field of international relations. The realist theory argues that states in the international system act as indistinguishable black boxes; each box will inevitably be entrenched in conflict with other states as each state only exists to preserve its own interests. Empathy does not exist in the anarchy of the international system.

I reduce the international system down to reflections of my own experience in Bolivia. So many times I relied on something like empathy to navigate the new environment, loving and listening and challenging and laughing and loving and dancing and splintering with new people in this new place. I don’t want to think that was all under false pretenses. And yes, I also know that I will need something like empathy when I go home again in just a few short weeks. It’s facing home again that demands the deepest empathy. Our smiles will be the same, but the tongues that press harshly against the backs of our teeth will hold new stories. In preparation, I have started to pack my mental boxes: a few things to be shared right away, a lot to be revealed over time and a small knapsack to keep burrowed in my heart. I think of home, and I can only picture everyone wanting their stories and their changed souls and their indignant rage about the Universe to reign the most infamous. Will it be impossible to see the change in others, to let people into my new closets- to empathize?

I’ve heard the saddest loneliness is when you are surrounded by people who love you, yet you can only seem to breathe the burning silence beneath short conversations. Are we all just destined to be black boxes? We will bump into each other every once in a while, feign interest in each other’s struggle for a just a moment before dissolving back into our own daydreams?

I am thinking of home. More importantly, I am thinking of you.  

No, we may never be empathetic, but we can try a little something. I want to try something with you because I am beautiful and you are beautiful and you, you are beauty and I am estranged by your beauty, and I think that you are so lovely. I hope to awake in your loveliness, and I know that I might sit there and only appear close- I know that my closeness may never be real because I may never understand you, but I am not moving. I am here in the fire with you. I do not understand, I will never understand, but I will be burned with you- we will have different scars, but I will burn with you because together we are so beautiful. I will taste your tears and I will summit with your ecstasy, and I will never know you, I will never get you. You are staggering beauty and I, I am trying to be staggering beauty. And we will leave with different battle scars, yours may be ragged and deep and mine might be so superficial, but there will be rotting tissue shared between us. Because we, we are beautiful. If it comes to this, if you ever truly need someone, I know that it might be scary. I know that I will probably never understand. I am here, as open as I can be. I have left my door ajar ever so slightly. Just turn the knob a little to the right.

I have left a cup of tea warming on the stove for you.

Snap

For those of you that know me, the image of me working on a farm is actually quite comical. In high school, we were always told there were two kinds of people: athletes and non-athletes. Okay yes, this is a generalization but just roll with it for a second. We were told there was a grand division between those who had an affinity for some sort of ball-handling and those who, well, maybe should just stick to reading and pottery. However, I am here to make the case that we have been forgetting all about a crucial third category of people- the people who refused to relent their individuality to the tragic conformity of high school stereotypes, instead embracing the fullness of their own spirit? No. Of course not. Get your head out of your ass.

The third category of people is obviously: “the-awkward-girls-who-pretend-to-be-athletes-due-to-their-throbbing-inner-pefectionist-and-a-religious-devotion-to-the-very-true-events-of-She’s the Man-and/or-Bend it like Beckham-but-who-actually-have-neither-athletic-ability-nor-really-even-basic-human-coordination”.

I am the third category (surprise). I have tried to be an athlete my whole life. I played basketball, soccer, tennis and even swimming (can you ‘play’ swimming?). Most importantly, I lettered in academics my first year of high school and ordered a soccer patch for my jacket to make it seem like I had actually lettered in sports. I did everything so right! I just didn’t have any talent.

This brings us back to my current life on the farm. I don’t have any physical talent here either. My head and my body just aren’t connected that way. If someone were to psychoanalyze me, they might say something like: Aly has a deep fear of vulnerability and a rigid control issue that prevents her body from moving with liberty… Also, we can conclude that this is definitely why she is single and will remain single long after humankind has gone extinct due to the over-growth of foot fungus. But actually the truth is that my center of gravity is at my forehead, not in my hips. I am a walking cranium, which makes me damn good with flashcards but really not that great with manual labor (nor, probably, in bed).

I think everyone has those things that they love but just don’t have a natural gift for. There is a big difference between loving something and ‘being at one’ with something. To be at one with something, I really believe the stars must align to give you a little bit of natural talent. It should fit like your favorite sweater: soft with a little room for growth. For example, here is a list of things I love but absolutely suck at:

·      The aforementioned category of ‘athletics’

·      Writing the letter ‘k’

·      Going to the beach (in the words of my mother, I just “don’t look good wet”)

·      Paint-by-Numbers

·      Being nice

·      Bacon

·      Walking

Now, in contrast, here is a list of things I feel I am ‘at one with’:

·      Cliteracy (no, this is not an ‘academic term’ for masturbation* you weirdo. Go look it up.)

·      Binge-watching Ally McBeal

·      Being in love Watching others be in love/third-wheeling

·      Crying while eating ice cream

·      Cheese

·      Coffee-shops (like, you’re around people but you don’t actually have to talk to anyone)

·      Unsweetened black iced tea

And just because I am kind of having fun making lists, here is a list of the things I hate:

·      Cam Welch

I don’t know if I will ever feel at one with life on the farm. This morning I was walking into my bedroom when a hummingbird followed me and flew toward the window, thinking it was another way outside. She ran into the glass but couldn’t figure out how to turn around and make it out of the windowsill. I am absolutely petrified of birds and all around apathetic to their well-being; I ran to find my host sister so that I later would not be considered an accomplice in murder. She entered my room and grabbed a towel as she headed toward the window. She was going to hold the hummingbird and take her to the door to let her go. This is how it went down:

Miri, the bird-whispering host sister, approaches the bird: “Tranquila. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Me, in my head: “THE BIRD IS LITERALLY GOING TO MURDER YOU.”

Miri, the bird-whispering host sister, holds the bird and pets its head: “Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”

Me, in my head: “SHE HAS BEADY DEVIL EYES AND DESERVED TO DIE.”

Me, in real life: “Thank you for everything. I am so happy she is safe.”

Miri, the bird-whispering host sister, lets the hummingbird go and the bird flies up only to get stuck in the roof: “Oh no! Pobrecita, I’ll go get her!”

Me, in my head: “JUST LEAVE HER ROTTING BODY. SHE GOT HERSELF INTO THIS.”

Me, in real life: “You’re right! We’ve got to do something!”

The point of this little anecdote? Yes, Miri did successfully rescue the hummingbird, but the point is that Miri is someone who is at one with the farm. She emanates this kind of compassion and service, while I might have some things to work on. 

I do love it though. The other day, I harvested crops for the first time. My first harvest was potatoes, which was so fitting, as the papa is a key cornerstone of Bolivian culture. After my partner Paulino uprooted the potatoes, I dropped to my knees to collect them into a basket. As I fell to my knees and grabbed my first potato from the earth, I was overcome by emotion- wonder bubbling with an ecstatic relief. There was something so profound about the fact that I was holding a small golden potato in my hand. I realized this was the first time I had ever worked with my hands. I felt like I knew something that I had never known before.

One of my favorite things about the Spanish language is that there are two words for ‘to know’: saber and conocer. Saber is to know information, things or facts. Do you know the answer to the question? Sí, sé la respuesta. On the other hand, conocer is to know places and people. It is to know lives. I love that the Spanish language distinguishes between knowing things and knowing people, places and experiences because these types of knowledge are so profoundly different. To know things? Well, that is to memorize or to compute. But to know people and places and lives? That is to go home again. It is to be overwhelmed. To listen torrentially as love makes its way through your most guarded maze of ear canals. To bare yourself open to the carving of a new magnetic North within you. To love and to never even begin to be able to describe the way you are feeling.

And if you are beginning to know new people and a new place and new lives all at once? Then I say you must be at a dinner table. I have vagabonded my way through many families during my time abroad. I have worked to know a lot of people and places and lives in Chile, Peru and Bolivia. For me, the best moments always happened at the dinner table. It’s where the three profundities meet: people are all together, they are in the epicenter of their home and for the moment, their lives have all converged. Today, I was at the dinner table with my new host family on the farm. I was listening to their conversation, happy that I was keeping up with the fast pace of Spanish. However, just as I felt truly confident in my understanding of the conversation, my listening was interrupted by my host mom catapulting an olive at my host father’s head as she screamed something in German. My host sister started laughing so hard she literally burped up her strawberry pie. I swore we had just been talking about the rain. So, if I had to pick a snapshot of the moment where things started to shift with my relationship in this family, if I had to flutter a shot of a moment to string alongside my millions of little memories that are beginning to yellow in the caverns of my mind, that would be my snapshot. 

And with this snapshot, I think I know something now that I didn’t know before.

(*I do not mean to say that women should feel ashamed for masturbating. I actually believe that the dramatic difference between the public’s celebration of male masturbation and its disgust with female masturbation is a damaging consequence of outdated and harmful gender expectations. This is a feminist issue. I digress.)