But I shan't dally on that now. Instead, I'll let you know, for my Lima peeps, that I have indeed returned--to the blog and to the land which birthed me as an almost full-time blogger--not only to see if Lima and I are in fact a good fit, but also to work as a volunteer at an NGO. Doing what, you might ask? Why, teaching creative writing and English, what else? I know, I know, I'm becoming a horrible cliche of a young American (speaking of which)
That song has absolutely nothing to do with today's post, I know . . .Anywhom, so I'm becoming a caricature of a 20-something-year-old American kid enamored with Latin America, so the eff what? These narratives, which eventually become cliche after enough time, exist for a reason. It's true that everyone should strive to blaze his/her own path, but to do that you gotta figure out which paths already exist. Otherwise how will you ever learn where traps lay, or what paths are just gigantic circles of self-destruction? Ultimately, some paths lead you up, some lead you down, but most contain their fair share of quicksand, piles of poop, and shady characters offering to be your guide for a price you'd rather not pay--or a price you end up paying without realizing it until you're lost, sitting under a tree and counting the seconds till the sun rises again.
Have I won you back yet? Will you forgive me for my long, unexcused absence? Will you once again accompany me on this unpaved, bumpy road which runs between the blogging world and the real world? I hope so, for, as anyone who's ever taken a road trip knows, you lose your mind in a matter of hours without anyone to talk to and keep you company. On to one more thing before I seal this post with a poem (as I am want to do) I'm going to start trying to incorporate a little more music in the blog because I love indie rock, and I think the world should love it, too. In that vein, here's new group from South Carolina called Tennis. That's all the intro I'll give them, and leave you with this note: if you buy their album you can joke to people "I love playing Tennis" (boom).
The name of their debut album is Cape Dory, and it's awesome, and it's fun, and if you're in Lima, it's perfect summer music, and if you're in the US, it's perfect music to make you forget that you're freezing half to death. So enjoy.
To close, as some of you are aware, I took a poetry writing class this last semester at school. I'll spare you the story of the whole semester or drafts and rewrites and, instead, leave you with probably the two most impactful things my professor said all semester: 1) make it strange, and 2) (this a little more profound) most writers are like baseball pitchers, you just have to be good enough to throw a baseball in or around an area to get strikeouts. But poets, poets are like knife throwers with language; a poet has to be absolutely perfect with his/her words, otherwise someone might end up dead. Chilling, I know. So here's hoping I don't kill anyone with my stray words:
Does Anyone Still Take Pictures With Film? They Don’t? Then This Memoir is Untitled, for Now.
To my mom and dad,
from whom I inherited my identity and
subsequent crisis
Love,
Your Son
Speaking Spanish is a lot like
making love—no, because my parents never would
have taught me anything like that—
it’s more like dancing,
which, I guess, is like making love in public,
showing everyone how majestically
my body can recreate itself, like a hand
waving hello and goodbye,
as though it could juggle time
all by itself. In vain, I
tried to preserve those recreations,
esas imagenes—sorry, those images
—which disappeared when the music
stopped, like heat rising
from the floor, aimless. I opened
my eyes, then, and
realized all that remained
of those images was
what I could hold
in my hands.
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