The time came when eyelids were heavy with titles, paragraphs and things that wanted to be transfered from the eyeballs' hard drive to virtual paper. It all became a whilrwind, spreading to my forehead, making it frown. Oh, the weight of ideas! It can become a burden if we don't give them wings!
I wasn't exactly sure where or when to start, until I ran into a blog called Tea and Cookies. To be more precise, into this particular post, Stalking Wonder: Farewell to 7th Avenue.
In this entry, the author talks about a flat in San Francisco where she lived a meaningful life for several years. Her story made this place human to my eyes, and brought up how strong the sense of belonging can be. Attachment (or devotion or fondness or crush), a malaise I used to thing—blind, selfish eyes, eh?—only Hispanics suffered, showed up in my mind, oozing with purpose. We need to have crushes, don't we? Isn't nostalgia a beautiful thing?
I understood every single word she wrote not with my brain, but with my heart. I felt that apartment was "someone" who embraced her with warm light and significant routines. I loved the tales about the clusters of happenings, feelings and elements that made a previous chapter of her life so important to her.
The author is now moving to Seattle.
I have moved twice in my life. The first time, I moved to Atlanta; the second time to Seattle.
Writings that give me watery eyes are challenging, and can be hard to digest. I like to cry because it always grants me a release, whilst watery eyes only show up to hold emotions like glue onto thy spirit. ¡Qué vaina! is what a good Venezuelan would say whenever something cannot be stopped. I wish I could stuff myself inside a washer machine, put on the strongest cycle and come out relieved, no stains, no emotions just ready for a new wear.
Some times, I feel I cannot let go of my own place, the one I would talk about just as the Tea and Cookies author talks about the 7th Avenue flat.
My place is Caracas, my hometown, my first love and one of my toughest ones, too.
I dislike the current political establishment in my country. For me, Venezuela's agony goes beyond political preferences or tendencies. Venezuela's illnesses nowadays are all preceded by the word "lacking". The word "vocation" is one that has fell into disuse. Work mystique has been substituted by the easier acts of corruption. A fervent sect of “yes men" (and women) are the ones entitled with “merits”. Nets of lies sorround every corner of the country.
While Venezuela is crumbling down, government officials cozy up in their Versace coats and use Louis Vuitton products as the quintessential pendula of the Venezuelan new "bourgeoisie".
I was one of those who preferred to flee the country instead of having an "eye level" view of what is happening there.
"Smart girl!"
"You lucky b*tch!"
"Get out of here before it gets worse!"
"Traitor!"
"I will never abandon my country like you did!"
Get the point? These eyes were called plenty of names, but they were praised as well. Very puzzling.
I also had another very good reason: I was always scared. I decided to leave my country two years after being kidnapped along a group of friends. I’ll spare the details of a very frightening experience. It left a scar for life.
When planning my move to Atlanta, the urgency to leave surprised me. I wasn't looking back or to the sides, my eyes were pointing up and forward. I sat in the airplane were my condition of "I have lived here since I was born" was lost. My hands wanted to clap rabidly. I was trembling with excitement and I couldn't put my hands together other than to rub the nervousness away.
The American Dream wasn't such at first. Nothing happened the way I visualized it.
The Atlanta book has two very well defined chapters. The first one tells the story of some happy moments, but it describes gloomy and long periods of my sorry self-sitting on a couch, crying my extremely foreign eyes out for hours.
As soon as I put a home together in Atlanta, I knew I was going to miss the one I left behind; this one wasn't going to live up to it. I wasn't running into friends at the grocery store; there were not "after work" coffee encounters with girlfriends; there weren't any fun wedding parties until 6AM, followed by a sleepy, drunk breakfast at an arepera.
My chest began to ache like it had a blister inside. In Atlanta, I couldn't spot the Ávila mountain (on my photo above) anymore; the chocolate didn't taste as good; I couldn't find the Venezuelan adobo I liked to cook from scratch. Family was no longer across the street. The umbilical cord was stretched to a point where the pain was unbearable, but I wasn't ready to cut it.
After two years of yearning for my land and amidst a failing marriage, I decided to spend some time in Caracas. What triggered this was an experience that I will always consider one of the best of my life: spending six weeks taking creative writing classes at The University of Iowa.
In Iowa City, I finally became bilingual. I also learned how to walk a city, shook handsome Michael Cunningham's hand after some chit-chatting, had the pleasure of meeting one of my favorite poets, Marvin Bell, and bought a ticket home. A+ for myforeingeyes!
I came back with hundreds of pages written. However, the best I brought back from Iowa, was the willingness to move forward again.
What was initially a plan of three months in Caracas became a whole year, one of the best I have to remember. I went back being a little more balanced. I ran away from political discussions. I found a job that paid nothing but fulfilled me to the point of making me feel like a hot air balloon on crack. And I made friends that are still close, and some that are no longer in my life.
I was free. I was happy to work overtime. I felt love. I went through a couple of unforgettable Platonic love heartbreaks. I began my academic training as a documentary photographer and, through the photos I made, I got to be properly introduced to my country and to my fellow Venezuelans.
Gallivating in my own country, with a camera and a brain bursting with words and a heart full of love became the main goal in my life. For a year, I defeated the fear I felt before I left the first time. Only then, I enjoyed every centimeter, every color and every bite of Caracas.
I stared at its seething and sticky streets for hours, sitting in traffic. I sniffed loud and shamelessly to get high with the array of street food aromas. The smell of arepas, empanadas, pale Polar beer, hot dogs and chicha blended together in steamy swirls, and calories that never reached my thighs. I danced those off, spinning around with wonderful salsa dance partners, and cheerful friends; we sang along the vallenato song of the moment, Vivo en el Limbo; our throats were lubed up with rum drinks, oh, my darling Venezuelan rum, my lovely Venezuelan beer; then, exhausted and ready to rest a few hours before heading to work, we wolfed down Reina Pepiadas, on a brief 2AM breakfast that also served as an anticipated cure for a hangover.
I felt in love with Caracas again. I saw it was possible to have responsibility and fun together. It was easy to forget I had obligations back in Atlanta. But in the 50/50 assignment to end up a marriage, that was the part of my job at my first divorce.
Begging family members asked me to try to rebuild my marriage. I agreed, even thought I knew the pieces no longer matched. Erosion shaped those in ways that made them impossible to fall into place. When this reality hit me, a plan A showed up in the form of a second chapter for the Atlanta story. I decided to go to Art School and pursue a Master in Fine Arts in Photography.
Less than a year later, and halfway one of the most challenging experiences of my life (art school is hard), we called it quits. I took the first step. He gladly helped me to wrap up. Nothing was left to save.
It hurt. Freedom became a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding. As much as I was ready to walk away, every step I took to get away tore my flesh. It seemed I was being hold by a hook while I couldn’t stop myself and a sharp end was ripping skin, muscles and heart.
I discovered divorce isn’t necessarily about being “in love” or “love dies” or “I will never love again”. It is a far more complicated issue.
The reason that a year later made me move to Seattle was already in the picture. It came into my life like refreshing oxygen, and helped me to keep going with a rather crazy, speedy and slightly confusing year. I thought life was good. Add this to the time spent in Caracas—and a photographic trip to Southeast Asia in between— and I was swelled up and ready to sail the Sound.
The first time I came to Seattle, I couldn't stop feeling my ears burning with excitement. Fours days were enough for me to become head-over-heals for it. It was overwhelming. Good kind. The excitement stayed (and is still around) but transformed into avid curiosity. Only a year later, the only place I haven't been to in the Seattle are is Mercer Island. Anywhere else within 100 miles around have seen these eyes.
I think I could call myself a Seattleite. I am granted the honor by longing for the sight of Mt. Rainier; or my love for that moment when the ferry approaches the city; because the sound of coffee beans being grinded are a language to me; because now I can bare the coldness of the city lakes' waters; or rejoice in the generous, selfless ways many kitchens in Seattle use to source their ingredients. I will always have the long Seattle Summer days, and the breeze of the Sound in my visual and tactile memories.
Become unforgettable, colors and textures of every Farmer's Market around town!
Sadly, the Seattle book was conceived as a compilation of memories and memorabilia that now are spread on the floor everywhere, broken. Oh, well, the Seattle book might have a very different end. No one tells us that in fairy tales, the “happily ever after” is just a factor that can or cannot show up. One cannot anticipate that there is also a “what went wrong” element lingering around as well.
The reason I moved to Seattle no longer exists.
Love lives, dies, grows or disappears. I wish I could say it has grown or died for me. It ran aground onto involution. Now, when I think about what love is, the only way I can describe it is as a 5x5 dark, asphyxiating room, where oppressive and dusty air fills my lungs with asthma.
As of today, I am not sure I will stay in Seattle. Many poignant, and most likely painful decisions have to be made. I might end up back in Caracas again. At this point in my life, my eyes will be foreign there, too. Wherever I go now, I will be a foreigner for some time. The feeling of home keeps slipping away through my fingers. I feel the turns and bumps I have had to endure have made me a city orphan. It seems I cannot find my way to become a city's daughter. Or maybe I have.
Misty eyes always dry. I am 20/20 chica, granted with a gift in the talent of these eyes. I just have to look at some smiles in my photos. I only have to replay the conversations with my subjects. I have a wonderful system of support everywhere, anywhere. Seattle friends are new, but they are golden light.
If I have to go, it’ll be sad. But I will think about it as Rosie Thomas says in her song Much Farther To Go (click to listen).
"I have much farther to go
Everything is new and so unpredictable
I should just kick my heels together and go home
But I'm not sure where that is anymore."
In the meantime, Seattle, I’ll keep my foreign eyes wide open to report any lovely happening, image, delight or custom worth talking about.
