Ocean Drive

Sometime its holiday blues, and sometimes its PMS, and sometimes its the neverending roller coaster of living in a foreign country. But it seems important to me to give some airtime to to the darker moments. The time when my way of being awkward, ill-coordinated, impatient, loud, anxious, long-winded, seemingly snobby (although I almost never mean to be), or self destructive (although its never anything grave, mostly gratuitous eating) rear up to form a picture of someone for whom I have little patience or affection. In New York, these times could be attributed to situation, job stress, and press of living in the city. Here, speaking Spanish everyday, doing this thing I had in mind for years, often alleviates these demons. Everywhere is real, palpable evidence that I can extend beyond my boundaries, cultivate relationships across cultures, handle quotidian and existential challenges. And I can laugh at myself and say well this thing or that thing I am just going to fuck up and that will be fine. No harm done. But your brain follows you on your travels, carrying in its suitcase its same learned habits, and screens and filters and occasional downward spirals.

And living outside of your tierra aggravates it too. Just when everything is sublime and wonderful, the tide changes and you can´t communicate with someone when you think you should be able to, or you don´t understand why something works out the way it does, but decide its better not to ask. Today I found myself being extremely new yorkish, first at the cab stand in front of the Supermaxi, losing my patience with a man who tried to take my cab, and then unsuccessfully trying to antagonize my landlady for giving me my power bills at completely irregular intervals. Then I turned my antagonism on myself by going to my first salsa class since April, on the excuse that I am supposed to be going dancing in Guayaquil for my birthday, which opened the field for self-castigation along the lines above.

And I know from long experience that the respite is not hard to come by. Drinks with a friend, a new shirt, a distracting book, a good journal entry all usually do the trick. Sometimes just sleeping it off or letting my hormones readjust makes all the difference. The sun comes out or my period comes and I´m quirky, smart, provocative, and well-travelled again.

We all have little heartbreaks that we never recover from entirely, whether its a family member, or a lover, or a life circumstance that didn´t go the way we wanted it to. And embracing the sadness that sometimes comes from them is, I suppose, part of the fun of it all. Lucinda Williams says, If we live in a world without tears, how would scars find skin to etch themselves into?...How would broken find the bone?

PS. Fabulous Ecuadorian souvenir for the reader who correctly determines the musical reference in the title line!! Anyone can play!