To Ale: Why I Would Teach Anywhere, Not Elsewhere

I teach because I want the future to know about the lies. First, that none of us are, or ever have been “vessels of knowledge” or “sponges.” That the world is not a dichotomous, monotonous seesaw (Thank God). It is not a timeline of events, an equation that you can solve or a hypothesis you can test and prove. I teach you, my students, because I wish to help you see that success is not a number. Failure is not a letter. A percentage is not your value and a grade is not your worth. According to me, your English teacher, The Oxford English Dictionary is wrong; the very terms “success” and “failure” are empty cages until you conjure up in them your own definitions and free them like Angelounian birds into an open sky.

Self-acceptance will take you galaxies farther in life than any college acceptance letter. I teach to affirm your sneaky suspicion that the proverbial “real world” everyone’s talking about won’t be any LESS real because you don’t define it by what you own, the job title you hold, or whether or not you have a master’s degree, a spouse, or a business card.

I teach to unravel our world as a Jackson Pollock painting—a chaotic torrent of possibility, silenced only by ignorance and indifference. I teach to CRUSH indifference. Let us inhabit this world of not multiple, but INFINITE choice. I wish for you, my students, to experience the beautifully terrifying vibrant anomaly of a life that you create from the ashes of your own disasters. I confess, I am greedy to witness the journey as you willingly crash into this anomaly each day, with open arms, sweat on your brow, and reckless resilience.

I want to give you these messages:

1. Don’t fear the mysteries beyond you. Join them.
2. At the end of the day questions taste better than answers, wonder outweighs knowing, and education outgrows classrooms, graduations, nationalities, among other things.
Oh, and 3. Please, wander without guilt in as many directions as possible.

No matter what they tell you, wandering is progress.
I repeat: Wandering is progress.

And even when “the real world” says I’m wrong
And if your exam score says you’ve failed
Remember this: Wandering is progress and we walk together.

Every Time I Died

It started like this—a perfectly comfortable Thursday afternoon. The sun had neatly tucked the shadows of the buildings into their drawers in the side streets. In a similar fashion, my aching uncertainties had retreated to the unfelt corners of my mind.

The leaves of the trees lining the sidewalk kept calling my eyes upward. Their multitudes undulated in soft layered waves pulled by the tides of their tiny intimate dances. The sky was ecuatorial blue. It painted every mind below it with existential pondering. Nobody under a sky like that was thinking about doing laundry or stirring the rice on the stovetop. Nobody that day was worried about arriving late for a meeting or dripping watermelon juice onto a white dress shirt. Nobody was thinking about the traffic of the city or the light turning green as you crossed the street. Like so many others under that sky, I was reveling in my own internal gallery of rich memories and blissful nostalgic flavors. I wandered through fragments of my life’s landscapes and laughter—so many poignant flames, so much heartbreak, and so much more joy. It’s what a person hopes to be pondering in the precise moment in which it all hits the wall. Or a speeding sports car.

In an instant, my thoughts shattered like glass against the realization that the warmth spreading around me was my own blood departing from my body. I had never seen so much of it like that. It was the most sacred, heavy shade of crimson. The weathered traffic light swayed ever so slightly above me, backed by the blue. My earbuds were still muting out everything except the music. Devotchka, fittingly was playing “Dearly Departed.” I was paralyzed but I was not afraid, nor distraught. Arms folded around my broken body. A face appeared over me. “J?” “Oh my God, Kali” she stammered. “J, what…what are you doing here?” J, one of my best friends since high school, she was living in Florida at the time. She cried over me, rocking me like a baby. She was wearing a beautiful flowing yellow dress. I watched the blood creep slowly into the fabric. “J…You are going to ruin that dress…” She smiled and whispered, “Well, you know…yellow isn’t my color anyway.” I smiled with her, noticed the way her long shiny dark hair slid off her shoulders lock by lock as it always had. Her smile transported me a moment of shaking laughing fits one summer day years back as we laid sunning on a river rock, up above the Ohiopyle falls. The details escaped me, but the perfection of her laughter and the memory of the water pulling around us was the last memory before the last breath.

I opened my eyes. It was Sunday. The sunlight through my bedroom window lit up the thousands of tiny dust particles drifting about the room. My face was streamed with tear-trails. How many times I had had the dream. It always started with the same blue sky. It was always the same song. The same traffic light at the same intersection I crossed daily on 12 de Octubre Avenue.

Only one part of the dream ever changed—the person who rushed to my side as I lay helplessly on the pavement. Over a period of two weeks, I had dreamt the dream six times that I could recall. It had been J, a child with a wind-swept face I met one day while hiking near Lago Quilatoa. It had been a forbidden, unrequited lover who I loved silently, in solitude since the first day we spoke. It had been a generous woman I met in Manuel Antonio beach in Costa Rica when I was sixteen who shared her lunch and gave me her business card for her shop in Antigua, Guatemala called “The Flying Pig.” It had been my brother, Ty, who took his life ten years ago. It had been Luis, a young boy who lived in the sheet metal hut across from my house in my village in El Salvador. Six dreams, six rescuers crying with me, holding me, from different times, locations, durations within my life. Some hummed, some spoke, some gazed at me silently but with each death, I woke up feeling the deepest peace and gratitude for all those who had rescued me in their ways, in their small and massive ways that only they could. And every time I died and opened my eyes to find another day before me, I felt exponentially more awake, more alive—ravenous for more crossings with people who could move me deeper and closer to that one ocean of constellations--this elusive thing we call "love."

Ode to Friends

My friends wear LOUD emotions.
Curse at rocks as they trip over them.
Smile at the punch line of their own bad jokes.
Cry at the grandeur of mist over a river.
And never want to apologize for throwing a fist.

My friends stay, disappear, reappear constantly.
Smoke fags not cigarettes and ask me things like
“Mijia que te pasa?” as they stir their café con leche.
They worship stilettos, dark chocolate, the horizon at the sea.
They wait for sunrise, dancing next to me on an overpass at 6am.
(Shhhh...they don’t know that the whole world isn’t a dance club in Ibiza.)

My friends could be called Activists. Ragers. Pacifists.
Hipsters. Hippies. Narcissists. Dreamers. Addicts.
They’d be OK with that because they know who they aren’t.
And they are too busy living bravely
To keep track of misperceptions.
They are game-changers. Rule-breakers. Peace-chasers.
They protect me from as far away as tomorrow
--in Australia. In Japan.

My friends drink before noon on Saturdays and
volunteer at homeless shelters on Sundays.
They are homeless and homeful like me.
They heap lost’n’found joy upon my heartbreaks.
Their laughter harmonizes with mine.
They are so. damn. strong.
Know how to fold loneliness into la masa of tortilla and soldier on.
They believe in. They reach out. They speak up.
Open and close constantly like morning glories.
Which I hate. And I love.

Ode to my friends.
Mis media-naranjas. Mis locos. My homegirls.
My brahs. Panas. Cheras. Compadres.
You are the color and the beat.
Thank you.

When I Met Peace

As a Peace Corps volunteer in rural El Salvador two years ago, I received my education in resiliency, determination, and strength--a degree in peace. One of my greatest mentors was a young woman in my community named Paz Chicas. She was 16 when she joined my girls youth group "Club Cheras." The name Paz actually means "peace." Paz, my radiant friend and teacher became be an integral part of my definition of this concept. Paz taught me that peace is rarely a proverbial pool of quiet tranquility or some mossy green freedom from struggle. "Peace" is the fierce rising spirit inside us which soars up again and again and again, impervious to the fears, obstacles, and injustices cloaked upon us. Peace is dancing in that heavy coat, smiling--laughing even, with your face to the light because you know what you carry is nothing compared to what you ARE and what you are, beneath it all, is strength. I began to perceive peace as that internal fiery gold motion. Like any great teacher, Paz never told me any of this. She simply embodied it and with such natural grace. I am ever grateful for her wisdom. Paz and I are both avid writers. In her honor and with her permission I'd like to share a piece she recently wrote.

"Today I will face life with the conviction that this day will never return. Today I will challenge every obstacle that presents itself to me with the faith that I will overcome it. Today I will do every ordinary task with sublime expression. Today I will resist pessimism and conquer the world with a smile, positive attitude, always hoping for the best. Today I will have the audacity to let no opportunity pass me by, the only alternative is triumph. Today I will invest my time in transcendental works. Today I will have my feet on the ground understanding my reality and my gaze towards the stars, inventing my future. Today I will have time to be happy and leave my footprint and presence in the heart of others." -Paz Chicas

"Hoy me enfrentare a la vida con la conviccion d que este dia jamas volvera. Hoy desafiare cada obstaculo que se me presente con la fe d q vencere. Hoy hare d cada tarea ordinaria una expresion sublime.Hoy sere la resistencia al pesimismo y conquistare al mundo cn una sorisa,actitud positiva d esperar ciempre lo mejor.Hoy tendrd la audacia d no dejar pasar ninguna oportunida,mi unica alternativa es la d triunfar.Hoy invertire mi tiempo en las obras mas tracedentales.Hoy tendre los pies en la tierra comprendiendo la realidad y la mirada en las estrellas para inventar mi porvenir.Hoy tendre tiempo d ser feliz y dejare mi hueya y presencia en el corazon d los demas."


Stop looking for peace. Be peace.

The Gringa Can't Read: Reflections from Venezuela

Confession: Unlike most English teachers, I struggle to read even the most riveting novel cover to cover. I find myself so frequently distracted by everything around me, it’s hard to commit. I read news because I believe it is a responsibility. I read poetry because it gives me intermittent shocks of illumination. But I read spaces, faces, and sounds because they move me to a deeper evolution of myself. Graffiti art, river-side philosophy, and bell chimes within a song are my favorite stories to read. Reading a good book, while undeniably enjoyable, is a conscious and deliberate act, yet reading a city for example, happens organically as you are defining a new “home” for yourself.
Reading is all about interaction-- I never hesitate to crouch down in the middle of the street to pick up a hand-written scrap of paper. Never have I passed a wall without scanning it for images, spray-paint proclamations of rebellion, love, or just mindless vulgarities. I simply must investigate a shred of purple something tucked into a crack in the sidewalk. Innate curiosity? Yes. But I think at the root of it is a genuine desire to build relationships with my surroundings. You can look at a map and understand a city’s layout but if you want to feel its pulse—if you want a conversation with the city, you will need to wander aimlessly, read it block by block, again and again. Stop to read every faded flyer pinned on lamp posts and every pothole full of murky water reflecting the cloud-laced pink sky. The stories abound.
In Maracaibo many protesters have been “trancando” or closing off the roads, collecting everything from street signs, old sofas, broken appliances, gutted cars, bags of trash, tires, tree branches, rocks, and wires to inhibit movement in and around the city. Some of these barriers are lit on fire and some are guarded and tended to. As the day goes on, the police clear the debris to the sides of the roads where they can. When I do walk, I stick to the three main roads considered “more secure.” I maintain a quick pace, stay away from the edge of the road, and now, keep an eye out for government-backed biker gangs. As a result I haven’t been able to read this space in the way I normally would. Wandering is too dangerous. But today, as I walked with a coworker down the avenue, I couldn’t bear to just pass by these debris piles one more time so I started collecting some of the bits and pieces I found en route. It was a gallery of stories. Among them 3 battered photographs, one of a smiling young woman on a couch. The notation on the back said 1997, Isla Margarita. “I’ve just cut my hair for the first time in 15 years.” Another photo showed a tall, dark, middle-aged man at a shipyard smiling, alone, and the last photo was of an empty street—no people, no cars, no identifiable focal point, a mystery. There was a “branch” from a fake plant, a flattened box of matches, and scattered, charred pages of books—one in Spanish, another in German.
Maracaibo has been a difficult city to read. I am told to be afraid again and again. I’m told to walk quickly, or better yet, not walk outside at all for my safety. Behind the walls of my pristine white apartment box within a box of many others I sometimes hear gunshots. I hear banging pots. I hear people chanting. I hear silence. The sounds surround me but still, they are out there and I am in here. I can’t get too close so I open my tiny bedroom window in my 7th floor tower, close my eyes and try to listen closer.
Emotions accumulate like the debris in the street, but where do I put them? How do I overcome them? I have lived in Maracaibo for only a little over a month, so I feel guilty for feeling what I feel and sharing these emotions. Does a gringa, especially a recently-arrived gringa, have a right to speak—to react to the injustice the Venezuelan people are fighting here? Do I have a right to feel angry, hysterical, hopeless, or heartbroken throughout the course of a day? Am I entitled to my sentiments infiltrating my daily interactions or lack there of? At times, I want to scream. And I think of the protests—the people out there, being brutalized in the streets after days of marching. I imagine they want to scream or cry for reasons beyond my comprehension. They have a reason and a right to be upset. Do we all?
I voraciously consume every video, every photograph, every news story I come across on Facebook and Twitter, day and night. I put all of those stories in my head in chronological order and I can hear the voices in my sleep--shaking with determination, passion, fear and sometimes I cry, sitting in silence. I’m a gringa in Venezuela who hates sitting in silence. I hate being a bystander. I hear, “relax Kali, this is not your battle.” How can something that evokes such a strong emotional response in me NOT be my battle too? No, I am not Venezuelan but my own national identity does not define me. My identity has been shaped by multiple countries which include but are not limited to the country in which I was born. I have been raised by people (origin/age/education irrelevant) who inspire me. I’ve been moved by the places which wrapped around me profoundly. My loyalty lies with all of them. And for this same reason my loyalty also now lies with Maracaibo and Venezuela…Although our “conversations” have been limited in my short time here, I am awestruck by the unity and determination I witness daily among the people in their fight for peace, justice, and representation. They have influenced me intensely in this short period of time.
The other day I spoke with a dear friend in Ecuador. We talked about why internalization without release is so destructive. I shared my frustration of being a witness and a bystander in this crisis, the feeling of absurdity while sunbathing by a swimming pool when people are out in the street fighting for their lives. She told me, “Kali—Just start creating. Make something.”
So I release in my way, cycling out what emotional debris gathers around these spaces. I vow to bring forth not just take in and in doing so, honor those bringing about change, by being one more person creating something rather than tearing it apart.