Been a while since I've had time to write. Things have been a bit hectic lately, and there's been too much to get into details over - suffice to say it's a strange feeling consistently waking up and not knowing what city or country you're in. But I've started to get adjusted to the chaos - so to speak. For a long time I've been seeking order, familiarity. There was nothing more comfortable than to know that when I left the cereal on the table it would be waiting for me when I came home, or when I came to the office I would be welcomed by a long list of repetitive tasks to complete in a predesignated and non deviating fashion, and I could pick up the next day from where I left off. I actually really enjoyed my first temp job the summer after my freshmen year at college, where all I did was copy and paste excel spreadsheets for 40 hours a week, for 10 weeks. There is something to those routines, you get a feeling that life can be broken down into simple reactions. A closed system, no outside variables. You set the gears, wind the spring, and let it go. There's never any extremes, and you can expect the expected.
However, there's something horribly wrong with spending days and years never straying outside of your comfort zone. There's just too much more to life than existing. I used to be afraid of failure, of being dissapointed, of being hurt, but at least that's feeling something. I could feel myself growing numb to life, and I knew I needed a change. Maybe some time abroad could help this suburban white boy with the experiences he knows he needs but is still terrified of. Of course, it's not as easy as that. Everyone always says that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (or, as I heard yesterday, "it takes small bites to eat an elephant"), but the real struggle is the day to day - the second and the third and the six thousand four hundred and ninth step, where you don't have the anticipation of the journey or the excitement of the finish, just the frustrating grind of the middle. And even then, it's not just one journey with one destination. It's a universe of hundreds of dimensions you travel in. You're losing ground in one direction and gaining ground in the other, but you might be focused on a third where you're standing still. It's impossible to keep a running narative of all the ways you're evolving but you still try because we feel we must make sense of it all. Before I tried to manage this by cutting out all the variables I could and was left with a simple routine that I could manage, at the cost of real experience, and in a way, my humanity. That chaos that is real life was terrifying, and I knew it would be a long struggle to get used to it - the true chaos and not my false order.
It's been about a decade since I read this exert from Vonnegut, but it's been swelling in the back of my head all these years. I only read it once, but I could almost recite it verbatum:
Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.Ok, I said this was going somewhere so I guess I should finally segway into it.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.
Last weekend I went to the Ocho Rios Jazz festival (held of course in Kingston, Treasure Beach, and Ocho Rios - each about 100 km away from each other. Makes sense.) I wasn't feeling well in the morning and was debating blowing it off, but I kicked myself enough to get going, and I'm glad I did. The photo above was from the first night, there were about a dozen volunteers at the bar ($80 draft Red Stripe, hells yes.) There were a few group pictures taken, I'll try to get those from the other PCVs.
The next morning we woke up and headed downtown to the Burger King for breakfast (yeah, I know, but you get coffee AND orange juice with your sandwich and hash browns, so it's hard to beat.) From there we headed to Dunn's River Falls. We left early to try to miss any tourist or cruise ship groups, and aside from a row with staff over whether we should pay for the locker when we brought our own lock, it was pretty incredible. The water was just a bit chilly, but you adjust surprisingly fast to it. It felt great to put your back against the falls and let the water smash into you, a lot like a deep tissue massage. I could stand at a 30 degree angle backwards and the water pounding my back would keep me upright.
Afterwards we headed towards a more private river down the road. Here we are still dry, just overlooking this:
Let me explain something briefly. I cannot swim, and I am not comfortable in water. I was fine at Dunn's River Falls because it never got above my waist. When I'm in a pool, I'll stay in the shallow end, and I can swim (well, frantically dogpaddle) from one point to the next, and then make a beeline for the edge and hold on with both hands. When I'm underwater, I panick and try to breathe through my nose and will be blowing water out of my lungs for the next half hour.To top it all off, this water was crystal clear. When I was in it I could see straight down to my feet, and in the middle I could not see the bottom. That was scary. And this, this was terrifying:
After jumping in, of course I paniked and water shot straight up my nose. Then I flailed until I got to the rocks and held on for life, shaking the whole time. My expectation would be that after the jump I would relax and be able to move around easier, but that did not happen at all. After jumping in here a few times, we moved up the river and then swam down a few hundred feet going over a few small falls. Every time I had to swim in water I couldn't stand in, I was terrifyed and needed to be coaxed (Thank you Matt, Melissa, Ang, and Chris for putting up with my wussiness.) And now I finally relate back to my introspective ramblings at the beginning of this entry. The easiest part was that first jump - everything after that was harder and harder. The chaos of not having a rock to stand on will always be frightening to me, but I can get used to it, like I'm getting used to the heat and the cockroaches. I didn't have any regrets that day, which is all I could ask for.Sunday we went to a beach a few miles away for the last day of the jazz fest. I met one of the promotors the first night and was able to get a Peace Corps free entry, and was able to see these guys from Poland for the second time in the weekend:
They played a great set, complete with duelin' accordions, a rockin stand-up bass, and an insane fiddler. (They have free mp3s at their website here) When they got to their slower traditional songs I had a horrible longing for being back in Hamtramck, eating pierogi and drinking Zyvidek in Polish Village, but I settled for a red stripe and some chicken foot soup. I met up with Judy, another PCV in the minubus back to Spanish Town. We drove through some light rain, and I listened to some Iron & Wine while looking out at the mountains. I was home soon enough, ready for the next unexpected turn of events, and whatever's after that.
