Farm 0614

My discipline slacked and/or activities varied just enough that I have not written any journal entries since last Thursday. It is now Wednesday (June 19th). I’ll do what I can to catch up.

Friday June 14

I asked Adan for Friday off from work, and he asked me to help with pea-picking in the morning. So Friday morning I woke up, and found Mario and Adan picking already at 7am. I joined them, and after a row and a half of sweet-pea-picking, I brought the peas up to the fridge area, said goodbye to Mario, and waited the expected 30 minutes for Adan to take me to La Espanola to do laundry and hang out.

45 minutes later, Adan comes out of his house and tells me that he’s off to do something that came up, and that I should go read. So I came back home and ate the rice+lentils second breakfast I’d left just freshly cooked in the kitchen, and started to read on the introduction of “Great Dialogues of Plato”. About 60 or 90 minutes of just hanging out and visiting Mario for a bit, Adan finally returned, then came out of the house again, and we drove off to La Espanola.

After half a hour of listening to Adan talking on the phone with his dad Ted (he is quite an active person), we reached La Espanola, and Adan gave me a tour of the main town street. He pointed out the three laundromats he knew in town, plus the main restaurants, the seedy pawn shop area, Walmart, Burger King, Taco Bell, and other such food places. I decided to go to the middle laundromat (with the most businesses around it), so Adan dropped me off and drove away.

Once inside, people threw a few quick alert glances in my direction, and I guessed my uncut hair made me seem potentially dangerous. I changed $5 into quarters, bought $0.75 detergent, put my few pounds of clothes into the $1.50 washer, and sat down to read “Oscar Wilde”, by André Gide. I’d read a little bit of it before, but I decided to start it from the beginning, since I had quite some time to read.

Once the wash cycle was over, I put my clothes in the $0.25/8min dryer, and continued reading. 8 minutes didn’t dry them quite well, so I let them sit in for another cycle, and left only my jeans for a last 3rd cycle. By the time I’d folded and packed everything, I was almost just done with the book.

And I found it inspiring. “Art begins where Life ends”. “We must always go to Art. Why? Because Art does not hurt us”. I felt in me a rush of preciousness about everything inside and outside of me, around me, and I saw three girls, 3-6 years old, running around each other, wanting to catch each other, playing, laughing and shrieking joyfully all around, running and dancing at the same time by the gracefulness, and not even running towards each other, just between themselves, randomly, now following, now splitting, now around each other. And their mothers would shush them continuously, to which they paused for a second or two, and then continued running and playing. I saw the whole scene like there was a mild and bland pond, on which I could see three shimmering sparkles of reflected sunlight playing around, dancing, joyful by nature. And the pond, afraid of change, shushed these sparkles sometimes, but they were too joyful. I loved it.

And I thought I would tell their mothers to let them play and be and shine as they were, in eloquent oratory, but I could not muster the courage or right words. After a while of eyeing one of the girls and smiling at her, I told her, and the other two: “You girls are precious! All you three, you know that?”. “Your daughers are precious”, I told their mothers. They said “thank you”, and as I often do after delivering a genuine, bold-enough statement, I stood up and left with my clothes and books in my backpack.

It was raining as I walked outside, and I felt the rain fall on me drop by drop, and I felt the now-ness of the moment, and how beautiful it was that I was feeling and enjoying it, instead of fleeing from the rain with fear and anxiety of getting wet and getting my clothes or shoes muddy or of appearing unseemly to other people. The rain on me was marvelous, it was there, for me, and I was there for it. I walked out towards Riverside St, and I saw bubbles floating along the rain streams like tiny sci-fi waterships, of many sizes, some double or triple bubbles, merged by surface cohesion, or simply single bubbles floating alongside the sidewalk. They were so ephemeral - a single rain drop fell on one and it vanished; its lovely dome would shatter into a thousand pieces and become one with the stream below it. I saw into one of the larger bubbles, and I saw my own body walking on its surface, a convex mirror inside of which I effected but a tiny of projection of colors, like itself on my own eyeball. But I saw it, and it was mine, and I was its, in that very moment, and because of our bond in that single moment, that bubble’s existence became indispensable to my own existence. Out of the hundreds of bubbles around me, of the millions that bearned and died during that one rainfall, it made a bond with me. And that made both of us very special. We gave meaning to each other. Our lives merged, and we would forever remain together.

I thought of returning to the laundromat and telling the girls the extent to which I appreciated their joy and playfulness, and their mothers how they should let the girls be girls. And as I looked back, I remembered how “... that part ended. I now have to move on”. How one either moves on, or stagnates, like the pond. So I kept moving forward, and after appreciating for a little while the large spray painting on the wall made by Adan’s friend, I arrived at Riverside. The light had just turned red on me, and cars began to drive by.

I felt stopped, stagnated, and refused to be stopped like that. Once the cars from my left stopped coming much, I crossed over to the median line, but cars kept coming from my right. My spirit sallied like an exalted horse, and I felt my “coeur” telling me to cross. So simple - Guatemalan habit took over, a good two to three seconds of space opened up between the cars, and I ran across the street with powerful exaltation. I reached the sidewalk and kept on going - I stepped on an elevated divider with little stones, and then jumped off to the parking lot, still at full speed, feeling like I was jumping off a cliff. As my feet landed on the parking lot, my momentum kept bringing my arms forward also, and I fell on my knees and hands, enveloped in wonderfully exalted inspiration.

“We can’t stop Time. Time can’t stop us. We have got to moooooooove” came into my mind. The physical momentum I collected was only its outward-most expression; I felt in my mind, in my heart, I MASTE keep going. I stood up - my hands stung - I’d scraped the bottom palms of my hands, and a little skin off my knees and legs. It was not bad at all though, and it seemed like a good price to me for the wondrous momentum I felt inside me.

Inside Burger King, I washed myself up with disinfectant soap in the bathroom, then ordered. My eloquence had hardly ever reached these levels. I was ecstatic, inspired, and felt every interaction maste be richest in experience and meaning and wonder. The exact dialogues with the BK clerk I will not recall, but I exuberantly ordered what sounded good at all, unrestrained by limits of diet, prudence, or price. 5 chicken wings, large caramel mocha, Alaskan Fish sandwich combo, a chocolate milk, and 2 oatmeal cookies, if you please! I gave the 2 cookies to the clerk, Victor, as appreciation for having attended me as he did, and I sat down to ruthlessly devour my meal, with packets of ketchup spilling all over my hands and tray.

After the meal and thanking Victor for his kindness, again, I walked to Pizza Hut. Promptly I asked for an employment application, and I was given a QR card and a form. Salary? $7.50. Minimum indeed, and I left. Next on the street was an electronics and furniture sale. I walked to the computer area, and asked to see the newest addition they had. A PC all-in-one screen, I asked to see the specs, and the lady left to print them out for me. Once on the desk, I asked her about the Blue Bus schedule (to get to Santa Fe), and she offered to look it up on the internet and to call them up to find out more information. She told me the next bus would be leaving at 4PM, and as it was only about 2:20PM, the impulse jumped in me. I would be going to Santa Fe that afternoon, going to Albuquerque, find a good music player and/or car for Mario and me, respectively, or just hang out and meet Irini, then come back to La Espanola on Sunday. It seemed perfect. Immediately I took out my phone and called Adan to tell him I wouldn’t need a ride back to the farm that day. When voicemail came up, I boldened up and recorded my intentions for him to listen to. I walked towards the bus station.

On the way, I saw a car dealership with prices shown around $2000, $1600, and even $1200. Curious, I stepped in to ask about them. Then Adan called me to tell me to meet him in McDonald’s, so after really quickly checking out the cars, I ran back to McDonald’s and got in his car. He was on the phone with someone else, so I didn’t yet tell him about my plan to buy a car. But he just happened to stop at a Farm shop right in front of the dealership, and then I told him about it, and he was OK with it, though he did warn me to take care with monthly payments, as the guys were shady. I was dropped off there, then he left.

I spent the next three hours trying to get a cheap, working car back to the farm with me. The cheapest one, at $1200, seemed to turn on and work OK, until the test drive. At that point, it wouldn’t gas - I pushed on the pedal over and over, maxed it, but it barely responded. So we took it back to the repair area, and the guys started looking it over. After about 20 minutes of watching the mechanic guys look puzzled, I asked to try a $1600 white Mustang. It drove nicely, and I got to give it a little 1-to-2 mile ride, but the whole inside tapestry was an intense red, and the driver’s door was completely broken from the inside - wires and pieces of plastic hung everywhere. I considered it, but between the style, the mileage, the color, and its ragged inside state, I voted for a no. I asked to see a 1990 brown Volvo sedan, and the owner said “Take it for $1000, but no buts or why’s or fixes. As is”. Intrigued, I looked into it. It didn’t seem in such a bad shape, so I asked to see the engine. They couldn’t find the lever. It seemed to have been broken, so they needed to go inside with a pair of pliers to open it. At that point I realized they didn’t really have anything that I could walk away satisfied with, so I thanked them for their time and left.

As Adan had already left me there, I wondered how to get back to the farm. I reached the main 76 road and considered walking, then saw a Long John Silvers right in the corner. Concerned about resentful shady car dealers driving off to rob a lonely walking guy who had seemed close to pay with cash, I entered LJS and ordered a pineapple cheesecake. I checked my phone - missed call from Mario. I called him back:

• “Hola Antonio. Estas en el Rincon?”
• “No, estoy en La Espanola”.
• “Ah, es que queria ver si le enseñabas a mi esposa como mandar fotos con la iPad?”
• “Ah, si claro!  Aunque fijate que no tengo como regresarme a la granja. Tu venis para aca en algun momento? O me podes venir a traer? :-)”
• “Ehh, si, esta bueno. Salgo como en media hora?”
• “Si, esta bueno! Aqui te espero, voy a estar en el Long John Silvers que esta en la esquina de la 76 y Riverside”
• “Ah, si conozco. Alli te veo...”

Quite the synchrony. So for the next half an hour I ate my cheesecake, something else I ordered that I don’t remember now, and waited for Mario. Soon he arrived, I got in his car, heard voices in the back, and there was the rest of Mario’s family! I said hi, and we drove to McDonald’s. Only Mario, Manuela, and Hernán came down - the rest stayed in the car. For the next 20 minutes or so, I registered her and Yailin’s emails on the iPad, and showed Manuela how to send pictures with the iPad. Oh, I also installed, and showed them how to use, Duolingo, in English for Mario and in French for Yailin. After the quick session and 3 shared ice creams, we got back into the car and drove back to the farm. In the way, I asked Yailin about french. She seemed interested, though she doesn’t know much french yet.

Back in the farm, I cooked dinner and read Plato/Craigslist’d for the rest of the evening. I heard a car drive up on my road after midnight, and I guessed that would be Josh and Tyler, as they’d said they’d arrive on Friday night.