Guatemalan Time

I´m having trouble getting my thoughts to express what I really want to say...oh well...

My friend and I used to have this joke about guatemalan time which is anywhere from one to three hours after something is supposed to start or after you've arranged to meet someone.  It´s really an approximate time since it´s completely normal and even expected to be late here.  Nothing really starts on time.  Time is relative.

It´s funny and interesting how different people and places deal with time.  In Wulingyuan, the small town I lived in in China, everyone was about ten minutes early.  I'd hear the knock on my door and be like, “Really?  Early?”  It took me a bit to get used to.

Growing up in NJ and the east coast, the standard is to be on time.  Sometimes I even wanted to be late but it was hard because I had internalized being on time.  I just...couldn´t...be...late.  Except at night.  Going out anytime before 11pm is early. 

Living in California for the past ten years, everyone was about ten minutes late.  Being more than an hour late was considered rude.  And, conversely, everyone went out earlier at night, most likely because the bars closed earlier than they did on the east coast.

Paris and Madrid are pretty similar to NY in regards to nightlife.  Go out late.  Stay out late.  People are usually somewhat on time for work though but Madrid is definitely more hurried and on time during the day.

It´s like I move to a new place and try the culture on like clothes and swirl around in a circle but none of the clothes are mine.  I´m borrowing.  Even in the US, I´m borrowing.

But here, in Xela, specific time arrangements are more recommendations than actualizations.  Which has its advantages and disadvantages.  It makes me think of my own culture and how people from the US are used to getting things exactly the way they want it.  Everything is so specific and particular.  Like in the US I can get a meal personalized.  I can order a hamburger cooked medium well with only one slice of cheese, no onions, and two pickles.  My favorite Starbucks drink in the US is a 160 tall non-fat raspberry mocha with whip.  I'm laughing now even typing that.  And if we get something that's not the exact way we want it, we complain and get compensated or have things changed.  You can't really do that here. 

I've seen people come here to Xela and expect to get things the way they are used to getting them back home, catered to their specific desires.  And it's great when we can get something the exact way we want it, but you can't really obtain things that you're used to from back home here.  And I've seen people get upset here when they get something not the exact way they want it or can't have things the way they are used to having them.  I'm wondering if this has more to do with control or if it's more about thwarted expectations.  I kind of think the root of most unhappiness is control.  A lot of people want to control their lives and what happens in them but that's a fallacy.  Control leads only to unhappiness because if you spend all your time focusing on how to make everything be the way you want then you're not really enjoying your life.   

Life here is more improvisation.  You work with what you're given.  You accept what you have and try to make it work.  You don't try to make what you have perfect and specific to how you want it (though I'm sure people still do) but it's more that you accept what you have here and see how you can make it work.  It might not be a 160 tall non-fat raspberry mocha with whip but it could still taste pretty damn good and you might even enjoy the difference if you drop previous expectations.

Where I Stand

Here I sit in my new apartment with my new boyfriend: cable.  Cable and I have been together and broken up many times in my adult life.  I have to say though that cable is a great boyfriend.  You can turn it one whenever you want and make it go away when you don´t like it and it never gets mad at you or upset.  Usually though you do have to pay for it which makes the whole operation a little uncomfortable but my cable is of the best kind: FREE!

Fountain of Sorrow by Jackson Browne is playing.  I love this song.  It reminds me of Saturdays when I was a kid and my mom would be in the kitchen doing something or other and I´d be cleaning the entertainment center in the new living room since it was one of my chores.  I read somewhere that many of your memories are false.  Like they did a study and asked people where they were during some major event, say JFK´s assassination, and most people had these really clear recollections since it was certainly a defining moment.  But when the researchers checked up to verify the veracity of these suppositions, many of the memories couldn´t have been possible because places people remembered didn´t exist, other conditions they thought existed didn´t actually exist then, etc.  Even our own memories lie to us.  The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves, even when we don´t know we´re lying.

I love traveling.  Everything is ephemeral.  All I´m making now is memories and not building permanence.  I´ve traveled so much and I know when I travel the best thing for me to do is to just try and live every moment without a view to anything, to see it, to breathe it, to be part of it and to just relax memories of the past and not have thoughts to the future.  When you´re in your hometown or a place where you want to build a stable and lasting life, like how I was in LA, you are surrounded by your past or the future you want to build for yourself.  Here I don´t have those same restrictions.  I stand in now.  And it´s awesome.

Better than Disneyland

What is home? For me right now home is forgetting. Forgetting yourself, where you are, and everything that normally holds you and keeps you stationed in a moment. It can be when you are in a certain place or with a certain person or some certain time you spend, but home to me is the complete forgetting of discomfort and like a mini oblivion from everything that holds you back. The only other feeling home needs is familiarity because otherwise I'd be conflating home and happiness. There's a sense of the familiar, a sense of security, that makes you feel warmth. I feel like we carry the capacity of home inside us too, taking it with us wherever we go, but that it can only be realized at certain junctures in our lives. Sometimes you can be at the house you grew up in and be surrounded by the feeling of home and at other times all you want to do is get away from that place and it's not home at all, only a familiar and lonely place. It happens with people too where sometimes you're with someone and there's this incredible sense of home and safety but at other times that same person can make you feel lost and unsheltered. And it happens with other places as well; there have been some places I have lived in or visited that have made me forget and felt as familiar as my bones. I can recall a day just sitting with my friends at our favorite cafe near my apartment in Paris, our waiter (surely he belonged to us, or at least he does in my memory) calling us princesses everyday (for surely we were) (I love how some memories are mini fantasies) and there was nothing else then, only friends, coffee, comfort, solidarity, and a breathtaking city all around. But when I visited Paris again, it was still magical, but it no longer held that exact same feeling I had then. I wish I could say that home can develop if you stay in a place long enough or stay with someone long enough or I guess just will it to happen but that's not true. Familiarity develops yes but not that feeling of home. You can't force home. And when you're there you never want to leave and it's like one of the best places in the whole world. Even better than Disneyland.