And the spirit said, "Crash!"

Ties gag me. Always have. You'd think, at 24, I would have learned to buy the correct size dress shirt, so that when I button the top button and put on a necktie, I could avoid gradually slipping into a coma of claustrophobic asphyxiation. But since I only go clothes shopping about once a year, on December 25th, under the Christmas tree, (and my mom thinks I'm skinner than I actually am) I opt to avoid buttoning my top button as often as humanly possible. In fact, if I could wear sweatpants and a t-shirt every day of my life, I would be a most happy fella, thank you very much.

But there's something about this place that requires a necktie. I moved to New York City just a few months ago, with big dreams of bright lights and Broadway openings. I knew it was going to take a little time and patience to book my first acting gig, (two or three months, maybe), so I looked for a job to pay the rent in the meantime. After a series of rejected restaurant applications, I finally stumbled upon a rather unusual, and seemingly glamorous job as a personal assistant and chauffeur to both celebrities and corporate clients.

When I took the job, I didn't consider how much time I'd be spending with my top button buttoned. Between auditions and work, I spend at least 90% of my week trying to look fancier than I feel. And with such a limited supply of oxygen to my brain, I get easily confused and disoriented, and sometimes think this buttoned-up version of myself is the real me.

One Sunday morning several weeks ago, I slipped into a pew at Trinity Church down on Wall Street, wearing one of my favorite neck-tourniquets. I had been church-shopping for months, never quite finding a parish with the right blend of respect for ancient traditions and progressive thinking that I try to hold in balance in my own life. (I usually test the waters during the Lord's Prayer, praying, "Our Mother, who art in heaven..." and see how the people around me respond.)

At first glance, Trinity is a pretty buttoned-up place. Lots of neckties, patent leather, and frilly hats. I was glad I had dressed the part that day. When the service started, the organ crescendo-ed, the choir filed in, with incense swirling, and the music washed over me.

The choir was divine. No one bristled at my version of the Lord's Prayer. And the sermon was focused on social and economic justice. Huh.

But my necktie was choking me. I was trying so hard to look put-together and professional, like I belonged in a centuries-old church where presidents and Rockefellers had once attended. As the organ crested over top the climactic final hymn, I sang half-heartedly, wondering if I could ever find a niche for myself in this mass of polished parishioners.

As the organ got louder and my tie got tighter, a crash right behind me shattered my self-concerned daydream. Spinning around, I saw a man I hadn't noticed when I entered: He was probably in his later fifties, stout, bald, and grinning so widely his eyes pinched shut. The crash had been his imitation of a pair of cymbals. He held his arms high and wide over his head, letting their "sound" resonate throughout the church, as a bit of spittle fell from his lips. Every four bars or so, or whenever it was musically appropriate, he crashed his imaginary cymbals, wind rushing through his lips, unabashedly contributing in his own simple way to the beauty of the music.

His joy was infectious: I unbuttoned my top button, took my first full, deep breath in hours, and sang the alto line (my favorite in old hymnals) a little louder than I should have. For the first time, I thought, "Maybe there is a place here for a guy like me."

The next day, as I sat in a fancy car outside a fancy restaurant, waiting on a fancy client to finish his fancy champagne, I couldn't stop thinking about the cymbal guy. In the midst of all those poised and proper church-goers, this man was true to himself, unashamed, and uninhibited. His spirit said, "Crash!" and he crashed.

It is so rare to see someone be true to their spirit in public. So often we fixate on what the world expects of us, enslaving ourselves to the neckties, or bank account balances, or job titles that we think give us value. At what age do we suddenly become so self-aware, and begin trying to mutate into something "acceptable" to the culture at large?

We certainly aren't born thinking this way. When I'm not driving, I babysit two four-year-old boys, from two different families. The hours I spend with Silas and William are the few in which I don't try to look any fancier than I really am.

Silas and I live in a fantastical world. When we're together, he becomes Super Kitty, I become Cornelius the Dinosaur, and as a duo we fight off all kinds of terrible and frightening monsters---Wollypogs and Amarats, and the like. Strumming a ukulele, we improvise protective incantations, and then evaporate the most wretched creatures with Super Kitty's pungent "Booty Burps." Trust me, they're powerful.

William's fantasy world is full of trains, boats, and big machines. On our walks to the park, he becomes a "Bacela Train," often stopping right in the middle of a crosswalk to invite new passengers aboard. I'm his faithful conductor, "punching the tickets" of any travelers, be they imaginary, or kindly strangers willing to play along.

Silas, William, and the Cymbal Guy couldn't care less what the world expects of them. Their worlds aren't make-believe: Silas is his Truest Self when he is Super Kitty, William was born to be a train, and when the guy at church crashes his cymbals, it's as if his whole soul is leaping for joy.

Each of us has a truest self---an essence, if you will, that probably has nothing to do with what the world expects of us. Suffocating under the pressure of our neckties, we stumble along in jobs that don't satisfy us, in relationships that inhibit us, and in church pews that intimidate us, all in the name of becoming "acceptable" to the world.

Unlike my role-models, Silas, William, and the Cymbal Guy, I lost touch with my truest self a while ago---long before I moved to New York. I don't know exactly who he is anymore, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to spend his life catering to every whim of the rich and famous. And he certainly never wears a necktie.

I catch glimpses of him every now and then. Usually after I've had a beer or two. He dances on the subway platform when "White Boys" from HAIR comes on his iPod. He hugs strangers on the street who look like they need it. And once a week, he teaches a class for teens who love to sing and dance.

I'm finding him again, slowly but surely. And I know that I can only live my fullest life if I earnestly seek him.

After my first encounter with the Cymbal Guy at Trinity, I kept attending services there. This Easter, the church was filled to overflowing, with over a thousand people cramming the aisles. As the congregation stood to join the brass choir and timpani in Handel's Halleluiah chorus, a bald, smiling head poked out above the top row of the choir. He looked so out of place in his tweed, too-tight suitcoat, amongst all the robes and flowers. As his head bobbed in time with the music, he looked like a lost chick looking for his mother hen.

But he wasn't lost; he was counting. As we approached the final chorus, the conductor gave a grand gesture, and with a flash of light, two REAL cymbals flew up over his head, and came together in the most rapturous flourish I have ever heard.

He held the cymbals over the whole congregation, as triumphant as any image of the Risen Christ, beaming his beatic blessing on us all. The cymbals chrashed thrice more, in perfect synchronicity with the escalating joy of everyone present, culminating in a tearful ovation as the Cymbal Guy, as his truest self, took a solo bow.


- Posted on the go, from my iPod!

Roam-sick

Saturday, January 23, 2010

They all said it would happen at some point. And I guess they were right.

For no particular reason, I found it damn near impossible to peel myself out of bed this morning. My eyelids were so heavy. The morning sun was too strong. The covers were pinning me down. I was trapped in my own inexplicable heaviness; too anxious about what the day would bring on the other side of the blankets to push them off.

There was no good reason for my state of mind. I hadn't partied the night before. No one had wronged me. I haven't even gained weight! In fact, I had every reason to be optimistic about certain new possibilities wiggling their way into my life.

It was my complaining bladder than forced me out of bed eventually. Like a newborn wailing to guarantee that first instinctual intake of air, my body took over, saving me from the smothering amniotic blankets.

I went through the motions of my Saturday morning routine. Coffee and NPR with a side of oatmeal. Shower, alternately ice cold and scalding hot without warning. Brush teeth. Jeans and a sweater. Make bed. Grab lesson plan. Out the door.

About to walk out of the building, I stopped short at the mailboxes, finding a pink slip of paper sitting inside. A package awaited at the post office.

Everyone loves a package, especially an unexpected one. Sunshine and speculation carried me the extra mile out of my way to the post office.

The package, which took the perplexed employees about 10 minutes to locate, was from my Aunt Gobie. She was thanking me for the time we spent together when she was in the hospital earlier this month. In the box was a beautiful sweater that hadn't fit my uncle, two bags of rice and beans mix, and six Reese's peanut butter hearts. And the sweetest card, with a neatly folded, crisp bill, which I knew was only a representative mite of what she wished she could give.

And so it began.

My heart ached. I'm sure that outcome was the very last thing Gobie had in mind when she put the package together. But I missed her. I missed Uncle Brad. I missed a hundred people at once; some scattered across the globe, and others in this very city.

It didn't help to hear the excitement in her voice when I called to thank her. The thoughtfulness with which she had assembled the simplest items ("Don't vegetarians eat a lot of rice and beans?") killed me. I sat on a bench at 46th and 6th while we talked, under the bland towers of midtown. The streets were emptier than they should have been, and all I wanted was to fill them with the faces of people I loved.

After talking with Gobie and Brad, I had to go teach my weekly Musical Theatre Workshop. I volunteer with a group called Artists Striving to End Poverty, and every Saturday, a few of us teach a class for the International Rescue Committee. I have about 15 high-schoolers in my class who love to sing and dance, even if they can't speak English well enough to really understand what they're singing.

Walking into the building, already dripping in my own melancholy, I was greeted by a group of student leaders trying to come up with ideas of how they could help in Haiti. Several of them wanted to go there immediately.

To put this in perspective, all of the students in my class are either refugees or political asylees: They all come from parts of the world rife with unrest. I have students from The Sudan, Guinea, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, and the list goes on. They know far more than their fair share of grief, and yet they wanted to go help out their Haitian brothers and sisters. I was speechless.

Throughout the rest of the day, I couldn't stop thinking about the collective sacrificing spirit of my students. Every week, I learn more of their personal stories (courage and fortitude are inadequate words by a long shot). Though the faces are different, these students remind me so much of the young people that I taught when I lived in Nicaragua. My soul got heavier as I ran through the names and faces of those students, wondering how they are doing. Some are still in prison. Others, the more transient ones, disappeared long ago, and I will likely never have contact with them again.

When I get an a mood like this, I can really start spiraling fast. Walking down the street after class, I started projecting faces of people I haven't heard from in ages onto strangers' bodies as they passed. It didn't take much: If I saw a curly head of hair, I was suddenly convinced that it was my dear friend Natali, the holistic healer and best barista in all of Nicaragua. A blonde jogger wearing a camelback zipped by, and I was sure it was my cousin Rachel, whose birthday was today, and with whom I had shared some of the most spectacular weeks of my life on the bike trip this summer. Walking by a cafe, I almost tripped over myself, convinced that I saw TK and Judy dining inside---an couple who had adopted our motley crew of cross country cyclists out in Colorado.

At first, I was somewhat aware that my mind was playing tricks on me. But after a while, my brain got out of the equation, and just let my heart wallow in its own puddle of self-pitying nostalgia. For several minutes, I associated every stranger's face with someone I loved.

Some people might call it homesickness, what I was experiencing all day. But that word doesn't fit right for me. The people I love are not all concentrated in the same little town, where I can hop on a bus home from the big city and see them all at once. I have made and loved many "homes" in the past few years, most of which have only lasted a few weeks or months at a time. For four months this year, I made my home in a new place every night, as I made my way across the continent by bicycle. And in each "home," there are people and places that I learned to love, fast and furiously, and then learned to leave, just as quickly.

And so a better word for my particular brand of melancholy today would be, "Roam-sick." I don't know what brought it on, but it hit me hard today, and I was rubbing it all over myself like a one-year-old playing in his own poo. I wanted to reek of roamsickness, so everyone would know just how blue I was. At one point, I'm almost too embarrassed to admit, the following thought ran through my head:

"It's like I feel all of the sadness of all the people missing in my life concentrated in a single point in the center of my chest. If I feel this way, how must God feel to have the weight of the entire world concentrated in God's chest?"

Okay Hamlet, calm yourself.

Again, it was my bladder that saved me from myself. Suddenly, I had to pee so badly that I ran through the first open door I saw, which was the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, just off Times Square. Once my bladder was empty, I realized that I had stumbled into a dress rehearsal of a Madrigal ensemble that would be performing in the church that evening.

The haunting chords of the ancient instruments and pure voices stilled my self-pitying heart. Something stopped me dead in my tracks, and plopped me down in the third pew from the back, just a few rows behind a homeless man curled up and snoring on the bench.

I sat for about an hour, not thinking of much. Sometimes, when you start to spiral into self-pity, not thinking of much is the best you can do. At least it puts on the brakes long enough to help you change directions.

As the ensemble played, I felt a growing need to pray, but I was still a little to smeared with roamsick-tastic baby poo to come up with the right words.

I remembered something my college chaplain used to say: "When you don't have the words, remember: Prayer is Breathing. Breathing is Prayer."

And so I just breathed. I breathed in openness, and I breathed out roamsickness. I breathed my prayer over and over, deeper and fuller, to the sounds of harpsichord and the theorbo, the lirone, the tiorbino and the arpa tripla.

And after several minutes, I mustered a smile. They had all told me this would happen. All of my friends who had moved to New York before me said that at some point in the first year, you hit a wall, when not much makes sense, and you don't really know why you're here, and you really just want to go home...or go roam, as the case may be.

Sometimes, when I pull myself out of one of these self-destructive wallowings, I can go too far in the other direction. I get mad at myself for wasting so much energy on a stupid problem. "How adolecent, to mope around like a child because you've had too many wonderful adventures and met too many wonderful people, and you miss them. How many people in this world would kill to have seen what you've seen? There are too many real problems in this world for you to spend energy on that! Look at HAITI!"

But this time, I was a little gentler with myself. I went to my favorite Chinese restaurant and got some Chow Fun. (Mostly, I ordered it because of the name.) And then I had a donut. A delicious, chocolated drenched, pink sprinkled donut.

And now, sitting in my bed with my geriatric laptop and a cup of tea, this morning's blankets don't feel nearly as heavy.

On the road again...

I'm on my way back to New York, after quite a long visit home to DC. Originally, I only planned to spend a few days at my parents' around the holidays. But we make plans, and God laughs.

Traditionally, my mom's sister Lori and her husband Brad always spend Christmas at our house. Lori is practically a second mother to me, having lived with our family through the first decade of my life. In fact, her nickname, "Gobie", originates from the early 80s, when my older sister struggled to pronounce Lori's name.

The day before New Year's Eve, Aunt Gobie got seriously sick. Her stomach cramped so fiercely, we found her banging the wall with her fist and mumbling incoherently in the bathroom. We debated back and forth about whether her condition warranted an ER visit, but were too afraid of how high those medical bills might be.

Gobie and Brad both work more than 40 hours a week, and work hard. Brad is a master of concrete pouring, and Gobie a dental assistant. Both work for small companies that are unable to provide health coverage to their employees, and yet they can't really afford private insurance on their own.

And so, crippled with pain, but with nowhere to turn, Gobie went to bed to try and sleep it off.

The next day, we had no choice but to rush her to the ER. She was bleeding internally, and extremely weak. Hours later, the doctors explained that a blood clot had formed near Gobie's colon, depriving about 40cm of her large intestines of oxygen and nearly killing that tissue.

She was lucky to be alive.

The care we received at Washington Hospital Center was outstanding. We imagined that spending New Year's Eve in the ER would be hell---with all the drunks and party-going-accidents streaming in. But they put us in a private room with a real door that blocked out the madness outside, even knowing that Gobie was uninsured.

The teams of doctors that treated her over the next nine days were unparalleled in their attention to detail and concern for the wellbeing of the entire family. We found out that our doctors were each nationally recognized leaders in their respective fields, and yet took the time to explain every minute detail until Gobie understood completely.

I went back to New York for two days to take care of some work responsibilities, but came back as soon as I could to keep Gobie company and interpret hospital lingo as best as I could.

When she was finally released, we were so very grateful for the care she had received and the speed of her recovery. And yet, I couldn't help but be a little angry.

I was angry that we had waited to take her to the hospital because we didn't have insurance. How pathetic, that in the wealthiest nation on earth people make medical decisions based on financial concerns, and not their actual medical needs!

How unfair, that a couple of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, blue-blooded Americans, should have to suffer the overwhelming stress of being one serious illness away from financial ruin.

During the last several days that Gobie was in the hospital, we plowed through the process of setting up a payment plan, and began to apply for insurance. The dollars and cents of it would be overwhelming to even the most financially successful among us.

A year ago, I was so optimistic about the promises of healthcare reform. The campaign rhetoric tugged on my heartstrings in a way that often evoked tears. And now, as the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes more apparent, it is hard to not be discouraged. Even if the current bill passes, I fear that we are too far gone to ever realistically live in a country where people need not worry about their health care coverage. The current bill is far too short-sighted in scope: It is the victim of partisan bickering and the fear of electoral reprimand.

And yet, to do nothing would be succumbing to despair. I don't expect my government to take care of my heath care needs, but I can't stop hoping that government action might bring some equity tothe playing field. We shall see.

For now, I am so grateful that Gobie was healthy enough to leave the hospital and drive me to the bus stop this afternoon. Hugging her ever more tightly, I realize that our family is one of the blessed ones. Every day, there are thousands of other stories like ours, and not all of them end positively.

As I head back to New York, I can't stop wondering what I can do to improve the situation. I've written and called my representatives in congress. What else can I do?

- Posted on the go, from my iPod!

Happy thanksgiving!

Home for the holidays...a wonderful place to be! I just dropped Stephanie off at the bus station for her return trip to Philadelphia. I miss her already. She fits into our family like a twin lost at birth.

I was so happy to have her here, especially since this week marked the one-year anniversary of my departure from Nicaragua. I've been feeling pretty nostalgic, both for Nicaragua and the bike trip. It was great to have someone here who was with me during both of those life-altering experiences.

I realize how much I miss blogging the bike trip, so I've resolved to write more about my life. Who knows if you'll still find it interesting? It's a bit cliche, these stories of a young artist trying to make it in the big city, but maybe you'll read anyway.

I've got to run get ready for the Maryland football game. One if the things I miss most about home is going to the games with Dad to see his band play. I haven't been at all this season, so I'm pretty excited. Go Terps!

Big love,
Kendal

- Posted on the go, from my iPod!

Started to feel at home today...

A week into this adventure called living in New York, I've just started to feel like someday I might belong here. I figured out a way to make money (driving a pedicab around the city), found a place to sublet for the first month (friends of friends of friends, one of whom happens to have grown up near my parents' hometown in central Illinois), and got connected to volunteer projects with two different activist groups.

And then there was Richard Williams. After spending the whole day running cross-borough errands and chasing down old friends on either side of this big little island, I was sitting in the subway station waiting for the uptown 1 train at 14th street. I was holding a big stack of vinyl records I had just purchased at a flea market—old Original Broadway Cast albums—and was happy to find a place to rest my tired legs, sitting on one of the wooden benches by the turnstiles.

A second or two after I sat down, an elderly black man approached, with a recently-purchased six pack of Oreo Cookies tucked under one arm of his navy suit coat, and a can of Coca-cola under the other. He was holding a nearly-overflowing handful of coins in one hand, and awkwardly using both hands to try and stuff the coins into his pants pocket.

He settled into the last wooden seat on the row to my left, leaving two empty seats between us. Having successfully arranged his coins and Coke and cookies, he turned over to me and said, “What kind of tunes you got in your hands, son?”

“Old Broadway show tunes,” I replied, a little uneasy about being approached by this unkempt stranger.

“No opera, huh? Only show tunes?”

“Yep,” I replied. “Not many people use these LPs anymore. Not many people even have a record player anymore.”

“Well I do. I have Opera Saturdays,” he smiled wide—his face a well-loved guitar, missing the A, G, and B strings.

“Only Saturdays?”

“Only Saturdays! Laaaaaaaaaa!” he sang in his best soprano. “The neighbors always hear me singing along on the weekends. But Sundays are for Country Western and Rock.”

The conversation paused for a moment, and a sharply dressed brunette sat in one of the two seats between us, unaware that this guy and I were mid-conversation.

“Who's your favorite Country guy?” I asked, leaning out to speak around the curvy businesswoman.

“Excuse me?” she murmured, confused.

“Johnny Cash, no doubt,” the old man shot back, not missing a beat. The brunette went back to her book.

“Cash takes cool to a whole new level, doesn't he?”

“There's one more guy I can't think of, that I really really like. It's on the tip of my tongue...”

As he fought to remember, the train pulled into the station, and he leapt off the bench without a backward glance. I chased after him.

When I took a seat next to him on the train, he slowly turned to look at me and jumped, almost surprised to see me there. He took off his mesh baseball cap, wiped his wizened brow, and mopped a few beads of sweat off his beard. Half the scruffy hairs on his face were black, and the other half, snow white.

He brought an Oreo to his lips, and, lacking incisors, broke the cookie in half and stuck it in the back of his mouth.

I wanted to know more about this man, but was strangely intimidated by him. His soul was too old for me to understand. I felt the same kind of awe that I knew from my time living in Nicaragua, working with orphaned street kids; the kind of awe born from being in the presence of wisdom earned through tribulation.

I searched for a way to continue the conversation: “Do you ever go up to Lincoln Center to hear the live broadcast of the opera out on the plaza?”

“Lawd, yes!” he hollered, his voice spanning about two octaves in as many words, and causing our half of the car to look up. “I go up there all the time.”

“Well I haven't been yet, but I hear it's lovely. I just moved to the city a week ago.”

“Where'd you move from?” he asked.

“Born and raised in Washington, D.C.” I said, proudly.

With a fist clenched around his remaining Oreos, he socked me in the shoulder and said, “Brother, I spent my childhood in D.C., too! Northeast, on M St.”

“Well how about that!”

“Yeah, I've still got a brother down there, who sells real estate. Let me tell you, things is changin' down there. They didn't even have paved sidewalks when I was growing up down there. Only dirt roads everywhere. And prices ain't what they used to be. Things are startin' to get more expensive down there than they are up here! My brother pays over 50 grand a year just on property tax alone. He was tryin' to unload one of his commercial properties down there, and had a Korean fella come offer him $50 million, CASH MONEY, on the spot. But he knew something ain't right when a guy wants to pay you CASH MONEY like that. So he didn't do it. After that, market fell through. He's looking to buy more property now, cause the IRS is takin' everything he's got. Gotta get more property to help bring down the taxes. Plus, he's buying a new Benz every two years, for about $250,000 a piece. It's crazy, man. Crazy.”

“Well things aren't much better up here!” I said. “I'm looking at apartments the size of a closet that cost $1500 a month!”

“Yeah, I got me a one-room about like that. All I need, is that one room.”

We came to the 34th St. station, where I should have hopped off the local 1 train and waited for the express (2 or 3) to take me uptown. But something kept me in my seat.

“So was your whole family from D.C., too?”

“Nah, nah. My parents were teachers down in South Carolina. That's where I was born. My parents had about 450 acres of land they farmed, and they taught in the schools in the 40s and 50s. Built our house out of trees they chopped down on the land. They were too eager to get the house up, and didn't let the wood dry. Built the whole thing out of green wood. By the time it was done drying out, the house was tilted and twisted so bad, you had to cut the doors and windows off at an angle to get 'em to close. Dad left the house to my baby brother, and he wanted to tear the thing down and build fresh. I told him, 'Damn, you must be outta yo' FOOL HEAD, boy! Our mommy and daddy went through hell getting that house built, workin' on two-, maybe three-hundred dollars a month.'

“So me and my brother hired an engineer to come down there and save the house. And let me TELL you, he picked that house straight up in the air, put it on stilts, and left it there for about two weeks. It got all straightened out...they put a new foundation in, and set it back down. Now it's the prettiest damn house you ever did see.

“The state tried to build a penitentiary on our land...wanted to buy it from us. But that's good land...prime real estate. We're right on the highway to Myrtle Beach. So they went and built it right across the street from our house, anyway.”

I did a quick historic time line check in my head, and then asked, “So the schools your parents taught in...Those must have still been segregated schools, right?”

“Of course they were! Son you wouldn't believe what things was like back then. Hate everywhere. And let me tell you just how bad we had it: Our chief of police was also the head of the KKK! They used to march up and down the streets all the time, scaring people.”

I told him about a house I had passed in Kentucky that was flying the KKK flag off the front porch. “I can't believe that hate like that still exists in this country.”

“Are you kiddin' me? In some places down south, you got BLACK people who's in the KKK!”

I was skeptical. “That doesn't make any sense!”

“Some people just got a lot a hate built up inside...even for their own race. Your race has people that hate their own race, too!”

“I guess anything is possible,” I conceded. “But still, I think those folks need therapy.”

“Nah, nah, nah. You know what it really is? It's because they don't have GOD'S LOVE in their lives. They ain't got Jesus Christ to show 'em love.”

I paused before responding. “Well, lots of people call it by lots of different names, but you're right: It all comes down to having love in your life.”

“You cain't LIVE without that! You cain't just live for yourself. You gotta be givin' something back to someone. If you is just livin' for you, you ain't gonna be getting nothin' outta life. And most people are just livin' for themselves these days.”

I agreed with his philosophy of giving back, but told him I was more optimistic about people on the whole. I told him about my bike trip (“You did WHAT? From WHERE to WHERE? Oh, LAWD!”), and most importantly, how many people we met who were there to look out for us in our time of need. “People are willing to help others more often than not,” I argued. “But they need to be given an opportunity to do so. You have to put out the kind of positive energy that shows people opportunities to reflect that positive energy back to you.”

“Maybe so. Maybe so,” he repeated. “So what are you gonna do for a job up here in this city?”

I hesitated. I never know how to answer this kind of question. “Well, I'm a musician and a teacher of sorts.”

“REALLY!?!” He liked that. “What kind of instruments do you play?”

“I play piano, I sing, and I'm learning to play the banjo.”

He socked me in the arm again, kind of hard this time. “Chuck Berry plays the banjo,” he grinned, flashing his toothless smile with uninhibited joy. “I like the banjo. It's a good instrument. It makes you happy to hear it.”

By that time, we were just one stop away from where I had to get off. I seriously considered staying right where I was, and chatting with my new friend until he got off the train, and then riding back. But it was getting late, and I still had lots of work to do before falling asleep.

I dug around in my messenger bag, and pulled out one of the business cards I just recently had printed for theatre work. It has my contact info on one side, and a full-color, glossy print of my head shot on the other. “Here's my info,” I said.

“Well aren't you fancy, Mr. Sparks!” he teased.

I laughed back, “Well, at the moment I'm in the business of selling myself as a professional artist, so I have to look the part, right?”

I realized I had passed the whole train ride without knowing his name. I asked him.

“Richard Williams,” he glowed. The way his named rolled out of his mouth, I felt like he was giving me his most valued possession. He said it with such joy, it was as if he was offering me the last bite of his ice cream sundae.

“Richard Williams,” I repeated, receiving the gift he had given me. “Be in touch, will you?”

Transitions...

I write to you now from Matagalpa, the closest thing I have to a “home base” here in Nicaragua. I'm sitting in my favorite little corner of the city, Artesanos, sipping Chamomile tea, and enjoying the cool mountain breezes that gently sweep through this open air café.

Leaving Bluefields was a tremendously emotional transition for me. Working with a well-established organization like Acción Médica allowed me to hit the ground running with my projects in a way that I hadn't been able to in previous volunteer situations. I became so emotionally invested, especially in the prison project, that I had a very hard time leaving behind that which was only getting started.

On my last day at the prison, I brought each of the young men a hard-bound journal, inscribed with a personal message of encouragement from me, a copy of William Ernest Henly's INVICTUS (translated, of course), and a long list of ideas to get them started writing (Write about your happiest memory...Write about what you want your life to look like when you leave prison...etc.). We sat around in a circle at the end of our meeting, with José Ramón strumming away on my guitar, asking over and over, “Can't we just sing one more song?” They got me pretty choked up when they told me how much it meant to them to have someone come visit them every week, and take a real interest in their lives.

Through tears, one of the teens handed me his handkerchief and said, “Take this, to remember me.” I was really touched, and then taken off guard when he followed up by saying, “Can I keep your ring to remember YOU?” Now, it isn't a fancy ring, but it was a gift from my mom, and therefore pretty sentimental to me. While searching for a response, I stuck my hand in my pocket to find my own handkerchief to nervously wipe my brow. Right before I wiped, the obvious response came to me: “Here, buddy. Take my handkerchief to remember me!” One sweaty red handkerchief traded for a sweaty purple handkerchief. I don't think that was exactly how he hoped the exchange would pan out, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Leaving the theatre group was emotional in an entirely different way. It was no small thing, taking on the challenge of forming group of teenagers with no theatrical experience into a performance-ready theatre troupe in less than 5 weeks. Together, we learned basic theatre skills, wrote a one act play, rehearsed and polished it, and performed it for an audience of over 130 people on my last night in Bluefields. The credit for such a success goes to the willingness of the teens to try new things, their natural talent for storytelling, and their commitment to excellence in the final product. In the end, they were a smash success with the audience, and left the stage beaming with pride in their accomplishment.

The sub-plot to the theatre story was the relationship between my co-teacher Jenny and I. You’ll recall from a previous blog entry, that in a frustrated moment several weeks back, I accidentally called Jenny a jackass, when I meant to call her stubborn. (We were playing a warm-up game, and Jenny kept disagreeing with the group about when she was “out,” and I got frustrated after the third or fourth disagreement. I got the words for “donkey” and “stubborn” confused...Damn second language!) Though I apologized up and down for my error, I can now pinpoint that as the moment that our different ideas about how the group should work began to clash visibly.

Our clashes were rooted in cultural difference. Nicaraguan society is much more hierarchical than our culture in the US. For example, in an office in the US, you are much more likely to see the boss and all of her employees sitting around one table, sharing ideas equally, and addressing each other by first name. In Nicaragua, on the other hand, people are much more likely to sit and listen to the boss, only responding when he calls on them, and they probably refer to him by his title, like “Doctor.”

This cultural difference found it's way into our theatre classroom quite quickly. Everything I've ever learned about theatre is all about group participation and individual empowerment. It's stifling to be in an environment with a dictator for a director. So when I stepped into the classroom as a teacher for the first time, I did everything I could to make it an egalitarian place. “This is YOUR theatre group,” I would tell them. “What do you want this group to look like? What are your expectations? What are your desired outcomes?” I usually answered their questions by asking questions. Whenever I was asked, “How should we do this?”, I tried to respond with, “What are your options? Which do you like better? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each?” I'm sure that I wasn't 100% consistent in this approach, but I did the best that I could to create that kind of empowering environment.

It wasn't easy to teach that way, in a culture that is so inherently hierarchical. I was working against the cultural sensibility that the teacher knows best and everyone should wait around and see what he has to say before making a move. I think my teaching style was most unsettling to Jenny, my co-teacher, who was so used to being in front of a classroom and being fully in control of the class' progression. I'm sure it was equally unnerving for her to have a foreigner come in and start up a class in a subject in which she had no experience or training, and then be expected to take over the class once the foreigner left.

I failed to recognize or understand Jenny's uncertainties until too late. Being a short-term volunteer, and very conscious of my place within the office hierarchy, I felt uncomfortable openly addressing the differences between our approaches, fearing that Jenny might view any such conversation as an attack on her personal teaching style. This was foolish of me. I should have sat down with Jenny at the beginning, explained my approach, and said, “This is just my way of doing things. Feel free to change it when I leave, but maybe for the next few weeks you could be my partner in this, and maybe we can learn something from each other.” Maybe that would have helped. Maybe not. You know what they say about hindsight...

One of the prime examples of our different approaches came late one Wednesday afternoon, as we were preparing for that evening's HIV support group meeting. Our site director, Jeannette, came into the office and suggested that we put together a short little skit about the stigmas that persons living with HIV have to face, and then present it to the group that evening. One of the group members was there at the time---a very outgoing young woman, who is the only member of the group who is publicly open about her HIV status---and I suggested that maybe she (let's call her Rosario for the moment) should be the star of the skit. Jenny's mouth dropped and her head started shaking, like I had said something terribly offensive.

“No, Kendal. You don't understand. She can't be part of the skit.”

“Why not, Jenny?” I said. “She's a member of the group.”

“Yes, but how can she visualize the stigmatization of HIV positive persons if she's in the skit?”

“Well Jenny, don't you think that, as a person living with HIV, Rosario understands those stigmas far better than you or I ever could?”

“The thing is,” said Jenny, “we have to SHOW THEM what that stigma is, and Rosario can't benefit from our presentation if she has to be in it.”

It's all about different cultural ideas. I know this. I kept telling myself this. But it still frustrated me.

We had a similar problem when we started writing our one act play. The story was about a young girl who contracted HIV from a one-night-stand, and then had to tell her family and friends her status, and ask for their support.

We made a habit of moving the roles around every day, so that each person could have a chance to act each part. It also helped us be more flexible if one or more of the actors didn't make it to practice. Instead of two friends, there could just be one. And instead of having a mother, father, and siblings, we could get by with the young girl only having a mother for the day.

The downside (or maybe the upside?) of having so many people cycling in and out of the different roles, is that everyone formed very strong opinions about how each role should be played. When you create an egalitarian learning environment, people tend to feel comfortable offering their opinions freely---be they positive or negative. I challenged people to keep their criticisms constructive, to varying degrees of success. I had the hardest time communicating this to Jenny. She was prone to vehemently tell students when she thought they weren't doing the parts “right,” and would jump in to show the students just how it “should” be done.

It got to the point that the students thought that Jenny was the only one who could play the main character “correctly,” and so when we presented a preview of our progress to the office staff a few weeks in, the teens insisted that Jenny take the lead role. I had told the students that this was their theatre group, after all, so I

decided to sit back and see how it panned out.

Jenny was great. She has a real flair for the dramatic, and could be a really sensational professional actress. The first presentation was well received, but Jeanette pointed out that she would have liked to have seen one of the teens take the lead, instead of Jenny. This comment was a God-send, saving me from having to single Jenny out on my own. After the presentation, we sat around and debriefed for a few minutes. I sat there in silence as the teens discussed and agreed that they could learn a lot from Jenny, but that it would be better if she didn't play the main parts anymore. Everything seemed to be working out.

Over the next few weeks, we expanded the story to a full one act length---about one full hour. The roles got a little more complex, the story became more interesting, and we set a date for our first public performance. There was an uneasy peace between Jenny, the students, and I. If Jenny was upset about being asked to play a more supportive role, she certainly didn't show it directly. But she stopped participating in rehearsals almost entirely. I continued to invite her to participate, asking her opinion, but got limited response. I didn't get worked up about it...in fact, I was honestly glad to have a little space to do things my way for a little while, without coming into conflicts over teaching style.

Over those next few weeks, our biggest challenge was learning not to laugh during serious scenes. We were quite the giggly group, and theatre should be fun, so I was stuck finding a balance between keeping discipline and maintaining a positive work environment. One afternoon, we just couldn't get ourselves to stop laughing, so I had everyone lay on the floor on their bellies, and I turned out the lights (a trick I learned from a dear friend who teaches drama). In the dark, I talked about how it was our responsibility to honor the struggles and the lives of those people who live with HIV. I told them that there would be HIV positive people in the audience on the night of our performance, and that out of respect for them, we had to be as truthful as possible to the real-life experience of contracting the virus. I finished by saying that we also had a responsibility to those who work with HIV positive people, like Jenny, who have lost friends to the virus, and who have helped people cope through some of the darkest hours of their lives.

That chat was a turning point. From then on, whenever we got giggly, I just had to say, “Remember who we are honoring,” and things settled down.

In the week before the big performance, I was impressed to see how much ownership the students took in the process. Though I thought that they were ready to perform, they were still pretty nervous, and they asked if we could rehearse every day, instead of just twice that week. They brought in their own warm-ups and theatre games that they had found on the Internet. Jenny's son became ill, and so she was unable to meet with us for most of the week. For this reason, and because she hadn't been participating much in rehearsals anyway, we didn't give her a role in the final performance. (I should mention that I played only a directorial role the whole time...I never acted in any of the scenes.)

The other challenge in the final week was that one of the actors dropped out of the group, due to a family crisis. He had been playing the father of the girl with HIV, and so we turned over his lines and responsibilities to the young lady who had been playing the mother, turning her relatively small role into a much larger one. She rose to the challenge, but struggled with some of the complexities of the role. In the play, when the young girl tells her family that she has contracted HIV, the parents kick her out of the house, because they don't understand the virus or how it is transmitted. The girl's friends take her in, and together they seek the support of a community health promoter (from our organization) to help her gain the support of her family, and reconcile the relationship. In then end, the girl moves back in with her now-supportive family, and all is well.

The challenge of playing the parents in this situation, is how to kick your own kid out of the house at a time of great need, and then later have the audience feel good about the fact that the girl is moving back in. Basically, the parents can't be mean about it, but have to justify throwing her out by revealing their fears about the virus. The main idea was, “Honey, we love you, but we can't have you living here and risk you infecting the rest of the family.” This approach gave the health promoter the opportunity to explain how the virus is transmitted, and help the parents feel comfortable inviting the girl back home.

When the young lady playing the mother had to take over the responsibilities of the father as well, I recruited Jenny's help in working through the details of this role with her. Towards the end of the week, the young actress was finally comfortable in her role—or at least she told me that she was. Things were going smoothly.

That is, until we got to the day of the performance. What had started out as simply a presentation by the theatre group, had suddenly morphed into a full-fledged community activity for the whole organization, complete with a thirty-minute spiritual devotional, a PowerPoint presentation on HIV, testimonials by people living with the virus, and a candle-lighting ceremony. Somehow, I missed the memo on this, until I was handed a schedule the morning of the performance. I was also told that we were going to need to cut the length of the play in half, since there were so many other activities planned, and people might get bored. Oh, and by the way, we think the teens should sing a song after they perform the play.

Another example of cultural difference. I'm used to having my ducks in a row for a presentation, long before the day of. I like to know what's happening...and my worst nightmare is standing in front of an audience without knowing what's coming next. So you can imagine that these last-minute changes threw me into an inner tailspin. I think I did a good job of not showing my frustration, especially over the fact that the activity had been planned around our play, and now we were being asked to cut it in half to make room for 30 minutes of hymn singing. I smiled and said, “No problem,” without any real plans to change anything, knowing that the teens would probably rush through the play on account of their nerves, anyway.

That morning, we ran through the play once, polishing up the final details. I couldn't have been more proud. I thought to myself, “If they do half as well this afternoon, they'll have so much to be proud of.” We agreed to meet at the auditorium (the multi-purpose room of the local convent) at 1:30pm, cleaned up, and ready to go.

I didn't really expect them to be on time. After all, we are in Nicaragua. But actually, most of them showed up early, eager to see the stage, and walk through the motions a couple of times before the audience came at 3:00pm. I called up my boss, Jeanette, and asked her if we could move the furniture around in the room, especially the big podium sitting in the middle of the stage. We had most of the actors there, and so after moving the podium, we walked through the show, step by step.

It was 2:45 before Jenny showed up. I was relieved that I hadn't assigned her any responsibilities, because she was over an hour late, and hadn't had the opportunity to walk through the staging with us. We were about three-quarters of a way through our walk-through when she walked in, right onto the stage, and said, “You can't move that podium like that, because we need it there for the testimonials and presentations.”

You might imagine that, fifteen minutes before the audience arrived, such a comment wasn't really appreciated, especially from someone who had arrived over an hour late. I admit, my tone was inappropriately sharp when I replied, “Jenny, we'll move it back in place before and after the play. Now if you don't mind, we need to keep working.”

I saw out of the corner of my eye that my tone had offended her. I knew better, but didn't take the time to rectify the situation, feeling the pressure of the audience I imagined to be pressing on the doors from the outside. “I'll apologize later,” I thought.

The activity started 45 minutes late, as is pretty standard in this country. The teens and I gathered in the back of the room as our turn came around, just after the 30 minutes of hymns and 40 minutes of PowerPoint presentations. I simply told them that I was proud of them, and then listened as each one of them offered encouragement to the others. It was really something to see just how far they'd come in four weeks, and I bowed my head in quiet pride as one of the teens asked if he could pray for the performance. They were ready. We were all ready.

When the time came, I went to the back of the room to run the “light board,” (a.k.a. the light switch by the door), flicking off the lights so that the actors could get into their places. When the lights came back on, the murmuring crowd feel silent, and my jaw dropped.

Jenny was sitting on the stage, in the chair usually occupied by the role of the mother. Jeannette leaned over to me and said, “I didn't know that Jenny was going to be in the play.”

I replied, “Neither did I.”

The next forty-five minutes are still painful to remember, even three weeks after the fact. Jenny took over the role of the mother, sidelining the girl who had been rehearsing the role, making her into a mute “sister” that sat wordless at her mother's side. The girl who had been rehearsing the real role of the sister was even more confused, and kept looking at her boyfriend in the audience, shrugging and giggling nervously. When it came time for the main character to tell her mother that she had contracted HIV, the girl couldn't even get the words out, because Jenny kept cracking joke after joke, making all the actors laugh on stage, and keeping the audience at a dull roar. The most crucial moment of the scene went something like this:

“Mom, I have to tell you something.”

“Well, spit it out. I'm freaking tired and I don't have time to listen to your pathetic complaining.”

“The thing is, well, um...Mom...”

“Hurry up! Rub my feet while you're at it. I've had a long day.”

“Mom, it isn't easy to tell you.”

“What? Are you pregnant? I told you had to stop hanging out with those horrible friends of yours! This is just AWFUL! I can't believe my own daughter...”

(Lots of audience laughter and giggling actors.)

“No mom, I'm not pregnant. I have HIV.”

“WHAT? GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! You disgust me! Don't come near my daughters. You are such a slut for getting that disease. I can't believe you! Don't touch me! Get out of here!”

(Uproarious laughter from actors and audience alike.)

And so it went, on and on, with Jenny sacrificing the script that we had written to get cheap and easy laughs from the audience. It's hard to describe how I felt as I helplessly flicked the light switch on and off in the back of the room. Betrayed, would be a good start. Hijacked. Blindsided. Confused. Crushed. Pissed as hell.

By the time it was all over, Jenny was on her knees, center stage, beating her breast and clutching her daughter's knees, begging forgiveness for the fool she had been. You'd have thought she was playing Lady Macbeth. The audience ate it up. They laughed so hard, they could barely stay in their seats when the lights went up for curtain call. The laughter burned in my ears.

How could Jenny do something like that, after all the time we had spent talking about how complex the relationship between the daughter and her parents needed to be? How could she take over one of the teens' roles, especially without telling anyone? (Or rather, without telling me? Who knows, maybe the other teens were in on it, too.) How could she turn the whole play into a giant JOKE, after all the conversations we had had about the fact that we were honoring the lives of people living with the virus? After I had said that we were honoring JENNY, and all the work she has done with HIV!!! I couldn't look at the faces of the HIV positive folks sitting in the audience, feeling like the whole play had become a mockery of their real-life experiences. How selfish and infantile must a person be, to sabotage five weeks of rehearsal just to make a point? Or rather, to put oneself in the spotlight, no matter whom must be trampled to get there?

I should also mention that we had hired a videographer to film the event. Unfortunately, we forgot to tell him that it is inappropriate to stand on the stage in between the actors and the audience. While Jenny was busy becoming Mama Rose, our friend the cameraman stuck his massive equipment two inches away from the actors' faces, blocking the audience's view, and making each of the teens squirm and send sideways glances at the lens every few seconds.

It was all too much to handle. I have never felt so betrayed in my life. And as I tried to breathe deeply and regain my composure, Jenny grabbed the microphone and sweetly said, “We'd like to invite up the guy who made all of this possible...Our director, our teacher, our friend....Kendal!”

Can you imagine the effort it took to plaster a smile on my face in that moment? To accept Jenny's hug, and graciously accept the beautiful gift that the teens had purchased for me? I did the best I could, but when someone tried to put the microphone in my hand, I just couldn't keep it together any longer. I declined, and made a bee-line for the back door. I prayed that I wouldn't run into anyone as I rushed through the long corridors of the convent and out into the high-walled garden.

As I collapsed onto a stone bench, hot tears of anger and betrayal gushed down my face. I couldn't pinpoint if I was more hurt by the fact that my role as director had been so blatantly disrespected, or that the hard work of each of the teens had been so rapidly undermined by the selfish motivations of someone's over-sized ego. It didn't matter, really. The damage was done, and I was leaving town the next day.

I sat there in that garden for the next forty minutes, while Rosario's amplified testimony drifted overhead, mingled with the slow, haunting chants of the nuns in their cloisters. Gradually, I pulled myself together, knowing that I needed to put on a good face for the audience inside, and the teenagers who had worked so hard, and had achieved so much, despite the present circumstances.

When I walked back in, one of the teens noted my red eyes and said, “I know you're sad about leaving us tomorrow. But we're going to be okay. We've gotten off to a great start, and we're going to keep going after you leave.” He didn't know the real reason why I had been upset, but his words reassured me that my work in Bluefields hadn't been in vain.

As the audience filed out, I just smiled as people congratulated me on what a success the play had been. If any of the teens were upset about Jenny's stunt, they sure didn't show it. I think they had been so nervous beforehand, and were just so pleased that the audience enjoyed the final product...they simply forgot how the play was intended to be performed. The office staff was especially enthusiastic. They were so impressed by what we had pulled off in just a few weeks. I avoided Jenny's eyes, not trusting what might come out of my mouth if we spoke at all. I felt so alone in that moment—each and every compliment adding to my frustration that no one knew how the play was supposed to be. Yes, the play had been funny, and Jenny had made people laugh a lot. But I didn't care how GOOD the play was...I cared about the ownership that each student felt in the process.

As the last few people drifted out of the auditorium, the teens asked me if we could play a couple of our warm-up games, just one more time, before I left. So we sat in a circle, making silly faces and laughing our way through the quagmire of pride mixed with the impending bite of separation that we were each feeling in our own individual ways. I have to admit that they really helped me shake off my profound sense of betrayal, reassuring me that the foundation that we had laid was strong, and that the group would continue, at least for the next little while.

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The next morning, I woke up at 5:00am in a complete daze, not sure if it had all been a really bad dream or not. I quickly packed my bags, and hopped on a plane to the Corn Islands—two little tropical paradises off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. I had originally planned to be there only a few days...After all, what's there to do on an island that isn't even a square mile? But after the trauma of that final day in Bluefields, being on a remote island, laying on a sandy beach and sipping a piña colada, was exactly the therapy I needed.

I ended up staying on the islands for 12 days...most of which I spent on Little Corn Island, learning to scuba dive and getting really tan. By the time I got back to Bluefields to pick up my extra suitcase, I had cooled down enough to put the performance incident behind me. I wasn't yet ready to talk through my feelings with the involved parties, but I wasn't sure what good that would do anyway, as I probably won't ever see them again.

After two days traveling by steamboat, speedboat, and several buses, I finally arrived in my beloved Matagalpa a week ago on Friday night, and collapsed into the welcoming embrace of dear friends, cool mountain breezes, and a friend's soft couch. I know that I'll continue reflecting on these experiences for some time to come. I keep reminding myself that my final day in Bluefields was the exception to the rule—that I have learned so much from my six weeks there, and will continue to learn from those experiences in future work.

But for the moment, I'm just glad to be back in the closest thing I have to a home in Nicaragua.

T-Shirt Sightings...

So it's an inevitable fact that when a developing country receives loads and loads of donated aid materials (often in the form of used clothing), there will be lots of people walking around wearing items that seem out of place. This fact is especially exacerbated by a language barrier and high illiteracy rates. In my time in Nicaragua, I've seen some side-splitting malapropisms walking down the street. I should have been writing them down, but one never has the pen and paper handy when the time is right.

But then today, just on my way in to work, three different sightings jumped out at me as particularly hilarious. I thought I'd share....

3) A big burly Creole man, hunched over an shining shoes in the park, wearing a MISS SAIGON t-shirt.

2) A great-grandmother in her 90s with a scarf tied over her head, walking with a cane through the market. Her shirt said "Easy" in pink sequins.

1) My personal favorite, a toothless, big-bellied fisherman whose gut stuck out under his University of Michigan t-shirt, as he wiped his brow with an Ohio State ball cap.