i'm not really sure what to think right now. i'm listening to an album by a supercool guy i met on monday at a built to spill show. i sort of want to share this music with everyone i know. it's dark and eery and beautiful and is forcing me to access parts of me that i try to avoid. it makes me feel lonely and wanting to create something that can make people feel in the same way completely raw way. i miss loving. and the infinite complexities of love. learning and pushing and laughing and tumbling. i want to be in love again. this week i also hung out with a friend in paris who i could sort of picture something with. but he's in a relationship - a long term one. but we're also very attracted to each other. i feel the responsibility to warn him about the depths of my own darkness and also a more basic responsibility to not ruin someone else's life. this whole episodes reminds me of how selfish i've been in the past to people i care about and who care about me. always, i drop the ball. and runaway and think of it as me saving someone from something more painful and overly complex. but it's basically just plain wrong to continue to think in these terms. i want to hide and hibernate until i can wake up and feel like i can do things right.

rube goldberg, a-go-go

i love being reminded of the beauty in everyday exchanges. while i'm in the midst of many a frustration adjusting to a new existence in a foreign country where my abrasiveness ain't cute and my fumbling words aren't seen as humble attempts to "assimilate" or learn, it's easy to lose perspective on what it's all for.

i had an impromptu french lesson today in my kitchen with my roommate florent. while i was burning zucchini and turning pasta into starchy mush, i shyly shared the vocab a handy french audio dictionary helped me to pick up. the learning and frustration are so much more fun when shared and laughed over. yes, emile hirsch, happiness is only real if shared.

i was also temporarily inspired by all this democratic national convention bizness. i caught up on michelle obama's speech and for the first time could really identify with all this american dream gumbo. surprise family reunions and spending time with family has reminded me of some of the lessons that i learned while bumming around south america. sincere thankfulness for those who came before me and who paved the way for me to live this vagabond life for a little while. i suppose we're all waiting to see what become of it all as i find my place, my role in this rube goldberg-ian contraption of life.

poop diatribe.

i miss the days of yesterday when i could poop without guilt, without grief, without shame. i miss the days when i could laugh when i ripped. when sneaker shuffles or running water diversions were not necessary. i miss the days when i could be me, uncensored, bloated, and proudly stinky.

straight out of murakami

i've just arrived in colombia, happy to see familiar faces in a sea of a pushing crowd outside bogota's airport. it's been just over 7 months since i started my journey and i've arrived in the last country on my south america trip. i've spent these months living and working, traveling solo, traveling with new friends and old, and now i'm about to begin a month of family time with a family i hardly know. in many ways, this was the most anticipated part of my trip. a place that i've imagined having roots in. in reality, i'm just as much a gringa here as i've been everywhere else on my trip. of course i realized this would be the case a while back but it makes me think about home and roots in general. in many ways, i'm very attracted to the idea of being rootless. being able to possess an adaptability any where i find myself. not being tied down to a place or people in order to be able to pursue exactly what it is that i want. so is the way of a solo traveler. i do what i want. i go where i want. i create what i want. i love that this is who i could be for this time in my life. living purely for myself for the sake of myself. as i consider next steps in my life, i wonder how long i can keep this up. can i possibly spend another year traveling? becoming accustomed to the kinds of temporary roots i've left all through out south america? living in paris for a year as a grad student would be very different from backpacking across south america but in a sense, its another form of escapism. in the depths of my heart, i can only picture going back to new york if i was with him. if he declared his love for me in a hopeful way like he never has before. but i realize this is asking way too much and that only my dreams and fantasies i've cultivated over the many hours of window seat bus rides i've experienced over the last 7 months can live up to my, well, dreams. it's in that space alone can i live out this other life. its only with the help of this fantasy alternative consciousness am i able to find the strength i need to keep moving. how very haruki murakami of me. i'm frightened by what'll happen once i've really realized that these worlds are in fact not able to exist simultaneously. distraction is crucial.

snap, it's mine.

i've spent the last few days doing research for a project i'm working on with a band called la culta. la culta is 5, all with deep roots in mataderos and it's daily going-ons. the song 'desaparacido' was written by the group's lead singer, ale, about his older sister who was one of the 30,000 disappeared (state estimates are much lower) during argentina's dirty war that persecuted anyone with even slight hints towards the left. ale's sister, however, was not an intellectual. she wasn't a student who participated in demonstrations. she didn't secretly read marx or host anti-government meetings. instead, she was taken from her mother moments after birth. the family was told she had died during birth but her family is convinced she is one of many children who were stolen from their families and given to supporters of the dictatorship.

the song is about ale's family's years of heart break and disappointment and anger. although ale wasn't born at the time, he's inherited all the burden of a lost sister, the regrets of what could have been, and the emptiness that all family and friends of disappeared share. in the video that i'm helping with, i want to explore this inherited grief. what is lost as grief is passed on from one generation to another? what is gained? what is learned?

i've begun to collect images by argentina photographers that explore similar questions. here's a few ....















"Marcha por la vida," Adriana Lestido
















"The Memory Forest," Marcelo Brodsky















"Buena Memoria," Marcelo Brodsky














"Nexo: The Archives 2000 - 2001," Marcelo Brodsky

a note on name.

although the title "healing veins" maybe sounds a little dark, it's actually a reference to eduardo galeano's book "open veins of latin america." the book is galeano's attempt to trace the generations of exploitation latin america has face since being discovered some 500 years ago. although widely known as a journalist, galeano approaches latin american history more critically and poetically than most traditional journalists or historians. it was written over 30 years ago but continues to be relevant today in the context of our increasingly globalized world.

as part of my thesis at gallatin, i looked at the centuries of colonization, neocolonization, liberalism, neoliberalism, and a bunch of other -isms that for better or worse have escaped me. i looked at cycles of power and theories on how and why power is established, distributed, and manifested in basically ever action we take as members of any given society. blah blah blah today, globalization is the $10 word everybody is afraid of, the end of cultures, individuality, and all the things that make us different and interesting, the hand homogeneity. well, it just don't have to be so. more than ever, we're better equipped with ways to preserve and to continue to evolve in order to exist as distinct peoples and individuals. so "healing veins" is my attempt to convey this message.

i feel this sentiment a lot in argentina. after the economic crisis in 2001 and the subsequent devaluation of the argentine peso, argentina has been forced to look internally rather than abroad. more on this a bit later ....

so, yea, title of blog is hopeful. word.

open terrain.

i've tried blogging before. never whole heartedly, never successfully. in my mind, usually my thoughts are too scattered and disorganized to even fit into an already saturated world of scattered and disorganized blogs. my thoughts always seemed too small or too huge to begin to openly share with every joe schmo with a computer and broadband access. but, meh, i'll give it a try.

i'm 2 months into my travels in south america. 2 months living in my recoleta apartment with two lovely foreigners and working at conviven, teaching english, sneaking into the villa, confessing my indiscretions and the occasional late-night, early-morning kiss with the sunrise. i feel worlds away from how i felt three, four, five months ago - generally beaten down by a rhythm of life that i didn't want to keep up with. i had been working at an advertising agency and was unhappy. i had broken up with my boyfriend and i was unhappy. i wasn't sure where i was going or who i was going with and i felt terrified. this unhappiness originally prompted me to think about a scene change. in a sense, i wanted to just run away from everything that couldn't be fixed anymore, erase shadows of memories of what i considered failures from my mind and start again, keeping what i wanted and ignoring what was too hard for me to face. i had so much built up sadness but was only letting it exist as anger. in many ways, this is the curse of my family. anger and aloofness masks as strength but below it, a deep river of dissatisfaction fuels these cycles.

the few months leading up to this trip gave me an opportunity to really analyze the reasons why i wanted to leave and what in fact was fueling my need for adventure and my emotional state before heading out. i started out scared, i grew into being scared, and i think i've settled on scared. ha! each stage, however, was fueled by really distinct needs. at first, i wanted to run away. but as i gave myself more time to heal, more time reassessing, i realized that i pretty naturally have a spirit that wants to constantly learn and be humbled by the places i go and people i meet. but after 6 years in new york, with the exception of a few trips in between, the big apple wasn't doing it for me. i was forgetting about the things that i really care about, or maybe it was during this time when i felt like i was losing myself did i really come to understand what was and is important to me. it's a funny and incredibly privileged problem to have: when faced with so many possibilities, which ones do we choose for ourselves and which ones do we ignore or promise we'll get back to later? what opportunities are we losing when we adopt the bookmarking method of goals? i guess i figured now was as good a time as ever to pack up, reevaluate the decisions i had made so far and begin to set tangible goals for myself. i need to acknowledge that this trip is for me and by me but to continue to be incredibly thankful for everyone who has contributed to getting me to this place, emotionally, spiritually, logistically. and also the people who continue to help me to stay here and make connections to these places.

so thank you.