Superplush (part 2)

Why the Title
Two years ago a few friends spent New Years in West Virginia with me at my parents’ sangha’s retreat center, which features an extremely well padded green carpet.  It was so sumptuous, in fact, that we saw no reason to use the beds or chairs, instead lolling about on the floor as frost gathered on the windows.  The carpet attained rock star status among us, becoming known as “the Super Plush Carpet” and receiving frequent acclamation even months later.

During my trip home the phrase “super plush” reentered my lexicon.  After spending the night with a sock over my eyes on a magazine table in Dulles I met my brother and his family for the drive to the wedding in North Carolina.  I stared out the window, taking in all the space!  Route 29, through the heart of Virginia, has almost constant settlement along its berms, but it’s not like the constant settlement of El Salvador.  The wide lawns in front, treed hillsides behind, and ample distance between the houses on Route 29 gave off such a different impression from El Salvador, where the landscape and the houses always seem about to topple on one another.  I didn’t feel severely culture shocked, since this Virginian landscape was such a familiar one; I just noticed how super plush it felt.

I didn’t stop noticing how super plush so many parts of the U.S. experience are for the whole trip.  Other things that made me mutter to myself wow, this is super plush!:
Riding around in comfortable cars with good suspension on smooth roads.
Drinking water from the tap (especially in NYC, knowing how high-quality it is).
Putting my toilet paper in the toilet (not a few times I looked around for the TP wastebasket and, noting its absence, wondered at the poor bathroom maintenance).
Effortlessly overhearing nearby conversation (truly super plush to so easily understand those around you!).
Breakfast at the Zen retreat in West Virginia: 3 types of bread, bagels, 4 types of yogurt, homemade granola, 3 types of cereal, butter, margarine, 3 types of jam…mmm.
Almost every house I saw (glass windows, stone steps, big garages…).
Large, stainless steel, whirring, grinding, bubbling coffee machines in Brooklyn coffee shops.
Sandwiches in NYC.

…and the list could go on.  The only thing I notably did NOT find super plush about my trip was the lack of a cell phone, which is something I always have and always has service in El Salvador.  But of course my friends had all gotten new cell phones that flip open in crazy ways and display photos, or touchscreen iPods you can watch YouTube videos on, pretty much blowing my mind with their super plushness.

I used the touchscreen iPod to catch up on some YouTube videos I hadn’t gotten to see yet (limited internet café time in El Salvador mainly being used for more important things like email, news, and wikipedia): Obama girl, and the hakas of various rugby teams and the Trinity High football team from Texas.  Obama girl was pretty lame, and I’m surprised it got so much attention (and I say this as a guy who has a big crush on Obama).  But the hakas are awesome.  If you don’t know what a haka is, just search for it on YouTube.  I’m rooting for an appearance of a haka in the third season of Friday Night Lights, my favorite high school melodrama TV show.

Zen and Why the Other Title
During my time in El Salvador, my zazen (sitting meditation) practice has gotten more regular than it’s ever been since I started sitting in high school.  This is not to say that it has advanced.  There are stories of masters like Hui-Neng, the Sixth Zen Patriarch, an uneducated woodcutter who suddenly gained enlightenment upon hearing someone chanting the Diamond Sutra.  But there are also plenty of stories slightly more like mine, of monks who spent many years of devoted practice on the cushion before gaining so much as a glimmer of realization.  The lack of improvement in my zazen hasn’t bothered me unduly, partly because I’m content to put in the effort each day, and partly because zen practice is properly done with the aid of a teacher, and I don’t have one.

This is why it was so wonderful to attend part of my parents’ sangha’s fall retreat at Saranam, the home of the famous Super Plush Carpet, with their teacher.  His delicately delivered dharma talks and dokusan (private interview) with me gave me so much insight into the nature of zen practice that I feel I could spend the next year (or lifetime) working on what he talked about.  Also, sitting with a group of devoted practitioners was extremely helpful.  I’ve come back “home” to El Salvador with a good measure of liveliness and devotion infused into my practice.

Speaking of zen and my trip home gives me an excuse to explain this blog’s title a bit.  It comes from a quote by a Chinese master: “Speaking too much about zen is like looking for fish tracks in a dry riverbed.”  The purpose of zen practice is not something that one can convey an understanding of by explaining it.  Only through direct experience can we come to know the true nature of our self and all things.

I thought this sentiment could also describe—albeit in a shallower sense—the effort of writing a blog about my experience, state of mind, and activities as a PCV.  I had read a few books about the country before coming down here, and one impression I got was that facts sort of slip through one’s fingers in El Salvador, like soup through a fork.  For example, from 1981 to 1994 seemingly no one in the world knew whether 1,000 people had died at El Mozote or not!  It’s always to someone’s benefit to not be certain about something (in that case the Reagan and Salvadoran administrations’ benefits), and what I’d read suggested to me that obfuscation was more common in this culture.  This impression has been borne out in my experience here.  I have been frustrated many times by peoples’ willful tendency to ignore facts when it suits them to do so.

And, of course, my own experience here is inherently unique and untranslatable.  I’m frequently frustrated by the questions What do I write? and What can I say?  Visiting the States and getting the opportunity to describe firsthand my Salvadoran life showed me even more than writing the blog that I won’t be able to capture it.  I told some good stories, showed some good pictures, and gave my family and friends an idea of what it’s like to live here.  But, just like in the zen tradition, where one can find many good stories, illustrations, and an abstract idea of what it’s all about, talking about it will never approach the thing itself.  So the title “Fish Tracks in a Dry Riverbed” is intended to point to the futility of writing about this experience, especially in this place where even the simplest facts are hard to pin down.  This blog is something, but it is far from the thing itself.

With this in mind I often don’t write about the seemingly most pertinent things, to the great frustration of people who want to know what I actually do, what my days are like.  Instead, I write about what captures me at certain moments.  A pastiche.  It’s more fun that way, for both of us.  Who wants to read a staid, linear account of someone’s two years in Peace Corps?  Well, I’m sure my parents would be happy to, but I’d rather keep things less self-involved, more varied.  Not that going on and on about why I titled my blog thus and so is going to do that.  So let’s move on.

Superplush: My Visit Home (part 1)

Lo and behold, it turns out that Peace Corps Volunteers don’t just fall off the edge of the earth for two years, coming back tanned, tough-stomached, and bemused by our strange North American customs. Just as Thoreau in his famous isolation sometimes saw fit to take Sunday dinner at his mother’s or Emerson’s house, some PCVs pop in during the middle of their service. These days Thoreau’s social butterfly habits are almost as well known as his solitude, but most people still have a foggy idea that Peace Corps doesn’t permit its volunteers to come back to the States until their time is up. Even I hadn’t seriously considered going home until I did it, even though many if not most of my PCV friends already had, some of them more than once. But when my closest cousin got engaged and set the wedding date for October, I knew a visit just had to happen.

Congratulations, Molly and Logan!! You are beautiful! Good luck with the Russian!

The Transition

I bought a plane ticket, my anticipation snowballed, and all of the sudden I was walking out of customs at Dulles airport. The receiving line was crowded with expectant Salvadorans waiting for other passengers from my flight, some of them bemused by me in my Salvadoran national team jersey. Ha! I thought, welcome to the States—you’re still an out-of-context gringo! I headed for the bathroom, about 50 feet past the crowd of Salvadorans. At that distance from them I was aware of suddenly being a very much in-context English-speaking white guy, which felt confusing. A reticent member of the crowd was hanging back, leaning on the wall by the bathroom. He looked like a construction worker who’d cleaned himself up for the first time in a while, and he held a bunch of flowers in his hand. I wondered how long it’d been since he’d seen whomever he was waiting for, sure that my 13 months away from my loved ones paled in comparison. I wanted to say something. I probably would have in El Salvador, but now I was all off-balance. What would he think of me trying to talk to him? What would I say, here, anyway? 50 feet into the States, and already everything was different. I felt a little excited to be here, but certainly not relieved. And this shy construction worker with his woeful bouquet gave me a pang of nostalgia for El Salvador, already.

Bad days, good days, eyes and forays

9/29/08

Hello, it’s pouring. The space in front of my front porch has filled with water, almost to the point of overflowing onto the tiles. The cascade pouring through the hole in my roof above the pila (water basin) filled it in record time. I’m so glad I have plastic up under the roof tiles; otherwise everything in the house would be soaked. As it is only the middle of the house receives a fine spray through the tiles, where there’s no plastic underneath. It makes walking from my desk to my bed slightly bracing.

In other news, things are well. After a terrible couple of days at the end of last week, I had a great weekend with Niña Candy at a conference on gender organized by volunteers, and a great first day back in the community, which I’d sort of dreaded. Here’s the scoop: I had long ago asked Don Gilmer, the school director, if I could use the school building for the eye campaign I’ve arranged to come to the community. He was loathe to agree, since suspending classes for a day means the teachers have to come in on a Saturday or holiday to make up. But he referred me to the president of the school board, Don Pipo (Teodulo’s brother), for the final word. It turned out Don Pipo didn’t give the final word; he told me the organization running the eye campaign, FUDEM, needed to solicit the use of the school from the departmental office. I dutifully requested that FUDEM write a letter, went by their San Salvador office to pick it up, and hand-delivered it to Gotera. The response the next day, last Tuesday, from the departmental director was a firm No. I wheedled on the phone to no avail, receiving only a barrage of sugar-coated bureaucratic mumbo jumbo in return.

That left me scrambling Tuesday afternoon to find a place for the seven doctors that would be arriving in a little over a week prepared to examine 200-300 pairs of eyes and sell discounted glasses. The best alternative was Don Chepe’s house: right next door to the school and big enough to handle the crowd. (He also happens to be my landlord, a nice guy, and a recent convert to the AA gospel—the days in May when he drunkenly looped his arms around my neck and babbled that he wouldn’t touch my stuff if I moved into his other house are distant memories.) Unfortunately, Don Chepe was away working in his cornfield, a 3 ½ hour bus ride away, and his wife didn’t know when he’d be back. This afternoon? Tomorrow? Day after?

He still hadn’t returned by Thursday afternoon, when another frustration arose. Niña Candy and I were set to leave the next morning for the three-day gender conference. Over the previous month I had been repeatedly inviting the teachers, the school director, and the school board members; Candy was the only enthusiastic invitee—the other two who were going to come backed out (unfortunately practically no one in my community is given to doing things outside the norm or beyond the bare minimum). Now, barely 12 hours before our departure, Don Pipo rolls up to the school demanding to see a signed, stamped note of permission from the departmental office before he’ll let Niña Candy cancel her Friday classes. I could not believe his gall. He’d known about this for a month and had given his tacit permission. I’d already told him that the departmental director had also given her explicit permission for any teachers to miss a day to attend. Now, even after Candy had told her students there’d be no class tomorrow, and they’d all gone home, he comes in demanding an official note? He kept holding the agenda for the conference that I’d printed out to show to the teachers in front of my nose, unnecessarily explaining to me that it was an agenda, not a signed, stamped note. I came pretty close to yelling at him.

And so I left the next morning, fretting over the uncertain location for next Thursday’s eye campaign and worried for Candy, who’d accompanied me without clear permission from Don Pipo. Thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about my community: nobody wants to collaborate on anything worthwhile, they ruin things with their need to exercise control over situations and other people, they don’t like me and don’t want to do anything with me…and on and on.

It was a relief to rendezvous in San Miguel with the other volunteers and the community members they’d brought, everyone in high spirits about going to the beach for the three-day conference. I’d escaped my problems, at least until Sunday afternoon. We relaxed with coffee and bilingual talk about politics (apropos of the debate that was probably going to go on that night, barring a McCain no-show) while we waited for everyone to show up. Then we crowded into two camiones, trucks meant to carry livestock or firewood but that just as frequently transport soccer teams, church groups, and (now) groups of Salvadoran schoolteachers and gringo volunteers. The ride to the beach was almost two hours of sun, wind, good views, and shouted Spanish.

The conference was fantastic. All the participants, from the 19- or 20-year-old girls Suzanne brought to the old lady Dave brought and the old guy Missy brought, jumped into all the activities and discussions with gusto. We had some interesting conversations about gender roles and their flexibility or not in this culture, the rights of women, attributing blame in cases of sexual assaults, and that sort of thing. The few homophobic and machista comments that were uttered somehow didn’t lead to confrontations or unsavory agreement among the Salvadorans. We did lots of dinámicas (icebreakers/games), resulting in much hilarity. Everyone seemed to make new friends. We didn’t separate into groups of gringos and Salvos as much as I feared; it was fun to talk in Spanish all weekend, especially with educated people who are easier to talk to. We swam in the calm, lukewarm ocean at night, swishing our arms around to disturb the luminescent microorganisms that look like underwater fireflies. Some of us went on a boat ride and enjoyed gorgeous clouds and a dip in deep water.

When the time came to leave on Sunday Niña Candy talked a lot about how much she wanted to stay. I was glad she had such a good time. We chatted the entire bus ride, retelling jokes from the night before and riding out the energy of the conference. Both of us were a little nervous about confronting Don Pipo, and I was additionally worried about Don Chepe turning down my request to use his house for the eye campaign. But we didn’t let it bother us too much. When we got to town she went to the 3 PM mass and I went to my friends’ comedor to watch the Italian classic, Inter vs. Milan, and celebrate Ronaldinho’s first goal with his new team.

Maybe Candy’s piety on Sunday paid off, because everything turned out well. Don Pipo was mysteriously much calmer and more amenable than I’d expected, and Don Chepe gave me an enthusiastic yes. Moreover, Don Gilmer the school director seemed excited to use some of the activities from the gender conference in the school and with the parents. All this success made me feel great. I walked around chatting cheerfully with people and enjoying the feeling of being here. Hopefully the good luck lasts through Thursday, and lots of people show up for the eye campaign.