Waiting is a recurring theme here. I know that when you are told what time to show up you need to do some pretty fantastic math (likely involving imaginary numbers) to figure out what time you should actually show up. Somehow I still have not figured it out, yet every Dominican has an instinct for knowing exactly when things will start. This is such a strong instinct that posters very rarely include times, just dates.
Priorities
Mercedes' office
has clocks
that don't work.
So, it is always
11:20 and 1:29.
Morning or night?
there is a calendar too
(the kind where you arrange
plaques to give you the month and the day).
For weeks
it has read
"Monday November 2".
I know these things
because I spend time
in her office
waiting for the clocks
to be right.
If I wait long enough
the calendar will be right too.
But that will take
a very long time.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Incense and Mangoes
I had a friend in grade 9 who loved apples...erotically. Each day he would lay his brief-case (yes, he had a brief-case) on the table. He would open the snaps, take out two apples and set them on the table. He would put his brief-case back on the floor and proceed to "make love" to his apples. With big slobbering bites he would devour them. The whole time he would make groaning noises and say: "this is a better-than-sex-apple"! I doubt he knew what he was talking about, but I certainly did believe that they were good apples. Perhaps even sinfully good. The apple is, after-all, portrayed as the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.
Personally, I feel that it was a mango that "opened their eyes". Apples are certainly more versatile and keep longer, but a mango is unadulterated pleasure. Opulence. Sex.
I bought a mango for twenty-five pesos from a fruit vendor who had set up along the side of Nunez. I carried it in my hand, feeling the weight of its buttery orange flesh (warmed by the sun) against my skin. I left it in my fruit bowl over night and put it in the fridge the next morning to eat cool after work.
I went for a run to work up my appetite, lit some incense I had bought in China-town and peeled the mango's redyellow skin with my pocket knife. The skin revealed the flesh, brilliant orange, darker at the bottom. This is where the sugar had settled as it ripened on the tree. I sliced the darkest nub off and placed it on my tongue. Waves of flavor and coolness coursed through me. Piece by piece I took the mango apart, until only the slimy sweetness around the pit was left. I picked it up and and sucked off the nectar. Covered in sweat and sweet I think it is time for a cigarette and a shower.
Personally, I feel that it was a mango that "opened their eyes". Apples are certainly more versatile and keep longer, but a mango is unadulterated pleasure. Opulence. Sex.
I bought a mango for twenty-five pesos from a fruit vendor who had set up along the side of Nunez. I carried it in my hand, feeling the weight of its buttery orange flesh (warmed by the sun) against my skin. I left it in my fruit bowl over night and put it in the fridge the next morning to eat cool after work.
I went for a run to work up my appetite, lit some incense I had bought in China-town and peeled the mango's redyellow skin with my pocket knife. The skin revealed the flesh, brilliant orange, darker at the bottom. This is where the sugar had settled as it ripened on the tree. I sliced the darkest nub off and placed it on my tongue. Waves of flavor and coolness coursed through me. Piece by piece I took the mango apart, until only the slimy sweetness around the pit was left. I picked it up and and sucked off the nectar. Covered in sweat and sweet I think it is time for a cigarette and a shower.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Daily Things
Today a colleague who is fast becoming a friend asked me: "what is it like in Minneapolis, I might be going there for some training?" "Huh?", I said.
Despite the fact that my home town is closer to Minneapolis than any other major American city, I have never been. I guess it's because I've never had any reason to go and the city has never given me a reason. I get enough Norse settlers and cold weather at home. He wanted to know what kind of weather they had. I could help him out there: Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, bring a jacket because it could change any time. He was also interested in the culture. I was a little bit puzzled. I've never considered cities like Minneapolis or Calgary or Milwauke to have any culture to speak of. But I proved myself wrong when I started thinking about what people would eat or do in their spare time: "Well, I guess there are a lot of Germans and Scandinavians. From what I know of them (and myself), they're pretty quiet and eat meat and potatoes. Like folksy, rock or country music and would most likely spend their Friday nights in poorly lit bars." Then he asked if he would see any Indians. This one really had me stumped, because this colleague is from Pakistan, has lived in many countries around the world and runs an Indian restaurant here in Santo Domingo when he is not teaching English. I figured he was talking about American Indians, because that's what everyone here calls them, swallowed my Canadian political correctness and dove in to the conversation: "Yes, I'm sure you would, in fact one of my favourite authors lives there, Louise Erdrich. She is half Ojibwe, I believe. You could visit her bookstore. I'm sure you'll be able to see some East Indians too."
I've spent so much time trying to be normal here that I've forgotten how different the cultures I come from are. This is still a monolithic culture. The only difference between big cities and towns are the numbers of people and fast food chains. To be fair there are a couple museums and Universities, but not much else changes. Seeds of difference are beginning to sprout here. Far too often, though, they are killed before they get a chance to grow.
Despite the fact that my home town is closer to Minneapolis than any other major American city, I have never been. I guess it's because I've never had any reason to go and the city has never given me a reason. I get enough Norse settlers and cold weather at home. He wanted to know what kind of weather they had. I could help him out there: Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, bring a jacket because it could change any time. He was also interested in the culture. I was a little bit puzzled. I've never considered cities like Minneapolis or Calgary or Milwauke to have any culture to speak of. But I proved myself wrong when I started thinking about what people would eat or do in their spare time: "Well, I guess there are a lot of Germans and Scandinavians. From what I know of them (and myself), they're pretty quiet and eat meat and potatoes. Like folksy, rock or country music and would most likely spend their Friday nights in poorly lit bars." Then he asked if he would see any Indians. This one really had me stumped, because this colleague is from Pakistan, has lived in many countries around the world and runs an Indian restaurant here in Santo Domingo when he is not teaching English. I figured he was talking about American Indians, because that's what everyone here calls them, swallowed my Canadian political correctness and dove in to the conversation: "Yes, I'm sure you would, in fact one of my favourite authors lives there, Louise Erdrich. She is half Ojibwe, I believe. You could visit her bookstore. I'm sure you'll be able to see some East Indians too."
I've spent so much time trying to be normal here that I've forgotten how different the cultures I come from are. This is still a monolithic culture. The only difference between big cities and towns are the numbers of people and fast food chains. To be fair there are a couple museums and Universities, but not much else changes. Seeds of difference are beginning to sprout here. Far too often, though, they are killed before they get a chance to grow.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
"Big Yellow Taxi"
To answer your question Joni, yes that's exactly the way it seems to go. But lately I've been thinking the questions should read: "don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till you're gone?"
The truths about places and people I've left behind are haunting me. I've spent half a year now scratching at the surface. As always, I'm anxious to see what lies beneath this sunny veneer. I want to put a crack in it, "that's how the light gets in" after all. I find, though, that there is only more light and more noise on the other side. The country is swamped in sun, car horns and meaningless screaming. I crave a snow cave, or a sauna with a ticking stove and a frozen lake. I long for quiet aisles of books, a barrier between me and the outdoors. I think of libraries as lovers, the only differences is that you can't take them with you. An internet connection isn't a library, no matter what you read the computer still smells the same. I miss the smell of books. There are some things that vaguely resemble libraries here, but none of the real thing. They usually don't let you in or are closed or are actually book stores. It's not the same thing. Libraries need months every year of cold, rain or best of all fog to grow big and strong. I've left all that behind with a curse. People need the inside time to think and write and organize. The weather must drive you to it. Sunshine is not conducive to deep thinking. Missing that side of life I'm reduced to blubbering each time I encounter something more profound than dancing salsa, laughing, complaining about the power going out or electronics breaking. The sound of a bouzouki is enough to bring tears to my eyes. I'm thirsty for all the daily things I've left behind. Just one birthday party that doesn't stop traffic or one sad song, please. How about someone saying: "can I read you something". It doesn't even matter what it is, the idea of someone sharing ideas is enough to make me weepy. I wouldn't say no to a little irony every once in a while. I want a culture that consists of more than dancing and arguing. Being happy all the time is exhausting.
The worst thing is that when I leave this place I will miss it too. In my mind it will be brighter and clearer. If you are a romantic, you must never go back to places you have been, no reality can do a memory justice. Places aren't things.
The worst thing is that when I leave this place I will miss it too. In my mind it will be brighter and clearer. If you are a romantic, you must never go back to places you have been, no reality can do a memory justice. Places aren't things.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Waiting on Mangoes
In Canada you call it
winter
because nothing grows
and you need to change your tires
turn on your furnace
seal your windows
put your garden to bed
and perhaps
buy a new winter coat.
The days are cold and dark
the sun is pale.
There is no such word for it here.
Without a calendar
there are few ways to tell
what season it is
Hurricane season is
more of a possibility
than a season.
The rain may dump
for a few days
and form puddles on your floor.
Some wind,
but nothing compared to other places.
If you want the weather kind of seasons
you're in the wrong place
there is only
hot and very hot.
But if you still demand seasons
look to the fruit.
There is orange season:
beautiful
black men
shave orange peels
in the streets.
This perfume
challenges the smell
and even the noise
of passing motorcycles.
The men stalk the streets
with bags of oranges
that look like
tennis balls
ready to eat.
Now that something like spring is coming
laughably large leaved trees
are dropping green fruit
before me as I walk
and the men
have small yellow fruit
beside the sometimes oranges
and year long bananas.
Spring is called out
by the mango
Messiah
royal fruit
that warns of summer's
unrelenting heat.
It turns the molten orange
glow of the sun
into a cool honey tear drop.
The mangoes fatten
so easily on the branch
without any effort
from anybody.
winter
because nothing grows
and you need to change your tires
turn on your furnace
seal your windows
put your garden to bed
and perhaps
buy a new winter coat.
The days are cold and dark
the sun is pale.
There is no such word for it here.
Without a calendar
there are few ways to tell
what season it is
Hurricane season is
more of a possibility
than a season.
The rain may dump
for a few days
and form puddles on your floor.
Some wind,
but nothing compared to other places.
If you want the weather kind of seasons
you're in the wrong place
there is only
hot and very hot.
But if you still demand seasons
look to the fruit.
There is orange season:
beautiful
black men
shave orange peels
in the streets.
This perfume
challenges the smell
and even the noise
of passing motorcycles.
The men stalk the streets
with bags of oranges
that look like
tennis balls
ready to eat.
Now that something like spring is coming
laughably large leaved trees
are dropping green fruit
before me as I walk
and the men
have small yellow fruit
beside the sometimes oranges
and year long bananas.
Spring is called out
by the mango
Messiah
royal fruit
that warns of summer's
unrelenting heat.
It turns the molten orange
glow of the sun
into a cool honey tear drop.
The mangoes fatten
so easily on the branch
without any effort
from anybody.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Carnaval Vegano
I know what you are thinking, but don't make the mistake I did the first time I saw Expreso Vegano written on the side of a bus. There are only a handful of people in this country that know what a vegan is. There is no way they would name a bus line after veganism and there is definitely no vegan carnival here. Vegano is the demonym for somebody from La Vega, a city that has existed in some shape or form since Christopher Columbus founded it in 1494. La Vega is the capital of Caribbean carnaval and a town that literally doubles in size each Sunday during February to celebrate carnaval. This is word that is synonymous with light beer, loud music, loud costumes, cow stomach beating implements and fights.
Before anyone coming from Santo Domingo can enjoy the light beer, they must first drive through the roadblocks. Pentecostals in the DR are just as opposed to carnaval as the rest of the country is crazy about it. There is about a kilometer of road as you enter La Vega lined with t-shirted proselytizers reminding the soon to be debauched travelers that prayer is free. These signs and t-shirts soon give way to beer stands. The streets are usually packed by 11 am and by 12 there is a carpet of yellow beer cans covering the ground. Why can't we all be like Belgian monks and admit that beer and prayer go very well together.
The music is not so much heard as felt and seen. It beats on your eardrums so loud that you choose to ignore the pain and focus how the sound affects the rest of your body: vibration in the legs and thumping in the chest. The side street you enter is a sound tunnel. Waves pulse through the people as if they were water. Sound rushes through the green tent and masked partiers dance or try to force their way through the sweaty crowd. There are more minivans than I have ever seen in this country before, but not the kind you drive your kids to football practice in. Customized rear hatch doors complete with carbon fiber tweeters, woofers and subwoofers pump the pollution out quicker than the tail pipes. The hoods are open to allow the engines to cool as best they can as they run at capacity to power these van sized speakers. Two vans side by side pummeling the dancers mercilessly with sound.
The costumes are not so much seen as heard. They creep up behind you and something in the middle of your head tells you a googly eyed demon is coming down the street. Everything is fluorescent: pink, green and purple. Some of these costumes cost a months wages and all of them cause at least a days worth of sweat to pour out in just a few minutes. They have to get them drycleaned after each time they wear them so that they will be fit to wear the next week.
It is violence to all the senses. If the music feels like a beating the actual beatings are worse. Each costumed vigilante carries what looks like an under-inflated balloon on the end of a rope. Once upon a time these were cow stomachs, now they are plastic, but they still hurt. The vigilantes wear batting gloves and take running starts at the crowd. The next wave of costumes is always harolded by people running away from the whips. They leave large yellow bruises for weeks, but still, the crowd taunts them leaving their rear ends exposed to the whippers.
There is enough swinging of whips and beer drinking and crowding in of people that sooner or later the short fuses will burn out. A tall muscular young man with long curly hair is puffing up his chest and pointing ("tu y yo"). Maybe its over a girl, but nobody can really tell. All the crowd can do is sense the impending blows. The shorter, stockier man has finally had enough and cold cocks him in the face. The crowd bellies out around them and the scare crow looking youth is being tossed around by his hair and beaten in the face. After a minute or two, the bigger guys have made it to the fighters and pull them off each other. The winner runs off while the scare crow bubbles out words through a swollen face to anyone who will listen, but no-one can hear.
The senses are overloaded. A couple minutes in the heart of carnaval explains why Dominicans shout rather than talk, dance rather than walk, and devour rather than eat or drink. Calling this old tradition vibrant would be so inadequate that it would be ironic. Some parties go off like dynamite, this one goes off like an a-bomb.
The music is not so much heard as felt and seen. It beats on your eardrums so loud that you choose to ignore the pain and focus how the sound affects the rest of your body: vibration in the legs and thumping in the chest. The side street you enter is a sound tunnel. Waves pulse through the people as if they were water. Sound rushes through the green tent and masked partiers dance or try to force their way through the sweaty crowd. There are more minivans than I have ever seen in this country before, but not the kind you drive your kids to football practice in. Customized rear hatch doors complete with carbon fiber tweeters, woofers and subwoofers pump the pollution out quicker than the tail pipes. The hoods are open to allow the engines to cool as best they can as they run at capacity to power these van sized speakers. Two vans side by side pummeling the dancers mercilessly with sound.
The costumes are not so much seen as heard. They creep up behind you and something in the middle of your head tells you a googly eyed demon is coming down the street. Everything is fluorescent: pink, green and purple. Some of these costumes cost a months wages and all of them cause at least a days worth of sweat to pour out in just a few minutes. They have to get them drycleaned after each time they wear them so that they will be fit to wear the next week.
It is violence to all the senses. If the music feels like a beating the actual beatings are worse. Each costumed vigilante carries what looks like an under-inflated balloon on the end of a rope. Once upon a time these were cow stomachs, now they are plastic, but they still hurt. The vigilantes wear batting gloves and take running starts at the crowd. The next wave of costumes is always harolded by people running away from the whips. They leave large yellow bruises for weeks, but still, the crowd taunts them leaving their rear ends exposed to the whippers.
There is enough swinging of whips and beer drinking and crowding in of people that sooner or later the short fuses will burn out. A tall muscular young man with long curly hair is puffing up his chest and pointing ("tu y yo"). Maybe its over a girl, but nobody can really tell. All the crowd can do is sense the impending blows. The shorter, stockier man has finally had enough and cold cocks him in the face. The crowd bellies out around them and the scare crow looking youth is being tossed around by his hair and beaten in the face. After a minute or two, the bigger guys have made it to the fighters and pull them off each other. The winner runs off while the scare crow bubbles out words through a swollen face to anyone who will listen, but no-one can hear.
The senses are overloaded. A couple minutes in the heart of carnaval explains why Dominicans shout rather than talk, dance rather than walk, and devour rather than eat or drink. Calling this old tradition vibrant would be so inadequate that it would be ironic. Some parties go off like dynamite, this one goes off like an a-bomb.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Getting Better
Lately, I have been considering the U.S. The Dominican Republic tries to be America. They have adopted (and perfected) their "national pass-time", they worship the American dollar and a large percentage of their population lives in "Nueva Jork". Yet, more and more Dominicans are choosing to stay at home. Santo Domingo has a lot to offer. As I write, tunnels are being dug underneath the major traffic arteries for more traffic and trains. Babies are being born, puppies are popping out of dogs and people are celebrating... nothing in particular, just celebrating. Maybe it is that the mangoes are already falling off the tree, well before they are big enough to eat. Maybe it is because the sun shines so long and so hot, that the endorphin high of an average person cannot be spent in an average life time. Maybe, they just like to dance. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everything's perfect, just that I don't envy anyone living in Michigan or Arizona right now. This is a country pressing forward in every way, not receding, despite their emulation of those United States.
I watch another sunset over the roofs of Santo Domingo. The wind is pushing the clouds into shapes I have not seen before. The sun glances off of them for a couple of minutes, in shades of orange and pink and then recedes into the grays and blues. Birds dart past me, as I sit on my balcony, much too quickly for me to be able to understand what they are. The city is pulsing. Though the heart was once exposed, it is being encased in concrete. "We may be poor, but we aren't that poor, our houses are not made of wood". They are making something that will last; the houses have pillars.
Every morning I wake up at five minutes to six and put on some shorts so I can step outside to turn on the water (a ninety degree turn to the right of a red valve). I should reiterate that things are not perfect. Our fridge does not work properly. The once green cilantro is turning into brown mush, but the ice is still ice. I would not even go so far as to say that things are good enough. If North America, or even history in general, has taught us anything, it is that things are never good enough. They are not good enough here. But they are getting better. I realize that I can be happy, if I learn to be satisfied with "getting better".
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