In Bogotá

I’m in Bogotá, Colombia now and have been since this past Wednesday. I’ve talked to one person at the first hostel I stayed at, a very nice German chef from Munich, who shared a joint with me. Apparently medical weed is now legal in Germany. Besides that, I’ve not talked to anyone. I’ve been brushing up on Spanish, but I can hardly have a conversation with that: it’s all I can do to say “soy de los Estados Unidos” (which may be erroneous, but I’m not going to check), and I get shy and trail off halfway through. I think part of the reason people can’t understand me is that I’m talking so damn quietly, because I’m ashamed of speaking poorly. It’s just that I’m a little shy.

I have this vague recollection of my mother saying something like I should go up to people and say “hi, I’m Preston. What’s your name?” Already the name’s off to a bad start: it’s difficult enough for english speakers to get right, and downright impossible for non-english speakers. But more to the point, I’m afraid of walking up to people; I don’t know why. There’s lots of times where I’ve sat for quite a while trying to build up to courage to say hello to somebody, promising myself that this’ll be the moment, no, this one, okay, for real this time… until they get up and head out. Then I congratulate myself for how close I got and promise that I’ll really do it next time.

I met my friend Xander¹ on the first day of kindergarten in the sandbox. I believe, and I’ll write this out before corroborating it with him like they do it in police interrogations, that this was on the morning of the first day before class started. We were digging next to each other, or something. I reconstruct the scene mostly as follows: I said, “hi, I’m Preston.” He said, “hi, I’m Xander.” Then we dug some more. Then I said, “do you want to be my best friend?” He said, “yes.” That was 22 years ago this month. We were five years old. He asked me some months ago whether I would be the best man at his wedding, and I said yes, of course I would.

I’ve been feeling kind of mopey the last couple days; I bonked my head pretty bad last weekend so I’ve been taking it easy, and the altitude hasn’t helped much. It’s been a long and hectic summer, and I’ve been a little bit everywhere. Colombia has been good because I’ve felt like a fish out of water. It’s not the big things that are different, but the little things: you have to rush to get on the bus because they will snap the door shut as quickly as possible to keep the vehicle moving; toilet paper often goes in the trash can and not down the toilet to keep from clogging the narrow pipes; I still haven’t figured out if you can order tap water, but just today I got “aqua con gaz” down. Lots of smiling and nodding, and the people are very patient. The level of English is very low, but people are quite kind about repeating themselves, though some have the knack of enunciating more clearly for foreigners, and some don’t. I’ve certainly come a long way on that front.

I’ve been standoffish and surly at the hostels, though, because I don’t want to seem cloying. I don’t know: I don’t want people to know that I want to get to know them, that I’m interested in them and where they’re from and what they’re up to and how they know one another and why they’re here and did they come with those other people or just run into them here and what’ve they seen and liked or not liked and where are they off to next and what’s something they miss about home and what’s something they think is better here than where they came from and what’s something they always pack with them that they don’t think other people often carry along and…. Instead I’ve been doing some programming work for UIUC to solidify a recommendation and reference for PhD programs beginning next fall, in which I am precipitously loosing all forms of interest, and struggling and procrastinating on my novel, which is now mired at about 60,000 words, but I think I have to restart or rework the scene I’m on now almost from scratch because it’s not going where it’s supposed to go, but maybe that’s okay because the book’s only semi-autobiographical anyhow.

I miss my mother very much. Tomorrow will be three years since she died. I understand why she always hated this month: her father died on the 24th of September, and her mother the 10th. Everywhere suddenly feels very close together, and everything seems to be happening at the same time.

This started out focused and then veered all over the place. I’ve got a lot going on and on my mind right now, and it’s been a while since I sat down to blog it out. I’ll get back into the swing of things, I hope. Otherwise, blame the brain injury.