Don't Ask

Because you might be afraid of the answer or of the reaction the answer might create not only in you but also in the person you're interrogating.

For a spell there (abracadabra) I was a little afraid of asking for advice and I wasn't even talking to a cursed jones played by a sly Foxx. The advice would come and it would be good and sound and not remotely surprising or telling. The problem with asking for advice is that I most often asked for it as a form of validation for what I either knew to be true, an excuse for the truth I wanted to avoid or a comfortable lie told between friends in full understanding that maybe half truths were not all bad.

Now I'm over it and I'm being honest about asking people questions.

What do you want to do? Would you like to have a drink? Do you want to run away with me? From me?

Even better is when you get to ask questions with your eyes and if you know the other person as well as they know you and then the sweetest thing is to be able to smile with your eyes, frown with your nose and point with your tongue (Panamanians actually point with their lips).

....

Yes, me too.

Growing up I was a Third. I was Ender (the term Die and Go). I wasn't ender in the literal sense for I am neither smart enough nor am I nearly accomplished enough to claim such moral rectitude as that kid had. Nor have we been nearly vanquished from existence by bugs. We are the bugs but that's a debate for another forum. And I wanted to be him in the questions I asked - being deep without coming across as vacuous or superficial or inane. One time in chemistry, wondering out loud whether or not you could reason out the list of formulas we studied down the hall in physics through a careful understanding of the little negative signs we called electrons I flirted dangerously with the possibility of making a smart question.

Now I do research and toe the line from time engaging excitedly in rabbit holes and (sometimes, thought hopefully not too often) circular argument trying to reason whether or not a snake can eat its own tail continuously. Also, balance (sheets) matter.

....

But rest assured, if i'm not asking it's not because I don't want to know. It's a combination of the fact that I'm not feeling lucky and it feels like Jeeve's has been out of business for quite some time now. It's a combination of the fact that everyone who knows wonders how I don't.

How could you not know? Because I know that if it has not come up then it hasn't come up because you appreciate my silence and dearth of interrogatory remarks. Or if you don't, you haven't brought it up. Because I'm afraid that if I do there might simply be a slight look of fear in your eyes.

So for now.

Don't Tell.

After-Glow

And I did love the 90s hit.

And I'm not talking about the meteor strike that left a light "seen only once in my lifetime" - well not my life time but the lifetime of a blogger who saw it go down. Pun unintended.

Last night was a reminder of the times you stood in a staircase or a park bench or simply from the entrance to a grand hall and thought to yourself - it's good to be king. Or in some cases I thought to myself (with a big fake mane) Man I can't wait to be king.

Neither here nor there but the song that goes apropos is not Anthony's Freedom or Cole's Power Trip but Club Can't Even Handle Me by The Panhandle.

Last night was vintage, red, sisterly, brotherly and full of bromantic moments centered around looking at each other in the eye, telling each other that you loved and missed each other and an agreement to tear the city up with a BNO to best all others.

Make it home by 6:01 rocking the 6:06 and smile to yourself on the walk down your hallway thinking boy am I lucky to be who I am, with the friends I have, in the city that I am, trying to juke it all.

That's the kind of afterglow you only get around your mid20s (bit of a stretch but let's roll with it) and that I'm sure (and hopeful) it continues to evolve as you progress and hit your peak around age 65 and you're on a shore somewhere rocking the perma linen outfits, dark old-school ray bans, boat shoes and hair so white it looks like sand (from Cancun).

Or you know. Whatever.

Maybe there's palm trees in the back and on your lap is a coconut with a little bit of happy juice and by juice I mean some rum from the bottle half buried in the sand next to you so the popo don't see it and your machete is stuck at the base of the tree where you hacked the coconut open.

And maybe just maybe there's kid playing at jumping waves like I used to do with my dad - sometimes going into the way, sometimes jumping and occasionally getting beat up by them, standing up shakily, a bit terrified and dizzied wondering if you were still wearing your bathing suit or if the ocean had reclaimed what was rightfully hers.

Alarm clock goes off and it's my favorite part of the saturday, cozy up in bed, open eyes, hand flail on bedstand looking for glasses/waterOHSWEETGOODNESSwater/phone. Slip into sweatpants and shirt grab gym bag and walk out to the solstice except this time you're a bit more awake and you're a bit happier.

GSB. and AG.

Gym. Shower. Breakfast. And the sweet dulcet tones of Andy Grammer.

And the afterglow of bacon and eggs and pancake mix and cocoa powder and a pen from a special place.

-D

Tally.

Countries added: 3
Total countries thus far: 26.
Finland: people proud of the way their language bubbles and a country of white haired folk. (And yes. Generalizing. Deal.)
Sweden: the friendliest people you've met who think they are unfriendly. Constantly reminds you of how beautiful the city of STHLM is either by the views that sneak up on you or because the STHLM'ians remind you.
Amsterdam: Bikes, food from the wall and a lot of fried stuff. Fried batter, fried mystery meat. Fried hopes and dreams (in that they taste delicious and not in the sense that they're burnt and gone).

Number of 17th century ships seen: 1.
Number of 17th century ships licked: 1.

Museums: 5 but I only saw one bedroom.

Times I was called American only to have myself explain: 17
Bike crashes: 2.
Boats ridden: 3
Party boats: 1.

Times I lost my head 2.
Number of roofs hiked on: 13
Number of roofs hiked on where i feared not for my life but for making a screaming, crying fool of myself: 2 (picture forthcoming but trust me, that ish was narrow).

Castles: 1. (surprising but the original medieval, disney looking one in STHLM burnt down in lieu of a beautiful but functional castle where Silvia reigns supreme.

Cathedrals: 4. Cathedrals carved into a massive rock: 1.

Glog cups drank: 23
Beer horns: 2.

Battered bullets: 9? (things got a wee bit hazy).

New people met: 1,438. New people that know they met me: 11.
Heineken friends: 2

Parties in Amsterdam where despite the northern europe family tree I was still the tallest person there: 1.

It was real - Sverige, Helsinki, Amsterdam. Till we pun again.

Thought given to this post: somewhere between the mcchouffe and the heineken and the glog i found the lilly amongst the thorns.

3 Gatas

My mind is slower and I just started running away.

I look at the mirror and I have changed. Leaner, meaner, faster...new yorkier? The miles gage (never upgraded to digital is starting to get dangerously high to the point where I might need to pull the trick where I crack the dashboard and run the wires with a drill. Pour some saw dust on the carburator. Super glue the fenders on the front and badonk. Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!

If we could move things with our minds would we start small or would it be the anger or frustration at a mountain that change things?

The story of the three cats is a famous mexican old wives tail (no it's not).
It's one that tells the story of three unique characters (where character here is what define a person and not a person itself). Alone they can stand on their own 2 (4?) legs and carry on and keep calm and get excited about balls of yarn or half eaten birds without need for entertainment. Put the three together in a box (or a bar) and the three are three kittens of the same litter.

And they say finance does not translate. Well the sum of the parts can be greater than the individual.

This is not management. I'm not taking about working teams or teamwork.

People that complement each other and that do things that individually would make the world cringe and internally make them hug, cry and laugh. A shared history - some call it childhood, some call it college - leaves people with an inexplicable filial bond. The kind that allows for murder and a cup of tea as you all cuddle up on a bed and look at the ceiling and talk about boys (girls?), the future, the insecurities.

I have a hard time keeping in touch. My friends know this. My acquaintances know this. The people I hate to have forgotten likely remember better than I do.

Of the top of my head JoanquiAbello, Silvia Hdez, Miriam something or other, Raymond DLS. Call this a brief list of nearly no one but a mark of a number of people that were my best friend for a period of anything between 6 weeks and 3.5 years.

And there are those who "talk" on the daily in the way only people in my generation (and admittedly, the younger generations as far as the younger generation has a cell phone although doesn't that get younger and younger with each passing day). Who share the latest sight, thought and breath with those they love. Can we learn that? Can they teach me?

My one hope is that I have the kind of elephantine memory (occasionally) and photographic ability to recall (mostly just the images in my AP Chemistry textbook from back in 2007) that allows me to pick up where I left off.

It's why when we digress in conversation I am the one that stores key words to help us jog back into the train of thought. I admit, sometimes we have to run and leap into the open train car door but we always get there.

So three cats sat. Mininas.

Time

I have a bone to pick with time. Not Rip, Van's cool with me.

It's not an issue about passing time, certainly rush past it as fast as I can making sure that every next second is relatively shorter than the previous one. This also means that every next second has to be all the more intense than the previous one.

It's why I accept challenges with the caveat that the challenger be willing to take it upon himself.

That's how on a faithful college afternoon - the kind that can only happen in a run down apartment building that calls itself the hall of kings but where rat traps are laid everywhere within and without the place. Where exposed brick isn't a nice artsy touch to the place but more of an accident of unfinished business (masonry?). I saw a man eat a spoonful of powdered cinnamon, choke, cough, garggle, whelp only to have the powder cling to his very existence. At one point some of it came out in a cloud but not from his mouth but his nose.

And then I saw his friend do it as well. Challenge challenged.

But just last week I kept thinking it was midnight when in truth it was midday. What gives?

Never been one for watches and since I am part of the cell phone generation the digital display truly speaks more to me than the two slightly disfigured arms. Gotta admit the irony of the short pointing to the long and the long pointing to the short is my kind of humor. Not funny.

And truly our life has become or at least becomes so regimented that a watch is as good as the sun that rides up the horizon and slides behind it. Useful, necessary, but a luxury.

My sisters lives without it for months at a time. Both the watch and the sun just in different seasons.

I think.

And today I asked a coworker what his plans were for the weekend. It was 9AM on Tuesday morning and I'm not entirely certain if I was talking about the proverbial weekend or this one in particular.

It'd be too easy to figure it was driven by ennui or the circumstances at the time - my mind was occupied with the thought - it is the exalted weekend child, and I should have fun.

He looked at me quizzically and he said - are you serious? I don't even know if I'll make it till then.

If we dont, well, time...it'll come to fists.

It's time.


*This one is particularly cantankerous

March Waters

Letters in the most literal way possible have always played a role in my life. They let me imagine places and get to know people that have never been.

Now they take me places.

And I'm reminded of that famous quote - "I am not a crook!"
And that other famous quote - "We are looking for the ros lyn"

And a third quote (for the sake of completion) that I just happen to enjoy - "Amigos con derecho y sin derecho de tenerte siempre".

The weather was crisp and spirits were high as we all united and boarded the train for an underwater adventure towards a mistress of the lower hoods of Brazil.

Where down south Favela would carry the connotation of danger, low income, dancing and hope - that only translates here into delicious caipirinhas, corrugated metal and flimsy flip flops stapled to the roof. The samba was flowing and the drinks kept playing with perception of time, space and season. The smell of feijoada was a tantalizing possibility but I knew there'd be more to come so instead i egged people on and carried light conversation smiling in the compulsory way only the happy can.

No reason and cheeks hurting we left the lady - my shoulders still itching to follow the smooth tones of samba and bossa nova.

Thighs and pies. Enough said. Deep fried chicken in hot sauce with a buttery biscuit that's served in a style reminiscent of the german bratwurst in an positively diminutive bun and called a hot dogs despite merely being a handle with which to grasp the goodness.

Back up driggs and past my cousin's cleaner we perfectly timed it in such a way that we ran into sisters that managed to look alike and not alike disarmingly at the same time. A block down we picked 3 more for our crew and lined up outside BB.

Where beer dispelled any illness we may have once had.

And we had a Blast (2 chips). And a defender and an celebration of the month between september and november.

I'm going to call these daycations from now on.

And listen to Aguas di Marco (pretend the c has a little curlycue below it) for a little while.

Mobius

Dear Friend,

I'm leaning on fairly obvious inspiration today but I'm ok with it. I have too many disparate short stories to tell you about today for a normal thing (for that is what it is to suffice).

Do you know how few people know that every post I write is about a person? And though admittedly 40% of the time that person is me (which probably speaks to a wee bit of narcissism likely (or hopefully) inherent in all humans and not just the sign of an inherent character flaw) the other 60% I write about people. Sometimes it's the people in the stories, and sometimes it's the story itself that tries to create the vision of the person. Does that make sense? I don't know why I'm telling you this.

On Saturday I visited Sam's Town. Or better yet it wasn't really Sam's Town but an equally slightly decrepit piece of Americana that attempts to entertain the modern day American (Mexican). Just me and two friends trying to branch out a little outside the urban jungle and we found ourselves in a geometric island. We all feared the hurricane last year and yet we embraced the cyclone.

Maybe it was curling my toes in the sand and walking down the beach trying not to step in half broken glass bottles, watching a 65 year old man "jog" in a hammock for bananas and a small middle aged man in a fisherman's hat hunt for treasures with a metal detector - I couldn't stop smiling. The landscape was nothing like the one I wonder at every day. Instead of Skyscrapers I had The SteepleChase, the Soarin' Eagle (I don't know why I got a kick out of the ') and the Slingshot.

The latter was ridden by a young kid named Lewis. I regret not going on that.

And then we had beers after a log plume called Wild River - likely because of copyright.

Neptune Jam was there. Not the candied type I imagine Jupitanians consume but the kind made up of an eclectic group of men in love with the music they are creating on a boardwalk where kids and adults alike swim through the air in what can, by some, be called dancing.

It was great and I'm glad I got a number of moments where I got to appreciate the space and time of the present without worrying about the future and the past.

It was four when I thought it was really 7.

****

And I start to write the second story my dear friend, I'm worried the third is escaping my memory already so I'll toss out the word taxicab now before it's too late. This will help me remember and leave you with an inkling of the kind of people I engage in conversation in the middle of America.

Let me tell you about these people I met. Not the taxicab drivers but the others.

They are engineers of sorts - of all sorts. They are not only in charge of engineering solutions to major health and health system problems but they are also techno geeks deeply committed to a .net system that is interoperable. Picture Windows and Microsoft being forced to play nice not because it's $ but because it's the law and because otherwise people die.

People so passionate they are moved to tears by the CEO of an IT company or the President of a Consulting Division.

Healthcare is personal but the future of it will likely require us to separate those two words and focus on health first and reach only for care as the last option possible.

This digitization of the healthcare system today has led me to believe IT will provide where others can't and I realized my writing style has changed friend and I blame the song choice more so than anything.

I turned to asleep again.

The smith is a great restaurant.

***

And the last part of this story is the shortest one.

I met two cab drivers this week. It's a little sad you never meet the drivers in NYC. The first cab driver was on his third wife and was originally from far far away - he had a college degree which he showed me (because he always keeps it tucked away in the little flap on the ceiling of cars and he told me sometimes it's just easiest and best to smile and nod. Ha! I already knew that because you taught me that! The second cab driver had graduated college 5 years ago but he was 69 and had a 14 year old child from his third wife. He came from everywhere because his dad had been in the military and so had he. He had left for tour from Kansas 44 years ago and when he returned 4 years later he got off the plane to a new airport - the one that still stands today.

And all of this reminded me of the time my little cousin, aged 4 at the time came up to me at my grandparents house and he asked me "can i show you that i know how to count to 100?".
"Yes"
And off he went until he hit 100. And he looked at me inquisitively for some guidance. I said "one hundred and one" to which he raised his hand to stop me lest I give it all away. And we worked our way up to a thousand. And he looked at me inquisitively for some guidance. I said "one thousand and one" and at that point we started skipping the nonsense in between, going into the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, billions, trillions.

And his eyes lit up in wonder.
"They don't stop"
I smiled - "They're infinite".

He's been a great math student for the last 6 years.

Love always,
D

East River Run

There’s something about running in the pre-dawn of New York City. Right around the time when the people around are not ones to be feared - bleary eyed and clutching a small cup of coffee from the carts.

Left-right left-right pounding the pavement still hot from the sun the day before. It is in that rare quiet where thoughts can shake free from the multicolored distractors of 3^rd Avenue, the inherent delight of Time's square or the neon colored signs of ktown. The city is a symphony of lights.

Fewer sirens disturb the fragile moments captured between the techno blasting in my earbuds and the sound of heavy breathing. I still like to have myself tied to the mast while my rowers stuff their ears with wax and I listen to their sweet song.

Taxi horns sit silenced as drivers steal a few moment’s peace, preparing mentally for a day full of stop and go's. 

And I rush past them all. The East River rises on my approach my feet carry me further from the haze of Midtown, down uneven paths sprinkled with the occasional tree or patch of grass. Oh and a rat. A rat ran past me, about five inches away from my foot. And I squealed a little. 

Sure, there are moments where I long for the open green of just about anywhere else, trying to escape the concrete and steel hemming me in. When the idea of wide open spaces is defined beyond the 1000 square feet limit. But it in such moments as this, the Brooklyn Bridge looming ahead of me, or even as I stand jostled for space on a rush-hour 6 train, that I realize what people talk about when they mention the magic of the city.

You get an insiders look into the guts, (the trash), the people.

And then you've run for an hour, have no idea where you are and start seeing avenues you didn't know existed (and are not convinced they do). 

Run past places you know you need to try and find gardens that make no sense - stuck between two walk ups and behind a van that looks like it belongs in the 80s. Or a regularly sitting man who seems to be completely enthralled with the idea of braiding his own hair every day. And the basketball courts with weekend tournaments that make JV feel like you are running out under the spotlight at the barclay's.

Mackarel

One of those times when you go buy fries and you get cod.
Or crave a grilled cheese with plenty of velvetta and no care for the sweet and savory mix of fig jam and brie.
Look for a pinot and find a sustainable blend that goes well with sustainable, cage free, free range, organic, melodramatic seafood harvested not hunted and done so lovingly.

And then there's the idea of a quest.

Funny - the videogames title fables that promise 10s of Thousands of Combinations and Options. It's a pick your own ending RLStein Goosebump excepts it's a visual and creative and still far far short from our every day life.

That's just one man's thought. Though I've conquered nations, won the world cup of everything and travelled through bi-colored portals solving puzzles - it's all fallen short.

I've stood at the top of the Avenue of the Dead looking east, north, west, south and felt connections. I've seen Kukulcan snake his way during the solstice and equinox. Hurtled myself hundreds of miles and hour across time (zones) and space (well really some lower levels of the atmosphere that still hugs to us). I've carried babies deadly afraid of the soft spot, seen a child's amazement when he realizes that his own two feet are capable of motor skills.

I've eaten truffles. Hunted for chanterelles.

Now picture sports drinks promising hyper ionized energy. Oh good. Salty water. Or salt dissolved in water where the magical process of dissolving allows for a wholesale stealing and borrowing of electrons.

Shot rapid fire or subtly inserted into a sentence or word. They're interesting and drive conversation and human curiosity and I get to explore all of them now. 

Well built they can be inserted in poetry and high literature. They can disarm arm dealers and confuse the posers. They can unveil truths and complicate them.

***

"You can cross!" I yelled.

"I'm going to take your arm now" I said as I closed in.

And i reached out and grabbed his elbow as his hand found my forearm. The man was walking with a purpose - more purposed than most of us not wearing sunglasses at 745 am. 

"Where are you going"

"I'm going to the subway station - are you walking there?" I knew I was.

And so we walked with a quick back and forth over 3 city blocks. He was from Jamaica and going home after a swim at the Y.

And I haven't seen him again but I wonder if I'll see him every morning.

I'm coming home

Not literally.

Not metaphorically.

I'm actually just going back to the old country. Which in my case would be Spain, or Rome depending on whether I ascribed to the notion of the "old country" either by racial heritage or religious legacy. But the truth is that I'm going to the lower countries to visit a friend that I don't know in her natural habitat. And then I'm going to Sweden and spending a week in the family home of a sister I barely know.

And I'm being lenient on the barely.

But her daughter is a soccer player in college in the U.S. on a scholarship. I used to love seeing pictures of my niece, the only dark, soulful Mexican tan amongs a sea of platinum blondes and pale skins playing indoors. She was the shortest but she had hops. I've met her twice.

I remember a nephew in that I bought video games for him that were from time to time passed on via mail or personal courier. No idea what his face or personality might be like.

My sister poses as different challenge - a grown woman, with a husband she met online and has been happily married to for years - I wonder how she knew my dad. How I know my dad and whether or not we'll ever Venn Diagram our experiences and get a full picture.

But I'm finally excited for a trip outside my bi-national experience this past lustre.

I'm tired of speaking English and Spanish and look forward to once again have the doe-eyed, deer-in-headlights, glassy stare of the misunderstood not because they have some deeb psychological angst but because no matter how loud, and enunciated, Swedish is nothing like anything I've ever heard off. What should be even more exciting is Dutch. Tantalizingly close to German but just off enough where it's not enough. Like when you're standing on the deep end of the pool and you can feel the tip of your toe graze the bottom long enough to "be" there but not long enough to stand or give you a sense of balance.

And the winters are brutal in Europe but I'm hoping for one of those random sunny weekends where the continent grows alive as its denizens rush to the street in a desperate land grab of vitamin D.

Gregarious Pluto will be my guide but I'll also allow for a great deal of spontaneity in hopes of finding a strange street that no one has ever heard of before with delicious coffee or maybe hope to get picked up by a 1920s crank car that inspires me and teaches me a thing about Nostalgia. Or maybe I'll end up at Tesla (re: Electronic) party where the hero wears a masks and spins flash drives like it's his job and a mob of youngsters push through the crowds with video cameras held high in the air by extendable poles in an effort to make a mass concert available to the huddled masses (of the economically fragile ROE). But I can also hope for a bar concert that straddles the line between cabaret act and dark Dead Kennedy's vibe with a lead singer that comes in multiples, is French, possibly Bulgarian and who sings Sweet Emotion like she's Marilyn Manson but that can also croon Too Drunk To F*** like it's an sweet old Charles Trenet song.

And I expect Sweden to be covered in snow and the people to be friendly and kind and I expect myself to constantly debate for five days whether or not I'd ever actually wear wooden shoes. Maybe I'll get to see one of the communal living arrangements that make people so happy, kids well adjusted, and adults in their mid-forties feel self-fulfilled and like better parents?

Oh and I'm travelling in comfort - happily alone joined by friends, blood and in-law.

The general

I'd need a radio in order to dispatch what I'm about to say:

My driver today was from Haiti (as an inordinate amount of my drivers from Newark driving into Manhattan at 5:30pm typically are). I asked him if he spoke Creole and in a somewhat accented English he replied with "Of course I speak Creole, I speak French, a lot of English, and some of other stuff" in the way that only speaking something oddly francophonic for the majority of your life can do.

You somehow ignore the hard sound of an h and emphasize that "oo" sounds like "uhhhhh"

I told him I was from Mexico and after the perfunctory (<-- is this the right word?) about "futbol" and "quotations" the truth came to be. Being from the little island of Haiti the man had little aspirations for his nation's soccer team. To him, like apparently to many of the Caribbean islands, Mexico is the tallest little person in the room. The only one in the scrappy, upstart geographic coalition that includes everything south of the Rio Grande that can dream of greatness and the world cup.

Mexico is the only one that can do it. Short but you jump (in reference to a legendary goalie in Mexico affectionately known as "the rabbit" and reminiscent of the French goalie of world cups past.

Mexico is the only country to have qualified for every World Cup and never won. That is, we've played at every single one but never made it to the finals.

He suggested we could make a real run for the Cup this year on the back of a new generation of Mexican footballers that defeated Brazil at the Olympics and the previous generation that won the sub-17 world cup. But they've never spoken of my people like they have of the current generation of Spanish balonpie.

Nor will they ever. We stand in the shadow of their turbulence. Still.

Pause as he wrestles with the Holland Tunnel traffic

And the conversation naturally veers to Mexico boom industry. Tech. Ha!

He probes here and there with a couple well placed questions that suggests he's far more studied than his faded Jets jersey and porcelain cat on his dashboard suggest.

Last Saturday my mother texted me a simple "Honey, your father and I are ok but just wanted to let you know they did it again but we are safe and at home! Love you" which prompted me to call (i dont do well under vague allusions to threat). The drug lords at home had taken to some of the key avenues and as they've done before in protest for this or that, boarded public transportation buses, politely asked the populace to get the f*** out, please. With an automatic gun in hand. The buses, once commandeered, were parked crosswise and torched.

You know, the casual things that happen in the "Second world" that are more reminiscent of war lords than of a country only a 3.5 hour flight and a free trade agreement away.

Casual.

I told him we were a democracy. He said that is good, that Haiti had a democracy but that the problem was that the definition of democracy at home for him was different than what a political science professor might use to describe it. An obvious stalwart supporter of democracy he admitted the weaknesses of the system in an uneducated nation more distressed about the day to day survival than the circus held at the nice government buildings far, far away.

I asked him about dictatorship.

Too much power in one family. it goes straigggggt to their heads (in obvious reference to Duvalier)

And then he surprised me - who is your general?

Frankly I don't know. I've met generals in the Mexican military. Battle scarred men who have never seen a war, faces pockmarked by the skin breakouts created by years of greasy beans and rice and though with less pomp and circumstance than some of their compatriots up north - they can still gut someone bare handed without taking a second breath.

Who is your general? 

Frankly I have no idea, but it occurred to me that I come from a country that is fighting a war on drugs. We call it that, and it's fast and it's furious (cough cough) and that maybe its time we start figuring out who really runs these efforts. And the claims that some may make of the endangerment of those in the middle of the war - it's moot, masked the judges like they do in colombian but let the people shooting know their committing acts of civil war. That the children they recruit can also do the fighting. 

We need a decorated general with a heart of gold - maybe with a beard to cover his scars on his face.

Boats

My first memory on a boat goes back to an age best remembered amidst the blurry blackouts of a 2-3 year old who only has flashes of images where reality and truth are as uncertain as depth perception and the "tides" (of emotion).

When I was little I used to go to a pool - a YMCA of the sort Mexico has I imagine - in the Distrito Federal. My cousin, who at the time seemed like an adult but in hindsight (and math) could not have been a day over 16 was a swimming instructor. And though i would hold on to the edge at the deep end of the pool to keep the thrill level high, the thing i lived for was the end of the day. My cousin would pile together swimming boards and fashion a multicolored red, green and blue raft of a delicate nature. He would them plop me gently aboard and shove into the deep end. The slow swaying would begin the slow and inevitable process of disintegration until I had to abandon ship.

The musicians were almost as good as the ones on the decks of the unsinkable. And the music would play on although at the time I'm pretty sure it wasn't something classic but something popular in the early 90s at home - Reik probably, or Fey.

My love for water, open or otherwise was sealed in those moments amidst my confused and childish screams of happiness and terror of the dark bottom. As I grew up older and discovered girls (where had they been?) and water sports (if ever something can make a man feel so grand and so little other than not being able to hammer a nail in straight) I found pleasure in speed.

Whether tailing a large boat jumping in and out the waves on a jet ski with nothing holding you back other than the earthly bounds of sanity and self restraint or the pleasure of being dragged behind a speed boat, water rushing in, enema-style until you "got up" - it was incredible. And that was all well within sight of land. But I was more of a Columbus and less of one of his earlier crews. I wanted to see nothing but water, feel myself at peace amidst the big sloping waves of the open sea.

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day.
My (fairy?) godfather came along and showed me how to fish.

And he didn't walk on water. His gait is slow, slower now even, and at the center of his chest (clearly exposed whenever he's close enough to hear the ocean waves) is a bulbous, abnormal scar that protrudes. That's where the doctors have cracked his ribs open multiple times, reached in and squeezed a little bit more life out of him. His skin is parched and spotted but still retains a glimmer of the youth he once was and still thinks it is. Wake up at the crack of dawn, board the boat, sit on the boat trolling for swordfish and marlin. That's where i learned to love the ocean in the non-suicidal Hemingway style.

And did seriously, did none of E.H's friends pick up on the suicidal undertones of the old man and the sea, for whom the bell tolls, and a farewell to arms?! Something about fighting with a sword for hours on end, knowing when to give and when to pull, when to sit down and when to call for help getting back to your chair as your quads and forearms burn from exhaustion and the sun. When to wait it out, let the fish really sink into it while you sip on a beer - not so quietly - taunting it.

The "dorado" is a dinosaur of a fish. A neanderthal head, a golden hue that turns blue and a nasty kick to it. Bring one on board and all hands on deck to subdue the monster that will flay shins and break the occasional finger. Then a thud and a celebration as the smaller fish make breakfast lunch and dinner.

 6 years later i haven't really been out on the water like i miss. I've gotten to learn the true sundowner experience, wearing a cowboy hat, celebrating the birthday of a nation other than mine - smiling and happy. Ironic that I now, for the first time in my life live on an island that feels nothing like one (though it's still teeming with dinosaurs). Maybe someday I'll get to go back and seek out a small mexican fishing village. One where i can fish, sell, cook and then sit down at the town square with a bunch of my friends while singing and drinking. I'll probably sit down as the last waves of heat rise from the asphalt and the cobblestones and wonder something about the crazy idea of growing the fishing business to a multinational empire. Wonder about the quote - "monopoly? monopoly is just a game senator - I want to rule the world". And vaguely remember terms like IPOs, DCF and EBITDA amidst the blurry blackouts of a 22-24 year old who only has flashes of images where reality and truth are as uncertain as depth perception and the "tides" (of emotion).

Te quiero Tio Ray.

Fairytales of things that never were

I'm going to try to describe dreams. Not of the kind defined on a Pto. Vallarta beach with the word resort attached after a magical font type writes D.R.E.A.M.s (Resort). It's also not of the kind of dreams that you speak of in the "I have a dream..." style of thinking, the type that changes nations or at the very least our own personal sphere of influence (which may or may not be the same thing depending on how many of you read my blog, or follow the Mexican president's twitter account).

Dreams of the kind that wake you up with a sudden start (as you die if we are to believe Inception; and I do, down to the very fact that the initials of each of the main characters spell the word Dream). Dreams that you live through, asleep or awake and that you rarely transcribe not for fear of what they mean but because you struggle to recall the simples detail, because you find yourself in the middle without certitude of what the head or the tail of that particular snake is. The kind where you are as prone to live a half-remembered thought with a dash of fantasy as you are to imagine yourself sitting at the edge of your own bed contemplating your sleeping self.

So picture real life - all suits and ties and dark tones and hues with a single bombshell that draws attention only from those willing to take a moment to break their intent conversation/staring fight with the piece of ground one yard away from their feet to take in the air of faint superiority and confidence that masks the possibility of a truly wondrous creature.

That's my average day.

Lilium inter spinas.

I live in a world of fantasy where I have been blessed with friends with jobs and life's that are constantly searching for meaning and spirit. Where the term value-added is more than the lingo dropped during a consultant presentation and excel stands for both a program and a quality we hope to achieve in all our activities.

Where the horrors of the sinister lurk at just the right distance to afford us denial. Where we face truth only when it is sweet and drinkable (like Coors! or is Bud Light! Which one has the little ventilation marketing ploy?).

But when you walk around and see people with the flu because they haven't gotten their shot or dealing with their allergies either by sniffling or eating honey because medicine is not really necessary you start to wonder. And what that might be is whether or not we have the right amount of perspective. Or it could just be that the nightmare you're currently in is only a multi-million person city with hundreds of thousands running around with masks and fake (90% of the time) knifes and they could either treat or kill you.

And yes, we're back to discombobulated thought.

But in my previous life I never knew anyone allergic to anything that wasn't manageable. I've always been allergic to cats and I've always lived with them. I always thought shots were the things you either took at the bar, got from the doctor or used to have a pop off in the station. Not to avoid a cold. And lines were a suggestion for those willing to wait.

I'll admit the last one actually serves a purpose.

And a(non) fiction turns to reality. Or otherwise and vice-versa.

Not another Staind Song

Today I spent the better part of the morning transcribing old phone contacts from a decaying symbol of technology to one that still heralds the oncoming onslaught of technology as defined by the cool and not the technical. In other words I gave up on the blackberry in favor of the iphone. But you needn't worry - this isn't the story about how I finally broke down and got myself an iSomething beyond my Mac (iMac?) and my iPad (iTablet).

It's been a while since I've spoken - truly spoken - with someone from home. And I loosely define as the place where I grew up. Not the small town named Primavera (Spring) where I spent the better part of my childhood walking through forest trails, following gaming tracks that didn't exist and teaching myself how to survive in the wild by bringing sandwiches from home. I'm talking about the general collection of space between my town and my city. The two worlds I lived in, one of which was actually in Spanish and was more closely related to my family, nuclear and otherwise. The other was in English and equally confusing in its intricacy, the role it played in my dreams and the extent of the breadth and depth of my relationships within it.

The two worlds occasionally overlapped - particularly when I described a part of one world to a person in another. Talk about Dia de los Muertos to your liberally educated English teachers in 10th grade while at the same time revealing that the day itself was about a connection to stranger in a collectively painful mind day for Mexicans everywhere. Maybe you'd even get away with describing something that made you seem wise beyond your years and for the rest of the day you would walk around with an inward smile feeling much better about yourself than you probably should have.

So as of late I look for spanish music. And maybe it's because it terrifies me that as often as not I find myself thinking in English, talking to myself in English and wondering out loud about hopes and dreams that only had a Spanish verbalization before. Me hace falta el Espanol y el sabor Mexicano.

There's a reason I work my way through a canister of red pepper flakes on a weekly basis and its not that I miss the fire. I add jalapenos to most things and revel in the hidden flavor of a chipotle burrito not because the collective is reminiscent of home but because there are key individual flavors you can add to make them taste of culture and not of pre-packaged deliciousness.

And I think the moments of self reflection that my current situation affords me are dangerous as ever and I realize that I have always been afforded the opportunity to be a better long distance friend that I usually am. That the technology, both social media and phone wise has been miles beyond anything my parents, or my parents' parents had and they all, along with their coetaneous friends and colleagues managed to maintain communication. I flash back to all the friends I made in summer camps all over the world and the ocasional calls they would make to my little house in Guadalajara. I'd be surprised every time. It wasn't the why do they care but how much they cared.

And so now, I'm going to start to care.

More that is.

Chapter 5: A break in time

My first summer was long, and interesting. It wasn’t my first summer for that had happened over 18 years ago and I was in a womb at the time. This was the first summer I spent without the company of my parents of the company of Germans.

When I was 9 my parents sent me to Germany for the summer. I was on my own. For an intensive language course. Now when I say they sent me I’m overstepping the poetic license often afforded to writers (for that is what I choose to call myself at times like these). I asked to go – sort of. 3 months earlier I’d had an earnest conversation with my parents about my desire to learn to speak German.

You could say it’s my parent’s fault as they intiitated me in the world of languages when at the age of four they enrolled me in Japanese classes. That stopped about 8 months ago and the only traces remaining of that are the numbers and a few awkward phrases and terribly butchered spoken and written traces of what could have been.

Back to the Germany bit-

I was going to a small town outside of Munchen called Berchtesgarten (sp?). The first week though I would be touring with a group of 12-14 year old boarding students from Amsterdan in Switzerland. I was in Switzerland, my age was nine and had pocketfuls of cash. I bought the most expensive Swatch watch I could. I bought the biggest, baddest Swiss Army money could buy. On day 4 I called my parents asking for money for, you know, food and stuff.

I wish I could say I reasoned out the expense as an investment, a quality mausoleum that would allow me not to remember time but to forget it (a la Faulkner). The turth is I thought the watch was cool and though my, at the time, rather delicate wrists could not muscle up to the size of the strap, I wore it proudly. And I carried the Swiss army knife confident that the plastic toothpick would one day save me from either the Zombie apocalypse or a lodge piece of meat between the molars.

I repeated the experience 4 more times travelling again to Munchen, then Frankfurt and twice to Berlin. Needless to say personal finance was a field explored considerably and one that was mastered by trial and a considerable amount of error. On my fifth trip I came back with money.

But I digress only as a necessary setup for the first freshman summer. I was taking classes but I’d come to realize that summer classes give the student the distinct impression of being useless, and easy, and puny compared to the semester long courses. Sure, you were trapped in classrooms for a longer period of time and on more repeated occasions – but the professors took the opportunity to experiment or teach courses they truly loved without the academic year mad rush to publish. There was also the thick Philadelphia summer air that required linen clothing from top to bottom and and air-conditioned sunshine to be survived.

People joked with me asking me if I was really from Mexico and how was it that I could not stand the heat. Silly kids. I can handle heat better than most anyone – though I’ll be sweating profusely throughout the “handling” process – but the kind of heat that most of the northeastern cities observe was something new and unexpected for me. It was wet, damp, moist and dense. I hate swimming in soup.

Ient through the motions with the classes and on most night me and the guys living in the fraternity house that summer wouldorder large buffalo chicken pizzas from across campus – Ed’s. It felt like a travesty to order from an eatery that wasn’t on Penn’s campus.


Drexel.

Students and graduates in Mexico fail to build a sense of community or loyalty to their institutions. In fact the term or expression ‘alma mater’ hasn’t really made it into mainstream language in Mexico even though our language, it would seem, would be more keen to adapt it given our romantic tendencies. Whether that’s the fault of the institutions, the economy or the students is something that academics like Lujambio Alonso probably wonder about and consider at these elevated educational summits that he so earnestly advertises on Twitter.

I think it’s a combination of the three stakeholders. Universities in Mexico have yet to truly embrace the idea of higher education for the sake of its contribution potential to the society around them, the creation of an educated set of academics that can dedicate their life’s to professorships and a sustainable outlet for research and its application. On the side of the students – a stakeholder group to which I add the parents who have the task of “raising their kids” there is a desperate under appreciation for education, a terrifying sense that doing just enough is good enough and an unfortunate elitism inherent in social class.

The wealthy in Mexico often don’t care about education because if they are women, they are still expected to obtain MRS degrees. And yes, I’m talking 2011. If they are men they expect to inherit whatever the family business or scam is depending on how old the money is. If they are on the extreme other side of the issue the truth is that even public education (which is sometimes, still, surprisingly the best , i.e. www.udeg.mx) is expensive and often requires upper level connection to gain access to. And even then the universities failure to breach the income gap, foster intercollegiate unity and the lack of a figure or form to rally around.

Here I learned, depending on your school and region you either rallied around whatever sport did the best, the exclusivity of your school or the reputation you would work hard to uphold.

I was working on the party Ivy. It was simple, nightly we would either host parties or go through the streets attempting to set up BYOs, owning up to huge bar tabs (that to this day I’m grateful we would split up 7 or 8 ways) or simply being raucous and launching balloons from rooftops sometimes only narrowly missing windows that we would have been sad to see go.

I’d never truly owned a bar because I’d never experienced the sometimes desolate ghost town feel of a university in the summer. But 4 seniors and 3 freshmen rolled into a legendary place called the Blarney Stone and ignored the two strangers in there and focused on the bar tenders and the jukebox. Between pints of Blue Moon and toasts to life, the year 1850 and the new and old we sang Frank’s entire discography. That night we stumbled back with our arms linked together and we watched as Shia tried to look tough and good. A feat made easier by the fact that none of the extras were over 5’10.

We had a 4th of July party. We watched the fireworks from a roof. I ate hot dogs and sat on a picnic blanket at night with sparklers. Everything I’d seen or read about before was actually true.

The next day my dad arrived to stay with me for a couple of days.

The main hall was covered in everything ungodly. Beer bottles and cans lined the floor along with bits and pieces of cake and watermelon. Both of which had been an essential part of the food fight. Shishas and other things – vases if you will – were everywhere, some of them still standing in a kind of solemn defiance while others had fallen like soldiers in a battle field. There was toilet paper on the chandeliers and about 400 solo cups. The smell was a combination of rotting fruit, stale beer and a bit of vomit that I was sure was hiding in the chimney.

My dad took a second to take it all in. 30 seconds. 1 minutes. He turned, looked at me and asked where my room was. We walked up to the third floor and once he was settled in my room he said:

“I saw some Smirnoff vodka downstairs”
“Um…. Yes?”
“Well.”
My dad is prone to paused speech, a second habit from being a public figure most of his life.
“Can I have some?”

I’d never been so glad that Barney taught me that sharing was caring.

A week or two later I started my summer job. Officially I was known as a Residential Teaching Advisor for the Program of Baby Geniuses – a summer program sponsored by the university for extremely capable rising Senior in High School. Extra-officially I was joining a three week paid vacation in Philadelphia were my main requirements would be to fend off flirtatious advances from a coworker (another student), get kids to wake up early and make sure that these extremely intelligent human beings did not perish for lack of common sense and basic good judgment.

Let me explain. One of the children – as I will call them from my then august 18 year old high horse – came running into the office claiming his refrigerator was not working. He was panting, for some reason.

Jack – “It just wont work Diego!”
I looked inside to make sure the switch was turn to on, felt around the ice box to check for signs of life.
Me – “What happened when you plugged it in Jack?”
Jack – “Plugged it in?”

This is the same kid that had probably scored a 2400 on his SAT about a month ago.

Every morning we walked the students from the residence halls to the lecture halls. And then back. And then to the dining halls. And then to the buses for whatever afternoon activity we’d planned for them. On the 4th day we lost a kid on the morning walk. We found him two hours later sitting on a park bench 6 blocks in the opposite direction. His reason? “I think I took a wrong turn somewhere”.
I wrapped up that job when a fraternity brother scored free tickets to the killers and I took most of my coworkers out to Camden that night for a last big bang.

And so my summer ended. Only a week or two shy of sophomore year – I thought this was when things would get interesting.

I'm coming back.

With a vengeance.

Chapter 4. – The pledgeship

I’ve always argued that I was one of the lucky ones. They say (where they is everyone that speaks in adages) that you don’t get to pick your family you only pick your friends. This was not true in my case. I was one of those kids that came from a wholesome family with a dad, a mom and a set of living grandparents at one time or another in living memory. I had two half-brothers and half-sister. And then I transplanted my existence somewhere 3,000 miles north from home where no one knew me.

Enter a problem surrounding operations and the basic lie that Friedman told us: the world is flat. Yes, it might be flat, but it’s large enough for us to see the curvature of the earth – or small enough for us to be able to hug a model globe.

If I broke my legs, needed immediate hospitalization or simply required the warm presence of my family or friends in a moment of dire emergency the following would occur. I would call them – assuming I was in a condition to do so.

1) 2007 was the year Guadalajara stopped having direct flights to Philadelphia. 2007 was my freshman year.
2) To get from Guadalajara to Philadelphia you have multiple options. You can have layovers in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and Houston. All those flights leave GDL early in the morning.
3) If the call back home happened any time after 11am local time, my family would have to wait at least till the next day.
4) At which point anywhere between 9-12 hours of travel time would have to occur baring any major delays or the weather being its usual cooperative self or my parents avoiding being put on some sort of list because they didn’t speak English.

That was my reality.

And so before discussing something that I would later look at in morbid retrospect with warmth and melancholy – pledge – I should say that before I left home I promised my dad I would never join a fraternity.

Enter a lost in translation moment. Fraternities in Mexico are secret societies that handle all the power – they are the prototypical skull and bones type societies except they operate in a country where rules are easier to bend and money truly speaks. Where money is your name and it doesn’t require a last name. You kill people to sign the pledge and get a ring and never speak of it again until someone in your organization decides to break out, write a book about the secret society and gets killed 2 months after publishing.

Or you know, whatever.

I came back from Winter break with a new haircut, a suitcase packed with a variety of alcohol, a saxophone and a stark determination to avoid the winter blues no matter how much indigo my life felt like. And campus greeted me with a 10 day rager.

This is when I began to rage.

Admittedly my preparation over break had involved reading Pledged – the underbelly to sororities or something like that and though I always wanted to talk to my parents about it, it never seemed real.

On the first night of closed rush – past the first two awkward days of house jumping looking for the best free food and impossible conversation – brothers put us on a bus. I sat near the front perhaps as homage to the many years I enjoyed seating up near the front of the bus with the teachers and the good kids. The word boat race started being thrown around. Two gallons of beer were handed to either side of the bus and people were tasked to drink as much as possible and then hand it down. The goal was to kill the boat. So I did. All of it, the gallon full, to the (for some reason) admiring eyes of rushes and fratters alike. I then sat down and enjoyed a comfortable buzz for the rest of the night.

The week progressed in a similar fashion except that with each drunken revelry I felt more and more engaged with the people around me. They had something inexplicable between them – they cared about each other and obviously enjoyed their company terribly.

Most fraternities have a final dinner as part of the rush process. This dinner is a little more formal than the rest of the nights – though heavy drinking is not only allowed but highly encouraged – but it also has the premise as the last time to have a serious or meaningful conversation. That night a brother sporting a white suit and a backwards, flat-rimmed Phillies hat told me he wanted kids like me running his fraternity years from now. I was sold.

I was offered a bid and after a bit of crying and screaming – both coming from me – my parents supported my decision.

Then pledge came.

No details of course for those are the secrets of the fraternity but what I failed to realize at the time was the purpose and its effectiveness.

The idea of pledge or as nationals insists on calling it – new member education – is to provide a set of strangers with a shared background and childhood. It’s the school of thought that claims that bonds are develop edwhen the individual is subjected to high levels of physical and mental distress. When the two god-given legs you have are no longer enough you have two choices: crumbling to the ground or reaching out and hoping your new brothers will catch you.

At first it feels weak and artificial and I still wonder why not one of us walked out. We do not know each other and the only thing those 24 kids had in common was that a large group of guys thought we were cool, or interesting, or hung out with the hottest girls or had a great set of hair. But by the end everyone cracks and once that’s done it’s easy to rebuild yourself in the image that they want you too.
I’d often tell stories of pledge and realize how silly or futile our little acts of heroism sounded when voiced out loud. When you were down in the hazement though, we were no longer 18 years old, we were men wiling to do battle with whatever was thrown against us and nothing was going to stop us. The vice of mob mentality was overpowering and you truly believed that what you were doing had a higher purpose and that the young man I was holding in my arms as he convulsed and his eyes rolled to the back of his head would be fine not only because I hurriedly and passionately whispered – “it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok” – into his ear but because he had to get through. He simply had to.

The same reasons why when handed a gallon to chug I would decide to do not as much as possible but all of it so that other wouldn’t. Staring up from the ground as everything around me blurred and my body shivered uncontrollably with the loud “WOARGHHH” I thought not – “I’m crazy” but “I’m doing it, they can’t touch me”. I’d drank nearly a gallon of it and through the tears I could see the plastic bottle empty lying only a couple of feet away from me. My brothers would try to pick me up but my weakened body would do little more than melt in their arms before another surge from within forced me to the ground, crying and heaving.
And sometimes we drank. The idea was that whatever you did not drink your brothers would have to. In that the nights were finite – no matter how long they felt.

During pledge you rarely see anyone outside the people you pledge with. You go to class, have dinner and then go pledge for anywhere between 3 and 12 hours a night. On your spare time the expectation is that you’ll clean the house, be in the house or hang out with the brothers. The idea of coming back form pledge and doing work never jelled with me. My mind would be gritting its teeth analyzing every little part of it and swearing to quit tomorrow only to end by seeking a drink with my pledge brothers.

You go to the parties you organize for the house or that the house sends you to. Other relationships and friendships go down the wayside and I found myself, for the first time in my life, in the difficult situation of attempting to evolve a booty call into a dating thing. I was exhausted half the time and all I could do was seek a little warmth and company from whomever was willing to offer it. It was only about a month and some change later I realized she had a boyfriend.

That ended things.

With Spring Fling came the end of pledge and I went home for some much needed recuperation.

The semester ended with finals that I barely passed because I’d spent the majority of my time focusing on learning things from a little black book and knowing which brothers had swam the red river of rage or who had thrust his nipple into an unwitting girl’s mouth.

My grades suffered. So did my sanity and other important things like my health and my friends. But I had finally developed a family that was just down the hallway or half a block away at worst. Artificially initialized, it was now solid enough to carry me, I thought.

Four years later the fraternity has been through a lot but for the first time in my life I've known the pleasures of having a little brother and an older brother who was actually involved with my life. I've enjoyed toasting to the sunrise as I overlook the Philadelphia skyline and a desolate campus. And I've learned to appreciate the idea of being Greek despite being Mexican. It might just be a unified approach to dealing with race relations.

Chapter 3. In which a Mexican discovers what American college is like and finds himself at a formal

I showed up to college early. Usually a punctual guy, I showed up to college 3 days early. I was tricked, conned really. The admissions office is a whimsical little wench that invited me to ISO. An international student orientation that precluded the New Student Orientation that is famous at the University of Pennsylvania.

NSO is a staple in Penn-ite? Culture. A weeklong revelry that Bachus would celebrate by ringing the bar bell announcing a last call.

ISO was a lonely affair.

The freshman dorms have a capacity for something like 2400 students. Only a couple hundred come to ISO. Some internationals, apparently, were smarter than me. It felt like the scene in those tragic movies where most of the human population has been exterminated by a plague, a horde of zombies, or a combination of the two. The fact that the few humans remaining always seem to find themselves in the whole word is the only thing that felt out of place. I didn’t see anyone for the first 24 hours – except a bathrobe clad individual who checked me in.
I had a schedule, a campus map and a still sparse looking room in desperate need of artwork, or at the very least posters telling people what I liked, or what I thought they would like and identify with. Or simply one that told a story about how much I liked to pound shots.

At the first event I was told to never try to bribe a cop. I was also told that in AMERICA (all caps, yes) it wasn’t polite to ask people how much money they made. You were also not supposed to cough up loogies on the street.

I was obviously flabbergasted.

(Note the sarcasm)

It dawned upon me, and not the administrators, that while this ISO was supremely helpful for those who had never been in the United States, ever, it would not be useful for anybody else.

Here’s a fun fact – one that might suggest at the fact that I am rich beyond your wildest dreams, which I assure you, I’m not. People applying to school in the United States have paid for some form of international education – American or British usually.

This form of education is expensive. It requires not only tuition but sufficient savvy and culture on the part of the parents to acknowledge that such an investment might be worthwhile. So you must factor the tuition costs in their life as well.

Further, for schools to have any appeal at all required thorough research, of the first contact kind as well as reading material. An understanding, however light, of culture was required to convince them to apply for something that would set them back at least 52,000 dollars a year.

But let us pretend that those who we have accepted for their overachieving qualities and high standards would not bother to look into the country they are moving to.

Or that the Mexican who wrote about his travels – including the U.S. – might be wildly unfamiliar with the concept of personal space…

I still like to kiss people for greetings for the record.

Eventually NSO rolled around and I got my first experience of COLLEGE friendship when I held peoples hair back while they lost it. That first week I didn’t touch a drink. I was after all from Mexico and drinking had never been a big deal. You could do it because your society approved. And I wanted to make a statement that many doubted – you can have fun without alcohol.

That and I think that getting drunk with strangers is not only dangerous but stupid. It leads to stories of freshman girls waking up, face down, in a frathouse with the sweet aftertaste of Jaeger bubbling up. It also leads to guys walking home with crusty eyebrows and a fist caked in blood from punching a wall. Of course these are !hypothetical scenarios.

I started probing. Exploring not only my high school “passions” like model U.N. but also diving into a culture of business that I had never thought about before. The former I would discover was no longer called Model United Nations but we covered it under the guise of the International Affair Association. A place for those interested in the higher art of diplomacy, world development and coercion to gather. The latter was a pleasant surprise.

Coming out of High School I knew very little but was convinced that I was wise beyond my years. I had to be an engineer, my “passion” for physics and math said that. Forget about the fact that I loved creative writing and enjoyed Social Studies during what I now consider the beginning stages of Mexico’s civil war.

These business types had passions about finance pronounced feenance. They had dreamt about running Goldman or using their engineering savvy to develop the next big Google or Facebook. They were ripe with possibilities and I wanted it.

I learned that a “single” was a great thing. It allowed me to invited friends whenever I wanted as well as entertain… My neighbor and I developed close friendship and had a knocking system. I would scream at my wall asking for milk and the wall would scream back saying YES! And voila milk.

The girls across the hall would constantly come up with new dorm adventures. The type that involve learning the lines in mean girls, jamming to Oasis or playing midnight football. And I loved them. One of them would become one of my junior year roommates and I would see the other compete my senior year during a gymnastics meet.

Down the hall was British man with more style than I could ever wish for and a Jewish man from Massachussets with more style than I could ever wish for. Together we were a trio – eventually we would become a package deal. The Brit taught me of thirsty Thursdays and the Sox fan of the all-American game called Beer Pong.

I told him in a faux-shocked tone that Mexicans did not play with their food. And then I found something I was better at – quincy (chandelier).

Going into November my winter wardrobe consisted of a single green hoodie. It was my favorite sweatshirt and it only recently went into retirement in my girlfriends closet. It didn’t dawn on me that I was wildly unprepared and that madras shorts, boat shoes and hoodies were not going to cut it. That a single cover was not the way to go if you heating broke.

A couple of sniffle sessions later I had a thick, fluffy jacket. I wouldn’t receive my standard Northeastern government issued black North Face fleece until much later in my college career. I also obtained a pea-coat. What a concept! A formal wear attire that can also be casual, warm but not sufficiently so on its own requiring the wearer to layer up. And layers had only been the metaphorical kind to me before that. The kind that you talk about when comparing a person to an onion you unpeel. Now I had to get shirts and sweaters and sweatshirts and jackets and peacoats.

I got a trenchcoat too and would wear it only occasionally lest I be confused for a flasher. Being 6ft6 and Mexican didn’t help I thought.

When the first snow I was ready. The thought: “Bring it cold” ran through my mind a couple of times as I tried to act casual about the fact that the heaven were raining beautifully shaped snoflakes and I attempted to catch only one out of every 30. What I wasn’t ready for was the utter darkness.

I’d get out of class at 5pm on most days and the day would be gone. I’d get home and feel like it was 10 and I should be cuddling up to a movie or dressing up to party (I was not quite at the “rage” stage yet).

The winter blue colored themselves indigo for me.

The way around that I would find is to keep your room hyperilluminated, keep your head down and do your work but allow yourself the dorm room life break cleverly provided by those around you.

That’s who I found my friend around the corner who told me all about her life in California and I told her about my life in Mexico. Shower battles ensued where cold water was periodically dropped in the midst of a cold shower to sharp shrills – often from me.

Co-ed shower. Ha! I came from Catholic country that would have outdoor protests and sit-ins to denounce the perverted admins who would allow that to happen. I had also only met one Jewish person in my life.

The University of Pennsylvania campus has an urban legend which might very well be true – 7 out of 10 white males on campus are jewish. Something close to that applies to girls. This I say from my empirical evidence. The first 6 girls I talked to at Penn were Jewish and once it became apparent that I was not a part of the tribe they began looking past me, not for someone more interesting, but someone more appropriate.

Enter the Jewish American Princess. This concept along with the idea that if you are not from Jersey you must hate on it and that if you are from Jersey you must defend it like a rabid dog on its last leg in a pit fight – were brand new to me. The first principle I understood, we had an equivalent principle at home called “fresas”. Literally put they were strawberries but pragmatically they were daddy’s girls who got what they want if it meant they drove a Benz or a BMW while mommy had to settle for the RAV4. Mommy rarely did for she had been one of them at one point too. I went to a high school full of them. But my high school had princes too.

The latter concept was confusing. In my short adventures into the Jersey countryside I’d found nothing but fun and pretty forests and bocce ball (the Spanish version of petanque that wouldn’t you know it, the Northeast had adopted as a fun backyard game). Sure the Jersey shore would eventually come on and my refusal to watch would be focused on the fact that it was on MTV and I was done with trashy reality TV. But what was so bad about Jersey other than the uber competitive public school system? And the fact that Governor school left kids with a tight sense of community because it was a summit of the nerds. (Let’s just look past the fact that I was expected to know what Governor school was).

Then I was going to a formal at the Castle. Truly the southern name – fratcastle – hadn’t migrated up here yet and I was none the wiser. But the idea of a classier affair, one with champagne, suits and potentially a chocolate fountain appealed to me. They had spotlights! And an ice sculpture! And it was perfectly pretentious because the champagne was little more than Andre. Standing in line to get checked in by the bouncer that night a Penn security guard approached me and the two friends I was with.

“What’s going on here tonight?”
The two girls turned around leaving me to field the question.
“Not quite sure, I’m trying to figure that out myself!” – I felt like a tool. I was dressed in a suit, the blush of a pre-game still warming my cheeks and I was playing dumb.
“All right, you guys take care then”

I got a pat in the back for my cool and cavalier attitude. That was my second con.

And then before I knew it it was final and I started fretting about not being a straight A student anymore. How was this possible? How could I have fallen so deep into my sword? How many rethorical questions could I fit into a chapter?

The thing about writing something like this is that you get to voice all the questions you have to keep to yourself all those years not because you don’t have anyone that can bounce ideas around with you, but because being able to do so requires an understanding from the other party. They have to understand that you weren’t just the typical big fish in a small pond but that you were frustrated, to the core, at the apparent level of mediocrity that passed as excellence in your country. You were frustrated not only with classmates and teachers but with the larger governments’ inability to finance the country and incredible skill at stealing from it. They needed to understand that nobody back home knew what it was like to live and breathe a campus and become a loyal follower of your mascot (a man I would later befriend). They did not know or could not begin to know the idea of dorms and frat parties and an education system that, as a norm, required student input and wasn’t simply reliant on heavy handed professors imparting their lessons to a mute audience. Most of my family members wouldn’t, and still don’t understand the idea of a liberal arts education, or that studying two majors in 4 years is feasible.

On my graduation night a friend’s mom came up to me and congratulated me on going to the U.S. for college.

“What school are you going to?”
“Penn”
“Awesome! What’s that?”

This was one of the positive interactions.

So finals season came and went and as I tried running a MonteCarlo simulation to try to determine what my GPA would be and how I would explain to my parents my fall from the heavens.

They didn’t care. They understood what I would not understand until senior year – that I was to learn more from my peers and my classroom experience than I could learn from a single letter grade. That the strength of the American education system relies heavily on the fact that the learning is done experientially and puts the student face to face with a challenge that they might not be successful at. That it lets you fail and feel like you failed but also leaves a door open that will let you climb back to your feet. And all the while I worried about the “curve” – a pretty little notion that we should, as humans, behave, given a large enough n, as statistics prescribes we should. And I worried about what my friends would think, what my parents would think and I forgot to think about myself.

I learned from that mistake pretty quickly.

Chapter 2. An introspective note

This will hopefully go down as my first attempt at the pseudo-autobiographical novella. That means there will be many attempts to re-write this book and my life.

One of the first things I did when I got off the plane was procure a phone – a cute off-the-cereal-box model that would allow people to reach me. I didn’t know any better and got a Sprint phone and got limited texting and no data plan. This, along with the fact that smaller, thinner towels work better than the big, luxurious ones I craved. (That last bit turn out to be entirely pragmatic – the thing, smaller towels dry faster and are less prone to smell of humidity)

The phone was to be my landline to America. For my parents and friends back home I had MSN messenger and Skype. The former I would learn was a relic of times never had in the U.S. where people preferred the then outdated AIM messenger. I tried convincing them that the rest of the world used MSN and hotmail. That AOL and Yahoo were a thing for those who weren’t in the know. That Hotmail was known as hucchimail in Brazil and that it had proven to be effective in keeping me in touch with my summer friends from Europe and South America long before facebook ever became a thing.

So I was limited to calling my parents via VOIP on Skype and the occasional splurge – calling them from my cell phone. My friends and I emailed, email still. We often chatted at night. It is a matter of time however before you start letting go of those late night text-driven conversation in favor of going out with your new friends.

For the first time ever I was exposed to 2500 new individuals pre-selected for the interesting qualities or incredible smarts or both or something I’d never even heard of. I was no longer a slave to having gone to the same school for 12 years with the same 75 people.

The friends I keep – Sarah, Ingrid, Sergio, Carlos and Odette – those were just happy coincidences of faith. All of them were happy souls that happened to find as many smiles with me as I did with them.

But I had the potential to meet new people.

To do things I’d never done before like go to my first BYO, eat a cheese steak or go to a Frat party. Wait around, feigning interest, around a keg until I could get my hands on that nozzle and pour myself a cup of Beast or Fratty Light.

I tried to understand things like the three-point stance, the idea that a guy and a girl could both be texting while trying to meld together on the dance floor. How two guys would sandwich a girl and both ignore the fact that they were using a warm body between them as the only line between straight and no-homo. The way people moved between parties at nights – migrating in packs, flocking on the streets like birds – from one crowded party to the next, was worthy of an anthropological study and something I might still consider looking into.

I’ve learned about the hook-up culture. I’ve learned that here you make-out with someone. You do this a couple of times and you might be bumped into regular booty call. If you perform well you can move into a thing. No complications (or so the theory goes), just having fun, crazy kids in college doing their thing. Then maybe you get asked to a formal or a date party and that pushes things up a notch. It might be time to have the conversation. And the conversation is had, no formal date in the traditional archetype yet. No dinner and a movie, no formal way of asking her to be your girlfriend. Simply a let’s be exclusive talk. And you hope she’s on the pill and your RA is stocked.

I pledge a fraternity and though I will discuss that later I will say this now: it was one of the best things I ever did. My frame of reference was based around movies like Animal House and American Pie. To compare my fraternity to movies like Band of Brothers or the story in Atonement would be a stretch. But I learned a fair amount about the human condition and the capacity for good and evil in unexpected places.

Learned that the best time to do laundry is 3 am on a Monday morning and that the conversations had there can lead to everything from a dinner at a Japanese sushi bar to discovering that the three-in-one sheets are much easier to handle than bulky bottles of detergent. You can never have too many quarters.

In short I’ve learned a lot, I think. And I haven’t even begun to discuss the things that happened in the classroom where the learning was supposed to happen..

But that has been lost to all but a few of my friends. My parents, as much as I love them, have a skewed version of what my life is here. It’s not that I meant it to be that way, it’s just that it happened.

Most college kids live in fear of their parents finding out that they drink or smoke in college. Reputations change from nerdy girl with the cute classes to smart girl, make-out slut. No longer the smart-kid in the football team. Simply jock.

That wasn’t my case. I knew I wouldn’t be a big fish here that I’d struggle to be more than a canned sardine tossed into an ocean of North Eastern and Californian prep-schoolers. I just wanted to tell them about my life here. And I wanted to tell my friends.

But nobody had a reference point. Most kids I grew up with stayed in school in Mexico like I almost did. You go to school in the same city, you live with your parents until you’ve gotten some sort of promotion and then maybe you marry the girl you’ve been seeing for 4 years. And you do this by formally going to ask for her hand in marriage before you propose. You go out with the same friends you did in high school, to the same clubs and bars. It’s a tightly knit community that easily forgets outsiders but welcomes those ready to not change the order of things. You belong to the same country club your parents did.

If I had to, I would describe it as an interesting place where the aristocracy of the American South meets the back-roads of middle of nowhere Mid-West – combining these stereotypes leads to my city.

There are no college dorms. No frats. No international body of students and professors.

So how was I supposed to describe a picture or a color to those who couldn’t see? Who at best would see a hung-over version of me on a weekend visit. Phone calls and chat screens do very little in the way of providing understanding. That’s why video chat was invented, and even then, it was limited to the back of my room as the camera framed my face well with a bookcase and a fridge in the background.

Details went by the wayside. My friends here often didn’t even have names because the English versions of them would go in one ear with people at home, and out the other. My stories seemed petty and inconsequential at times, especially in the later years where the violence became widespread and everyone had heard of Ciudad Juarez and nobody was going to “Pulco” for Spring Break. The idea of doing an “Econ Scream” (Penn’s tradition before the first economics midterm of first semester in which midnight is marked by a vociferous and collective scream supposed to vent out frustration and stress though really it’s just another opportunity for free food) has little worth in people who can’t even begin to comprehend the stress. Who still worry about the cliques and groups they never rose above of in high school.

So the truth as I am about to depict it is a new truth for those who knew and know me.

Ch. 1 – Life Before Illy

It must first be clarified that I, Diego Hernandez Diaz, of sound mind and body (kind of – I’m slightly overweight), do hereby decree the following a more or less factual account of my past four years. There is embellishment and considerable artistic license that must be acknowledged but only as it involves the events relating to myself. That is to say, the whole book, and particularly this chapter is the kind of truth you would swear to your parents, not the kind of truth you would swear to in a court of law.

I haven’t been Mexican for a long time. That is to say I am proud to be a Mexican born and raised. I grew up in a city called Guadalajara. To those outside of the United States of Mexico that’s often a meaningless piece of information. Perhaps that’s why I’m prone to making up stories about my background when talking to my disposable in my trips up and down the continent. That’s why I tell them that I’m a Philly native travelling from Guadalajara only on business – it keeps things simple if I have them believe the verbal diarrhea that spills from my mouth rather than fill them in on my life. Tell them how my parents don’t speak English- how despite the fact that they both have Ph.D.’s in Pharmacology they speak a little French and considerable Spanish. They were the first in their family to attend college.

People would wonder why my English is so good. People do wonder. And every time I come up with a kitschy and smart-alecky response to it.

“I watched a lot of American sit-coms that wouldn’t run on American TV you know? Like Reba!”

And then they’d wonder why I don’t have a southern accent. So I’d explain that my parents, with incredible foresight, bought a great deal of English books so I would have material to dig into once I learned to read ingles. Of course that would only mean that I’d have to explain to them two things. One – I went to an American School that threw in an extra year between kinder garden and first grade appropriately termed pre-first. This was a year meant for to teach us how to read English. And two – I showed them that I could read English about two weeks into the year. My mother was summoned to the principals office and offered the following:

Principal: “Your son can read”.
Mother: “Spanish. Yes, his father and I taught him. Or is that his father and me?”
Principal: “English.”
Mother: ”English?”
Principal: “English”.
Mother: “That’s not possible. His father and me can’t speak English”.
Principal: “We’re moving him up a grade”

And so off I went to the first grade and you can easily how this story gets complicated.

So I stick to other truths. But not this time, an it’s not because I’m finally “of age” in this putative country but more so because I’m in the right state of mind to write it. Even if it takes me all night or simply a couple of hours a night till the end of the school year.

The story that followed was not one filled with years of bullying as the youngest kid. I was a big kid. Not big in the mid-west type of big but simply massive. I was taller than any other kid in my grade – boxy, chubby almost but not quite. It was the kind of size that affords you the luxury of never having to be violent because sheer magnitude of potential repercussion avoids you a scuffle. Instead I developed two things – a hard work ethic (though I’m sure any psychologist worth her two cents could prove was deeply ingrained in me by my parents) and a larger than live personality.

Blitz through the next 10 years. I was a shark in a pond full of guppies and felt damn good about it. My friends and I fancied ourselves the kings of our high school. The same school, down to the plot of land, we’d attended for over 12 years now. From different walks of life we had a jock, the future lawyer (the pre-law stereotype in American cynicism), an artsy type who’d belong in Brown (and did go to Brown) and a computer maniac who chose to got to MIT because he could. Somewhere in there I fell into my niche. I fell in the middle of all of them. With a little bit of each and my own passion for people. At the time I didn’t realize that my friends at Wharton would help me identify my gregariousness as a positive attitude called “good at networking”.

On one infamous occasion we convinced the headmaster to let us out early on a Friday afternoon to go study physics on air hockey tables. We went to Peter Piper Pizza and behaved like we were in middle school. We did the same for the rest of the year.

On another occasion we shot a film for our film festival and convinced the headmaster we needed to go to the mall to get the soundtrack that was going to win us the prize. We left, got the soundtrack and soft serve and returned to win the prize.

I know it sounds like suburban victories and they were. Even though Guadalajara was nothing like Suburbia and my friends were not your average valley-boy types. We were nerds with ideas of grandeur at a school that didn’t have seniors hazing freshmen or people that skipped school.

We had bodyguards who kept our walls safe and a security force that could overtake Paris.

The American School Foundation of Guadalajara was a place where an American Football team would have had a hard time finding traction except for the few consulate kids who were both athletic and inclined to believe in a half Mexican team’s ability to memorize plays called quarter and dime.

This was my school, a place where choppers would land in the middle of the soccer field and where bomb threats would have FBI agents from the consulate show up at our school and scan our rooftops. It was also a place where a Math teacher, a former proctologist in the U.S. seeking asylum in Mexico after a few sketchy sounding cases in his home country, could propose building a solar oven using the old satellite antenna atop the school library. The soup we warmed using that was fantastic and we learned nothing except that it takes a lot of sweat and tear to build a solar oven.

When I was going into the 10th grade I considered switching schools. The Mexican schooling system works in a 6-3-3 schedule unlike the American 4-4-4. 10th grade was my last chance to get out – and I almost did. I applied to a different High school, rocked their admittance test and was set up to go.

Diego gets pulled into a meeting with the principal and the headmaster. Diego is interrogated about his future and he starts referring to himself in the third person.

I explain that the other school is offering me a larger scholarship, that the other school is cheaper and financially speaking, for my parents at least, it is better. They mention that getting into an AMERICAN (all caps) university will be infinitely more complicated that way and I need to be smart. The thought of attending university somewhere in the United States not of Mexico first pops into my mind. They ask me to stay. They tell me I need to stay. I tell them I can’t do.

I launch into an allegorical story of the kid who attempted to buy candy with his weekly allowance. In the story he attempted to buy the Mexican version of caramel chews but they were a dollar and his allowance was 50 cents. In the story education was the caramel chew- something that you desperately crave but immediately regret as it sticks to your teeth and palate in noxious ways that keep you tongue clicking like a horse for an hour afterwards. In the story I portrayed myself as Romeo. I was merely a captain of the ship I’d been given to command from the outset. I had no control over it.

It was my first con worth telling about. They bought it and got to ride their train for the next three years on the exclusive deal that they’d benefit from my accomplishment and I’d benefit from their lower? Education.

And so I stayed and played the game. Took the PSATs and saw a counselor who told me all my schools were reach schools.

Let me clarify a notion quickly. We, that is to say, Mexican children (and families) do not have a concept of what a counselor is. In Mexico you guesstimate what your college choice is and you apply to one. And by apply I mean you take a test that 2nd graders can take and pass and as long as your check does not bounce (and even then) you are enrolled in the pursuit of higher education. A counselor is about as useful as an alternate religion in a catholic country. We already have priests, you better promise something better.

I explained to Ms. Spiesel that I was only going for gold and that if I was to stick to silver or bronze I’d stay with Mexico’s gold and go from there. Financially speaking it made sense. Get paid to school here or pay a fortune to go abroad.

And I got in. I got into my dream school – Stanford. And other smaller schools like Penn, USC, Notre Dame, and Yale.

It came down to Penn, Yale and Stanford. At Yale I was irked by the tour guides constant references to Harry Potter – he seemed to fail to understand that bringing my imagination to the earthly constructs of his university made Yale fall short. At Stanford I saw rats on Palm Drive and found issue with being referred to as either a fuzzy (liberal arts) and techie (engineering) – they didn’t seem to get that I was a fuchie. That neither label truly applied.

In the end – as you will see – hopefully and only if I still have you, I chose Penn. Not because I knew anything about the dual degree Engineering/Wharton thing I was signing up for but because they had a transparent a simple attitude.

“Yes, we work hard. But we play our hardest”.

It wasn’t some slightly surfer bro approach to life who just happened to stumble into life by accident and be successful. It also wasn’t a thing where parents could pay for my weed addiction and English major simultaneously.

It was pragmatic. It was exciting. It was the home of the Phillies.

We used to get grades by quarters in high school. My second semester senior year, the time where the inflammation of the senior is formally known as senioritis hits – I missed 6 weeks of class in a 10-week grading period.

My chemistry teacher was a middle-aged crisis filled neurotic who would hit on me. My principal I had already seen drunk once. He was sitting outside the school, smoking a cigarette – he looked up to me and asked: “what’s the point?”. Two of my classes were independent study and my Spanish teacher was terrified of me. I was the only kid who actually read the books and calls him out for taking the spark notes quizzes, translating them and administering them. I had nothing to fear.

I came back and had my highest average ever.

So I chose Penn.

On my graduation night, when I introduced my girlfriend to my parents formally for the first time, I was smashed.

Prom looks like this. Everyone comes, family and friends. We all have dinner at a castle we rent. No limos required, just suits and lots and lots of intoxicating material – preferably liquid. We have a toast post dinner to say buen provecho. The families leave. And then the open bar hits for the next 4-5 hours. We then go to another open bar after party.

My parents hired a driver for me that night. I packed 17 people into my Honda CR-V that night.

A summer followed that I compared, in my graduation speech, to terminal patients on their last few weeks of doctor prescribed life.

I tried taking advantage of my last moments with my family, friends and loved ones. Or so I thought. Forgetting that I would be back at every chance, and that it wouldn’t be until senior year that I would realize that I needed to stop coming back.

When I said I wasn’t Mexican for while I didn’t mean it. It just means I drink scotch more than tequila now.

And then I boarded a plane to Philadelphia, PA.