Homecoming Riots

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
~ Frederick Buechner

You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you.
~Isadora Duncan

This morning my dreams were filled with violence as explosions continued to rock the ground around me. I'm not really sure what I was doing, talking to my fourth grade teacher who had somehow turned into a parakeet, or maybe trying to fly by running really really fast (I don't know why I always try that in my dreams). Whatever the particular dream may have been, when I finally opened my eyes I realized there were actually an inordinate amount of fireworks exploding outside, especially for 7:30 in the morning.

Ah yes. Riot day.

Bolivians love riots. More specifically they love bloqueos, or roadblocks. If you haven't been paid in two weeks, set up a bloqueo, if you've petitioned the government for a change and you haven't heard back fast enough, set up a bloqueo, if your favorite soccer team lost last night... bloqueo. While these actions sometimes border on the comical, the sad truth is that many poor Bolivians have no other recourse in which to make their voice heard, thus for days at a time cities are often shut down while particular interest groups battle it out with government bureaucracy.

This particular day happened to be the bus drivers, petitioning for a raise in public bus fares from 24 cents to 36 cents. As I locked my front door and stepped out into the street I wished them all the luck in the world, but I couldn't help letting out a little grumble as that still meant that I had to walk the 18 blocks to work, and it just didn't feel like a walking morning.

Even though there are other elements to this story, including witnessing a non-rioting bus driver get his tires slashed by an angry mob, and having to pick my way through an oncoming band of riot police, all the while convinced one of them was going to crack me on the head just for kicks and giggles, I wanted to pause the progression here. Because even as I grumbled my way to work this morning, I have to laugh this evening, because like soooo many other things I unthinkingly whine about, having to walk 18 blocks to work when I don't particularly feel like it falls in my new mental category of "first world problems." I can't remember who I need to thank for helping me create this category, my best guess would be Becca Pratt's facebook wall, but suddenly I have begun catching myself complaining about things that are entirely not complaint-worthy. The other day, for instance, my ipod just WASN'T syncing with my library and it was bugging the snot out of me... up until the point I was able to whap myself on the forehead and say, "Ryan... first world problem!"

Friends, the fact that you are able to read these words should help you realize that most of the things we spend our time worrying about are completely first world problems. We are so entirely blessed/lucky/privileged/good-karmaed (depending on your spiritual or psychological outlook) that many of the things that get us down just AREN'T WORTH IT! None of us had the tires slashed on our sole-source-of-income this morning, none of us are trying to earn 12 cents more to help us feed our families. I don't mean to minimize anyone's pain, but I think we would all benefit from trying just a little bit harder to avoid worrying about our first world problems, and instead bleed for the things that deserve to be bled over.


It's late and I have places to visit in my dreams, but I also wanted to mention that my time here in Bolivia is coming to a close. Due to the continuously overwhelming generosity of others I'll be able to make my way up to Lima and catch a flight to Dallas where I'll get to watch two wonderful people get married. Then, if I'm lucky and the wind blows just right, I'll find myself floating back to LA. For those of you who know me well that probably sounds strange, me coming back to the states. I left trying to be strong, trying to let the wound left from the absence of friends heal over... but like so many other things I'm continuously learning and relearning, strength is highly overrated. I miss you, and I don't particularly feel like trying to not miss you anymore... so I'm coming home.

Love,
Ryan

Flaming Disappointments

Most men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
~Thoreau

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.
~Rumi

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.
~F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

I'm not in the mood to be light or funny, but I told myself that when I finally did update my blog I would start with a story.

So here is that story.

The other day as we were sipping our tea at breakfast and I was making a poor attempt to rub the sleep out of my eyes, tia Ruth sadly informed me that the two lovebirds and one of the parrots had died in the night. Someone had fed them something they shouldn't have eaten and that was that. I was surprisingly shocked. I mean, they're birds. Like most things birds tend to die every once in a while, but I felt like a travesty had been committed and I should have been able to prevent it. I sympathized with Ruth and Dona Mary about the loss of the birds, and after an appropriate amount of silence excused myself from the table and walked back out to the courtyard on my way back to my room.
As I passed by the cage that now surely contained just one lonely bird I stopped short. There they were, all four of the birds, looking vibrant and healthy and without care or concern.

Did I mention that my Spanish sometimes fails me at really important moments?

I still try to imagine if it wasn't the birds, then what in the world Ruth and Mary were talking about, but I can't muster the courage to go back and ask them. Were they playing a joke on me? If they were they never got to enjoy the laugh that is usually meant to follow. Or perhaps they were talking about some relatives that had passed away. If so then what did I say? How did I respond? Did I call their dead relatives birds? Ahhh Spanish...

On the flipside of that rather traumatizing event, several nights later the whole family and I were sitting around the table for dinner and Junior, one of the many young members of the household, asked if he could get up and fry himself another egg. After receiving permission he popped into the kitchen and started heating up the oil (fried eggs are pretty much deep fried here). Being the young teenager that he is, he started a rather impromptu dance in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, and we were all having a good laugh at his musical rendition and awkward dance moves, when suddenly a huge orange glow erupted from the stove that we could see reflecting off of his shocked face. Johnny, Ruth, Dona Mary, and I all jumped up and dashed into the kitchen, where we found a pan of oil that had combusted into a huge fireball that was licking at the ceiling of the kitchen. Junior's dance moves had markedly turned from the disco-dance to the panic-dance and he scrambled to the sink and grabbed a bowl of dishwater to douse the flame. Without a moment to think I yelled at him not to use water (thank you Luke Prince for teaching me that one) but even as he was looking at me confusedly Dona Mary swooped in, grabbed the flaming oil pan, and capped it in one swift motion, effectively extinguishing the flames. As we all calmed ourselves I explained the importance of not using water to extinguish a fire caused by oil, with Dona Mary nodding her approval at my every sentence. Ahhh... Spanish, we can still be friends.

I've been living in Cochabamba Bolivia since November of last year. That puts things at nearly five months. One one hand, a good chunk, on the other, barely a drop in the bucket. I've been doing things the way I want to do them, not the way life usually dictates. That means a lot of reflecting, a lot of reading, a lot of partying, a lot of prayer. I'm grateful for this, the power to choose where and how I would like to be, when usually I find myself too weak or uncertain (or is it just too nice?) to force life to play by my rules. Thank you life for being such an acquiescing opponent at times.

This past week I said goodbye to my wonderful host family. I was thoroughly surprised, and deeply grateful, for how enjoyable my time with them was. However after initially agreeing to stay with them two months, and then staying there four, I felt as though my time with them was at an end. While they would never admit it, I had begun to feel as though I was stretching their ability to be generous hosts. Granted I was paying rent, but I suspect they could use the space more effectively than the money, so I said my goodbyes and moved into the second floor of Andes Xtremo, an extreme sports and adventure guide business situated in the center of town. I have my own climbing wall. Don't hate.

And so yet again I find myself in the middle of transition. Changes come.

In the past couple of weeks I was also turned down for a very nice position with a very nice organization that would have allowed me to return to LA and still remain working in the Humanitarian Aid sector. It seems as though my heart has divided itself nicely between my desire for community, for friends who get me and understand (or at least put up with) my various passions, and with my desire to work in a field that feels significant to me, namely international development. Until this job possibility I had steeled myself to the reality that those were two segments of life that would remain separate until I managed to create a "home" somewhere overseas. But then that job popped up, and I applied, and I was placed on the shortlist, and I had an interview, and I had a second interview, before a panel, and I was shnazzy and professional, and then I had a third interview, and the world seemed ready to become my oyster. And then I didn't get it.

So now I'm left feeling somewhat adrift as I reconcile myself to my previous ideas of reality. Will I ever be able to have a home with those I love while I do something I am good at and passionate about? My answer right now is probably not, which is okay, but the dream has left something of a stale taste in my mouth. I added the quotes at the top not because I just bumped (or rebumped) into them, as is usually my practice, but because they resonate with me at this particular moment of my life. Which is, not at all coincidentally, why I don't particularly feel like being light or funny. Now I know certain friends and family members may be worried at this point, but please don't be. There is a way to experience sadness, or perhaps regret at an opportunity and an idea that will never be born, without it permeating your soul, and I am walking in that particular way. My days are marked with joy, and when I'm still I catch myself smiling at little nothings, but this particular post happens to not be about those things. So please, fret not ;)

This month I'll be doing a lot of thinking. Or I guess I should say a lot more thinking. I'd like to come home, but at 27 I'd also like to feel as though my life were moving in a direction that hinted at something greater. I have good friends who are getting married, others who are having kids (and Uncle Ryan wants to see them!) and others who are just having a rough go of things in general. And I'm not there. Strangely, as I write this a part of me recognizes that therein lies an answer to the question I continue to pose. Do I really want to be part of something greater? Is a job really going to satiate that hunger within me? Or am I already a part of something greater, something that we are all apart of, that remains much larger than any 9 to 5, that involves simple presence and time spent.

As a person of faith I believe in those trite little things that are so fashionably scoffed at these days, things like angels and demons and heaven and hell. And as a matter of course, I also believe that we spend our lives either moving closer or pulling farther apart from God. In his sermon The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis talks about this very thing, explaining that it is our burden to love our neighbors and to have a concern for their eternal well being. That, he says, is ultimately the weight of glory. So, I suppose, from that perspective, is there really a "something greater" that I still feel like I need to find? Or has the answer been staring me in the face this whole time?