Le Point Vierge (2) – A Typewriter, a Love, a Snickers

Back home from Bogota, we arrive at yet another Le Point Vierge, as I am contemplating going out tonight, not necessarily for any fiesta purpose or any reason to forget (heaven forbid), rather, because I don’t want to grocery shop, and Armoury makes a great mac and cheese and Pisco Sour. I need to process with my feet dangling from a barstool three key things that have occurred within the past day, week, and month—a typewriter, a love, and a snickers.

            1. I got a typewriter in Bogota. An authentic, vintage, Colombian typewriter with Spanish characters for my Spanish-speaking self. Oh, what joy for 60 Colombian pesos and a good conversation with a street vendor, one of about four hundred others peddling in a Saturday flea market. I asked him if it worked, he said yes, and I chose as I often do to trust a stranger with kind eyes. Sure enough, it does work, and yet I already most lovingly want to annihilate it with a pistol Hunter S. Thompson-style on a snow-capped mountain peak in my booty shorts with a cigarette dangling from my lips, because, after all, I am a writer. Tortured, perplexed, and entranced by my own written words on the page and dying to throw them away and plaster them on the nearest building at the same time. I have a commitment to report the truth! I must tell everyone! And yet I keep secrets, precious tidbits to myself, whispered only to friends at bars or into my phone, this 21st century Dictaphone-esque contraption early in the morning in melodic Spanish in between sips of black coffee, jet fuel in my veins. I am a journalist, after all. Colored by my own experience, these eyes that see beauty and tragedy all around, often at the same time, and try to make sense of it, gonzo to some, authentic to me, here I am.

            2. I found love in Colombia, rather, fell in love again, a love that knows no bounds, this love of Spanish, and this love of country, of place, of land. My love has always been oriented to place. I have been fascinated with this idea of the west, Spanish oeste, and for me it resides in the deserts and wide-open spaces of West Texas, in oil fields, minimalist art, Cowboy boots, dive bars, and open highway. I see it in the stars at night. I hear it in the click of a cigarette lighter. But the west extends further than that. The west represents the unknown, the untraversed. Places I dream of, lands of opportunity. Uncertainty abounds-- maybe even danger. There is a certain anxiety that catches in my throat. But there I go, chasing it like a cat chases down its ninth life. I go to Guatemala. I go to Peru. Last week, I went to Colombia. Goddamn, I adore Colombia. Bogota is the wild west. It is full of new wonders. It is full of language and life. I wear my cowboy boots and walk the uneven sidewalks and take the cable car up the mountains and my breath gets sucked out of me. I speak the Spanish I dream in with people full of warmth and kindness. People who remind me so much of west Texas that this place thousands of miles away feels like an iteration of home so familiar. And yet I love it all the more.

            3. Snickers. I am home now. Back at work. I still reach for the candy bowl here, abounding in those mini Snickers, labeled “fun size” even though there is nothing fun about them. They are an addiction. A poison. I don’t like to label myself fat. I don’t like to be negative or unkind. I would not like to set a bad example for my siblings, because I know that the words I use to describe myself do not fall on deaf ears. Whether I know it or like it or not, people listen to the words I say and read the words I write. It is a responsibility I have shaken loose or tried to avoid for far too long. But now, I am a journalist. Now, I have an ethical duty and a set of values I personally would like to adhere to. In the back of my mind as I write today, I can hear the Snickers wrapper unfurling, laughing at me, taunting me. I can feel it gurgling in my stomach. I can feel the urge to reach for more. I can punish myself for reaching, and I can punish myself for not. Either way, I treat myself with anger. Either way, I am beating myself to a pulp, all for feeding a starving “earth suit”, as a medical provider once described it to me. There is more than this. There is no easy solution to whatever is going on. I don’t have the right words for it. Whether the pants fit, whether I eat or I don’t, really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I use verbiage that is kind. Really, I like to think of myself in my adopted language. In Spanish, I haven’t learned how to be unkind to myself. I haven’t learned insults. No one taught me how to be mean or vindictive. Of course, I learned how to curse, very quickly, when I stubbed my toe or got cut off on the highway. Vergación! But I don’t know quite the right words to make myself cry the way I do in my native tongue. Maybe that’s the secret. In Colombia, I ate without guilt. Torta de queso con dulce de leche, I mean, come on! And tamales Colombianos y cervezas! The whole country was just bursting with fresh, delicious foods. Arepas, arepas, arepas! And I ate all of it. I didn’t speak or think a word of English my entire trip.

            I am at a strange crossroads in my life. Things are becoming real. The words I am speaking are not just lifeless, they are prophecy. Last year, I wrote a few things on my window, scrawled them in expo marker, then closed the shade, let them simmer beneath it, bake in the Texas summer sun. Now, I look at them astounded, for they have all come true. There is a bubble, a big cloud drawn out where I have written two words—“Guatemala + Home”—and now I am seeing them barreling down a railroad track to greet me, spewing steam and blowing a horn, urging me to hop on, greet my destiny with a smile and a holler. Whether this is manifestation or prayer I don’t know, but I can tell you that when you are consistent with your craft, when you take those baby steps and don’t give up, something good will come of it, something sweet, dulce, and you might just find that your dreams are not just far-flung hopes that vanish into the sky, but rather tangible fruits you can climb up and grab, if you only build a ladder.