So I was robbed yesterday.
It is sort of a long and complicated story, but the basic plot line is that someone tried to break into my apartment by ripping out the lock, failed, and then came back the next day to finish the job while I was out trying to get it fixed. Annoying, I know.
I didn't actually realize that I had been robbed until about 24 hours after it happened. I woke up this morning, tried to look at my old cell phone to see what time it was, and realized that it wasn't there.
Neither was the cord.
Neither was my guitar.
"Am I going crazy?" I thought. And then, as the haze cleared, "shit."
It took me a while to think about looking to see if anything else was missing. It doesn't look like I have lany fewer DVDs than I used to, but I didn't really check. The three dollars on my dresser are still there. So are my CDs. I guess it's a good thing that I keep my Daddy Yankee and Fat Joe collections in a safe under the bed.
In related news, my digital camera seems to have grown legs and walked away.
So I'm oscillating between being a little bit and very upset. Clearly I'm not happy about the idea of being robbed. It's like, "Really? Robbing people? Wow." And I'm not happy that they broke into the outside courtyard, but that I left my inside door unlocked. Because now it's partly my fault. Except that our apartments have this really neat little design flaw where it's entirely possible to be both locked in the courtyard and out of the house AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. So if I could go back, I don't know that I'd do it any differently. But of course I am second guessing myself because making the "wrong" decision has cost me about $800. Sweet.
What really bothers me is the specific stuff that I lost. For one, whoever stole my phone is going to be disappointed that it a) has no service and b) doesn't work even if it did. So they have something which is useless to them, and I no longer have the pictures that I took over the past three years.
And the camera does not make me happy either. It was only a year old, and a Christmas present from my dad. I asked him to help me buy a camera. He bought it for me. He's so generous. It had my only pictures of Deanna on it. It had the pictures of Chiapas that I take around to show people on it. So, no more camera.
But it's the guitar that kills me. I love playing that guitar. And I love that my mom bought it for me. I remember thinking of how much it meant to me. How cool I felt. I remember knowing that she saved up money to buy me that guitar. My sixteenth birthday present. I was always going to keep that guitar because of what it meant to me.
It's not the stuff, it's what that stuff means to me.
The bright side? They didn't steal my hot water heater. That's a popular little item here in Agua Prieta. Three cheers for hot showers.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Personal is Political
I walked home the other night through the very cold streets of Agua Prieta. Everyone except for me had the good sense to be hiding inside, so all of my usual haunts were closed. No late night tacos, tortas, or burritos to be found, with the exception of "Taqueria In-n-out." It's open late, but it's also super expensive and excessively greasy. And they don't have guacamole. Definitely not my favorite choice, but a boy has to eat.
I stepped inside and made my order, chatting up the man behind the counter. I wouldn't call him a friend, but I recognize him and he calls me "guero." We talked a little bit more as my carne asada cooked on the grill. My spanish is always worse at night but I was making an effort. Eventually the conversation got around to the inevitable "where do you work and what are you doing here?" I explained a little bit about what I do, and then asked him where he was from.
"I spent 29 years living over there" he said.
"29 years?" I asked. "Wow, that's a lot. Why are you back here?"
This is where it always gets interesting.
"They banned me for life," he replied.
Which of course leaves me wondering which law he broke. They almost never ban people for life.
"What'd you do?" I asked.
"I was selling drugs."
And just like that the conversation was over. The point when they tell me that they were driving drunk/selling drugs/beating their wives is always the point when I get annoyed and sometimes stop talking. It's not that I'm judging them for what they did (although clearly I'm not crazy about any of those things). I get so annoyed because it just seems to justify the fence in some small way. If I were in charge of customs and immigration, I'd keep that guy out for sure.
/rant.
I stepped inside and made my order, chatting up the man behind the counter. I wouldn't call him a friend, but I recognize him and he calls me "guero." We talked a little bit more as my carne asada cooked on the grill. My spanish is always worse at night but I was making an effort. Eventually the conversation got around to the inevitable "where do you work and what are you doing here?" I explained a little bit about what I do, and then asked him where he was from.
"I spent 29 years living over there" he said.
"29 years?" I asked. "Wow, that's a lot. Why are you back here?"
This is where it always gets interesting.
"They banned me for life," he replied.
Which of course leaves me wondering which law he broke. They almost never ban people for life.
"What'd you do?" I asked.
"I was selling drugs."
And just like that the conversation was over. The point when they tell me that they were driving drunk/selling drugs/beating their wives is always the point when I get annoyed and sometimes stop talking. It's not that I'm judging them for what they did (although clearly I'm not crazy about any of those things). I get so annoyed because it just seems to justify the fence in some small way. If I were in charge of customs and immigration, I'd keep that guy out for sure.
/rant.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Keep Crashing This Car, Over and Over
Why are we still so afraid?
The things we do deserve their rightful names.
Swing with all you have.
Stop me if you can.
-be sensible, jimmy eat world
I think that, in a way, we all bought into the hype.
It's the trial. At last. The trial.
And of course there's so much to be said about that. Justice. A reckoning. Punishment. Confrontation. Something.
Whatever we thought it would mean, if we ever really thought about it at all, we were not prepared for what it actually was. In poetry you can never say "I love you." In life it is never enough to say "good and hard." How to describe that week? Imagine Jesus descending into hell. Grace personified. But in hell.
The trial was, both literally and metaphorically, a destination. Something that we could look forward to. Something that we could place our stock in. Something that was, I don't know, tangible. But it was also an unwanted guest, still in the house far after we tired of its company. It was the emergency surgery.
And it's understandable really. We needed this. Some of us more than others. Several of us much more than me. We all needed this. But none of us wanted it to be necessary. All we've ever really wanted was escape.
When I try to think of the last time that I sat down with a bunch of other people from Central Presbyterian to discuss Peter, for any reason, I picture his welcome party. The rest of it has sort of slipped by. I've never really talked to my parents about it. I've never gotten a card in the mail saying "we're having a meeting at the church, why don't you come join us." I've never had someone even suggest that maybe we should sit down and talk this out. What in the world would we talk about? How would we possibly begin?
Looking back, these events (the Peter years, the post-Peter years, the Peter's back!?! trial years) have all transpired with surprisingly little fanfare. Look back again and you'll be forced to realize that he has never really left us alone. A constant presence that everyone is ashamed to talk about. Scared to talk about. Confused about. The 600 pound gorilla in no uncertain terms.
I got a phone call this morning saying that Peter has been arrested. Again.
I couldn't move on even if I wanted to.
When the stone first hit the water, the disruption of our lives was just too much. Surface tension destroyed. The rotting muck underneath revealed. And when the water returned to glass, no one could intentionally throw another stone. But the wake remains, bouncing off the shore and ricocheting around us. The ripples lapping against our collars remind us that we are up to our necks. The temperature drops slowly. We alternate between bouts of confused panic and treacherous sleep.
Look out the window. The green bleeds away, leaving a sickly, jaundiced yellow in its place. The lazy breeze speeds up, and then its temperament sours. The wind grows teeth and tears at the flesh of the trees. And then one day you realize that the cover from your shade tree is gone. You look up to see a weathered oak standing naked in the sun.
At some point I realized that all of this was choking me. This recurring sliding feeling wasn't going away.
So the trial, this public spectacle, became the chance to say that the emperor has no clothes. It was a chance to come out. All is not well. Something terrible has happened here.
Something terrible has happened here.
Late in the week I was listening to an expert witness testify about trauma and its impact on adolescents. Suddenly I became alert, conscious of myself in a room full of strangers. I was nodding along, picturing my life in the scenes of escapism and guilt.
Here's a test:
Do you often assume that people in the church are full of shit? Clearly guilty of something, definite skeletons in the closet?
Do you look for cracks in the corners, sagging rafters, proof that the foundation is slipping? Are you convinced that the building will collapse? It's only a matter of time. Save yourself.
Do you feel caught between the past and the present, as if some blunt instrument has struck your history and shattered its continuum? Endangered your future?
Do pieces of your life feel fragile? At any moment a wave will come and sweep them away, like great walls of ice abandoning the glacier and drowning themselves in the sea.
Do you search desperately for something that looks like Jesus and feels like love?
The trial unlocked the hard drives and knocked over the file cabinets. Information everywhere. Bits and pieces of fear and hate and betrayal just littering the floor. Millions of pixels all distorted. An image I had not forgotten, but had very clearly lost.
The trial turned out to be a chance for the world around us to crash the party, to reach the epicenter and look for survivors in the wreckage.
Ultimately, it didn't quite go our way.
Mistrial.
A miscarriage is when you lose the baby. We didn't lose the trial. We had a trial.
In some way it was validating. It was good to hear eight voices say that was has happened was wrong. That what has happened was criminal.
Why did I need to go? Why did I feel so compelled? A physical draw, my headlights pointed towards the one thing I wanted most to avoid. Was it to support my friend? Clearly. But what does that even look like? Was it to, in some way, confront Peter. Possibly. I confess that I always stayed out of the men's room when he was at the urinal.
Mostly I think it was because someone finally gave me the chance to show up, to walk into a room. To say with my presence, "this was wrong."
I have been living my life like a sprint since the moment Peter left. Or maybe since the moment I left Peter. I've been running. From myself. From him. From the guilt. But sprints don't last. You can't live a sprint.
I've been running because the temple where I worshiped, the place where I Am dwells, burned to the ground. All that cedar and bronze. Poof.
But we've found that life goes on without the temple that Solomon built. Instead of the altar, we've had the Nicoletti's table. Instead of the burnt offerings, we've had the Wicklund's fire pit. Understanding in a car crash.
Transformation just takes so much time.
If I could make it better for the people around me. The friends and the family. Oh God. I would. But I'm not God.
And God is. God Is.
I'd be lying if I said that I don't still try to offer myself up as the ram caught in the thicket. I'd be lying if I said that I was alone in that.
The things we do deserve their rightful names.
Swing with all you have.
Stop me if you can.
-be sensible, jimmy eat world
I think that, in a way, we all bought into the hype.
It's the trial. At last. The trial.
And of course there's so much to be said about that. Justice. A reckoning. Punishment. Confrontation. Something.
Whatever we thought it would mean, if we ever really thought about it at all, we were not prepared for what it actually was. In poetry you can never say "I love you." In life it is never enough to say "good and hard." How to describe that week? Imagine Jesus descending into hell. Grace personified. But in hell.
The trial was, both literally and metaphorically, a destination. Something that we could look forward to. Something that we could place our stock in. Something that was, I don't know, tangible. But it was also an unwanted guest, still in the house far after we tired of its company. It was the emergency surgery.
And it's understandable really. We needed this. Some of us more than others. Several of us much more than me. We all needed this. But none of us wanted it to be necessary. All we've ever really wanted was escape.
When I try to think of the last time that I sat down with a bunch of other people from Central Presbyterian to discuss Peter, for any reason, I picture his welcome party. The rest of it has sort of slipped by. I've never really talked to my parents about it. I've never gotten a card in the mail saying "we're having a meeting at the church, why don't you come join us." I've never had someone even suggest that maybe we should sit down and talk this out. What in the world would we talk about? How would we possibly begin?
Looking back, these events (the Peter years, the post-Peter years, the Peter's back!?! trial years) have all transpired with surprisingly little fanfare. Look back again and you'll be forced to realize that he has never really left us alone. A constant presence that everyone is ashamed to talk about. Scared to talk about. Confused about. The 600 pound gorilla in no uncertain terms.
I got a phone call this morning saying that Peter has been arrested. Again.
I couldn't move on even if I wanted to.
When the stone first hit the water, the disruption of our lives was just too much. Surface tension destroyed. The rotting muck underneath revealed. And when the water returned to glass, no one could intentionally throw another stone. But the wake remains, bouncing off the shore and ricocheting around us. The ripples lapping against our collars remind us that we are up to our necks. The temperature drops slowly. We alternate between bouts of confused panic and treacherous sleep.
Look out the window. The green bleeds away, leaving a sickly, jaundiced yellow in its place. The lazy breeze speeds up, and then its temperament sours. The wind grows teeth and tears at the flesh of the trees. And then one day you realize that the cover from your shade tree is gone. You look up to see a weathered oak standing naked in the sun.
At some point I realized that all of this was choking me. This recurring sliding feeling wasn't going away.
So the trial, this public spectacle, became the chance to say that the emperor has no clothes. It was a chance to come out. All is not well. Something terrible has happened here.
Something terrible has happened here.
Late in the week I was listening to an expert witness testify about trauma and its impact on adolescents. Suddenly I became alert, conscious of myself in a room full of strangers. I was nodding along, picturing my life in the scenes of escapism and guilt.
Here's a test:
Do you often assume that people in the church are full of shit? Clearly guilty of something, definite skeletons in the closet?
Do you look for cracks in the corners, sagging rafters, proof that the foundation is slipping? Are you convinced that the building will collapse? It's only a matter of time. Save yourself.
Do you feel caught between the past and the present, as if some blunt instrument has struck your history and shattered its continuum? Endangered your future?
Do pieces of your life feel fragile? At any moment a wave will come and sweep them away, like great walls of ice abandoning the glacier and drowning themselves in the sea.
Do you search desperately for something that looks like Jesus and feels like love?
The trial unlocked the hard drives and knocked over the file cabinets. Information everywhere. Bits and pieces of fear and hate and betrayal just littering the floor. Millions of pixels all distorted. An image I had not forgotten, but had very clearly lost.
The trial turned out to be a chance for the world around us to crash the party, to reach the epicenter and look for survivors in the wreckage.
Ultimately, it didn't quite go our way.
Mistrial.
A miscarriage is when you lose the baby. We didn't lose the trial. We had a trial.
In some way it was validating. It was good to hear eight voices say that was has happened was wrong. That what has happened was criminal.
Why did I need to go? Why did I feel so compelled? A physical draw, my headlights pointed towards the one thing I wanted most to avoid. Was it to support my friend? Clearly. But what does that even look like? Was it to, in some way, confront Peter. Possibly. I confess that I always stayed out of the men's room when he was at the urinal.
Mostly I think it was because someone finally gave me the chance to show up, to walk into a room. To say with my presence, "this was wrong."
I have been living my life like a sprint since the moment Peter left. Or maybe since the moment I left Peter. I've been running. From myself. From him. From the guilt. But sprints don't last. You can't live a sprint.
I've been running because the temple where I worshiped, the place where I Am dwells, burned to the ground. All that cedar and bronze. Poof.
But we've found that life goes on without the temple that Solomon built. Instead of the altar, we've had the Nicoletti's table. Instead of the burnt offerings, we've had the Wicklund's fire pit. Understanding in a car crash.
Transformation just takes so much time.
If I could make it better for the people around me. The friends and the family. Oh God. I would. But I'm not God.
And God is. God Is.
I'd be lying if I said that I don't still try to offer myself up as the ram caught in the thicket. I'd be lying if I said that I was alone in that.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Understanding In A Car Crash
"these broken windows, open locks
reminders of the youth we lost"
I'll get up a post about the trial. Just not yet.
reminders of the youth we lost"
I'll get up a post about the trial. Just not yet.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
El Chile Que Me Toque Como
I've been back in Douglas for a few days, and now I'm headed off to Colorado. Deanna, friends, and, at long last, the trial of Peter Kim. What a weird, beautiful, messed up week it promises to be.
Chiapas, as always, is great. The group that I went with was both excellent and not so excellent. But as they say, free is free is free. Central to all of this is my Mexican family down there. They are the best.
I don't know when I'll be back there next but it can't come soon enough.
But be honest, what you really care about are the pics. Well, here are a few:
Chiapas, as always, is great. The group that I went with was both excellent and not so excellent. But as they say, free is free is free. Central to all of this is my Mexican family down there. They are the best.
I don't know when I'll be back there next but it can't come soon enough.
But be honest, what you really care about are the pics. Well, here are a few:
Mayan Christ in the middle of a restaurant in San Cristobal de las Casas. German tourists in San Cris are like the Japanese in Hawaii or Americans in Cancun, but still such a cool place.
Pictures were not allowed inside this church, but that's where the real action was. Sacrifices of beer, chickens, soda, etc. being made to the saints. Very moving.
A village prepares the graves for El Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Tomorrow they will be loaded down with flowers, food, and pictures as the entire community comes out to remember and celebrate.
Early morning in San Cristobal. Did I mention that this city is gorgeous?
Clean, perfect water. I love Chiapas. And taking pictures of my feet.
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