post traumatic stress disorder

some oranges at a market in tonala

alexia

laura's birthday

oh mexico...


i have been going out to the movies quite often here.

i know what you are thinking..

"you are in mexico, of all things, why the movies..."

my host family can get my friends and i free tickets because they have a membership (you know how i feel about free things), and as much as i would love to put up my (sometimes pretentious) natural hippie-defense and say i hate everything commercial and of western-culture- i have become quite a sucker for the movies. foreign movies, stupid movies, sad movies, action movies- hit me with any one and i'll probably love it. and ill probably cry and laugh significantly more than the john doe beside me. opps, mexico reivision: i will probably laugh significantly more than the jose lopez beside me.

anyways, the end scene of the last movie i watched, the curious case of benjammin button, twisted my heart and brain in a funny way and i feel inclined to share it with you.

if your looking for mexico news, im afraid this might be lacking. there are some colourless things of life that deserve a bit of quiet attention today. a few black and white photos of my past that have been hanging out frameless in front of my face crying out for attention. so here goes.

the extremely diverse worlds that i have found myself in over the past 2 years, are colliding, softly and beautifully.

i suppose it could've happened had i been home because there are movie theatres everywhere, but at the end of this particular movie i became overwhelmed with emotions and thus began to cry because, a) well, it was a little sad and i have inherited my super-sensitivity genes from my mama who cries during just about anything (ie. survivor-love you mom); and b) it was about hurricane katrina.

back to me came the many stories of the 20 or so peoeple i interviewed while in mississippi.

for those of you who don't know- last year i spent a month on the gulf coast of mexico and volunteered for the university of southern mississippi conducting hour + long interviews with people about their experiences with hurricane katrina.

and now, in my lungs is that, 'i don't know whether to cry or to laugh' feeling... and i just can't swallow it.

so here it is, a little bethany vomit for you.

i went away during my 2nd semester of university last year because i wanted to be punched in the face by a strange thing i had heard about, a thing called reality. now i realize that i must find it again. and again. now i realize that i live to be metaphorically punched in the face by bittersweet beautiful music, by the melancholy songs of humanity.

and i also realize that it is wrong to resent, as i have in the past, those who are content in lives of comfort. resenting is never good. and it is hypocritical. there are better thing for a human to do.

and i realize a lot of things but it is not important that i say them all, it is only important that i live them.

the first person i interviewed in mississippi was a man named jorge. jorge is an artist and the only man i have ever truly cried with in my life. jorge told me about post-traumatic depression. he told me about it, but more than that, he showed me it. he began to tell me of girls he saw in the wall-mart parking lot covered in dirt as though walking out of the hurricane.

and i remember him stopping. silence breathed heavily between us and i opened my mouth to say something, but, as though choking, he whispered, "wait". i remember waiting. i remember being humbled by the silence between. i remember understanding in that moment that the way his mouth had frozen, the way his eyes had gone hazy, and his tears had fallen- that was what he was trying to tell me. one minute he was speaking about the hurricane, and the next he went on to telling me about the work he had done during and after the vietnam war with people who had parts of themselves blown away by mines. armless people, legless people, stone-eyed people.

And for some reason i can't get his story out of my head now.
though i do not understand the feelings of post traumatic stress disorder- the way his eyes blurred and voice softened... i feel that now in myself. the stories of the hurricane will always be with me and whether or not i desire it, they will creep up on me at the most unexpected of times. but in a strange way, i think i desire it to a certain extent. i desire to feel, to feel for others- and in turn, to feel for myself.

when i am walking down the street in a year, might i see something that reminds me of a lesson i learned or a story i heard in this place?

about a year ago i was in a hospital asking god if i would ever be able to get out of the culture i was in (and not enjoying). i was sick with infections that were fought with antibiotics that hurt my stomach. and i wasnt just sick in my stomach and i was sick in my head/heart. today i am still sick in my stomach... tomorrow i will probably be sick in my stomach, but it doesnt matter. my head and heart are okay. in fact, im grateful for my sickness.

it was my stomach sickness that gave me a sickness in my head. it was the sickness in my head that drove me to slight insanity. it was this insanity that told me to drop out of my second semester of university.
it was this break from school that drove me to explore the glory of organic farming and the pains of a hurricane.

and the liberation i have felt when breaking free from the traditional has once again driven me away, driven me to mexico. so i am here. i have been here for a month and already have many tales to tell of this place. but in the end what more, besides the ability to recount fun stories, will i have?

i am beginning, with great caution, to engrave some new things on my heart...
... as soon as i know (which could be long after i return home) i will let you know what these things are.

or better, i wont say a word.

now, i can only allude to what i think might be happening inside of me, to what i am coming to understand. it has a little something to do with standing at the bus stop around the corner from my house and feeling alive in the wind made by the cars speeding by me, feeling alive in the dirty smells of the streets, feeling alive in a cement and steel world.

yes. it has something to do with not being angry for the ugly things around me. my humanity, i see now, is very much a part of the manufactured landcapes around me.. and for me to remove myself from the city, is to remove myself from millions of human beings that create and populate these places.

forests


i have begun to think that there are two kinds of forests...
forests of trees
and forests of people

both are entirely different, but they are both equally beautiful.
both hold powerful, mind-blowing stories.
both require patience; you must gently prod your way in, quietly explore the traditions, the norms...the foreign things. build up an understanding.

i have spent quite some time in my life learning to speak the language of the natural, the slow and simple swaying of leaves and branches at 7 in the evening when a forest is preparing for sleep.

and now i am learning to speak the language of a city and its people. it is a fast, hard, unpredictable language that includes much more than just spanish words.

that said- i am waiting. waiting to wake up and feel the language on my tongue, in my bones...
and everyday i ask myself, "is it even possible?"