I went home for a visit. A strange place to be when home is here, but is also there ((t)here). While I was there, I mean Toronto, I dreamed about here, San Salvador. Now that I am back, my dreams are in english and are performed between Queen and King Street (south of Bloor now).
It is not about my dreams I want to throw a few words for, it is about the experience of home both as a preconception (aprioristic experience) and as an expectation (aposterioristic experience). While in Toronto my discourse about El Salvador went from describing to storytelling to silence, (silence: the point when I realized I had nothing to say). I'll follow the same order now to narrate El Salvador both as a preconception and as an expectation.
DESCRIBING
Someone: How was Paraguay?
Me: El Salvador
Someone 2: Oh I've been to Brazil, isn't it wonderful?
Me: El Salvador
Someone 3: How is your family in Ecuador?
Me: El Salvador..My family is fine in Ecuador, Colombia, Canada and Argentina
Someone 4: How is your spanish?
Me: Good, considering it is my first language, my mother tongue, the language I use for feeling.
preconception: everything south of US is latin america. El Salvador: a place by comparison and contrast (as in, similar to Ecuador, Paraguay and Brasil). Please don't judge preconceptions, after all we, hispanics, struggle defining ourselves. We, hispanics, often see ourselves as what we are not.
STORYTELLING
I told the cow story (I was in a bus that hit a cow and killed it...to be continued), the right wing party rep and his analogy between where Jesus is with respect to God and where El Salvador should remain (for the non christians the answer is RIGHT SIDE), the perception of fear vs pure violence, yoga in San Salvador, biking in El Salvador, private vs. public, the malls, the birds, the monkey in my neighbourhood, the soap opera I watch, development, child labour, street fashion, graffiti activity, my office and its mango tree, the wired homes, the wired city and, Rafael the cab driver and my friend.
preconception: I tried my best to narrate a National Geographic experience but I couldn't. I could only talk for myself and from myself. I tried to be objective and in doing so the fragments of my experience created a place that doesn't exist. I tried to say.... but everything fell under the same discourse: an adventure narrated as anticipated by the listener. And so, with every word I said, I felt one step removed from El Salvador. To the point I missed it. To the point of its death. Silence now...
SILENCE
I said no more. I followed a script and kept going until getting to the point of: "So, enough about me, tell me about you". And I listened to the most wonderful stories coming out from the mouth of women and men I love. I saw kids, graffiti, the progress at the AGO, green trees, a lake as big as the ocean (to my eyes only). I saw him and him again. And then, and there, in the vastness of his arms, I saw home: a place that is here and is there.
expectation: I want to smell El Salvador, touch it, feel it. I want to be able to describe it with my eyes closed and my mouth shut. The way I can describe my love(r). In Silence.
I am back and saw green.
This episode is dedicated to (in no particular order except for the first):
John, Janene, Ethan, Sarah, Andrea, Ruth, Sylvia, Mike, Mina, Paul, Lisa, Rod, Laura (and tall poppy), Claudia, The Shniers and the Spevakows, The Greens, Shelagh, Carmen, Jose (who I loved running into), Paola (even from afar), Marty ,Dufflet, Betsy, Shane, Ellery, Peter and Carolyne...
