thefutureisred

Give Me Butterfly Wings: I Needed A Big Blog Break

Photo by e3000               

Sometimes death teaches more about life than what's on my computer.

After almost four months without a word from me, it's time to answer those gentle nudges of "Where are you?" What's going on with your blog?" I've been getting.

First, again, thank you for asking. I am grateful and, as they say, humbled that not only do people actually read this little red thing of mine, but even notice when it's gone. 

But it needed to be. It has become abundantly clear that I needed to focus on my non-blog life. 

The Catalyst

Or should I say catalysts, because it's rarely just one thing that causes change in our lives.

This past July while in New York, we learned from a friend of ours in Bocas del Toro that our old landlord Cher, a really lovely woman, had been murdered. By a serial killer. It almost sounds like a joke, but clearly, it's not funny. Not in the least.

Then, when I got back to Argentina after Burning Man, I learned that another friend of ours from Salta, Diego, had also been murdered. I don't really understand what happened. Apart from some vague intimations about it being a gay-related crime, that the murderer was an exotic dancer.... Quite frankly, that's when I stopped listening. Those details aren't the core of the matter. It is more that a really decent person is now dead for no reason at all.

It really fucks with a girl's head, you know?

I Wanted To Blog, I Really Did But...

I stopped writing soon after I heard about Cher's murder. Since then, the idea of writing about what was going on in my head just felt wrong, but to write about something else seemed forced and a waste of my time. I’d rather paint with Lila or hang with Noah or do something altogether different.

So that's what I did.

I Don't Want To Be Too Late For What's Most Important

With all the traveling, running around, trying to develop programs, meeting people and posting, I felt I never had time for anything. My life too often felt like a massive unfinished to-do list and I was always working to reach a constantly moving horizon.

If I continued like that, I would miss out on my real world. So I had to let go of the online world for a while.

My hits were at an all time high when I stopped writing, and I’ve watched them fall, fall fall, as well as watched how my connections with many of the people I know online have faded. That has been hard to see.

But I had intended give Diego a call and get together sometime, soon. By the time I got around to it, I was too late. I don't want to say the same about Lila or Noah or the other people who are most important to me. I want to be truly present in their lives and mine.

Making A Commitment To Real Life & Community

This week, Noah and I will sign the papers to buy a house here in Salta. It will be our home, yes, but it will also be a community center for traveling artists, writers and teachers. (And will be filmed for an upcoming episode of House Hunters International. We're even flying to NY in February to do some filming there.)

 

So far, we’ve formed connections with local universities and non-profit organizations. We plan to use the internet and social media as a tool to connect students between countries, allowing them to share their work with each other as well as with bring in international artists, writers and photographers, travelers and educators.

The goal of our program, though, goes beyond a creative exchange to an initiative to teach English, keep students in school and ultimately improve their economic prospects by connecting them with an international community.

We just finished our first semester working with 12 year olds at the experimental high school that is a part of the Universidad Nacional de Salta (la UNSa). Next year, we’ll work with the same group of students, incorporate online and gallery exhibitions of art and photography and are working to begin teaching at the two local universities of Salta.

Does This Mean We Will Be In Salta Forever?

It is unsettling to think of being settled. It is overwhelming, too, to commit to one place after being on the move for almost five years.

The underlying assumption of our program is that since it is based on the people, the needs and the soul of Salta, it will not need us permanently to continue growing. We are here until our work here is finished;then we will move on. 

Paper Mache Butterfly Wings and Walks By the River

Along the way of designing the project, I stopped to design paper mache butterfly wings with Lila. We picked dandelions by the side of the river flowing near our house. I stepped away from the to-do long enough to start weekly belly dancing classes with a really fabulous teacher. Someone who will be teaching as part of our community center.

And maybe, just maybe, I've learned a bit to accept that the most important thing I want to realize in this life of mine is how to be patient and not be too attached to any one outcome, because the bottom line is you never know what happens next.

Hey, Future Is Red! Where've Ya Been?

 

Yes, I realize it's been well over a month since my last post. That last post, the one about bulls in the main square of Meynes, said nothing about my sudden disappearance from blogging and from social media for that matter and I've been asked, "Where did you go? What's going on?"

First, I want to say thank you for even asking. The fact that enough people read this blog to care means a lot to me.

This last month, I've been mostly offline traveling and spending time with family. We arrived back in Salta Friday, began a new education project yesterday. I haven't talked much about this project because so many details are up in the air, but soon I'll have something more definitive to say. For now, I can tell you that it was fantastic to be back in the classroom. The students we have are amazing, and I'm really excited for the future of our program.

Tomorrow I leave for Burning Man. You can check out an article I wrote for Craig and Linda of Indietravelpodcast on ten steps to prepare yourself for this amazing event. They'll be publishing a Burning Man packing list in the next few days as well.

I'll be away two weeks, the longest I've ever been away from Lila, and I am feeling apprehensive about it.

In the meantime, I'm still writing and editing at Matador Life where Nick Rowlands and Candice Walsh have been keeping things running at times I'm offline. And I'm working with Simon from Neverending Voyage to rework this blog. I began The Future Is Red over three years ago and much has changed since then. I'd like what I post here to better reflect our new home in Salta and the new work we'll be doing here.

It's been overwhelmingly busy, and I often remind myself of my Five Rules of Banishing Chaos. Mostly of the second step.

It will all eventually get done.

But it's also made me realize, I can't do everything. I'm going to have to make choices. And while we now seem to have a sense of stability we haven't had since we left New York, I feel like now is a time of amazing change.

Does Your Work Limit Your Personal Creativity, Too?

My work with Matador Life is boss. I spend my mornings working with other writers and travelers, talking about writing, travel, relationships. I publish my writing weekly, and I get paid for this, too. It's really a dream job. But what about that pesky fiction I've been meaning to write?

I had moments of inspiration that lead to two short stories. Mama He Says and Welcome to Sapoland. They were both fun to write.

Then the other day, I went for a bike ride down Ruta 28 heading toward Salta. It's a lovely road. Cows, goats and horses happily munch along the edges of expansive brush topped with mustard yellow flowers. Along the way, you can stop to buy fresh unpasteurized milk -- I've been wanting to get some to make cheese -- empanadas and even cabritos and lechones to kill and slap on the asador.

The whole scene inspired me, and I even composed an entire short story, beginning to end with symbolism of branded horses, small piles of garbage and the large armadillo statue at the end of the road. Problem was, it was all in my head and by the time I got home, the story and its inspiration evaporated.

In general, I haven't had much room in my head to write creatively these days. Work, life, blogging, planning my trip to Burning Man and a host of other things that I genuinely enjoy and feel very grateful to have in my life take up a lot of room.

Or maybe that's just an excuse.

They say to be a writer you need only write every day. And I do, just not fiction every day. Sure, I blog and write for Matador every single day. Every single day, I'm engaged with writers and the writing process.

Do I need to make room for ten minutes of fiction writing every single day no matter what?

David Miller, my editor at Matador, recently started a website called Mix Tape Writing. Each week he holds a new contest. Each serves a writing prompt designed to turn your thinking a bit on it's head.

This week's challenge: Called Ambient White Noise.

Do you find writing articles and editing others' writing (or maybe just daily life?) get in the way of your own creative fiction? Or is this just part of the ebb and flow of the writing process?

I'd love to hear what others experience and maybe hear a bit how you work through your own writer's block.

Photo by realSMILEY

Mr. Mackie's Classroom: Why South Park Characters Shouldn't Teach In NYC

A recent article detailing how a California school banned the dictionary because a student looked up the term oral sex, reminds me of a similarly anti-educational incident from my teaching days.

I was running poetry workshops at Booker T Washington middle school through CCNY’s Poetry Outreach Center which paired graduate students with a classes in the New York City public school system. I worked with Ms Wertheimer’s 8^th grade class for four years.

Once a month, I came in with poetry and literature, everything ranging from Shakespeare and Kafka to Outkast’s Ms Jackson -- oooh, I am for real -- and we read, discussed and wrote our own poetry.

The students in these classes were in what was called The Olympia program. Which meant, not quite special education behavioral problems, but not quite expected to truly succeed either. Among quotes I heard directly from teachers and administrators mouths.

“Don’t teach these kids Shakespeare. They won’t understand.” I did anyway.

"Some of these kids have real potential, it’s a shame most of them will end up working at McDonalds.”

And my personal favorite,

"Why do you want to work extra hours with him? He doesn’t know how to read.”

Few things, though, left me more in slack-jawed-awe than one dictionary related incident and a school program director who, I swear, was the  drop dead doppelganger of South Park's guidance counselor, Mr. Mackie. You know, the one with the too tight bow-tie?

I prepared a magnetic poetry-like exercise for the class by printing hundreds of sentences from all different novels and poems onto paper, cut them out into individual words then asked each student to choose ten words to be used in a poem or set of poems.

The only rule: Use every word.

Some were easy words and connection words. Cat. And. The. Hat.

Others I didn’t expect students to know. Ambidextrous. Chthonic. Ineluctable modality of being.

We didn’t have enough dictionaries in the classroom. Those we had were tattered, pages missing and were for far younger students than populated the class. We weren’t able to find the more difficult words I chose.

When I asked the program director for more, particularly more advanced ones, ones better suited to the age group in the classroom, he said the following to me with no irony in all seriousness.

“I would,” he replied. “But my concern is this exercise isn’t appropriate for these students, because many don’t know how to use a dictionary.”

Really? I mean. Really?

Usually, I kept a professional distance and attitude from the administrators I met in the New York City school system. This time, I admit, I was not so polite in response.

What's the problem here?

My students at Booker T Washington showed a level of creativity I didn't see in the students I taught at a nearby private university, a place where students had far more privilege and freedom than those at Booker T. I suspect living beyond any expectation also frees you of the constraints to produce what society expects.

Standing on the other side of the row of desks has its on frustrations. The nature of dealing with administration stifles any creativity on the part of the teachers. You teach to the No Child Left Behind tests. You struggle with principals who care more about walls decorated with pretty things to impress bosses than whether or not 8th grade students can read.

I also quickly realized after teaching in other middle and high schools in NYC that Booker T Washington isn't the worst. They have more resources, dedicated teachers. They are in an area of town that is relatively safe. In four years, I never once lost a student to a beating or to child welfare. Yes, I saw students carrying sandwich bags with crack vials. Yes, I had students with family in prison. One thirteen year old disappeared from class after a couple days when his girlfriend had a baby. Another tore the classroom apart whenever his mother had a new boyfriend.

It is not the worst.

How does one learn in that environment? What does one learn?

Photos by jasonwhite and dcJohn

How To Pay For Two Years Of Travel -- Part II

Picking up from last Friday´s How to Pay For Two Years of Travel -- Part I.

When you have no choice but to pay for the night!

Sometimes, you´ll find yourself stuck and will have to pay by the night. There are always cheap options for this as well.

I have not yet visited a continent where you cannot find a hostel, although if you arrive too late in the day or during a particularly busy time -- such as Carnival in Central or South America -- you´ll be forced to turn to either camping out or a more expensive choice.

In France, Italy, Holland and just about every where else we stayed in Europe, we found we could trust in the quality of the places recommended by tourist offices, even if the prices seemed too good to be true. The owners are also willing to negotiate their prices if they have an empty room and someone in tourist information will do the negotiation for you. That's how we ended up at both La Beliere in Moustiers Sainte-Marie and La Matabone of Lourges. They were both new and thus empty at the height of tourist season. Both, I will add, were a bit out of the main tourist drag.

Wherever you are, don't be afraid to negotiate even if you're not fluent in the language. If nothing else, the negotiation gives you practice.

There's also the Etap chain - the cheapest of the Accor group of hotels found all over Europe. Cheap stay per night, includes breakfast, not luxury, but not bad at all, and you can usually get a room at the very last minute. Etap saved us from sleeping on the street more than one night.

Seek out advice from every possible place!

I consider this perhaps the most important thing you need to do. Start right now!

When we first decided to travel, we noticed that everyone and his mother had advice for us. We also found that many friends, family and even strangers had offers of places to stay, contacts in certain cities, and endless local insider information. It can be overwhelming and at times even unwanted.

Listen anyway. 

Someone might mention a job or place to stay for free. Having contacts can also help you immeasurably if you show up somewhere looking for work. As an example: When we first discussed traveling to Buenos Aires -- approximately nine months before we finally arrived in Argentina -- Noah contacted an old professor of his from City College who we knew had contacts in South America. He ultimately connected us to the place we´re now staying and working in Salta. It was a slow process, but now that we´re here, we have community in Salta who has helped us immeasurably.

I keep a Word -- or whatever text editor you use -- file on my desktop where I type down any and all information people give me. I make sure to include the name of the country or city along with whatever information I´ve been given. I don´t worry too much about order or neatness. When I want to find something, I simply do a search in the file for the country or place name.

Talk to other travelers. In most places, there is a circuit. Wherever you are, there will be a stream of people coming from all directions and destinations. You ask them all about how busy things are, how cheap, what’s the best way to get around, good places to stay, then plan your next step accordingly.Otherwise, I would never have known that the guy selling chicken sandwiches out of a trailer on the main street in Bocas serves one of the best chicken sandwiches I've ever had (always get the Jumbo with piquante and cheese.) Or that when everyone thought Bocas had been destroyed by earthquakes and flooding, I was able to let a friend of mine who leads GAP tours know that Bocas was indeed fine and open for business.

Again, Couchsurfing is a wonderful source of this sort of travel tips. As are TripAdvisor, Matador Travel, Twitter and Yahoo Groups (although with Yahoo, the personal profiles are more limited, so you don't have as much on which to judge the person giving advice).  On all, you can contact people directly or post in a larger group.

Get a job!

Teach English or another language you know.  Check out Nomadic Matt’s five part series on how to make money by teaching.

Make and sell jewelry or other crafts.

Are you a musician, a dancer, a performer of any kind? Do you want to be? While perhaps this is a bad idea in places like Atlanta or New York, where street performing and vending are discouraged, there are plenty places in this world who not only tolerate but encourage busking.

Performers and vendors in San Telmo´s Sunday Feria

Or you can apply for writing grants or art grants. You can start your own website. Sell your travel photography. Write for travel sites. Wait tables. Garden.Teach yoga or another skill of yours.

Brave New Traveler -- a section of Matador -- recently featured an article on 25 Ways To Earn Money When You're Broke On The Road with even more ideas.

Some last minute advice! It's all about your attitude!

You will be amazed at how open and giving people can be. Friends, family and perfect strangers have freely given advice, clothing, contacts, a place to stay or a meal. I, myself, try to be as giving. When we have a place of our own, we open our home, our table and our things for others.

My openness, however, has boundaries. There are always those who will take advantage, so you have to read, research and know what how much your willing to pay or give before agreeing to anything. That said, people have overwhelmingly helpful. We have had only one less than stellar experience, and that only involved the loss of some snorkel equipment and a towel.

Also remember that no one owes you anything, no matter what they promise. Don't bother getting yourself all worked up when someone offers help then doesn't deliver.  Instead, be patient, focus on those people who do come through and then move on.

I suppose that´s exactly what I mean when I say we´re traveling one day at a time. Each day brings new surprises, enchantments and yes, even disappointments. You take them as they come. It´s character building, and that, I believe is the very crux of traveling.

Back In the Classroom: STAR After School Program

See, Couchsurfing might be good for a place to stay for a road trip or overseas, but you find the real value of Couchsurfing in the people you meet and the worlds they open up for you.

You might suddenly see the beauty of spending time watching birds (something I once thought a ridiculous waste of time). Or you might be convinced that free fall sky diving isn't a completely insane idea and maybe, just maybe, one day....

Today, I met Dave Harter, the director of the STAR after school program in Saint Grace's church.

This program is not well funded. Two dollars to provide 3 meals a day for one child? Please. There is endless work to do. The resources are limited. But the staff and volunteers who work for this program show such a high level of commitment and creativity, that somehow they more than make up for whatever might be missing.

Dave posted on the Buffalo Couchsurfing group asking if anyone would like to volunteer. I replied. We e-mailed back and forth, discussed a few things and then today I found myself standing in front of 30 students talking about Panama.

They loved the slide show of pictures from Panama City to an outhouse in San Blas to parrotfish and sloths. The Ooohs and Ahhs I heard every time I flipped slide made my day.

I will admit, though, that I was terribly nervous. It has been years since I last stood in front of a classroom. My style has always been to create a framework for my lesson, and then improvise within the framework. But I am rusty. 

Hats off to all the teachers out there. It is fun, exhilirating and wonderful in many ways, but I am exhausted.

I can't wait to do it again.