Category: the desert

“If you can meet with triumph and disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same”
(Rudyar Kipling)

What if this is not a story of overcoming? A story about coming out stronger at the other end? A journey of self discovery, of a great revelation? What if there is no enlightenment, no epiphany at the end? Not even a hint of poetic justice here, something that brings some kind of consolation for all the pain and struggle.  What if this is a story about realizing one’s own shortcomings and not really becoming stronger or wiser? Just coming to terms with what you are? With your limitations, doubts and insecurities? Would it just plain boring, uneventful?  Is it less of a story? Would a reader feel that he / she is wasting his or her time, like catching by mistake the wrong bus home? Would he measure me through the extent of my failures? Judge me for not trying? Dismiss me for not being worthy? Think of me in terms of disaster, since there is no triumph?

Stories of overcoming are more plentiful in America than anywhere else in the world. The myth of the American dream pervades each one of them. Success stories are the prevalent language of Hollywood. Basketball players who overcome a history of losses and disasters, athletes who overcome their physical problems to become winners. Weak teams that rise from the ashes to be hailed as national heroes. Ordinary individuals who achieve popularity, profit or distinction.

Stories of immigrants who come to this country and face the tribulations of separation, the obstacles of a second language to become successful scientists, PhDs, medical doctors abound.

There is a glorification of these successful images that are proudly advertised everywhere, including stickers on your car. This is what is perpetuated in the media, in movies and fiction. And reaffirmed in stories we tell each other. Winners are exalted. There is no denying the positive impact these stories have in the American ethos. Many people believe they really can be successful, maybe even heroes, no matter the adversity they were born  into or they stumbled upon. It is a beautiful thing to see the fire of success burning in people’s eyes. It is true that if you can wholeheartedly believe in an idea, the idea can start to have a mind of its own and slowly but surely take place. With hard work, commitment and faith.

I’m afraid triumph has not happened to me in America.

But what if my story is different? That’s it make it less “American”? Less appealing?

I feel that success only happens outside me. It circles me, surrounds me. But I cannot reach it from within these walls. And yet I cannot bring myself to leave these walls.

It is true that my publications and academic engagements lend me a certain respectability and the idea of success but they also paradoxically paralyze me because they impose many restrictions.

I am frequently torn between going for it or simply accepting the fact that I’m not a “go-getter”, an “ass-kicker”. I am simply not an American badass. It is true that I have occasional bouts of energy – this is when, in my own terms, I still try to seek triumph. It is when I still believe that something can be done. That I can save myself and finally take the right road to success, and then things can happen almost like in Hollywood. I am split between a sense of deep insecurity and moments of pure arrogant superiority: I am bilingual, trilingual, they are not. I am a PhD, they are not. I am different, maybe more cultivated and more international than most. However, they communicate faster, are more articulate, have a an admirable sense of organization and pragmatism, an enviable community as well as that damned faith in success.

We can try as hard as we want, but we are all doomed to be what we are. We can deceive people – and ourselves – temporarily but not all the time. This is not to say that people don’t evolve or change but I confess that I have always been a little skeptical of magical transformations. Triumph is indeed an impostor and the many “losers” in this country are an irrefutable proof of it.

What if this me is someone who struggles and sometimes finds it difficult to go through the day. Someone who tries hard to find some sense of satisfaction in isolation. Communicating has become more difficult. Sometimes I feel that my voice is muffled and, when I do speak, the words come out in violent sputters, as if they had been suppressed for way too long and feel this crazy urge to exist.  Much like this post, I’m afraid.

Two conflicting views of the desert used to inhabit my imagination.  On the one hand, it was a desolate and barren landscape and, on the other, an exotic and mysterious dreamland. This imagination was fed mostly by the Western movies I watched in my childhood and the romantic fiction I read in my early adult years. In the movies, the desert seemed vastly inhospitable, lifeless and desolate. In my mind, the sand smelled of dry baked earth and tasted of dust and silver dollars. The harshness of the arid wilderness mirrored the white cowboy’s ambiguous “frontier justice” and his mythic struggle to survive. Much more vivid and exotic, but by no means less stereotypical, was the desert of the fiction I read. Exotic looking men with thick turbans roamed the desert dunes on camel caravans bringing merchandise and mystery to hopelessly romantic minds like my own. This desert was mostly a psychological backdrop to the fiction I read, used as a metaphor to convey the effects and meanings the author wanted to create.

If fascination is a kind of love, this turned out to be a fickle love affair.

The truth is when I moved to Arizona, I missed my green hometown. I missed even the rainy days that I used to loathe.  I missed the temperate climate and the extensive leafy parks where I used to go running.  I missed the sweet smell of jasmines and wisterias and night blooming flowers. This was home. Moving from one extreme biome to another has taken a heavy toll on  me. As far as ecosystems go, the sub Atlantic forest is literally poles apart from the Sonoran desert. The lush, abundant vegetation that I found at “home” was nowhere to be found in the Sonoran Desert.

I lost my bearings.

It has taken me years but I have learned something: the beauty of the desert is not an obvious, polaroid one. Similar to poetry, the landscape reveals its magnificence for eyes that are trained to capture its subtleties. This unfolding requires time and effort. My relationship with the real desert, the one that became “home”,  was a rather shaky one. Its vastness initially scared me. It has taken me a long time to understand its languages.

I am still learning.

Yet, the beauty of the desert has always been there waiting for me and it surpasses even my romantic imaginary deserts. After all those years, I still marvel at the multitude of colors that the Sonoran Desert displays daily. Little by little, I started to adjust my eyes and discern its colors. Waves of reds, oranges, peach, terracotta and tans appeared to me in a beautiful tapestry design against  different shades of blue skies. This is by no means a rain forest but it is the most humid and fertile desert of the planet – plants not only survive, but thrive. Wildflowers grow even in the hot summer months but it is during the spring that they flourish spectacularly,  in extensive carpets. Full of life, color, drama, sound and and yes, a bit of fury (given my tumultuous beginnings).