Morbid poetry for Halloween!

Yo quiero un mapa

de viaje inesperada,

del tipo que fanteseaba

cuando era optimista.

Las fronteras rodearán

un espacio puro blanco,

o sea, vacio, como sueños

que se quedan no deseados.

Cuando trece yo tenía

todas cosas yo merecían.

Y todo descubriá

por la fuerza de fantasia.

Pero ahora con edad

me alegría tener solo

visión no prevista.

No me importa el lugar.

Cuando me muera,

solo debajo la tierra

sin guía ni pareja y

andaré nunca más.

No me importa adónde

mis huesos  estarán

mientras los gusanos comen

un cerebro bien viajado.

---------

I want a map
of an unanticipated journey,
the kind I used to fantasize about
back when I was optimistic.

The borders will surround
a blank white space,
that is to say, empty,
like dreams that stay unwanted.

When I was thirteen
I deserved everything.
And I discovered everything 
through the force of fantasy. 

 But now that I am older,
the only thing that would please me
would be an unforeseen vision.
The location doesn't matter to me.

When I die

I will leave the earth on my own,

without guide or partner, and 

I will wander nevermore. 

It matters not to me

where my bones end up

so long as the worms can eat

of a well-traveled brain.

Gratis para la gente que no puede leer

Una voluntaria
salió de la República
y dejó en la acera
afuera de su casa
dos sillas plásticas en una pila.

En esos lo
puso un letrero.
¿Qué dijó?
Te digo:

-Gratis para la gente que no puede leer.

Dos primos Dominicanos
quienes estaban paseando
(Sus nombres eran Randrika y Romeano)
vieron la pila y el letrero.
-¿Qué dices? preguntó el varón primo
a su prima alfabeta.

Y en voz alta Randrika lo leyó
a tu primo Romeano:

-Gratis para la gente que no puede leer.

La jóven bien educada pensó 
tan grosero el letrero, pero
a su primo no lo molestó.
-Perfecto, el tiguere dijó.

-A ti una silla doy.
Vamos a tu casa y luego me voy.

La pobrecita voluntaria de educación
despidió a su sitio con mucha decepción. 
Pero el letrero, su última lección,
enseña que todavía hay cosas que son
gratis para la gente que no puede leer.

---

"Free for People Who Can't Read."

A volunteer left the Republic
and left on the sidewalk outside her house
two plastic chairs in a pile.

On those she hung a sign.
What did it say? I'll tell you:

"Free for people who can't read."

Two Dominican cousins were walking by
(their names were Randrika and Romeano)
and saw the sign and pile.
"What's it say?" the male cousin asked
his literate female cousin.

And to her cousin Romeano
Randrika read in full voice:

"Free for people who can't read."

The well-educated young woman
thought the sign was very rude but
it didn't bother her cousin.
"Perfect," said the tiguere*.

"I'll give you a chair.
Let's take it to your house
and then I'm out of here."

The poor education volunteer
bid farewell to her site
with feelings of great disappointment.
But the sign, her last lesson,
teaches that some things still are
free for people who can't read.








*A word in Dominican Spanish with no direct translation. It comes from the word tigre ("tiger") and is used to describe a person with street smarts.

On throwing plastic chairs at fighting dogs

When I told a Buddhist teacher that was I serving in Peace Corps he thanked me for my "life of sincerity." I believe he did this because he assumed that my service was motivated by a desire to help relieve the suffering of others. (It was, in part. I also wanted to learn Spanish.) The one-word name for this motivation is "compassion," which is the key Buddhist virtue.

This seems beautiful and simple, but like any other world religion Buddhism is subdivided into different schools of thought and what exactly constitutes "compassion" is a matter of debate. There are probably as many different Buddhist interpretations of compassion as there understandings of God's Love among the different Christian churches.

Zen, the Buddhist school in which I have principally practiced, teaches a very specific understanding of compassion. It is not the self-sacrifice of Christ, nor charity, nor generalized goodwill toward all beings. This is all good stuff but it's just not compassion. In Zen, compassion is not just the desire to help but the correct extension of help itself. And help, also, is a complicated notion.

Sometimes when we "help" someone we do them no favors. We "help" them because it makes us feel good about ourselves and thus we do things that are unnecessary or downright counterproductive. Which is to say no help at all. Sometimes the best help is no help at all! Every parent knows that sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for your child is to consciously withhold aid so that they will develop the capacity to do things for themselves.

Zen, in all things, is wary of multiplying entities beyond necessity and compassion is no exception. Dogen, perhaps Japan's greatest Zen Master explained Buddhist compassion by likening it to a sleeping person who adjusts their pillow in the middle of the night. They do it selflessly, without thinking of anything at all, let alone how good it will make them look. And they do it just right. No more or less than necessary and without some complicated system of ethics to justify their actions.

The checkered history of international aid is full of examples of ego-gratifying help that was really no help at all. In my Peace Corps service I think a lot about how to get things just right. I tend to err on the side of caution. Many times, it seems like so much more work would get done (and faster!) if I just pushed my Dominican counterparts aside and did things for them. But where will that leave them after I leave?

Instead, I ask questions to make them think, answer questions when I actually have the answers, and show them how to do the things that I know how that they do not, even if it takes me longer than I'd like. I am unsure if this is approach is compassionate. Sometimes though, my work here presents a situation where it is so perfectly clear what help is needed that the compassionate thing almost does itself.

The other day I visited a Dominican counterpart at her home to offer her my aid in preparing for an important, upcoming meeting. Her literacy is only so-so and though she did not ask, I imagined that she would appreciate my help composing the report required of her. She accepted my offer readily and, no, that is not the compassionate act I am talking about.

We sat in plastic picnic chairs on her front patio so she could keep an eye on the kids and as we talked I petted the following dog:

¡Superma'!

He is not mine but follows me around because, unlike many of the humans he is used to, I am kind to him and, no, that is not the compassionate act I am talking about. That virtue that is commonly translated as "loving kindness."

In the middle of our conversation, in the blink of an eye, my friends' dog confronted and attacked the dog whose head was in my lap.

There is nothing faster than fighting dogs but I was almost as fast. In the span of a second I stood, lifted the chair on which I had been sitting and launched it into the furry fray. This act so startled the dogs that they parted and fled their separate ways.

That is compassion.

The dogs might have hurt each other - they were certainly trying too! They might have hurt my friend or the children playing nearby. If I had tried to intervene more directly I might have gotten hurt. And the implement of my intervention was soft enough that it didn't hurt the dogs. It was just right.

The dogs were fighting because they were angry. Buddhism teaches that anger is one of the three poisons that we must never ingest if we ever wish to be enlightened. Yes, I am aware that dogs enjoy fighting- as do people. But Buddhism teaches that attachments to the excitements of the body (and fighting is exciting if nothing else!) will not lead dogs or people out out of suffering. Yes, Buddhism teaches that the suffering of dogs is important, and what is more, that dogs have what it takes to be enlightened. Yes, Buddhism is kind of weird.

I am confident of everything in the above two paragraphs but I had reasoned none of this before acting. I just chucked the chair like a sleeping woman reaching for her pillow and it was just right.

When the dogs were gone, I grabbed the chair again and sat on it and we resumed our conversation as if nothing major had happened.

Out of town for my 36th birthday, came home to this

A suburban house in a medieval village

We we first arrived in our Peace Corps site, I was surprised to discover that our small mountain village near the Haitian border was full of American suburban-style houses. They might be made entirely of concrete but they follow essentially the same "ranch" style floor plan that I grew up in.
Even the lot sizes are similar. 




It makes sense when you date the construction - 1990 - and for other reasons that I'll get to later but it was still something of a shock. A slightly bigger shock was discovering that our new neighbors raise pigs in their "suburban" backyard.




It's just enough space for the two pigs to roam and wallow as nature intended with room fo the out-buildings.

I shouldn't have been surprised and the host family where we initially lived raised chickens, and I later learned  (that is to say, I noticed) that the neighbors on the other side raised chickens and pigs. And that my preferred chofer raises rabbits in his backyard. And that people graze mules on their front lawns.

I also shouldn't have been surprised since this type of homesteading was once common in the U.S. and is only a generation or two out of fashion. And what is more it is coming back into fashion. Maybe not pigs, but a backyard flock has been a pretty cool things to have in certain circles for a few years now. Also, I actually used to work for an organization that promotes backyard "farming" as a solution to food scarcity in poor neighborhood.  But that was in the inner city, in the poor neighborhoods not far from the cool neighborhoods where people raise chickens. The American suburbs have staked out their identity by being located squarely between the city and the country while being neither.

I suppose that the suburban style houses made me think on some unconscious level that the pattern of living had something in common with the American suburbs, when in reality where I live is more like a medieval village, with the population clustered in the middle of productive agriculture lands.

When Americans think of farming they think of a large swath of land with a single house in the middle of it, like a lordly manor or castle. This layout works when you have lots of land to raise commodity crops like corn or soy in huge quantities and reflects our individualist culture.  But Dominicans collectivist culture doesn't lend itself to that and nor does the distribution of land. It's hard to grow row crops on the steep slopes of the hills outside (or regrettably, sometimes inside) the national park and in case most people don't own land in enough quantities to make it profitable. Some grow corn as feed but that is in flat parts and those families are few. Most grow a few tarea of cafe or abichuelas (beans) or other staple crops for home consumption and supplement with the kind of backyard ganadería (livestock) or other sources of income if they are fortunate enough to have it.

Last weekend was the Día de la Virgen de Nuestras Mercedes (The Day of the Virgin of our Mercies) and a friend invited Cat and I to a fiesta on his family finca (farm). After a short Catholiic oración before a shrine inside a small house called a rancho we got down to the business of drinking and dancing to merengue típico under the roof of an outdoor pavilion.

"Why do you have the party all the way out here?" I asked my friend.

"We used to live out here!" he shouted over the music. "There was a small pueblecito (village) out here - mostly my family. My abuelo was the last one out here after everyone else moved to town."

This pueblecito was one of many that moved into the main pueblo when the concrete houses were built. I don't know if incentivizing relocation was part of the governments plan when they built the houses but it makes perfect sense from a services perspective. Centralization makes it easier to set up public services like electricity and water.

The rodillas y llanuras (foothills and valleys) that surround the pueblo are cut through with alambre barbed-wire that marks the boundaries of family property. Some of these used to house small family settlements like my friends'. His property is about 2 km outside of town, which is a short distance by motorcycle but a long distance on foot in the rain. Many men and hired hands make a similar trip everyday.

When I think about this daily journey out of town, from home to work, the first word that comes to mind is "commute." In a sense, it is pretty suburban after all.