Quick! Call now - time is running out!

It’s going to be summer next week.  Really excited for that.  Granted, I have been able to drive around the Northeast with the windows down for three of the past seven days.  So I guess that makes it a little less exciting.  Also slightly diminishing the fact is that, when translated literally, the Guaraní term for “summer” apparently comes out to “Louisiana in the dead of July without A/C but with the humidity plus five extra degrees at times for good measure.” Go ahead.  Look it up.  Prove me wrong.  I dare you.

Let’s get down to some nuts and bolts.  If my previous posts are any indication, you’ve probably realized that I’m not too keen on this sort of discussion.  Today, though, I’ll go ahead and humor you with a brief stroll through the hardware store.  I leave Albany on Tuesday afternoon and arrive in Miami later that evening for orientation.  On Wednesday, some other future expats and I will orientate and icebreak our way through the day before boarding a late night flight south.  Somewhere on Thursday’s schedule, and not to be overlooked, is an arrival in Paraguay.  I’ll go ahead and highlight that as *urgent* on my itinerary.  I’d hate to skip that one.

And then it all happens.

As for communication over the next several weeks, bear with me.  I will surely post updates on here and respond to all emails as time and Internet access permits.  A mailing address will be coming shortly, as well.  Stay tuned for that.  Beginning on Tuesday, my (518) cell phone number will no longer work.  Go ahead and call it if you’d like but know that I reserve the right to not call you back indefinitely and to look confused and hurt when you accuse me of not returning your calls.

Also, since I won’t be able to answer your future texts, please feel free to pick your favorite responses from the list below and use them as needed.  I think I’ve got most situations covered:

• Definitely.
• Leaving now… Be there in 10.
• Ok sounds good.
• Yeah, I saw that – it was awesome.
• can t now im dr ivng
• Burnett blew another 6-run lead?  For real?
• [the second half of that Shins lyric you just awkwardly sent me]
• Yes, Mom, I made it to _______ safely.  Sorry I didn't text you first thing when I got there.

I suppose this will be the last time I update this blog while I’m in NY.  I travelled throughout the area a lot over the past three weeks.  I’ve had an unreal amount of fun and said too many goodbyes.  Some of the toughest are yet to come.  I hesitate to use the word “emotional” because I really hate what its everyday connotation implies.  It conjures images of weakness and instability.  It evokes the scene where a giant, soaking Alice, cake in hand, helplessly cries herself a flood because she knows no other way of coping with a changing environment.  I’ve yet to shed a goodbye tear and, truthfully, I probably won’t.  That’s not typically my outward nature.  But I still can’t think of a better word to describe the recent days and weeks other than “emotional.”  That’s exactly what it’s been – a flurry of emotions and I’m thankful to have shared them with so many wonderful people.

Paraguay has some big shoes to fill.  This is a statement I’ve thrown around somewhat facetiously over the past few months.  Now, though, I say it genuinely and without pretense.  

Have a happy, healthy and unbelievably awesome 2012, America!

Railroad Ties

There’s a pretty notable nature preserve located in and around my hometown in New York.  It’s hardly the most interesting place to explore, but it’s considered something of a local treasure among 7^th grade science teachers and butterfly enthusiasts alike.  At the end of the day, though, wandering through the Pine Bush Preserve is simply a more desirable way to pass an afternoon than strolling through the mall.

Several weeks ago I was doing exactly this – following the yellow-marked trail a couple miles through soggy terrain when, around one bend, the trail happened upon a new, unmarked path to the left.   After walking a short distance in this direction I noticed a clearing a couple hundred feet through the woods.  Weaving through trees and brush I reached the open space and discovered a healthy stretch of railroad laying several miles in either direction.  Even though the tracks could hardly count as secluded - you could easily see an overpass with decent traffic flow a mile or two down the straightaway - I thought my little discovery was pretty cool.  But what I thought would be really cool, however, would be to watch a train ride by up close from where the woods met the clearing.

I crouched for 20 or 30 minutes but nothing came.  Turning back, I decided to return in a few days and stake out a spot where I could patiently wait for a train to chug by me in the woods.  In my mind, I figured this would be a neat - though admittedly romanticized - little event.  It was hard not to imagine the simple amusement of hearing a low whistle in the distance as it crescendos to a blaring locomotive exploding through the quiet woods.  Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by a powerful freight train speeding by just fast enough to make counting the sixty or seventy boxcars impossible?  Or by the rainbow blur of graffiti screeching alongside the rusty, battered cars? With no one around, wouldn’t it be cool to imagine that, if the train was going slow enough, you could hop on up and insert yourself into a sort of Mark Twain adventure?

           

I thought so, at least, and a week later I set out over scattered patches of snow to arrive at the same spot looking out on the tracks.  The scene was set – heightened by the sense that I was off the marked trail and possibly in violation of some vague trespassing ordinance - and I was ready to patiently wait all day for my train to pass if necessary.  Heck, the longer the wait the more rewarding the payoff, right?  Well, not even ten minutes passed before I heard a whistle and saw a white light off in the distance moving east-to-west.  Then, not 30 seconds later, the train was barreling by.  And then, just five seconds later, it was past me and gone.  So much for trying to count hundreds of cars or read the graffiti or imagine all the places it might be headed or what cargo it’s taking there.

           

For the record, I was able to do all that but the result was pretty underwhelming:  There was a whopping total of four cars, the graffiti was a neatly stenciled Amtrak logo, the cargo was probably a few dozen business suits passing through Albany and it was gone quicker than it got here.  Talk about a letdown.  I didn’t even get the chance to stake it out all afternoon!  Plus, I was reminded how much I hate that terrible whooshing feeling you get while waiting at the subway station as the train zooms in. And I’m damn sure that Huck Finn never hopped an Amtrak.  Where’s the poetry in all that?

           

And so, fast-forward a month and a half.  I guess my biggest concern as I get ready to embark on the next two years is what if it can’t live up to the scene I’ve set in my mind?  What if my imagination is so revved up that reality has no choice but to be underwhelming? If over the course of one week I can overhype an ordinary railroad track in the middle of nowhere then it’s scary what sorts of damage my mind can do leading up to a foreign experience complete with a new country, job, people, and opportunities.

I have made it a point to temper my expectations as best I can about where I will be going and what projects I will be working on and everyone that I will be meeting.  To be honest, that hasn’t been as horribly difficult as you might believe.  What I’ve been unable to do, however, is avoid imagining how incredible the experience as a whole might be.  It’s been close to six months since I’ve known that my destination is Paraguay and that boils down to a lot of time inside my own head.  I cannot wait for the moment next week when I get to erase my notion of what this experience ought to be like and replace it with what it actually is.

Dear Abby – Why? Sincerely, Rilo in Albany

For a few months now I’ve found it interesting to observe the variety of reactions I get when I mention to somebody that I am headed to the Peace Corps. Two of these seem to pop up most frequently.  The first is one I’m particularly familiar with because it is the exact reaction that I’ve had each time someone else has mentioned their Peace Corps experience to me – a glimmer of jealousy and intrigue followed by a lot of excited exclamations like “Where?” and “When?” and “That’s so cool!” 

I’m more interested in discussing the other frequent response, though.  This one is usually offered up a bit more solemnly after processing some of what the job entails.  It revolves around the questions “Won’t that be overwhelming?” and “Aren’t you scared?”  Initially, I tried to shake this question off and play it cool but people weren’t buying it.  Pretty soon I realized I wasn’t buying it myself.  So to answer that question – Yes, it will be overwhelming.  But I’m pretty sure that’s part of the point.

I am aware that this is going to be an overwhelming couple of years.  I also acknowledge that there will be times when the emotional rollercoaster is banking so hard left and dropping down so fast that I will laugh at myself for having the nerve to believe I could be aware of how overwhelming it might get in advance.  But I’ve reached the point where I’m welcoming that.  For a while now I’ve done a good job of underwhelming myself on a day-to-day basis.  When the toughest decision you make all day requires standing in Best Buy for twenty minutes debating whether or not to get season two of Fraggle Rock while it’s still on sale, then maybe it’s time for a change.  When you find yourself emailing Dear Abby a slew of Rilo Kiley lyrics simply as a means to entertain yourself, then perhaps a new continent is worth looking into.

So, yes, I am beginning to feel anxious.  But it’s the good kind of anxious.

And still, to my surprise, missing from nearly all of these reactions is the question, “Why?”  The topic of my personal motivations for going to Paraguay and the numerous branches of inquiry that can stem from this line of thought are rarely approached.  Aside from acknowledging that this can be a relatively intimate question to bring up in light conversation, I get the sense that it just doesn’t occur to most people to ask.  I suppose when people hear that someone is going into the Peace Corps, it’s pretty easy to assume what’s motivating him.  The transference of your own convictions onto another combined with the canned cliché of “trying to save the world” probably makes asking “Why?” an afterthought.

I had genuinely expected this to come up more often than it has and I am (somewhat embarrassed to admit) genuinely relieved that it is not often asked.  I tend to fumble around my answer when discussing my reasons for wanting to work in the Peace Corps.  This is certainly not to say that I am unaware of what motivates me or that I’m doing this on a whim.  Nor is it to say that there isn’t some small, altruistic slice of me that would like to “try to save the world.”  Who wouldn't?  But that’s just a simple fraction of my motivation. I’ve had trouble expressing it to others because it’s a complex combination of so many things that has led me to this point and it’s difficult to neatly categorize and differentiate Reason #1 from Reason #2 and so on.

Compared to all that, it’s easier to just spend $15 and watch some Muppets run around in an underground cave for a few hours.  But I’m kind of over that for now.

The Paraguayan delta was...

Welcome.  Thanks for stumbling across this page.  Pull up a chair.  Make yourself comfortable.  I don’t mind feet on the furniture.

This is where I will be sharing my thoughts as I spend the next two years in Paraguay working with the Peace Corps.  To be honest, I’m not really sure how often I will be posting updates.  My knack for writer’s block coupled with what I can only assume will be a less-than-reliable Internet connection may lead to fewer posts than I’m hoping for.  Also, since this is essentially the first time that anyone without academic tenure or a professional responsibility has read my writing in six or seven years, it may take some time to get comfortable myself.

Just as I can’t accurately predict what my experience in Paraguay will be like before I start living it, I don’t really know what shape this blog is going to take yet, either.  I have a few vague ideas about what I don’t want it to become  - a) a dry, boring account of my day-to-day routine, b) a soapbox.  My guess is that I will try to straddle the fence between staying connected with anyone reading back home and simply keeping myself entertained.  If I wind up leaning too far in one direction for your liking and tumble over, I apologize in advance for messing up the neighbor’s lawn. 

And now a few surface-level words about the blog’s title: 

·      Yeah, it’s a play on Paul Simon’s “Graceland” and what I think are some of the most unquestionably great opening lines to a song

·      No, I don’t actually play the guitar

So come on back.  Bring your friends.  Don’t be shy.  Post some comments.  I hope you like what I’ve done with the place.

On that note, I’d like to open up the floor for some questions –

Q.  I just read your blurb about the blog’s title and I still don’t like it.  I think it’s pretentious and stupid.  I mean you’re barely even musical, right?

A.  Your comments are valid and uninteresting.  I’ll be sure to forward them to management.  I appreciate your concern.

Q.  So let me get this straight – you finish college, spend two years as an AmeriCorps and now you’re joining the Peace Corps?  Are you still putting off the real world?  When are you going to get a real job and actually contribute something to society?

A.  Really?  This again?  Are we really gonna keep playing this game?  Next question.

Q. What sort of work will you be doing in Paraguay?

A.  Rural health and water sanitation.

Q. That seems pretty vague.  Do you have any idea what that will consist of?

A.  Yeah, kind of.

Q.  ¿Hablas español?

A.  Huh?

Q.  Will you go on record as to how recently it was that you learned to place Paraguay on a blank map?

A.  No, probably not.  I don’t like where these questions are headed.  That’s gonna be all for now.