History Lessons

It took me 39 years to fell in love with history. It started by chance one September afternoon in Berlin after searching "History of Berlin" online and finding a radio program hosted by a Colombian historian.  Since then I listened to countless hours on WW1, WW2, the Cold War and the history of Russia in the voice of a woman that apparently has been doing this for years, sharing the story of the world to farmers, displaced families, coffee growers and probably a handful of guerrilleros. I'm hooked. Why did I waited this long to learn about Rommel, the origins of the Balkan war, the Byzantine empire folding into Russia, the role of the US in supporting dictatorships in Latin America? About Nasser in Egypt and Nehru in India, about Victor Jara in Chile, the arts during the siege of Leningrad and Rostropovich playing Bach by the Berlin Wall.  How do we fit in all this? We are directly connected to the series of events that led to this very moment. We owe it to the men and women who believed in making what was right over what was allowed or understood, and to those who kept creating meaning through music and arts against all odds. How do we ensure that we contribute the best of our selves, within our own and minuscule role, in the timeline of humanity?

I suggest you to write and keep a diary. There might be no other way or opportunity for you to know how much you've grown, or not. To compare your current narrative to how you described yourself and your life in the past. To see how the vocabulary and words of preference have changed, to realize that you have an underlying subject across many years, geographies and people.  To talk to you in the past and tell yourself that everything will be fine, that those things for which worried you so much are over, or resolved, or you don't care anymore. You might be also able to talk to you in the future and remind yourself that you are there by choice, and that like in the past, everything will be all right. Start now. Write as often as you want.  But write. Keep some memory. Document. Utter. Attest.  The lines you write will be more reveling over the years than any photograph you've taken.  I have a feeling that lately there is very little space for reflection. To stop and wonder. The immediate has taken over, and the deep self questioning has become a thing that people used to do. It is boring. Not for me and I hope I'm wrong. 

For better of for worst I've documented my life in photos so I can go through them during rainy days like today.  With the playlist in shuffle I click through folders of images to retell myself the story of a journey that could be similar to everyone else's, but it's mine.  I'm particularity fond of the self-portraits. There I am, recently migrated to New York with no money to buy a mattress. And now, at my fully remodeled bedroom. At the new job not knowing how much I would hate that cubicle. Bored in my cubicle. At the old job after being promoted.  Proud at my new office overseeing the East River. Feeling lonely at night. Celebrating the success of a great meeting in front of the mirror in the restroom. Jet-laged. Getting ready to go out.  Excited. Confused. Thoughtful. Wearing a beauty mask. Drinking an entire bottle of wine. Drunk.  Testing the light. In the shade. Naked. In the old, new, future apartment. Dreaming big. Feeling low. An accomplished New Yorker. Recently migrated to Mexico with no furniture in the apartment.  Alone. Not anymore.  There I am. 

Thursday at 6:30 PM at cubicle. Not a good day. 2008.

Polina spent the afternoon at my place. Just like when we lived together in Astoria, we sat in front of each other with our laptops open.  I worked on some pending tasks for Sesame Workshop as she showed me documentation pieces from her latest performance in Oaxaca. Polina decided to shift from a mayor in administration into the arts world more than ten years ago, but just recently made the commitment into becoming a full-time artist. "I have no savings left in the bank but for a reason I am not worried. It feels as if I have another kind of savings which relate more to my inner resources," she mentioned during lunch over a bean soup.  I can already see the maturation in her work. When I met her ten years back she was painting vegetables, now she is engaging communities during 2-hour long performances at public spaces that explore faith, transformation, tradition and the celebration of life itself. "I'm not sure where I'll be next year, probably London followed by Berlin and Russia."  She left for Oaxaca a couple of hours ago.  "I love you", she said while waving goodbye from the elevator. I do too.

Begin Anywhere

I couldn't sleep last night with excitement, which hasn't happened to me in quite a long time. The reason? I've finally created this website after more than a year of undecisiveness about the name. How many projects have died because the right name never came through? I created Artichoke Lab in college as a dummy of an indie magazine.  Since then the name has been with me somehow. Why then it took me so long to get started? I guess at some point I was afraid I had not enough to say, or not enough quality content or missing a clearly defined idea. Recently I've been afraid of not being a millennial and not quite grasping the entire new digital scene. Well. F*ck it. Here it is. The initial journey to materialize a long overdue idea. As John Cage clearly said: Begin Anywhere. 

Here I am. There is nothing creative in such a statement, it is just what it is, you like it or not.  We can actually be without being; live mindlessly. I recently read a quote by Goethe which has been on my mind:"Nothing is worth more than this day". It is very similar to the quote I want to get tattooed on my forearm (which of course might never happen) by Mexican poet Jaime Sabines "Este es el tiempo de vivir. El único."  Of course this is nothing new for all of you who do regular meditation and yoga, but for all the other mindless human beings like myself it always comes as a fresh reminder. No hay tiempo mejor que ahora, there is no better time than now. Now, what happens if you feel left behind? What if you see the world going at a different pace than yours? Does it matter? My Australian friend Jessica taught me the concept of FOMA (Fear of Missing Out);  trying to seize as much of the world as you can, while you can. The concept doesn't appeal as much to me as it used to. I want to seize as much of myself as I can, while I can. Shift the focus: I don't want to miss out of myself. Selfish? No. Should I get the tattoo? Maybe. 

Silence is not necessarily bad, but it is just easier to write when you are in crisis. Could it be that I'm bored? My Mom says that the closer thing to happiness is peace. I'm at peace.  The first post after a long time is harder to write, as if you had to justify your absence or write something so brilliant to make up for your dissapearance. I won't do any. I have a dog. I've been wanting a dog for more than eight years and I finally have it. His name is Marte, which means Mars in Spanish, as he is a little reddish, fury and fiery ball. Victor says that I have a good eye for dogs as I tend to choose the energetic, funny, independent and smart ones. That said, I sometimes wish I had chosen the calm and quiet one from the pack. I guess we don't have the ability to choose something that doesn't reflect who we are. I'm not saying I'm funny, energetic or smart, but I have a tendency to get myself into trouble.

I'm officially a consultant, which means I'm in a deeper time-management problem than ever before.

I'm 36 and live with my boyfriend in the hipster neighborhood of Mexico City - which means that I really don't live in Mexico City but in a bubble of fashion designers, lattes, organic food and mezcal cocktails. I miss New York like crazy but I wouldn't move back for now. There is still plenty to discover.

I'm divided and in love. When in New York I love New York. In Mexico City I love Mexico City. In Guadalajara I love Guadalajara. I commute one month to New York the next to Guadalajara, even when this means missing - or not even building a routine in Mexico City. I used to be tired of travel for work, but I now travel each month by choice.  I just spent ten days at our Upper West Side apartment and reminded myself how much I miss the energy of New York, the gold rush added to a constant need to be out there. The constant fear to miss out. But, what are the things you should let go, how to prioritize? I'm about to become 36 and I don't own any property, have any substantial savings or have children, but I have not missed out of many other life-changng experiences. It is now, that I'm getting closer to 40 that the question becomes inevitable. Should I miss out of having children? Should I miss out of a life of adventurous travel? Should I miss out of opening my own business? Should I miss out of living in a new city? Should I miss out of buying a home? And if not, where? Where would you buy a home if home is transitory? And, can I have it all? I want to keep living in the places I call home, I want to keep traveling to places unknown, I want to keep learning with any new project I undertake, I want to build a family of friends and probably children, I want not to be alone while learning to be so. I want to stay in love with what life brings. 

My Mother's neighbor is a pianist, so every morning when I visit we wake up to her rehearsing. On a particular Saturday morning like today my Mom  knits and I draw flowers, and we can stay like this for many hours.  It is sunny and warm outside, and for a strange reason her dog is not barking .  The occasional helicopter flies above the neighborhood and I ask my Mom if she thinks the police is looking for another drug lord; she raises her eyebrows not knowing the answer. Today feels so peaceful even when tomorrow morning Otto, my dog, will die unexpectedly.  Calm could feel suspicious sometimes, but its definitely good to slow down for a moment and enjoy my Mother while we are still kind of young. 

The good thing about having moved to Mexico City is that I get to go back to New York at least every two months. Ideally I would split my time by half between both places, which means enjoying the sweetest things of both and leaving the bad before it starts to crawl over you.  It is when you leave when you start to see those blind spots you missed because you were immersed for so long in such a dynamic and ever-changing place. For starters, the not-so-hidden fact that New York is extremely expensive. I’m 35 and have almost no savings. I don't own a property or even a car, I have very few things I can call my own, and really, who will care for my wardrobe? Not that I measure my life achievements based on material possessions, but unless I earn enough to live in the neighborhood where I want to live, eat where I want to eat, wear what I want to wear, and still save money for retirement, I’m not coming back for good. The other and most important piece is that New York reminds me of how lonely life can get. I’m not talking about the contemplative loneliness that gets you in the mood for writing. I’m talking about the I-don’t-want-the-weekend-to-come loneliness, as you fear the 6:00 PM mark on your watch every Friday. I was lucky enough to find great friends, those kind of friends that I see myself sharing the nursing home with. But for many years New York felt like a rollercoaster of great people that moved out of the city after two years. Each time leaving me crushed.  New York is a great place to live, but you need a family of friends, and knowing that Truman Capote lived in your building or that the world’s diversity is represented on a subway train is not sufficient. I change my previous statement, I don't care so much about the neighborhood, or the food, or the clothes. I won’t move back to New York unless someone can assure me that my great group of friends will still be there. 

I left New York in October. I thought it would never happen. You see, when you go from surviving to living and almost thriving in a place as hard and beautiful as New York it is almost impossible to leave.  But I did, after eleven years. I also left the job that took me around the world (literally).  I have to be honest, the idea hasn't fully settled yet, but I also feel proud of myself. This seems to have been one of the biggest detachment exercises in my life. It’s now four months since we arrived in Mexico City and it doesn't feel as bad as I expected. Mexico City is quite a vibrant city, full of contrasts but also inspiring. We’ve managed to land in the neighborhood where most of our friends live, we bike everywhere, architecture is amazing and we get lots of sunshine in our apartment.  I miss New York, being a New Yorker, and being Programs Director (my former job title), but it also feels good to strip yourself from any labels and concentrate on what is left - yourself.

Some people thi...

Some people think my life is glamourous, but traveling around the world is not only left for jet-setters, it  also includes missionaries, doctors, theatre troupes, backpackers and regular people like me.  It has been a week since I came back from Liberia and my body is slowly catching up. Cold sores, a sinus infection, cramps and now one of my molars is fractured, as it seems I've been grinding my teeth at night out of stress. "I don't understand how you do it?" Alex asks, "You go to these places and listen to these stories. How can you come back to your reality and not feel affected?" Truth is, I sometimes do. I still remember the story of the man who witnessed the killing of his son by armed guerillas some years ago. "They opened his chest with a knife, took out his heart and eat it. They believed my son's heart would make them powerful." This story kept me awake for a few nights. I also got to see the other part of the story where people are rebuilding a country and children are being raised without images of war.  It's funny how you can feel emphatic and at the same time, it is hard to relate. I have never been at war, but I certainly understand resilience; I am from a country currently fighting a war, but I know that violence is not the only thing that exists. "I will never buy a house or invest outside Liberia," Shadrach mentioned during one of our conversations, "I'll go to Cambridge and get my pHd but I want to live here."  My friends emphasize that we take certain things for granted, electricity, Sunday brunch, public libraries, street jazz, transportation systems and nail polish. What is that which is taken for granted in the places I visit? Possibly cassava leaves, spicy food, children raised by entire communities, festive funerals and drumbeats.

Night out in Sekondi, Ghana

I try to absorb in as much of Africa as I can while drinking Star beer at the makeshift bar on the street in Sekondi. We’ve been working in Ghana for four days, but we haven’t seen much besides the office and our hotel. The Veivaag Hotel, built with Norwegian investment, hosts mostly European engineers working on the oilrigs offshore. After drinking a couple of bottles of South African wine my colleagues; contrary to gender stereotypes, shared their love stories.  Will and his wife managed to get married after contradicting Indonesian traditions; Glenn met his wife at age 5, and Ali, who is getting married in a month, is planning for a Muslim wedding under the Ghanaian tradition. “Will I ever get married, again?” I wandered as I took pictures of young well-dressed men dancing to high-life on the street. There are so many pieces of my life-puzzle to get resolved; the challenge is both scary and exciting. I love my life, even when it is reign by ambiguity. A dog sits on the middle of the street to eat a piece of fish, flower-printed curtains decorate the surrounding houses, loudspeakers play African Pop and women on our neighboring table start circling their hips to the music. The weather is just perfect, warm and slightly humid. We are heading back to New York tomorrow and as a glass of Amarula is brought to our table I breathe in as much of Africa as I can. “Are you sad?” I ask Ali. “Yes, because I do not know if I’m ever going to see you again,” he replies. “Are you ever coming back to Ghana?”  I hope so. Breath-out.

The white light...

The white light gets me tired. It could also be effect of the malaria pills. It may be the fact that after a 24-hour flight delay, we got to Ghana and start working from the onset; or that I’ve been eating too much rice, afraid of getting sick by eating fresh salads. I’m resting in bed sleepless and upset that the only options on television are a Steven Segal movie or a Nigerian soap opera. I got Leonera with me, an Argentinean movie that I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time. One of those items that remain in my suitcase, trip after trip and yet to be used, along the ciprofloxacin and a small bottle of St. John’s Wart. “It is funny how you get used to the landscape”, I tell Will as we drive by fishing communities along the coastline close to Ivory Coast. I feel no longer surprised at the sight of women carrying heavy loads of all kinds of materials over their heads, ovens made of mud to smoke fish, barber shops filled with men and mosques across from grocery stores named after biblical passages.  I guess that is a good sign; when the different becomes part of the regular. 

Late night thoughts in Sierra Leone

We crossed the river at night, the eventual lightning from the coming storm illuminated our way into the island, where we disembarked and lead our way to the camp using torches. It has been already a long day, riding for almost 7 hours from Freetown. I’m in a room lit by a candle and I can hear the storm and the bugs creeping outside. Will, Alex and Denilda are all in their rooms across from mine.  There is no running water and there is a big rat sitting immobile by the toilet.  I drink cognac and smoke a cigar trying to conceal the heat. We have no access to internet, no cell phone reception and we do not know precisely where we are. Chimpanzees and pigmy hippos live in this island, along with black mambas and a British researcher that spends her days observing chimp behavior. Being under these circumstances, adds to the feeling that there is a certain something that makes Sierra Leone really interesting. I’m not sure if it is the lack of infrastructure and electricity, the fact that candles are more common than light bulbs, the spicy food, the calypso music, the white sands, diamond mines, or the war-deteriorated buildings along the road. It feels vibrant and alive, crude and raw. Opportunities are rising from the ashes, as it continues to be a hot spot for foreign exploitation.  I’m sweating, the candle is consuming fast and noises from unidentified animals are coming from the bushes. This is going to be a long night.

I could hear my...

I can hear my Mom singing to a Janis Joplin song through Skype. "Are you listening?" she asks. "My generation was blessed with great music." I call her often and we sometimes leave the speaker on as each of us do our stuff; I guess it is a way to keep ourselves company.  "I use to steal my father's radio every day from 8:00 to 9:00 pm to listen to the Creedence Program," she says remembering her teenage years as she plays Have you ever seen the rain? There is a nostalgic feeling to this song. My uncle Andres carried a Creedence tape in his car and played this song every time he dropped me at the airport when my summer vacation in Mexico City was over. "Do you like Home Sweet Alabama?" my Mother asks. I can't reply, I'm ready to go to bed and for all I know she will stay awake until very late searching for old songs on YouTube.  Nostalgia and internet are a powerful combination.

Some of us...

Some of us have steady jobs, some of us have dead-end jobs, some of us have inspiring dream-like jobs, some of us are jobless. Some of us have children, some of us don't. Some of us are married at 24, 34, 44, some of us are not, some of us are desperately seeking for a partner, some of us are gay, some of us wish to be single. Some of us know our mission in life, some of us don't, some of us don't care, some of us walk endlessly to find it. Some of us blame the others for our bad decisions, some of us take responsibility to change the patterns. In life and personal decisions, no rules apply; inspiration does. There are many ways to milk a cow, to crack a nut, to write a poem, but there are many more ways to lead your life. We learn by observation, but again, there are many ways to observe, so we select what to get inspired by. The key, I guess, is to make sure you get exposed to as many different examples of paths to select your own. For the first time in a very long time, I feel finally walking on the right direction. Where am I walking to is still uncertain, but I don't care about it anymore. "What happened to Brenda in Africa?" people have been asking continuously and I can only answer that I let go. "I imagined being naked, metaphorically," I clarify as I share the Africa epiphany, "and all my belongings and attachments are taken away from me. What would I rescue? What would I keep with me?" The answer is nothing, I have myself. "Am I ever going to have full clarity on what I want?" Arloinne asks as we walk down Alvaro Obregon from Roma to Condesa in Mexico City, "I came back from Europe expecting Mexico to bring back the possibilities, and now I miss Berlin and my life there." According to my mother questioning hasn't ended even at 60. My recent words of wisdom: It is what it is, so keep walking and make the best out of it.

From Lagos to Calabar

I listen to Norteñas as we fly from Lagos to Calabar, close to the Cameroon border. I'm so tired that the line between dreams and thoughts has become blurry. The music takes me to Sinaloa and images of man wearing Texan boots and cowboy sombreros get mixed with storylines of hunters and gorillas in the forest. We just spent two weeks in Sierra Leone working with partners to develop the initial story for a drama on chimpanzee conservation; tomorrow we'll sit down with scriptwriters from Nigeria and Cameroon to agree on the story for gorilla conservation in the border between both countries. I sometimes wonder how I ended up working in all these parts of the world, a question that probably many people wouldn't - or can't afford to - ask themselves. I'm lucky. Life has provided me with enough content to write a book, which makes me feel a sense of guilt for not even trying. Dream and reality remains blurry until the stewardess hands me a plate with chicken and yam. Next to me a Nigerian 20-something man plays with his iPad impatiently; he is returning home for the May 1st holidays. The cheap pink toilet paper in the restroom reminds me that this airline not only tries to cut any possible costs, but that is not really reliable. I rather go back to the dreamy state I was before. As we prepare to land, the Norteño playlist is coming to an end and for a moment I wish I was landing in Mexico. Why I decided to leave in the first place?

Teddy bears and miners

My guess is that the teddy bear was given to them by a Westerner, assuming that this will allow them to collect more money. In any case, they are not only beautiful, but after a long trip and while waiting for the ferry in the coast across from Freetown the least thing you would expect is to see two cute children smiling on the beach. We sit across from the Chinese and British that work for African Minerals, or so we assume as vans are bringing them in small groups from the airpot. It seems that every flight coming into Sierra Leone is bringing loads of mining workers, from engineers to security forcers. "Do  you think they are miners or mercenaries?" I texted some of my friends from the plane, as we waited in Conkary on our way to Freetown from Paris. For a moment I'm puzzled, the sight looks like this: men in their forties, all with deep Southern accents, covered in tattoos, wearing Harley Davidson t-shirts and John Deere caps and some are even toothless. This may sound like prejudice, but this is definitely not the usual group of people I imagine traveling to anywhere in Africa. I get texts back asking me to stay away from them and a "please be careful". I assume my friends think I'll be snapping pictures at them - which by no means is a bad idea.  Victor texts right before departure to remind me that some kind of coup d' etat is happening in Guinea-Bissau. Sierra Leone's civil war ended 9 years ago. Seems so far and yet it is so close. In the meantime we wait under a palm tree for our ferry to arrive. It will take almost two hours to arrive into Freetown and I'm so hungry that I can only think on the promised "pepper-chicken" and a glass of beer.

Life is happening...

Life is happening everywhere at this very moment. Wherever you go you'll find people making transactions at the local market, laughing on each other, having a beer in the afternoon, playing soccer, or flirting at the corner. To an extent, I believe that creating beauty around us is a manifestation of "life happening".  Taxi and truck drivers add stickers and hang decorations to their vehicles in Asia and South America, flowers are displayed outside homes in flowerpots or empty tomato cans in Spain, Colombia and Nigeria,  Indian temples are covered in colorful dust, men in Rwanda wear golden watches matching their golden teeth, women wear lipstick and high heels to ride motorbikes in the mountain highways of Laos or to cross the Tijuana-San Diego border. Beauty dispels fear; it unifies and humanizes. A few years ago, at the peak of the Iraq war, a different image was shown during the morning (French) news, an old man was sweeping dust outside his grocery store in preparation to sell cardboard hearts and bonbons to celebrate Valentine's Day. When you think about this you might feel there is no place you wouldn't go. The biggest risk, as my friend Mario says, is that life could happen regardless of your involvement, and passes you by.