Burning Lunch

Rehearsal Break at our house--pausing for homemade bread (not my best loaf)

Colectivo Katari, with whom I'm working, eats four meals a week together.  Four.   We're talking adults, 4 times a week, committed to sharing and eating together.  A couple people cook and clean, and the rest pitch in for the cost.  Today 10 of us ate for 50 Bolivianos--just over $7.  I wouldn't call them foodies (Matt Johnson is the only foodie I know), but they eat well -- para buen salud.  In contrast to this meat-heavy culture, all meals are vegetarian, usually accompanied by tea or fresh juice. 

I cooked today--and burned my main dish.  Which equalled my first Bolivian cry (tiny one).  Cooking (or burning) for 10 people, in a kitchen that doesn't belong to me, in a foreign culture -- it wounded my pride and trigged every insecurity....from "how on earth will I impress people without my standby of balsamic vinegar?"  to "who am I?"

Probably those of you familiar with the experience will affirm that living in a new culture is terribly awkward.  Other days I feel like a complete chicken.  I'm not sure why I'm tempted to think I'll eventually (soon, of course) master all fears.  I doubt fear quits.  Bravery has little to do with the "No Fear" slogan from bad 90s t-shirts.  It has to do with feeling fear, and stepping forward anyway.  My fear was one of the reasons I knew I had to leave the US-- I was afraid to leave.  It was a fear that called to me--even by the sweet love of God--to face it head on.

A trip to La Cancha, Cochabamba's town-sized market
(They never run out of bananas)

I often have instincts which I hesitate to (or simply don't) follow through: that person I ought to greet or thank, the gift I should have bought for someone, the phone call I should have made.  Usually the instincts have to do with connections with other people.  I squelch them due to fear, sometimes due to laziness.  

You can buy everything at La Cancha.  Everything.
Live chicks, bunnies and guinea pigs--check.
Washing machines, cheese, couches--check.
Dried baby llamas--check.   Everything.

This habit of hesitation showed itself in my acting years ago (it probably still does).  Thankfully I had an observant teacher who took note.  He commented that he saw my instinct emerge, then collapse--never fully realized.  As he was known to do, he designed an exercise specifically for me: an improvisational scene in which I was required to follow through on every one of my instincts.  It was an incredible breakthrough for me.  And what a relief it was! --not to judge every action before committing to its realization.  Frankly I attribute much of my success in San Francisco to the fearlessness--or habit of fear-facing--that I developed in that very exercise.  It began to set me free.  

Why did Guatemala feel "easier?"  Perhaps because 3 weeks (half with a friend) is only a visit.  Most of the time I was near Antigua, which caters to tourists--particularly tourists attempting to learn castellano.  The community makes their living off being patient with people like me.  There I was a visitor, free to be strange and struggle with the language -- now I am "home" but still as strange and language-inept.

As an artist fear is death.  In learning a new language too.  So I lay them down--every valid terror.  Again.  Again.

There is a river of God vigorousness, where my Beloved has invited me many times.  If you know the wild rivers of the Northern Cascade foothills, maybe you can imagine.  The current is strong, whether dangerous or calm, and my Beloved requires I unfetter myself from each branch along the shore.   This is the river of every terrifying thing and the world's most quiet place where my Beloved sits with me, very close, in absolute stillness, and I am never afraid.