The Alizid: A Tale of Wanderings

Drive the Game

2011-08-18T21:04:00.001-07:00

Life in Kenya is not a rerun from a dramatic, possibly staged television series on the savannah. Looking out the van window, I would fail to hear a British narrator and urgent instrumentation over the trumpeting of an elephant herd or the galloping of Grant’s gazelles. When six hyenas bombarded a pack of African wild dogs, running off with their mangled carcass, all I heard were the breathy curses of my classmates.

For such a remote wilderness, the fast paced lifestyle is remarkable. Whenever we would receive a radio alert about a rare, endangered, or elusive animal, we would dash to the van and drive. With only thin dust roads showered with pebbles, speeding is safest. Swerving off into the brush after an aardvark or honey badger hardly impacts our ride.

That night, I had just finished a pre-dinner bucket shower, using a friend’s leftover hot water. Upon emerging from the hut, I noticed the van’s headlights on. Afraid I had forgotten about a scheduled game drive, I grabbed my fleece jacket and hurried into the van, with my professor, Dustin Rubenstein, at the wheel. The radio call was for wild dogs, which seemed dull to me. Dogs are not exotic mammals, and it is not surprising that the ones in Kenya would be wild. But I decided to give them a chance, so I zippered up my jacket and climbed up to the crevice between the van’s trunk and the raised safari roof.

Beyond the three electrified fences that contain the campground, Mpala is indistinguishable. Locations and directions require careful consideration, such as “by the stagnant pool where hippos sometimes bathe,” “that place where we saw the lion yesterday” or “near the abandoned air strip”. But animals move. This came as a surprise to me since I had been treating Kenya like a zoo. I travelled to the equator line to observe animals, most of which I could gaze at from behind double paned glass. At a zoo, a desire to observe wild dogs would lead me down a nubby carpet to the wild dog area. Kenya has no wild dog area.

The sunlight fades fast on the equator. Brightness does not linger in the clouds; it shifts from a clear white to muted gold to dusty red to black. As the atmosphere transitioned from gold to red, illuminating the dust particles that will soon adhere to my skin, we began shouting out the window at passing drivers, “Excuse me, have you seen a pack of wild dogs around here?” Some shook their heads, probably too engrossed in their research niche to worry themselves with another species, and others emphatically carved a route with their arm and urged us to hurry.

Dusk turned to night, and we took turns scanning the roadsides with a handheld spotlight. Since this meant that we could only see one side at a time, our paced slowed considerably as we surveyed the ranch. The spotlight danced as the van clambered over pebbles. Sitting on the roof disqualified me from holding the heavy spotlight and I was thankful for the lack of responsibility. The dogs could be on the left with the shaky circle of light on the right and we would keep driving forward.

Luckily this fact was inconsequential because the van’s headlights climbed the body of a wild dog from paw to rounded ear. Too stunned to react, Dr. Rubenstein did not stop the van until the whole pack felt the heat of the glare. A limbless crimson dik dik carcass lay glistening in the road. Six wild dogs, resembling regal German shepards with long, copper fur spotted with black and grey, gnawed on the dik dik torso, while thirty waited behind them eagerly. The motor, purring like a cheetah, did not faze the grazers but the vigilant ones turned their heads away from the fracas.

In that instant, six hyenas ransacked the scene with one, flanked by an entourage, swiftly grabbing the carcass in its jaw and rushing into the nearby bush. The wild dogs, so accustomed to the warm treat, looked at the bush, bewildered. A few nosed the road, coating their bloody snouts in dust. Some ran to the edge of the bush, barking. One snarl from a hidden hyena sent the whole wild dog pack trotting down the road.

The headlights and spotlight soon revealed nothing more than mika-speckled rocks. I heard bones cracking somewhere to the left of the van, but the verdant shrubbery concealed the ugly, snarly faces of the victors. The sound of shattering ribs verified the bandits as hyenas, since their teeth uniquely allow them to pulverize bone. Hyena feces are distinctly white in color as a result of this trait.

Where did the hyenas come from and how long had they been there? It seemed that we were the missing link to their master plan. We made it known to the humans we passed that we were looking for the wild dogs, but how did the hyenas know to distinguish our van from all the other ones? Either they followed our rattling van to the meat or had been waiting lazily for a random distraction.

The wild dogs went hungry due to my curiosity. Human interference makes unknown impacts. We noticed the hyenas because as a group of biologists-in-training, we collectively notice every stick bug and chameleon. But maybe every van interrupts natural behavior. Maybe every ecological experiment disrupts instead of protects. I never knew innocent intentions could be so cruel.

bella horrida bella (wars, frightful wars, Aeneid XI.86)

2011-08-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

Ants have been regarded as model organisms due to their small size, short generation time, and the lack of guilt researchers feel in manipulating them. What I did to those four species of acacia ants that I studied in depth with Columbia’s EEEB department (ecology, evolution, and environmental biology) in the Laikipia District of central Kenya would be a moral and legal fiasco with most other organisms.

Unlike honey bee attacks, all ant species that occupy the popular Acacia Drepanobulum trees can bite and bite and spray all the chemicals they store in their small abdomens with reckless abandon. These pungent liquids, pheromones, symbolize heterospecific and conspecific aggressive behaviors, meaning that ants engage in civil war as well as international war when threatened.

I posed an obvious threat to these ants. Roaming through a forest of various acacias, I searched for specific color combinations: red-red-black (Crematogaster mimosae) and black-black-red (Crematogaster nigriceps). From half a petri dish, I created a battle arena and disproportionately placed the same species from different trees as well as different species, timing how long it took them to kill each other.

Before the battle, I had to verify that the enemy was indeed the enemy by sending a sample victim into the “home” colony. A tangle of writhing black substituted for passport identification. But beyond smelling enemy pheromones, do varying defense behaviors exist?

I knew the answer was yes even before I began my vicious permutations. I tapped an acacia branch until the ants left the comfort of their enclosed habitat, bulbous brown swollen thorns, to investigate my attack. Positioning the two sides of a petri dish like hinged jaws, I then proceeded to engulf ten samples. If I counted less than ten, I snapped again.

“Pain is temporary,” I reminded myself as ants escaped my gutless plastic monster, rioting on my forearms. I murdered more than I imprisoned. Maimed ants were flicked away for fear of faulty results. Both species bit with equal ferocity and impressive alacrity. They shimmied up to my neck and squeezed down to my toes.

Though I did not have access to a wet lab, I detected the release of defense pheromones. I could not see them in the battle arena but I could smell them on my own skin—an acrid and moldy stench, like mixing wet leaves with used running socks.

Given their retaliation towards me, I expected similar brutality when faced with an intruder ant, which I shoved into a petri dish of its enemies. But for every kind of enemy—C. mimosae of one colony versus C. mimosae of a second colony, C. mimosae versus C. nigriceps, C. nigriceps versus C. mimosae, C. nigriceps of one colony versus C. nigriceps of a second colony—the ants employed a different war tactic. In what can be dubbed an act of brotherly love, the acacia ants exhibited a faster and more frequent heterospecific response than conspecific response. Ants of different species became nothing more than eraser rubbings rolling around the petri dish. Ants of the same species but different colonies were sometimes killed, sometimes pardoned.

In the aftermath of ant war, there was no blood and no guts. A few shriveled black specks like squashed soda cans did nothing to elicit any emotional response. My emotional response came when, after believing my hypothesis to be correct, I ran statistical chi-squared and wilcoxon tests of my data and found that there was too much variance to have conclusive findings. I could spend another day in the field collecting more samples, I could revise my experimental design by grinding up the different species into a PETA-disaster-paste and covering the ants in enemy pheromones, or I could admit my lack of dedication and stare at the less belligerent drongo birds.

That night, kicking off my brown coated clothing, a few ants skittered off into the corners of my tent. Briefly checking for ticks and sunburn and remembering with surprise to swallow a malaria pill, I immediately fell asleep. The dreams of a researcher sting with the bites of Crematogaster acacia ants.

Best Behavior

2011-07-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

In 1920’s Paris, with trails of white smoke curving from dangling cigarettes, artists and writers discussed their work, speculations, and mental blocks. At the Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya, with trails of red dirt curving from the laboratories, biologists and chemists discussed their work, speculations, and experimental design.

A tourist, dressed in khaki adventure shorts and a wide-brimmed sun hat, would likely gasp dramatically at zebras munching on long, green grass and then drive on to more discoveries. As a tropical biologist-in-training, I dressed in quick-dry pants and a long sleeved rashguard, urgently pressing a stopwatch before staring at a Plains zebra (equus burchelli) through binoculars for five-minute trials.

Dominant behavior is most evident among harems with an alpha male and docile, hungry females. Along with eating, watching for predators is necessary for survival. The amount of time females devote to nutrition depends on the size of the group. A bigger herd size should indicate more vigilant animals, increasing the overall time spent feeding. After five minutes of constant staring, images of a glistening hide in brilliant black and white, wet nostrils, swiveling ears, and a tail flicking at flies no longer register awe. Written in the waterproof pages of a researcher’s notebook is Trial 7, with tallies marked in their allotted columns.

Plains zebras, prevalent when I had searched for honey badgers or aardvarks, seemed to have vanished into the thick acacia brush when I really needed them. Impala, Thomson’s gazelles, dik diks, hartebeests, Grant’s gazelles, orynxs, and other ungulates proudly stomped the red dust into billows but the—Oh, are those them? No, Grevy’s zebras. Keep driving.—locations of my research subject could not be found. All the animals in Mpala have their unique hangout spots, but they are not as certain as a zoo enclosement. The Plains zebras have no sign with arrows and exclamations, no address. So many questions to ask the landscape: the mountain ridges fading into increasingly paler shades of blue, the corpulent swollen acacia thorns, the lickerish baboons and dainty klipspringers. But I have chosen to ask the Plains zebras.

The red dirt clung to my sunblock and eyelashes as I gazed out into the lush fields. I envisioned stripes between tree branches or a whishing tail in a low flying drongo bird. I even tried to castrate bachelor male herds with my desperately determined mind so I could include them in my study: the relationship between herd size and the time females spent foraging or vigilant using focal and scan sampling.

Grazing female zebras chew with their heads down, focusing on the blades tickling their black snouts. Vigilant females stare up at me, the menacing intruder clutching a sharp pencil. “Down!” I whispered at the grazing ones. “Up!” at the vigilant ones. As they oscillated between nonchalance and terror at my behavior, I calculated time and begged them not to flee.

After a day of 140 trials, I returned to calculate what turned out to be inconclusive results and eat dinner—green lentils, white rice, and chapattis, a thick fried dough. As I tilted my head down to my plate so the rice wouldn’t fall off my fork and lifted up my head to chew and listen to fragmented conversation, I reasoned through possible error sources: habituation time too short, large variation amongst the trials, observer’s delirium. At that moment, a group of zebra may have been peering at me, balancing binoculars on their muddy hooves. In the cacophony of insect night life, I could almost hear them snorting “up” and “down”.

On the Road...

2011-04-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

...to university fame (kidding). The most recent post on this blog, "Market Hunting," was accepted into Surgam, one of Columbia University's literary magazines. An excerpt can be found on the Columbia University Arts blog:

http://cuarts.wordpress.com/

Market Hunting

2010-12-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

You plan to go to the market, not because you need to buy something but because you need to be reminded why you are in Vietnam. Last night you went to an expat bar and spoke English while dancing to Lady Gaga. You spent the morning reading about economics in English and texting American friends. With half an hour until lunch, you have almost enough time to escape the bubble and walk.

You close the tall iron gate of the pastel yellow French colonial house, a skinny, miniature version of the French equivalent, and walk past the badminton courts at the end of the residential block you always tell taxi drivers is yours, and where your Vietnamese family of two months lives. It is a lie, since your school pays these people every month and you have no biological relationship, but you can pretend. Today you don’t need a taxi because the market is in your neighborhood.

Hanoi is so oppressively humid that after a while your body does not register the heat; sweat glands work as they should, and no one judges the sweat stains on your elbow-length conservative shirt because everyone’s clothes are damp. Your sheets are damp when you wake up, your toothbrush is damp, the seat of your chair is damp, your damp notebooks are crinkled, your damp computer screen has spots of mold, your damp thighs slide together when you walk, and the steam rising from three hot meals does not fog your already fogged glasses.

Trees line your street, which is rare for this city, but you are confused about where these trees are actually planted, since looking up, all you see is a tangled mass. Green leaves connect to branches and green leaves connect to bundles of suspended electrical wires. Your knowledge of technology is limited but you are fairly certain those clumps of wire should not touch the way they are touching, especially since they are all so damp the copper has probably turned green like the Statue of Liberty. Each wire has a person and story on the other end but no one cares enough to make it straight. Maybe it is hopeless, you think. You try not to be ethnocentric but it is difficult.

Your street goes in a loop, not a grid, and the market is four blocks away to the left yet still bears the same street name. Hanoi’s haphazard plan does not bother you because at least it does not give you rashes or ruin your possessions or require three cold showers a day like the temperature. You walk with alacrity, your spongy black flip flops pattering to the beat of your gait, to show the Vietnamese couples staring that you are not a tourist—you know where your market is and how to get there. Having passed it every morning on the way to school, you know what to expect but today you decide to visit the stalls you ordinarily purposefully avoid, to get a zap of culture shock.

As your neighbors stare, you smile demurely and pretend this is all natural. Really though, your heart is pounding because it always thu-thumps with every motorcycle screech. Crossing the street, you get so close to the speeding drivers that you can see the labels on their jean waistbands—another fake Dolce & Gabbana. One day your white skin will be so distracting, the driver will not swerve. It happened once already, the teenage male driver with black hair gelled in spikes staring at your blue eyes with startling intensity, face frozen, but you ran across the cracked asphalt when you noticed his hands neglecting to reach for the hand brake, and your damp thighs slid together while you sprinted as the safety of the next crowded street approached.

The vendors cover some of the sidewalk slabs with heaps of used clothing and handbags so that you must retreat to the stream of Honda Dreams and Vespas with their shrill beeps, a Morse code that lets other drivers know their presence on the asphalt. The system is not foolproof and you have seen the evidence—battered metal and dazed, bloody Vietnamese men discarded on the side of the road. You have never seen even an indication of an ambulance, but you have learned that sometimes it is better not to ask questions.

It is better, also, not to ask how much something is. You enter the outdoor market through a narrow oval entrance in an alley wall lined with red bricks and are bombarded with the magenta, red, orange, lime green, deep green, and pale yellow colors of the fruit vendor stalls. Nothing has a set price because not even the price of dragonfruit is predictable. Instead you call out numbers, easy vocabulary, until an agreement is made. At first this was a fun game but because you are white, you are also wealthy, since one American dollar equals twenty thousand Vietnamese dong, so the game has turned guilty and panicked. The prickly scarlet balls of rambutan and the scaly pale green custard apples remain in their straw woven baskets and you continue onwards.

The phở smells like basil and the roasting chicken smells like a summer cookout. Oil crackles on portable gas stoves and Vietnamese families perch on small blue and red plastic stools, shoving noodles and meat into their mouths with chopsticks. The fragrances mix with smoke, making the moist air even thicker. You turn a corner and the lunch becomes raw. Gutted dogs lie on sticks ready for the rotisserie. Shelled sea urchins glisten in a heap. Bloody pig limbs rest in rows on a counter: slabs of meat, hoofs, and intestines. Silent, the butcher stares forlornly at the customers intently weaving through the vendor stalls.

A porcelain bowl of fat wiggling maggots is displayed on the curb and the vendor absentmindedly picks her nose. A cage of indignant roosters is tied to the back of an abandoned motorcycle. The birds screech at the discomfort, ignorant of the fact that soon they will be defeathered, butchered, and then plopped into boiling broth. This immediacy of your meals unsettles you, realizing that you prefer the anonymity of hamburger patties and chicken cutlets. Ducking under a blue tarp to evade the blinding sun, you discover another maze of stalls.

Withered frogs are displayed like sheets on a clothespin line, noodles on the floor in a dusty corner in twisted bundles like hay. Some vendors smile at you as you wander, but most stare blankly. Customers push past one another, competing for the competing vendors. Around another corner are plastic stickers and toys of animals, blonde dolls, and Ho Chi Minh. Further down the street are boxes of fake paper money and buckets bursting with bright flowers you can’t name. Each area of the market has a special purpose, from offering a meal to providing funeral décor. The market is the order in your chaotic Vietnamese life. This ancient system seems to work for the citizens, though economically speaking, you are stumped, since compartmentalizing the market heightens competition while demand remains constant. But you are not part of the system and regardless of what you say, you are not a citizen here and will never be.

Passing each middle aged woman selling identical flowers side by side, you notice lacquered bowls and vases across the street. You consider buying a lacquered item because of your newfound obsession with the haunting depth of the shiny, metallic technique but decide to wait until you are about to leave the country to stock up on appreciations. The Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum dedicates an exhibit to lacquer art and slowly meandering the dimly lit hall for the first time of many visits, the dark red and inky black tones make you quiver in the air-conditioned French villa, incredulous at the meticulous detail and the complex process necessary for lacquer technique. A cobalt vase gilded in gold perched on the market sidewalk curb glints in the sunlight and you look down at your toenails, newly painted with bright red glitter.

The market vendors are much less aggressive than the teenage vendors that wander the city streets with a box awkwardly dangling from their shoulders, selling scarves, postcards, and cigarette lighters. Market vendors shout at customers, customers shout at vendors, vendors shout at vendors, and customers shout at customers. No one shouts at you because you would not understand and do not belong in this market with the buzzing flies and whimpering dogs, scraping spoons and screaming children.

You are a woman, so you are at the market. Yet everyone sees through the lies. You weave through crowds and haggle persistently but you will never be a woman casually walking through the market. You will always be the girl whose knee length skirt is just a little too short, who slips in the trash that litters the curb, who takes pictures of anonymous houses because of a fascination with the foreign architecture, and who confuses the words “beef” and “father”. One morning last month you tried to ask your host mother if it would rain that day, she nodded, and you brought an umbrella to school; later that day, she was surprised to see you home because you had told her you were going shopping.

Passing a humming refrigerator stocked with local beer, you want to buy a sweating can but are unable to because your male friends are not here to buy alcohol and energy drinks and anything considered unfeminine for you. Your host sister calls them your bodyguards and coyly smiles when you assure her that you are not dating any of them.

You came to the market to be reminded of why you are here. You turn to retrace your steps because instead of finding the answer to your question, you encountered other people asking precisely the same thing. You walk at your brisk New York City pace now, not pausing to look at the pearl necklaces or t-shirts, yellow chicks or slowly scrambling turtles, gummy candies in the shape of Hoan Kiem temple or rainbow lollipops. You need to be home in time for lunch. You hope for tofu or summer rolls but it will probably be something involving grease in the hopes of fattening you up to make your American parents happy.

A group of middle aged, pajama-clad women perform vigorous arm thrashes, hops, and lunges in the badminton court at the end of your street. You have often seen Vietnamese adults engaging in this activity, and have never figured out what it is. The exercises remind you of tai chi on acid, or watered down aerobics. The Vietnamese value exercise but your host sisters hate moving, especially when it is hot. You were not aware that people could dislike walking. Because of their sloth, you feel like it is possible you are related to this Vietnamese family.

Except that you cannot be part of the family if you don’t have a key to the house. You ring the doorbell and scratch at a mosquito bite as you wait for your host mother to emerge from the kitchen. You beam and wave excitedly. Your host mother does not return the sentiment. She opens the door and asks you, “Cháu có vui vẻ tại thị trường? (Did you have fun at the market?)”

You pause, making sure your interpretation is correct before you respond, nodding, “Văng (Yes)”. You are glad you are home, though, and just in time for sweet green banana and snail soup, steamed white rice, garlic beef stir fry and spring rolls. It could be worse, you think, and help set the table.

Surviving Spaghettification in Space

2010-11-13T10:57:00.000-08:00

The universe consisted of a compact ball of hydrogen (protons, neutrons, electrons and their anti-particles) plus radiation. There were no differentiated planets, suns, stars and galaxies. Five billion years ago, the compact hydrogen soup blasted apart with huge force, matter was hurled in all directions, and the universe doubled in size.

The blast caused a major decrease in the density and temperature of the universe after which new particles could be formed. Then the particles and anti-particles fought in a frenzy of self-destruction. The universe was left with a greatly reduced collection of positively-charged nuclei and negatively-charged electrons in a vast plasma mass.

Ninety nine percent of the matter of the universe still exists in this plasma state. We perform our own version of the big bang theory. We are all made of stardust—carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. We smash up against each other for victory, slushing through a plasma sludge of our own making.

Stars are in constant battle with the pressure of gravity. When stars succumb, black holes form. Light is emitted when black holes collide. If something falls into a black hole, it gets stretched and shredded: spaghettification.

The sky looks like celestial soup without overbearing light pollution competing. The pale yellow dots splattered across a black bowl are overwhelming. Stars only twinkle. Do not flash or sparkle. It is bizarre for something to only be allowed a single verb. Though the dance implies movement, stars are not living beings. Do they listen to music? Is there a synchronization we are not aware of? They show up for the performance every night. Their enthusiasm never wanes, even as the sun, ruler of stars, threatens to overtake them.

Stars are so highly complex yet their beauty is so simple. They are there every night, regardless of whether or not I can see them. Their presence is secure in the world of chaos, though the realm in which they float is more chaotic than the busiest city.

I dreaded college in the city because I had always envisioned college filled with trees and grassy quads, with a multitude of students perfectly proportioned by ethnicity playing Frisbee on a forever autumn afternoon. No stargazing with friends splayed out on the lawn after a night of drinking games and dancing to Beyonce and Jay Z.

But I found beauty on the roof of the astrophysics lab building one night, peering through a telescope and counting the four moons next to Jupiter—Europa, Io, Callisto, Ganymede—and then looking over the ledge of the roof lab over the library to the blinding skyline with the bright speck of Jupiter and a waxing crescent moon suspended over a fluorescent Empire State building lit red and blue.

The first time I saw stars, I was eighteen years old. Having escaped an attempt to play the drinking game Kings with two decks of cards instead of one, I was lying supine in the pebbly sand of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, as a friend pointed out my first constellations: Orion, Taurus, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor. I listened to the ancient stories, speechless. There were so many of them, dancing rhythmically to the sound of ocean waves.

Orion the hunter has three diamonds on his belt, aiming to kill Taurus, three dots in a triangle. The bull was a disguised Jupiter, who abducted the naïve and unsuspecting maiden Europa. Cassiopoeia twirls around in her throne as punishment for declaring herself the most beautiful. Arcas, who almost killed his mother and was transformed into a little bear, looks more like a small ladle.

Stars are highly complex yet their beauty is simple. They are there every night, regardless of whether or not I can see them. Their presence is secure in the world of chaos, though the realm in which they float is more chaotic than the busiest city.

I float on the frothy surface of chaos, a space cadet. There are moments the tide pulls me under and gasping for breath, my heart pounding and my head spinning from lack of oxygen, I am tempted to succumb. But the waves eventually spit me back up and I evade the threat of black holes.

I used to twinkle incessantly; now I just try to stave off gravitational pulls.

Science has taken advantage of my admiration for it, controlling my decisions and letting me sacrifice so much in its name. I refuse to be spaghettified by physics and chemistry. Numbers drive me now. I have chosen language that I can hear and almost taste, history with artifacts and proof, words I am able to visualize and create.

Stop.

Stop memorizing adrenocorticotropic hormone, compartmentalization, primary streak, mycorrhiza, apoptosis, nonsense codon, epididymis, Schwann cells, Casparian strip, loop of Henle, sarcoplasmic reticulum, corpus luteum, trophic cascade, imbibition.

Eclipsing binary, perihelion, inferior conjunction, geosynchronous orbit, protoplanetary disc, hypergalaxy, Roche limit, supernova, heliopause, Oosterhoff group, Cepheid variable, magnetosphere, entropy, toy theory, globular cluster, dwarf planet, chaos, spaghettification.

Adrift

2010-11-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

The water looks like it is covered with a film of cellophane and I could pop a swell bubble with a large needle. The ship creaks and metal jiggers clank lazily against the masts. Thick, coarse sailcloths slap and whisper in the faint breeze, which does little to alleviate the oppressively humid air. The soft grainy wood of the quarterdeck sticks to my flushed skin, and when I lift my calves, the dark grey imprint of my sweat remains on the planks. Sunscreen trickles down my back in white squiggles and my attempts to shield my bare shoulders from the sun are in vain. The sticky lotion oozes between my fingers as I smear sunscreen onto my freckled nose and over the prickly stubble of hair on my legs. Salt from my seawater hose showers and evaporated sweat sticks to the sunscreen in sharp, gritty crystals.

My favorite sound is the ocean but the sound disappears when there is no wind to make waves. The ship rocks slowly from side to side, port to starboard. I relish my ability to walk the 134-foot distance steadily, and this momentary hiatus allows my mottled bruises time to heal. I bang my shins vaulting into my bunk; my elbow is pink and puffed from hitting the belowdecks support column every time I pass the two gimbled tables swaying and laden with platters of burrito toppings or fresh bagels or glistening tomato soup; I stub my toe whenever I lose my balance in the laboratory; my cheek bone is still purple from the unexpected swell that knocked me forward while I was counting zooplankton under a microscope to estimate their population frequency; the bandaged scrape on my calf from when I fell through the bowsprit net while furling the JT threatens infection; and my hip has a large blue-grey tinge from when I fell into the oven handle while trying not to burn scones, which were thrown overboard anyway because I had distractedly added too much baking soda.

I am drifting somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean, sailing on a two masted brigantine with nine cream colored sails I have set and struck, with two dozen lines I have hauled and heaved. A confetti of zooplankton and eroded plastic pieces skim the waves. Dolphins play in the frothy bow waves and sometimes their slippery, leathery skin becomes coated with the confetti. Belowdecks, the glossy wood-lined box with dusty, moldy maroon curtains where I sleep traps the hot air, making it difficult to breathe and resist the urge to tear my clothes off. No amount of fatigue makes a nap bearable in these conditions, and though typing on a steady computer screen in the library without swirling water darkening the porthole seems like a viable option while hovering in the entrance to the corner alcove and listening to the drone of the engine room next door, I decide to wait until sunset.

When I feel my days losing direction, I bring The Aeneid with me to the quarterdeck. The pages are folded and yellowing, the highlighted and annotated marks in orange, green and purple are blotched from spurts of seawater. The blue cover has detached from the text from too many affectionate readings. I am up to Book Four, having already read descriptions of Aeneas being tossed in Neptune’s waves as the Sargasso Sea has tossed me. Book Four details the frustrations with rigid plans. Aeneas just wants to continue having sex in caves with Dido. Rome can get founded another time. The sea has become a chore for Aeneas. The sparkling waves never change.

“I’ll be up all day,” I moan, letting my head rest on the edge of the quarterdeck hull. I close my eyes and sigh. A brown booby flies diagonally from broad on the starboard beam, diving to snatch helpless zooplankton from the flat surface of the sea. No waves propel the zooplankton or hide them from the enemy. Perhaps the booby is a disguised Mercury, sent by Jupiter to cajole us back to vitality. The minute hand jerks to twelve, a shrill ring reverberates through the quiet still air, and order is restored. A shipmate on watch leans over the rail of the opposite hull and peers at the taffrail log. “Great. 632.8 nautical miles,” she exclaims, crouching into the narrow doghouse entrance to record the result on the sprawling, faded map of the pastel blue Caribbean Sea, smudged pencil calculations of where we think we are, based on measurements of the sun’s position. In the last hour, we have sailed less than half a mile.

I could use a shower but fresh water is a rare commodity and today is not a Shower Day. Today is the day I write the discussion section of my oceanography research paper on the accumulation of plastics on Jamaican and Dominican beaches. Today is the day I finish my ethnomusicology paper on Dominican bachata music. Today is the day I don’t vomit over the side as saltwater stings my eyes because the wind died just when we all predicted it would be strongest. I had elected to sail for two months in the North Atlantic Ocean to appreciate the sea and stars, and to understand the historical hardships from Odysseus’ and Aeneas’ divergent journeys, to Columbus’ accidental discovery of America, to the calamitous 2010 earthquake in Haiti, but I am relieved every time conditions keep us from sailing, instead forcing us to drift aimlessly. As a native New Yorker, I rarely experience idleness.

Science textbooks on polished, wooden shelves line the white painted walls in the cramped furnace of the belowdecks library, secured with lines of frayed blue bungee cords. A large, white plastic fan with ELVIS KING scribbled deliriously in sharpie blows hot air at the textbooks like a hairdryer, fading the green and blue hues, and completely disregards the college students dressed in Patagonia tank tops and Billabong bathing suit bottoms with wispy hair coated in salt and oil, puzzling over Excel graph data. The books are never removed and opened. Instead, I address questions to scientists with PhDs or peer into buckets of net tow samples and petri dishes of sieved marine organisms. This is what science should be. Science is not fifty pages of small print or one hundred multiple choice questions. It is not a factor of my GPA, it is the adventure of gybing on a port tack to prepare for a Hydrocast deployment, and the surprising discovery of eighteen degree mode water in the Yucatán channel.

Science surrounds me, inescapable as Aeneas’ destiny. I watch my fatigued shipmates clamor to action at the sound of the hourly clock chime, measuring Beaufort force, wind and current direction, wave height, temperature, salinity, fluorescence, depth, and direction. Direction is the most difficult concept for me, much more than spectrophotometry or the principles of buoyancy. I steer off course more than on course and on slow days with no wind, it is just as hard to control the helm on calm days as on days when screaming wind tears at the sails and water splashes up one hull, slapping the opposite one. Juno should not feel threatened by me and I cannot comprehend why she would change the currents to lead me astray. “Forty degrees off course,” I call out in exasperated warning as per protocol.

While Aeneas can accuse Juno and the Fates for his misery, I alone am to blame for my wandering. Plans and directions are comforting but the strong pull of currents leads me astray to two hundred degrees off course. I am distracted by shiny possibilities like the phosphorescent esca in the central filament of an Anglerfish. I took a year between high school and college in order to explore and experiment, but unlike those in high school and college laboratories, these experiments are new and tactile. The samples I count are zooplankton that I snatched myself from the ocean at various precisely measured depths, killed with specific chemicals, and recorded according to standard procedure. The chlorophyll-a and the dissolved oxygen analyses I perform disturb beakers of the very seawater that envelops my floating home, the same seawater that abruptly soaks my clothes, soothes the urge to cut my hair when I stand under the fire hose, and cleans my laundry.

Neuston net tows glow at night, parading bioluminescence. After watching the net for half an hour, adjusting the boom to make sure the prized net is comfortable, I hoist it back on the lab deck. My hand reaches for the white plastic jar at the end—the codin jar. Unscrewing the jar fills me with the same excited anticipation as when I first translated the final lines of Book Twelve from Latin to English. The zooplankton is a slippery mass of pink goo, flashing neon green in flickers. A Sargassumfish wiggles through a chunk of beige, scratchy sargassum weed and a small seahorse lies motionless on an unidentifiable piece of red plastic. Though there is no indication of human life beyond the ship except for the occasional traffic threat two points off the starboard bow, signs of human destruction hover in the pelagic zone, waiting for innocent students to collect and count plastic shards and oil pellets.

I appreciate the discomfort that study abroad brings because as humans we rely so much on convenience. It is easier for a tourist to flick a cigarette a few inches from her beach towel than to walk to a trashcan. Jamaican locals would rather toss condoms and crackling food wrappers to be swept away into the ocean by wind. Dominicans dump cracked fishing crates and broken computers directly onto the sandy shoreline so they do not have to roam the streets searching for an evasive dumpster. The hopelessness of the situation, and the thousands of debris fragments I systematically collected from six tourist, local and unfrequented beaches, and fished from the surrounding turquoise Caribbean waters, is discouraging. Of course, because I am an indignant teenager, visions of torn, swollen diapers and black plastic bags studded with slate colored barnacles fill me with inspiration to save the world by majoring in environmental science—Two years of chemistry? No problem!—and restore the solid waste management of the negligent. Aeneas always put the care of his country before the convenience of remaining with Creüsa in Troy or lingering in Carthage with Dido.

The crewmembers on watch duty and the crewmembers woken from their naps join me for the daily two-hour lecture on the quarterdeck, the abrasive tar caulking between the heated planks inflicting burn blisters on the weary students. In the 105 degree Fahrenheit haze of misery, my hands and feet have broken into an itchy, puffy red rash from lack of sunscreen care. Someone tosses me a bottle of SPF 90 and I gratefully squeeze another coat onto the layers of grime that cover my sticky skin. Being allergic to the sun requires me to be constantly alert even when I am not responsible for ensuring the ship’s safety during watch duty. The sweltering air tempts my mind to wander and I have forgotten to hydrate again. My orange Nalgene bottle, scraped white in the places I’ve dropped it to cling fearfully to the rail, holds filtered water hot enough for tea. Considering the thoughts and brainstorms that send me on long-winded, forked roads of tangential mental distraction, I conclude these are not conditions appropriate for beginning a focused two-hour lecture.

Focus. Focus on the dripping sweat tickling sunburned skin. Focus on Captain Steve announcing mandatory Shower Day tonight. Focus on a to-do list of assignments that were put off until the wind returned, even though the threat of seasickness looms. Focus on the glassy translucent water, a vibrant dusky blue. Focus on the mangroves lecture. Focus on the knotty, mangled roots thick with skittering mangrove crabs. Focus on ship report updates. Focus on what happens after we dock in the United States again.

I lack direction, preferring instead to float like zooplankton and let the currents push me places. My friends never know where I am and a coworker once joked that I would soon rule my own island in the South Pacific. But zooplankton, the underdogs, are a crucial life form and one of the most complex and diverse of eukaryotic protists. They rely on the gravitational pull of the moon like Aeneas relied on the Fates, trusting that in the end purpose will be soothingly revealed and their suffering not in vain. The Fates have put me on this stationary ship stuck without anchoring somewhere in the middle of the vast expanse of cobalt blue water. I just hope King Aeolus sends one of his winds soon.

I remember blackouts

2010-10-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

The blackness is so thick I can almost curl my fingers around it and tug. But I can’t and the humid darkness remains. I scoot back against a chair and hug my knees to my chest, silent. I blink. I blink. My sixteen-year-old Vietnamese host sister, Chịp, wails in frustration. With a language like a song, I am impressed my sister can manage an emotive tone.

The living room of my host family’s house was just starting to become familiar and now foreignness envelops me once more. I try to picture the wooden bench up against the window, the matching chairs and the painting of a vase with flowers perched above it, the other painting of a meadow on the opposite wall, the television with a cheerful blond Norwegian-looking doll and a snow globe of New York City resting on top, and the beaded entranceway to the kitchen, the only place in Viet Nam where I don’t feel welcome.

It had only been two weeks—my feet beginning to break in the stiff plastic house sandals given to me by my host family—and already I no longer noticed the pedestrians calling out to me in the streets or staring at me on the bus, the thin limbs in mismatched and faded clothing, the challenge that thick motorcycle traffic imposes on my daily routine, the lingering sticky-sweet stench of the durian fruit vendor, or the heavy black smoke of burning paper ancestral offerings.

My twenty-four-year-old Vietnamese host sister, Thư, stomps and claps and smashes into the piano keyboard. Suddenly a small lantern illuminates Thu’s motherly smile and the bottom of her plastic magenta eyeglasses. My host mother, I imagine, remains rigid and reserved on the hard wooden bench like usual. At first I had thought my host mother resented my existence but I soon came to understand that she was just dutifully fulfilling her role as a woman: demure and unobtrusive. I unfold from my twisted confusion and rejoin the huddle in the middle of the floor.

We had been watching a movie on Chịp’s favorite channel, the Disney channel, on a Monday night. Hilary Duff had enrolled in a naval academy and the moral was that she was girly yet did not give up at school. Each shot of camouflage, boot camp exercises, rifles, or any other indication of warfare made me uncomfortable since the Vietnam War, known as the American War in Vietnam, had never been mentioned in the family. My host parents had certainly lived through the war but I did not know the extent of their involvement or how strong their sentiments were. Did they intrinsically hate Americans and I was just an exception? Was I an exception?

Glancing at the clock and then back at Hilary Duff, I had hoped that silently sitting on the beige tiled floor with my host family and watching a squeaky blonde girl get covered in mud would help me break down the barrier separating guest from adopted daughter and sister. The family has already changed into pajamas while I am still in the skirt and blouse I wore to school that day. Each member has a token pajama outfit they wear every day. My host mother’s is red with the Chinese symbol for longevity, Thư’s is yellow with a large duck, and Chịp’s is pastel pink sprinkled with small flowers. My host father does not have pajamas, from what I can see.

I stare at the three women engulfed in shadows. They chatter amiably amongst themselves as the sweat starts trickling down the sides of my face. “Xin lỗi, em (I’m sorry),” Thu apologizes to me. I shake my head and then remember I can’t rely on gestures to communicate anymore. “Tốt (Okay),” I squeak.

My index finger traces my miniature Vietnamese-English dictionary; once, twice, three times. I fidget with the pages, feeling the softness of wear. I consider casually commenting on the sudden heat influx but can’t remember which tone to use. Having learned three romance languages, I am used to relying on cognates and intuition. In Hanoi, I flounder in the music of the sentences.

With the patter of plastic blue slippers, my host father climbs down two flights of spiraling marble with a battery-powered fan the size of a basketball. He hovers over us momentarily and then disappears back up into the silent abyss. A gaunt man with monochrome clothes that hang from his stooped body, my host father still fulfills the stereotypical Vietnamese patriarchal role as the aloof provider of the family. I never see him joking or playing with my host sisters or even touching my host mother. Though my host sisters have shown me wedding pictures in which my host mother actually smiled, I have no idea how they met or decided to get married. Without access to the computer and therefore his digital games of solitaire, I don’t know what he plans on doing tonight.

Chịp begins belting out her favorite Korean pop songs. Thư encourages me to sing along but I laugh nervously instead. Mosquitoes, lacquer-green beetles and feathery moths dance around the lantern. I slap at my arms and scratch the insect bites. There is nowhere to look but at the light.

As soon as Chịp finishes her Korean warbling, I rush up the stairs to the master bedroom, my new room, the bedroom that my host parents relinquished so that I, as the American, can feel comfortable, while they sleep on mats in the third floor computer room. Though they are in their fifties and I am only seventeen years old, I am embarrassed to reject their generosity.

I yank open the first desk drawer, where I remember I put a photo album. Back downstairs, we flip through the laminated pages and I proudly blurt out family vocabulary: mother, father, older brother, aunt, grandmother, cousins. My host mother repeatedly exclaims, “Tóc vàng (blond)!” I have not been blonde since I was ten years old, but since I don’t have the sleek and shiny black hair of all Vietnamese people, I can be whatever my host family wants me to be. Which, of course, is blond. I am almost afraid to tan in the tropical sun, in case my coveted pale skin becomes slightly more like their glowing brown.

Suddenly the power is restored and the television flickers back on just in time for the last minute of the movie. Hilary Duff successfully graduates from naval academy, or peace is restored in her household, or something of that nature. We shut off the television and disperse to finish my economics reading (me), a trigonometry worksheet (Chịp), an English lesson plan for the class she teaches to four year olds (Thư), and the laundry (my host mother).

An hour and a half later, the black print of my textbook quickly grows to envelop the whole room. I open the door—blackness there too. My host father appears once again to hand out necessities: a lantern for my room and one for my host sisters’ room. I offer him my flashlight but he shakes his head. I shine my light on the stairs so he won’t fall as he retreats into solitude, his hacking cough echoing in the hallway.

Choosing to interpret this blackout as an involuntary study break, I join the insects around Chịp and Thư’s lantern. The three of us share riddles and quiz each other on Vietnamese and English vocabulary. My sisters are far beyond the “table” and “chair” stage while I have to repeat “bed” and “window”. I feel like I’m at an elementary school slumber party of overachieving nerds. When the lights illuminate the house again after half an hour of giggling, we reluctantly return to our desks.

The third blackout of the night, two hours later, finds me reading The Quiet American. I sigh, exasperated, stumble towards my wardrobe, and change into my pajamas. “Chúc ngủ ngôn (Good night),” I call out to my sisters. They return the sentiment. From my room I can see Chịp huddled by a lantern, frantically trying to finish her trigonometry homework. Though I also have homework, I decide to save it for the following day when the city’s electricity functions again.

I feel shepherded by the city of Hanoi. Its bus system determines the times I arrive to school, return back home, or travel to my voice teacher’s house. Its weather determines what I will eat that day, since my host mother buys ingredients fresh every morning at the local market two blocks away. Its citizens determine how I view myself—pretty or ugly, short or tall, chubby or fat, pale or very white, endangered or flattered. And its electricity determines how efficiently my workload diminishes.

The following day is more humid than usual. I arrive home to learn of another blackout, which had just ended. Relieved that I missed it, I stack my books in order of priority on my desk and settle in for a long night, which will only be interrupted by the mind game that is a Vietnamese family dinner. At dinner I try and make my bowl of rice last as long as my family’s three helpings. I chew individual grains, I chew air, I keep my bowl raised so no one plops more jellyfish or chicken fat into it. Whatever is in the rice bowl must be consumed. It is an unwritten law.

Halfway through studying for an environmental science quiz, the power goes out. No. No no no. I take out my flashlight, prop it between my teeth, and continue working, fanning myself with my left hand. My clothes quickly turn damp, then wet. Would this become a daily routine? Though blackouts cause no more than an inconvenience for me, which should be expected when traveling to a developing country, the uncertainty and confusion lead me to despair.

The blackouts last anywhere from ten minutes, a taunt, to three hours, a punishment. In New York City, this pattern would be classified as a national catastrophe. There would be television news, editorials, investigative commissions, political inquiries, and blue ribbon panels. In Hanoi, it is just part of the summer. My family seems to have accepted that the power is beyond their power.

After the sixth blackout that week, the block erupts into cheers when the electricity is restored again. Joining in with an American “Woo!” I feel connected with my neighbors. But no one ever seems angry and the blackouts are hardly even mentioned. The idea of protesting to a government when services are not adequate is just as foreign for them as blackouts are for me.

Next Destination: College

2010-10-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

I am a staff writer for Columbia's journal of world travel, NOW!HERE. The first issue of the semester is out:

http://www.nowherecolumbia.com/

No Traffic Ahead

2010-05-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

Perched at the tip of the bow I stare at the clouds quickly turning pastel pink to peach to pale orange to yellow to grey. The Cramer violently rocks up and down but my harness and tether keep me calm. My head shifts from left to right in opposition with the rhythm of the boat and my eyes rake the dusky blue horizon. No lights, no boats, no traffic ahead.

****

"How can I help?"

On the first day we were instructed to ask that question often. My first time on a boat about to set sail, I eagerly asked, "How can I help?"

The deckhand Ashley immediately responded, "I need you to grab your harness and be lookout."

I rushed down below deck, gathered my harness from my bunk and ran up to the bow. The boat was just starting to inch its way out of port in St. Croix. Luckily I had studied the plan of Cramer before departing so I knew where the bow was. I waited for Ashley to give me further instructions, my stomach tightening as I regretted what I had unknowingly volunteered for.

Ashley came up next to me and yelled over the sound of the engine, "You have to tell the captain about any buoys or boats you see. If you don't tell Steve we'll crash." Using her arms to signal the relative bearing system she called out DEADAHEADONETWOTHREE BROADONSTARBOARDBOWTHREETWOONE ONSTARBOARDBOW BROADONSTARBOARDQUARTER ONSTARBOARDQUARTER DEADASTERN ANDSAMETHINGFORTHEPORTSIDEOKAY?

The wind roared in my face as I squinted out at the ten green and red buoys bobbing in the water. Dead ahead. Lunging aft to warn Captain Steve, I forgot to unclip my tether and slipped on the deck. When I finally made it to the other side of the 134 foot boat, I hurriedly tested out the new vocabulary words. Tether unclipped in my hand, I raced back to my lookout post. Five more buoys. No, now seven. Ping! Unclip. Ping! Clip. Three white buoys, two sailboats, two red buoys, one green buoy. It began to rain and I blinked away droplets as they whipped my face. I slid on the slick wooden deck as I ran back and forth.

And then there was nothing but the waves battering against the boat and the turquoise horizon dead ahead.

As I unclipped my tether and turned around slowly I noticed the four lowers raised. I had been concentrating so intensely I did not see or hear my shipmates handling the sails behind me.

The other bow watches I have been assigned have been much quieter. Even at different times of the day and night the horizon looks the same--a dark grey sky cutting into a black sea at mid watch, a blue sky blending with a cobalt sea at morning watch, a pink sky illuminating a dark blue sea at dawn watch. Staring at the Atlantic Ocean for an hour or more cannot be compared with any activity done on land; it is a strange juxtaposition of extreme concentration and idle time. I sing as I cautiously turn my head to scan 360 degrees and look for traffic, the noises of the wind and waves drowning out the sound of my voice. And when my shipmate comes to relieve me from my post, I am relieved to report "No traffic ahead".

The Priest of Time

2010-05-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

"What is the story behind your name?"

"My name? There is no st--oh wait a minute. Yea man. So I had a bag filled with ganja, right." He picked up a brown paper bag and clamped both hands on the opening. "Four pounds. No, four kilos. And the police, they come an' take me arms." Still holding the bag, he crossed his arms, making eye contact with each member of his audience. "I go like this"--he flung his arms out and with his elbows tight began to flap--"and fly away. So my friends call me Father Tick Tock. I'm still running from the police and time..." His story faded there.

I nodded. The story only slightly helped make sense of the wonderfully bizarre name, yet I understood. Most likely the actual event connected less with Father Tick Tock than the friend who christened him.

We were sitting in a small circle on the prickly grass near the ocean--Father Tick Tock, Tim, James, Lis, Hilary, and I. Father Tick Tock was crouching on his shiny red and black basketball shoes and the red mesh tank top and three gaudy necklaces hung out from his torso. He had initially approached us as soon as we arrived at Boston Bay to sell us marijuana but even after we refused, giving different reasons for why ranging from a shrug to an elaborate lie involving Coast Guard drug testing, he continued to be friendly and interested in talking with us.

Having Father Tick Tock close by, I was more comfortable wandering the shoreline looking for shells and seaglass by myself as Jamaican men interrupted my childish venture to hit on me. New York City instincts still caused my chest to tighten and for my mind to jump to fabrications (I don't have a phone, I'm moving and I don't know my address yet, I have a Canadian boyfriend named Robbie), but when I pointed to where my friends were and Burt or Will or Papa turned to look, I was able to continue scanning the ground. Will even picked up some seaglass for me.

As we walked to Jerk Centre, where he was generously taking us to his favorite vender for dinner, I realized that Father Tick Tock answered my question better than I would have. What is the story behind Babby Malouf Gubba Gubba Dumptruck on Fire? Magubbagubba? Or Piccola Anguria? Chica de Sol? Wheeze? Aliza, even? I don't know but I remember who called me by each name. Nicknames bring me closer to people and I often brainstorm new names to give friends and family. Loula--that's my friend Mallory. Daniel is Bruce, Patricia is Martha, Ellis is Alaska, Rebecca is Cribut, my grandmother is Mother Gooseberry.

I found it strange that Father Tick Tock would adopt us as friends without a business incentive. New Yorkers are known for being snobby and aloof and I could only be skeptical of the sunny Jamaicans. A New Yorker would never run home to sell his mesh tank tops to tourists like Father Tick Tock did for James and Tim. But a New Yorker would not have any mesh tank tops in his dresser drawer either.

The One Hundred Count

2010-05-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

The one hundred count sounds like a marathon or a dietary challenge. In some ways, it is both of these for it requires stamina and endurance, and the seasickness that often accompanies the one hundred count could sell as a weight loss program. In fact, the one hundred count consists of staring at a pile of pink goo under a microscope and poking at it with a sharp metal stick. Highlights include sitting while on watch. Downsides include picking through and identifying tiny zooplankton for an obscene amount of time.

I was almost a quarter way through a one hundred count, calling out the names of the zooplankton I had identified, when I excitedly shouted, "Chaetognath!"

"Really?" the second scientist asked me. Chaetognaths had never shown up on the one hundred counts before. My lab partner came over to the microscope for a second opinion.

"I don't think so, Aliza. Where are the fins?"

"But it's my critter fritter," I defended. "Look at the bristles on its mouth. And it's transparent and clearly a worm." On shore in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, I had studied the chaetognath as my assigned zooplankton and finally seeing it under a microscope, knowing it had been floating in the real live ocean before it was grabbed by the Neuston net and drowned in ethanol by one of my shipmates, ignited a special thrill and passion for this minute worm that I never knew I had.

This moment was one of those hands-on learning experiences advertised in catalogues--when a tedious homework assignment leaps off the page and lies freshly killed in a petri dish.

Three minutes later, I picked out another chaetognath from the mess of pteropods, siphonophores and copepods. This time no one doubted me. Another tally was recorded next to the chaetognath.

Staysail

2010-05-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

"No, no, no! Work with me, please. C'mon, girl, just stay still."

I grit my teeth and sharply turn left, jamming the rudder ten degrees to the port side. The numbers continue to scroll right.

Maybe no one will notice. My fingers strum the helm as I consider bringing the rudder to fifteen degrees. The mains'l begins to luff.

"Shhhh!" I jerk my head upwards and glare at the sail. And of course, this is the moment the mate decides to emerge from the doghouse.

"Mark your head?" she asks me.

"Uhhh two nine zero but I was just at two seven five a moment ago and I'm trying to get back there." Obviously the coy numbered sphere bobbing in a glass dome of water is culpable yet somehow the blame is always put on the helmsperson with a tiny portion set aside for finicky winds and currents.

The compass, suspended in liquid to account for the boat's constant motion, turns its body to face magnetic North. A thin, white, cylindrical magnetic strip sticks up from the spinning black hole, remaining constantly firm in the middle of the doghouse doorway and determining the gravity of my errors. The numbers she reads are not even entirely reliable, since I have to convert from magnetic to true North before I plot our dead reckoning position on a chart. Still though, I stare at her unblinkingly for the allotted hour until I, relieved, am relieved.

The mate stands beside me and tries to give me tips, ones I have heard many times before. Wait twenty seconds before correcting again. Do not correct more than five degrees. Watch the bowsprit, mainmast, wind, current, JT sheet, birds, clouds, wave bubbles. Begin steering the other direction before the boat is done turning. Let Cramer steer herself. See what direction the boat is leaning and put the rudder a bit in the other direction to even out the course.

But the moments in which I am steadily on course are not due to these tactics but simply because the compass has decided to be generous. She taunts me, making me feel like I have finally mastered the helm and staying on course for just enough time for me to think it is safe to drink some water or adjust my ponytail. Then without warning I am off course and frantically pleading.

What a conniving little bitch! I have done nothing to deserve this.

Helmsperson is the position of most obvious power on the boat. The fate of our direction relies on the innocent helmsperson and this small object, which travels from 000 to 360, glorified on its own pedestal. I loathe its tick-marked, white numbers and the triangles that signify the direction points. I loathe the way it dances mockingly before me. I loathe its minion of luffing sails, banging sheets, clanging jiggers, screaming winds and boisterous currents. Even after eighteen years living in Brooklyn, I have never encountered a more terrifyingly powerful gang.

Before embarking on the SSV Corwith Cramer I joked that there was a strong chance I would be responsible for the boat hitting an iceberg. "But you're sailing in the Caribbean," my friends would remark. "There is no ice there."

"Exactly," I would respond.

Now that I am finally sailing, it is no longer a joke. If we were to end up in freezing waters, I would not be surprised. And it would all be the compass's fault.

But I was just at two seven five. I promise!

My Personal Coffin

2010-05-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

My bunk is located on the port side of the SSV Corwith Cramer, the upper and most aft of the six cubbies. Initially I regretted calling this hole my home because of its location in the noisiest part of the boat, the main saloon, where people congregate to eat their meals and talk. In addition, there is no easy way to get into bed since I am a mere five foot four inches. However it is time to reassess this glum logic from thirty days of yore.

1) I hardly ever miss a meal. The galley workers really know how to turn canned produce into excellent food and meals are a great chance to catch up with my shipmates.
2) My bunk is tall enough for me to be able to put on pants without having to lie down like most of my other shipmates.
3) There is a fan inches away from the bottom end of my bunk. Though it blows cool air directly parallel to my bunk, if I dangle half my body off the bunk I can sleep comfortably.
4) Comfy red settees line the edges of the main saloon, including the area right below my bunk. This is convenient for relaxing as well as for when members of A watch come to wake me up. JP or Anna stands on the settee, which allows for optimal hearing and more satisfying wake ups since I can see the face of the person waking me.
5) The lab generator switchbox, located inches away from the top end of my bunk, hums to let me know when science is happening.
6) The water pipe running through the side of my bunk allows for extra hanging space. Along with the wooden pole located outside my bunk for vaulting in, I use the water pipe for damp laundry.
7) My bunk has shelves instead of nets or large, empty spaces. Ideal for organization.
8) The main saloon is centrally located which provides me with superior situational awareness.
9) The only smells are cooking and baking aromas. No greywater stench, head odors or engine room fumes.
10) Six other shipmates share the main saloon as a living space--Maggie, Heart Break, Sarah Sarah Dixon, Beta, Anna and Di--which makes it more entertaining than other spaces on the boat.
11) There is ample room both in my bunk and in the main saloon. Chances of me smashing into something are slim, though that does not mean I don't lose my balance multiple times a day.

Though I am fond of my bunk, I do not enter my space unless necessary. This is due to my aversion to being alone as well as my dislike towards the musty smell. The red curtains, thick enough so that I can change without shame, retain all heat within the small box. It has taken some practice but I can vault into my bunk without bruising my shins, a feat I am proud of. And now six hours of sweaty sleep await me and I look forward to curling up in the dank, yellowing polka dots of my soft mattress until JP sings my name repeatedly or Anna shines a light in my face and yells TRUCK!

The Crameid: Book One

2010-05-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

I sing of a brigantine and seventeen students,

Who first set sail from the Virgin Islands;
They were not the first on the Cramer,
And will not be the last,
But the Caribbean waters were foreign to them.
From St. Croix to St. Maarten to Samaná, Dominican Republic
They were jostled and pushed by Neptune;
Most leaned over the side of the boat in anguish
As she rolled, but three strong ones--James, JP and Patricia--
Ate their fill of galley delights and lay down, satisfied,
In their cramped and musty bunks.

Tell me the reason, oh Muse, for the bioluminescence
Shining in the waves, almost as a reflection
Of the thousands of stars visible on clear nights.
Or of why there are no phyllosoma in the Sargasso Sea,
Or of how the clewl'n works to strike the tops'l.
How long would it take these seventeen students
To feel confident in their many jobs at sail in the Atlantic,
As a weather reader, a boat checker, an equipment deployer,
A line coiler, an assistant chef, a chlorophyll-a data processor,
An assistant engineer, a writer, a reader, a winkler,
A sailor.
Can such apathy hold the minds of professors?

There was a city they called Port Antonio--
Certainly welcomed by those who could not speak Spanish--
A city situated on the Atlantic Ocean, yet far
From the Dominican Republic from whence they came,
And the United States they think about often.
This land promised information about the Mooretown villagers,
About biodiversity and ecotourism, about reggae and literature.
The people would treat these seventeen students like tourists,
Which they were and were not simultaneously,
And some would feel uncomfortable looking at trinkets
While the island rocked back and forth like a large floating raft.

After adventures in Jamaica, presenting scientific findings
And hiking to marvel at green wonders not seen in the blue ocean
That the students would soon regard as their home,
They would set off on the last leg of their onerous journey
Up the Yucatán and back into the States.
The Captain prayed that King Aeolus would be kind
And offer them a favorable wind at little cost.
Once in Key West, a few would travel with family,
One would go see a space shuttle launch,
One would study for his LSATs,
And the rest would sail together to Charleston.

Just out of sight of Samaná, the students already
Had begun to wonder what would happen after
The Cramer had washed herself of the seventeen;
Would they ever be all together again?
The group had held together just as a copepod clinging to
A clump of Sargassum weed manages to nestle in a groove
And avoid being drowned in ethanol, instead being tossed
Once again back into the sea, a science evader.
Would all projects be turned in on time?
Would the water for the pasta ever boil in the galley?
The students constantly asked themselves questions.
Questions related to anxiety and homesickness,
Ignorance and frustration, curiosity and awe.
Hands to set the jib!
Which one is the jib downhaul again?

Take Me to Zen Yen

2009-11-27T14:55:00.000-08:00

The young Vietnamese boy sat patiently at the Yen river’s edge, his hands resting lightly on the bamboo oars tied to the thin, red, metal rowboat. He looked up at us, wrinkles forming on his forehead as he raised his eyebrows, and waited until we had boisterously situated ourselves in his boat. Without a word, he began to back up his boat into the water and steer us out into the wide expanse of vegetation. No introduction, no complaints. Strong black coffee, the smell of burning incense, the startling clash of a metal gong, the gleam of gilded wood and lacquer statues, seven hundred and sixty two slick stone steps, the squeaks of bats, the dank wonder of an underground niche, and the tickling sensation of sweat trickling down our spines had energized us and we hardly noticed the thin boy, tan like the twigs floating aimlessly in the ripples.

He wore a maroon fake Dolce & Gabbana shirt with a white flap on the left shoulder and another white flap on the right breast. His uneven brown hair was carefully combed over his dark brown eyes, which gazed at us four Americans uneasily and with a hint of envy. Meanwhile, we joked around with our friends in the other rowboats, taking pictures and splashing water. And then suddenly, all the boats were gone. That’s when we finally saw the boy struggling to fight the current. 

The five of us were totally alone--no sounds but that of the oars dipping into the glittering water, nothing to see but mountains soft with tufts of green trees, tall grasses and pink lotus flowers, and the reflection of the grey and white clouds in the water. The river was ours. The silence was a peaceful break from the smoggy chaos of honking motorcycles that defined our new home, Hanoi.

His name was Trung. This was his first time rowing tourists from the Perfume Pagoda. He was sorry he was taking so long.

I was sorry he was our age, yet had dropped out of school to take us from one unfamiliar shoreline to another. I was sorry his arm muscles did not have enough power to continue rhythmically circling the oars. I was sorry I could not help him.

He would stretch a tired smile whenever we did something silly to amuse him, like singing Santigold or daintily dangling slices of bread in front of his face for him to bite. Otherwise he wore a tight-lipped grim line of a mouth, eyes squinting in pain.

Middle aged women in conical hats streamlined past our rowboat, laughing and teasing our faithful Charon.

He was sorry he was taking so long. I was sorry I could not help him.

As we inched along, I felt something puff up and expand under the bottom of my right ribcage. A sense of relief and satisfaction perhaps, or elation. After three weeks in Vietnam my regrets and hesitations had splintered and were being carried away by the river’s current. It occurred to me that we might never be reunited with the other Americans waiting patiently for us at the shore, that if the clouds decided to burst and send down rain our rowboat would fill up within minutes. But these thoughts did not worry me. I knew I would be all right. And I knew Trung would not be.

Mai Chau

2009-10-31T21:34:00.000-07:00

I was scraping the last bits of rice from my lunch bowl when I heard the first hollow boom of thunder. My sore muscles tightened and I sat still on the bamboo floor of our stilt house homestay in Xo, chopsticks perched over my bowl. As soon as the drumming began on the roof I turned to my friends circled around the lunch platter and announced with unblinking eyes, “I’m taking a shower. Right now.” Miniature soap, shampoo and conditioner in hand, I hurried down the stairs and stood on the cement ground with my sunburned face straining toward the foggy gray sky. Red dirt trickled from my hair, my hiking clothes, my arms and my legs, collecting by my bare feet before mixing with the clear rain and disappearing. I straightened my head to allow the cool water down my spine.

Facing the stilt house, I saw my friend Cole scurrying down the slanted planks of wood to join me. Laughing, we poured shampoo on our heads and watched as the white bubbles cleaned our sweaty t-shirts. Soon more people were shivering barefoot on the stone ground, thankful that there was a force able to relieve us of this menial task. After a three hour trek in the mud, all anyone wants to do is stand under a powerful shower. Since Xô is one of the poorest villages in all of Vietnam, our school of sixteen teenagers were not going to complain about the water basin and buckets. But nature helped us out in the end, stopping the slapping rain suddenly so we could change into dry clothes and march back inside, knowing we saved a substantial amount of cistern water for the Xô villagers. Charity feels wonderful.

The Relentless Plea

2009-09-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

“You buy,” the woman always insists, sneaking up behind me or waiting for me at the corner, looking up into my eyes with a woeful expression.

“Dạ, không,” I stutter, shaking my head and scanning the motorbikes combing the street. I have no interest in her sticky orange bag of pineapple chunks, her t-shirts with a bright Vietnamese flag or a sketch of a temple or the phrase “I heart pho,” her toothpicks, or her postcards.

As I attempt to cross an intersection while still keeping all ten of my toes, I feel the postcard on my hand or the t-shirt over the crook of my arm. Giving me the product when there is no money in my hand should not be a smart business tactic, but it allows the desperate vendor (and every vendor is desperate) to advertise her product further, allowing me to see the picture of a densely packed street in detail or feel the cotton cloth against my flushed skin.

It is hard to escape the guilt. It is even harder to escape the street vendor.

Each ‘no’ causes a surge in the vendor’s persistence. This makes the New York City foreigner uncomfortable, since I am used to homeless people dejectedly calling out for money, but staying in one spot. The personal contact here in Hanoi forces me to flee into the paved road of honking Honda Dreams, hoping that the street vendor finds another tourist.

Everyone uses jewelry, fans, hats and cigarette lighters, but the street vendors never seem to harass their fellow Vietnamese pedestrians. Only Westerners can be swayed, and they cannot understand that I do not fit this stereotype.

Whenever I leave the comforts of my room for the sweltering chaos outside, I worry about the vendors. They can be intrusive even without speaking, still forcing me onto the busy street. Small stores densely packed together leak out onto the sidewalk, creating a blanket of shoes or handmade cloth bags or spare motorcycle parts.

No space to move, no space to breathe. Just like home.

¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto! (What have I done to deserve this?!)

2009-07-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

“¡Tengo dieciseis años! (I’m sixteen years old!)” I shouted frantically over the nurses’ chatter and the clatter of glass syringes on the metal cart. “¡No puedo perder tanta sangre! (I can’t lose that much blood!)”

The Spanish nurses ignored me, pushing the IV to a corner of the crowded room to make way for the two-tiered cart of syringes, clear liquids and gauze. “Aspetta, aspetta per favore! (Wait, please wait!)” I babbled in Italian, fear oozing into my language comprehension. I was going to die alone in a Spanish emergency room just because I had asked for a blood test. I don’t remember mentioning “Please drain me of all the blood I have and replace it with a mysterious clear liquid, por favor” in any of the three languages I can speak.

“Una análisis de sangre, sólo para seguridad (a blood test, just to be sure).”

I had become mildly concerned when I had watched first a swarm of tiny bumps march up my feet stopping at my knees, up my back starting at my waist, and from my shoulder to my elbow. Then I had noted the bumpy pink carpet as it completely covered my chest and arms. And now, my hands were so swollen with boils that I had to ask a friend to put my shoes on and open my water bottle for me. I surrendered and tattled on my mysterious rash, alerting my summer program’s staff.

But finding the cure was more painful than the affliction. A day earlier, a dermatologist had gouged out one of the boils on my hand for a lab biopsy and then stitched it up with coarse black thread--a scratch, he had told me in comforting English. Really, a lie or a mistranslation. I naively nodded consent, a universal signal.

Now I had learned from my error and no longer trusted Spanish doctors. They are notoriously lazy in Barcelona, working from 9 to 2, followed by siesta time, and then maybe returning back to work. Weekends? Debe estar bromeando (You’ve got to be joking). Emergencies must be at a convenient hour. I had walked into the emergency room with flaming hands and a mini Spanish-English dictionary on a Saturday afternoon. Not the time for an emergency, silly American girl.

A young doctor with dyed blonde hair had rolled her eyes at me, and explained step by step in a high pitched, overly enunciated voice that she was going to prick my arm and fill only a small vial with my blood and then using the same needle point to minimize pain, she was going to make my hands all better with a cortisone drip.

I looked at her beauty and squinted. Though she was the antithesis of the chubby, wheezing dermatologist with wispy white hair from the day before, she was Spanish and he was Spanish.

“¿Puede esperar un momento? (Can you hold on a moment?)” I dialed long-distance to my parents and explained the situation. Then while my aunt, a retired pediatrician, called me, my parents tried to reach my doctor. Then my aunt hung up so that my parents could call again, and my aunt called my mom’s cellphone to discuss the matter.

“Vale (Fine),” I agreed, holding out my right arm tentatively. Would this prick really be a prick? Or would it be a hole in my vein and then, oops lunch break, come back again in two days during the mid-morning and she’ll finish sewing up the wound that she herself, a professional doctor, inflicted?

I lay back, certain my picture would appear in medical textbooks throughout the country and throughout the world. Bad adjustment to Spanish tapas? Doubtful. Eczema? Perhaps. Allergy to gluten? Possibly. Herpes? Patient repeatedly denies, but doctors remain skeptical.

These professional diagnoses were just as ridiculous as the non-professional ones I had received earlier in the week. That Thursday afternoon, I had been in the computer room waiting for my friend Matt to finish his Google fix. “Do you have menopause?” he yelled to me. Heads turned. I shook my head no and awkwardly laughed.

“Then it’s not your progesterone.”

“Thanks, Matt.”

My second non-professional diagnosis: meningitis scare. For an Andalucian museologist, the best way to tell if someone has fatal brain and spine swelling is an indication of a fever.

At a quarter to two in the morning on that Saturday, one of my Spanish teachers, José, sprinted to my dorm room calling my room to tell me he was coming. As I waited outside my door in my pajamas, tired and utterly confused, he raced down the hallway flailing a thermometer. Without a word, he jabbed the thermometer into my armpit and waited for thirty seconds with deep concern carved on his young face. Before I could even ask, the thermometer was yanked away and held up to the ceiling light. “Estás bien (You’re okay),” he stuttered and left. “Buenas noches, (Good night)” I called out to him.

Now as the large IV bag drained into my bloodstream, my hands and arms were no longer hot, but the cortisone drip did not immediately make everything all better like the nurse had promised. The boils stubbornly refused to yield. In time the carpety rash turned from pink to white and shrank into little acne pimples. The boils on my hand turned from red to purple to white, shrank into squishy lumps and disappeared. The bumps on my legs and back became a tannish yellow color and left dotted remnants--a souvenir.

I had paid 100 euros for the emergency room, 70 euros for each of three dermatologist visits, 110 euros for the lab biopsy and 30 euros for meds. Diagnosis? Priceless. I was allergic to the sun.

A Step Forward for Europe: Amendment on Ban of Ugly Produce

2009-06-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

When I first read the headline “Europe Relaxes Rules on Sale of Ugly Fruits and Vegetables,” I couldn’t believe I was not reading The Onion but the International News section of the New York Times with the dateline from Brussels. Apparently, “misshapen fruit and vegetables won a reprieve on Wednesday from the European Union as it scrapped rules banning overly curved, extra knobbly or oddly shaped produce from supermarket shelves.” I was relieved to find that food not meeting “European norms” will still be allowed into the country--with a warning that the food is “substandard,” of course.

It is good to know that Europe has begun to embrace diversity. In an act of tolerance and acceptance, twenty six types of marred fruits and vegetables will now be legally available for purchase. The unprejudiced food markets will help the European economy as well as alleviate the hunger of millions. Such an act of benevolence, though countered by roughly half of nations under the European Union, has shocked me. The reprieve can only leave me begging Europe for more of its selective kindness.

Europe took a big step forward when it scrapped the law against abnormal and weird-looking food. Could Europe maybe extend its recent unbias to human beings as well? Far-fetched, I know, but maybe the European nations will make a connection between that twisty carrot and that man from Somalia. If unique is the new uniform, then maybe the Italians won’t stare at the Asian-Italians on the bus or the Spanish won’t glare at the Russian couple speaking Russian on the street. French Muslims might be able to wear their burkas in school and all Albanians or Romanians won’t be labelled as pickpockets.

My school in Viterbo and a local Italian high school sponsored a forum where we could practice unfamiliar languages and compare cultures. In December, thirty teenagers sat in a circle, pondering how we were similar. “We all celebrate Christmas?” an Italian student offered, gracefully practicing her British accent. Enthusiastic agreement was met by two shy nos: one Italian and I both shamefully admitted that we had never celebrated Christmas. With persistent urgings from her English teacher, the girl explained to the group in halting English how her family would celebrate Eid-ul-Adha that December instead of Christmas. I wanted to ask her where she would find a mosque. I wanted to ask her how it feels to be the only Muslim. Does she hide her religion to evade taunts? She turned her head to me and gave the pointy-eyebrow-bulging-eye sign common amongst students desperately but subtly asking for a life line. Eager to help her out, I began my lecture. The Italian teenagers were unimpressed with the miracle (burning oil versus immaculate conception?) and the dreidel seemed pointless and boring. The description of sweets and presents were met with curt approval. The five American students were blasé, concentrating instead on my Italian grammar and pronunciation. Luckily, I had rehearsed this speech already to my host family, so only one category of alien revealed itself through my lecture.

Brooklyn is known for its squat and stocky mass of dense, squishy dough: the bagel. The bagel is known as Jew food--with shmear, of course. Growing up in bagel-ridden Brooklyn, I felt the Jewish presence all around me. The triumphant beige synagogue with its adjacent complex was just a few blocks away and I never hid my religion. I would compare with my classmates our favorite Jewish holidays and “bar mitzvah season” came and went like a 90’s fad. I was unprepared for the role as the Jewish representative. I did not know the entire Israeli history or even a recipe for Haroset! For shame, for shame.

What should I have done when my host sister Sarah’s friend Simone once showed me a swastika pin his father gave him? Sarah’s rowdy group of friends and I had just finished our pizzas and we were dawdling in a piazza, waiting for the next morning to begin. Simone was not one of the neo-Nazi skinhead teens that lived in Viterbo. His hair was long and straightened: a typical goth just like the others in the “Black Label Society” to which Sarah also belonged. He had given me jewelry and had always shouted my name whenever he saw me, playing with the very American ‘er’ in Goldberg. We had been friends. I quickly diverted my eyes from the pin and looked at my sister. She tried to explain to him the significance. He shot her down. I opened my mouth, breathed out the cold air, and that was that. Should I have ranted about my grandfathers in Auschwitz and the tortuous three years my grandmother and aunt endured as children? Probably. But maybe I was looking at those jagged and geometric lines as an American Jew. Maybe I was being overly critical about the sharp shape of two pieces of metal placed on top of each other. It’s just a symbol, Simone said, and put the pin back in his pocket. The Hindus use it too.

But now that the bulgy pears are bitten with the same or almost the same delight as a juicy and perfect one, I can imagine walking the streets of Italy without passing the “Viva Hitler!” declarations, or even bringing my friend home for dinner without my Italian host sisters commenting on how he looks like a squirrel. I can now imagine my host family introducing me to guests as “Aliza” instead of “The American, who is Jewish. Oh, her name is Aliza. With a z.” The possibilities seem enormous (perhaps a liberal immigration policy?) but it is too early to lift my hopes.

It’s just a banana with abnormal curvature. It’s natural and the Hawaiians don’t seem to mind.

Dictionaries

2009-06-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

Dictionaries are plane tickets. Flipping through the alphabet, I find words that will come in handy. Bathroom, tissues, soap, where, street, please, sorry, that, there, stop. I enjoy guessing an English definition by listening to the sound of a foreign word. Fango. Faaaaango. FanGO! The Spanish word for mud sounds so exciting, soothing and inviting. Edepol. Dull and dreary. Yet, it is the Latin word for “by Pollux!”

My favorite words are the ones that are rarely used in its language. Living with Italians for nine months, I never heard passerella, the Italian word for catwalk, or divampare, meaning to burst into flames, or loculo, a burial niche. I love the words that don’t exist in English, like fanfarronear, the Spanish verb for to show off in an arrogant and haughty way, or the Latin word sonipes, meaning prancing steed.

While reading my history homework or punching a function into my calculator, my friend slumps in a library chair and proclaims “I’m bored”. I stare at her, motionless. I want to take her chin in my hand and swivel her head so she can see the possibilities around her. I want to point out the entertainment like I point out the good movies at Blockbuster. But everyone uses dictionaries. No one, however, uses them with glee and fervor. Except me, of course.

I carry a foreign language mini-dictionary like ladies carry lipstick, as a permanent staple in my bag. My attachment to perusing dictionaries confuses the strangers on the subway: is she an American tourist trying to brush up her Spanish or a diligent Spanish student trying to grasp the exotic English language? If I speak to a friend in English on our way to Manhattan, I’m either secretly applauded for my impeccable American accent or ignored. If I speak to a friend in English on our train ride to Rome, I’m either glared at for being American or quietly commended for my dedication to master English.

I don’t skim dictionaries due to frustration with my own language; in fact, I love English as well. English has its own quirks. Though my other dictionaries boast of inane and onomatopoetic words, English takes the roots of these ancient and romance languages, adding an entirely new dimension. Yes, the Latin verb effervescere, to boil up, is quite lovely. But an effervescent personality? I bet those Roman scholars didn’t see that one coming. Bankrupt is derived from the Italian words meaning broken bench. Alarm used to mean to the arms, taken from those melodramatic Italians. Dictionaries are seen as dull books brimming with dry facts. But what about the mysteries and stories? Italians, for no explained reason, use the verb to make a bottle in the sense of to fail in a performance. So that verb, fare fiasco, has graciously given us the sharply consonant word fiasco. With a bent and coffee stained mini-dictionary in hand, no fiascos can come my way.

Kill the Pigeons!

2009-06-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

No one knows this, but last year while I was in Viterbo, I was a pimp. No, it was not a project for my class trip to Pompeii. Nor did I benefit from the job. In fact it was forced on me by...pigeons.

I was lying on the floor of my room, struggling with a confusing image of Mercury told by Virgil in cruelly complicated Latin: he, headlong, sent himself towards the waves with his whole body, similar to a bird which, around the shores, around the fishy rocks, flies low lying near the sea? The Cyllenian progeny coming from the maternal bird? While debating whether to ask my host mother for help, knowing this usually proved more complicated and frustrating since I rarely said “headlong” or “progeny” in Italian, soft cooing distracted me from the Aeneid. I looked up from my laptop and spied a pigeon sitting comfortably in the flower box on my balcony.

I smiled and remembered fond Latin class memories in room 28 with an irate and exasperated Ms. Durham, banging on the air conditioner to soften the blasting coos. Pigeons were the only familiar link between my Italian life and my American life. But after the one singing pigeon, more came. Soon six pigeons would flap around, ruining the plants and belting out unrhythmic chants. They were flirting with each other and using my balcony as a brothel. Every day they gathered right outside my window earlier and earlier to start the disorganized chorus, just as every day I worked my way through another book of the Aeneid.

In May, I excitedly flipped to book 12, the final book. Having read the fantastically gory war scenes, I wanted to take action. A new epic poem would be written about me, called the Alizid, about sex, violence and pigeons rather than arms and a man. But on the bus, I read about Aeneas’ injury. Venus, his mother, shrouded herself in mist in order to come down from Mount Olympus and save her son from the seemingly incurable arrow wound. I looked up from my lovingly crumpled book and sighed. My mother was farther away from Italy than Mount Olympus seemed to be and she did not have the magic powers to heal my pigeon scratches and bites. Pigeons are evil creatures -- I could lose an eye!

Early one mid-May morning, I stumbled to the glass door that separated me from the feathery prostitutes. My alarm clock blinked 5:30 as I glared out at the pigeons. My new alarm clock had no snooze button; they had won the day.

Even though I was planning to wake up two hours later to take my Italian AP exam, I marched four steps into the bathroom to take a shower and soothe my anger. Even from the opposite end of my apartment building, I felt their conniving presence. Careful as I always was to not splash any water on the tiled floor, I thought I noticed the floor shaking slightly in rhythm with my archenemies.

My previous passivity had been like Aeneas’ initial hesitation when Turnus pleaded for mercy. But these pigeons were not pleading for mercy--they knew the anguish they were causing me and they were reveling in my pain. They had to die. So I drove my sword deep into their chest, just like Aeneas did. Well...I bought colorful metallic windmills to scare them away.

Months later, in my white splattered brownstone, my host family emailed me pictures of the fist-sized “piccioncini”. Among the shiny shrink paper that crackle in the wind were yellow fuzzballs lying lazily in the dead flowers of my balcony flower boxes. How could I still be angry? Besides, killing off an entire community of birds would probably have altered the entire food population and I would have become a biologist’s worst enemy. Thankfully, walking through Brooklyn is not as terrifying as walking through Saint Marco’s Square in Venice, where the pigeons actually rest on pedestrians if they stop moving. So I will just have to shake my head in a sympathetic manner like I did when the Italian government fell for the 61st time since Mussolini, and let Italy deal with its own problems.

An American Jew’s First Christmas

2009-06-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

“Dov’è l’albero di Natale? (Where is the Christmas tree?)” I asked my father. It was Christmas Eve in Sora, a small city surrounded by snow-capped mountains 200 kilometers south from my apartment in Viterbo, and I had been planning to sneak my family’s Christmas presents under a big, green pine tree covered with flashing lights and homemade ornaments later that night.

My father apologetically rushed to his bedroom closet and I watched, bewildered, as he rummaged through dress shoes and work tools, looking for my Christmas tree.

“Ecco qua (Here it is),” he announced, brushing the dust off his pants and holding up a small cardboard box. My father delicately took out a miniature plastic tree and placed it on top of the television in the kitchen. He yanked the black cord into a nearby socket and the tips of the fake pine magically flashed bright colors. I forced a smile, and reluctantly placed my carefully wrapped gifts under the cabinet that held the television that held the Christmas tree.

I had been waiting for this night ever since October, when I noticed my mother literally roasting chestnuts over an open fire, preparing our dessert for that night. I imagined my grandfather dressing up as Babbo Natale (Father Christmas) and my entire extended family gathering together to sing Christmas carols and drink eggnog. I would bake sugar cookies in various festive shapes with my two sisters, and we would share a friendly laugh whenever I would spill flour on the floor. My teachers would assign me no homework over the vacation and I would casually speak rapid Italian to everyone I met.

As I stood in front of a small, boxy, white house which would be my new home for the next week, clutching in one hand a plastic bag containing two pairs of clothes and a toothbrush and another bag filled with presents in my other hand, my newly accustomed familiarity with Italian life zoomed away down the adjacent, noisy highway. Memories of my first day with my Italian family overwhelmed me, and I remembered my mother force-feeding me the contents of the refrigerator while my father yelled at me for not knowing the significance of the American flag and not believing in UFOs and aliens and my sisters nervously translating his rapid dialogue. As I piled blankets on the cot set up next to my sisters’ bed, I hoped my introduction into my extended family would be more graceful and silently prepared myself for various scenarios.

On Christmas Eve, my grandmother had prepared a traditional Christmas meal for the family. Most of my Christmas knowledge comes from the annual Christmas musical I was in for five years, The Christmas Revels, so I could only imagine that we would be eating a Christmas goose or a Christmas pig. I was not expecting a plate of rice teeming with steaming seafood, still with their pale red shells, beady eyes, curved tails and some even with spiny legs. But I pretended I was eating chocolate, a survival technique I had learned from Anne Frank’s diary when I was eight, though my sister Sarah still had to hold my hand whenever I encountered a particularly large and lifelike part of my meal.

During dinner, though I was being as Italian as I could possibly be simply by eating and not saying anything stupid and nonsensical with my bland American accent, my mother proudly described to her family all the strange things I do. My aunts and uncles gaped at me as my mother announced all my eccentricities, such as not using a hairdryer, running in the garden without a coat on, waking up at seven in the morning and still catching my 7:20 bus to school, and living in Brooklyn--right next to where the Twin Towers stood.

After dinner, my new cousins distracted me with difficult conversation in an unfamiliar dialect that sounded more like Yiddish than the Italian I had been studying for four months while my parents and sisters snuck out to buy me Christmas presents after discovering that I knew enough to buy presents for them. The next morning, my family picked up the four packages I had placed on the freezing, speckled grey linoleum floor and in return they handed me a large, ostentatious, bright pink felt purse and an Italian espresso maker, already preparing for my impending return back to America. Since moving in, I have given my family other presents, so I knew how they would treat my Christmas presents. On a trip to my garage one day to look inside all my suitcases for my American brother’s missing glasses, I noticed a shelf with all the gifts I had meticulously chosen for their specific needs: slippers scientifically designed for comfort, bilingual Italian-English books, patterned silk headbands and glass rings. There is also a small shelf in my kitchen for the regional wine, cookies, mushrooms and chocolate I pick up for my family during school field trips. I knew my sister Sarah and father would never wear the shirts I bought for them, my sister Erika would never listen to the tango CDs I burned for her or use the thick winter scarf I purchased, and the DVD for my mother would soon be covered in dust from the garage.

But like my Christmas festivity predictions, these too were slightly off. As soon as we returned from Sora, my father unloaded the sparse luggage and copious leftover food crammed in the trunk and immediately sat down on the couch to watch my mother’s Christmas present with me. My mother, who is usually soft spoken and tiptoes around me with only the occasional bout of confidence and sarcastic humor, seemed only vaguely interested in her Christmas gift and left my father and I in the living room to enjoy the present that wasn’t ours while she did the laundry. I explained Reese’s Pieces and pizza delivery services to my father, and he explained to me how aliens really do exist.

“E.T. telefona casa,” Spielberg’s character robotically begged.

Once the movie was finished, my father made room in the cabinet under the television for the DVD, nestled between a mini-series about the life of Jesus Christ and an educational video about physics. Though I was not pasty and withered like E.T., I called home and excitedly recounted to my American mother what my father had just done, relieved and shocked that I had finally purchased something that my family would actually use. Though I still do strange things, I’m learning to be less of an alien.

Mangia

2009-06-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

The most common Italian expression is, “Mangia! Mangia! (Eat! Eat!).” Here, I am always so preoccupied with the disturbing tactics my host mother slyly uses to stuff me full of carbs that I often forget that there are people in Italy who suffer from an opposite dilemma: they are starving.

In Viterbo, there is a residential quarter about a three minute walk from my school, hidden away down a long, lonely street. Dilapidated houses are concealed by the shadows from the back walls of expensive bakeries, coffee shops, pizza parlors and butcher stores that line the main road of Via Cavour. A green shutter with peeling paint hangs off the window frame of a small, cream-colored house and points down a street to a square, pastel pink building with a small stained-glass oval window planted in the middle near the roof. This abandoned church, converted into a free hostel and cafeteria, is now the refuge for alcoholics, homeless people, the developmentally disabled, and tsunami victims from Sri Lanka.

As I entered the already busy kitchen, which was the size of my entire apartment and cluttered with gleaming metal ovens, stoves, counters, and utensils, I had a single concern: do these Italians actually expect me to cook? I recalled my host mother’s sullen face when I explained to her that if I ever tried to cook dinner, I would probably burn down our apartment building. Donning a white apron and rubber gloves and breathing in the smell of rosemary and the cold Viterbese wind, I prepared in my head how to say the dreadful news: “Non posso cucinare (I cannot cook).” Luckily, these Italian chefs did not trust an American girl with their precious roasted rosemary chicken, baked potatoes and minestrone soup, so I made salad and lent an extra hand when necessary, doing the work no one wanted.

As I was washing each leaf on each lettuce head, carefully checking the front and back for bruises or dirt, the soup kitchen’s owner, a tall, plump man named Giovanni with wispy white hair and a cleanly shaved beard, dressed in a tight, white sweater and track pants under an oil-spattered apron, shared with me his thoughts on ‘mangia’.

“I work here to try and relieve the suffering and pain so many people must face daily. A good lunch can erase the traumas these poor people have experienced. So much suffering. Soooo much suffering,” he sighed, peeling potatoes. Giovanni cannot sober the alcoholics, house the homeless, repair the neurological defects in the developmentally disabled, or transport the tsunami victims back to Sri Lanka, but he can give these hungry people lunch every Saturday afternoon.

As I grabbed a handful of the lettuce I had washed five times, and hacked at it with a small knife, I kept thinking of how connected Italians are to their food. There are not three flavors of gelato, there are thirty. Meals do not have one course, they have five. I am forced to feign pity whenever my host sister complains about how hungry she is because she had no time for lunch and therefore only had a prosciutto crudo and parmesan sandwich with an apple. Great care is taken to make sure everything is fresh and of top quality. The refrigerator in our home is always bursting with yogurt, mozzarella, oranges, celery, milk, eggs, potatoes, lettuce and carrots, and I am not allowed to leave the house in the morning until I have taken a snack for break time.

Living with my Italian family prepared me well for the task that lay before me: giving people food. Even the people with perpetually grumbling stomachs interjected “Basta! Basta cosi! (Enough! Enough as it is!)” as we sloshed food onto the plates, ignoring their pleas.

“Vorrá il pane? (Would you like bread?)” I politely asked a tall, wheezing middle aged man with blue veins popping out of his large pale hands, clutching the edges of his black plastic tray.

“No grazie, (No thank you,)” he answered in a raspy voice.

Giovanni, overhearing as he artfully stacked glistening chicken breasts onto a small, flimsy, plastic plate, pointed out his left elbow towards the bread, pouted and raised his eyebrows. Understanding perfectly this special Italian food sign language, I asked, “Quante fette di pane vuole? (How many slices of bread do you want?)”

“Nessuna, (None,)” he replied as he began to edge his tray down, slightly annoyed.

Cheerfully, I tossed two slices of bread onto his tray and directed my attention to the next famished ospite (guest).

“Vorrá il pane? (Would you like bread?)” I asked a thirty year old Indian woman in a sequined, magenta sari, balancing a toddler on her hip.

“Certo! (Of course!)” she exclaimed, pushing her two plates of chicken, two bowls of minestrone soup, and one plate of salad as far to the edge of the tray as she could to make room for more food. Mimicking Giovanni, I built a Roman column using five bread slices. Then, without even asking, I decorated the edges of her chipped black tray with little brightly colored chocolate eggs, which caused the toddler to stretch her tired face into a smile and kick her legs.

That night at dinner, my host mother eagerly repeated the question she asks at every meal, “Vorrai ancora? (Would you like some more?)”

As I opened my mouth to refuse, she quickly placed another piece of fish on my plate and edged a piece of bread down the tablecloth until it rested on the edge of my knife. However, instead of inwardly groaning, I chuckled and picked up my fork, ready to begin clearing my plate a second time. My host mother cannot cure homesickness, stress, or sleepiness, but the least she can do is give me a wonderful, filling meal.

Quest’é Halloween

2009-06-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

“Ciao!” I exclaimed, extending the ‘o’ like I hear all the teenagers do here in Viterbo. I was waiting at the bus stop and I had finally worked up the courage to greet the only other person who waits at that stop. He looked at me wide-eyed, murmured “Ciaooo” and, taking out a cigarette, turned the opposite way.

It was Halloween, a friendly holiday which I thought would be the perfect opportunity to get to know the other Italian teenagers who live in my district and go to school on my bus. I was embarrassingly wrong. Italians don’t dress up for Halloween. I do. Everyone at my American school does. As I tried to figure out this fourteen year old’s rudeness, I remembered the face paint and the hair dye: there was an Italian flag painted on my right cheek and an American flag painted on my left cheek, and the right side of my head was dyed green while the left was blue.

Even though I was dressed up half Italian, I had never felt more American. Usually I am introduced as “the American” by my family, but that was not necessary as I walked through the winding cobblestone street with my friend Mallory, who had dressed up as Wanda from Where’s Waldo. Italian strangers interrupted us to practice their English, yelling phrases from store entrances such as “Good night!”, “Bye bye!”, and “How are you?”.

The next morning I celebrated their holiday, All Saint’s Day. I awoke to find that my host parents and grandmother had gone to a nearby church. My host sisters were at home because, as they explained to me, they are perfect and do not need to pray and absolve their sins. They invited me to join my flawed family members, if I wanted. Having just celebrated a Pagan holiday, I decided I had committed too many sins to be absolved, and I stayed home.

Defining Viterbo

2009-06-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

Early man crawled from Africa up to the craggy boot. The Villanovans sparked the history of ingenious Europeans, giving way to the Etruscans. What started with large brushstrokes in underground niches became magnificent stone temples and triumphant arches. Shiny chariots raced across the continent, claiming the newly blood-soaked lands as their own. The first Popes moved to Viterbo and initiated the conclave in the large building complex that rests on the top of a hill. During dangerous times when the Vatican City (now built) was unfit for Pope habitation, he would come back to Viterbo and distract himself with natural hot springs and a humble Catholic following. Viterbo now goes quietly unnoticed. Cities in its vicinity recognize it as the city they have never been to and never plan to visit. Rome is starting to get sick of all the tourists that clog its historic landmarks and supports the plan for a new airport in Viterbo, to divert those damn Americans.

Viterbo is most itself when the biting wind whips around the medieval walls. The sun is setting, birds are flocking to the trees, and everyone is outside. There are no seats available in the cafès and espressos shoot out of their chrome boxes every second. I hear Italian in every piazza, in every alley, in every pizzeria. Everyone knows everyone, and it is a chance for the citizens of Viterbo to recount their day to all recognizable individuals and their spouses, friends and children.

They hobble in bundled scarves and puffy winter jackets down the Corso, stopping every few steps to greet another friend. They stomp their feet in the snowless cold, but they are vivacious and happy. I smile as my sister introduces me to new friends and muster up a loud “WHEEEH CIAOOO” when someone excitedly greets me, claiming to have met me before. I nod and laugh at the small talk, shivering and making mental notes: Erika’s friend Francesca’s boyfriend Andrea’s brother Giacomo’s girlfriend Violetta’s mother Antonella and her husband Massimo. Then I study their faces, knowing that I will see them again and knowing that I will forget that I had seen them previously.

No matter the temperature, as long as there are verbose Italians and espresso, it is a good dusk in Viterbo. But they cannot stay for long because their stomachs are grumbling and their thoughts return to the best part of the day: dinner. With thoughts of heaps of spaghetti and sizzling rabbit, they make their way back home as the sun disappears behind the hills and the city lights illuminate the cobblestones.

Spending a year in Viterbo has made me the person I am now. There were days I was frustrated with my choice: when I sprinted to the bus stop at 7:10 only to watch it pass me by or when the old walls seemed to suffocate me and remove me from the outside world.

As time passed I would still glare jealously at the young children who babbled perfect Italian, forgetting that they were not showing off but were actually from the country. People live in Viterbo! It was often hard to believe. I picked up some bad habits, like a caffeine addiction and a crazed need for ritual order. When I am in Viterbo I feel much more relaxed. I can take deep breaths because the air is light and fresh, unlike Naples or Rome. The purring of stray cats comforts me and I don’t mind wiping off the dust from their matted fur on my pants. Everyone takes a special interest in cheering me up and making me feel welcome and at home.

In the morning, there is a slow rush of Italian students as they make their way to their respective public schools. My morning bus fills up with chatty students trying to impress their friends by blasting Mika from iPod speakers. I hastily scribble the last answers to my math homework, stopping only when confronted by a wide-eyed student who has heard that I lived right next to the Twin Towers. The sun rises while we roll down the deserted highway. With every lurching turn the tired students fall into one another and laugh, oblivious to the old ladies muttering about manners, fragility, noise and heavy bags.

Once my bus reaches the center of the city, the students casually leap off the cumbersome bus and search for their classmates. The students’ backpacks are thin and hang loosely off their shoulders, and the students smoke while they stroll to school, wearing skinny jeans and multiple sweaters. I pass even the tallest and most athletic boy on my own trek to school, lugging my laptop, textbooks and notebooks. My calves burn as I fight the steep incline of the city, huffing my way ahead as if it were a race. If the Italians have not already guessed my citizenship by my bright orange sweater and messy ponytail, my rushed flight to the sanctuary of an American school surely gives off red, white and blue sirens.

By nine in the morning, Viterbo is empty except for the many roaming cats. If the Italians are not at work, they are in cafès or bakeries or supermarkets. Outside drifts a silence that is soft, burnt red and bitter. At one, there is another surge of Italians: hungry students and those parents who must rush home to cook lunch for the family. The buses fill up again, Vespas zig zag dangerously and chatter almost overpowers the loud screeches of the birds. Then comes siesta and even the birds quiet down--the entire city of Viterbo naps.

I watch this scene from the second floor balcony of my school, my art history textbook open on the table to Giotto’s work or a half eaten pesto and mozzarella sandwich from up the street lying greedily, waiting for me to sit back down. It is this time every afternoon when I curse the Americans and their fastpaced track. Why do I feel the urge to quiet my fellow students as they chant Latin verbs to each other or my English teacher as he reads aloud from Metamorphoses the rap song of Pierus’s children? But I have to wait until four for American silence. By the time I leave the school and swing the huge green door behind me, the sky is already beginning to lose its radiant pulse.

At dusk, the reinvigorated Italians and I make our way back to the piazzas and main streets to socialize and munch on pizza before dinnertime, as the biting wind whips around the medieval walls.

Writer's Statement

2009-05-04T17:18:00.000-07:00

In New York City, on August 30^th, 2007, from approximately six o’clock to approximately seven o’clock in the evening, most people did not notice anything different in their daily routine. Maybe they were sitting down to dinner, or watching television, or surfing the internet, or chatting on the telephone. If I were in New York City on August 30^th, 2007 from approximately six o’clock to approximately seven o’clock in the evening, I would be doing the same mundane rituals. But that was not the case. At approximately six o’clock in the evening I was staring at the line that divided the grey, marble hallway floor and the brown, speckled linoleum floor of my new home. In Italy.

I stepped over the boundary in a daze. I floated through all the rooms quickly pointed out to me, not yet ready to believe that I would not be living in an impressive Italian villa. The tour guide, my 22 year old host sister Erika, stopped at my room and proudly proclaimed, “La tua camera!” Orange. Orange and pink. I finally felt a sense of belonging. I looked past the awkward laughing and uncomfortable pettings I had endured during the car ride and saw my favorite colors. I was home.

At the dinner table, instead of focusing on understanding the Italian language spoken, I focused on not being rude. I knew it would inevitably happen, but I did not know what form the accidental rudeness would take. I complimented my mother’s cooking, I kept my hands in my lap, I used my fork and my knife, I ate everything on my plate, I smiled and nodded at the dinner conversation. I was concentrating on plying the tough, rubbery chicken from its small bone in a polite fashion when my father asked me if I believed in aliens. I shook my head no, confident that was the correct response. Surely I was just contradicting an uncertain belief that all Americans believe in aliens.

He exploded. The rudeness had slyly wiggled from my mouth. How can I not believe in aliens! What about the UFO in Nevada? Did you not hear of the crashed space ship found by the American military? My cheeks were tingling apologetically, but I was laughing. I was so scared of the moment I would be rude that it was a relief not to be so careful anymore. We jokingly argued our differences through the rest of dinner. I had found a real family. In Italy.

It did not take long for me to discover that I was the alien. As I struggled to blend in, not knowing the language and communicating with a dictionary and gestures, I learned by making mistakes and I wrote everything down. Even when I returned home, I found myself reflecting upon my past year abroad in both Viterbo, Italy and Barcelona, Spain and continued writing essays about those experiences. I have chosen eight samples of nonfiction that reflect my fascination with foreign cultures and languages as well as what it means to be an alien in a foreign land.

First Post!

2009-05-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

Usually, I give my writing pieces to higher powers and they take care of all the technicalities (ex. syaglobejotters). But I have boldly chosen to get my own blog! Egad! So this blog will consist of all the travel-related opinion essays I have written last year, this year, and in future years.

Enjoy!