This Monday was the start of a lecture series for Latin-American Studies, and so far it's been two of the most interesting days of my entire life. The speakers we have had so far, one from Uruguay and one from Chile (both exiled in the 1970s) have been fantastic. I've literally been hanging off of every word from their mouths, that is how interested I am. History never ceases to amaze me. The first speaker was a man who was blacklisted because he was a musician, and the candombe music was being used to express political ideas at the time. The speaker today I especially liked because she was a writer. She read aloud some of her poetry about being exiled in Canada first in Spanish, then in English, then she read an amazing short story aloud that actually brought tears to my eyes. I couldn't stop thinking about how different my existence in this world is compared to hers. The story especially touched me because she is very Vancouver based, and the story made tons of references to specific streets, restaurants, coffee shops, villages, etcetera in downtown Vancouver. It was like a completely different view of the city I grew up in, that my parents grew up in...even my Grandpa was born and raised here.

I admit I do go through minor obsessions once in a while, and I had assumed this preoccupation with anything and everything Spanish was one of those short-lived phases, but it has yet to die down. I've felt this intense desire lately to try to become fluent in Spanish and travel everywhere in South America. I once had an obsession with South-East Asia and actually started planning a huge cruise around that area, but South America is appealing to me a little more, probably because I have a better chance at understanding Spanish and/or Portuguese language and culture than I do Asian. I really just want to travel the world. I know that everyone says that at some point in their lives, but I really honestly do. I want to see everything and I want to know everything. I want to know the history of Africa, Asia, South America, Australia, Europe, everywhere. I know that I have been influenced from this school year, having never taken any sort of Latin-American course before, but I find I really am relating to a lot of it. I feel this strength inside me that makes me think that if I were living in Argentina in 1969 I would have been a revolutionary, too.

I just want to make a difference somehow. Sitting here at my computer trying to survive suburbia is not fulfilling. I feel the need to explore, to learn...I want to change everything about myself just for a few months to feel what it is like. I want to change my clothing, my attitude, my diet, my living conditions. I want to dance to different music, speak a different language, study something I have never cared to learn. I've been so adamant lately about falling in love with a man who is not of the same ethnicity as me. I want my children to be mixed and to have the chance to learn another language in our home other than English. I suppose that all of this goes back to my feeling as if I'm devoid of culture, or at least a culture I'm proud to be a part of.

The first speaker on Monday intrigued me when he spoke of his children, who were born and raised here in Canada. He said that he actually felt very grateful for his experiences in Uruguay because it made him find his own identity much more easily than he thinks his children will be able to. It is a much harder thing to grow up in Canada and truly understand yourself and what you stand for because of the lack of oppression and the influence of the media. Here, he said his kids can wear their hair any length, change the colour every day, pierce what they want and tattoo what they want and everything is allowed. When he was a teenager, having your hair a certain length branded you as a communist and you would be exiled, so for him to wear his hair long was an incredible risk. Military rule really forced him to evaluate his own beliefs and really question, do I believe in this enough to risk my life for it? He made a point that in Canada, coming to terms with yourself is a much more difficult task, and in that way he is actually grateful he experienced what he did.

I very much understood what he was saying, because if anyone reading this hasn't noticed, for the last year or so I've been on that quest to find myself and it has been very painful and hard for me to realize what I truly want out of my life. I'm confused and frustrated, and maybe it is because I have never been forced to take sides. Nobody is making me learn anything here. I learn what I voluntarily take at college, and I decide for myself whether or not I want to embark on a spiritual journey or not. I decide whether I want to go to school to take accounting or business or medicine to get that high paying job and live a comfortable life, or if I'd rather pursue literature and history and languages and travel the world searching for some sort of peace within myself. I just want to find a place I feel I truly belong, and I don't know if I'm there because I've never had to leave. I've never been forced out of my native country and I can't say if I'd really miss it or not. The woman today said that for the first year or two she was in exile, she missed Chile so badly that she'd actually put away money thinking she'd be going back in Chile within a month or two and that her residence in Canada was only temporary. I wonder if I were forced out of Canada, if I would become someone like her but for my own country, longing for Vancouver and the culture here.

If I get out of here, maybe I will come back to appreciate it more. Maybe when I come back, I will really feel at home and I'll breathe a sigh of relief when I inhale the air, smell the ocean, catch a glipse of the North Shore mountains. When it rains maybe I will go for a walk, just to feel the wetness on my face and let my hair tangle together and my fingers go numb. I'll walk along the edge of the sidewalks and sing the way I used to on cold nights when no one was around, and I'll think, how could I have ever hated those grey clouds and this beautiful rain...

<< || >>