Recoding

I have lately been expressing my feelings out loud with a higher frequency. The verb for expressing in French is "exprimer", which always reminds me of the Spanish exprimir which means "to squeeze". As Canucka has blogged about, there are certain words in our L2s (L2 is language research slang for "second language") that just stick with us and we like to use. Most of them are swear words, I guess, because they don't carry as a strong feeling or meaning than to native speakers. However, I was talking to Gabrielle about how English has become my main language for expressing positive feelings. I *feel* in English, and that is not to say that I don't feel when I used words expressions like mi cielo or preciosa, I DO mean them. However, I have re-coded my life experiences into English.

Just last week I finished a five month individual counselling process with the Counselling and Development Centre(CDC) at YorkU. It is not my first time in my life in which I have sought help, nor the first time that I have attended the CDC to get help. In the half dozen or so opportunities I have been seeing a mental health professional this is one of the best experiences I have had. To begin with, I was driven completely by my own motivation to change and to explore my behaviour patterns, thought processes, and emotional responses to life. This sounds so dry and contrived, but really, that is all it is to experience life: how we act, how we think and how we feel. And I was (and still am) on a period of my life in which I needed to tame my wild introspection and finally make it work to my advantage.

Even though it was more a "here and now" kind of process, where every week I was able to reflect on the events of previous days, there was always the presence of the past. A reframing of my life and of the image I have had of myself throughout my life was at the centre of the growth I experienced in the past five or so months. My counsellor was not only the perfect squash court to bounce back ideas, but a very impartial voice of advice at the right time. The counselling stopped at this point because she was only doing an internship at the CDC. I've been asked if I would've continued going to counselling and yes, I would have. However this is a good point to transition into being my own voice of reason and will keep the hour a week to myself. I have decided to start going to play squash once a week, alone, to give me the appropriate time and space to review my week and continue the path I am taking.

All of this to say that I believe that among many many things, this process not only reinforced the recoding of my life into English, but also helped me integrate and accept all the different parts that form me, like a stained glass window or a 3D puzzle. My different identities can come out every now and then and I can let them be. I have been given the chance now to explore even further a new part of my cultural experience. As I start to get to know Gabrielle I get to see myself through her eyes. Moreover, being French her first language, it has given me a chance to understand and share this ESL experience, and also to push myself into using a third language (every now and then at least) to squeeze meaning out of this life. Just a couple of weeks ago, as I was trying to describe a Guatemalan enchilada to her, due to my lack of vocabulary in French, I wasn't able to come up with the word "betterave", but more interestingly both the words "beet" and "remolacha" (what betterave means in English and Español) were completely blocked. I was aware that I knew them and I had the image of such vegetable but I couldn't even do the "switch coding" and interject English into my very primitive French conversation. Oh, the mind and its games.

Note on frequency of postings/comments
As you may have noticed there was almost a month in between my previous post and this one. I confess I have been doing some living lately and thus have neglected elToronteco. I still read the postings on my favourite blogs and every now and then I drop a line as a comment. I also appreciate the comments on any posting I have written and I get a laugh at seeing the google searches that result in unexpected visits. I make no promises of future postings, but I am not riding towards the sunset just yet. After all, besides squash, blogging will become part of my self reflection exercise on a more consistent way now that counselling has ended. So, stayed tuned.

Everything I learned about blogging...

Recently a dear friend pull the plug or better off "signed off" on her blog. I have since started to write this post that I hope to publish soon. It is an idea I have had from the get-go when I decided to create elToronteco. It is a huge tribute to the blogs that showed me the power of this new media. Then I realized, What do I know about blogging? Not much, I guess. But what I do know is that these blogs and their authors have influenced more than my "extra-curricular" activity of blogging but the way I see and live life. The very first blog I consistently read was:

Bitácora de Mauricio Romero http://romerogt.delaermita.com/ [Español]
Nepotism-shmepotism... I believe that the melange of personal notes, rants about open source technology, the occasional political diatribe, reiki and other spiritual and material matters really describes the person with whom I share most of my genetic configuration. RomeroGT is my older brother but more than that is a great friend and a real traveling companion. Space separates us, but distance is not measured in Kms. I've been reading this blog since 2004 and I believe I started by commenting via e-mail and then I figured out how to post my comments. This blog changes its css every now and then, always looking for different layouts. On one of those layouts had a widget with recent posts from other "Blogs chapines" (chapín is slang for a person from Guatemala) and through those links I was able to discover other blogs, particularly, in October of 2006 I stumble upon this blog:

Hello from Here http://hellofromhere.blogspot.com
LD is a Canadian journalist who was living at the time in Quetzaltenango or Xela as it is also known, the second largest city in Guatemala after The Capital. The personal touch of her postings and the struggle she was having with integration of her experience in Guatemala, which was in many different levels quite deep, with her Canadian identity caught my attention. Then there was a personal link because a friend here in Toronto actually have met her a couple of Summers before while visiting Xela. One important think I learn from HFH was to always keep it personal. Not just report the news (which in LD's case is her actual job), but find something that you cannot deliver in any other way. HFH could be seen as an Ex-Pat blog, one of those transition from the "dreaded mass e-mail" to the public posting of the author's adventures in the foreign land. On the posts of HFH you can find a human side of Guatemala and the transition from being an outsider to becoming part of that reality... because Guatemala, as Francisco Goldman describes in The Long Night of the White Chickens, is a country you don't live in but you live with. And LD also showed this on a post called "Ni de aquí ni de allá" just before returning to Canada.

LD decided to pull the plug on HFH recently. She's been back on Canadian soil for more than a year and the "novelty" of living in Toronto is not really inspiring. Believe me, I know, and you can see my own sparseness in posting as such. One last lesson from HFH is that sometimes you need to live in order to blog. It has to mean something to you. It took me a year to come across a situation that merited starting a blog. In the meantime, through the Web of relationships the Internet is I was able to find two of my best friends' blogs: From Ronald Flores, well www.ronaldflores.com [Es], and from Ale her two blogs Congo Days [En] and Desde Kinshasa [Es].

From Ronald's blog I have learned that I don't have to fear to elevate the level of the conversation. From both of Ale's blogs I have rediscovered that kindred spirit I met back in Guatemala and also to dare to write in both languages. I took the single blog two languages approach whereas she keeps two separate yet equally important blogs. These two friends of mine make me proud of being a Guatemalan blogger.

The last blog I would like to mention as part of my formative time as a budding blogger is La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo (http://antiguadailyphoto.com) whose author, Rudy is one of the first great friends I have never met (although I will try again to correct this later in the year). LAGDP has given me the opportunity to craft my commenting skills (as HFH and RomeroGT did as well). It is also "concerned" with design as RomeroGT. However, one of the key lessons is the beauty of using pictures to tell a story.

I must mention two good friends (and their blogs) that I made since I started elToronteco. Carmencita, a Guatemalan woman living in California, where she grew up, is another two languages/two blogs kinda person with the recently renamed "Un viaje a las raices" (http://carmendebizet.blogspot.com/) and with her personal Xanga blog http://www.xanga.com/CarmenDeBizet/ , which heading reads "Given enough coffee I could rule the world". Carmencita is a wonderful story-teller with a good sense of humour and also with a complex identity (which is a common denominator on the whole bunch described here, me included). The other amiga is Cancun Canuck (http://www.cancuncanuck.com/) or Canucka as I call her in the blogosphere. A former Toronto resident now transplanted into that Caribbean tourist hot-spot of Cancún where she is living a life among the nativ.. I mean locals. Her insights are great, her stories are funny and human, and (I must mention it) her 3-year-old son is just the cutest MexiCanadian ever (there is something to be said about mixing the races ;-) ).

So, I might not know much about blogging. But my journey started by lurking and commenting, particularly on the blogs mentioned here. To all you guys, a YouTube dedication:

Contigo Aprendí by Armando Manzanero
Interpreted by Costa Rica's Trio Azul Kristal

Primavera

(...)porque en tales días obtuvieron los judíos paz contra sus enemigos,
y en este mes la aflicción se trocó en alegría y el llanto en festividad;
que los convirtieran en días de alegres festines y mutuos regalos,
y de donaciones a los pobres (Ester 9:22; Nueva Biblia de Jerusalén-NBJ)

La primavera ha iniciado con un nuevo día (o Norouz) y mientras en Toronto esperamos que finalmente el verde empiece a crecer y los árboles se re-vistan con sus hojas y sus flores. Este año tres celebraciones se han conjugado en esta semana primaveral: El año nuevo Persa(cómo me lo recordó este año la entrada en [daily dose of imagery] ver también el enlace sobre Norouz) que inicia el primer día de primavera o sea en el equinoccio de primavera. Este año, junto con el primer día de la primavera, los judíos celebran la fiesta de los Purim, siguiendo el relato del libro de Ester en el cual gracias a la intervención de la bella reina, el pueblo judío fue salvado del exterminio mientras estaban exiliados en Babilonia bajo el mando Persa (coincidentemente). La historia es una de aquellas sangrientas historias del antiguo testamento en las que se exageran los números de muertes de enemigos del pueblo elegido, sin embargo no es una historia solamente de venganza, sino de acción de gracias y de cómo los oprimidos, gracias a la intervención divina, salen victoriosos frente a la aflicción y el terror. Personalmente Purim me recuerda el haber compartido el año pasado unas galletas de forma triangular que dicen representar (depende de quien se le pregunte) la oreja o el sombrero de Amán, el enemigo del pueblo judío que pretendía hacer que el rey Asuero decretara la muerte de ese "pueblo disperso y diseminado entre los pueblos de todas las provincias (del) reino, con sus leyes, distintas de las de todas las naciones, y que no cumplen las leyes reales" (Ester 3:8, NBJ). Gracias al encanto y los banquetes y la oración de la reina Ester, el rey Asuero entra en razón y la balanza cambia de lado y los judíos terminan "exterminando" a sus enemigos ayudados de un nuevo decreto real. Mi buena amiga que me convidó sus galletas y su cultura anda de viaje por Nueva Zelanda en estas fechas. Así que le mandaré electrónicamente de alguna manera un saludo de Purim.

Por otro lado el año nuevo Persa es personificado en mi mitología personal por otra buena amiga, la cual le debo el haber empezado este camino de búsqueda de identidad. De origen Persa, pero con afinidad a la cultura latinoamericana, SM hizo un viaje a Guatemala en el verano del 2005 y previo a su viaje le pude compartir lo que yo "sabía" sobre mi amada matria. El convertirme en un "informate nativo" y poder reflejar mis opiniones y añoranzas despertó en mí esa "chapinidad" que al día de hoy escapa definición para mí. Así que sin saber mucho de la cultura Persa, esta amistad me hace respetar y apreciar esta celebración del primer día de la primavera que antecede al cristianismo.

La celebración que es quizás más conocida para quienes lean esta entrada es la Semana Santa. Anoche la luna llena me recordó la conmemoración de la última cena y la visita a sagrarios que al menos un par de veces hice con mi abuelita materna. No puedo decir que he dejado de ser cristiano, ni siquiera que he dejado de ser Cristiano o Católico, pues esa formación es la que me ha forjado como el ser humano que soy. Sin embargo, no atiendo a ninguna comunidad y no he pisado el interior de una iglesia si no es con una cámara y cómo turista en mucho mucho tiempo. El fervor de Semana Santa que magistralmente es pintado en LAGDP permea mi ser. Acá en mi tierra madrina se celebra bajo el nombre de "Easter" con colores pastel, una comida familiar, chocolate, conejos, y un fin de semana largo. Más allá, pero sin ser necesariamente opuesto o excluido, del rito y connotación cristiana la celebración de Easter es la celebración de la renovación. Tema que se siente en el ambiente cuando se habla de la primavera. Se pueden ver o rebuscar las raíces cristianas en este festival del sinergismo, en este experimento de multiculturalidad que es Toronto y Canadá en general. En las iglesias se verá y se hablará acerca de la resurrección de Cristo por la cual la salvación de las naciones fue consumada.

En mi reflexión personal he podido conjugar todas estas ideas en un saludo y un deseo de primavera: Qué la renovación toque a tu puerta y que la invites a pasar dentro de tu casa

Fotos: Passiflora caerulea (Pasionaria), arriba tomada en la casa de mis abuelos en la zona 6 de la ciudad de Guatemala, la de abajo tomada en Montreal en las afueras del Oratoire St-Joseph

Identity Pt. 2

| 1 0 0 |
| 0 1 0 |
| 0 0 1 |

I somewhat left my series on finding identity aside for a while. On this post I want to talk about another aspect of identity, personal identity. As you may know, or recall from your school years, any number multiplied by 1 remains the same. For example, four times one is still four, ten thousand times one is ten thousand. In linear algebra, the matrices that have this property are called identity matrices. A matrix is nothing more than a set of values (numbers, whatever) set in rows and columns. Now, not all matrices can be "multiplied" by the identity matrix, you have to be a special matrix and to conform (the actual technical term) with the identity matrix in order to be "multipliable" (my term). For me, everything is a metaphor of something else, and when I learned this properties of matrices a million ideas came to my mind. The most striking one was that because there is no such thing as division among matrices, in order to get to the identity matrix you have to multiplied by a very special matrix which is your "inverse". No, it is not yourself, is your "inverse" you need to result in the identity matrix.

What a trip, isn't it? Who, or what, or where is this inverse matrix? Why is so important to become one or to become "identity". What is the relationship between conformity and identity? Conform is quite the verb... is tossed around in an Orwellian manner almost as a joke sometimes. Or is rejected as loosing part of one's identity. But to conform might be just to have some common characteristic with the other. You don't have to be identical, you just need some shared interest, or background, or point of view. I am starting to believe that without conformity there cannot be a relationship. And without conformity there would be chaos. Moreover, human beings are designed to conform. And you need to conform to find identity.

I keep transforming myself, rearranging the different aspects that make me unique, trying to fit, first within my own skin, then with my environment. I am after all one of the most difficult persons I know. It is impossible to please me. And thus I seek to please others. I don't know the other, what I know about the other is quite limited, particularly compared with what I know about myself. And there is a very high probability that whatever I know about you will match, at least in a minimal way, one of the aspects of my self. Let's take music, for example.

I grew up listening to music in English and in Spanish, with some French tossed for flavour. There was also instrumental music which I learned (to listen, never to play properly) in school. In family gatherings and parties there was sometimes a live conjunto, a musical band, which sometimes had a marimba, and sometimes it was only a marimba. I used to hear hard rock and new age, but I did dance to tropical music (merengue and salsa in the beginning, but eventually also reggae) and to "dance" music. When grunge came I was all over it. My first CD I ever bought was from Enya, the Celtic New Age singer, but the first CD that I put on my mom's brand new CD player was from Juan Luis Guerra. I fell in love with Nueva Trova in university as many university students do, but that is a love I have kept throughout the years. I have discovered French pop from Quebec, and I have heard so many different rhythms from around the world I can move my feet (because I am a lousy dancer) or bop my head to. In regards to instrumental music I don't like what is properly called "classic", preferring the slightly older (everything is relative) baroque and more recent impressionism. Recently I have had a reggaeton phase and right now I am going through a "nueva cumbia" phase. There is something to be said for CanCon regulations which have promoted Canadian songwriters, which have me in awe for their lyrics and their compositions. Yep, I have an eclectic taste indeed.

All of this just to say how easy is for me to "conform"... to take any of these or the many many more threads that make me who I am and match one of yours. And I will keep transforming myself, trying to find that inverse matrix that eventually will be multiplied by me and will result in identity.

Don't even get me started with angles...

Under the rug

It's Sunday afternoon, just came back from the laundromat, my place is in desperate need of cleaning, I started yesterday, not done yet. And instead I am writing a post on my blog. Typical guy who lives alone. Somewhere I read or heard a complaint of someone about men not noticing dust... I notice it alright, I just (1) don't care enough (2) cannot deal with it right now. Anyway, I always have the feeling that no matter how much I sweep and mop and spray and scrub filth will always come back, almost immediately. Cleaning is one of those mundane(yet necessary) activities that makes me feel like the Sisyphus. Is not the only one, but is the one I have in front of me right now.

Well, continuing with my search for identity (which will help me procrastinate and avoid cleaning) and with my crusade to understand and share my "culture of origin" I thought about writing about second last names. In Guatemala, and in most Latin America I believe, the tradition is to have two last names. The "first" last name is the first last name of the person's father and the second last name is the first last name of the mother. This creates the illusion that there is some sort of value on the woman's family name. Think about it, the mother's first last name is actually her father's last name.

I am always intrigued by the importance of names and family names. Is a colonialist criollo mentality I guess. From very young I was inquiring about the origin of both my family names and the people behind them. It seems my great grandfather from my father's father side (i.e. from my "first last name" side)moved from La Antigua Guatemala and pretty much lost ties with his relatives back there (a mere 41 km from Guatemala City, but with treacherous roads and lack of means of transportation it used to be a day's travel back then I guess). My second last name, the one I take from my mother and which I have fought to keep in Canada defying local tradition and other immigrants practices is Escobar. There is an interesting way how my mother, and therefore myself, end up with this last name. There is a more "parental" than biological connection with the last name. My mother being the second child out of three children and only daughter of my grandmother received the last name of her second husband, even though it was understood and known to everyone that she was the daughter of my grandmother's first husband. Thus I have cousins with different last names. My grandfather Escobar was, besides all his flaws, my mother's father.... real father, as they say.

In any case, I grew up proud of both my families and thus of both my last names (the criollo mentality once again). At some point in the transition from Guatemala to Canada I thought that hyphenation was the only choice I had to "save" the Escobar. I started using the hyphen and up to this day there are versions of my name hyphenated at YorkU. Don't get me started with the fact that I use my middle name as my call name. Two first names and two last names make for quite a bit of confusion and I find endearing when someone calls me Mr. Escobar. At some point in my life I thought about making my father's name a "middle name" and adopting my mother's last name as my own. I outgrew those tantrums that would have caused unnecessary and potentially costly headaches, without mention an outright split from one part of my family heritage. So I have learned to embrace my different familiar origins and in my colonialist mentality I even designed a coat of arms for my two last names combined (see above). I am no expert in heraldic elements so I cannot explain or defend my coat of arms. For purposes of this convoluted post let me just say this: Escobar, means literally "to broom", not "to sweep", but "to broom". Thus the brooms in my coat of arms. So it would have been ironic that I just sweep my second last name under the rug and even potentially forgetting that once I was called Manolo just to please North American standards of one name and one last name. Moreover, and coming full circle on today's lesson is the fact that cleaning is waiting for me and I'll be using the instrument that is representing half of my family heritage in my made up coat of arms.

But the story doesn't end here... Next month I'll be taking a three day course on curling, a somewhat obscure and/or archaic Winter sport in which teams compete over solid water throwing stones towards a "target" and in which they use (wait for it) brooms to "curl" the ice in front of the stone to give the throw both impulse and direction. This can be the begining of a beautiful friendship between a Spanish last name and a Scottish sport popular in Canada. It can end in the Olympics, why not dream big. After all, the oldest Olympic medalist is a Canadian curler. Definitely not the ones in Vancouver in 2010, but probably the ones in Sochi in 2014, which coincidentally were awarded to the Russian city in Guatemala just last year. Coincidence... I think not.

Now back to cleaning... a toilet bowl awaits.

Identidad Pt.1

"Sabemos que la raza, por sí misma, no hace historia:
no es factor que determina nada de importancia en el proceso social"
Severo Martínez Peláez (La Patria del Criollo, p. 25)

Me propuse escribir hoy sobre un tema que me ha estado rodeando la cabeza, probablemente toda mi vida, pero con mucha más insistencia en los pasados dos años. Inicio esta mini-serie con una cita de La Patria del Criollo: Ensayo de Interpretación de la Realidad Colonial Guatemalteca el cual creo debería ser lectura obligatoria para estudiantes de nivel diversificado en Guatemala. Originalmente publicado en los 70s (el siglo pasado) y siendo una obra sobre la era colonial, sigue siendo tan relevante hoy como lo ha sido desde su primera edición. La Asociación Americana de Antropología [EN] en una declaración de 1998 enfáticamente critica el concepto de "raza" como puramente colonial y sin fundamento biológico. La diversidad genética "dentro" de los llamados grupos raciales es mayor que la diferencia entre individuos "a través de" o de todas las razas. Este hecho y denuncia apoya el argumento de Martínez Peláez. Clasificar grupos humanos generalmente tiene como meta la objetivación del "otro".

Actualmente en Toronto, el distrito escolar de Toronto (TDSB p.s.s.e.i.) acaba de aprobar la creación de una escuela "afro-céntrica" que abriría sus puertas en septiembre del 2009. Como he comentado en otras partes (Miss HTP [EN]) la comunidad negra en Canadá, o al menos en Toronto, es simplemente mejor organizada o tal vez tenga mucho más "empuje" en cuanto a influenciar cambios. Hace tres años un reporte del TDSB arrojó datos en los cuales la deserción escolar en distintos grupos étnicos fue analizada. Los estudiantes de origen hispano fueron quienes tenían la taza de deserción más acelerada. Es decir, con el paso del tiempo hay más estudiantes de origen hispano en Toronto que no terminan la escuela. De esta situación nació la Spanish Speaking Education Network, pero nunca se habló de una escuela hispano-céntrica. Afortunadamente. ¿Por qué afortunadamente? Porque uno de los retos de la comunidad hispano-hablante es la integración de sus miembros. Es cierto que hay peligro de perder el idioma materno y puede existir problemas de conflicto de identidad inter-generacional. Sin embargo, es mi criterio, que una sana integración de los valores traidos del extranjero con los valores locales es la clave para el éxito de cualquier individuo y/o comunidad.

Ahora bien, tengo la impresión que hemos sustituido (aunque no al ciento por ciento) el término "raza" por "grupo étnico" o aun peor "etnia". ¿No se habla acaso en Guatemala de "etnias mayas"? No basta ser politicamente correcto, sino de crear una actitud crítica frente al problema de clasificación. En mi carrera académica este es un punto importante y esencial. Me estoy embarcando en la etapa de análisis de datos de una parte de un estudio longitudinal que se esta llevando a cabo por parte de mi laboratorio en YorkU. Dejando a un lado el objectivo final del proyecto, una de las preguntas que se quieren resolver es comprobar que las pruebas de habilidades cognoscitivas (específicamente de capacidad de atención mental) que utilizamos y que han sido desarrolladas dentro de la Teoría de Operadores Constructivos (TCO p.s.s.e.i.), son inmunes o al menos menos afectadas por los efectos del sesgo cultural que padecen las pruebas estandarizadas utilizadas generalmente.

Dentro de la información demográfica que voy a usar en mis análisis el "país de origen", tanto de los estudiantes como de los padres, es de los más relevantes para evaluar las hipótesis vagamente descritas arriba. Y aquí dejo esta entrada, para continuar con mi búsqueda, interior y exterior, académica y personal, en la literatura y en la calle, de argumentos para apoyar o desacreditar el por qué "país de origen" nos puede dar alguna pista a lo que podemos llamar "cultura" o "identidad" o "herencia memética". Así que no pierdan la sintonía durante las próximas semanas y/o meses mientras continúo este monólogo (¿manólogo?) con vistas a poder terminar mi programa académico.