Confessions of a Picaro

This life would be easier if accompanied by a soundtrack. The music would be a cue for happiness, sadness or if a killer is lurking in the house. Alas, I have to rely on my imperfect perceptions to determine my mood. At the moment, as at many moments, I am in a state of confusion. My stay in the U.S. is over. Despite some periodic frustrations with living in Atlanta, the inconvenience of having to work for a living, and my normal excessive amount of complaining, it has been an enjoyable summer. My job proved to be both challenging and interesting, I enjoyed the good cooking and comfortable accommodations of my parents’ home, and the time seemed to flow by smoothly. Just how cushy my summer has been was made painfully clear when I returned to Trinidad for a weekend.

Due to a ticketing restriction that prohibited extending the back-end of my round-trip ticket beyond 90 days, I decided to use the extra ticket to visit the boat. To my pleasant surprise, the boat remained unharmed and relatively clean, aside from a little mold. However, during the visit, my body had trouble adjusting to the oppressive heat, firm bed, and the lack of a fully stocked refrigerator. Sailing, like camping, is described as “the art of being uncomfortable.” It is apparent that it will take a little time to remaster this most unforgiving of arts. After finishing my job in Atlanta, I decided to take a road trip up the East Coast to visit friends and family.

My first stop was in Washington D.C., where I met up with my friends from college. Arriving on Saturday evening, we sipped absinthe while watching the Ohio State-Texas football game (which my cousin Eric attended). Sadly, the steers and queers prevailed, although the details of the game are lost in a foul licorice-tasting haze. The rest of my visit in our nation’s capitol was spent visiting museums, eating out, and playing cricket on the mall. Planting our wickets between the Washington Monument and the Capitol building, we achieved the rare accomplishment of drawing attention to ourselves – this despite the two transvestites making out on the park bench. Despite having only the vaguest grasp of the rules of cricket, we had fun bowling and batting until the inferior ball from Trinidad fell apart.

On Wednesday, I drove up to Storrs, Connecticut to visit Brian and his girlfriend, Angie, in their new apartment. Their cozy apartment was made all the more comfortable by the recent addition of the Fox Sports World channel, which broadcasts soccer games from throughout the world nearly every hour of the day. While Angie was at class, Brian and I spent a few hours in an epic cricket battle (the most lopsided affair since Sri Lanka demolished Zimbabwe) before settling down to watch some soccer.

The next day, I made the scenic trip up to my parent’s cottage in Onset, Massachusetts. This trip marked the 29th summer that I have visited Cape Cod. It was nice to see my grandparents and to relax in such a beautiful setting. On Friday, the peaceful atmosphere was shattered by the arrival of Brian and a multi-ethnic sorority. Our quiet cottage on the bay was quickly turned into a rambunctious dorm. Clearly above such youthful indiscretions, I valiantly attempted to provide the voice of reason and moderation. Unfortunately, my voice was drowned in a sea of debauchery and revelry.

On Saturday, a friend from high school drove up to visit. Shocked by the hedonism on display, he decided to continue on to Boston to enjoy the more subdued merrymaking of the Florida State – Boston College football game. Just as quickly as the hurricane of partying rolled into town, it quickly blew out of town on Sunday morning, leaving me with a couple of days of relaxation before beginning my return trip.

On Monday afternoon, I drove back down to Storrs. Brian and Angie had arranged for a small dinner party that evening. Despite many of the same characters as had attended the weekend on Cape Cod, the soirée was subdued and it was apparent that these mature young individuals were recognizing the tremendous responsibility that our country places on college students. As our nation goes through difficult times, we naturally look to fine institutions such as UConn to provide the leadership to help us through our national crisis. It is heartening to know that the leaders of tomorrow are already embracing their responsibilities today.

On Tuesday, I drove down to Washington, D.C. for one last visit with friends. In addition to the pleasantness of spending time with friends, I was happy to learn that my friend Nathan had proposed to his girlfriend, Holly, over the weekend (she accepted). A couple of enjoyable days spent in D.C. before driving back to Atlanta served to provide an appropriate conclusion to the trip.

Throughout the entire two weeks, I was constantly impressed with how happy and together all of my friends seem to be. My brother, my high school friends, and my college friends all seem to be doing well and moving forward with productive lives. As I prepare to return to Trinidad, it made me wonder why I am not like them. Why can’t I be happy with a more traditional life? Will I always be a peripatetic traveler? Will I ever be content to settle down, stay in one place, grow a relationship, and find happiness in a more conventional way? This is something that I have put a lot of thought into, but something that I find difficult to articulate. The best that I can do is to quote from one of my favorite authors.

In this passage, Paul Bowles is speaking of the desert, but I feel that his observations apply equally to the ocean. Perhaps this is the best answer that I have for why I am looking forward to going back to Audentes.

Immediately, when you arrive in the Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible absolute silence prevails outside the towns and within. Even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force, which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straight away. Then, there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting it into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue. Darkest directly overhead and paling toward earth, while the night never really grows dark.

Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls or you will go on standing there unless something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call le baptisme le solitude. It is a unique sensation and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this holy mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears. Nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. The strange and by no means pleasant process of reintegration begins inside you and you have the choice of fighting against it and insisting on remaining the person you have always been or letting it take its course, for no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when you came.

Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is ‘why go.’

The answer is: when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude, he can’t help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast luminous silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him. No other surrounding can supply the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in comfort and money. The absolute has no price.

Leave a Reply