El Semaforo es Rojo, Para Otros

I took the wrong bus leaving my workshop with Colegio Maria Cano in Granizal today, and ended up on a street corner loaded with prostitutes, midday. Luckily my sense of direction guided me back to the more familiar area, which was surprisingly not very far.

There are a lot of homeless people in New York, but there are a real lot here. One man was seated right in the middle of the sidewalk filling up his crack pipe with powder that looked almost silvery. Any time of day, all over the place, there are people sleeping in front of closed shops. Little kids will walk up to me in the middle of the night begging.

Yesterday, a nice guy selling candies on the bus without any front teeth identified my appearance as distinct and wanted to have a quick English class. He said he applied to work for some center where English was a requirement, but they said he couldn't speak clearly enough, so he can't find work other than hopping onto buses and selling candies. This is as common here as musicians in the New York subway, if not more so. Occasionally there are kids selling candy "for the basketball team" in NYC. But interestingly, here the vendors throw the product into your lap, or put it directly in your hands, through the whole bus, give their speech about how delicious the candy is, then walk back through the bus for people to either return the candy or pay for it. The same thing happens in cabs: at stop lights people toss bags of chips into the cab onto your lap, then come back around to retrieve it.

The streets are loaded with pirated DVDs and pornos. The most interesting to me, is there are tons of people walking around with briefcases around their necks full of gum, candies, and cigarettes. The gum costs the equivalent of 5 cents. Not to mention all the people selling cell phone minutes of the street. Or the guys walking around with carts loaded with aguacates (somehow always 'los mejores aguagates'), or guayabana, or other fruits, and a megaphone repeating their product and price. Certainly in Times Square there are the African men selling brand imitation purses that they wrap up in a sheet and throw over their shoulder when police walk by, and the old women who wandered my street in Long Island City collecting bottles and cans to recycle, but the masses of people here selling something or living in the street (not to equate the two) is daunting.

Not that I haven't thought about it thoroughly before, but I thought about it today and it was almost as though all my philosophy fell away. What do I know of these lives of the street? Little. I was handing out fliers in Times Square for a little bit, repeating myself all day, to support myself when I started living in New York. And I've listened to stories of being on the street from people here and in NYC in my work. But I've never touched that particular monotony, chaos, insecurity. Pity can be inherently demeaning, so I want to avoid 'feeling sorry' for other people and somehow making myself the 'not pitiful.' What's the positive? A different sort of freedom? If I take Zen seriously than the repetition of a street vendor should be a delightful way to touch the infinite, should it be treated as such. And haven't the great mystics been wanderers?

The fact that I really go back and forth with my feelings on this I find interesting. Sometimes I'll have no problem with the experience of a street person being as justifiable a way of living as anything else. Maybe someone wanders in a field of bliss as he searches through trash cans. How am I to know? Then there are days like today when I start feeling sorry for people. If I'm going to say 'yes' to life, don't I have to say 'yes' to poverty and suffering as part of life? I think when I see poverty of such a massive scale it feels more systemic. Or rather, it seems even more inescapable.

Part of this reaction emerges after seeing 'La Sociedad del Semaforo' which translates to 'The Society of the Traffic Light.' It's a movie about street performers and vagrants at a particular intersection in Bogota. It used non-actors for a naturalistic acting style amidst an often dream-like disjointed directional style. The film opens with an entire highway full of ambulances blasting their sirens and honking, unable to move forward. The principal character vacillates between intelligent and sensitive in moments, turning traffic noise into jazz, to drug driven madness, stabbing a security guard to steal a pair of baby shoes that he later puts onto a dog. At the conclusion of the film, the intersection explodes in anarchy from the 'paisos' after one of them dies in jail.

And where am I in this? Watching a movie about it. Writing about it on the internet. Passing through the street to my little house where breakfast is prepared for me every morning. Taking cabs often. Not flinching to treat friends to coffee or dinner because everything is so comparatively cheap. Going into schools and groups affected by poverty and violence, giving a different sort of relational experience and a different type of opportunity for personal expression.

I wonder, if someone here had to choose between an opportunity to really express themselves, and to be heard, or $50, what they would choose? It depends on the person and the level of poverty, but I'm leaning towards $50. That's 100,000 pesos. Resource based development is certainly different than offering 'cultural' programs. Of course I believe both are necessary. With poverty of this scale, I better be damn sure theatre is necessary. Although life isn't about eating, people must eat. A fasting monk chooses his hunger, and then can have a powerful experience. Let’s not get into the hierarchy of needs...

Am I looking for my own affirmation in this blog entry, feeling odd playing theatre games in the third world? I get affirmation of the experience I offer every class I teach. For example, the class at the University of Antioquia went excellent today. We met at MAM (Museo de Arte Moderno) in a studio space because the University remains closed. The students were excited just to have the opportunity to be in class. A group hug, an applause at the end of class, beaming smiles. I need to stay with this joy and connection instead of worrying about the man smoking crack in the middle of the street.

There's a cat that meows outside my window every night. I can assume it meows because it’s hungry and is asking me for food, or I can assume it meows at its pleasure, singing to the stars and the streetlight sparkling mountainside.