Do I live in Macondo? Or Riohacha?

I see Gabriel Garcia Marquez characters everywhere. I chose to believe that it means that I have adapted so well, and know all the Panamanian qwirks so well that I can superimpose literary characters on the people whose paths I cross in my everyday life. Well, not really. Its just that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is such a great writer and knows, above all, how to tell a story so that it comes to life, and me with my overactive imagination, well, I just run with it. (And upon editing this I realized that it might seem quite erratic for those who have not read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Consider yourself warned. If this serves as anything other than a pretentious blog entry, well, maybe its homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez will spark some literary interest. And since I just literally translated each title, I also left each one in their original Spanish so that if such inspiration abounds, you will know what to look for.)

The other night I saw Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, (Love in the Time of Colera, Amor los tiempos de cólera) walking down my street, his white hair glowing in the moon. An older man, he was walking, with chess board under his arm I might add, shuffling along slowly with the finality that looked like he had just decided that tonight he would play his last chess game and ask his lover to pour him some cyanide. While he slowly plowed forward to his own destiny or to the destiny of ardent, self imposed death that was Jeromie Saint Amour’s, I thought if I stood and watched, would he turn into someone’s house, a happy guest, or if he would just continue walking through the novel of this world, until someone turned the page and he disappeared into literary non-being?

When I was traveling back to the United States, upon entering in Houston, standing in line to show that I actually am an American citizen, I saw Sra. Rachel (A Day after Saturday, Un día después del sábado), being pushed in a wheel chair, confused by the English speaking customs agent. Struck by the look of utter confusion (mixed with a sting of indignation and bitterness) I was compelled to help. Only was it after I explained what the agent was trying to do, did I realize that she was puzzled why this stranger with whom she could not communicate wanted to come into to her personal life, just like Sra. Rachel was perplexed, and slightly enraged at why there were so many dead birds in her house, and why they were killing themselves trying to get in through the screens of her windows.

My coworker, who just left for her maternity leave (here in Panama your maternity leave starts a month before you give birth), is Ana (In this town there are no theifs, En este pueblo no hay ladrones), and I can see her, laying in her bed, arms at her side, exhausted yet unable to sleep, her head propped level with the height of her stomach, waiting up at night for her husband to come back with the billiard ball he stole. Her eyes held open by her own anxiousness, the whites exposed and as spotted as the ravished cue ball is spotted with indentations of pulverized chalk, she walks into the office everyday, the weight of her conscious—burgeoning under her husband’s mistakes—apparent in the defeatist manner in which she walks; not really walking, but merely pushing one foot in front of the other. She mutters what she wants her employees to do, just as told her husband to stop smoking or to just return the raptured ball, defeated, knowing her pleas were useless.

The cashier at the grocery store close to my house is the Lady that arrived at six (The Lady that arrived at six, La mujer que llegaba a las seis), so schizophrenic in her “Do you have a frequent shopper card?” that one day it is a flirtatious, the next it's direct interrogation, and then even pure desperation some days, just as if she was flirting, brainwashing and even scaring her customers into collaborating in her alibi: her constant twitch and shiver every time her cash register scans new merchandise is the twitch of a women checking the clock and the passing traffic outside the bar making sure there was no way the man dead in her apartment could have been identified as having been killed by her.

Perhaps I live in Riohacha or Macando, who knows. Like in Blue Dog Eyes, maybe it will be a truth that will always call from me in my dreams, and I will not know what world I live until I find some who knows how to answer my question with the phrase “Blue Dog Eyes”. Until I read that phrase written on the walls of the city, and thereby confirm that this is a world formed by magical realism, I will walk around the city screaming “Blue Dog Eyes”, I will keep superimposing my favorite images from Marquez’ books on those who I see in my daily life living out the culture he wrote about. Maybe my conclusions are wrong, and maybe some sorted destiny awaits the identities I place on others, maybe this mixing of identies is dangerous (for who knows if the idenity I chose to place on someone is actually who they are, and if so, the reverse must be true, that others place identities on me that I am not. To them, I might be a Jimmy Carter, or a Johnny Appleseed, but then who really knows if the identities we identiufy ourselves with are really our identities.) But I will continue in my life like Santiago Nasar (Chronicle of an announced death, Crónica de una muerte anunciada), nobody advising me of the danger that is in front of me, everyone wondering if I know what is going to happen and should warn me, or if they should just let the enevitable come to pass.