“…simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world’s champions…. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an “exhibitionist.” How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, “Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!”
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We’ve taken to the sea away from our home, the intangible place where your character has worn a groove in the social landscape, where the other characters in your life are large and singular, and your fit is generally snug. We’ve taken to the sea with an unspoken expectation that the world will spread flat, everywhere you turn promising forward motion, every face one of a thousand flowers in bloom, the groove skipped and a shallow waving needle track trailing in your wake. The larger world.
What you sometimes find instead is that the larger world is a very small world. The population of La Paz numbers around 200,000 people, but for all practical purposes the social population encompasses the cruising fleet of 100 or so boats. The names of various couples, groups, and assorted crew are further combined and condensed to share an identity with the goofy name of your boat. It’s a world of personal celebrities. There are the adventurers, the vagabonds, the globe crossers. The cool people, the solitary, the partiers, the parrot heads. The colorful, the lonely, the givers. The snow birds, the temporarily retired, the unapologetically retired. The pilgrims, and the ones who never want to leave.
Do you play an instrument, or at least feel comfortable saying that you do? You are a musician. Have you fixed your engine before, unassisted or otherwise? Mechanic. Have you in the past been a student in a discipline or skill such as yoga, the arts, a language, or computers? Congratulations, you are now an instructor. Have you ever crossed an ocean? You are now a revered Old Salt, and your opinion has achieved Elevated Status. Been here a while? You are the Ambassador to La Paz.
Do you want to be in this play being put on by the new local English-language acting company? You can be! Pick a role that suits you.* Have you considered re-sewing your canvas like x-y-z? Why yes, I guess you could call me a canvas expert. If you put up your shingle in the smaller world, who is to say that you are not the happy master of your domain? The cruiser city as a cultural construction seems made for the tap dancing drunks.
For those of us who use the radio like a telephone, our little worlds are further lain bare as we discuss our problems, our plans, and our feelings on the open airwaves. We can chart who knows whom, and how often they are in touch. We can deduce who is doing who else a favor, and the nature of that favor and its someday cost. We can identify the clans, the secret clubs, and categorize what they are about. Out here the people live out loud, yet ironically it can be difficult to really get to know people.
It can be a shock to the system to blow in from out of town and be confronted by this peculiar little civilization. The big world of possibilities within a small world can be intimidating. Your first instinct may be to try to figure out where you fit, but it can be daunting to try to find your fit, your people. This is especially difficult and puzzling when coupled with the fact that this is supposed to be only a stop along the greater way like all the others, and there’s a nagging question as to whether this is how you should be spending your time, which of course suddenly feels like it’s a-wasting. From what we have gathered so far, the La Paz ennui affects many of our fellow travelers, albeit temporarily like getting a cold after a long flight.
A week or two back Harmony and I were walking up to the showers toward evening after a day of working on the boat, on our way to something or other in town with some people we’d met, and discussing our time in La Paz so far. She said,
“I haven’t felt like the Freshman in a really long time. It’s weird.”
“Yeah. It’s like trying to get in good with the cool kids, and being the awkward ones on the edge.”
“In high school I was that awkward girl on the edge of, like, every group in the school.”
“I’m with you on the awkward part.”
We climbed up the ramp from the docks and started to cross the parking lot. Harmony continued.
“Do we even want to have to worry about the cool kids? We could just not.”
“The cool people are fun and interesting, why wouldn’t we want to hang out with them? Who cares! Let’s just be what we are.”
“And what’s that?”
I held open the door to her shower room.
“The cool kids’ awkward friends who go do stuff with them.”
Harmony harumphed with a smile and glided past my arm.
We’re still trying to figure out how this whole thing is supposed to work. However as the friendly run-ins, the collision of free radicals increased, our social lives began to heat up like a chemical mixture. The heat also burned up our calendar, but such things are unavoidable.
Nearly everyone we’ve met has a blog like this one, these
channels to home and to each other and to the dreamers. You can meet a
person and have instant layers cut through. You can swim among each
others’ surfaces comfortably and make some memories, or you can probe
what’s underneath. It’s a technological adaptation to a revolving door
world. It’s also a little bizarre.
Slowly but surely, we’ve worn a little groove into La Paz. So far that groove appears to have been characterized by board games, fixing our broken boat, our first sailing race, and a memorable a capella rendition of “Make Me a Pallet” performed by the elusive musical sensation known to the audience at one Open Mic Night simply as “Harmony from Serenity“.
Though we have to do it for the sake of our adventure, and though I am long past ready to get out of the city, I will be a little wistful to leave. It won’t be so bad though. Another interesting part about this life on the move is that you’re destined to see people you know down the line, and meet still new ones. We’re going to need these communities though, because wherever you go, there you are.
There is also the continued hope, of course, that through our travels will be revealed that larger world we seek.
Carnival in La Paz
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* Disclaimer: I don’t actually know what the acting company’s casting process is like, but enthusiasm for the theater appears to be the first and most important consideration.
**Usage of the word “kids” is a relative term. The oldest kids we met out here were I think in their fifties, and they were very cool.