Dear ants.

Dear golden-raisin-colored ants who frequented my room last night,

Apparently your communication skills are legendary within your phylum. But last night, I was not impressed. It might behoove your species to develop a way of saying, “DO NOT GO NEAR THIS HUMAN BEING. SHE WILL SMASH YOU AND THEN DROP YOUR CHITINOUS BITS INTO THE WEB OF A SPIDER WHO WILL NEVER STOP TELLING HIS FRIENDS ABOUT THE NIGHT WHEN MANNA RAINED FROM THE HEAVENS. SEE? RIGHT THERE. RIGHT WHERE MY ANTENNA IS POINTING.”

Sincerely,

Monica

The play that was Thursday.

Jay asked me to read The Man Who Was Thursday to see if I’d be interested in adapting it for the stage. I finally got to it on my downtime in gusty Monteverde. I absolutely loved it…right up to the point when it went all Christian Allegory with an anticlimactic thud. (The character “Sunday” getting in a hot air balloon and throwing down bits of paper with cryptic writing? Mehhhh.)

This is an odd reaction from me—I was raised Catholic and feel at home in its traditions, and I love The Chronicles of Narnia—so why would I object to Christian allegory? Maybe because I had been hoping it would actually be an exploration of the nature of anarchy, like it seemed to be at first; I don’t know much about anarchy and tend to pooh-pooh it, and want to be better educated. So for it to derail and swoop into the familiar bosom of Christianity really annoyed me.

So I proposed to Jay that instead of writing a conventional adaptation, I’d write a play about the experience of reading it. I’d call it The Play That Is The Book That Was The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton by Monica Byrne. (Or just Thursday for short.) I’m thinking that it’ll begin with me in an armchair and a tweed coat, by a fireplace, smoking a pipe, acting surprised when the lights come up. And that all the characters are women who nevertheless protest that they are men, a la Ursula‘s short story “Intracom.”

I got the green light. Queue the Charlie Kaufman movies…!

Fear of language.

I think I’ve been afraid of learning new languages specifically because I’m so addicted to the precision with which I can communicate in English. There’s also the fear of causing offense, mispronouncing, or even using the wrong language—when the nice man at Costa Rica customs asked me how long I’d be in the country, I immediately said “Drei Wochen.” (Muchos gracias, Frau Vojtko.)

There’s also the natural tendency of the native speaker to assume that the struggling speaker is actually stupid. My favorite example of this is when I was on the train from Chennganur to Madurai in India, and had eaten a snack, and was sitting holding the wrapper in my hand. The women across from me got agitated. They pointed to the wrapper and then to the window, over and over. I knew what they meant, but there was no way I could communicate, “I’m waiting to drop this into a designated trash receptacle at some point in the future,” much less all of the accompanying cultural constructs. Finally one of them grabbed the wrapper out of my hand, threw it out the window and gave me a look as if to say, “See!? GOD.”

But since I’ve been in Costa Rica, the shame of not being able to communicate at all is outweighing the fear of communicating badly. I used to think that I shouldn’t attempt a new language unless I can get as good as Nabokov. Which is total bullshit. That’s what people tell themselves to keep from writing, period—”I shouldn’t write unless I can be as good as X.” Of course, every X had to begin, and most weren’t good for a long time. (Ursula taught herself Latin at age 75 so that she could write Lavinia. What’s my excuse?)

So what language(s) should I learn? I’m torn between learning for curiosity (Japanese, Malayalam, Swahili) and learning for utility. But since travel is a major priority in my life, I’m leaning towards the latter. So, first Spanish (duh), which lets me travel to all these countries; and then French, so I can get around all the former French colonies. I’m on the fence about Hindi, since English is actually the lingua franca of India (among the educated classes, at least). It might be that Arabic would be more useful.

After that, I could learn just for the pleasure of it. Forse bella Italiana…

Subterranean lovesick alien.

I made a valiant effort at getting SCUBA certified while I was on Caye Caulker. But when I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with vasodepressor syncope, which means I faint more easily than most—my blood pressure plummets and I feel horribly nauseated—and unfortunately, my old nemesis returned. My body was deeply freaked out by the tightness of the wetsuit and the dryness of the compressed air. So, even though I managed to breathe steadily and complete all the exercises, when I resurfaced I also threw up five times. (My instructor was aware of only one of these times. The other four times, I cleverly disguised with splashing motions.) 

So I pulled out. Which is fine with me. Because now I know how it feels to have a regulator in my mouth, to fall backwards off the side of a boat, and to swim through water the color of lime jelly. Which means…I can write about it!

I mean, that’s one huge reason I travel. So I have more tools to tell stories. But in addition, I’m amazed at the power of travel to clear mental spaces and spiritual spaces and disrupt patterns and destroy walls I thought were indestructible. Who knew that I’d love caves with a near-religious fervor, or that I might not be remotely the marrying type? So now I’m having fantasies about learning Spanish, renting an apartment in San Ignacio, going caving every weekend…and writing a new novel, set in the cave in the years 1012, 2012 and 3012. A Mayan burial, a modern-day tourist group, and a future archaeology group, all working “alongside” each other. And the rhythm will be more lyrical than naturalistic, more like Mariette in Ecstasy than Mating. 

This is crazy talk. But there’s a fine line between crazy talk and truth. 

Harassment, pizza.

[Note: this post should not be taken as definitive on whether to travel to Belize. In fact, I think the incident upset me specifically because I'd had such an easy time in the rest of Belize. The vast majority of men I've interacted with have been kind, friendly and polite.]

Two nights ago, I was walking along the main drag of Caye Caulker, looking for a place to have dinner. I registered catcalls originating from a group of men across the street. They’d been doing it every time I walked through. As before, I ignored it. But the calls continued.

I get furious when people (men and women) tell me to “just let it go.” I’ll decide if and when to let it go. Sometimes I do, to protect my mental health, because I generally prefer being happy to being angry. I don’t take every instance of harassment as an implied referendum on my basic humanity.

But…sometimes I do. And this time, for whatever reason, I snapped.

I took a hard right and made a beeline for them. I pressed my hands together and said, fighting to keep the sarcasm out of my voice and failing spectacularly: Sirs, if I do not respond to you the first time, it stands to reason that I will not respond to you the second or third or fourth time. Further, it stands to reason that I do not want your attention, or even find it insulting and hurtful. They took the first refuge of the cowardly, saying What? What? as if they suddenly didn’t understand English. (In some ways, they did. How many people actually call them out?) I continued, How would you like it if I got in your face, yelling questions about your name, nationality, hotel, and what you were doing tonight? You wouldn’t. Because it’s not about sex. It’s about ownership of public and private space. It’s an exercise of power. And when I occupy your space and yell in your face, you can feel that.

I might be on edge because, the day I got to Caye Caulker, I was talking to the female proprietor of my guesthouse about a tour group in San Ignacio (Mayawalk) whose owner (Aaron Juan) fled across the border after charges of sexual assault of minors, but has returned and continues to operate. The woman’s response was, “Yes, but did they lead him on? What do these girls expect if a guy buys her drinks all night and then she lets him walk her home?”

I struggled not to explode. I cannot believe people say these things without making the most basic logistical inquiries. To wit (and forgive the heternormativity; I’m speaking from that experience):

(1) Does a woman owe a man sex in exchange for alcohol? No.

(2) Is it fair for a man to expect sex in exchange for alcohol? No.

(3) Is it fair for a woman to let a man buy her alcohol, suspecting he might want sex in exchange? ……..eh. If I’m ever in that situation, I just shrug and say, It’s your money. If I get some free drinks out of patriarchal bullshit tonight, it’s no skin off my back.

(4) Is that misalignment of expectations punishable—and only on the woman’s side—by rape? No. To put it mildly.

Oh, and I almost forgot!—

(5) Past a certain point of intoxication, are women capable of consent? No. (And there’s a handy term for sex under these circumstances: assault.)

This isn’t fucking rocket science.

Back to the pack: the men continued to play dumb. So I walked away. Whereupon they took the second refuge of the cowardly: calling me ugly names and making ugly threats that—even though I knew were empty, on this tiny island where everyone knows everyone and tourist dollars are essential—upset me.

The next morning, walking the same strip, I was approached by an older man who said he didn’t like the way those men had spoken to me, and had told them so. I thanked him. I began to explain why it had made me so angry. He gestured me off the strip so we could talk more. I said no, I had to get lunch and then go back to my dive school. He said, Let me buy you lunch. I said, Thank you for offering, but I don’t want you to buy me lunch.

Immediately his tone changed. Don’t be like that, he said. He came closer and I smelled alcohol on his breath. He reached for my arm and I slapped his hand away and said Don’t Fucking Touch Me and walked away. I could hear him chuckling behind me.

I know all men aren’t like this. I know that. And yet sometimes it’s very hard to remember.

So I sought an antidote: I went to the police station. (In some situations or countries, this might not be a good call. I judged that this time, it was.) I had a good cry and explained to the clerk what had happened. He introduced me to an officer named Kent, who’d just come off duty. I started to explain, as I had with the older man previously, why the harassment had upset me. He said I didn’t have to explain. That there was no reason I had to put up with it. I felt like someone was finally agreeing with me, saying, Yes, the sun does rise in the east.

Kent offered to walk up and down the boulevard with me. We did. He was very kind. He asked me about my writing. He advised me on how best to learn Spanish. I pointed out the men who’d been bothering me, who, seeing me with Kent, fell silent and melted away.

It’s an imperfect solution to an imperfect situation. But I’ll take it for now.

Kent then invited me to his family’s pizza place, where he’s the bartender and his wife is the chef. After going home and showering, I went. He greeted me. He introduced me to his wife. I ordered a personal pizza and it was so amazing, I ordered an entire second one, and ate it all. I tipped generously and Kent came around the bar and gave me a big hug, and told me to come to him if I had any more trouble.

God bless the allies.

Actun Tunichil Muknal.

I have a friend who, though he’s been to Belize many times, has never been to Actun Tunichil Muknal. I said, You must go. You must. You must. He asked me to explain why, but all I could come up with were disjointed words. “Water” and “stone” and “darkness.”

When I was in the cave, I felt such a deep, unspeakable happiness. I knew that something was happening to me, and that all I could do was hydroplane across the surface of the experience, and let it do its deeper work over the coming days. And years.

The Mayans went deep. One kilometer into the earth, lit only by torchlight. They built shrines in chambers just above an echoing underground river. We followed where they went, swimming, wading, climbing, dropping, and sometimes squeezing through gaps no wider than our throats. The only light came from our headlamps. The light barely brushed the cathedral ceilings above. I felt humbled: here nature works, the ultimate artist, answerable to an entirely Other sense of time and space. A column of stone takes thousands of years to make. I placed my hand over one, so that the rare drop of water splashed on my palm.

I wanted to stay. Of course, this is the fatal impulse. Cavers die because they convince themselves to penetrate farther, just into the next chamber, which becomes a next, and a next, until an accident happens and they can’t get out. But the cave made me so happy, it also made me a bit mad: I wanted to explore forever, get lost, make camp on triangle of subterranean beach, and exhaust all my candles until darkness fell, and I’d sit there, listening to the water, forever.

Gonzalo, a guide who became a good friend, assured me I’d go crazy after awhile. He’s probably right. Nevertheless, I still feel choked up and quiet when I think about the cave, like I’m in love. Being away from it, I miss it; but I don’t want to go back too soon in case I spoil the experience. Gonzalo says the caves extend far beyond the shrines, five kilometers into the earth, and knows people who mount expeditions to go all the way in. I’m already plotting how, and when, to come back.

Some story needs to be told.

San Ignacio.

Photo credit.

When I’m traveling, I’m reminded that I love few things in the world more than smiling at a stranger and seeing her smile back at me.

The bigger my world gets, the better I feel.

Worthwhile.

Yesterday, as I was crossing the Swing Bridge from Southside to Northside, I passed a big white man who pointed the way I’d come and said, “Is there anything worthwhile over there?” If I hadn’t been preoccupied with getting to the post office, I’d have stopped to give him a piece of my mind. But as it was, I just said, “That’s a big question, sir. I don’t know how to answer that.”

Of course, one of the favorite pastimes of white tourists is to criticize how other white tourists are “doing it.” (I speak for myself.) So I’ll leave the matter alone. But: Is there anything worthwhile over there. Removed from its context, it’s a profound question. This is my third day in Belize City, a place all the guidebooks say to skip as soon as possible, to get thee on to Ambergris Caye or Tikal.

But I’m here because my mother taught here at a Catholic girls’ school in 1962. She was only 23, far younger than I was when I finally got brave enough to travel on my own, and at a much more tumultuous time, and she stayed for much longer. She came because she’d just traveled through Europe—a college graduation present—and she badly wanted to give back to God for all she’d been blessed with. So she signed up with the Papal Volunteer Corps. She fell in love with Belize, but she never got to come back.

Yesterday I visited Pallotti High School, where she taught. The buildings are painted tropical green and yellow. Sister Clara, the administrator, greeted me with a hug. It struck me as such a bright and prosperous place: all the girls wear white, and they go from class to class laughing, draped over each other, or serene and solitary. I found a shady spot to sit outside the classrooms and just listened for awhile.

I didn’t expect much, going there (though of course I had brief fantasies of an ancient nun calling me “Mary Anne!” and rushing to me with tears in her eyes). The irony, of course, is that when a child searches for a lost parent—the letters they wrote, the places they stayed, the things they touched—she already knows that the most precious relic is her own body. My mother made me. Not metaphorically, but literally: she built me, cell by cell. So if she is anywhere, she is wherever I go.

Tonight is laundry night in Belcove Hotel Room #33. I’ll use the complimentary towels to wring my clothing dry. In the morning, I take the bus to San Ignacio, and from there, to the Mayan ruins.

Ecclesiastes: Free my heart.

In the words of Meshell Ndegeocello, “I’m so ready to go.”

My “staging area” above. Packing is almost finished. I left for Ethiopia almost three years ago, to the day, that I’m flying to Belize. Six weeks, rather than four months. All seem like very short times. All are eternities when you live them.

I picked the color orange for my locks, this time around. But the code is the same: the date of my first kiss, backwards and condensed.

Three years ago, leaving home to travel was terrifying and lonely. Now, it’s a return home, a return to self.

How did that happen?

Baby light my fire.

In my experience so far, e-readers are an absolute gift to artists. Not only am I buying so many more books than I used to (which benefits their authors), but I’m reading so much more than I used to. That goes for plays, too.

I want you to send me your play. YES, YOU! If you want to trade, I’d be happy to (my “menu” is here). No commentary or feedback is necessary (or promised). I just want to read the plays my peers are writing. I want to take a long walk around the field.

To send me your play, here’s what you do:

(1) Open your play in .doc format.

(2) Increase the font size to 24.

(3) Save it as a PDF.

(4) Send it as an attachment to the address listed here. I’ll take care of it from there.

Right now I have fourteen friends’ plays on my Kindle, and I’ve read them all. I’m going to be reading a LOT when I start traveling next week. I’d like to get that number up to 50. So send me your play!