okay, i'm back (maybe)
can we normalize dropping off the face of the earth? k thx
truth be told, i know nothing of substack. i think it is its own media type, but i want to use it almost as if a diary and a blog had a baby. a bliary, if you will. i just want to type out a stream of consciousness and hit post, even though that’s less palatable. but having few readers actually makes it easier, because then it’s sort of just for me and there’s no pressure to perform. at first, i wanted to tell amazing, captivating stories and was going to chatgpt for grammar help. but i am so tired of performing and fitting inside invisible lines. can’t i just verbal vomit and move on with my life?
i can already feel the cringe from posting this, but i’m trying to think of it as exposure therapy.
ok, here we go.
playing catch up
i’m not sure why, but i feel i need to let you know where i’ve been before i tell you where i am and where i’m going. so this entire post will simply be a recap of the first half of 2025.
january to april
on january 26th i left the states for my third trip to cuba. that’s where all six of my subscribers are from—you all (if you’re reading this) inspired me to document my travels. and so far, i have greatly failed in doing so. but i have caught a bit of inspiration or motivation or whatever this feeling is to write.
cuba was great. it always is. a vibrant country with vibrant culture. being in cuba makes me want to be an artist, even though i have no artistic skill and lack the patience to develop any. maybe if i lived there for an extended period of time i would just morph into one. you know how you become like the people you’re around? i think cuba just happened to have so many artists there that now every cuban is artistic by default. anywhere you focus your eyes in cuba you’ll find something created with thought and intention—from the murals to the sculptures to park benches. art is so embedded in the culture it has become the new normal.
i love you, cuba, and i’ll be back.
from cuba i flew to colombia and spent five weeks wandering around the country. i felt inspired to write many stories there but lacked the motivation to write. they remain on my mental to-do list for when i eventually begin to catch up. if i ever do.
i crossed the border from colombia to ecuador, and that is its own story to tell. took me over 24 hours and included some risky situations—but i’ve obviously survived to tell the tale. add that to my list of things to write about. coming soon! (maybe)
almost as soon as i crossed into ecuador i felt the vibe shift. perhaps because of the stark contrast in scenery and climate. i left paradise at the beach for cold, rainy mountains. and it was nice, don’t get me wrong, but i felt the sadness creeping in. i moved from town to town, searching for community and warmth that i never really found. for this reason, i stayed in ecuador for just over two weeks.
while in ecuador, my plans changed (a few times) and i decided to fly back to the states in april. so i knew my time in peru was limited. i booked my flight from an airport in the north, so i never made it down to lima, much less cusco. i did end up meeting people and seeing many interesting ruins in the north. lots of pictures and stories to tell there. my backlog of stories is getting longer and longer.
and that pretty much summarizes jan-april. nothing very interesting in the recap, but there are stories to come.
april-july
there were two big motivating factors in my return to the states: 1) my dad’s condition and my mom growing tired 2) civil disobedience.
my father is in his mid (late?) seventies, and his memory is quickly on the decline. but he’s a stubborn man with chronic health conditions that need to be managed. this, coupled with a big, opinionated family, makes for a giant mess. a lot gets said but very little gets achieved. my mom has been wearing the hats of breadwinner and primary caretaker for the last ten months and it was greatly weighing on her. she is in her seventies too. and working full time, plus dealing with my dad is more than a lot. i wanted to come help her out for two weeks in particular that she was stressed about. the situation happened to change just before i arrive, but i was already halfway there.
the other reason i felt compelled to return was because i felt like i was live-streaming the beginning of the holocaust while doing nothing about it. i still feel that way. someone once said all that is needed for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing. i can’t do nothing. sure, i share about it on social media, but that can’t be enough. “here look at all this devastation happening because of the government we employ” and a lot of “wow, that’s so sad” and then moving on with my day isn’t doing enough. i know it is doing something because i lost around 50 followers on my personal instagram account in the first of month sharing about the palestinian genocide. fifty people had to look away, couldn’t reconcile with reality. i also have formed deep relationships from sharing the headlines and heartache. i know for a fact that i inspired others to speak up about these atrocities. and i’ve made my whole schtick about the ripple effect, haven’t i? surely something so small cannot be totally inconsequential.
but where do i start? how do i get involved? what do i do?
i had no answers and no direction. just indignation and a sliver of hope.
a friendship that rekindled because of the aforementioned social media posts is where i started. my friend, she lives in lousiana, and is just as upset about the state of things as i am. we often ask each other what can do we. so together, we decided we would do something. after helping my mom with my dad (which didn’t really happen due to a change in circumstances), i would meet with her and we would find a way to help whoever we could, however we could. i no longer own a car, which poses a major inconvenience when i am stateside, but i was able to catch a bus toward my friend’s direction. once there, we planned a little activism-oriented roadtrip. she decided shortly before my arrival to also be getting married that week. so i was one of two friends in attendance of her courthouse weeding on friday and saturday morning we were in NOLA, marching in the “no kings” parade. that’s where our roadtrip began. we woke up at 4 am to drive to new orleans, paid for parking, and marched alongside fellow upset americans. i donned an american flag (held upside down), a cowgirl hat and a shirt that reads “dump him” while my friend held a sign that said, “no one is free until we’re all free.” this series of parades around the country (est. over 2,000 cities and towns) was likely the biggest single-day protest in american history. an estimated 4-6 million people turned out to reject any slide toward strongman rule. and we were there.
it was empowering to be standing with strangers that possessed the same frustrations. and there are more of us, after all. online i see people sharing clips from the 90’s cartoon “a bug’s life” and it suddenly makes sense. the grasshoppers must squash every ant that resists, because if all the ants resist, they are much stronger than the few grasshoppers. and we are the one’s footing the bill, aren’t we? millions of middle- and lower-class people often paying more taxes than the uber wealthy. they couldn’t afford their whips to keep us in line without our paychecks. yet here we are—complying. we make it easy for them to manipulate us because we don’t see that we’re attached by strings. these concepts are nothing new, but it feels like we must relearn the same lesson over and over again in different aspects of life. this is just a much bigger view than what we’re used to dealing with, so we’re forced to both zoom out to see the giant picture while also zooming in to see how it bleeds into every detail. it’s so obviously right in front of our eyes, but we’ve looked at it for so long our brain just tunes it out the way it does with our nose. it’s always in our line of vision, our brain just thinks it’s not something we always need to be aware of. but then again, our nose never started stealing from us and used the money to make the rich richer and the poor poorer or popcorn in gaza. so it’s a little different, i suppose. i could rant on about the endless atrocities that didn’t start yesterday and the patterns and how this all boils down to patriarchy, but i’m getting tired of writing, so i’m sure you’re tired of reading—if anyone’s reading at all. i say this not as a form of self-deprecation or seeking validation, but more so in realizing that sometimes the need to speak, process, write or whatever is just needing to release. you don’t always have to be perceived or received. which makes me rethink my original answer on the “if a tree falls in the forest” dilemma. anyway, i just needed to get that all out. i guess i haven’t processed the past six months yet.
after the protest, we camped outside of NOLA. it cost us $42 to pitch a tent in the bayou—hot, muggy, buggy, and an extreme waste of money we are both resentful of. the days leading up to the protest we had searched for places in the south we could either volunteer, learn, or support a plethora of areas. it’s surprisingly difficult to get involved in things overnight though. there are either specific regulations or schedules get made weeks in advance. so rather than volunteer, we decided to keep making noise and spreading the word. we started a tik tok account to add to the collective cry. to discuss things, start conversations, contribute our own ideas, share other people’s posts, etc. and my friend ordered all these stickers that say things like “abolish ICE” and “end israel’s occupation of palestine” etc. so we put those in public restrooms, on telephone polls, park benches, and electric boxes. that’s the civil disobedience i was referring to. we also saw where people were using usps shipping labels to write messages, so we custom made our own and put those in the towns we travelled through. she had a box of blank yard signs we wrote on and stuck on street corners in public areas. we went through five southern states doing this, which is where it’s probably needed most. and maybe all of this was for naught. maybe it was merely an annoyance or disturbance to those forced to clean such areas. but maybe they reminded someone of an action they’d been meaning to take. maybe it introduced an issue that someone wasn’t aware of. maybe it encouraged those feeling hopeless. maybe it caused someone to research something and learn more. maybe some are still up, inspiring, annoying, and educating passersby. i don’t know and won’t know. but to me, it wasn’t nothing. and if i preach that every ripple starts with one drop, i must be content sometimes only having one drop to contribute. and for now, that was my drop. maybe with many, many more we can make up an ocean.
and now?
now i’m in morocco. i just spent my first night here in marrakech after a long and arduous travel to get here. i’m allowing myself to move slowly and just be for a little while. which is why i have the time to write. or maybe not the time, but grace. i’m trying to rewire what my brain constitutes as productive and why or even if productivity is important. i know i’ll feel cringe and regretful after hitting post, even if i read and tweak this six times. but the chances are, few (if anyone) will read this, and even if they do and it changed their view of me, so what. they will likely go on about their day as any other. the worst that can happen to me is i lose any or all of my six subscribers. and that, coco, is not the end of the world.
stories to come about morocco and peru and ecuador and colombia and maybe cuba too.
thanks for allowing me to process.
cokes