precious love

I´ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be foreign. I don´t feel foreign here and I´m in a different hemisphere. But our Pilar friends call us the foreigners and think we´re a little bit funny. However, I watch them and feel like I´m at home. I don´t always know what they are saying but on the other hand I do. I know these people, they just like the parents at home in North Dakota sharing the same stories, laughing the same way, sitting around in the same groups.

But there are big differences. because we´re from lost estados unidos they wonder sometimes at what we film and why. I wonder if they think we think they´re strange sometimes. At times I tell them how things are similar to the life I had in North Dakota but they seem to range between wanting to show how different they are and how the same. So I watch and take part.


And I have to remember sometimes I do think things are strange. The other day when we went to downton Pedro Juan and Ponta Pura a woman with a corner stand tried to convince us to by her fleece blanket of garish color combinations and `Precious love`printed on it. I almost bought it right then and there because I thought it was so terribly amusing. Does that qualify as condescending...imagine there is a question mark here since i can´t seem to get it to work.

This isn´t to say there is a great divide between US and THEM. We spend most of our time all conglomerated together with them chatting and me jumping in frequently with `que significa...`

Sometimes I find myself imagining conversations I could have with people when I get back home and I wonder, `How will I explain that with my limited vocabulary...`and then i remember this will not be the case up there in the north in the summertime.

I´ve been thinking a lot about Chris Marker´s film Sans Soleil. I think there is an idea floating around that we´re much the same all over the world but there are slices of magic, of culture that combine to make humanity...looking for a word that´s not trite...that make humanity complete.


P.S. The trend continues. Most difficult keyboard so far.