KERRY M. 2002

Kerry and I met in 1997 at George Mason University -- she was dating my good friend, Tom. Kerry is from Northern Virgina and had had about enough of it by the fall of 2001 when she picked up and moved to Chile.

This photo was taken in October 1997 when she and Tom and some other friends of ours came to visit me in my first apartment in Brooklyn.

This piece was sent from Chile on October 3, 2002. She has since returned to the States and is living in Los Angeles.

On September 10th of 2001 I was where I am now, probably doing much the same thing I am doing now-procrastinating on work by writing emails. The only thing extraordinary about that day was that I was settling in to a completely different reality in a different country with a different language at a different kind of job. In other words, every little thing about every day was a vicious struggle or a complete joy, an utter failure or an overwhelming success. On September 10th of 2001 I had been living in Santiago, Chile for a little over two months. I still couldn't speak much Spanish and I understood about one tenth of what people said to me in their Chilean accent: speaking a mile a minute, dropping the "s's" off of their words and using so much Chilean slang that it sounded like it could have been Chinese or Dutch for all I knew.

I found myself thinking much of the time, "nothing is easy, EVERYTHING is difficult, a trial." And it was true. From going to the grocery store and trying to figure out ingredients and cooking directions, to finding my way on a bus to get to a store to buy contact lense solution because they don't sell it in the regular stores here. Nothing came easily, painlessly- every stupid task exacted an ounce of sweat and a pound of frustration. I also found myself, however, reveling in how this new reality was forcing me to be more aware, to constantly think. I wavered between being disgustingly self-pitying at times, to thinking myself so much better off for having moved outside my comfort zones instead of being complacent and stagnant, sticking with what was readily available. I had actively sought out a more challenging lifestyle and reality in order to foster my own personal growth and to achieve certain long-standing goals. I was humbled at every moment of the day, yet I had never felt better about myself and what I was doing.

I purposely changed my reality, made myself live another lifestyle, and welcomed the opportunity to see the world from a different perspective. I was glad to be away from the United States, having felt suffocated by consumerism and competitiveness living right outside of Washington, DC for so long. I wanted to be in a culture that was slower and appreciated leisure time and family more. I found myself feeling sorry for friends and family back in the States, seeing them as trapped inside a cage of comfort- having everything come so easily, comparatively speaking.

I look back on that time, on that mentality, and see a woman with blinders on, carrying a heavy burden and feeling so righteous for doing it. All the while, the protective net of her citizenship allowing her to fall into safety whenever she tripped on her way. I did not, on September 10th, appreciate the fact that without having lived in the United States I most likely never would have had the opportunity to live and work abroad. I was so focused on what was wrong with the US that I could not see everything that was right with it- that still is right with it. And as my tribulations and exaltations here have emphasized to me, over and over again, there can be no sweet without the bitter- there can be no true comprehension and value of freedom and convenience and comfort and prosperity without having also experienced their ugly counterparts. Such is the law of life; ying-yang, light-dark, God-Satan, order-chaos, put it in whatever formula or philosophy you like, truth is truth.