watched the news yesterday afternoon, hoping for direction, something to push me one way or the other. The bar was empty, just me, my friend Carolyn, and a middle-aged guy from Wales who laughed out loud when Tony Blair appeared and said that George Bush looked like Kasey Casem.
I watched for two hours, not really absorbing anything, not really even listening. My mind kept wandering. I need a haircut. I don't think I can find Iowa on a map. I really want to fall in love.
Like always, the radio is playing the hits of the Eighties -- Phil Collins' "Against All Odds," Christopher Cross singing "When you get lost between the moon and New York City..."
It's hard to hear. We're bombing, but we're also dropping food. Could that be true? I can't figure out where we're bombing, who's there. I don't understand all the graphics, the little arrows and triangles. I can't even find Iowa on a map.
CNN cuts to footage from the strikes -- infrared pictures with big blips and little blips.
"What are the little blips?" I ask the guy from Wales.
"I haven't really been reading the news," he says.
The radio gets louder -- "Feelings. Whoa, whoa, whoa, fee-uh-lings."
My mind wanders again. I have a job interview Wednesday to teach English here. I like the city. It feels rich, not poor. It feels safe, not dark and dangerous. The little boys kick the ball in the street and wave as you walk past. You are famous. You are a gringa. All the teachers at the school are women, and all of them date Ecuadorian men. In my mind, I try on their lives, wonder if it would make me happy, or if I would spend evenings in a cold apartment, trying not to miss everything. But the city feels familiar, and I have laughed more with these women in the last few days than I have in the past month, because Jane is such a klutz, and Carolyn is going neurotic over this boy in Quito, and I have this epic case of the Latin American shits, and all of it is just funny, funny, holding-my-stomach funny.
Sometimes, I worry that people aren't laughing in the United States.
The little scrolly thing at the bottom of the screen catches my attention. It's a quote from Osama Bin Laden, a promise to attack the United States again.
I wonder how paranoid people feel. I worry that they never laugh.