Remember when Scooby Doo and the gang found themselves frantically thrashing about the stink pools of an active garbage compactor, within the Death Star of all places, where a tentacled fiend tried to drown and eat them?
I sure do. It’s one of my favorite VHS memories.
Now, imagine the scene dragging on for several years instead of minutes. That’s the experience of the first-generation immigrant who starts from zero. I’m not included in this category, obviously, because I have the time to study YouTube videos about Darth Jar Jar theory. Though I’m not a particularly sought-after spokesperson on anyone’s behalf, not even my own, I’ve personally known many first-generation immigrants — some friends, others family. Those who flourish, who confront their tentacle monster with equanimity, do one thing muy bien…
It’s called “moving on.”
Anyone can physically move somewhere, provided the opportunity, but can they shut the fuck up about a perceived slight in the Trader Joe’s parking lot that occurred over ten years ago? I’m not so sure.
We all know of a mind frozen on some fateful day in the 1980s like Han Solo in carbonite. Whatever happened during the last ice age should be water under the bridge… erm, or perhaps over the bridge in this most climactic of climates. Nevertheless, immigrants and other working people don’t have the disposable time to dwell on el pasado — the past. They proceed poco a poco — little by little, paso a paso — step by step. To where? To the dharmic gnosis of a human life well lived, of course.
And then there are those who don’t. We’ve all met someone who, unprompted, stated the following:
“I like to stay busy.”
Oh, hell no. I like to stay away from people who lie to my face. Worse, concealed within the lie is a truth even more terrible: “I like to chain myself to every available distraction, because otherwise my third eye fixates on the automatronic demon dance inside my mind. Pray the springs don’t loosen further.”
Being busy is, under the best of circumstances, an adverse effect of being alive. I’m surrounded by remarkably busy people in Spain. They tend not to linger on their labors for long; they move on. I’m no doctor, but I think the abundance of cantinas here is, in and of itself, a public health service. I suspect it’s healthier to walk to a bar every weekend, to scream and shout and laugh and sing, than it is not to have access to affordable healthcare. Thankfully, Spain has both. It even has people who do things other than seethe before a screen of light like Darth Maul, captive to someone else’s culture war.
It also has, unfortunately, Americans.
Some time ago, I was minding my own business until I wasn’t. I overheard a woman shouting — and not at the bar.
“She TOLD me to sit here, so that’s what I did! THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS.”
Is that American English?, I thought, gears turning. Oh, thank God, I’m no longer the worst person at this immigration office. I watched a policeman cower in fear while trying to accommodate the crazy lady in stilted, deescalatory English sentences. And just because I ascended from padawan to Jedi through sheer mental fortitude, doesn’t mean I couldn’t be sadistically overjoyed for such an opportunity. Please withhold judgment before hearing this… my strategy was much more ethical than hers.
Unlike the crazy lady, I sat in the wrong wrong chair while she just so happened to create a diversion. Having chosen one of the empty desks instead of the general audience seating, I flipped through documentation in my binder as if I were a serious person, and eventually the clerks began taking turns to glance at me. They were saying things like, “Señor.” Then I heard “Hola, señor,” followed by “¿Qué hace?” and “¿Tiene una cita aqui?”
“Ah, tengo una cita a las diez y media,” I smiled, looking at my watchless wrist, “¿Puede ayudarme, por favor?”
This technique is only permissible among advanced Jedi and Darth Jar Jars.
Let’s innovate, together — the below AI music video was ethically sourced by billions of dollars in venture capital for technological development. Any resemblance to actors or characters, living or deceased, is purely coincidental. A mere fraction of total US electricity usage is a small price to pay for increasingly sophisticated Star Wars prequel memes, right?