Tourist vs. Traveler

"All knowledge ultimately means self knowledge"

                                                            - Bruce Lee

"India is like Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave". This is what 21-year old Sarah told us when she went to India the first time, maybe it's because she was traumatized with how everything worked in India or maybe it's because she went with a tourist set of mind instead of opening herself to a traveler state of mind. For me, that is the only part of the book in which Sarah directly talks with a "tourist tone", the other being when she was in her apartment and she is questioned on why she doesn't treat her servants like servants and why didn't she lived like what she was, filthy rich, and lived like the queen she could live like, using all her servants without being so nice, just like the majority of tourists do. For the rest of the book Sarah is traveling, she travels a lot phisically but she travels even more spiritually, we can see her inner Journey, from that foolish, uptight girl who quits her dream job in the aussie ABC to move to India for love.

I really don't know if I believe in God because of how religions put him as being an almighty being with "all-forgiving patience" and "all-knowing knowledge", since I was little I've never liked that definition and never will, if you were really almighty you would be having a good cup of wine and loads of great sex. The fact that I don't belive in a God per se doesn't mean I don't believe in human spirituality and the journeys the soul sometimes needs or takes. Sarah was a self called atheist who was brought up in atheist family and when she went to India she discovered a whole lot of religion and religion driven life, she tries to soak up all the knowledge she can soak up by studying diverse religions. That is very, very cool, for me she did it to gain knowledge and to gain self-knowledge by doing so, she could see how she related to every single religion, for example she admired how in Kashmir the Muslims could sacrifice so much for faith, which is very similar to what she did of moving and sacrificing her carreer for the love of Jonathan.

By being the kind of journey in which you can better know yourself and how you think and react to certain situations the journey will ultimately lead you to inner peace which is what she really wanted, to find her inner Holy Cow, to find that place within her that she could just stop doing whatever it is she is doing and just "be". She doesn't necessarily have to believe in a God, like me, she just needs to believe in herself and know what to take and make of every experience or encounter life will throw at her. Her Holy Cow was found in India, where she experienced and lived Hinduism, Judaism, Buddism, and took what she needed to little by little get to know herself and make peace with herself, it is as if she needed to get through hell to get to heaven's gates. India made Sarah an internal traveler, which made her be a complete person, it made her find her Holy Cow.

May the force be with you all.

Elvis has left the building!!

My Holy Cow

        Life, we all have one, we all exist, we all breathe, we all dream, but not all of us live our life. Those of us who decide to not merely exist tend to find out that life is very tough; sometimes it can be so hard on us that it can make us ask ourselves who are we, what do we want and why do we want it. With that said, I will make an approach on how bodybuilding changed an continues to change me using Sarah MacDonald's Holy Cow, Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place, and of course, my own body and life building journey. Bodybuilding has taught me a lot, I honestly say it has made me a better person, it has taught me humility, dedication, patience, courage, gratitude, perseverance, but above all, faith. Faith in myself is what has kept me going when I've sacrificed relationships and grades for my dream, and when I constantly sacrifice who and what I am for who and what I will become.

            As Kincaid mentions, "That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native in this place there is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere." It actually feels good when you're at the gym and you see this guy that's got no clue what he's doing there but acts like he's Lou Ferrigno, the bad part is that this happens at a humongous scale, these guys are more than those of us who are willing to go and work hard for 2 or 3 hours a day. I don't mind them being in the gym, just like the natives do about the tourists in Antigua, but I know they're there not knowing the implications and consequences of being there, just like in Antigua. My point being that one does not have to travel to be a tourist, one can be a tourist in the mall or at the supermarket; just like being a traveler doesn't mean going to another country or state, one can be a traveler at the gym if you're willing to take bodybuilding as a personal mind-constructing journey.

            Bodybuilding is a sport; an art and a lifestyle, in order to succeed you must let it become a part of you just as MacDonald made India a part of herself, she mentions that "India is Hotel California: you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” the only way to become successful in this industry is if you let the sport change you. MacDonald explored India and it changed her, in analogy, bodybuilding changed me too. I used to be a very insecure person when it came to making any decision, training and eating right I feel like I'm unstoppable every time I have an intimate yet public encounter with the iron. The gym also is like Hotel California because one does not really leave it, right after you check out you have a 30-minute anabolic window to consume carbohydrates so that glycogen levels can be optimum for muscle growth, one has do eat every 2.5 hours and get 8 to 10 hours of sleep. That's just the beginning and it gets worst from there, the requirements can be quite exhausting sometimes but if you can outlast the pain, at the other side success will be waiting for you.

            Sometimes in life we need a north, something that gets us up even when we feel like sending everything to hell. I still remember when I looked at that myself in the mirror and decided it was time for a change, I was 15 and weighted around 235 pounds, and at that time my goal was to get to 130 pounds, which I did. Once I got down to 130 and looked like the Grim Reaper's brother I discovered it, bodybuilding. I was browsing motivational videos on YouTube and there it was, Pumping Iron, I saw that movie and was blown away; I wanted to become a bodybuilder, one of the best. In that movie you see a young Arnold Schwarzenegger battling a young Lou Ferrigno for the 1975 Mr. Olympia title, that's a very big deal, the Olympia is the single most important championship a bodybuilder can win, Arnold won it 7 times. This made me look up information about Arnold, when I saw "For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer" that quote simply blew my mind away. I understood a lot of things about myself and about why I decided to be a bodybuilder that night I met Arnold, apart from faith I had to have courage to overcome anything life threw at me.

            Now everyday I get up and go to the gym, train, get my meals and sleep, when I'm not in the gym I'm thinking about the gym and everything that applies to the gym, for example, the diet, the routines, etc. Some people have told me that I'm obsessed; I say that I'm dedicated, after all, as Shahir Zag, an accomplished ad maker, says "A tiger doesn't lose sleep over the opinion of a sheep.” which means I will go where no man has ever even remotely dreamed of going. I'm willing to sacrifice everything because I know the success will be substantially bigger than the hard work I put in, I've lost all my friends, my girlfriend, everybody because of this ambition, because I prefer going to the gym and getting my protein shake in instead of going to the beach and downing a beer. My ambition of being a bodybuilder, going to law school and medical school is a very big commitment, nobody has done this, I will. What's the way to get to my north? Succeeding in the gym, my success there means my success everywhere else.

            We were all meant to shine and conquer since the day we were born, we just lose touch with our essence, with our purpose just because people like to stick fingers on our face, fuck people. I will continue sacrificing anything and everything in order to be a successful professional bodybuilder and get my International Federation of Bodybuilding pro card. MacDonald says, "The only thing that can stop a bus is the king of the road, the lord of the jungle and the top dog. The holy cow." my holy cow is that moment when I’m under the weights, the world stops for me, no UPR, no worries, no nothing, just me lifting for my future. 

The Sexy Bald Blogger has returned my peeps.
Zeus bless you.
May the force be with you all.

"A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid

Hi world, what's up? So I got to read Jamaica Kincaid's 'A Small Place' for my literature class (hooray!). Hey don't laugh about my 'hooray' it's a sincere 'hooray' (one can have fun even doing class work right?). Anyway, I started reading it and started feeling bossed around in the most gentle way ever, Kincaid starts by telling you that you are a tourist arriving to Antigua, a place you don't belong. She goes by the whole traditional 'arriving at your destination' thing in where she tells you how to look at the island and what it means, it's a journey from the airport to the hotel where you are going to be staying. This is all quite normal actually, the part that really shocked me is when she describes how locals look at tourists, they make fun of them, imitate them and envy them. Let's be clear, this are very poor people who probably aren't getting out of the island in their lifetime. It's a sad reality, but when one is a tourist either in Antigua, Mexico or Dominican Republic it's a reality you or me as a tourist will not notice. If you put yourself in their shoes you should understand, these people work at the hotels where guests come and go, hotels in their homeland, hotels where they will never afford to stay. This is a product of the incorporated world we live in, for example, after the 2004 Sri Lanka the villages that were in the coast got whipped off the map, what did the government do? They used something Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman liked to call "The Shock Doctrine" and privatized the coastal terrains granting construction permits to big hotel corporations . The government drives the people off their god-given land (something like Iron Maiden's The Clansman Song) and builds infrastructure to capitalize on, the people have no option but to work here if they want to eat. The feeling that locals had in Kincaid's essay is the same feeling that people will have in Sri Lanka (that is parting of the Kavafis point of view that every city is the same, only the people change), they will look at tourists like outsiders who are enjoying what they cannot. Journeys? They really make one feel special and different, but not everything that shines is gold, no one knows how a place is more than those who live and work in it, as it is the case with Antigua.








Image from the remains of the 2004 Indian tsunami.










The Clansman is a song by the British Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden that shows the feeling of native people seeking freedom when being driven off their land.  Click to listen.

Remember, 
Protect and love your country, don't let it fall on the hand of capitalist investors who just look at it as a big bag of cash. 

May the force be with you,
Gabriel Rosa.

"Why don't you like me?"

So I got assigned chapter 8 "Helping" from the book "Down on the island" by Jim Cooper (yay!) (...) on my english class. This chapter is very interesting for me because good ol' Jimbo was in "shock" when he saw his college students cheating on the departamental tests, they were not only cheating, they were helping each other cheat in the exam. Yes my fellow boricuas, the gringo was shocked because we help our friends get through the hardships of life (even college ones). Off topic, if he was in shock on an english test he ought to hang around Ciencias Naturales when exams are given, cheating is taken to a whole new level there, trust me. On topic, Mr. Cooper points out something very interesting, that in the continental states students are encouraged to be the best in their own right, not to help their friends during exams and stuff because they are in a constant competition with themselves, their classmates, other schools, other states, other countries, hell, even with poor E.T.'s home planet.

To me this explains a lot about american culture, their desire to be the best and shine on their own right, after all they are a country "started" by revolution and what they have done and accomplished has been all them. In contrast, this also explains a lot about puerto rican culture, we want the best for our friends and family because we are a country built on suffering and slavery, we help the ones we care about, it's natural. He accentuated that relatives of the students he failed went to practically beg for some extra credit work, he said no. This drove me bananas, i mean, dude if they can't pass your class what makes you think they're going to pass that course with another professor or even graduate? Well the answer was simple, he gave the students the grade they earned, not the one they deserved. That is a very cool and awesome philosophy, but considering the state in which puerto rican education was at that time one simply cannot be a hard ass with students. I'm not saying he should pass all of them but he should at least try different methods of teaching before failing them.

He also said that students would often question him on grades when they got bad grades claiming he "did not like him/her". He didn't understand this, let me explain this to all of the non-boricuas, as we are very good with the ones we love, we are very very very (you get the picture) bad with the ones we hate, which might make us think that if you fail us it's because you don't like us. We are very hospitable people, i mean we take southern hospitality to a whole new level, he says it in his book, that if we invite you to a party we prefer a yes and a no-show rather than a no, it's just the way we are. We are also known to lie from time to time to cover ourselves or for a friend. "Why don't you like me?" represents who we are as a culture. We can go to great lengths for those who we love, helping them cheat, asking for extra credit for them, making their essays, you name it. I just want everybody to know that we don't do it for bad reasons, we do it with all the kindness in our heart, contrary to what news reports say, we puerto ricans are good people and we prove it to the ones we care about on any level necessary.


May the force be with you,
Gabriel Rosa