TheExpatJournals.com

I love New York City, but I sure like me a lot better when I’m not in it.

This will be a bit unusual for my Panama Chronicles as it pertains almost exclusively to departing the US with finality. Many people have asked me how I landed in Panama or ‘Why Panama?’ and there’s not really a simple answer.

I ended up resorting to the joking response that middle-aged men have affairs and middle aged women move to other countries hoping that would encompass enough of a concept to deter further questions. Like someone doing press interviews to promote something new, I got tired of the same old question. I can now simply say ‘Go here and read.’

For many years, I’ve had a passion for African antiques, particularly from the Congo. I used to dream of moving there and had ambitious desires to be of service to women in particular. I still possess ideas about how to completely turn around local economies in a co-operative method, but I digress. First of all, it’s completely dangerous there and second of all, I just couldn’t drum up the desire to learn French. Yet for years, scouring the internet for info on Africa was a hobby. People used to phone, ask me what I was doing and I would regularly respond, “House hunting in Africa.” And it was true.

So I sort of thought Capetown, South Africa might be an alternative. But the more I checked into the feasibility, the less feasible it became. During the course of all of this, something I was surfing for lead me to Panama. And it grabbed me pretty quickly and held on tightly. The more I read, the more interesting it became. From afar, I was smitten. For the next ten months or so, I unearthed every snippet of info I could possibly cull from the internet. It became obsessive for me.

Other events conspired in my life and in my world. Politics was no small factor. I have always been what some have called a pathological optimist. So by the midterm elections, I tried to comfort friends with the analogy of Rodney King. As awful as it was, denial dissappeared. But when we bombed Iraq, something in me broke. It all felt so futile, and for me emotionally, I knew there was no turning back. Like the end of a relationship that is over long before it ends, and finally reaching what you know is the end. The question became ‘where can I go?’

On a side note, someone recently asked me if I didn’t feel an obligation, a civic duty to stay and work towards change I’d like to see. My answer was “No. The truth is that my reaction to the state of things entails so much anger and so much impotence that my mindset ends up quite negative. I just want to live my life now and down here, it’s easy to be at peace and that spills over into the lives around me and is far more of what I want to be contributing on this earth than the anger when focused on political realities in the US.”

So…I was working like a fien in NYC as a consultant to a start up record label that, in spite of their experienced staff, were
shockingly lacking in any sort of collective culture that added up to anything promising. I became more and more frustration and boy did it show. I had also been sort of talked into managing a band again, a part of my career I had left 7 years previous. Both nightmares and compounded by the fact that I still had an independent marketing company to run. It all added up to 130 hour work weeks and misery.

I had tried to leave NYC once before, but couldn’t let go of being a New Yorker. It was the only place I had ever lived that felt like home. NYC either really works or doesn’t at all and for me, for many years, there was nowhere else on earth that could hold a candle to NYC. Like one of those last episodes of “Sex And The City” when Miranda, who has moved to a fantastic house in Brooklyn, laughs about some of the horrible apartments she had and ponders, “Why does everyone thing it’s so fabulous to live in Manhattan?” And Kerry responds, “Because it is.”

I felt like I belonged to a special club just by living there. I cannot adequately state how great New York City used to be for me. Across the board. I later laughed at how spoiled NYC’ers are when it comes to options. Having virtually anything you could want at your fingertips equals feeling deprived when you don’t no matter how relatively little of those options you actually avail yourself of.

Back in August, I went to El Valle, a valley in the crater of an extinct volcano surrounded by peaks in a cloud forest. Because of it’s altitude, the temperature drops at night and the clouds dip down into the valley. As I skinny dipped in a swimming pool fed by a perpetually running, perpetually bathwater warm, perpetually chemical free thermal spring set in a backyard that was literally a botanical garden with it’s individual areas of bromeliads, hibiscus, bonsais, orchids, etc…oh God, the combo of that warm water, the cool night air, the mist of a cloud on my face and the lush gardens…Well suffice it to say, that is not an option in NYC. And there is nothing like spending years and years in the city to give you a passion for
nature due to the deprivation of it.

I would also say to friends: I can throw a rock into the Pacific Ocean from my bougainvilla covered balcony above a cobblestone street in the oldest neighborhood on the entire Pacific coast of the Americas. The rent on my 1000 sq. ft. loft is $500 a month with a lease/purchase option. And if I move upstairs, I will have unobstructed views of the ocean, the skyline, the Canal and I will be able to watch the sun both rise and set over the ocean from my living room. It still defies logic to me that I look due east at the Pacific Ocean without being overseas somewhere.

I have the most delightful maid who comes two days a week, thoroughly cleans, does laundry, cooks and that costs $20 a week. Taxis are as plentiful as NYC, yet it’s difficult to spend over $2 to get anywhere in the city. Health insurance is a fraction of the price and doctors are mostly US trained and still actually doctor in a proactive way that ceased long ago in the US. Even Johns Hopkins is building a hospital in Panama City. Health care here is anything but third world. The temperature is a steady 74-82 degrees, only the humidity shifts. The people have hearts of gold are are the most gentle, kind spirited people I’ve ever known. I grew up in the South and as I’ve said before, “The people here are truly the kind of hospitable that the folks in the South purport to be.”

There are great restaurants that are cheap, cheap, cheap by NYC standards. You can watch a recently relesed movie in a plush leather recliner with the expensive ticket-$6. Though I do admit the lack of Angelikas and indie films in video stores is one thing I miss. And if a release is in a foreign language, the subtitles are Spanish. And I’m not there yet.

There are mountains, rivers, two oceans, jungle, beaches, islands and indigenous cultures to explore. To start. There’s a new language to learn. And I haven’t even started with the developing friendships here, which for me, is the most valuable natural resource in Panama. There is absolutely no way to adequately articulate the beauty of the friendships I’ve already developed here. You become family. It’s so easy to belong. It’s so easy to share and so inspirational in terms of reciprocity. I think that in NYC, it becomes a bit easy to limit your belief of what your importance is to another person by what you can do for them. Here, it feels like it is about what you can BE for them, not do for them. The openness, the humor, the genorosity is just the kind of foundation I want in my friendships.

When I was in NYC for September, a friend told me about a woman who came out and warned her not to park where she was about to park…she would get towed in spite of the lack of signs. She thought it was so incredibly nice of the woman to go out of her way. I said to her, “While that does stand out in NYC because it’s not the norm, can you imagine living somewhere where that is the norm and ugly attitudes are the exception to the rule? And can you imagine what living in a
culture like that does for you inside?”

Now, one of the problems with leaving NYC before is that I longed for more intimate friendships, for people more in my life on a regular basis, which I always found difficult in NYC because life is always so busy for everyone. Long term friendships and numbers of acquaintances revolving around social activity seemed the only alternative for that constant contact. For me, that equalled making up in quantity what you lack in quality. Not that there aren’t a couple of people who will forever be foundations in my life, but I still longed for something closer to family being someone without family, chosen family.

Now NYC is great for being single, as outside of NYC, life seems to revolve around insular families. Which is a huge part of what made moving out of NYC impossible without being a couple-isolation. Coupled with that is the seeming fact that folks outside NYC seem to be only concerned with their own ‘back yard.’ Some may call that a lack of sophistication, but to me, it was simply a decision to ignore most things beyond their own small world. And that made for a lot of gossip and a lot of drama around their relationships. And that seems very petty and boring to me. I need the constant mental challenge that a place like NYC offers. Otherwise, I get bored.

I remember coming to visit NYC while living in Asheville, NC–an incredible place albeit not a permanent possibility for me,
nevertheless where I first attempted to escape NYC. Anyway, this friend was suggesting that we fly to Reykjavik and sit in the geo-thermal pools for New Year’s Eve. I remember thinking that I didn’t know a soul in Asheville who even thought like that and to me, it summarized the difference in cultural mentality that I’m stumbling to describe here. I moved back within a month.

So, it is with much surprise that my friendships in Panama seem to encapsulate the best of both worlds. My friends are Panamanians who speak fluent English having studied English all through school and then gone to college in the US and most have travelled the world. Plus, in Panama, exposure to so many ethnicities is a given since it is the crossroads of the world. Many even say it’s the center of the world. So my friends here don’t think in petty terms yet offer the sort of intimate friendships that I longed for. Heaven!

So beyond the fact that the ability to explore the land, learn the language, gain new understanding of new cultures, again, without the friendships here, all that possibility wouldn’t be possible in the face of isolation and loneliness. But with it, I feel like I’m having an adventurous second childhood! And that is not something I could have created. That is something that can only unfold. Pushing gets you nothing but frustration here. And that is complete paradox for a New Yorker but incredibly freeing when you’re tired of push, push, pushing. Let go and trust the invisible net that will not only catch you, but cushion you in the softest, most gentle way.

And the expat community is an invaluable resource! Unlike those country spots outside NYC, they embrace you and welcome you. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of mingling with Americans in foreign countries that you would never have met or spent time with in America. Well, that’s what it’s like here to be an expat. Strangers in a strange land becoming unlikely allies as a result.

NYC used to be about culture, used to be about creativity, used to be unique, used to have an edge. To me, NYC is now tame and lame and whitebread mall culture just like everywhere else in the US. Bubba Gump, Red Lobster and Disney in Times Square? Home Depot and Kmart? How many mom and pop ‘institutions’ have gone out of business in the last few years after a century in the neighborhood? How many struggling artists can afford to live there? And without them, where’s the edge?

Last weekend, I did go up to Harlem to buy some mud cloth to bring back and then over to this amazing exclusively essential oils shop on 104 and Lex followed by dinner at this great Puerto Rican restuarant on 106 a few doors off Lexington. I told people that if I had discovered uptown, I might never have moved to Panama. It’s what I loved about NYC. Individuality. Life. Edge. And ironically, Latin culture.

Back in September, I was speaking with a friend who was speaking with a friend who had moved away a few years ago and was really missing New York. He told her, “The New York you miss isn’t here anymore.” Couldn’t sum it up any more simply nor any more perfectly than that.

So back to before all the rambling, I quit 2 of my 3 jobs, got Vonage, knew that I had learned as much about Panama as possible without getting on a plane, so that’s what I did. I came here for one month. The first two weeks were interesting, but I was still imploding from 18 months of 130 hour work weeks. But once I relaxed, wow did magic unfold!

I know me well enough to know that living outside of Panama City is not mentally healthy for me no matter how much I might want to. And though everyone I knew tried to steer me away from Casco Viejo for any number of reasons, my head knew that Paitilla, El Cangrejo, or Marbella would be the easier, more reasonable choice, but my heart absolutely demanded Casco Viejo. And I haven’t regretted listening to that for one minute so far. And it’s been 6.5 months.

On my last day of that first trip, I rented a place. I went back to NYC for only 8 days, sublet my apartment for the summer, took as much as I could on the plane and moved. In September, as I walked through Tocumen to head back to NYC, my eyes welled up with tears because in that moment, I knew I didn’t even want to go back and I knew that I was feeling a kind of peace and happiness that I hadn’t felt for so long, I had forgotten what it felt like until now. Later in the summer, I marvelled in regards to the many wonders that Panama has equalled for me, “I get all of this just for leaving New York?!”

One of my friends asked me last night how I felt as I departed NYC. I told him that my mind was telling me I should feel some dramatic bittersweet something around leaving or at least some fear, but I couldn’t feel a thing. My first departure couldn’t have been further from that truth with all it’s internal goodbye drama.

And the difference validates what I already knew…it was time. Like that relationship that ended before it was over, all that was left was to end it. NYC and I grew in different directions. I couldn’t keep longing for what used to be nor live in the hope of what might be. It felt downright silly to wish for a time that had long past. Then again, one of my descriptions of Panama has been to say that it’s like living in the 70’s with Broadband.

I feel I’ve been delivered and that somehow, all of this unfolded rather than me creating it. Like someone took stock of all my true desires and then cross referenced it all perfectly to add up to Panama.