Ah. Breakups. Well, as far as breakups go, it was as good as it could have possibly been. Well, no...I suppose a painless breakup would have been preferable. But for a breakup with someone I loved, it felt right and I got the answers I needed in order to move on. For this I am grateful. And I'm also lucky to have stumbled into a movie which helped me keep everything in perspective.

The movie is called The Motorcycle Diaries. It's a film about Che (then Ernesto) Guevara and his buddy Alberto Granado in their youth, when they took a massive roadtrip throughout South America. Since I am woefully ignorant of South American history and politics, I knew nothing of Che Guevara other than the fact that he was a Communist revolutionary who supported Castro and was killed. I didn't know that Guevara had been a medical student, and felt a pang of recognition when in the movie, he expressed boredom and lack of fulfillment with medical school and medical exams, and yearned to explore and travel and see what else the world could teach him. The movie wasn't particularly fantastic...Salles is a competent and enthusiastic, if not brilliant, director. The two lead actors did very subtle and moving work, but the structure and the pacing were a bit irritating (particularly in the beginning), and much of the humor failed. The black and white snapshot motif felt a little too cheezy for me, and took me out of the movie whenever it occurred. The first third of the film felt like an inferior retread of another movie (one of my favorites), Y Tu Mama Tambien. However, once the subject matter got more serious, and Ernesto and Alberto learn about the plight of their poor and powerless countrymen and countrywomyn, the movie became much more interesting. The scenes at the leper colony, where Ernesto and Alberto ignore the rules established by the nuns (forbidding any of the healthy workers to touch the lepers with their bare hands), were particularly moving.

When I saw DR at about 6 pm and asked him if we could meet after he finished work at 8 pm, and to my surprise he had filled his evening with a rugby practice and couldn't see me until 11 pm, I had to figure out how to spend those five hours without going insane with anxiety over the likely impending breakup. So I drove to an adjacent town to get some ice cream (which is my usual drug of choice for anxiety) and try to study at my favorite cafe. I happened to see that The Motorcycle Diaries was playing at the movie theater, scheduled to start right when I arrived, and I hopped into the building to watch it. I expected it to be a total escape--how much could I identify with two randy boys on a road trip through South America back in the 1950's? And apart from Ernesto's dissatisfaction with medical school and his desire to break free of expectations, I didn't find much there. But then there was a brief scene where he visits his girlfriend at her house, and they have a lovely time together. She begs him to stay with her; he regretfully is unable to grant her request. She tells him that she would wait for him, but not forever. She gives him $15 (in U.S. dollars) to buy her a bikini if the boys ever made it to the U.S. on their trip. After Ernesto and Alberto leave, no matter how many scrapes they get into, no matter how broke they are, he refuses to spend those $15, despite Alberto's begging and pleading. Then, at one of their stops, Ernesto receives a letter from his girlfriend. We never find out exactly what it says, but from his anguished reaction, we know that this girl is no longer his. Ernesto spends the day staring at the ocean and touching the letter, grieving his loss, as his buddy Alberto tries desperately but fails to cheer him up. And then Ernesto leaves the letter behind, gives his buddy a grin, and they move on. Afterwards, Ernesto finds something so much more important and meaningful than this silly girlfriend--a connection to the native peoples of South America, a sympathy with their plight, and a determination to do what he can in order to make their lives better. He gives those $15 to a destitute Communist couple who are desperate for work and risk their lives to work in the mines.

And so, after viewing this movie, I felt a strange peace, and kept it as I drove to his house for the inevitable confrontation. The breakup was excruciatingly painful; I sobbed, my chest shuddering violently, snot mingling with tears on my face, while he sat on his couch and stared at me helplessly, making sure not to touch me. But I knew that while it hurt, and while I lost something lovely and valuable, there was so much more in the world to worry about, to think about. Since I can no longer love him, I can redirect whatever love, whatever passion I have, into something more productive and more appreciated. Guevara found this to be true, and while I suspect that I will not become a Communist revolutionary, I think I can find this truth as well. In the large scheme of things, what is a romance anyway? Sure, it's the centerpiece of so many books and movies and television shows and songs, and it can be all-consuming for those who are involved in it...but in the end I don't think that romance alone would give my life meaning, would make me feel whole. Since the romance part of my life is obviously shot at the moment, I need to work on the rest of my life. To find some sort of life path, like Guevara himself found. Funny...I had been hard at work at figuring that stuff out until I met DR; then most of my energy went to my relationship with him, and I largely neglected the task of understanding what the hell I should do with my life, and how to cobble together a spiritual construct.

Somewhat inspired by the film, I agreed to go to Pennsylvania to go Kerry canvassing with a friend of mine. Pennsylvania is considered a swing state for this current election, and people from all over the East Coast have been driving to Pennsylvania in order to talk to voters there. My friend (MF) and I went door to door with people who were targeted as likely Democrats through previous surveys. We asked them about their thoughts on voting, and whether they wanted more information about particular issues in order to aid their decision, and whether they knew where the local polling place was located. The neighborhood we roamed through was located in inner city Harrisburg; it was run down with many abandoned and crumbling buildings. Most of the people we met were black or Hispanic. It was fun to see the strong Kerry support in the neighborhood; passersby were excited to see us and quickly divested us of Kerry signs and bumper stickers, lightening our load considerably. MF and I got lost and asked an elderly gentleman where we could find "Reh-jeen-a" (Regina) Street; he quickly corrected us and said that it was "Reh-jeye-na" Street and directed us to it. As MF and I left him, I joked that he was a dirty old man and changed the pronunciation of every possible word to resemble "vagina." So angina would be pronounced "an-jeye-na" and so on.

We encountered one gentleman who stared at us silently through his open doorway as we cheerfully announced that we were part of the Kerry/Edwards campaign. He then shouted that he was not voting for anyone, because "Both of them are liars!" We asked him to explain this, and he said that both Bush and Kerry were one-sided in their support of Israelis over the Palestinians. He urged us to enter his house, and although at first we weakly protested, citing the need to see many more houses that day, we ultimately complied. I saw green arabic letters streaming down his computer in columns, like the numbers on computer screens in The Matrix. He had an enormous television which showcased the Al Jazeera station. MF stayed standing while the man insisted that I sit on his couch, which I did. I was a little nervous because there was a beautiful white crocheted covering on his couch, and I suspected that my unpredictable period might be imminent and was using no barrier. The man said that he was a Lebanese Christian, and that if the Palestinians and the Israelis each had their own state, then there would be no more war. MF admitted that he was Jewish, and then the man said that he was in the food industry, and Jewish people came into his store all the time, and he still spoke his opinion to them. MF bristled when the man shouted that Israelis thrived on the conflict between themselves and the Palestinians, and that if there was peace, then Israel would no longer have any purpose. The man insisted that the middle Eastern Muslims and Arabs will never stop fighting until the Palestinians had their own state, and agreed that things had gotten worse under Bush. MF said something about the civil war in Lebanon, and the man laughed and said that Henry Kissinger had told the Palestinians to take over Lebanon (which had a 3.5 million population, about 1 million of which was Palestinian) since they would never have a land of their own otherwise, and thus sparked the civil war. Eventually we made our graceful exit, and the man profusely thanked us, shaking our hands and calling us "son" and "daughter." He was an odd mix of warm hospitality and aggressive tirades. MF and I wondered afterwards whether he had been waiting all day for someone to come into his house, so that he could talk about his opinions with them. He seemed energized by the debate.

We met a heavyset black man who was sitting on the steps in front of his house while his three young sons rode on their bikes on the sidewalk in front of him. He said that he wasn't going to vote for Bush or Kerry, but would instead vote for a third party candidate, possibly Nader. We asked him why he disliked Kerry, and he admitted that he didn't think that Kerry would do anything to help him. His main concern was day care for single parents; after losing his job a year ago which paid $20 an hour, he hadn't been able to find a job which paid more than $7-8/hour. On that salary he was unable to afford day care for his kids, so he was stuck. He decided to start his own business and has been scraping by, but was utterly pessimistic about the possibility that either presidential candidate would improve his situation. As we started spouting our rhetoric, he told us that he had read plenty of information on the internet, and was indeed well-informed as he expertly described Bush's failures as president, particularly concerning the dubiously conceived war in Iraq, as well as Kerry's weaknesses. He felt that Bush would steal the election with all of the tools at his disposal, and that Kerry would not have a chance. MF and I remained resolutely optimistic about Kerry. In any case, we didn't change his mind regarding his vote, but we wished him the best.

So, while my experiences are not nearly as profound as Guevara's on his roadtrip, I did feel (perhaps misguidedly) that I did something good to help out the Kerry campaign, and in the process got a glimpse into the lives of people I would have never encountered otherwise. While several of the people we met, particularly the two I just mentioned, were cynical about U.S. politics and the potential for improvement, I still have enough naive optimism to think that people can make the world better.

One nice side effect of the breakup is how I've found solace in nature. While I was in the relationship, so much of my attention was focused on him and myself that I lost much interest in the world around me. But autumn imagery, although it's usually considered sad and mournful (as a metaphor for the end of life), has soothed me greatly. I find myself sighing with pleasure at the fluttering yellow leaves of the Japanese maple tree outside my window, the multicolored patches of fallen leaves on the rocks in the Eno River, the smudges of orange and red and green ahd brown and yellow which fly by as MF and I drove along the Washington-Baltimore Parkway, the brisk cool air which lends a solemnity to the pastel-streaked skies during sunset. It's even better than ice cream. Seriously.