Entry Two

Entry Two in the "What Chris is Doing In Colombia Over the Next Month" creative writing competition.

by David Parsons of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Chris boards the bus wearing a new shirt: tree-frog green, greyshort-sleeves, and an italicized elephant screen-printed in flat blue above his washboard stomach.

The mall was cool, air-conditioned, made him uncomfortable. His new ranchero hat keeps the sun from his eyes as the sun shines in the window; it reminds him of the mall, and this he does not like. It comes to mind now: why, he wonders, doesn't he like the hat reminding him of the mall? He thinks on it, and begins to like the memory. The small, semi-private internet cubicle at Marión with a keyboard he could hardly navigate for the accents and a photograph of the swiss alps with the word SUISSE in red letters on top; buying Mexican candies in a small Colombian hardware store because the shopkeeper told him, "Son los mejores, mi amigo."

Memory is like that, he realizes, as he watches the others board the bus and lurches as the yellow bus -- "East Mississippi School Bo rd: Bus 14"emblazoned in black on one side, the "a" conspicuously missing -- begins the short ride back to camp. We remember things as we like to. His distaste for the cool consumerism of the mall will metamorph into an appreciation of the differences of pop-culture that come with language and geography changes: he will remember smiling as he heard a deep masculine voice ringing out, "doble-ve doble-ve doble-ve punto coca-cola punto com," as a radio commercial played over the speakers of a clothing store. He will realize that he can't be sure whether things happened as he remembers or whether they may as well have happened because he remembers.

The lush green foliage, the smells of corn and smoke from roadside vendors selling food to people inside noisy buses and trucks, the sound of horns honking and spanish pop-music -- they all seem to float by as his mind weaves them into his story.