Hello! I’m Anya. I’m in my third year of the University of Southern California’s BFA Screenwriting program with a minor in Environmental Studies, and in eleven days, I’m waking up at four in the morning to go to JFK Airport and get on a plane for IES Abroad’s Galápagos Islands Direct Enrollment program. I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, so it’s no surprise that I’ve been treating the last month or so of my life as a Celine Dion-esque farewell tour, even though I’ll be back in the states in May. With nothing else to do on New Year’s Eve before 10pm (except avoid Times Square with a ten-foot pole), I’ve decided it’s time to investigate that feeling.
I’ve always considered myself to be a woman of extremes. It’s how I ended up in California in the first place; I turned down a quarter of a million dollars from a wonderful playwriting program at Fordham because I could walk to their campus from my high school in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan. But truthfully, even a place like New Jersey would be too close to home. (Then again, why on earth would I ever want to be in New Jersey?) I knew I needed to be somewhere new doing something unfamiliar and becoming someone closer to myself than I’d ever know in the little town I’d grown up in, even though that “little town” was New York City, which in my opinion as a professional East Coast supremacist, is the greatest city in the world. Although I can’t for the life of me remember where I originally found it, I’ve been writing and rewriting the words “RUN TOWARDS FEAR” in various journals for years now; I have this self-aggrandizing idea that I can only grow in discomfort. I know for a fact that a good part of January, and likely February too, will be highly uncomfortable in unexpected ways. People keep asking me if I’m nervous, if I’m excited, if I’m scared, if I’m ready, if I’m not, etc. and the best answer I can give is “yes,” which never seems like enough of an answer to anyone. But it’s the truth. I have no idea what to expect, and that’s the most exciting part. There is no way to prepare for this. I’ve never done anything like it. What a gift! And how scary!
It feels like every conversation I’ve had since returning home has been about this trip, and as much as that thrills me, I also know it means not seeing my family and friends for the better half of a year. I know it means trusting that the people who need me will be okay without me, and although they’ve never been good at keeping their word, this time I’m relying on a secret, invisible thing I’m calling faith. It means not being in community with my friends who make this wonderful life worth living. It means having the most free time I’ve had since I was in elementary school, before I learned that I like being chronically busy. Friends, mentors, advisors, and the like keep talking of this liminal state of existence called “island time” that seems to fall somewhere between the bounds of Eastern Standard Time and purgatory. I use “island time” as a synonym for “CP time” to refer to the inevitable 15-minute lateness I inherited from my Caribbean half of the family, but I’m getting the impression that when they say “island time” they mean something a little different. I have this beautiful oversimplification in my head that I’m genetically hardwired to live on an island, despite the fact that I’ve never actually been to the Dominican Republic or Cuba, where my dad hails from. It’s the same logic behind the beautiful oversimplification that, despite not speaking Spanish as a child, and despite being considered a “no sabo” by the Latino community, I expect that the moment my left cowboy boot makes contact with the Ecuadorian tarmac, I’ll start dreaming in Spanish.
Maybe the weeks prior to my departure have been a farewell tour because the trip itself seems like some sort of homecoming. I have no literal connections to Ecuador, so maybe I’m being delusional about the whole thing, but I’ve come to think of it as a spiritual homecoming. My grandmother, Gracie, passed away when I was seventeen. When she died, I felt that a part of me went with her. I felt that I’d let her down – that her broken English was an act of bravery while my broken Spanish was evidence of my cowardice. Just about every other picture I have of her has something to do with the Atlantic Ocean, whether it’s just a feature in the background or she’s swimming peacefully in it. So when I first moved to California, I started a tradition in the Pacific (I figured it was close enough). It usually begins with something like: hola, abuelita. Te amo y te extraño. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I know: it’s prayer. The best remedy for grief is letting it introduce itself to you as love. That love has nowhere to go, and finds itself, instead, showing you all of the ways you and the one you’ve lost are interconnected. Like anyone else who grew up with the climate doomsday clock in Union Square, I’m terrified of the damage we’ve done to our planet in the anthropocene. Every day, I feel like I’m mourning something: a species, a great-grandchild, the past. Still, my ecology textbook tells me that “interdependence sustains life”. When I want to be a better friend and a better neighbor, I look to mycelium. When I forget who I am, I look at Gracie. I had the privilege of participating in a workshop through USC’s Harman Academy of Polymathic Inquiry led by Aroussiak Gabrielian, who described herself as an artist aiming to “decenter humanity, from the microbial to the universal.” I hope to do the same. When I find myself spiraling about growing up on a dying planet, I remember that resilience is a scientific term. Our symbiotic participation in the natural world is an obligation and a privilege, not charity.
My beautiful friend eMJay just woke up from her mid-day nap, and my dumb (he is, and I mean it affectionately) little cat Binx vomited on a shoe, so it’s time for me to go. I’ll leave you with my lofty ambitions for 2025: I’ve told my friends, and one incredible woman I took on a six-hour date just before leaving Los Angeles, that I’ll return extremely buff and infinitely wise, with the ability to play guitar like an extension of my own body. I tell them that next time they see me, I’ll have solved climate change, and I’ll have done so in Spanish. I’ll read every book I’ve ever pretended to have read to sound smarter than I really am, but come May 10th, I truly will be that smart. I’ll be so smart that I’ll have cured my own clinical depression and unlocked a shiny new part of my brain that had formerly been inundated with whatever silly chemical imbalance I’ve had all my life and dedicate it to befriending tortoises in a Jane Goodall sort of way. Next you all see me, I’ll be 21 with an Advanced Scuba Certification and maybe I’ll have fallen in love. I’ll also be bald because I’m shaving my head to kick off the new year. I hope to rediscover my place in the family of things. I intend to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves. I plan to meet God and walk backwards into the ocean. I’ll let you know if/when I’m successful.
Eat your black eyed peas for good luck tomorrow. Happy New Year!
Anya Jiménez
Anya Jiménez is a Screenwriting major with a minor in Environmental Studies. She got scuba certified before learning how to drive, but as a New Yorker, she never thought she’d need a license. Anya was wrong and pays for this act of hubris daily.
