Yes is a pleasant country

My spring of sí, the Sisyphus of salsa dancing, and a beginner's mindset

I haven’t said no to a question since I got to Mexico. Mainly because sí is one of the only Spanish words I knew upon arriving.

As a words person, it's humbling to be somewhere I have the vocabulary equivalent of a three-year-old. My sparkling wit is somewhat dulled when all I can say is: I eat apples! He eats apples! You are eating apples!

I’m a firm believer in learning the language of the country you’re in, and I swear I’m trying. I found a Spanish tutor. I downloaded the Spanish-English dictionary. If I miss one more day of my Duolingo lessons, the Owl is threatening to hunt down my family.

Still, it’s slow progress, so I get by with what I know: sí. It reminded of a rule my friend Matt and his wife implemented when they were traveling full-time.

“Our only rule was to just say yes,” Matt told me. “If we were at a bar and got invited us to dinner, we said yes. If dinner led to a boat, we said yes. If that boat led to an armored vehicle which led to a Johannesburg country club with 15-foot walls, armed guards, and fingerprinting to get in or out?”—oddly specific hypothetical, Matt—”We said yes.”

I decided to lean into the linguistic constraints and make this my spring of sí: I deployed it enthusiastically and often—no matter how little I understood what exactly I was agreeing to.

My first friend in Mexico City was Steve, a screenwriter from Canada. He took me out to tacos at a street stand and we stared at the menu. “This…means face,” Steve translated. He pointed to each item on the list after that. “This means tongue. This is head. Then…no idea, no idea, no idea, no idea.”

Steve ordered three no ideas. Did I want the same? Sí.

In English, I deliberate a lot before I say yes to something. In Spanish, I spent a lot of time puzzling out what I had just signed up for.

I said sí indiscriminately and found myself petting a hairless dog, releasing baby sea turtles, rowing out to a floating farm at dawn, making a mole that requires 17+ ingredients, trying mystery fruit from the bare hand of a market vendor, eating crickets and beetles in my guacamole, taking a a dusty ATV ride on the highway, and boarding a very questionable fishing boat (and subsequently sending my last-known location to the entire WhatsApp group, just in case).

I loved saying yes. It made me into the kind of girl I’ve always wanted to be. Not an over-thinker, over-deliberator, over-optimizer. Someone agreeable! Someone fun and flexible! Someone who knows how to have a good time!

—

That illusion would soon be shattered.

When my friend Olivia invited me to a salsa dancing class, my sí came reluctantly.

There are a handful of things I consider myself incredibly good at (pouring water from a large vessel into a slightly smaller one, for example). There are many things I’m just alright at (everything else). But there are three things that I am unusually bad at: organized sports, learning foreign languages, and choreographed dance. 

In my view, these all require the same core skillset: learning the rules, improvising, and—crucially—being willing to fail in public. 

Be seen trying? I’m sorry, but that’s where I draw the line. 

The night of our salsa class, I considered canceling, but I didn’t want to disappoint my new friends. Plus I look so good in red. Bravely, I put on a miniskirt and walked to the club.

Beginners were herded upstairs for a dancing lesson. From this point on, I understood nothing. All I could say for certain was that no one was eating apples.

“ADELANTE!” the instructor yelled at the pulsing group of dancers. Everyone advanced (except me). 

“ATRAS!” Everyone retreated (except me). 

“VUELTA!” Everyone around me rotated and spun in gorgeous, balletic circles. I stood stock still in the middle of the room. 

The instructor caught my eye, looking at me with such abject disgust that it needed no translation.

We switched dance partners every two minutes, so I got to see disappointment register on a new face each time, my misery constantly restarting, the Sisyphus of salsa dancing.

Language tip: a crowded dance lesson is the fastest way to learn the Spanish words for forward, backward, turn, and “Ma’am please exit the dance floor, you’re a danger to yourself and others.” 

When the lesson ended, I slunk over to where my friends stood. My bangs were matted to my forehead and my face was nearly as red as my shirt.

“How was it?” asked Olivia excitedly. Her cheeks were flushed a pretty pink but she was otherwise unruffled. 

Twin demons of perfectionism and performance anxiety were dancing a little jig on my shoulder, and their footwork was much better than mine.

“I hate being a beginner,” I said, through gritted teeth, trying my best to hide the true depths of my neuroses from these nice new friends.

“Really?” Olivia said, surprised. “I love being a beginner!”

I believed her. Though I had just met Olivia a few days ago, every time we talked, a new hobby revealed itself: lifestyle photographer, competitive cyclist, standup comedian, Latin dancer, speaker of multiple languages. 

She was probably excellent at precisely pouring liquid from pitchers too. 

“It’s so freeing to have permission to be bad at something,” Olivia said.

I watched as she was whisked away and twirled across the dance floor, laughing as she went. Maybe she was onto something.

—

Before I left for Mexico, I’d been going to a Buddhist meditation center in East Nashville, because I am nothing if not an Eat-Pray-Love parody.

In meditation, we practice having a beginner's mind: emptying our heads of old ideas, expectations, and assumptions so we can see things with fresh eyes.

“As Shunryu Suzuki said,” said the tattooed white guy leading our meditation session, “‘In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.’”

Since 2022, I have been a beginner again—and again and again. I left my home, traveled solo, stopped drinking, got strong, visited new countries, drove across the US alone, and talked to countless strangers. I started writing seriously again for the first time in a decade.

Each time I start over, it gives me a new lens through which to see the world, my life, and myself. I think that’s why I like it so much. It forces a posture of curiosity. It opens me up to possibilities I hadn’t seen before.

Along the way, there has been fear and failure. I have been seen trying. But if I had known those small embarrassments were the entry fee to a more expansive life, I would have paid them a long time ago. 

—

A few weeks after my failed salsa lesson, I was out on one of my half-dozen daily mental health walks when I stumbled across a small used bookstore.

Browsing the shelves, I selected the only English-language book I saw, The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr. The young bookstore clerk, a guy in his 20s, came over and complimented my selection. I told him I’d recently read Karr’s Art of Memoir and loved it.

“Oh, are you a writer?” the clerk asked. 

In the past, when people ask this, I hedge. A breathless well-by-day-I-work-in-marketing followed by a but-I’ve-recently-gotten-back-into-writing, likely peppered with a have-you-heard-of-The-Artist’s-Way? It’s exhausting for everyone.

Inherent to this hesitation is that old shame of being a beginner. I have no recent publications or awards. I don’t know anything about the literary world. I don’t have an MFA or an agent or a book deal. But I’m starting to understand being a beginner as an advantage.

In The Artist’s Way (contractual mention) Julia Cameron says, “The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again. It is the willingness to once more be a beginner that distinguishes a creative career.”

If being a beginner means giving yourself permission to say yes, observe, experiment, ask questions, take risks, try and fail—well, isn’t that what creative work is all about?

“Sí,” I told the bookstore clerk. “I’m a writer.”

In a conversational pivot that belonged onstage at the ballet folklórico, the bookstore clerk asked: “Do you like to dance?” 

“Do I like…to dance?” I asked.

I looked around the small bookstore, which was the length and width of a hallway. The bookstore clerk mistook my blank expression for not understanding what he was asking, rather than being baffled by the request. He gestured to the radio and mimed a waltz. 

“...sí?” I answered. 

The clerk took my hand and put the other arm around my waist, leading us in a salsa twirl around the tiny bookstore. I had to admit, those disastrous lessons might actually have done me some good.

I recently came across the e.e. cummings poem Yes is a pleasant country. These past two months in Mexico, and these past two years at large, I’ve have found so much pleasure in saying yes, trading perfection for play, and allowing myself the delight of being a perpetual beginner. Yes has been a pleasant country. I’m considering permanent residence.

Back in the bookstore, the song on the radio finished and I thanked the clerk for the dance. I reached for my wallet to pay for the book, but he wasn’t letting go of my waist. He was smiling at me. His face was getting closer. Unusually close. Uncomfortably close.

Dear god, he was going in for a kiss. 

“Oh! Um,” I said, stepping back. What was that word I was looking for? It had been so long since I used it, but it came back to me like the name of an old friend. “No.”

I might be a beginner, but this ain’t my first rodeo.

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