Home, but Not Home

It all doesn't seem right. Maybe it's the snow and the freezing rain. Maybe it's my roommate, Noah, bragging about the three-way he had on his birthday. Maybe I'm just finished with DC.

Usually, when I come home from vacation, there is a small relief to be home. Don't get me wrong - overall, I almost always hate to come home. But, there are always those little comforts that ease the transition from the exotic abroad to the local banal. There's the food you miss. There's the hot shower. There's sleeping in your own bed.

This time, though, it was empty. Maybe I wasn't gone long enough. Maybe I hadn't yet missed my friends or family. Maybe my trip was too comfortable.

I suspect that it's more than that. Even though there's still some time left here, it feels temporary. When I see my house, I think about how I'm going to pack it up. When I see my friends, I wonder who will e-mail and visit. When I think of my parents, I wonder if they'll manage okay without me.

Home doesn't feel like home, but a waiting room.

Heading Home, Again

It started getting very rainy in Bocas and there was little I could do. A visit to trash dump to see people living on buzura was one of the most productive things I did with one of my days, so I needed to get out. Brighton Mike and I caught a ferry and a bus to David where there was absolutely nothing to do, though we did have the best and worst hamburger lunch from a stall (we were starving, but it was crap). We caught another bus to Boquette to see the volcano and, frankly, be anywhere other than David. After that we hit Playa Santa Clara, a very Panamanian beach spot.

To kill time in Santa Clara we snuck into the all inclusive resort to laugh at the fat people and swam several times to a buoy for no reason. We also walked to a truck stop and had chicken while the locals watched porno. Ironically, as little as there was to do, it still was more exciting than being in DC. Then again, we only spent a day there.

I saw the canal, which was a check-the-box activity, and spent the evening in Panama City with a few travelers. At dinner, Steve, a 49-year-old Buddhist from Australia, shared his insights on life and reincarnation. He believed many of us have met before and that explains the crazy connections we can share with people. He believed lazy people had full lives before and are now just resting. He believed there was something to learn from every failure and when there wasn't anything to learn, it simply wasn't a failure. To every judgement and idea on the way people should be or the way the world should be, there was a response that neutralized it. It was both defeatist and comforting.

And, so, I await my cab to the airport to return to DC. I'm fearing it, but then again, this week is going to be interesting and in many ways, so I do want to go home.

Stealing Canoes

Bocas has been extremely fun, but I´ll never understand the people that spend months or years here. Parts have gotten vold after just four days, but for the most part, it is great. Then again, I have the cash to spend on dinners and boats. The local hippies and drop outs just hang out, so I don´t really understand the appeal of this place for them. To each his own, I guess.

I´ve kept myself pretty busy since I have little time. My first day, I took a boat with some people I met out to an island and went surfing. I partied a little too hard and woke up late the next day late so I just took a twelve mile hike up to the nearby cave. Naturally, I forgot a flashlight. Still, the trip went through farmland and jungle and was breathtaking. My third day, I befriended a group of crazy Argentinians (who are easily 80% of the tourist population), rented a boat and hung out on a far off, picture perfect island. Today, I dived for the first time in 8 years. I forgot how much I simply loved it.

Of course, sometimes you have one of those crazy nights. Last night, the police shut down the bars and clubs on our island. Just as I was about to head home, a group of 20 Argentinian ladies I had met arrived from their island looking to dance. ¨Washington!¨ (yes, they refer to me as that) ¨Come back to Aqua Lounge and dance!¨ How could I refuse? Well, once we got to their island, most of them lost their steam and went to bed. A few of hung out and did some high diving until about 2:30. A couple of Argentinian guys and I needed to head back to our island. Unfortunately, because the bars were closed, the boats had stopped running.

¨Hey Washington, let´s take this canoe,¨said one Argentinian pointing to an old dug out log canoe
¨That´s stealing, said the other

The evil side of me agreed with the former so the two us got in and I utilized my paddling skills from childhood camping. Across the channel we went, careful not to take water and made it to our island. We docked at a posh hotel on the water, jumped its fence and went home. It turned out the canoe was Aqua Lounge´s owners, they don´t make them anymore because the trees are endangered and he´s crazy having fought a taxi driver last week with a tire iron. I attempted to look for the canoe this afternoon, but it was gone from the hotel. It probably got back to it´s owner, right? I don´t think I´m going to go back to Aqua Lounge.

panama CIty and Bocas del Toro

The past two days have been impossibly long. Not in a bad way. it's always hard to believe that so much can occur in one day. of course, the army advertizes that fact all the time. (By the way, why wont capital i, o and p work on this computer?) i went to work, caught my flight out with Jeff and had a hectic transfer Miami. i realized that i forgot my guide book at home so after arriving we befriended a British professional skateboarder and his girlfriend and tagged along to their hotel. The warm air was instantly relaxing and i was transformed to my jovial side. After checking in, the four of us got some chicken at the local restaurant in old town and chatted on the roof of the hotel about Brazil and peru. oddly, the Brits found Brazil to be safe and peru to be dangerous which was the opposite of my experience. But, that's the funny thing about places- they are nothing but your experience there.

i knew i wanted to get out of panama city quick, so we grabbed a cab in the morning to the domestic airport. We put ourselves on a waiting list and walked over the local mall, which was like any other mall except for the manequins all had tripple D breasts. Very odd. i tried to order tamales at the grocery store, but the woman insisted i couldn't because they were out of chicken sauce despite the fact that everyone else was ordering it. i conceded and got a ham and cheese sandwhich. Ah, language barrier. Returning to the airport, we were quized on how much we weighed. "uh, 90 kilograms." "you're too heavy" "okay, i'm 50 kilograms." They let us go anyway, but our bags had to go on the next flight. A happy compromise.

The flight to Bocas was incredible. The low flying puddle jumper allowed us to see the whole country with nice detail. The canal, the jungle, the mountains, the islands. Bocas looked like moss floating in turquois pools. The next few hours were filled with walking the streets, having lunch, walking and eating dinner. By the way, Jeff in the slowest walker in the world, but maybe i should learn to slow it down. i've also ben offered cocaine at least 40 times. we each had a dozen beers at the bar and i spent way too long arguing politics and history with some Fin. Long story short, i feel very relaxed and it's nice.

Vacate

Exactly four years ago, I wrote about going on vacation. At the time, I had recently started my job at Homeland and had made a few other significant changes to my life. In fact, it was not too long after I started this blog. As with most memories, it feels like yesterday and an eon ago simultaneously. I guess that averages out to four years. And so, I sit again, thinking about change and vacation.

Vacation, I said, was not only a chance to grow and change for the traveler, but a chance for those at home to grow and change. Loved ones grow to miss you, but also grow to be more self-reliant. At the time, I wrote, rather unquestioningly, that this was a positive thing, mainly because it mixes things up and makes people more interesting.

Upon reflection, it seems odd I was so certain. After all, Cheap Trick sang “I want you to want me; I need you to need me.” It saddens us when our friends don’t call us or our exes get over us. We want to be missed and we want to feel needed. It’s why some parents become overprotective, why some workers never take vacations and why some people take on pets.

In the first season of Friends, Phoebe dates Fisher Stevens. He makes the following overly-apt remark about the titular characters:

“Actually it's, it's quite, y'know, typical behavior when you have this kind of dysfunctional group dynamic. Y'know, this kind of co-dependant, emotionally stunted, sitting in your stupid coffee house with your stupid big cups which, I'm sorry, might as well have nipples on them, and you're like all 'Oh, define me! Define me! Love me, I need love!'.”

It should be noted that Fisher Stevens was criticized as being “creepy” and eventually dumped by Phoebe. Ironically, as the show progressed, the other characters became creepy as they were still in this “co-dependant, emotional stunted” arrangement for a decade. In the end, Friends became boring and stagnant and was cancelled.

On the other side of things, over-independence strikes us oddly as well. Hearing about my friend’s Dominic’s entry into an English boarding school at seven and his very distant relationship with his family was grating. And I will never fully understand my friend Cory, who has been through so much, but never speaks a peep of it. They are two of the most fascinating, independent adventurers I have ever met. Yet, it always seems that in no way do they need me, which I always felt was a hindrance to our friendship.

So, I guess I must conclude that, as with most things, there is a balance of reliance and independence. And if independence leads to change and reliance leads to security, there must be a balance of change and security. We need to be needed, but not too much. We need to change, but not too much.

The Other Life

I hadn’t seen Victor since his wedding. I had a lot of acquaintances in college, but I really had only three friends- Jeff, Dave and Victor. Vic and I lived together in the dorms for the first half of college and in an apartment for the second half. He came from a poor El Paso family and had never known a white person before college. He was quiet and religious and decorated his room with weird posters of Bugs Bunny playing basketball. After sharing a million beers together, though, perhaps anyone can become friends.

Work brought me to San Antonio, where Vic had settled down. I called him up and we decided to make it a million and three. He picked me up from my hotel and we stopped by his home to meet the kids before going out. We drove to a four bedroom house in a gated community with a minivan parked in the driveway. Inside was littered with toys, strollers and other remnants of his three children. Strikingly, with bare walls, minimal pictures and no book shelf, there were few other signs of life.

I met Jacob, his autistic 5-year-old son, who didn’t speak a word, but quickly realized that my height would allow him access to out-of-reach boxes. There was 3-year-old Lillianna, whose bashful euphoria had her constantly running, hiding and explosively laughing. And there was the 2-month-old Rosalina who looked exhausted and alien as all young ones seem to.

And in this suburban home, next to Vic, I felt like a boy. And despite his hardships with Jacob and long hours in the office and the fact he has never really had a vacation, I felt a little jealous. He had that other life. The one that I have been putting off. The one that makes parents happy and ninety percent of the world dreams of. It’s the life that has caused every girlfriend I have had frustration that I am moving too slowly or too quickly towards.

We got Mexican food and tried to talk over the sound of a Mariachi band. I tried to tell him about how I was going to Panama and then Afghanistan and then Jordan. He wasn’t too interested so we talked about where people were. I told him about how Connie was an urban planner in LA and Mikey was a doctor in Brooklyn. As it often did a decade ago, our conversation meandered toward politics and religion where I attempted to defend my agnosticism and liberalism.

“Wow,” Vic said, “I haven’t debated like this and laughed this hard since Chicago.”

Of course, I hadn’t debated like that or laughed that hard since…yesterday. I didn’t know if it was sad that I hadn’t grown up or that he had grown old. But, it was clear that neither of us regretted how we spent the last decade.