The Trials of an American Dilettante

Lithuania

2011-10-15T13:47:00.002-04:00

Lithuania and Poland are obsessed with the 16th and 17th centuries. It was their "Golden Age." They built castles and churches and conquered foreign lands. And they love showing off their glorious weaponry from the era: full suits of armor and manly broad swords straight out of a Dungeons and Dragons manual.

Except, if you take a step back, it's not really all that great. I mean, Western Europe had stopped wearing armor hundreds of years earlier when sword technology became light and sharp. Plus, they had started using these things called guns and cannons and were taking to seas. No, what the Lithuanians and Poles thought was impressive was actually archaic. Those slow moving armored hulks would be absolute sitting ducks. It was no wonder that the Prussians, Austro-Hungarians and Russians destroyed them consistantly after their peak and subjugated them for the next three hundred years..

I do have a point. Stay with me.

I was sitting in a bar on my third pint when I befriended three Lithuanians who one would think would never be friends. They grew up together, though, and were bonded in that childhood-friend-I-love-you-like-a-brother-and-would-kill-for-you kind of way. The first was a closeted gamer nerd, the second was a party boy type who spent some time in LA and the third was a very conservative racist asshole. I will say, to his credit, it was a conservative racist asshole who invited me to go drinking with them in the first place. Anyway, over the course of about fifteen drinks, this conversation happened between the conservative Lithuanian and me (add drunk slurring to the dialog if you like):

"Why did you come to Vilnius?" I was asked.
"I was on vacation in Poland and decided to see what Lithuania was like."
"What do think of Polish people?"
"They were really friendly and welcoming for the most part."
"I fucking hate Polish people. They're fucking nationalistic and just keep breeding. There's more of them outside Poland than in Poland. They're like rats."
At this point, his two friends were looking pretty embarassed.
"And Jews. What do you think of Jews?"
"Uh, there are good Jews and bad Jews. People are diverse."
"I hate Jews. They are also like rats."

Now, I don't exactly get how he hated Jews when Lithuania has like four Jews left after the holocaust, but whatever. He then went on a rant about the European Union and how the Germans are using it to conquer Europe.

The point of this little story is that this conservative Lithuanian's opinion on Poles and Jews was not just mean spirited, but useless and archaic. We live in a world with Poles and Jews. They're not going anywhere. The days of genocide or even national isolation are past. We're not going to go back to those days. It's a multiethnic global society. Deal with it. Like that suit of armor and that broad sword, feelings of Lithuanian patriotism (or whatever is driving his xenophobia) may at first appear admirable, but at second glance are completely without function in today's world.

It's all the same as anyone who tries to exploit the charm of "being old-fashioned." I had a prof in grad school who still used only a typewriter. I'm sure he thought himself charming. The cosmetic charm of that typewriter wore off the second the students asked how they were to e-mail him. It was a fully-armored Pole against some quick moving Prussians.

And, of course, this applies to Egypt as well. They're never going to get anywhere until they accept rights for women, rights for minorities and embrace religious freedom, but everyone wants to be old-fashioned. They think its charming, but its really incredibly impracticle

Poland

2011-10-14T08:21:00.003-04:00

There was a strike at the airport in Cairo. Of course there was - this is post-revolution Egypt. So, now the air traffic controllers wanted a pay raise of 300%. My friends who were heading to Sharm had been delayed 12 hours. Ahamdooleela, I was only delayed a couple hours (albeit at 4 in the morning), so I took it as a blessing.

So.....Poland.

When I said I was going to Poland, every person I told looked at me puzzled. "Why?" was the usual question, believing Poland had nothing really to offer.

Poland, though, was beyond my expectations. Beautiful churches, charming plazas, alcohol, uncovered women, pork, cars that aren't trying to run me over. Okay, I may just be naming things are not Egypt, but still.

Growing up, the idea of Europe was that it was a relaxing romantic place. Cafes lined the streets and some guy named Pierre read poetry in the park or some shit like that. After going to London, Paris, Barcelona, and Rome, I learned that the European stereotype was mostly a myth. Europe was crowded, loud, poluted, fast-paced and often very uncultured. That is, until you head east. Starting at about Vienna, Europe shifts to everything one imagined. All of a sudden there's cobblestone, violins and traffic laws.

But what about the post-communist ugliness? I certainly remember Prague in 1996. But Warsaw and Krakow in 2011 were mostly lacking the specter of the USSR's influence. The people were clean and healthy. The buses and cars had all been updated. Crowded shopping malls, busy restaurants and other "positive" economic indicators were everywhere. Poland was simply charming in every way. Friendly people, lots of entertainment, inexpensive, great food, wonderful sites.

There had to be something wrong with Poland. Otherwise, I wouldn't have a good story. I mean, walking into pubs and having herring and vodka shots is fun, but that's not a story. I once thought I was buying bread, but instead bought two pounds of smoked cheese. Funny, but not a story. What makes Poland stick out from the rest of the world?

Oh right, the holocaust.

I went to Auschwitz.

So, Yiddish speaking Jews were almost a third of Krakow's population. And now there's roughly 200 of them left in the city (and they're pretty old). The Jewish quarter has a half-dozen synagogues of which only one small one is used. There are a few Jewish souvenier shops, Jewish restaurants, Jewish bands and Jewish history tours. Jews don't run them or frequent them - they're for tourists. For the most part, one would not notice they were in the Jewish quarter. Almost all evidence of the population, like the population itself, has been erased.

As grim as Auschwitz was to see, the creepiness of a Jewish quarter empty of Jews or even the trace of a Jew was more powerful to me. And still, there's anti-Jewish graffiti on the walls of the Krakow (some of it crossed out as well). Maybe they're conflating "Jew" and "Israel." I don't know. Still, when you're only a few miles from a death camp, one would think one would have more tact.

East Timor

2011-08-03T07:58:00.003-04:00

Again, I ended up on the edge of the world and in the middle of nowhere. My plane to East Timor was filled with Timorese Catholic nuns. I certainly wasn't in Islamia anymore. A group of chanting schoolgirls hitting drums met the nuns and I followed the multicolored UN crowd to the visa line. Dili's airport was a backwater place. I seem to remember Rhinelander, Wisconsin, having a bigger terminal. I grabbed my pack and had my prayers met - there was a working ATM. Then, to a taxi. We arrived at the hostel shortly. I could have walked it in thirty minutes, probably, had I known the way.

"Ten dollars,"
"It's five,"
"Ten,"
"It's five," I said "Look me in the eyes and tell me it's ten."
"It's ten," he said as his eyes closed involuntarily. I couldn't believe I actually caught him lying. I gave him the ten anyway. Fuck it.

After dumping my pack, I decided to walk the city. After 45 minutes, I crossed the whole thing. I passed the port, which fit about two small ships at a time. I passed the national government building, a white-washed colonial structure. I passed the foreign grocery store, where a Korean gentleman and an Egyptian peacekeeper were in line. That was it. Dili was one long beautiful beach, with Timorese hanging out watching the horizon. Couples snuggled. I few hawkers tried to sell water and coconuts. Some old men played cards. They all stared at the foreigner and smiled shyly like a toddler when I waved.

How on earth was this sleepy, tiny little place the center of violence? And why are there so many UN cars driving around? It's practically a village - it's hard to believe it would fall apart in the UN left. Or maybe I'm wrong. History seems to show that rebel groups cause massacres quite frequently here. It was only 2006 when a thousand people were killed.

I walked further up the perfect beach a few miles to the massive Jesus statue, which had stations for Jesus' walk with his cross. About fifty joggers, both foreign and Timorese, passed me on my walk. Quite a fit place - weird - it's very rare in the third world to see joggers. New, but empty restaurants and bars lined the beach up to the statue. Naked children, without parents, filled the ocean. The only adults were couples, romantically sitting on their motorbikes counting the waves.

After my climb up to the savior, I caught a taxi back. Antonio, my driver couldn't speak English but invited me to get drinks with him anyway. I took his number to be polite, but certainly didn't feel like making awkward broken conversation with him. Instead in the evening, I caught dinner with an Aussie couple.

The next day, I tried to find something new to do. I went to see a graveyard that was the site of a massacre. It was a graveyard. I searched for a museum on independence, but couldn't find it. I heard it wasn't any good anyway. Out of sights, I hit the beach. And another day came to a close.

And that was that... East Timor: low on adventures. I guess its much like my time in any micro-state. I guess that's what the place needs though. A little breather from people dying.

Indonesia

2011-07-29T04:45:00.005-04:00

So, Indonesia is not as I expected. I expected something chaotic, something undeveloped, something seedy, something strictly Muslim, something off the beaten track. Alas, Indonesia is surprisingly open, organized, liberal and touristy. Almost disappointing, really. Maybe I need to go back to Yemen. Still, it's frickin' beautiful and friendly so it's hard to complain too much.

I arrived in Jakarta to find the airport bus system shockingly easy to use. Everyone pointed me in the right direction and met me with smiles and thank yous. I hit downtown in the middle of the night and walked the streets for about 30 minutes to my hostel. As it turns out, Jakarta is one of the safest cities on earth. It's a city of millions where robberies and assaults are almost non-existent. Oh, I got hassled. Guys on motorbikes were every ten feet wanting to give me a ride. And there were some beggars and whores, but all-in-all, it was a pleasant enough walk. I mean any city with sidewalks, some greenery and a moderate amount of cleanliness is a way above the Middle East in my mind. And the safety puts it way past any city in Latin America. I guess my standards on what makes a good city are low. Could I live in Jakarta? Yeah, I think I could.

The next day, I hit up some mosques and churches and decided to go to the museum with some British girls I met. By the time we got to the museum at the oh-so-late hour of 2 pm, it was closed. Nonetheless, I found the walk interesting. I think the British girls found it to be a little exhausting and I felt guilty for making them walk so far to see basically some crappy Dutch buildings. Traffic is bad in Jakarta and you have to play chicken with cars to cross the road. I'm just pleased the cars actually stop for people. Another score for Indonesia over, say, Egypt.

After a delicious fish lemon grass something-or-another soup dinner, I caught a night train for Yogyacarta. Yogyacarta had some massively impressive Hindu temples. They would have been nicer if I didn't have Indonesians asking to take pictures with me every five minutes, though. This happened a lot when I lived in China too. Although the typical resident of Jakarta or Yogyakarta has seen a forigner, Indonesian tourists have not. Picture after picture I took with giggling families, schoolgirls and schoolboys. Eh, comes witht the territory I guess.

I made it to Bali, which, oh my god, is a sight. The city of Kuta is an Australian shit show. With a capital S on both Shit and Show. Drunk by 10:30 a.m., they are everywhere, partying, fighting, yelling. Donned with crass t-shirts, neck tatoos, and rosy cheaks, they dominate the place. The Indonesias, in turn are their suppliers offering everyone walking by "trasport, massage, blow, weed, mushrooms, young girl." These Aussies, too, were not the backpacker world traveler types. They screamed at my accent - "oh my god, you're American! It's like I'm in a movie! Say something, say something!" It's so strange to be exotic - to both Indonesians and Australians.

Once you block out the Aussies, Bali is beautiful. They are swimming in their culture with temples, offerings and statues every two feet. You could take pictures of beautiful little things every moment. Young woman preparing offering here, old man lighting insense there. Young man preparing Hindu hanging here, old woman dressing statue there. They must dedicate half their day to rituals.

I escaped Kuta for Ubud, which was a nice change of scenery to see bright green rice terraces and volcanic mountains a pleanty. Stunning place. I get why its so tourist here, but still don't get why any Aussie would go to Kuta and only Kuta, a place that makes Atlantic City look way classy.

Brunei

2011-07-26T02:33:00.002-04:00

For the hell of it, I went to Brunei.

Jeremy and I bought a bottle of liquor from the duty free in Lubuan, Malaysia, and hopped the ferry. (Alcohol has been illegal to sell in Brunei for 20 years, but you can bring in a bottle). We checked into the Empire Hotel, a massive $1.1 billion hotel that hasn't been getting much business. Funny how Brunei hasn't taken off as a tourist destination. We bargained them down and each paid $50 for the fanciest room I have ever stayed in. There was kayaking in the pool, $500,000 crystal camel lamps and a four story lobby with escalators. It had it all, just not that many guests.

It was the king's birthday and the country was having a month-long festival, which, by the way, is right before the month-long festival of Ramadan (do they ever work?). We headed to downtown Bandar Seri Bagawan to see the action and the country's three sites (of which two are large mosques). To our surprise, a fire blazed above the city - part of the water village to be specific. Brunei's 3rd site was on fire. Firefighting boats pumped water up to the blaze as fast as they could as hundreds watched on in shock for some and amusement for others. Tragedy is only entertaining for so long before it becomes awkward, so we moved on.

We hit the festival and were met with nothing but smiles from the locals who clearly didn't get too many visitors to their hermit kingdom. A wave at any given car or any given pedestrian produced an ear-to-ear grin and a frantic wave back. We tried all sorts of weird looking spiny fruits that must have come from an alien planet. Nearly all of them tasted like grapes, the chicken of fruit. Also, I ate fried potato dumplings in at least 64 different ways. It was great food, a lot of walking and nothing really to do. Like any county fair, I guess.

Alas, nothing much more to say about Brunei. Quiet, friendly, and forgotten...

Return to Malaysia

2011-07-19T06:16:00.001-04:00

A decade had past, but Kuala Lumpur was the same - clean, green and friendly. I could walk on sidewalks, look at women in shorts and not get run over when I crossed the street. Not to mention, it has the best cuisine in the world and has real Chinese food. It's a brilliant city.

After Jeremy and I enjoyed a celebratory beer and I was cheated on a pair of flip flops, we hit the food stalls where I would try out my long-dormant Chinese. First, pork noodles with a table of school children. Then, I had some curry puffs. Then, some other nameless thing that was delic. Then, peanut chicken kebabs. "What is this?" "Zxqwvoy!" "Sure, whatever, I'll take one - no, two." Food bliss this nation.

We met up with George who I had also not seen in ten years. George, too, looked the same. We got huo guo (hot pot), a favorite of ours from our days in Shanghai. George was last in China a couple years ago and said our old stomping ground had changed. The "barber shops" of prostitutes that lined the streets were gone, Shanghai Finance College had been redone, and the whole area was a neon storm. Nothing was left of our memories. It was weird. After our evening of boiling tofu and lamb in super spicy soup, the owner came our table to see who could have possibly drank all of their beer.

The next day, our Chinese cab driver took Jeremy and me to the airport. He asked if in America one could buy beer for a Muslim girl. "Of course. It's illegal here?" "Yes, it's not in America? What if her brother complains to the police?" I laughed pretty hard at the thought of a young Muslim man entering an American police station wanting an arrest warrant for a a guy buying his sister a beer. But, of course, sharia is sharia. Malaysia had a lot of similarities to the Middle East after all.

Jeremy, this insane French girl Nadia and I caught a flight to the charming city of Kuching on Borneo. By day, we saw some national parks looking for monkeys and toured the city looking for statues of cats (for which Kuching is named. By night we hit the bars. Every time I spoke Chinese, we got free drinks from someone, which got rather messy over time. Come to think of it, Nadia, with no Chinese and bad English got just as many free drinks as I did and was able to crash somebody's karaoke birthday party, so maybe my skills are worthless. Oh, and we ate. I just order blindly and get the best plates of mystery.

We flew to Koto Kimabalu where Jeremy and I decided to climb the tallest mountain in South East Asia. We were forced to hire a guide who simply walked behind us, but he did provide us with an idea of how fast he could get up and down the mountain. "Two hours up and one hour down" he said. It took us roughly seven hours up and three hours down. The sight of other climbers puking from the altitude was bit surreal, but overall it was a fantastic hike. Of course, it was painful and cold, but nothing too bad.

We relaxed on the beach today and plan on hitting Brunei tomorrow.

Yemen

2011-02-23T00:53:00.003-05:00

The Indonesian flight attendant walked down the aisle of the quarter-filled flight asking people if they were getting off in Sana'a or continuing on to Djibouti. I told her Sana'a, which gave her pause. All the other Westerners were continuing on, apparently.

After explaining to the immigration guy in broken Jordanian Arabic that my visa was in fact valid, I waited for my luggage nervously at the carousel (a stereotypically rude Air France worker had told me in Paris there was little chance my bag would make it - I want to like you France, I do). One of the luggage helpers, who was very high on the wad of khat in his cheek, stood by my side eager to grab my backpack. Ahamdulila, it arrived just as my ride did. I passed by a line of bearded Yemeni as I exited the airport. Each had a softball of khat in their cheek, an enormous jambiya (dagger) in their belt and a I'm-going to-kill-you stare on their face. Holy shit, this place is intimidating.

Morning came. On the fourth floor on my hotel I could peer over the bomb wall at Sana'a - mountains, sunshine and buildings that can only be described as gingerbread. It was the most beautiful dreamland - only filled with the most extreme religious zealots in the world.

Out the window of the armored car, I saw the city. 95 percent of the women wore niqab and most little girls wore hijab. That was way more extreme than Kabul, where I figured about half of the women were in burqa. And then there was the men. Simply put, all of them looked like bad-asses. Almost all had their jambiya, their huge wad of khat and most looked angry. Many rode motorcycles, weaving in and out of traffic. A fair number had camouflaged jackets like Osama dons in his jihad videos. They all had leathered skin from the harsh sun at the extreme altitude. And they grinned with greenish black smiles - mouths filled with khat stained teeth from a lifetime of getting high.

Besides the inside of ministry buildings, I only got to see a bit of real Yemen twice. The first was lunch at a local hangout. We ate tuna with tomato sauce and some sort of green spicy stuff along with piles of lamb. Circles of Yemeni men chowed around us, sitting Indian style and never releasing their gazes from us. Well, they mostly gazed at the red curly hair of the lone female in our group. On the way out, my companions were making long goodbyes, so I meandered off a little and was offered tea. One of the Yemeni quickly brought up Palestine and told me I needed to do something about that.

"I'll do my best. My heart is with them," I told him.

Of course, if I had that much pull in the world, did he think I'd be sharing tea with him at a Yemeni dive?

My second bit of Yemen was the old city, which amazed me not for the souq, which I've seen a million of by now, but for the old buildings. Again, its like gingerbread. The Yemeni build their houses in brown brick, but fill in white mortar between the bricks in varying amounts to allow the bricks to form designs. It looks like gingerbread and frosting. Above every window is an extra arch with floral design, sometimes filled with stain glass. And the stain glass resembles gumdrops. Over the ages, the mortar even melts a little making the houses look gooey from a far. In actuality its a million times better than a crappy gingerbread house, but still. The mosques are built the same way with thin brick minarets with rounded tops.

With hubris, I say that Sana'a is the most beautiful city in the world, hands down. For a bunch of high, violent, religious zealots, you did good.

El Salvador and Honduras

2011-01-02T21:22:00.012-05:00

"Do you find Latin America exotic at all?" asked my friend Claudia on the next-to-last day of my trip, "I mean, really, they're not that different and I speak the language. It's just not like the Middle East or East Asia where everything is different."

I did agree with her, mostly. Latin America was certainly Western and with that came a certain ease in doing, well, nearly everything. Central America has little bargaining, cheating or begging. They don't think Americans and Europeans have infinite wealth and are all sexual deviants (at least not to degree the East does). They don't believe in ghosts or voodoo or CIA/Israel conspiracies. Basically, they are poorer, speak Spanish and are slightly more religious than Americans. Oh, and their countries are crippled by gangs.

Back to the beginning of things. I walked out of the El Salvador airport into the brilliant weather and was met by the standard pack of taxi cab drivers vying for business. I said no thank you and they backed off quickly, but they stared with puzzlement as I walked out of the parking lot. Does no foreigner ever take the bus? I walked up the road and the police stopped me. They asked Donde va and I explained I was walking to bus stop. They too watched as I got on the bus. Apparently foreigners don't often take public transit.

The buses system in El Salvador was top notch, though. Frequent colorful school buses zoomed across the well-maintained roads. For only 50 cents, I made it to El Libertad and then the beach town of El Zonte in less than an hour (not including my tasty pupusa stop). El Zonte was stunning, but lonely. I booked a room on the beach but the only other company in town was a group of fairly boring Aussies who were surfing for 9 months up and down the Americas. At sun down, everything closed, which made me again wonder about crime in this country.

The next morning I headed to San Salvador and toured some churches and markets. Other than the girls in market being extra flirty and there being a lot of well-armed security guards everywhere, nothing seemed too different about San Salvador compared to the rest of Latin America. I befriended a German documentarian and a Canadian ex-NHL player and the three of us walked to a bar in the evening and had beers to the sound of a heavy metal band. It'll all seemed civilized. The next day, I took a bus to see a temple at Chalcuapa and Lake Coatepeque. On the bus, I met a Peace Corps volunteer who was puzzled I was traveling so late in the day.

"You're not staying at the lake? It'll be dark by the time you get back to San Salvador!"
"Is that a problem?"
"Well, they hold up buses every once in a while."
"What? How many times has this happened to you?"

"In the last year? Four."

Well, the bus wasn't held up and I made it back to my hostel safe and sound. My friend Geraldine who was working in country picked me up later.

"Why are you staying in this part of town?"

"What? I'm across the street from a posh mall and down the street from the Intercon."

She showed me her GPS system which tracked the no-go gang areas. We were completely surrounded in red. She then scolded me on walking around downtown and riding the bus at all, two things she never does.

I headed to Honduras, befriending an American along the way who was working on a coffee farm to improve his Spanish. Over some beers in the border towns, we met to a local artist who painted murals. He complained that the US wont let him back into America to see his son just because he was in a drug-dealing gang in America and spent years in prison. The American was heading back to his farm and explained that he worked all day to produce about $8 worth of beans. His farm used to grow corn and beans, but they switched to coffee because it was so profitable. On my way to Copan, the buses all had to stop because of protests. I debussed, walked about a mile past cars, came to some burning tires and a mob standing around, then walked a bit farther to find a couple hundred riot police hanging out by the side of the road. I passed another couple miles of cars and rebussed on the other side.

I befriended some hilarious Belgian girls in Copan who cooked me diner and we toured the ruins the next day. One had had a romance with a Costa Rican and revealed that they really do yell "mami" in bed. And I then headed to the island of Utila for a few days of diving. Utila is a stunning land populated by the descendants of Irish and English traders and pirates who speak the weirdest English ever. It is also filled with some crazy drop-outs. There was a Canadian who was always drunk setting off fireworks and a Frenchman who brought a girl home each night, but couldn't disturb everyone in the dorms so they would go to the dive-shop kitchen. Everyone would come to Utila for diving, but often people partied a little too hard. The instructors, who were no saints, all spoke ill of certain individuals who "stopped diving." I made it off the island alive, despite taking some dumb risks like by riding on the back of offroading motorbikes after dark to get home.

I took a long bus ride to Tegus to visit my friend Claudia. She too scolded me for walking around the city and taking buses. And my trip ending with another long bus ride back to the beaches of El Salvador. I never did get the chance to surf. Shame.

Ethiopia

2010-08-17T13:18:00.002-04:00

Off the plane at 4 am, I befriended some Germans and got a crappy room in a Addis Ababa. The next day, some Ethiopian youths befriended us, much to my dismay. Though their intentions were to clearly take us around and have the locations charge us massive amounts, the Germans thought it was good entertainment and didn't mind. We first checked out the market, which was pretty insane even by Africa standards. Then, we ended up in a "chut" house, chewing the weed of Ethiopia that everyone wastes their fortunes on. It didn't really do anything for me, and, of course, the bill was enormous by African standards ($25 per foreigner). Later that evening we danced and various Ethiopians, both male and female alike, got close enough to me for it to be awkward.

Addis is dirty, poor and surprisingly cold. Prositutes line the streets in hijabs, which I guess keeps them warm, unless they are all Muslims. Homeless and begger children are everywhere and it takes being a cold-hearted jerk to get them to go away. I decided to get away from the city and headed east.

Ethiopia opened up into endless greenery and I made it to Debre Zeit where I went for a walk around the local lakes. Some guys who claimed to be 22, but looked more like 16, befriended me and asked me about my life. I lied and said I was an English teacher and we talked about how great Ethiopia was and their faith in God. We departed on good terms; I even gave one my e-mail address. 15 minutes later, though, they were back. The frowns on their faces gave everything away. They wanted to rob me.

"Give us your money!" one said.

Normally, I run in situations like this and I'm not sure what got into me. Perhaps it was the betrayal or perhaps it was just that they were unarmed. I puffed up my chest, put on the craziest face I could and yelled:

"I will fucking KILL you!"

Two started to run away. The third picked up a large rock and so I did the same. He threw it and ran. I thought it missed me, but I have a bruise today. An Ethiopian family passed by the men (boys?) as they ran away. When the family got to me, I felt like I needed to justify the the still angry and crazy face I wore.

"They tried to rob me."
"Sorry"

I got in a series of slow-moving minibuses with a baby always plobbed in my lap. Over the course of 12 hours ameliorated by epic scenery, I finally got to Harar. Harar is a walled Muslim city in the east that was once a mighty trading center. It was bumping from Ramadan, which was nice since I'm not yet comfortable walking around the poorly lit cities of Ethiopia at night, knowing that people do, in fact, rob foreigners. I had heard about hyenas in Harar so I grabbed a local boy and asked him to take me to the feeding ground. There were dozens of massive hyenas creepily lurking in the field. The man there would put raw meat on a stick and the beasts would rip the meat from his hands, and eventually my hands. To put it dumbly - it was cool.

The next day I got a quick tour of the city from a local kid. The Muslims in Ethiopia wear the most vibrant and colorfull hijabs and abayas. Nearly every square of the city got pretty excited about my entry. They clearly don't get that many foreigners. Unfortunately, they get enough that the standard response is putting their hand out for a hand out. Literally, hundreds of people asked me for money in Harar. It got old fast.

I headed to Dire Dawa, where I just wanted to get to the airport, but was pleasantly surprised to find a mass of Christian women in white hijabs praying (like Muslims do) towards the local church. A Christian call-to-prayer blared from the church speakers. I peaked inside in the gates and saw the men. Yup, gender-segregated with men up front and women in the back. It was the most Muslim-like Christian display I had ever seen.

On the way to the airport, a couple of mentally ill started following me and eventually they were shooed away by a 16-year-old boy who wanted to be my guide. Surprisingly, a tuck-tuck drove up, two guys got out and punched the boy in the face.

"He's a thief" they said before driving away.

Weirded out, I decided to grab a tuck-tuck myself to the airport instead of walking. The boy started screaming at me wanting "his money for helping me." I tried to explain that he didn't do anything, but I eventually just ordered the driver to go. Weirdness.

Back in Addis. Ug.

Sneaking into the Dome of the Rock Mosque

2010-08-08T10:10:00.005-04:00

"Yela, let's go," Rima said to me.
"Rima, you need to wear a hijab."
"I'll be fine."
"No you won't, go get it."

Begrudgingly, she went back to her bag. It was sort of odd that the ezhnebi was telling the Muslim Arab how to dress for the mosque. Not wanting to look like a tourist, I had put on slacks and a white button up shirt in an attempt to look a little more formal and less trashy. My beard was in full lumberjack and I was dark from months in the Jordanian sun. In my mind, I looked Muslim. After walking four blocks from the hotel, Mona looked at me and both she and Rima started laughing.

"You look like a Jew!"

I competely did. Black slacks and a white shirt? What was I thinking? I attempted to ameliorate the situation. Arabs always wear short sleaves so I rolled up them up. I unbuttoned my second button and tried to show off some chest hair. Ug, not even close. I should have worn a tight t-shirt or a blue button up. Anything but white really.

We walked into the courtyard of the Dome of the Rock mosque through the tunnel by the Western Wall. It was tourist hours. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Tourists would be all around the mosque, but unless they were Muslim, they wouldn't be let inside. That is, except me, inshallah.

Rima and Mona started chatting to the Palestinian Authority guards by courtyard entrance.

"Can I go inside?" asked Rima.
"Not without an abaya," said the guard.

I had underestimated the strictness of the mosque for women; a hijab, as it turned out, was not even enough. A second irony today - the Palestinian Muslim would not be able to get in, but the lying infidel athiest foreigner would continue on. I went on without the ladies.

In case anyone was watching, I stopped by the ablution fountains and washed. I then went straight for the mosque. Having trouble finding the entrance, I encircled the mosque three quarters before coming to it. Fat tourists were tryign to sneak a peak inside. Moment of truth. I walked toward the entrance and was stopped.

"Where are you from?"
"Amerika, bas ana Muslim."
"Do you know the fatiha?"

I had been trying to memorize the fatiha, the first sura of the Quran and the prayer of the Muslims, for two days.

"Bismillah, a-rahmen a-raheem, ahamdoolia, uh, rab alameen, uh, a-rahmen, uh, a-raheem, uh...malik.....uh....yom...a-deen...uh....eyak..."

I wasn't sure if he was pittying me or if hearing the butchering of the fatiha was too much for him, but he cut me off.

"How do you become a Muslim?"

Softball!

"La ilaha ila Allah, Muhammad rasool Allah. (No God, but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God)"
"Welcome."

I took off my shoes, put them in a cubby hole and gazed at the stain glass interior. Most mosques are sleepy places with men mainy seeking refuge from the heat and to hang with friends than for actual worship, though that happens too. It was small and serious inside with everyone looking at me. I did not fit in, clearly. I made my way for underground cave where Muhammed ascended to heaven, Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son and the home of the Easter Bunny. I was intercepted.

"Hey, who are you?!" said a mystery man.
"Asalam alaikum."
"Where are you from? Speak the fatiha."
The same as before.
"How many times a day do Muslims pray? Did you wash? Is this your first time here? What to you know of this place?"
Five. Yes. Yes. It was a temple, then a church, then a mosque. Ooh, wrong response.
"No, no, no, you do not know of the history."
"Uh, I mean, it was where Muhammed ascended to heaven, uh...you know, on the horse"
"Do you know how to pray?"
"Yes, uh...do you want to pray with me?"
"No, you pray alone."
His angry face forced a disingenuous smile. "Welcome. Woud you like me to show you around?"
Nervously, I said yes. We walked down into the cave where he showed me the alter of ascension and some corner that had something to do with Zacharia.
"Right, Abraham and Ishmael were there." I said.
"No, Ibraheem."
"Right, Ibraheem and Ismael"
"Would you like to give money to the al-Aqsa children fund?"
"Yes, of course....inshallah"

It hit me. This guy didn't work for the mosque. He was just some dude trying to shake me down for money. I started feeling better. We exited the cave and he eventually stopped following me around. I decided to quit while I was ahead and made my escape.

How did Richard Francis Burton ever do Mecca?

Thirty-Three

2010-06-12T18:04:00.001-04:00

I was walking home from the British Embassy after the 1-1 World Cup England/U.S. tie when I turned thirty-three.

I dread birthdays for the self-aggrandizing aspect of them. Yes, its supposed to be the one day you’re allowed to be selfish, but it oddly seems extra wrong to make a fuss about it. After all, it’s a celebration resulting from merely staying alive.

And speaking of staying alive (as well as self-aggrandizement), Jesus was thirty-three when he died. I first learned that after visiting La Sagrada Familia and overhearing a guide talk about the magic square on the Passion façade. Each column, row and diagonal adds to 33, Jesus’ death age.

1-14-14-4

11-7-6-9

8-10-10-5

13-2-3-15

Years later, I was on Costa Rican beach when a Tico explained to me why Bob Marley was so important. “He came from nothing; he was man like you and me. And he ascended to greatness, his music saving us all. And he was 33 when he died, like Jesus.”

As it turns out, Bob Marley was 36 when he died.

But who cares? Why is 33 significant at all? Why isn’t it just a number?

According to Christian tradition, 33 is the age of perfection. Not young, not old, 33 is the balance point. In heaven, they say, we will be 33 forever. Of course, the average life expectancy in the 1^st century was about twenty, making the balance age ten. And today, it would be about forty-three.

Scoffing at the idea, I told my friend Abeer that Christians believed 33 was the perfect age of man. Abeer, in all seriousness, agreed. “No, we Muslims believe this as well. In paradise, we will be 33 forever.”

Well, we have a year to find out.

Afghanistan Reloaded

2010-03-01T03:31:00.005-05:00

Cold and rainy, Afghanistan in February is not the most pleasant place. Well, I suppose Afghanistan in any month is not the most pleasant place, but February is particularly bad. Gray skies complement the gray buildings. Drizzle makes everything inescapably cold. The dirty landscape becomes one of mud and sludge. Fog obscures the mountains making Kabul look like an isolated bog.

To add to the dreary feeling is Afghanistan, there is the filth. And there is the polluted air, the traffic, the blue-turned-gray burkas of the oppressed women, the bad roads, the destroyed buildings, the malnourished look of the populace, the haggard stares and the ubiquitous poverty.

And there's everyone else's negativity. Afghanistan is doomed, people say with no resources held by a cultural of oppression, war and corruption. Trapped in tiny trailers working 12 hour days, it is little wonder that people get in a bad mood.

During the Marti Gras party, I saw people cut loose, releasing the stress they held is several

bad ways. There were a couple of fights from Aussies, several incidents of public urination and the groping Turkish Ambassador. College frat parties have fewer incidents. Afghanistan seeps into even isolated compounds.

And then there was the bombing at the Safi hotel. Rocked awake at 4 am, I thought I was dreaming. "Incoming! Duck and cover!" Exhausted from work and confused, I rolled over and went back to sleep. The following morning, I barely remembered it until others mentioned it. Lockdowns and heightened security riddled the next few days.

Oh, and then an earthquake. I awoke inexplicably at 2 am. I lay awake for about 5 minutes wondering why. Then, the room rocked for a good 20 seconds. I guess I have some dog in me, sensing the vibrations.

Not to mention my work, which is always, always, absolutely fucked up.

At the bar, I met a USDA guy and asked him if Afghanistan was truly hopeless.

"What do you mean?" he asked confused.

"I mean, everybody says they have no resources."

"No, not at all, the whole country is farmable. They have plenty of water. There's lots of rain, rivers everywhere and run off from the mountain snow. They just need a good irrigation system and some education on farming techniques."

Well, I guess there is hope after all.

Oman

2010-01-21T10:23:00.003-05:00

Oman is a country where a 4x4 is recommended to see it's sites. Since, they run about $100 a day and isolate you from the people, I decided to go it alone - it's expensive enough in this country. And so I've been doing a lot of walking.

I shared a taxi to Bustan Palace Hotel (my lord the luxury!), where the only other foreigners on my flight were going, and then walked ten miles to my hotel across from the fish market in Muscat. The walk was nice enough. Oman is mountains that go into the ocean with a small strip of civilization in between. White-washed mosques and buildings with brown mountains behind. Very pretty. And the Omanis all wear traditional gowns and skull caps all the time with the exception of the Indian workers who dress western. Every moment is picturesque. The people have been friendly, asking who I am and why I would come to their country. The Indians chat me up the most; they all seem lonely and missing home. One Indian even invited me to dinner and so we had vegitable soup and watched TV in his one bedroom apartment.

After seeing a millions forts in Muscat, I hopped a bus to Nizwa. From there, I wanted to go the Jebel Akhdar plateau, but lacked a 4x4. So, I decided to walk the 20 miles. Through a canyon and up a mountain, I walked for nine hours. I passed four terraced villages on the way, each time with people stopping what they were doing and staring. It wasn't just a "there's a foreigner" stare, it was a "what the fuck is he doing?" At the first and third village men came out, took my water bottles from me and refilled them. At the fourth, they invited me in for coffee, oranges and dates. Aparently, I'm Blanch Dubuois. Their kindness was much appreciated. I walked at night for the last three hours of my journey under a star-filled new moon sky. I arrived, hit the shop and had the most glorious dinner of a can of tuna, two Snickers bars and a Seven-Up.

Coming down was easier and I then headed to Sur, a city on the eastern-most point of the Arabian peninsula. Its location is near an important turtle nesting beach, so I broke down, rented a car and went out to see Mario's enemies. With an Italian tour group in the middle of the night, I watched the giant beasts poop out slimy eggs, bury them and make their way back to the ocean. Uterly amazing, but I did feel a little weird like I was interupting some sort of intimate moment as a voyeaur. Maybe it was because I was staring into a turtle's vagina after dark.

Not much time left here in sunny Oman and when I return it'll be off to a cold Afghanistan. Ug, Aghanistan.

Bahrain

2010-01-12T13:45:00.002-05:00

A steady stream of visitors to Amman left me exhausted. From the 21st of December to the 10th of January, I had guests and needed to show them Jordan. It was great fun seeing Eliana, Andrew, Teddy, Miss Petra's four friends, Duncan and Bren, but a vacation for me couldn't come soon enough.

So, off to the gulf for some much needed sunshine and...cultural perplexities. Bahrain is beautiful and weird. I first learned details about Bahrain about ten years ago. I met a girl from Bahrain who complained that Americans thought they wore hajabs in Bahrain. A Tunisian was with us and he said "they don't wear hajabs in Bahrain? I didn't know that. Where the fuck is Bahrain?"

I'm not sure if the Bahraini girl was mistaken or if times have changed, but Bahrain definitely has hajabs and abayas. My first impression when getting off the plane was that I had entered Saudi Arabia. Women were scarce and, when seen, they were covered in black. I decided to walk from the airport to my hotel to get a feel for the city. What some people call Saudi's Vegas seemed like Saudi's Saudi.

Then, I crossed the bridge to Manama and entered not Vegas, but Lahore. Pakistanis and Indians dominated the population. Their restaurants and shops everywhere in the alleys beneith the colorful waved skyscrapers. The food is fantastic, by the way. I've missed Indian food (Amman is a little lacking).

But where was this so-called party? There was noise coming from a hotel lobby so I went in to take a look. All of sudden, there were women. Filippinas, Thais and even Arab women in a abayas lined the bar looking for one thing - customers. Within seconds, the lady sharks saw me and swam toward me quickly. I made my way for the door and it suddenly occurred to me why the hotel reception guy was pushing me get a queen sized bed. I wandered some more and came to an Aussie pub called Diggers. A cloaked smoking Arab sat in front.

"What is this?"
"A pub. Go in, have a beer."

And so I went in. On the stage was a rocking Filippino rock band and at least ten Westerners lined the bar, but, alas, the room was also filled with over a hundred prostitutes. At least twenty tried to get my attention and one purposely bumped into me. I made a speedy exit.

"Not for you?" inquired the Arab.
"Not for me. Shukran."
"Welcome"

The following day, I decided to walk to some of the sites of the island. Unfortunately, the sites were spread out over a twenty miles. Nonetheless, I got some sun and exercise and met some interesting characters along the way. Outside of Manama, Bahrain becomes Arab again and they were all very curious what a foreigner was doing walking along the highway. "You want car? Taxi? It is long way." Shia posters for Hussein that looked like a romance novel cover lined the streets. I saw a fort and some ancient burial mounds. And there was the long serpentine bridge to Saudi which stretched out into the mist.

Bahrain was simply a puzzle - a Sunni ruled land of Shia filled with ultra-conservative acting ultra-liberal. Highly classist with Pakistanis and Fillippinos living under Arabs, yet everyone is so friendly and giving. Just weird and fascinating.

Colbert

2009-12-07T13:44:00.003-05:00

http://www.zimbio.com/watch/ywgjhXbz7w-/Janet+Napolitano/The+Colbert+Report

Ah, delayed gratification, 10 months after my research and traveling around America, my report was published. It was picked up by Stephen Colbert and he asks Homeland Secretary Napolitano about it. She dodges the question by claiming the info is old. Old, but still true.

Pella

2009-12-05T16:11:00.004-05:00

The chill of late autumn has infiltrated the desert of Jordan. Yet, rather than it being a time of death and hibernation, it is oddly a time of greenery. Cold nights have created dew for the morning and, suddenly, grass has sprouted impossibly in the sand. The median I cross every morning has gone from lifeless dirt to lush grass. Vacant lots of ugly brown have become unlikely parks.

We decided to drive to Pella to see another out-of-the-way site in Jordan. Hidden between Jerash and Um Qais, this smaller ancient city is often forgotten since it is less than one-tenth the size or its neighbors and incredibly hard to find. My now-sputtering car managed the roads heroically. The drive through green rolling hills reminded me perhaps of a of distant memory of Ireland, but more likely a movie's stereotypical portrayal of Ireland.

We had to ask for directions a half-dozen times and once a deceptive sign brought us to a restaurant rather than the site, but in the end we made it. The rapidly descending dusk, fell upon the hills where Jordanians were picnicking. It could have been a July Montana night at 8 p.m., but it was a December Jordanian evening at 5.

Other than a few Jordanian children who were interested in climbing and a few parent who were interested in sitting in the grass, the site was ours. Half-covered mosaics ands two-thousand years of pottery shards made the site seem like after archaeologist had their way with the excavation, it was again forgotten.

Israel and Occupied Palestine

2009-11-07T16:35:00.004-05:00

The border went smoothly and we were off to Jericho in the West Bank. Past the isolated and walled Israeli settlement, we drove up and down the quant and gritty Palestinian town looking for Hisham’s Palace. Jericho didn’t look too different from Jordan save a good number of bicyclists and a lot more trees. We eventually had to ask for directions and two Palestinian police officers warmly pointed us in the right direction.

After Jericho, we drove to Jerusalem to meet Paulina and Anna. We went to the Wailing Wall and wandered the streets of the old city. While we rested on a bench, an American college student struck up a conservation with us ad asked where we were staying.

“Grand Court outside of Damascus gate.”

“Oh my God, dangerous area!”

We rolled our eyes as the area was not in the slightest dangerous, but merely Arab. Later, we hit a trendy restaurant and a beer garden. Packed and hopping on Tuesday, Jerusalem definitely has a nightlife. And the falafel was to die for, though about 20 times more than what I pay in Amman.

The next day we went to Marsaba Monastery, about fifteen miles east of Bethlehem in the West Bank. We had to ask for directions about a dozen times to find it, but the thousand waves of random Palestinian villagers made the trip pleasant. The monastery didn’t allow in women, but sat perched on a cliff in some stunning surroundings. The monks were mainly Greek and Paulina spent some time talking to one in both their native tongues beneath a tree out front. He spent most of the time asking her why she wore such a short skirt.

The skirt caused some more attention in Bethlehem where men stared and called her a “heart breaker.” The Palestinian guard wouldn’t let her into the Church of the Nativity without covering up, so she wore her scarf like a sarong. Surprisingly, the greatest site in Bethlehem was the “security” wall, which was filled with fascinating art. At the wall, we saw a photographer with a security detail. We weren’t quite sure what she was being protected from.

The next day, we waited in line for al-Aqsa mosque and Miss Petra was able to find a stone for a woman in her village, which I’m sure the woman will worship. We saw a million and one churches in the Old City built around locations where events supposedly happened. Paulina, Anna and Miss Petra absolutely loved the Old City, but I was secretly turned off by the hordes of tourists and the invented importance of random spots where mythological events supposedly happened.

After handling a flat tire with the help of a miracle Palestinian tire shop, we headed to Tel Aviv hoping to find some beach time, but was met by a city in scattered showers. We made the best of it, though, and did a bit of walking in the city and frequenting of restaurants, bar and clubs. Tel Aviv was impressively welcoming, but Paulina hated the 1960’s architecture and plastic furniture.

One night we hit a club in a shopping mall where Paulina and Anna were hit on by some Russian Israelis. One chatted with me for a while.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“America, but I live in Jordan.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“What? No. No. Not at all. It’s like the safest place I’ve ever been.”

“Maybe for you. Fucking Arabs, Fucking Arabs.”

We drove to Elat, where I wish we would have spent more time and then passed back to Jordan where I showed Paulina Petra, Jerash, Madaba and Amman. A great trip, but, as always, its nice to be back in Amman.

Marathon in the Desert

2009-10-18T13:38:00.000-04:00

For my sixth marathon, I somehow got the brilliant idea that I would run the Amman Marathon. Because I had been working and traveling, I hadn’t trained at all, but was curious to find out about the “cold marathon.” Ironically, being untrained was the least of my worries and it was anything but cold.

Most marathons are in the autumn when it’s cooler and usually in the morning to avoid the noonday heat. Amman had planned to begin at 7:15, but it was 9:30 when it began. A harbinger. My running partner took a look at the organization and said “you know what? I’m just running the 10K – good luck.”

And so I was off alone dodging the incredible turnout for the Amman 10K, which was over 10,000. It was hot early and I was struck early by how few water stations there were. Other than the crowds, things went well for the first six miles, but I was worried about the water and the scarcity of food, Gatorade or anything with calories (2 Red Bull stations was it).

The 10K finished, and an isolated few (only 100 were in the marathon) continued down the long highway hill towards Marqa airport on an annoyingly uneven surface. Water stations were still sparse, so I would grab two bottles at a time and run double fisting. Through smog and past a sewage treatment plant I ran to the turnaround, which meant now that long hill down was now a long hill up. On the way back, I noticed locals were carrying off crates of water from the relief stations. That can’t be good, I thought.

At 21K was the halfway point and the beginning of the second loop. It was also the finish for the 10K and the professional marathon runners (who were just lapping me at that point). It looked grand - they would run into the old Roman amphitheatre, which was filled with people.

But I continued on to my second loop shirtless and exhausted at a little before noon, which hit 95 degrees. My nipple bandages had sweated off so I had to take off my shirt or else I would suffer serious chaffing. Ammanis clicked away and yelled things in Arabic at me as I searched for a water station. They had been dismantled, but the locals would hand me their half-finished waters, peace be upon them. There were no energy stations either on the second loop and I had only drunk two cups of Red Bull on the first loop. Thankfully, a car drove up the road around kilometer 28 and handed me some bananas. I love you. Seriously, I love you.

Again, I went down the road to Marqa airport passing empty stations, but, again thankfully, a few kids with half-finished waters kept me alive. At the turn around (kilometer 35), I was completely spent. So, for the last leg, I ran until my calves’ cramps forced me to stop and walked until the pain subsided. By kilometer 40, there was no running at all and I was simply trying to not pass out from heat and dehydration. Dizzy and ill, I ridiculously asked people at kilometer 42 in mixed English-Arabic “wein finish line?”

Around a corner, it was there. I was greeted by a crowd of fifty Jordanians with a medal and, more importantly, a bottle of water. The amphitheatre was empty. Whatever party they had was long gone. And for the next 45 minutes, I sat in the shade and waited for my consciousness to return

Iraq II

2009-10-13T15:22:00.001-04:00

I saw a bit more of Iraq this time. Site after site, I met with hundreds and hundreds of Peruvians and Ugandans. Who knew that I’d use my Spanish so much in the middle of Baghdad? Their presence all seemed normal to the people working there and managing the program. But, in truth there were many things that were seriously wrong and it was so obvious to the outsider.Funny how when things get too close, they get out of focus again. I would love to say more, but the work may be the biggest deal of my career so far.

After sixteen days of working twelve-hour days without a day off, I returned home to Amman. I need to stare at a wall for a while.

Egypt and Wadi Rum

2009-09-26T16:50:00.009-04:00

I'd been exhausted from travel, wishing only to spend some time at home in Amman. I took a flight to Cairo only to be sent back to Amman for not having a visa and had to come back the next morning. Once in Cairo, my days were split by a boring conference during the day and trying to see at least something in Cairo in the evening. The Egyptians were as aggressive and as friendly as I remember. They insist. Whether they insist you buy something or insist you sit with them, they will do everything in their power to force you. A young man even pulled me off the street you have Iftar with him and his friends. Going to sites proved difficult with everything closing early to prepare for Iftar. I managed a few wondrous sites that were nestled impossibly in impoverished and dilapidated cement surroundings.

After Cairo, I went to Sharm el Sheikh and got some much needed down time. Surrounded by mostly Italians, I tried not to think about my upcoming Baghdad project. I went sailing, snorkeling, sat by the pool, saw a sting ray. It was nice, very nice.

And nice became even better. My return to Jordan was rushed, but incredibly fun. I arrived and immediately drove south to Wadi Rum to meet Miss Petra for hiking and camping. When I bought my 4-wheel drive Jeep (which is always in 4-wheel drive oddly), I was a little upset that there weren't any economical gas-efficient sedans for sale in the community. The Jeep, though, was fantastic for hauling eight of us around without a guide in the Jordanian desert. At one of the lookouts, a Bedouin came up to me and asked how I got out there. I pointed to my Jeep and he seemed confused. I'm not sure if it was because he thought I would have gotten lost or that we had crammed eight people in.

Night was a hummus and bread dinner next to a campfire under a star-filled new moon sky.

And then, I went to Iraq.

The Eastern Desert

2009-09-06T17:20:00.006-04:00

Miss Petra said she had been everywhere in Jordan. And so, we went to nowhere. The drive to the Eastern Desert was a trek into awe-inspiring emptiness. Flat, rocky and completely lifeless, the desert's endlessness stretched beyond human imagination.

But why go into nothingness? Well, there were a few outpost castles set up by various past peoples. And there was an oasis called Azraq.

Azraq, sadly, had been devastated. What had once had been marshy wetland had been reduced to a dry dusty truck stop supported only by Iraqi and Saudi truckers. The wells of Azraq had been overused leaving miles of thirsty bushes. Impoverished Bedouin set up ragged tents between piles of trash. It was a hell, isolated.

The castles were pretty neat, though. One set up by Umayyad in 700 AD featured pornographic images of naked women upon indigo backgrounds. Gasp, those early Muslims were a bit naughty!

Traveling during Ramadan proved to be nice as the castles were completely empty. In fact, the guards, who could not be bothered to open the castles up for us, simply gave us the keys to explore the castles on our own.

Foregone Conclusion

2009-08-20T22:35:00.001-04:00

Paulina has cancer. She wrote me and said she believed she was cursed, certain she would lose her hair and die, and asked how my father dealt with it and how I dealt with him having it.

“I don’t know, “ I said. “Denial, I guess. I just believed he would live. I suppose he did the same.”

Though, the tests weren’t back, Paulina was certain things were at their worst and my advice was to counter delusion with delusion.

We imagine the future often with such certainty, even when we have such little information about it. When the future comes, at least in my experience, it rarely resembles anything I imagine. Still, despite my errors, over and over, I keep constructing would-be futures in my mind’s eye.

It was in Othello where the term “foregone conclusion” first appeared. Iago introduced the idea that Desdemona was unfaithful to Othello and Othello, in turn, dreamed about it. It was just a dream, something based on the past. But like so many have throughout history, Othello took it as a foretelling of the future. The foregone conclusion, the supposedly certainly future, was anything but.

The foregone conclusion is as paradoxical as dreaming itself. Dreams - fuzzy memories interpreted as certain prophecies. We even use the term “to dream” as thinking grandly of the future when the action itself is more of an insular exploration of the past.

In the end, my father neither died nor was fine. A third future I didn’t expect unfolded instead.

And again, I have a foregone conclusion that Paulina will be perfectly fine. I still need to cling to my delusions.

But, deep down, I know nothing is ever certain and that’s what makes life so wonderful and painful, richly.

Syria

2009-08-08T13:25:00.005-04:00

I caught a shared taxi to Sham (Damascus). The border went fairly smoothly, although my driver did threaten to leave me because my stamp was taking too long. Luckily, it was an empty threat and after a half hour, I was on my way. I was preparing for the worst since my Jordanian entry stamp was just some chicken scratch written in with a pen. "Ahamduleela" (praise be to God), funny looks from the border agents was all I got.

Unlike Amman, everything in Damascus is old, and with that ancientness comes its benefits and drawbacks. Grittier and prettier, Syria is. The buildings of both the old and new city are falling apart and the streets are a wreck. The city smells and is polluted, but there is a paradoxical majestic quaintness to everything Sham is.

A quick history lesson. First, Damascus was founded and then the Earth cooled. It was subsequently invaded and conquered roughly one billion times. It changed hands practically every day and sometimes twice on Wednesday. It was the center of all commerce, trade and basic human existence. This is a slight exaggeration, but only slight.

Before there were Shia and Sunnis, there were the rival clans of the Umayyads and the Hashimites. Mohammad was a Hashimite, but it was the Umayyad caliphate that controlled Islam after Mohammed's passing. From Spain to India, they spread their religious teaching from Damascus. Long story short, Damascus is considered very holy to Shia and is littered with Iranian pilgrims. The Umayyad mosque, converted from a cathedral and, before that, the Temple of Jupiter, is enormous, but meticulously decorated. Children run around playing oblivious to piety among burqaed women and Western tourists. And, in case you're making plans for the reckoning, the Minaret of Jesus is where JC will return on Judgement Day.

I wandered the sooqs along with the Jewish and Christian quarters. Calm, dumpy and beautiful, I was amazed that the old city had not become a hectic harassment like Moroccan and Egyptian sooqs or a comercial Epcotesque village. Much like the Jordanians, Syrians are cool and little lazy. They don't seem to have the energy or desire to spoil Damascus.

I headed north to Malula, where I ventured through a small Petra-like canyon to a Christian monastery. The monastery was hosting a baptism ceremony, which they happily let me attend. Sadly, I was the only person not allowed to take pictures of it. I then headed to Hama, home of moaning water wheels and the friendliest locals on the planet. I used Hama as a base to see far too many crusader castles and ruins. As awesome as these sites are, there are only so many ruins one can look at before they all begin to run together. The structures and the views were simply amazing, but there can be too much of a good thing.

Alepo and Lattakia closed out my trip. Alepo is known for being the most conservative of Syria's cities and Lattakia the most liberal. Just three hours from each other, most women in Alepo don a hajab while most in Lattakia wear tight jeans and a skimpy tank top. At night, the cars and crowds of Alepo disappear while in Lattakia, they come out and stay out all night on a weekday.

An incredible week and I am exhausted. On to America today. Will I ever really see Amman?

Umm Qais, Madaba and Dhiban

2009-07-27T16:05:00.004-04:00

I went north last weekend to the ruins of Umm Qais, which overlook the Sea of Galilee. With its fantastic views, the site is a popular spot for Palestinians to look westward longingly. Seriously, several large families were there at the bluffs to gaze out and remember from whence they came.

But, of course, I was more interested in the Roman ruins. The site is in need of some clean up, but there were plenty very neat things for me to geek out about. The theatre and its surrounding columns were crafted from dark basalt, something I had never seen before, which gave the structures an imposing look. The stones of roads were worn and warped from years of chariots and carts going over them. Toppled columns bore markings (see the Delta-2 below) from ancient engineers detailing how to assemble them. 1800 years later, archaeologists are using these same markings to reassemble them. The columns were also used to form the walls of later homes, which must put archaeologists in a dilemma. Which age do you restore the site to? The site was also littered with bunkers, gun turrets and foxholes from the 67 war. Towers still man soldiers. With high ground and access to water, the location was as key in Roman times as it is in present day.

Later in th eday, I headed sound of Amman to the Christian city of Madaba. Besides for pork, the city is famous for mosaics, namely a map that was constructed on the floor of a church after the Islamic revolution. A Rosseta Stone of sorts, it told where ancient cities lay while revealing that powerful Christians lasted longer than expected in the Middle East.

I lastly dropped off my sister in Dhiban, the grand capital of the Moabite kingdom (ancient rivals of the Israelites). It is mostly yet to be unearthed. In fact, its basically a back water village with mountain of dirt next to it, but maybe, just maybe, in ten years, there will be a reason to come to Dhiban.

Leaving Iraq for home sweet Amman

2009-07-17T12:46:00.005-04:00

Iraq was a an isolating experience. I would wake up, go to work, get lunch, go to work, go to dinner, go running and go to sleep. In between, there would be walking in a 115 degree dust storm. There were a few moments of interest. Hugh, my co-worker, and I ventured out of the Embassy for lunch once to Freedom Chinese Restaurant across the street. A dusty Chinese restaurant in a trailer, Freedom employed two Chinese waitresses who came to Iraq on year-long contracts. They hated it there, but their Iraqi employer took their passports so they couldn't run away. They called Hugh who speak Chinese once a week, but otherwise had no contact with anyone who spoke their language.

I got to tour the old stadium where Saddam would make his speeches. The entrance has a memorial to the "victory" over the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War. The monument is in disrepair and one of the hands fell or was torn off. Its a brutal memorial with hundreds of Iranian helmets at the base of the monument. Speed bumps in are made with the helmets as

well. We then went through the dust storm to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a very modern and now spooky place, especially in the fog of a dust storm. We then went to the Tigris to the see the 10 feet grass.

Getting out of Iraq, though, was fairly exciting. I took a helicopter for the first time, spent the night at Sully Air Force Base and then took one of those military planes where we're all strapped in sideways back to Amman. The safety instruction was literally screamed in 5 seconds. "In these bags are the air masks. Use them if we lose pressure!" It was all very surreal.

Back in sweet Amman with its cool evenings and blue skies. I can't say I'll miss Iraq, a land of T-walls and dust. Sadly, I have to go back in a little over a month.

Iraq

2009-07-07T04:45:00.002-04:00

My MilAir flight was cancelled due to a sandstorm, but I was able to get myself booked on a UN flight the next day. From 6 pm, I sat at the airport with some very tough, but jocular chain-smoking Norwegians. A couple hours and a couple packs later, we were off for Baghdad. The sunset over Amman from the air was unreal. They’ve been so striking that I wonder if sunsets will always remind me of Jordan.

And then it was surreal. Just surreal. We landed at Sully air force base and were released so freely into what seemed like wartime action from an army flick. Helicopters roared from all sides. Seas of fully armored and fully armed soldiers headed…somewhere…back and forth at double time. And it was sandy. Horribly and hellishly sandy. You could feel it in the air, on your skin and in your lungs. It was a fine and dry sand that I can only compare to baby powder. It covered everything like dust on the furniture in a century old house.

A jolly and plump chain-smoking man in a trailer fitted us for armor and helmets and soon we were quickly off for the Stryker compound where we would wait. This speed greatly disappointed one the Norwegians who was looking forward to hitting the Taco Bell, as we had all skipped dinner. We made it to Stryker around 11, where some soldiers played Monopoly and others slept in impossibly upright positions. I helped myself to an MRE ration and awaited the arrival of the Rhino. The MRE’s spaghetti and cherry cobbler weren’t horrible, but I don’t have to eat them every day.

The legendary Rhino comes at unexpected times in the night to take good little boys and girls to the Green Zone. Sometime between midnight and dawn, it is scheduled to make its trip (this is for security reasons). And at 2:45 am, it came. I suppose I should count my blessings.

The Rhino was like that armored van from Dawn of the Dead or that other armored van from Land of the Dead (for some reason my mind is on zombie movies). We slowly made our way down horribly bumpy roads to Baghdad’s downtown. I was so tired, I couldn’t make out anything. I think I too was gaining the ability to sleep upright. I just saw trees, sand and checkpoints. At 4:30 am, I made it to my room. Next time, I need to take the helo.

The Dead Sea and Jerash

2009-06-20T12:32:00.005-04:00

I was out late Thursday night (oh, it was a dancing inferno) and didn't feel like getting up, but I had promised Kristin, my co-worker, that I would drive her to Dead Sea. In exchange, I got to sneak in to the Marriot's beach and I got her rental car for the weekend. And so, driving in Jordan would be my new experience for the day.

There's usually two lanes on each Jordanian road. The left is where people will tailgate and honk like their wife is in labor and needs get to hospital right now (by the number of children per family, this is actually quiet likely). The right is where trucks drive at ten miles per hour and people merge in without looking. There were a couple close calls, but, all in all, not so bad. I came up with one law that I think will keep me alive - Jordanians always have the right of way.

The Dead Sea was as I remembered it - weird, amazing and painful. After 15 minutes in the water, my whole body stung. I tried to soak up as many rays as possible to get rid of the old psoriasis. Fate had brought me to Jordan, the place where sufferers come from around the world to rid themselves of P. No one knows scientifically why the Dead Sea works, but I remember that the guide from my Israel trip implied that it was God's work. I'm so happy that my P has a place in God's plan for the universe.

I drove home through some wondrous landscape. Through some stretches there is a breathtaking void of life. Then, a mile later, violet blossoms and deep green trees.

Saturday, I decided to drive to Jerash. I was lost in northern Amman for a good half hour trying to find the highway. English signs disappear off the highway, so I wandered and wandered and saw how the lower class of Amman lives. Eventually, a Jerash sign emerged and I was on my way.

After an hour drive and two 20 cent falafels, I entered Jerash. Mighty temples sat quietly baking in amber fields. Thistles peeked from mosaics. And both Arabs and I seemed equally out of place and out of time. My water diminished prior to my awe and I needed to be on my way.

Amman

2009-06-13T03:18:00.002-04:00

It was a brutal flight. Crammed in a small seat surrounded by screaming children, I was unable to sleep. I tried to pass the time by talking to a young Palestinian doctor from San Diego. He tried to convince me that we shouldn’t pay attention to the environment because there will be a reckoning. The movies were Escape From Witch Mountain and Hotel for Dogs. Brutal.

Things got better when I landed and cleared customs. Sand-stone-colored Amman sprawls up and down hills for what seems like forever. Though packed dense, suddenly there will be open spaces, which, on occasion, will be filled with grazing sheep or crops desperately trying to grow in the dessert. I arrived at my vast apartment (three bedrooms and four bathrooms) and dropped off my things. I called my mom and my boss stopped by with beer welcoming me to my new Muslim home.

I decided to explore and smell the city a little. I arrived on a holiday of some sort and Jordanians were speeding around, honking horns and waiving flags. It turns out only the last action was unique to the holiday. I received plenty of welcoming smiles and confused stares, which struck me as a little odd since I live in the posh part of town. Foreigners will always be entertaining, I suppose.

After being lulled to sleep by alley cats and call to prayer, I had to go to work. I filled out a form for every function thought possible and shook hands with dozens of people. Jet-lagged and overwhelmed, I’ll forget all of their names, but they will probably remember mine as its fairly unique. Ah well.

The Embassy resembles a Babylonian fortress and overlooks east Amman. I left work at sunset and the sun passed through the dust creating an orange sky. Call to prayer hit as I walked out the front gates. I stumbled home again.

It was Friday and I awoke to completely different city. What was previous packed with cars, crowds and active shops was now quiet. The streets were empty with only a few cars leisurely driving about. I took advantage of the Sabbath and walked the length of the city to the old Roman amphitheatre. And I was sunburned. I went to dinner with my office that night a Lebanese place. I discovered I’m the only person in the office without grandchildren.

And now it my birthday and I don’t know anyone really and can’t speak the language. What a week.

Destiny

2009-06-05T15:06:00.007-04:00

Samantha and I had been putting off having a drink for years. Like New Yorkers who go their whole lives without ever seeing the Statue of Liberty, we always figured we'd get around to it, but ultimately never had. With my departure for Jordan coming, we finally sat down together for a palaver, for really the first and probably the last time.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Overwhelmed. It's amazing how many occurrences and how many relations can come crushing down on me in the last two weeks. Of all the times for them to happen, why now? Why not months ago when I could handle them better?"

Samantha answered destiny, which I, of course, rejected. Being an ardent agnostic, I certainly couldn't accept that, in an infinite universe, God or the Fates gave two shits about my petty life and were steering it. I shared my analogy of the universe and the soccer field (if you know me, you've probably heard it) and my analogy of China and the hereafter (again, you've probably heard it). I explained that the universe is vast and no one can possible understand it. Destiny implies that humans can actually observe patterns in the chaos.

"But you feel it."

"Yeah, but I don't believe in patriotism yet I still feel something when the national anthem plays. We draw lines where they don't exist."

Samantha then told a story. At her old job, there was a fellow no one liked much. He was quiet, arrogant and rude. In a work intro session, he was asked to tell everyone something about himself that no one knew. He said that he had inventions that one day would make him rich.

People snickered at the man, but Samantha thought it was telling. Maybe he was deluded, but every person has hope for the future and believes they will be important. Believing that tomorrow will be better (that is - having hope) and believing there is something we are working towards that implies that we do observe patterns. We all believe in destiny just by striving.

Turning destiny on its head like that was interesting for me. Rather than it being part of an objective plan, maybe destiny is completely personal and subjective. Yes, destiny is probably imagined and certainly self-aggrandizing, but at the same time necessary for our existence. We see a plan that we must follow and it causes us to be resilient, persevere and improve.

Arabic Revision

2009-05-04T14:00:00.000-04:00

I was learning some Arabic a couple weeks ago and the pronunciation of a few words struck me as a little funny. The word for two is “thalatha” and the word for sir is “usteth.” Both evoked images of a boy with a lisp. But there was something else to it. There was some distant connection that was on the tip of my heavy tongue as I said those words. There was something soothing, enjoyable and relaxing in saying ththththth.

It wasn’t until I saw the Wrester’s girlfriend last weekend that it hit me. She’s from Barcelona. Of fucking course – the lispy Castilian Spanish. I must have ordered a “thervetha” (cervesa) a thousand times when I lived in Barcelona. It wasn’t just the lisp either. The Spaniards add a staticy sounding “hhk” that is eerily similar the Arabic “ha” in words like “Mexico” that the Latin Americans do not. Could there be a connection? Moorish invasion, maybe? Nine centuries of Muslim and Christian covivencia? Some report that 17 percent of words in Spanish come from Arabic. Did pronunciation pass over as well? And if there is a connection, why did the Latin Americans evolve away from the Arabic sound?

I’m not the first to think that pronunciation of these words came from Arabic. The web is filled with theories, but, in the end, nothing is provable and nothing is definitive. Language is fluid and changing and no one knows why our accents change. It’s really anybody’s guess.

But the thought has made me reexamine my time in Spain. How much of what I saw, heard and tasted came from the Moors? Words like “azucar,” “guitar,” and “ole” all come from the Arabic. We know that a massive amount of food, fruit and spices came from them. Did music and dance come as well? Today, we don’t normally think of the Muslims as being party people, but their culture has been revised to be more conservative. The Moors of al-Andalus were very different. Or perhaps because the Moors weren’t so wild, the Christian Spaniards stayed up late to spite them. After all, pork is enormous in Spain. Was their diet revised just to prove they were extra Christian? What about literature and poetry? For instance, windmills came from the Moors. Did Cervantes, a man who was enslaved by Algerian pirates for years, consider this when Quixote fought them? Cervantes, with his tongue in cheek, claims that Don Quixote was found and not written by him, but instead translated from Arabic.

I’m not certain what connections are real and what I am imagining and I most certainly will never know. Did Usted come from Usteth? But I am looking forward to following in the footsteps on Cervantes and Spain into a world of Arabization and de-Arabization.

Hard on Time

2009-04-18T15:38:00.002-04:00

A friend informed me that I was being a little hard on time. Yes, he said, time and space may be different, but space and distance are as equally non-existent and derivative as time is. After all, he said, distance can only be determined by comparison as well. A measurement of something is just a ratio of that and the pole to the equator. Nothing, by itself, has size or distance. There must be something else to compare it to. And on top of that, according to relativity, distance shrinks with speed, but speed is a just distance by time. So, distance is a comparison of objects affected by distance (another comparison of objects in a bit of circular reasoning) and time, which is a ratio of change of distance again (in yet again more circular reasoning).

It all gets cloudy, loopy and non-sensical. So, perhaps I should put it to rest since I can't really grasp it all. And we haven't even touched quantum mechanics.

Time and Space

2009-04-16T14:56:00.003-04:00

Time does not really exist. Well, at least not like we think it does. Time is merely a derivative of change. The Earth changes it's position around the sun and when we compare other change to the Earth's relative position, we derive time.

A runner makes one revolution of the track compared with the Earth making 1/525974.4 of a revolution around the sun. We have a comparison and, thus, a ratio of 1:525974.4 This ratio is clumsy, so we call it a "minute." But, make no mistake, seconds, minutes, hours and days are nothing more than ratios of change.

Ratios of change are hard to contemplate and visualize. So, like other things that are hard to imagine, we make metaphors. People can't conceptualize "God" so they think of a man in the sky and call him "He" with a hand, an eye and a voice. People can't conceptualize death, so they think of travel and "passing on." And people can't conceptualize ratios of change (time), so they think of space instead.

But, death is not a journey and, if there is a god, it is likely not a man. Likewise, time is not space. Our language makes us often think of time as space, but it is not. We cannot move in time in any way. You can't go forward in time and you can't go backward in time. You cannot travel through time or across time. You cannot fill time or empty time and there is no density of matter in time. Oh, sometimes we make metaphors that make it seem like time and space are one, but they nothing more than semantics. Time is, by definition, a ratio of change, which makes "time travel" just ridiculous even without the Delorian.

But besides the heaps of science fiction that has arisen from this space-time metaphor, I wonder what other things have come from it. Theoretical physicists talk about a space-time continuum and a string theory connecting them. Now, these are geniuses coming up with these ideas and I'm not smart enough to comprehend their work, but I wonder if they are regularly thinking of time as a ratio of change. I wonder if they are aware of the power that language has over us.

But like many things that don't really exist like god or culture or nations, we cannot escape the spatial concept of time. Everyone else thinks it does exist, so to live a practical life, we must pretend the emperor has clothes. So, I guess we should enjoy the sci fi and and "move on."

An Hour Outside of Prison

2009-04-06T14:10:00.002-04:00

After days of being stuck on the compound, I was given the opportunity to get out and see Kabul. So far Afghanistan has been the mountains above the razor-wire wall, some Afghan workers walking around and the Afghan mess hall for lunch. So, I escaped for a moment to experience a little bit of Kabul (and, yes, it is sad that "experience" is looking out the window of an armored vehicle, but it is a war zone after all). The gentlemen who escorted me around said they would never ever walk around the city alone.

We went to King Nadir Shah's Mausoleum. A USAID worker I met said she has been trying to get there for over two years, so I feel lucky. From there we saw a good view of the city. After that, we passed by the Olympic Stadium, where the Taliban held public executions, and the awe-inspiring Eid Gah mosque. Also on the route was the Ministry of Finance and the Serena Hotel, both which were attacked. And there was the Mosque of the King of the Two Swords.

The tour has a second half. I'll post them soon.

Afghanistan

2009-03-31T11:11:00.005-04:00

Dubai!

2009-03-30T12:10:00.002-04:00

Genuinely Liking

2009-03-17T12:20:00.002-04:00

The basis of economics rests on the idea that man consumes goods and receives enjoyment from those goods. Goods can be almost anything. They can be a physical product like potatoes or a service like tax consulting. They can also be abstract things like leisure time, morality or the "warm glow" of giving to charity. A person receives enjoyment from a good and goods are consumed because they are enjoyed by a person (if they not enjoyed, they are fittingly called "bads"). It is all very circular. If one sees a friend eating Doritos, one assumes he enjoys Doritos. And if he enjoys Doritos, he will try to consume them. People enjoy what they do and do what they enjoy.

But, of course, enjoyment is never that simple. Cola companies do blind taste tests all the time. In tests, about 50 percent of people prefer Pepsi and 50 percent prefer Coke. In the real world, Pepsi only sells a third of what Coke sells. What gives? That means 25 percent of society enjoys Pepsi's taste more, yet buys Coke anyway. Don't people want to enjoy themselves?

There must be another layer at play. I was surfing the net recently and saw a post that asked "Does anyone like Iron Maiden? Not in an ironic way, but genuinely like?" Enjoyment of music can involve more than simple listening? And I've met countless people who claim that they don't like Taco Bell or McDonald's. How can people not enjoy a fairly clear cut pleasure fulfilling food - fat, protein, salt and sugar. One's body has evolved to enjoy these nourishing ingredients. There are those who claim they do not like pornography and others who say they don't like alcohol. Assuming that these people are honest in their convictions, what is the second layer that makes them flip from enjoyment to unenjoyment or from unenjoyment to enjoyment?

Well, the Coca-Cola company knows that it doesn't just sell cola. It sells their brand. Advertising and packaging give people some sort of strange enjoyment other than taste when they consume the product. Perhaps Coke hits a subconscious trigger that makes someone think of a happy commercial. Maybe it makes people think of friends and family who drink Coke. Maybe it reminds people of their childhood when they drank Coke. Maybe it connects people to a celebrity who they admire who drinks Coke. Whatever-the-case, the second layer is strong enough to tip the scales from Pepsi to Coke.

This second layer is ubiquitous and comes in many forms. I know that mayonnaise tastes good, but the thought of so many extra calories makes me not want to consume it. Do I like mayonnaise? A Phish head may have such a strong connection to his friends and the shows that he begins to listen to their music. Does he really enjoy Phish? A food critic, after eating enough "complex" cuisine, may find a hamburger dull. Does he really not enjoy the hamburger?

Social reinforcement is strong and can not only alter our choices, but alter our cravings. Shying away from mayonnaise began as simply a choice, but now mayo sort of makes me ill. And we are all aware of the "acquired taste" aspect of food, music and art. Not to mention, the subtle, but powerful nature of peer pressure. If everyone else thinks bell botoms looks funny, we will; if everyone else thinks bell botoms looks normal, we will.

Still, the web poster on Iron Maiden introduced the idea that social reinforcement is not truly liking, that genuine liking is a simple aesthetic feeling and everything else is, somehow, is not genuine. But that seems awfully strong. Surely, we have preferences other than our biological responses. If that were the case, we would all only prefer the same carnal things.

But, the poster is on to something. At some point social reinforcement moves from subconsciously influential to consciencely coercive. Does one want to see a movie? What if everyone else is seeing it? What if one's girlfriend wants to see it? What if one's girlfriend insists on seeing it? What if one has a gun to their head? If one was forced to see it, did one really enjoy it? If one was subtly influenced to see it, did one really enjoy it? At some point, most of us would say that action done under coercion is not genuine enjoyment, but it is hard to pin point where. Ironic enjoyment of Iron Maiden is in that gray area.

Let's take the other extreme. Say all social reinforcement is part of our genuine enjoyment. After all, we choose our choices and we choose what pleases us the most. That includes not only the biological triggers, but the effects from society such as pleasing girlfriends and not taking bullets. Of course, if everything we did was what we liked, then we would be constantly enjoying things. At all times, we would be as happy as we could be simply because our choices were our choices.

And so the whole universe breaks down (or at least economics and our ideas of enjoyment of goods). It is difficult to determine what we truly enjoy due to social reinforcement. We do stuff because we enjoy things, maybe. But, we might actually not really enjoy those things "genuinely." And, what is enjoyment anyways?

When someone asks "Do you like it?" all we can say is "I think so."

The Flexibility of Emotion

2009-03-11T16:30:00.002-04:00

I stood in a stairwell today and listened to a coworker as she wept. Every day her manager treats her horribly. If it were just one day, it would have been tolerable, but it is every day and the misery was building. Today, the straw broke the camel's back and waterworks came out. Later, she was embarrassed that she let it get to her. After all, it was just minor meanness from an asshole over time. Other people have it much, much worse.

We have all been there. We get upset about something that doesn't deserve the time or attention. We feel ashamed about our lack of strength over things that are objectively trivial. We also feel guilty that others have it worse and somehow still cope. The comic above concisely shows this. The woman is upset about lost love, which when compared to starvation, is absolutely meaningless. The man highlights the relative weakness and self-centeredness of the woman (who is really us).

But it's not really fair.

An old friend used to joke that no matter what the size of the suitcase, ones clothes expand to fill it, making closing a suitcase always an arduous task.

Our emotions are the same way. No matter if one's life is trivial (a large suitcase) or important (a small suitcase) objectively, our emotions fill still that life. Keeping our emotions at bay is always difficult.

Childhood is good example. Though people claim that childhood is a carefree time, it is simply not the case. I remember anxiety about toys, friends, cartoons and siblings. I remember completely losing it when my sister wouldn't let me into a cushion fort or when my brother stole a comic book of mine. In pre-school, I remember balling when my turn was skipped to lead the class to the lunchroom. Looking back, it was idiotic to act that way, but there is no doubt I felt those emotions with intensity.

My co-worker was in genuine pain as is the Indian woman who lost love (well, if she were real). It would nice if we could get our subconscience mind to instantationessly have an objective, worldly perspective, but we are mere humans who selfishly care about our subjective local lives. While perhaps the justification for feeling pain is suspect when compared to something like starvation, the feeling is without-a-doubt real.

Learning

2009-03-03T10:53:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to learn some Arabic and, inevitably, whenever I try to learn something new, I run into someone who says some like "oh, wow, I can't do that, I'm just not a (blank) person." You hear this for almost every subject. "I'm just not a math person," "I'm just not a science person," "I'm just not a language person." And while certainly some brains do particular tasks better than others, it's hard for me to accept that this difference is really as great as people think among regular folks.

Say it takes a super-genius only one repetition to remember or master something and say it takes an idiot sixteen or so. Assuming a standard bell-curve distrabution, the average person would require around eight repetitions. Probably, roughly two-thirds of society would be within the first standard deviation from four to twelve repetitions and ninety-five percent of society would be within the second standard deviation between two and fourteen repetitions. Say one is very below average in something and is in at the bottom 5% of society. It still is only taking the person 6 more repetitions from the average, or 75% longer.

Am I not assuming a lot of numbers there? Yes, maybe I'm assuming a spherical cow (google this term if you don't know it). The point, though, is that most people are near the mean. To say we are exceptionally smart or dumb is difficult and even if we do assume we are exceptional, the effective result in the world often isn't all that great. The fastest man in the world runs a little faster than a 10 second 100 meter. Most of us can run a 15 second 100 meter and a fat ass can run a 20 second 100 meter. Doing something 50% to 100% better or worse may be the range for most things.

Considering how much wasted time we have in the day doing things like chatting about nothing, watching TV and surfing the internet, it means we are all capable of many great things, even if we are below average.

And even if the difference were large, does it really absolve people from not trying? Say it takes one person three times the time to learn a language or three times the miles to stay thin, is that justification for not doing it? I've met people who have lived in foreign countries for over ten years who have not learned the langauge because they believe their brains can't do it. I've met extremely fat individuals who believe they are simply genetically cursed. I've met people with personality flaws that are aware of them, but rather than trying to change them, they simply accept them as innate.

Again, we are all capable of great things, we just vary in the work and effort we need to expend. I am probably capable or doing an Iron Man or learning Polish, but, after weighing the costs and the benefits, I don't think it's worth it to do either. People that claim they are genetically hindered probably just don't think it is worth doing an activity and need an excuse not to do it.

Oddly, this idea of the brain innately being hardwired for certain subjects hasn't passed on to other things. When it comes to musical intruments and sports, people always say that practice makes perfect. And while often people don't put in the practice, they somehow believe that they could be great if they tried. And they are right. This attitude needs to be applied to all things.

The Barrel

2009-02-19T10:23:00.002-05:00

The last thing I was expecting to see last night was a gun barrel staring at me. After the wait for the metro and the transfer and the long walk home, I was only four houses away and ready to fall into bed. Then, a dark sedan pulled up beside me

"Hey, get over here,"

I turned and saw the passenger of the car, not three feet from me, pointing a gun at me. I remembered the shine of the piece, the darkness from inside the barrel and little else. Before I knew it, I was running and screaming. I sped off the sidewalk, jumped down into my neighbor's garden and veered behind a house. The car sped off, but I was worried that the car would see me if it came around the block. I went back up to the street and saw someone standing in front of my house (later, I discovered this was Teddy taking out the trash). Freaked about going home, I ran away from my house until I came across a dog walker who called the police.

This has all happened before; this will all happen again.

Ten years ago, during a winter in Chicago, a very similar thing happened to me. There were three guys in the car back then and they only flashed the piece instead of pointing it, but everything else was the same. They drove up behind me, they said "hey, get over here" while showing the gun and I took off running and screaming. Even the afterwards was the same- me standing panicked and out of breathe in front of a confused bystander followed by a half hour of filling out a useless police report.

"Why did you run?" people always ask, arguing it would probably be safer to hand over ones wallet. The answer is I don't know. When this has happened, there has been no thinking. Everything is completely automatic.

What About the Unresilient?

2009-02-17T14:14:00.002-05:00

My last blog entry was surprisingly met with quite a bit of disagreement. While my friends agreed that many people and perhaps most people get over things, there are others that have trouble doing this and truly remain unhappy. I was presented with numerous examples of individuals stuck in ruts who are miserable.

Fo mentioned her friend, Jamie, a gay man who has been in love with a straight man for 15 years and is currently devastated by the fact that the man is getting married. Soulless Hedonist mentioned his uncle who never got over his divorce and eventually took his own life. And I remembered Taiwan Steve's mom who is still haunted by nightmares of Steve's suicide six years after the fact. If we go back to the study about paralyzed people and their happiness, we see that three of the victims refused to fill out the survey. While the other victims moved on and got better, perhaps it was too painful for these three to even comment on their lives.

What makes one person resilient and another not-so-resilient?

Soulless Hedonist had this to say:

"You're going to hate this answer, but it depends. It depends on the person and the circumstances. Some people are biologically more depressed than others and more prone to dwell and be depressed. Some people are still young and can think about the future and hope while some are old and resigned to their condition Some people have greater opportunities and some people live in a changing world and can move on to new things in their lives. Others are stuck in their town and city with their regular acquaintances and reminders."

Soulless Hedonist's uncle was a biologically depressed man and couldn't move on. Taiwan Steve's mom was an older retired home maker with few distractions or hopes for the future. Jamie is a school teacher in New York with no aspirations of doing anything new. Whether it was biology, circumstance or choice, they just couldn't move on.

But, thankfully, these are still exceptions to the rule. All around us, there are those who have dropped out, in way or another. We have cat ladies who have given up on finding companionship, unemployed who have given up on finding work, and obese who have given up on being healthy. And maybe there are those who have given up on trying to be happy. Maybe it was biology, maybe it was circumstance, maybe it was choice. The unresilient do exist.

For the most part, though, people still try and people still live with hope. Hopefully, we never fall into the unresilient group.

Resilience

2009-02-11T10:27:00.002-05:00

Right before I left for Panama, Carol from Chicago e-mailed me and let me know she had been laid off. Another lawyer friend fired, I thought, she must be doing horribly. For the past few years, she had been miserable at her firm. She worked long hours, doing something she hated. On top of that, she felt she wasn't making the money she deserved for the work she was putting in and ability she had. I urged her over and over to find another firm or do something else, but she wanted to stick it out. All her hard work and tenacity was met with a pink slip in the end. She must feel betrayed, anxious, depressed, I thought. After getting home and playing phone tag for a while, we finally spoke. And boy was I wrong.

"I'm doing great!" she said with manic energy, "I sleep in, I do reading, I go to the gym- I'm in the best shape of my life, I'm able to write poetry, I have yoga class. It's great!"

I find it funny that so often movies and books will begin with a tradgedy or traumatic event and then fast forward to characters still suffering from that event. It truth, people are resilient. They get over things, they bounce back and they move on. Sure, events are always with them, but they come to terms with them, learn from them and make the best of things. Unlike a shallow plot thread, life is infinte and rich. Humans have little choice but stop dwelling and to do other things. Who would have guessed that reality was filled with so much more hope than fiction?

Sure, Carol bounced back quickly from a simple job loss and maybe that was relatively easy, but I have friends and loved ones who have survived much worse and are doing well. They have weathered deaths, rapes and physical disabilities. Even Michelle, who has gone through more than anyone I have ever known, appears happy.

Science seems to support this idea as well. Studies show that even after becoming paralyzed, people reported that were weren't as unhappy as one would expect and still found the same joy in every day events as anyone else. They also had just as much hope for future happiness as anyone else.
http://education.ucsb.edu/janeconoley/ed197/documents/brickman_lotterywinnersandaccidentvictims.pdf

Of course, the reverse is also true. The same study shows that the Buddhists are on to something. Happiness is also fleeting. Only six months after winning the lottery, people are just as happy as they were before.

So, I guess Carol should enjoy the thrill of unemployment now, because in a few short weeks, it won't be so enjoyable.

To Worry

2009-02-05T11:52:00.002-05:00

My mother is worried. After all, that's what they do, and, I guess, as mothers should.

"It's only a couple of weeks in Kabul," I told her.

The problem is, she spends the majority of the day watching the news, reading the newspaper and surfing the internet. She knows things are getting worse there. She knows my friend Katherine's brother died there. She knows all about the kidnappings and the bridge bombings and everything else that makes the news.

And I haven't been very good and easing her mind. I try tell her confidently that I'll be fine and that I wont really be outside the embassy. But, in truth I'm nervous myself. It's a military flight in and I will have to go to a camp outside of the embassy. Others who have been said that it's fine. You have armed guards and you wear a vest the whole time, but if that's true, it must mean there is a need to have armed guards and to wear a vest the whole time. Others reiterate that its fine, but then tell some crazy shock story about an M-16 bouncing around freely in a back seat or getting a briefing about how, in a worst case scenario, they will have to provide covering fire. So, I'm left going over things in my mind, as I always do, trying to figure out what it's going to be like.

Though Bobby McFarrin told us not to worry and to be happy, there must be some sort of evolutionary advantage to worrying. I guess worrying makes us rethink situations and makes us sharper. Also, if the experience is unpleasurable enough, we wont put ourselves in dangerous situations to begin with. Then again, worrying can make people lose sleep or be distracted and lose their edge. Not to mention, worry and anxiety make many people become isolationist, thus limiting their ability to spread their genes.

But, sometimes emotions don't help or hinder you, they just are there. Worry can be just worry. It doesn't change actions in any way. It's just an annoyance we wish we could shut off. But, then again, a lot of emotions are like that.

Home, but Not Home

2009-01-28T16:18:00.003-05:00

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

2009-01-26T09:30:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-20T18:46:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-17T11:12:00.003-05:00

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

2009-01-14T17:12:00.001-05:00

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

2009-01-09T09:52:00.002-05:00

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.

Head and Heart

2008-11-04T17:15:00.000-05:00

Follow you heart, the cliché says. How ridiculous, right? After all, in an emotional state, we don’t think clearly and we make poor judgments. We gamble and lose, we make missteps, we reveal our secrets. The emotional card player shows their hand without showing their hand. The emotional athlete misses their mark. The emotional lover loses their allure.

Clearly, following the head, free of emotion, is the way to go. In this collected state, we can rationally determine what’s best for us. Logic and reason guide us to utility. We can play the odds, be in control and know our surroundings. Free of adrenaline and cortisol, the mind is clear and the hand is steady. The stoic worker is chosen for advancement. The cool guy is desired by the ladies. Emotion is a moment of weakness and a tantrum of the inexperienced. By following the head, we save face and succeed.

And yet, all of the times I’ve had the courage (or perhaps weakness) to follow my heart and the courage to take risks, I’ve been rewarded. Oh, the results have not always been pleasurable. I’ve been met with a punch to the face in Rome and a taken wallet in Chicago. I’ve been mortified and horrified and panicked. And I’ve followed my heart straight to its shattering. But, only through risk, have I experienced the most intense joy and seen the most amazing beauty. And the failures? They have been the most valuable lessons and the greatest of stories.

Without the risk takers and the foolish, we would have none of the beauty that surrounds us every day. The artists would examine their income potentials and vanish. The athletes and actors would look at their odds and choose to go into accounting. The musicians and singers would stay in their rooms.

Without the quixotic courage to feel emotion and act rashly, we would have none the things that we live life for. Following one’s head is best to survive life, but following one’s heart is the only way to enjoy it.

No, the cliché was right all along. How soon we forget.

Routine

2008-10-22T14:09:00.001-04:00

When I was living in Tokyo, my landlord’s husband took me to see some Kyudo or Japanese archery. Kenji spoke almost no English and I spoke even less Japanese, so we walked in silence through the park. We passed a couple children on swings and a father teaching his fat diapered 8-year-old how to Sumo wrestle before we came to a wooden stage and a beautifully manicured grass shooting range. I tolerated the pain and sat seiza-style beside Kenji as a young man shot at tiny brown targets.

The archer started with a kneel while looking down, he then stood, looked at the target, placed his feet, looked at the target, kneeled down again, looked at the target, spun right, grasped his bow, looked at the target, secured his hands, spun left, looked at the target, stood, placed his feet, looked at the target, secured his hands, looked at the target, placed an arrow, secured his hands, looked at target, drew, held, held, held, and shot. It was a miss. He then repeated this ritual twice more and missed twice more. It took about three or four minutes to shoot each arrow, which is an eternity when sitting seiza. After the archer finished, I asked if I could hold his bow. He said no.

Our world is saturated in routine. Some, like the archer’s, are a challenge. Others are necessity. Every day, Soulless Hedonist walks the dog in the morning, at lunch and when he gets home from work. Some are simply habit. Every day, unless he has a meeting, Rick, a guy from work, eats at Potbelly’s and gets the same thing every time. And some, we simply just enjoy. Every Wednesday, I read the Onion on the way home from work because I like it (and the online version is blocked at work).

There often is monotony to routine, but there is also extreme comfort. I imagine the archer wants to set his mind at ease by completing his ritual. I imagine if Soulless Hedonist didn’t go home, we have to start worrying about his dog. If Rick broke out of his Potbelly’s lunch, I would suspect something was wrong with him. And there is a beauty to the reliability of a routine. In an unsure world where so much is unpredictable, we take comfort that some things, like the rising sun, we can depend on and will be there every day.

Packrats

2008-10-16T13:50:00.001-04:00

We all like to keep things around that remind us of the past. We snap photos, we keep souvenirs and some of us even fill attics with relics. Interestingly, we can each only handle a certain about of nostalgia. For some, letting go of objects is like wasting life. They fear that without the object, the memories will fade and experience will all be for nothing. Others hate the clutter and the constant reminder the past. They simply want to move on to better and different things. With both, though, there is an underlying sense of mortality. Objects seem to remind us and distract us from death and yet their existence enhances and assuages our fear of death. It is a remarkable contradiction.

I was in my parents’ basement a while back figuring out how I could clear the place out. They want to uproot and move to San Francisco, but have not been able to for years. There were five sets of cross-country skis there from back when we lived in Wisconsin. I remember not wanting to go ever because I would miss Voltron, but we went as a family and skied around during the Wisconsin winter. It was cold and monotonous and difficult and, yet, looking back, I think I loved it. The skis haven’t been used in over twenty years and they are hopelessly outdated. You couldn’t give them away. My parents packed them up, brought them to Baltimore and they have been sitting in this basement ever since. I’ve wanted to throw them out literally a hundred times, but haven’t been able to do so. The joy and sadness from seeing them has prevented me from bringing them upstairs every time I visit. And that goes for a million other pieces of trash in that basement.

I found out about Noah K Everyday today (everyday.noahkalina.com). He takes his photo every day and has done so for a decade. He’s not the only one, either. There are apparently dozens of other people who have been chronicling their daily image. And while it’s a neat concept and I always think I never have enough photos of myself, I think it would be overwhelming. Such harsh, precise documentation of mortality would be unbearable. Watching someone else age on Youtube is one thing, but to watch oneself would be like watching a clock tick. For Noah K, it’s a fairly unique accomplishment, but for me, it would be hell.

But, in the end, we keep what we need to keep and we toss what we need to toss and we handle what we can handle. That’s mortality.

Bailout

2008-09-30T13:20:00.002-04:00

For the most part, I don’t care for proverbs. They are merely one person’s opinion, but they are blindly accepted by many as true because of their age, fame or exoticness. That said, I'm a massive hypocrit. From my time in China, I learned one proverb that stuck out for me. I don’t know who said it or when and I have never been able to find the quote a second time in books or on the internet. If fact, I've forgotten where in China I read it first. So, I paraphrase:

“We are like fish flopping out of water. We know not which way the water is when we flop. We only know that the current situation is intolerable and something must be tried.”

I’ve been reading quite a bit on the financial crisis. And if there’s one thing I’ve figured out, it’s that no one knows what they’re talking about. Economists admit they don’t know, yet politicians and pundits then claim they do. I understand how mortgages work, and I understand what investment banks do, and I understand how stocks and shares relate, and I even understand what mortgage-based securities are. But, to be honest, I don’t really know what giving or not giving $700 billion would do or how it would help exactly.

I had lunch with Soulless Hedonist today and he had the following analogy.

Imagine you have a really, really depressed friend named Wall Street. You don’t know why he is depressed, but he is so depressed that he may kill himself. If you do nothing, he may get better, but he also may actually kill himself and, since he’s your friend, you would feel responsible for his death even though you don’t understand why he is depressed. So, rather than doing nothing, you can buy him an all-expenses-paid round-the-world party vacation for a month. You hope that after his awesome vacation, he will be out of his funk. Of course, he may still kill himself after that, but at least you tried something.

And so is life. We have no idea if we are heading to water, but the current situation is intolerable and something must be tried.

Blowing the Cover

2008-08-15T14:15:00.001-04:00

There are three types of people in this world. There the intelligence and competent, the unintelligent and incompetent, and the unintelligent and incompetent who try to pretend they are intelligence and competent. Okay, technically, there are also theoretical Columbo-types who pretend to be unintelligent and incompetent when they aren’t, but they are few and far between. Nonetheless, basically, we have the smart, the dumb and the posers.

Smart people have their strengths and weaknesses, but we need them to keep everything working. Dumb people, God bless them, when they have no ambition are, for the most part, harmless. Yes, harmless. They know their limitations and don’t want to fuck anything up so they stay out of things. The problem children are the posers.

Posers are worse than dumb. They do not understand or do not care how much harm they can do by getting involved. Selfish and unsympathetic, they will dress themselves up, learn a few buzzwords and try to pose as a smart person. Then, disaster follows that the smart people and the dumb people have to clean up.

To a smart person, posers are easy to spot. After only a few minutes of dialog, a smart person can tell if someone is like-minded. Are they quick? Are they logical? Are they knowledgeable? Smart people take pride and arrogance in identifying each other. Thus, posers rely on the dumb people and other posers to put them into power and succeed.

Quite often, in a given environment, a poser will run into a smart person. Posers quickly realize that their cover is blown and try to distance themselves from smart people. They will label them elitists and try to convince the dumb and posing to reject them. And often it works. Sadly, smart people are even easier to spot that posers and, thus, easy to stop by a unified poser effort.

This all reveals why Columbo did what he did. Smart, but non-threatening, he snuck in a stopped posers from getting away with murder and made the world better. I think we all need to go back and watch some episodes to see how it’s done.

Cynics and Cynics

2008-07-30T17:04:00.001-04:00

I was asked recently which I liked better – fiction or non-fiction. When I was young, I liked non-fiction as it had more information in it that was relevant to the real world. Today, though, fiction wins out as I have become cynical of non-fiction. I constantly question the author’s motives. What is he trying to get me to believe and why? I question the author’s perspective. Is he exaggerating to make it a good story? And I question the sources. How does he know that?

It’s not just non-fiction, though. As a cynic, I distrust the motives of so many in society and find myself deconstructing everything from news stories to advertisements. While fun for me, it is also crippling as I no longer accept any information at its face value. The analysis creates conflict where there is a seeming calm. It’s not just an innocuous Heineken ad with people passing off beers, but a calculated ad campaign where every demographic they wish to market to is represented- white male urbanites, blacks, bourgeois females, blue collars workers, cultural minorities, Hispanics…(you have to see the commercial). And nobody likes a cynic, but, alas, I don’t think there is any going back to blind acceptance.

Most recently, I saw Into the Wild, the story of Chris McCandless who goes out into the Alaskan wilderness, camps in an abandoned bus, gets trapped behind the rising level of a river and starves to death. At first I liked the movie, but later little pieces of the movie started eating away at me. Abandoned bus? He must have been fairly close to civilization. Wide river? I’ve been camping before. How many miles until the river thins out and calms down a little? One mile, two? At most it’s an hour detour. Also, how did those hunters find his dead body if there was a river blocking him? What’s really going on?

Sure enough, I found his bus coordinates online, checked Google Maps and found out that his camp was only 2 miles from the main hiking trail. Also, he was only about 25 miles from civilization. A day’s hike. More than likely, for whatever reason, McCandless didn’t want to reenter society and allowed himself to die.

The author of the book and the creator of the movie, though, hid these facts, probably to make the guy look better or push some other theme. It once again proves that the cynic is right and non-fiction is not to be trusted.

Cynicism was not always associated with a critical distrust of human motivation. The first cynics believed in rejecting wealth and power in favor of a simple, self-reliant life in agreement with nature. Antisthenes wrote “I have enough to eat till my hunger is stayed, to drink till my thirst is sated; to clothe myself as well; and out of doors not [even] Callias there, with all his riches, is more safe than I from shivering; and when I find myself indoors, what warmer shirting do I need than my bare walls?”

Somehow, over the years, questioning society’s accumulation of wealth became a questioning of society in general. The cynic became something negative. The cynic must be angry at society. Why else would the cynic isolate himself from the whole? He is bitter, untrusting and lonely. McCandless is portrayed as a modern cynic who is blinded with rage at his parents. It is this rage that leads him to reject society. In reality, though, there is little evidence that McCandless’ parents drove him to this. He may have simply been an ancient cynic who, albeit foolishly, hoped for a simple self-reliant life in nature. Or, probably, he just a depressed guy.

But that’s not such a good story.

Eyes

2008-07-18T16:14:00.000-04:00

She caused others to sneeze, so I had to pack up my kitten and send her away. Oblivion, the kitten, had a face that would make hearts melt. After three weeks, it was hard to say to goodbye. How did she pull it off? How can an organism that caused sneezing and liked to bite and tear up the couch capture the affection of those around her?

The psychologist may say that eyes had something to do with it. Large eyes and other “cute” features have an evolutionary advantage in some environments. Cuteness evokes a nurturing response in animals that ensures the caring for children and, in turn, the species.

But it wasn’t just the size of the eyes and cuteness. Oblivion also had pretty good eye contact. Cats that sit and stare at their masters are liked more than cats that go off and do their own thing. And, with humans, people that maintain good eye contact seem to put others at ease and succeed in the professional world. Those who look away are seen as nervous, awkward and are not trusted.

It is actually fairly logical that we don’t enjoy or trust those who do not make eye contact. The eyes hold a vast number of visual cues and reveal a speaker’s verbal meaning along with his or her emotional state. Eyes reveal happiness, sadness, boredom, excitement, nervousness, anger, intrigue, sarcasm and annoyance even when lips and words say that opposite. Those that look away hide this, thus we become annoyed with them and untrusting of them.

But beyond the cuteness and communication, eyes reveal one basic thing that we usually like- attention. When something or someone is looking at us, it shows us that we are in their vision and in the thoughts. That usually makes us feel important and needed, albeit for a moment.

Maturity Part III

2008-06-17T16:34:00.003-04:00

Three years ago, I wrote about the mirage of maturity (see June 17tth, 2005). People have a desire to want to seem mature, so they spend money and partake in things that are not enjoyable (like cigar smoking) to hide the scared child inside. A year and a half ago, I wrote about maturity again (see December 21, 2006). That time, I wrote about how people will cease certain activities that they enjoy just to seem mature.

I was having a beer with my friends, Soulless Hedonist and the Wrestler, the day before my birthday. The Wrestler told a story of how he was at work and overheard two men in their fifties talking about which young women at work they would like to bang. He thought it is was weird. “Isn’t that what young guys do and not old guys?” he asked. Soulless Hedonist was less shocked. “People don’t change or mature,” he said, “they just hide it better.” “They have the same desire to drink and chase girls,” he added, “they just no longer have the ability to participate.”

I agree with Soulless Hedonist in that people fundamentally do not change so much. We are all animals and we cannot make fifty-year-old men stop lusting after young girls. They still have functioning gonads after all. The existence of a job, a family and increased responsibilities doesn’t castrate someone.

But maturity, like modesty or politeness, is not about what is on the inside. It’s about social norms and acting within the realm of what is appropriate.

For instance, playing with toys is socially appropriate for a seven-year-old, but not socially acceptable for, say, a forty-year-old. The forty-year-old’s social group would find it inappropriate and he would be alienated. Conversely, we chastise those who try to act older. Teenagers who want to marry are seen as foolish and youths who feign interest in certain subjects are seen as pretentious and are made fun of by their peers. In fact, my previous blogs on maturity were really about pretentious people and boring people, two things I see as inappropriate.

But, if desire is static and maturity is relative, then almost everyone is actually fairly mature. Take the frat boy, where binge drinking and partying is acceptable to his social group. He is apt at recognizing his surroundings and is acting quite appropriately. For the Sex in the City women, caring about shoes instead of families is fine. With relative maturity, it may in fact be the Wrestler who was immature. He didn’t recognize that fifty-year-old men do actually talk about banging women.

Of course, with relative maturity, it is often difficult to determine what maturity and appropriateness are. Additionally, there is a maturity paradox. People that are too appropriate are boring and, thus, are no longer appropriate.

Alas, with such difficulty in its definition, one wonders what people are looking for when they say they want someone to be “mature.” I suppose they are asking for someone who fits their hypothetical idea of what appropriate social norms are (but not too much). If that is true, it is really an attempt to judge someone subjectively and hide it as an objective criticism.

Gemini

2008-06-02T16:30:00.001-04:00

According to astrologists, I’m talkative, imaginative and clever, but also fickle, impulsive and restless. Though astrology is completely illogical and any six-year-old could debunk it, I do sound like a Gemini (at least to me). While I am a Gemini, I am more importantly a person, which means psychology applies to me.

In 1948, the psychologist Bertram Forer gave each of his students the same personality profile. On a scale of 0 to 5, the students ranked the accuracy of the profile. The average score was 4.26 with students believing that Forer was an excellent profiler. Not only did they believe the profile was accurate, they believed it uniquely applied to them.

So, we humans have a tendency to think that the general is specific to us. Some have nicknamed this phenomenon the “Barnum Effect” after P.T. Barnum’s “something for everyone” slogan. While we understand that, say, clothing sizes fit many, other things become irrationally personalized like, say, music and religion. Even when we know that something logically cannot really be speaking to us personally, it feels like it is.

Okay, so, if I’m just reading into this whole Gemini thing, then I ought to fit any horoscope, right? Let’s try a few. Virgo- analytical, precise, orderly, conventional, hygienic, reserved. Yeah, somewhat, but not really. Taurus- disciplined, hard-working, calm, cautious, stubborn. No, not at all. Sagittarius- witty, idealistic, reliable, energetic, impatient. Again, not really.

But, this is all subjective validation based on my own opinions of myself. To fight this subjective validation, one is supposed to use some objective criteria. How can I prove that I act like a Gemini or don’t act like a Gemini? Well, we could survey people that know me.

Of course, the problem with surveying people who know me is that they are my friends, family and others that exist in my social class. They are probably very similar to me. and their judgment of my qualities is relative to other people they have met. While they may perceive me as somewhat patient, I may be very patient compared to a different group and impatient compared to another. In fact, say I roll with a group of individuals who are very patient, even if I were also very patient compared to the rest of the world, I may perceive myself as impatient because my peers are so patient.

Unfortunately, we have no isolated, objective personality. We only have relative personalities compared to those around us. Even if my Gemini horoscope were true, it would only tell me what I am like compared to those I spend my time with.

Of course, I do kind of still think I sound like a Gemini, but then again, I am fickle.

Why We Fight and Why We Give Up

2008-05-23T14:58:00.001-04:00

I clicked on my high school on Facebook and up came the faces of a couple dozen men that I knew quite well thirteen years ago. Some looked okay, but for the most part, they had gotten fat. How fat is fat? Fat enough that a square inch photo of them showed it. Most of them looked like they gained at least forty pounds since I knew them in high school.

Yeah, people like to talk about genetics and metabolism and perhaps that can explain why some get a little chubby while others stay thin. Getting fat, though, is something else. One has to pretty much not watch a thing they eat and stop exercising all together to get fat. One has to really give up.

At first glance, why we exercise is a fairly easy question to answer. It’s a little bit of vanity, it’s a little bit of health and it’s a little bit of social pressure. People want to look attractive as it helps one socially, romantically and even in the working world. People want to live longer and be nimble. Also, if your peers like doing something, you tend to do it to.

And at first glance, giving up is a harder question. Why did they stop caring about their health? Did they get married and decide to let themselves go? Did their friends and mates stop as well? Do they actually care, but just don’t have the time? It’s hard to believe that anyone would stop caring about their health completely or not care if their mate found them attractive. Also, no matter how busy someone is, everyone has some free time.

It is clear that giving up is not just losing the desire. Given the choice, everyone would choose to be thin and athletic. But, given the choice, I would love to be fluent in French, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to put in all the work to become fluent in French. Learning French is really hard and gives me little benefit, so I’m not going to put in any effort. I’ve given up on learning French.

Everyone has a rough cost-benefit formula in their head on every other choice as well, including exercise. People that give up realize it’s not worth it.

In fact, giving up is usually the logical choice for most things. Nearly all of us will never be great musicians or artists or athletes or intellectuals. Yet, we continue to do these activities and try to self-improve. Exercise isn’t really worth it either. One’s unfit body isn’t usually that much worse than one’s fit body. One could easily choose to pair off with a slightly less attractive mate who will probably make one just as happy, if not more. And trading an hour of exercise for a few seconds of extended life is pretty illogical to start with. Given the cost and benefit, more people should be giving up.

So, if giving up is so logical, why do some actually exercise or do any activity where one only has the chance at mediocrity? Some would say “for fun,” but most hobbies are actually hard work. The real reason why people fight is probably quite simple, circular and quixotic. Society admires the fighter in the hopeless fight and it comforts us to believe we are fighters. The inevitability of life is depressing and, thus, the illogic of fighting is inspiring. People want to be fighters so they fight.

The Squeaky Wheel in the Bureaucracy

2008-05-05T16:53:00.000-04:00

We are confronted with complaints and problems every day. For the most part, though, we ignore them and with good reason. Sometimes the problem is a fluke caused by the randomness of life. Sometimes the problem is exaggerated by a frustrated and venting individual. Sometimes the problem is already being addressed and it’ll just go away.

But, every now and then a problem is real and warrants our attention. We usually determine that a problem is real when the problem repeatedly affects us. After that, we must address it. Hit traffic at 8:30 on a given road once, it’s a bad day. Hit it repeatedly and one has to come up with a new travel plan.

With bureaucracy, though, often problems need to be addressed by a number of individuals in a chain of command. This results in only severe problems being addressed.

For instance, say one’s chain of command is 4 people. The lowest man on the totem pole runs into a problem. He ignores it twice, but after a third time, he reports it to his supervisor. Now that has become a single problem for the supervisor. He ignores it twice, but after a third time, he reports it to his supervisor. Of course, for him to hear the problem three times, the lowest man must experience it 9 times. The supervisor’s supervisor also needs to hear it 3 times in order to report it to the top of the totem. The top man has to hear 3 times to take action. The poor lowest man has now experienced the problem 81 times and has annoyed his manager 27 times about it. Their relationship probably isn’t great.

This bureaucracy does have some advantages. It probably leads to resources being used to address the worst problems first. Also, the problems that are addressed are in all probability actual problems. So, in systems like, say, the judicial system (despite the numerous stories to the contrary), this means that police are probably arresting multiple offenders and that multiple offenders are going to jail.

On the other hand, unique, complicated and nuanced issues are unlikely to ever be solved or treated fairly as someone in the bureaucratic line will filter them out. Only actions that occur numerously and that can be explained quickly and concisely will ever be addressed. The squeaky wheel does get the grease eventually, but only long after it has annoyed everyone near it greatly.

Creative Destruction

2008-04-18T15:03:00.000-04:00

For thousands of years, man has had the idea that through destruction there is creation. The phoenix rising from the ashes dates back to the Egyptians and nearly every civilization on earth mentions the concept. Plus, let’s be honest, the whole circle of life concept isn’t that novel considering it is ubiquitous in nature.

Strangely, though, there is something a little inaccurate about human descriptions of creative destruction prior to the 20th century. Whether it is the phoenix, Jesus’ resurrection or the Hindu cycle with Brahma and Shiva, there is death before birth. In “Thus Spoke Zarathura,” Nitzche wrote “Whoever must be a creator always annihilates” and “the man who break…is the creator.”

But they have the order all wrong in actuality. Creation does not follow destruction and destruction does not facilitate creation. In fact, as we see in nature and society, it is the opposite. Destruction follows birth and destruction prevents birth. On the other hand, it is creation that leads to more creation. Destruction is mainly just the result of redundant and superfluous creation.

For instance, organisms are not reborn after death. They are born from other living creatures. Usually after procreating, they then die, but never before.

The same is true of construction projects. Almost never will one tear something down to rebuild it better. Instead, one builds the new one and then tears down the old one.

20th century economists, were the first to get things right. “Creative destruction” was a way of describing the way old businesses die off and make room for new more efficient businesses. Never, though, does the old business die off first. The old business is rendered useless by the new business and then vanishes.

There is a simple, yet oft forgotten lesson for the anarchist or the nation builder to be learned here. Create before one destroys.

Promoting Democracy

2008-04-04T11:28:00.000-04:00

So, last night I collected my kickball team together for a drink at Ventnor. Naturally, because it’s me, I somehow got into a discussion about the promotion of democracy. One of my new teammates works for some democracy NGO and I asked her about what activities they did. She said they promoted election oversight and free press.

Now, certainly I agree with free and fair elections and a free press. But, I also believe that minority rights and secular governance are essential to a stable democracy. Fair elections lead to majority rule, but as John Stuart Mill pointed out, there is the tyranny of the majority. Democracy needs to be more than just two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. Minority rights must be protected and, in order to achieve this, there must also be secular governance since it is fairly clear that religious governments create laws that interfere with the practices of the minority.

Egypt is a prime example of a nation where many in United States do not want majority rule. Mubarak holds crooked elections in order to maintain power against an Islamic opposition party and the US supports him. If the Islamic opposition party took over, the US would have one fewer ally in the Middle East and the secular and Coptic minorities of Egypt would probably be persecuted.

Francis Fukiyama pointed out in “the End of History” that most people in the world agree with democracy. That idea has won and is considered legitimate. Even in nations where there is little democracy, they think it’s a good idea. When the US supports an anti-democratic regime, it loses legitimacy. Thus, when movements against crooked regimes become the populist movement, being anti-American becomes the populist movement. When the US struck down anti-democratic regimes in Eastern Europe, the populist movement became pro-American.

But, rather than go with the democratic flow, the US is picky and choosy about promoting democracy because, while they fear religious states, they don’t want to look like they are against that particular religious. Instead, they act in a subversive manner to keep back the religious party, which in the end fools no one.

Oddly, I see few international calls for secular governance and religious freedom. We debate the issue in our own nation and praise out First Amendment, but few are willing to say that there should be no states based on religion abroad. Yet, oddly people are willing to say there should be democracy. Even this girl’s democracy NGO tried to steer away from discussion of religion.

Of course, I may be wrong about this whole secular governance thing. If anyone has an example of a religious state with a functioning democracy that protects minority rights, please let me know.

The Myth of Just Being Oneself

2008-04-02T15:02:00.000-04:00

Often in life and quite frequently with relationships, when people are indecisive about how to act or proceed, they are given the advice to “just be yourself.” The advice is not new; in Hamlet, Polonius (who was probably being played by Bill himself) famously tells his son, “this above all, to thine own self be true.”

Most of us understand, at least on a subconscious level, that this advice is, at worst, completely wrong and, at best, needs to be supplemented with some serious disclaimers. In truth, as individuals with Tourette syndrome show us, we can never completely be ourselves. Additionally, adding the word “just” in front of such a task is the equivalent of ordering someone to just fall asleep. You can do it if you don’t think about it, but you cannot if you do.

The advice of being oneself seems to be based on the occasionally positive result of being independent and self-confident. People are attracted to people that are driven and assured and the advice assumes these traits will come out. Additionally, the advice assumes that by acting like oneself, one will attract like-minded individuals who will appreciate the individual. It is also based on the negative results of acting phony. Putting up a front makes people seem dishonest, pretentious and unrelaxed. Each of these qualities would likely drive someone away.

But being oneself and being honest is incredibly complicated. Which aspect of one’s personality does one present out of the infinite possibilities? Is New Jersey a highway with trailers or is it a state with numerous national parks? If someone asked you about New Jersey, which facts would you present? Is a failure to mention its negative qualities lying?

And what about politeness? Changing one’s behavior to suit those around you is inherently a controlling of oneself. If someone loves the opera and their friend hates it, is the friend honest or do they bend the truth? How far is being disingenuous? Eddie Haskell level?

And what about displaying a knowledge of social norms and control? My father once interviewed a man and asked him why he went into medicine. The man responded that women ignored him when he was young and he wanted power and prestige. Though honest and perhaps the real reasoning for many doctors, the answer displayed a professional ineptness. When it comes down to it, social norms require lying in certain circumstances.

Also, being oneself actually assumes that oneself is a good thing. What if a person is boring or, worse, evil? Then, pretending to be someone else is an improvement. Additionally, we all should want to improve, thus resigning to completely being oneself rather than striving to be someone better goes against this idea.

Not to mention the fact that our personalities change dependant upon who is around us and we aren’t even sure who we are in the first place. The Ancient Greeks said “gnothi seauton” (know thyself).

And those clever Greeks knew what is was all about. We live in a world with complex social norms, language, laws and paths to success. We interact with others who have complex desires, thought and emotions. We have to weigh our goals, wants and principles against everything around us. Being ourselves is simply not always, if ever, an option. But that’s the price one pays when one enters into a relationship of any kind.

Crap, I can’t even write a blog of my own thoughts with audience of less than ten of my close friends without offending someone.

New York and the Bungee Jump

2008-03-27T17:48:00.001-04:00

New York, by nearly anyone’s standard, is overwhelming. Every cliché about it is pretty much true. It is filled with people from every walk of life. It does have something for everyone. It does have pushy people. It’s alive, exciting and diverse. And, of course, it’s expensive.

In many ways, New York is like the bungee jump (or the sky dive, if you like). It’s an experience that in some ways is grueling and in other ways exhilarating. In the end, one is glad they did it, but also aware of the amount of money spent. Almost everyone who has bungee jumped says that they loved it, but wouldn’t necessarily pay the same price to do it again, which makes actually a lot of sense. With almost all goods, there is a diminishing utility in consumption.

But bungee jumping is much more than just bouncing up and down. It’s an exercise in will. The nervousness of arriving and watching others do it and suiting up and getting to that ledge and actually jumping off the ledge is nothing less than absolutely intense.

Overcoming this anxiety and having courage, for lack of a better word, is largely what the jump is about. One needs to be the type of person who is able to do it in order to actually do it. Like a college degree or a medal, the jump is a badge that proves one has a little more something than everyone else.

Though visiting New York is hardly a badge, people do use living in New York as a badge. Just as people enjoy being able to tell others about how they love spicy food and don’t sleep more than four hours a night, people like living in New York. Taking the intensity day in and day out gives them a feeling of worth. They tolerate the rush, the crowds, the pushiness, the dirtiness and the noise. They deal with the long commutes, the small apartments and long workdays. Even more impressive, somehow they overcome the costs of living (some even are able to do it without help from daddy or their rich spouse). For Christ’s sake, the “New York, New York” song even lauds this feat.

But, to be fare to New York and the bungee jump, even if we ignore the illusion of self-worth created by doing an arbitrary action, they are still fun by themselves. This, I suppose, gives them an edge on the marathon.

The Flow of Lives

2008-03-21T15:34:00.001-04:00

As each of us blazes our trail through life, we encounter individuals who are headed in various directions. Some people are on our trajectory and, so, keeping in touch with them is an easy affair. Often they live in the same city, have the same career path or are part of the same social circles. Other people, though, are heading in different directions and maintaining a relationship with them takes more effort. Unlike the first group who are convenient, the later group requires get-togethers, phone calls, visits and even major efforts like a change in job to maintain the relations.

For example, my friend Matty Potter moved into a house he found on Craigslist. He started dating the girl in the next room and eventually married her. They both like their careers, like where they live and have no plans on leaving DC. Logistically, there is perhaps nothing easier than their situation.

My friend Matt Yeti, though, had a tougher time. His relationship with his eventual wife involved large periods of time in different cities due to law school, internships and work. The shuffle back forth, the time apart and job changes were grueling.

Both Matt and Matty seem to have equally functioning relationships. Yet, Matt had to put in a lot more effort than Matty. Was Matty just luckier than Matt? Did his wife just happen to be on the same trajectory?

Well, one could argue that Matty is luckier or somehow more tapped into some sort of cosmic plan. Maybe he just happened to move in right next door to his soul mate who also happened to never want to leave DC. Doesn’t it seem like people occasionally run into each other as if its destiny? I mean, just yesterday, the Express had a picture of a war protester holding the name of a dead soldier that my roommate randomly had tattooed on his arm the week before (that’s a 1 in 4000 chance). Maybe there is destiny and people are spiritually connected. I’ve definitely had my share of countless “crazy” connections and reconnections with people that have left me stunned.

But, the Dilettante is a realist. He understands that it’s a small socio-economic class and these connections and run-ins aren’t really so miraculous. He understands that for every important person that one connects or reconnects with, there are dozens, even hundreds, that one doesn’t connect and reconnect with. No one remembers the important person one missed by five minutes because one missed them. And, as for meeting “the one,” haven’t we all ironically had that experience several times? That feeling of finding a perfect match is almost certainly subjective emotion rather than cosmic objective fact.

In reality, luck may have played some role in Matty Potter’s life, but there are many, many women out there who are compatible with Matty. Having one in the next room isn’t really that lucky.

But if finding a mate isn’t that hard, why are many of us single and why was Matt Yeti so unlucky? Why would he put in all of this effort when there are other women who are easier to deal with and more on his life’s trajectory? Well, maybe he got locked into a series of ever-increasing obligations, but most likely he just really likes his wife. He is discriminating and does not feel there are other women around of a similar quality. To him, his effort is worth it.

The real difference between Matt and Matty is that Matt Yeti is more choosy and
discriminating. This isn’t to say that Matty Potter would take anything, but Matty P is certainly more open-minded, accepting and compromising. Matt Y was looking for a particular woman and unwilling to settle for anything else. When he found her, he put in the work to make it work with his wife. While Matty worked with the flow of lives to find his mate, Matt fought them

The Utility of History and One's Bad Memories

2008-03-14T16:49:00.002-04:00

It was Lord John Dalberg-Acton who said “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Ironically, his most famous words were a side note to his larger point. Acton believed that position and time period were irrelevant when judging a crime. In direct opposition to Machiavellian thought, Acton once wrote to a bishop:

“There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of liberalism meet and keep high festival and the end learns to justify the means.’

That is, he believed judging leaders or historical figures differently than everyone else went against both the universal morals of Catholicism and the liberalist goal of an improving society. In fact, Acton even takes it a step further:

“You would hang a man like Ravaillac [a religious zealot who killed Henry IV of France]; but it what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes. You would spare these criminals for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Haman [a Persian who was hanged for plotting against the Jews] for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.”

Acton says, we should, in fact, judge people in higher positions and those in the past harsher than plebs and contemporaries to serve the function of history. I’m assuming Acton is saying that a liberal society learns from history. Thus, focusing on past injustices with great scrutiny would lead to improvement.

Acton makes a valid point and I can’t help but think of my own life. For some reason, a couple of moments in my life really stick out and give me guilt. When I was maybe 8, I smashed some phessant eggs after someone told me that the mother would no longer return after I touched the eggs (turns out that’s not true). Also, one year at camp when I was 14, I implied a girl was fat and made her cry. Now, I’ve done many things worse that these things, but for some reason, these ones really stick and annoy me with shame and embarrassment.

Now, many would say to move on. Many would say I was young and I should forgive myself. But, like Acton is saying, isn’t the whole point of history (in this case my memories) to learn from the past? Does not the shame and the embarrassment aid me in being a better person? Boy Dilettante is a criminal of sorts. Why should he be spared for mysterious reasons? Should he not be hung higher than Haman for the sake of improving Adult Dilettante?

Society, though, seems to disagree with Acton. Leaders are often pardoned or get off easy. Historical figures are mostly forgiven for their murders, enslavements and pedophilia. And, with regard to the Dilettante, children are almost always spared the full punishment of crimes.

Loving Art

2008-03-03T12:55:00.001-05:00

Recently I was asked if I loved art and I’ve been mulling over this question for nearly a week. First indecisiveness over Obama and Clinton and now this. Perhaps I wouldn’t make a great surgeon after all.

Sure, the question is bit undefined (okay, maybe more than a bit). What is art? Though, there’s a million answers to that one, I’m going with the answer from that skit on the The State—after spending a good deal of time introducing a dozen highly acclaimed artists and art critics, the host asks “what is art?” to which one critic responds “like, paintings and stuff” and ends the show.

And then there’s the even harder question of love? I had an argument a year ago with a girl who claimed she didn’t like water. “Who likes water?” she asked. “I LOVE water!” I insisted.

So, let’s talk about like versus love. I would say I like something when it simply pleases me with its presence. I would say I love something when it produces an overwhelming positive emotional response. The emotional response is so large that I don’t think I could cope very well without the hope of experiencing it again. Things I like, I can do without and easily replace. Things I love are things that, if gone, I would severely miss and, when they are gone, I crave. For instance, I like peanuts and I even like them a lot, but if someone said “no more peanuts, ever” I think I would be okay. On the other hand, if someone said “no more milk, ever,” I would panic.

I really like going to museums. I certainly like it more than most people. I find art very powerful. And I would really like to say I love art. But, honestly, if I never saw another painting or I never saw another sculpture, I think I would be okay.

I cannot say that about other things. If I lost the ability to see, I would immediately mourn the loss of sunsets and clouds and the sky and trees. I would miss the horizon and lakes and mountains and snow. I would miss eyes and freckles and ears and lips. But, far down the list would be art, certainly below birds or fish or even my own reflection.

My feelings on art is different than, say, music. With the loss of hearing, I almost immediately think of the loss of music and how horrible that would be. Given the choice between never again hearing music and never hearing the sound of wind or the sound waves crashing, I would probably choose nature over music, but it would be agonizing decision and recovering from such a loss would be difficult.

Of course, many people really do love art. They study it and devote their life to it. They can’t get enough it and surround themselves with it. Without it, many of them would be empty and lost.

Perhaps artists enjoy art because they have to work harder to be great. Michelangelo spent 40 years, off and on, on the Sistine chapel and it captivates people for five, maybe ten minutes. Richard Berry spent five, maybe ten minutes writing “Louie Louie” and it’ll be stuck it my head for a lifetime. Art is certainly a difficult medium to use to communicate. People spend hours and hours creating something physical to communicate emotion. With speech, we can communicate it in seconds. Humans may not be hardwired to take in art like they do with other media.

Then again, maybe those that love art are hardwired for it. Maybe they just get it like Bobby Fisher gets chess. Or maybe they learn to love it like academics learn to love their discipline.

All I know is I simply really like art, which may be subject to change.

Agnostic Domination

2008-02-26T17:19:00.002-05:00

Recently the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a study that revealed that at least 44 percent of Americans have switched from the religion that they were raised as to a new religion. The study also found that only 4 percent of Americans self-identify as atheists or agnostics.

We do not have a control to compare this 44 percent with. Is 44 percent a lot or a little? Still, I would guess that this percentage is more than other countries where other religious options are heavily deterred either legally or socially. In the West, people can switch faiths with little or no consequence. One’s friends and parents may care and alienate one for switching faiths, but for the most part, there is religious tolerance and, thus, tolerance for switching. Most importantly, economic survival is fairly independent of religion in the West, which allows people, for the most part, to switch freely.

It is interesting that in an environment of religious freedom, people switch faiths often. It shows that the basic nature of humanity is uncertainty with religion. I would bet that even the people who are still part of their birth religion have beliefs that do not really match up with the official doctrine. The probable situation is that, in fact, most people are agnostic. People probably have their own ideas on the universe, which change from time to time.

Additionally, spirtual fickleness doesn’t seem to be a modern phenomenon. New cults and religions swept through the ancient world all the time. The very existence of laws than ban certain religions shows that populations were prone to conversion.

Yet, even though it is clear that people are unsure of what the universe holds, few are willing to admit it (less than 1 in 25). I suppose this is because people enjoy being part of groups. Additionally, with so many religions existing, every belief is claimed. A person, over time, can show uncertainty, but at any given moment, they occupy the territory of a religion.

Cult

2008-02-15T14:27:00.001-05:00

My roommate has an addiction to buying DVDs and recently purchased “Undeclared,” a cancelled series about college from 2001. The series, which contains many of the same actors from “Knocked Up” and “Superbad,” reportedly achieved a cult following. After watching a few episodes, I see that the show has a unique type of humor and it is understandable that some would be enthusiastic about it, though I only think the show is okay.

Cults are a hotly disputed topic with no one completely agreeing on a definition. We all sort-of understand that cults are relatively small an involve worship, but issues of critical thinking, brainwashing, enthusiasm and “the norm” can vary from opinion to opinion.

In arts and entertainment, it is positive to have an item achieve a cult status. In fact, the mainstream is seen as simple and unable to comprehend the complexity of most art. Though classic art and literature can be good and famous, good contemporary art is almost always obscure and erudite. Only for the sake of making money do artists crave popular attention and a loss of the cult status.

With religion, though, cults strive to be more. Religion, lacking objective proof like science, relies on numbers for credibility. If a billion people believe that Jesus had superpowers, it’s not crazy. If ten people believe that David Blaine has superpowers, that’s crazy. With religious cults, people often highlight how the cults rely on brainwashing and abuse its members. Of course, nearly all religion attempts to indoctrinate impressionable children and tries to extract money from its followers. It all seems to be a matter of degree.

Cults of personality seem to break from the small size criterion and focuses on the worship without critical thinking that is reminiscent of religious zealots. Whether it’s Mao, a teen heartthrob or Obama, people worship a person and believe everything that person does is great without ever being critical of it.

Though there is great variance in the definition of the cult organization, there is one thing that present in all three- the desire for humans to worship something irrationally. Whether it’s a twelve-year-old schoolgirl, an eighteen-year-old rocker, an overly devoted boyfriend, a sports fanatic, a Bible thumper or campaigner, there seems to be a desire to worship a shiny golden calf.

The organization, whether it’s a person, a religion or a nation-state, feeds off of this desire to varying degrees. The organization can come in million forms, but the blindness of the worship is what makes a cult a cult.

Hillary and Obama

2008-02-11T16:47:00.000-05:00

Believe or not, but I am undecided about my choices tomorrow. In truth, either would do. Obama seems more electable and is a fresh face. Hillary seems to have slightly better ideas. McCain is such a disgusting piece of crap that I would vote for almost any Democrat over him.

McCain, on his super-slow web site, lists horrid view on so many issues. He actually lists his anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research and anti-same sex marriage stances under his “Human Dignity” section which also includes efforts to stop child molesters. On abortion, McCain claims that overturning Roe v. Wade is just the start (wow, not even hiding behind federalism). On stem cell research, he straw-mans the argument and says he’s against “fetal farming” and thus against stem cell research (no one pro-“fetal farming” since there are plenty of stem cells left over from abortions). On same-sex marriage, he claims that the practice threatens the preservation and health of civil society.

McCain wants to continue Bush’s tax cuts and deceptively claims that Democrats want to hike taxes. He has some convoluted gibberish for Health Care section. At as a kicker, he wants more troops for Iraq.

McCain does say he wants to fight global warming, but that’s about all he has on environment.

Abortion. Both Hilary and Obama shy away from discussing the issue on the web site. We all know they are pro-choice, but only Hilary mentions it under her “Champion For Women” section. Hilary also pledges to overturn Bush’s ban on money for the UN Population Fund. Advantage Hillary.

Stem Cell research. I’m sure Obama is pro-federal funding, but, again, only Hillary seems to list it on her web site. She has a nice little press release entitled “Ending the War on Science.” Advantage Hillary.

Same sex marriage. Neither mention it.

Environment. Both are pro-tradable pollution permits and want 25% renewable energy by 2025. They are completely equal on this one.

Iraq. Hilary wants to start bring troops home immediately. Obama wants them out completely in 16 months. Advantage Obama.

Health Care. Hillary has required participation. Advantage Hillary.

Poverty. Obama lists a whole lot more poverty fighting programs than Hillary. Both are for lower class and middle class tax help. Advantage Obama.

International. Obama wants to promote multilateralism, make peace with Iran, secure nuclear material and be a little tougher on China. Hilary links to a long Foreign Affairs article detailing the same sort of multilateral ideas. Another tie.

So, I’m still undecided. Fantastic.

Why is it so easy to determine what one hates and so difficult to determine what one likes? I'm remined of trying to order pizza. Ask what someone wants, and they tell you nothing. Start suggesting things and people start claiming they hate that topping. Well, neither Hillary or Obama has done anything to make me hate them. Maybe I should just flip a coin.

Sickness and Happiness

2008-02-07T14:18:00.000-05:00

In the modern American world, sometimes we question the utility of additional conveniences. At some point, having more just doesn't bring us any more happiness. The post-materialists recognize that, at some point, having more pizza and beer (the favorite comodities of microeconomist) is actually a burden and utility decreases. Not to mention the Buddhists who think all consumption is just a cycle of unhappiness.

Certainly, I can see where they are coming from. Hauling away boxes of pizzas and beer cans is a pain in the ass and worrying about ever-breaking and continuously-stolen I-Pods rivals the joys of the I-Pod in the first place. And I know pleanty of absolutely miserable rich people.

But, while there is question to what brings us happiness, there is no question to what brings us unhappiness- sickness. Poor health is pure unhappiness. Those days with the flu or extreme alergies or something worse are painful and unenjoyable. Though many people opt for spartan existances and often people opt for painful challenges, no one opts to be sick. It is a horrible time with its only reward being a resistance to a single specific virus. If you're unlucky enough to get cancer, recovery never brings you back to full strength. No, sickness is something without a brightside, which is why the most successful international organization are all medical related.

When people look at how far our society has progressed and improved, oddly sickness is overlooked in favor of the easier to measure longevity. Most people know that the average American lives to be around 76, but few think about the decrease in sick days. But it is true that people spent weeks and months each year in bed sick until the 20th century. Now, its unusual if we spend more than a few days in bed twice a year. The good 'ol days sucked and the third world really does have it bad.

Return

2008-01-31T11:30:00.000-05:00

It was raining when I got back to DC, just as it was when I left. My mother picked me up from the airport, treated me to a burrito and drove me to Takoma Park. My roommates had failed to take down the Christmas wreath off the front door and everything in the family room was eerily in the same place. It was all exactly as I had left it a month ago, as if I had been in Narnia.

I dumped my pack and collapsed upstairs, but I kept waking up in the middle of the night, first at eight, then at midnight and then at five. I kept dreaming of Ghanaian soccer and couldn’t get a Weezer album out of my head. Maybe it was the jetlag or maybe it was the Larium. I decided to go into work early since I was up. I grabbed a medium t-shirt that was usually snug and put it on. It was now loose.

Work was work. Our last report was still upstairs with the Inspector General and the entrance conference for our next review was still not scheduled. I had lunch with Staats and Tristin who reported that nothing had happened over the past month. Yup, it was all exactly as I had left.

My run after work went surprisingly well and I weighed myself afterwards. I lost fifteen pounds. How is that even possible? A half a pound every day?

I decided to grab some Chinese when I got home, so I went down the street and ordered some kung pao. I chowed down while watching Countdown, which left me with an enormous stomach ache. Apparently, this whole food thing is a shock to my body (unless it was Keith Oberman). I guess I should have gone with yams for dinner. At nine, I became massively sleepy and felt light-headed. I stumbled upstairs and passed out again. I kept waking up expecting to see blue walls. I need to get off this Larium.

I’m sure in a couple of days, I’ll be acclimated. Oddly, though, both physically and mentally, I miss Ghana. Who would have guessed?

The North

2008-01-26T05:42:00.000-05:00

I made it to a village called Tongo outside of Bolgatanga. Tongo is in the savanah with fields of amber grass rising from the ruddy earth. Trees are scattered through the landscape, but each far enough from the other to be considered lone. Drier than dry, Tongo is the image of Africa the west has in its mind, minus the lions. It is so stunning, it is surreal. I stayed with Jesse, a Peace Corps volunteer who teaches art to deaf children. The children moan and hit each other for attention, which makes it easy to understand why the Ghanaians think they are idiots when they are not. Jesse hopes to teach them how to make a few craft so they can survive. Other than helping his students, Jesse hates his time in Ghana. He spends his nights drinking, playing cards and talking to two other volunteers who he seems to share a brain with. They finish each other's thoughts and are fascinated by each other's banal tales of shopping at the market and dealing with the locals. The presence of outsiders is almost jarring to their rhythm of isolation. Once his two friends leave Ghana, Jesse says he will leave.

I went to see a woman's community craft shop near the Burkina border (the tour was given by a man). I also went to see the chief of Tongo's house (17 wives) and the very gross shrine near his home (priest sitting in a pile of Guinea fowl carcasses). Some Ghanaian told me I was in the wrong Tro Tro just so he could get the front seat, which caused a huge fight between him and the Ghanaians who were looking out for me. It was kind of awkward.

At least the north had some okay pork skewers. I gulped down the fat and skin knowing that I needed the energy. Eating is chore here. Amazing.

Two days of bus transport followed. The Tongo to Bolga, Bolga to Tamale, Tamale to Kumasi, Kumasi to Accra, Accra to Nick's place. Hours of delays, hours of traffic, hours of road construction. It was terrible. I caught some sort of cold from the trip and had the worst headache I've had in 15 years. Last night, I walked into a field and collapsed practically weeping in pain. Other than that, it was really a beautiful night.

Adventure

2008-01-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

Ooof, what an adventure getting to Mole and back!

So, I got a bus towards Mole, which stops in a town called Larabanga, 6 kilometers outside of Mole. From chatting with people on the bus, I learned that there is an annual "festival" in Larabanga the next day. Since I wasn't sure if Mole had a bed for me anyway, I got off the bus with the other few travelers to spend the night in the crappiest town in the history of man. A Dutchman, an American girl and I went to the "guest house" where the American girl's Slovenian friend was living. At this point, the pity of the Slovenians begins in dusty,dusty Larabanga. The poor Slovenian was fed just rice by her host family at night and bread in the morning. There was no running water (just a barrel of rain water) and the toilet was a hole in the ground. The Slovenian had no computer, tv or any entertainment. The worst aspect of the town is that they play dance music until 4 in the morning and start again at 6 in the morning that literally shakes her rat infested cement home. The Dutchman, American girl and I slept on the roof after eating white rice for dinner. I taught the others my trick of shoving wet toilet paper in my ear. I was so tired, I actually slept a good four or five hours through the music, but the Dutchman and the American girl didn't sleep at all. The Slovenian, as well, couldn't sleep.

I was awoken in the morning by a strange boy who was excited about the festival. "Today," he said "Larabanga will be like Accra." At the time, I was skeptical, but eventually realized the kid was delusional. I also wondered how and why some stranger kid walked into a house that wasn't his and climbed on the roof just to tell a foreigner about the festival. Went walked to see the sights of town. First, we saw their magic stone, which is sacred, but can be photographed for 50 cents. The magic stone was moved to straighten the road, but somehow returned the next day to the same spot. Then, a woman crashed her car, only to survive unharmed near the rock. Then, were taken to the town's magic mud puddle (diameter 2 yards), which women were drinking from. We were told that the festival would begin at 10:30 so we headed to the oldest mosque in west Africa, along with the 30 children we had accumulated along the way.

Nick warned me about Ghanayan festivals. "A festival is standing around," he warned. The oldest Quran in west Africa was being brought to the oldest Mosque in west Africa. People came as far as Nigeria to see it. We were warned not to take any pictures about 8 times by the clerics because the Quran was "mega-Sacred." We waited from 10:30 and, finally, after 1, the Imam and the Quran arrived, covered in blankets. There was about 300 people standing around to see this event. And that was it.

So, we walked to Mole (it was nice to leave Larabanga) and went on the tour. We saw some elephants, baboons, warthogs, green monkeys, cobbs, Guinea fowl. It was nice, but we were starving. After getting back to the Mole gust house, I ordered some curried chicken and a coke, went for a dip in the dirty pool and relaxed. Mole was brief, but very nice, especially after spending a day in the worst village ever. A slept until 4 am when we had to catch the bus back to Tamale.

Halfway down 100 km dirt road from Mole to the highway that goes to Tamale, a bus blocked the road. It was clearly trying to turn around and got stuck in a ditch. The Ghanayans were having no luck trying to put tree limbs and rocks under its tires to get it out. Other minivans tried to go around and got stuck. Soon, it was a pile up of stuck vehicles. It was so ridiculous that even the Ghanayans on the bus were laughing.

50 km from anything, stuck in the middle of a dirt highway under the hot sun in the middle of Africa. Still, we couldn't go back to Larabanga. So, we started walking and left behind the hundreds of stranded Ghanayans. Luckily, one the buses (not ours), off-roaded it around all of the pile up. They picked us up on the other side of the mess and we road to Tamale. Success! Incredible! It was a cramped ride in which a Guinea fowl crapped all over me, but I was happy to make it back to crappy, crappy Tamale.

Tired inTamale

2008-01-18T04:11:00.000-05:00

I spent yesterday on buses and am exhausted today. I had to catch a shared taxi into Kumasi and then a tro tro to Techiman. From Techiman, I went by shared taxi to Nkoranza and then by tro tro on a horrible road to Boabeng to see a monkey sanctuary with two different types of monkeys. The monkey's were neat, but like the grand canyon, it's a long trip and after 30 minutes, you've seen it. A Peace Corps volunteer was in my tro on the way to the sanctuary. He seemed ready to kill himself from the isolation. I remember isolation well from China, but his must be worse for him. At least I had a couple of fiends to see in the evening and some McDonald's in Shanghai. He has a lot of dust and the polluted nothingness of Techimen. He says market day is the highlight of his week. As fun and romantic and the Peace Corps may seem at times, Margo's description of it being "two years of being really bored" seems pretty accurate.

I then had to go back to Nkoranza and then Techiman to hop a bus crowded with Muslims to Tamale. God, that was long. When I arrived, it was super late and most hotels were booked. I also unfortunately picked up a tailing kid who tried to meet me today, but I managed to finally offend him and got rid of him. I got my ticket to go to Mole. The place is booked, so I'm not sure where I'll be sleeping (maybe the town 4 km away). Oh well, I'll figure it out. Muslims can't deny you a place to sleep.

Lakes and Haircuts

2008-01-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

I decided to go see Lake Bosumtwee, where Ashanti souls pass after they die. It was a nice misty and mystical lake. Some guy pretended to be the chief and wanted me to give him money for tree planting. When I didn't give him anything, he called me a racist and tried to fight me. The other villagers apologized for him.

Upon return to Kumasi, I decided I needed a haircut. This is a dilemna, though, as clearly no one knows how to cut white hair. So, I got buzzed and now my hair is shorter than ever before in my life (well, maybe birth). It looks okay, but, then again, I'm tanned so everything looks fine. The barber asked if I wanted a shave and I said sure. He then shaved my face with his hair clipper. If you ever have the chance to shave your face with a hair clipper, I would recommend passing on it as it was extremely painful. I struggled to hold back tears as the clippers ripped into my neck hairs. Ahh Africa.

Tomorrow I head north to a monkey sanctuary. Awesome.

More Beaches and Kumasi

2008-01-15T07:24:00.000-05:00

Heading west of Accra, I checked out the forts of Cape Coast before heading to the beach. The forts kept slaves before their trip to the New World and they were pretty dreary. The guide kept making note of the lines where crap was before they excavated them. The people of Cape Coast wouldn't really let me walk around at night- they kept telling me to go home because it was supposedly dangerous. The Ghanans are always looking out for me, often too much.

I hit the beaches of Busua which were, of course, great. They were deserted and and beautiful, but the waves never got high enough to surf (despite the presence of surf shops). I took a tour of a palm making facility in the jungle. It looked more like a meth lab, really. Industrial barrels and antifreeze containers held the wine as it fermented. Little kids as young as four ran about blitzed off of palm wine.

I hopped a van to Kumasi that broke down. After a half-hour of sitting by the side of the road, a bus drove bye and picked us up. Kumasi is busy and industrious. The Ashanti people are colder and more business oriented than the Ewe in the east. The Ashanti sold the Ewe into slavery. Somehow, it shows.

The Larium is beginning to get to me. Dreams are stronger and I can't sleep as well. Though, it may be the fact that at night people leave their TVs blasting. In the morning, they sweep. The Ghanans are a sweeping people. From 4 to 8 am, they sweep, sweep and sweep. The sound of handleless brooms wakes me every morning and prevents me returning to slumber.

Ghana, Togo, Benin

2008-01-05T15:42:00.000-05:00

Ghana is a funny place, but isnt everywhere? How to describe it? Well, very dirty. All streets are lined by two-foot concrete ditches filled with garbage and waste (yes, waste). You have to look down at all times or else you might fall in and break a leg. The food is horrible. They have seven different blobs of grain that you dip into various soups and eat with your hands. Also, they have rice. Its all carb with little fat or protein. That said, the Ghanans are friendly, but trying. They yell "yaboo" at you all day (thats foreigner or tricky dog) and get offended if you ignore them. I spent new years with Nick and his Peace corp friends at a "bar" (some tables at the side of the road) in front of an Accra brothel. I next went to Nick's village. Its a beautiful location with palm trees, chickens, goats, women carrying everything on their heads and families wanting you to take their children to America. Nick must be very, very bored.

Nick and I crossed into Togo and noticed the French had done a much better job than the English. The country has better roads, closed sewers and people leave you alone (except the kids who yell yaboo bon sua). Togo's landscape, like Ghana's is stunning with miles of untouched beach. They cant really swim here and the undertoe would kill them anyway. I went by myself into Benin and caught a car to Abomay, where I'm going to check out some skull throne or something before heading home to Ghana. The Beninese are noticibly active compared to the lounging Togolege and Ghanans. Who would have guessed? Not knowing French is tough.

Surfing Ecuador

2007-06-12T16:21:00.000-04:00

I hit the eternally overcast beaches of Montanita for some surfing. After a couple of hours of swollowing gallons on salt water, I finally got the hang of things. Lessons learned- if you weigh more than 150 punds, don't bother with the short board. If you have to use the long board, be prepared to get really tired after an hour of hauling the thing around. Quite a dilemna. What's the big metaphor for turning 30? You can learn new things all the time, its just painful and tiring. Who would have known that surfing tears the shit around of your belly and nipples even with the surfing shirt on?

Failure to Summit

2007-06-08T10:23:00.000-04:00

I spent the past week preparing for my climb. I was getting pleanty of sleep, hiking small mountains in the area and taking altitude sickness pills. I went out to Cotopaxi on Wednesday and we left to try to summit at 1 am on Thursday. I was tied to the first guide with some Swedish guy while this Aussie girl was tied to the second guide. We got about half way up (about three hours left to the top) when a pretty heavy storm hit leaving powder on the mountain in our path. I was too heavy and kept sinking up to my knees in the snow while my guide and the Swedish guy were able to walk with ease. I was clearly slowing the Swede down and climbing out of these holes was exhausting so I chose to turn around with the second guide and Aussie girl who were ready to go back after she fell in water-filled crevass. 30 minutes later, the Swede and first guide turned back when the weather got even worse. So, climbing Cotopaxi was pretty hellish and ended in failure. Oh well. I think I'm going to head to the coast and sit on the beach for the rest of my trip.

Double Failure

2007-05-21T14:28:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine broke his arm for the second time this weekend. It had just healed as well. He had had metal plates put it and taken out and went through a massive ordeal to get it back to near-healthy working order. Then, after playing some flag football, his arm broke again. Back to square one.

Doing long and arduous tasks sucks as it is. Doing long and arduous tasks in an attempt to recapture something you already had before is even worse. It must be simply agony to try to recapture it for the second time.

Though the thought of re-breaking an arm is sickening on a number of levels, there is a silver lining to double failure nonetheless.

There is no lesson in winning, only in losing. The Chinese have a proverb that says something similar to that, but we don’t need their ancient legitimacy. It’s pretty self-evident. The question at hand, though, is whether there are lessons to be learned in re-losing.

I believe there is. That lesson is mastery.

When I was sixteen, I took my drivers test three times. I failed it twice. I didn’t fail many tests back then. I was the type of student who paid attention in class, didn’t study and then would take a test. I’m not saying that every test I took was outstanding based on the “no study” method, but I never failed.

So, the first time through, I failed and parallel parking. Okay, perhaps I was rash and arrogant the first time through. I now knew the test. I knew exactly what to do. Failure, lesson learned, try again, right? But, instead, I took it again and failed the parallel parking again.

Sure, I could make excuses on why I failed twice. I was using a mammoth Audi 5000 station wagon instead of the tiny Hondas that were used in driving school. That’s not important, though. After the second failure, I got some trashcans and practiced parallel parking in front of my house all Saturday afternoon until I mastered it.

I passed the third time, but, again, that’s not what is important.

What’s important is I am a frickin’ master at parallel parking now. I know what you’re thinking- yeah right. I know, I know, everyone claims they’re a master at weird pointless things like quarters or Super Mario Brothers. On top of that, everyone thinks they’re a good driver. Independent of all of that bias, I am incredible at parallel parking. Really. And its not arrogance; the skill is actually only the result of being a failure at something relatively simple.

My skill lends itself quite useful in DC and I am quite thankful I have it. And I owe it to one thing and one thing only- double failure. (I know, I know, that’s kind of two things, but you get the point).

The Vent

2007-05-09T17:01:00.001-04:00

When I was living in Shanghai, I had very few people to talk to and those I could talk to spoke very poor English. Not communicating with other humans and not sharing ideas was simply exhausting. Finally seeing a few of my foreign friends at the bar late in the day was an incredible relief.

It is an amazing thing that we humans need to vent. Yet, the very nature of the word implies that some sort of unpleasant gas is building up and causing pressure. With a release, we are once again normal.

But it is causing this build up? Why do the talkative need to vent while the mousy remain silent? Why do artists need to paint, write or dance while other find no need to. Why are there complainers, hot heads and vandals? How and why does their anger build up when other people remain cool?

One of best comic strips I have ever seen was a four-panel drawing. His first panel showed a boss yelling at his subordinate. The second showed that subordinate yelling at his wife. The third showed the wife yelling at her child. The final panel showed the child kicking the dog.

Actions beget actions- this is clear, but why is not certain. Misery loves company, but why is not certain.

My theory would be empathy. When I was in middle school, I was treated poorly and, in turn, I treated others poorly. When I listen to music, I feel like playing music. When I was in Shanghai, weird things happened to me and wanted other people to understand and know about those weird things. Conversely, I have found that quiet and inactive people tend to not have many experiences to share and tend to be boring.

New or strong experiences make us feel different and not understood. After an experience, we have the desire to correct that difference. Through communication, art, love and, unfortunately, abuse we “vent” to bring ourselves closer to others.

The Greek Tragedy of Karaoke

2007-05-02T16:48:00.001-04:00

When I was in high school, I first tried karaoke and it was awesome. I’m completely serious about this. Bored at seventeen without a punk show to go to that weekend, we hit the Timonium Fair Lanes. In the side bar, there was an old fat DJ and his karaoke machine. We picked the worst late 80’s glam metal and went to work making asses of ourselves.

Karaoke makes a lot of sense. Previously, to sing and perform, you needed a venue, a band or, at least, some talent. It was all too serious and way too inaccessible. Karaoke was the people’s revolution. All of a sudden, anyone could do it. One didn’t even need to know the words. It was fun, it was ridiculous and it was entertaining. Pick the best bad song that rocked and let the good times roll.

After college, I moved to Shanghai to teach English and saw a very different side to Karaoke. I was taken out by the Chinese teachers to a “Ka-Li-OK” establishment. Rather than a large bar crowd, our party was put in a private room. I chose to sing Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”, but was met with no smiles or laughter. The Chinese watched me with complete stoicism and then politely clapped when I finished. They went on to choose songs without irony, sang the best they could and applauded each other in a similar fashion. I’d like to say the Chinese were unique, but if you’ve ever been to Reef on Tuesday, you’ll also find a similar sort of crowd.

Karaoke without self-degradation and humor was shocking, but there is something far worse. Every night of the week, you can find some Karaoke in DC. Most likely, though, it’ll be exactly the same experience. You’re going to hear “Sweet Caroline,” “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places,” and “Living on a Prayer” sung by a gaggle of drunks. The redundancy to the songs chosen and pack singing makes one want to jab one’s ears out.

What happened? How did Karaoke go from something so accessible and liberating to something so serious and systematic?

The Greeks identified this cycle in all of their epics. The tragic hero is at first strong, intelligent and creative. He succeeds only to gain hubris. Then, the gods smite him. Poor Oedipus, Perseus, Jason, Theseus and Bellerophon.

Hubris ruins everything. It causes directors make bad movies and it causes comedians to stop being funny. Writing becomes trite and self-important and music stops rocking. The arrogant and serious stop questioning, stop evolving and stop having fun. In a sense, they stop living.

With karaoke, no longer are people willing to make fun of themselves. They are either really there to perform seriously or they are so scared of embarrassment that they must go up drunk, in a pack, and sing the least experimental song possible. The gods have smited our hero karaoke for its users’ lack of humility. Now, it’s no longer fun.

Options and Commitment

2007-04-24T11:54:00.000-04:00

Say you were offered $100 million in exchange for never seeing a sunrise again. Many of us would say no. Yet, how many more sunrises are we really going to see? Twenty? Thirty? We’ve all seen sunrises. They’re okay. Worth millions of dollars a piece? Probably not. Still, the thought of never seeing a sunrise again is horrific. Nonetheless, tomorrow we will probably sleep and miss yet another one.

This fear of limitation is the heart of fear of commitment. The thought of the rest of our lives without certain opportunities is scary. Even when the opportunities are unlikely to be taken, we still dislike them being taken away. We like to keep options open as options represent hope, even if it is false hope.

This fear of limitation is immense. It reminds us of our shortcomings and our mortality. It reminds us of the ticking clock on our lives. This is why people that commit are considered tough.

How does one commit? How does one get a tattoo, get married or become a suicide bomber? How does one overcome all of that fear? Does the joy or principle of a commitment overcome the fear of limitation? Perhaps, but it is more likely something else.

The Japanese samurai had “Bushido,” the way of the warrior. It involved the virtues of rectitude, courage, benevolence, respect, honesty, honor and loyalty. These virtues, despite being incredibly redundant, helped the warrior be a better fighter. By not thinking about self gain and self worth, the warrior could overcome the fear of death (the ultimate limitation) and enter battle without hesitation.

Zen Buddhism came to Japan and the samurai quickly adopted it. The world, including death, was an illusion. By not thinking at all, the samurai come become an even better fighter.

In the end, commitment isn’t about weighing choices and opting for limitation, it’s about not thinking at all. It is about putting the fear of limitation out of mind. This is why it is the young an rash who end up getting tatoos, dying in wars and eloping. Those who are thoughtful understand costs of actions. Those who are thoughtful certainly aren’t tough.

Not thinking isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This fear of limitation is just as irrational as the desire to commit. Putting it out of mind can be to ones advantage. We have to put death and fear of injury out of mind every time we leave the house. Additionally, there is nothing more pathetic than a 45-year-old who isn’t ready to get married.

Also, if someone offers you a $100 million to give up sunrises, you should probably take it.

The Irrelevance of Quenching

2007-04-11T16:10:00.000-04:00

When I was 16, I read Siddhartha by Hesse and I hated it. Siddhartha first lives a life of fasting and pain, then a hedonistic life of pleasure and indulgence, then “finds enlightenment” as a ferryman who hangs out by a river. I found the “happily-ever-after” simple-life ending to be trite. After a couple months, I felt, he would get bored and start searching again for enlightenment.

I still stand by my13-year-old criticism. I felt the book wasn’t true to human nature for the simple reason that desires can never be quenched in the long term. This fact is one of central ideas of Buddhism. Human wants are infinite and the desire to fulfill them leads to pain. Hesse attempts to take the opposite approach- after living life and gaining experience, one will be able to eventually find enlightenment. After experiencing everything, one will be content with not experiencing anything anymore.

Hesse was a German and Western society assumes that oats can be sowed and that one can get something “out of their system.” We allow the young certain indulgences with the assumption that they will “settle down.” Any erratic action after the 20’s is called a “mid-life crisis” and is laughed at. In truth, though, people continue to drink, continue to have sex, continue to seek possessions and continue to want power. Juvenile desires remain into adulthood.

We assume that desires can be fulfilled in the long term because so many can be fulfilled in the short term. After sleeping, the desire of sleep is gone. After eating, the desire to eat is gone. After sex, the desire for sex is gone. But all of these are short-term desires. In the end, there is always another appetite.

Now, I am not saying that all desire is eternal. Many desires do eventually leave us, but they do not leave us from fulfilling them. At one time, I wanted a tattoo. I didn’t get one, but the desire left me anyway. Eventually one’s sex drive will be gone, but it has nothing to do with how much sex one gets.

My buddy, Panama, and I had come up with opposing theories on life and death. Mine, I realize, was Hesse-like and was flawed. I theorized that life was like an amusement park. If one had to leave at 8:30 am, one would be upset because they didn’t get to go on any rides. After a full day of fun, though, one would be exhausted and ready to leave (die). The analogy, though, is flawed as an amusement park is a short-term desire and cannot be applied to life. Real desire is long-term and regenerates.

Panama had the theory that eventually life is like being on a plane. Being on a plane is so boring, painful and unenjoyable, that one wishes the time wasn’t there at all. He theorized that eventually life reaches that level and one is okay with dying.

Panama’s theory, though, rests on the idea that desire and pain will increase in time. As an old person, one will desire all the things one has lost so much that it is overwhelming. In truth, though, many elderly stop caring about various desires and just accept their minds and bladders have gone.

Ironically, the elderly naturally end up in the Buddhist state of non-desire near the end of their life. Oddly, the achieve it not through leading a Spartan existence of denying desire like the Buddhist wants or through fulfilling desires like Hesse and Western society want. They just get there through time, regardless of how they live their lives.

-manship

2007-04-06T16:23:00.000-04:00

There are a couple of words that use the suffix “manship.” “Manship” usually refers to the art or skill of an act. For instance, “workmanship” refers to how well a job is done and “sportsmanship” refers to how well one conforms to the rules and conventions (i.e. politeness) of a sport. It is the making the “how” of an act proper (whatever proper may be).

Oddly, “manship” does not necessarily refer to advancement or success in something. A good workman produces a product of the highest quality. But, labor and production is not solely about quality. Price and quantity are important factors. Putting too much labor into something would either increase the price of the product or decrease the profits of the company. For every excellently made product, there is a completely unmade product that could have been assembled with that extra time. Most of us don’t need one expensive finely crafted pens; several cheap BIC is preferable.

Similarly, sportsmanship does not mean advancement or success either. Adhering to rules, including other teammates and staying calm can make it harder to reach one’s objectives. Having a good sportsman on one’s team can be incredibly annoying when one truly wants to win.

But, for some reason, we like workmanship and sportsmanship. Despite the obvious advantages of doing things otherwise, seeing people live by a proper code is comforting. In fact, we really dislike the opposite. No one wants to play with a poor sport and no one wants to work with lazy person even if their poor “manship” doesn’t affect them. There is an irrational pride in good “manship” and shame in poor “manship.”

In 1950, a British author named Stephen Potter wrote a book called “Some Notes on Lifemanship.” It was a tongue-in-cheek guide on the proper way to live life. Since then, a few more less-ironic self-help books have borrowed the term “lifemanship.”

It is not surprising that the empty, yet endearing, “manship” code that applies to sports and work would also apply to life. We tend to like people who are conform to the basic norms of life. People with jobs, who want to marry and who want to have children are normal. The jobless, single and childless are kind of weird. We steer clear of lazy people, liars, complainers and the self-absorbed. People that are only interest in self-gain and do not care for their friends and family make us uncomfortable. Those who cooperate, adhere to many social norms and are polite are met with acceptance.

In fact, it’s more than just acceptance; it’s respect. “Manship” may simply be a generous and cooperative compliance to social norms. It may be just perseverance to conform to an arbitrary code, thus a display of strength. Like any art, it’s hard to define, but we know it when we see it. Whatever it is, we like it.

The Buying and Selling of Indulgences

2007-04-02T13:33:00.000-04:00

In the 16th century, Martin Luther had had it with the Catholic Church. The Church was selling indulgences, which in effect, was a way to buy oneself into heaven. Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg and Protestantism was born.

In his 95th thesis, he wrote:

“And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.”

Luther believed that being sinless and getting into heaven was hard work. There was not an easy way to achieve it and one certainly could not simply buy it. Now, I’m no Christian nor am I even a theist, but Luther’s point is a good one in that it can apply to a broader range of things in this world than just salvation. Almost all physical objects can be bought and sold, but abstract ideas and conditions are consistently not for sale.

In his 24th thesis, Luther wrote:

“The greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty.”

People can desire a number of abstract things. Some want happiness, while others want love. Some desire maturity and others intellectualism. Some want to feel moral and others want to be good parents. Some want to be artistically gifted and others want to have “refined taste.” And, many of us want all of these things. The thing is, these are very difficult things to achieve that each take a lifetime of constant struggle. They are illusive journeys rather than defined destinations. Deep down, everyone knows it, too.

Nonetheless, people still try to buy them. I know materialists who think that the latest and greatest objects will bring them fulfillment. I know couples who purchase things for each other and with each other, but do not really know or like each other. I know people who donate money out of guilt and I know parents who try to buy their children things to makeup for the fact that they are never around. I know legions of the pretentious who try to surround themselves with art, literature and music, but have never spent the time or effort to observe it and understand it. And I know grown children who think that buying certain objects and living a certain lifestyle will make them into responsible adults.

Luther believed every truly repentant Christian had a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon from the pope (thesis 36).

Hard work leads to true achievement of anything incorporeal and nothing else.

On Riddles

2007-03-29T15:34:00.001-04:00

Often in epic stories, characters come upon riddles that need to be solved. Riddles are used as a matching of wits as a change of pace to the regular matching of brawn. This occurs in Greek mythology, Norse mythology, the Hobbit, Batman and the Dark Tower. Like epic matches of brawn, lives are almost always on the line and the fighting is almost never fair.

Riddles often rely on metaphors. What has four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening? Once one connects days to lives and legs with arms and canes, the riddle solves itself. Riddles often rely on puns. When is a door not a door? When is a door not adore? When it’s a jar. When it’s ajar.

What is frustrating about riddles is that both metaphorical riddles and pun based riddles are almost impossible to solve because they exist in worlds of infinite solutions. Anything could be the solution to a riddle. On top of that, one doesn’t know how clever, complicated or fitting the answer is supposed to be. The result of this is solutions are almost always dependent on whether you’ve heard the riddle or something similar before.

True heroes answered riddles based on their wits; they fought fairly. Batman would actually figure out the Riddler’s riddles. Oedipus’ wit actually defeated the Sphinx. These feats, though, are as unrealistic as Gilgamesh’s weeklong wrestling match with Enkidu.

Other tales highlight the problems of riddles. In a number of tales, the heroes change the game. Odin, when faced against the giant Vafthruthnir asked “what did Odin whisper to his son Balder before he was placed on the pyre?” Bilbo Baggins asked Gollum “what’s in my pocket?” Eddie of New York asked Blain the Mono “what’s the difference between a truck of bowling balls and a truck of woodchucks?” These tales take riddles to their logical end- ultimate obscurity (a single person knows), infinite possibilities and no clues.

Some may see Odin, Bilbo and Eddie as cheaters, but they are actually playing the game ruthlessly well. Riddles are not games of logic and intelligence. If logic and intelligence were truly at play, everyone would have sat down to do math problems. Riddles are pedantic and are purely about delivering questions in ones’ own realm of knowledge and not in the opponents. Our anti-heroes recognized that obscurity was the game and saw that personal knowledge was the best way to achieve that.

David killed Goliath by not fighting him hand-to-hand and instead hitting him with a missile. Was that fair? No, but neither would hand-to-hand. Competitions are usually designed, presented and participated in by people who are adept at them. Only a fool would box a boxer. Wit is the same. “Smart” people are usually just people who choose to engage people on things they happen know about.

Still Alive

2007-03-19T16:58:00.001-04:00

In fiction, death has meaning. Protagonists go down in blazes of glory. Antagonists fall allowing everyone beneath them, quite abruptly, to be free and live happily ever after. It is amazing how often the world is presented as something fragile enough that a single life can tip the scales.

Death in real life usually doesn’t mean much. Oh, we’re sad when loved ones die and death, in general, is a lurking force in our lives. But when someone dies in real life, it is usually senseless and empty. Little is learned and little is gained. It is a loss, but not much changes. Systems are in place for successors, people adapt and life goes on.

People often try to make one’s death matter. Murderers think that offing one person will significantly benefit them. Martyrers think that their life will advance an issue. In the end, though, it usually takes many murders and many martyrs before anyone takes notice or anything changes.

Historians, both professional and amateur, attempt to make deaths matter as well. With nearly every emperor, king and president, there is a story that tries to exploit a death. Often there is a rumor of murder (Napoleon), or conspiracy (JFK), or a fantastic quote (John Adams). No “great man” can simply die, it seems. With a great story, people attempt to use a death to mobilize people behind or against something.

Some individuals, though, were so important that the rumor of life was stronger than death. Through supernatural means, these divine characters continued on.

Alexander the Great led armies to conquer most of Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia and India. When he died (probably of natural causes), the diadochi quickly split things up and things went to pot. For hundreds of years, rumors circulated that Alexander (who was the son of Zeus) was still alive and still conquering.

Nero held the vast Roman Empire together under a period of economic prosperity. When he died, the empire fell into civil war. Again, for hundreds of years, rumors circulated among his admirers and enemies that Nero (the last son of Aeneas, descendant of Venus, and, to the Christians, the Antichrist) was still alive and would return.

And, of course, there is the story of Jesus, which has all of the elements. He is the son-of-God martyr who was conspired against and murdered. He said a bunch of great quotes and he is rumored to be alive. The story has then been used to mobilize people more people than any other.

These stories show that life is more powerful than death. With death, one can only make one limited statement, which eventually is forgotten. With life, one can have many more tales. This can even be seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Spock dies to make a powerful ending, but writers realized that Spock resurrected, as ridiculous as it was, was more useful.

Perhaps one day, Americans will believe that a divine Washington is still alive.

Experience

2007-03-08T14:11:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, I find myself talking about traveling and living abroad. Okay, whom am I kidding? This actually occurs quite often. So, today, I found myself talking about Rome with a couple friends who both spent some time there.

Now, I hated Rome, which causes many to crinkle their brow and look at me with disapproving anger. When I tell people this, it’s like I have said I hate sunshine or babies. For the life of them, they cannot understand how I, of all people, could not like Rome.

The reason I didn’t like Rome is fairly simple. I was a poor nineteen-year-old American backpacker there in the summer time (the height of tourist season). The city was dirty, most of the sites were closed for repairs and everyone I met was really, really mean. That, and a train conductor tried to extort money from me, which led to a brutal fistfight and me crapping my pants (yes, that actually happened).

People usually dismiss my opinion of Rome with a simple “you had a bad experience.” This statement, though, is rather empty. Of course, I had a bad experience. Everything is experience. Every place one goes, person one meets and piece of food one eats is an experience. One’s like or dislike of anything is based purely on one’s own personal experience.

Some would argue that if I had more experiences there, my opinion would improve. People use this “limited exposure” argument for a lot of things. When you hate someone, people say, “Once you get to know him, he’s not that bad.” When you hate a food, people say, “It is a refined taste.” When you hate music, people try to introduce you to more of it. They expect that with more exposure, one will come around.

There is some merit to that argument. Certainly, limited experience gives one a skewed picture of something. There is no denying this. But, it should be noted that a limited experience is still an experience. Lovers of things dismiss other’s limited experience as no experience, which is a serious mistake.

A person allergic to peanut butter may not know peanut butter well, but their limited experience is important. A victim of a rape may only know a rapist for a few minutes, but their experience is important.

After all, ample experience also gives people a skewed picture of something. Irrational sentimentality begins to develop for people, places and things over time. One learns to ignore the bad, become numb to it, and only focus on the good. A friend from Hungary one told me that the old bread lines didn’t seem so bad. Everyone stood in them everyday. It was normal and no one really minded.

Take DC- I have lived here nearly six years. To me, it’s a pretty good town. The crime isn’t so bad because I have learned to shelter myself from it. I know which parts of town I like and I know which modes of transportation to take. Furthermore, I know the people, the restaurants and bars I don’t like and I avoid them. In a sense, I have crafted my own DC that it vastly different from anything a stranger would stumble upon. In many ways, a stranger wandering around DC without bias sees a truer DC than I know.

The naïve should naturally respect experience, but the adept should also, in turn, respect fresh eyes.

Weird

2007-03-02T11:40:00.001-05:00

At a happy hour on Tuesday, I was part of conversation in which a very drunk woman said, “…and so now I feel weird after tongue-kissing my boss because I just found out he’s married.”

As I left the bar, her friends remarked that the story was certainly odd, but it was simply amazing that she completely missed what was truly weird about the story. Who makes out with their boss? Who does this at work? Who the hell uses the term “tongue-kissing?” The most banal part of the story is that he’s married. What’s weird is that she somehow missed the fact her boss was married and yet got to the point of making out with him at work.

Weirdness is funny thing (by definition). We’re all weird in some way and if we weren’t, we’d be horribly boring. But there are two types of weirdness- the weirdness we know and the weirdness we don’t know.

Most of know that there are aspects of ourselves that don’t fit in with the rest of society. Maybe one has a mole or one really loves horseradish. Maybe one secretly has a thing for Australian aborigines. Whatever-the-case, we are usually aware that the rest of society does not share our trait. Even truly deranged Nazis, pedophiles and murderers are smart enough to know that they don’t fit in and hide their differences, usually in their basements.

But then there are people that somehow think that their difference is normal and go on with life completely unaware of it. There are those people who freely use racial slurs and somehow don’t notice everyone cringing. There are those people with exceptionally bad haircuts. Its not that they know and don’t care; its that they somehow don’t know.

Another story. I went to Valencia when I was 20 during a festival called Las Fallas. I hadn’t planned ahead very well and every hotel in the city was completely booked. Luckily, I befriended this guy Dante that was part of a group of Americans who were studying in Switzerland. They had a room and he said I could crash on the floor. He warned me of something first, though. He said, “I have to wake up early and catch a boat to Majorca. There’s a couple I’m staying with who are the cheapest human beings I’ve ever known. They are fucked-up human beings.”

So, after partying, I tried to sleep on the cold tile of the room Dante and this couple shared. After Dante left, I caught a few hours sleep in his bed. I awoke to the sound of the couple whispering about how much money they were going to ask me for. I could see that Dante had left 800 pesetas ($5.50) on the table as his share.

“So,” said the girl, “We really hooked you up, you know. We were thinking that you could pay 1600 pesetas for the room.”

“I’m going to pay what Dante paid.” I said. I put down 800 pesetas and promptly left without any goodbyes.

I met up with Dante a day later in Majorca and told him the story.

“Ha, we paid 2400 for the room. They wanted to pay nothing.” He shook his head and said “You know what the most harmful thing in the world is? When fucked-up people get together. A fucked-up individual by himself isn’t too dangerous. When he’s alone, he keeps those ideas to himself. You get two fucked-up people together and they start feeding off each other. They convince each other that somehow the way they live and the way they think isn’t fucked up.”

He was right. Freaks with freaks, assholes with assholes, Republicans with Republicans, fundamentalists with fundamentalists. They spend time with each other and they feed off each other until the weird becomes the status quo. Of course, weird is relative, so we are all doing this by hanging out with peers. Guys with mullets come from groups with mullets. Goths come from groups of Goths. Our friend who was making out with her boss must have been part of a group where that was normal.

Pedantic dilettantes come from groups of pedantic dilettantes.

Programmed

2007-02-26T16:03:00.001-05:00

Snowed in Sunday, I watched Whit Stillman’s “Last Days of Disco.” Though void of a plot, sympathetic characters or anything resembling an homage to disco, the movie had a few cute scenes with some lofty life questions to contemplate. It was no “Barcelona”, but I sort-of enjoyed it. Although, I can’t think of too many other people who would like it at all.

A common theme of movie is the idea that we are programmed from a young age to be a certain way. An environmental lawyer mentions the perhaps that entire environmental movement was caused by “Bambi.” A nation of little kids witnessed the hunter shooting Bambi’s mom and, a score later, the environmental movement comes along. Another character worries that “Lady and Tramp” was teaching girls to be vacuous and to be attracted to assholes.

How significant are these early exposures to entertainment? There are a few things that I might have been affected by growing up. I think I hate clowns from seeing “Poltergeist” at a young age as well as cockroaches from seeing “Creepshow.” Then again, those things are naturally scary anyway. That’s why they were chosen to be in horror movies in the first place. I have absolutely no fear of snakes despite their repeated presence in entertainment. So, who knows…

More than anything else, at a young age, I was exposed to aliens, space ships and robots. Star Wars, the Masters of the Universe, Transformers and Voltron dominated my impressionable mind and those of my peers. Yet, society has no real improvements in space travel or robotics since my youth. There are no flying cars, laser pistols or cybernetic pets. The closest thing we have is a computer and communication revolution that has us all looking downward at pdfs and mp3s instead of upwards at space stations. I don’t remember childhood idols like Luke, Adam, Optimus Prime or Keith wasting countless hours checking e-mail and deleting spam.

In the end of “Disco,” the characters learn that they may have been programmed at a young age, but it didn’t matter too much. Stronger social forces push their direction more than anything else. One character, fearing she’s a prude, tries to sleep around only catch herpes. The affliction forces her back into an exclusive relationship. Another character wonders if he is happy in a relationship, but a job takes him to away from that relationship before he makes the decision for himself. A third character, though perhaps mentally unstable, is now able to live a normal life thanks to modern medication. None of them are at the mercy of their internal desires and personalities, but all of them are at the mercy of the winds of social change and luck.

The characters do not even know if they truly like disco. The movement is ripped from them before any of them chooses to abandon it. Furthermore, the characters do not know even if they like each other. They are thrust in and out of each other’s company by a larger forces and great deal of luck (where one went to college, economic forces, who happens to be in the club on a particular evening). There is a great deal of talk about controlling one’s destiny, yet no one is able to.

Though I find in real life people are slightly more decisive and a lot less introspective than in “Disco,” the movie makes an interesting point. We look often inward and strive to improve, change and mask ourselves. Perhaps we are all programmed and full of baggage, complexes and fetishes. Whether or not we can escape our programming is an interesting question, but dwarfed by larger forces. We may have control over ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we have control over our destiny.

Authenticity

2007-02-23T17:19:00.001-05:00

Recently I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie “300” about the Spartan and Persian battle at Thermopylae in 480 BC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDiUG52ZyHQ
Like any other historical movie (or non-historical movie, really), the movie spends considerable effort on certain aspects of filming to create an illusion of realism while ignoring other aspects of realism.

For instance, clearly a massive amount of time, money and effort was spent on sets and costumes to make the characters look “authentically” Spartan or Persian. Additionally, the actors have clearly spent hours and hours working out to make themselves look athletic. Some actors probably put in extra effort to read about their roles to learn about the mindset of an ancient soldier. In the end, it produces a pretty rad lookin’ movie that feels “authentic.”

Oddly, audiences care about certain aspects of realism and yet they let others slide. Obviously, the Spartans and Persians didn’t speak English and I am sure certain aspects of the story are changed. This is all for practicality, though. For pacing and communication, it is understandable that these changes are made just as its understandable that science fiction movies have sound in space to create excitement.

Still, it is funny that movies never focus on other aspects of authenticity that would be easy to include. It is doubtful that any Spartan or Persian had such nice teeth. It is doubtful they had waxed chests or bulging pectoral muscles, which are fairly useless athletically. None of them were probably over 5’ 8” and few looked like models. Audiences allow for these kinds of anachronisms, but if a single Spartan were wearing glasses, we would scoff.

When actors did their research, none probably went on a strict diet of millet or drank watered down wine. They probably didn’t look into rickets, malaria or any of the other diseases that were part of every day life. Few probably even considered that their character was illiterate with twelve dead siblings.

Yet, the audience allows certain mistakes because the rest feels authentic. It is like a fancy Chinese or Indian restaurant. We have a broad idea of what our own culture is and what we are presented seems as if it is not of our culture. We know that, logically, there is nothing of such high quality in that foreign country, but we ignore that. Few really want truly authentic foreign food- it probably tastes bad and one might get sick. And I suppose no one really wants to look at ugly, toothless, sickly, short Spartans and Persians either, despite that being truly authentic.

In the end, most people are comfortable with their own time and their own culture. People like eating fake Chinese food and fake Indian food that is really American food, but feels like foreign food. People like watching fake history with modern players that is a modern movie, but feels like its historical.

Re

2007-02-19T17:11:00.000-05:00

People are often weary of doing things again. Sequels rarely measure up to the original. Ideas become trite. Reconciled relationships usually do not stayed reconciled. The cynic reminds us that experience usually trumps hope.

In truth, though, revision is the lifeblood of everything that is of quality. Artists, writers and performers mull over their work dozens of times until it is perfect. They understand that no one can create perfection the first time through. Whether it is Shakespeare, Mozart or Michelangelo, their work is filled with mistakes and reworking.

At the Academia in Florence, David stands as a masterpiece. People forget what the rest of the museum holds, though. To the left of David is a room filled with Michelangelo’s practice sculptures. Michelangelo would test things through on cheap plaster and measure distances. After several run-throughs on plaster, he would then move on to expensive marble. At the entrance to the Academia are some of his unfinished marble works. They are unfinished because he messed up. Even with careful practice, precise measurements and a massive amount genius, he faltered and wasted very expensive pieces of marble. The greatest ever still fucked up just like the rest of us.

Those that become too confident and stop revising are the ones that truly fail. We see it in the “classic” director and the sell-out band. Their new work is never as good as their older stuff. It is because they believe the hype, surround themselves with sycophants and stop going back.

Before Jamestown, there was failed Roanoke. Our Constitution had the Articles of Confederation, not to mention twenty-seven amendments. The Wright brothers spent four years crashing gliders before being credited with inventing the airplane and they kept working after that. And for those who would like a sport analogy- without rebounds, no team can win a basketball game.

The correction is a wonderful thing, really. We can all start anew in a world of forgiveness and second chances. We can all have a renaissance.

Adding a “Re” can make things even better.

Women’s Best Option: American Men

2007-02-02T17:00:00.001-05:00

American men, with all their faults, are awesome when compared to non-American men. Sure, we tend to be fat and maybe we aren’t sexy, exotic or passionate. All things considered, though, we are clearly the superior choice. First off, we may be sexist, but we are less sexist than most men of other nationalities. When it comes to being treated as an equal with respect and liberty, women are pretty much limited to Americans, Canadians, Northern Europeans and Aussies. Can you find a non-sexist man in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, East Asia and Southern Europe? Sure, but they will be in the minority. Chances are, going with the non-American will lead to a life of a cheating spouse or a wife-beater.

Now the second greatest quality of the American man is that he is normally circumcised. American men really do not get enough credit for this. For this alone, we should be thanked and European men should be shunned. Any time someone attempts to tell you that European or Latin American men are more romantic, you can reply, “you know what isn’t romantic? Shmegma.” This line can be easily altered to fill almost any complement of Europeans over Americans. Europe has more culture- you know what shows less culture? Europe is more cosmopolitan- you know what shouldn’t be cosmopolitan? Europe has more fair-trade food- you know what isn’t a fair trade? You name it and shmegma counters it.

With these two obvious pillars of American superiority, one may ask why 95% of the world’s women do not choose to pair themselves with American or American-like men. Obviously, location and language are huge factors. Nearly all people are limited to the choices around them, if they even have choices at all. Choosing your own mate is a very recent and predominately Western phenomenon. Other cultural barriers may be too much to overcome as well.

In other countries, there are women who do flock to the American man, but this is usually for financial reasons. In developed countries where money is less of a factor, there are groups of women who do prefer American men, but probably no more so than American women preferring non-American men in this country. These are people drawn to the “exotic” factor.

Ultimately, there are probably very few women who rationally choose American men over non-American men based on their kindness or cleanliness besides American women. Of course, American women grew up in America and, thus, are culturally biased. I imagine the majority of Saudi women or Korean women, despite living in cripplingly sexist societies, prefer their men to Americans and feel blessed to live where to do. But, that’s the weird bias of growing up somewhere. One prefers your one’s local team and one’s mother’s cooking. Maybe one can learn to ignore or even prefer sexism and shmegma.

Crafting Identity

2007-01-29T17:16:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, I met one of the most unusual individuals one could meet. Believe me- I’ve known some characters in the life. There was Robert, an American in China, who was slow-talking from a decade of English teaching, completely benevolent and dearly loved prostitutes. There was Elvin, a Welshman in Thailand, who could not read, but had inhuman cross-cultural charisma and pool skills. There was Christian, a Belgian in Morocco, who was a French legionnaire dying of cancer giving his last bits of wealth to the widows of his fallen comrades. There was Nikka, a Japanese rapper who was completely convinced that my meeting him was part of a Buddhist cycle of destiny. And there’s Shoffy in DC, who truly hates no one and has never lost touch with a friend.

I went with my sister to a party hosted by her friend, Stephanie. One could best describe this woman as an 85-year old grandmother in the body of a 33-year old. Her voice wavered up and down like a whooping crane and she puttered around her apartment like a panicked mother on Thanksgiving. She dressed like Judy Garland in a red polka-dot dress complete with a high-riding belt and a bow in her hair. We were offered cupcakes and tea with very fine rice-paper napkins.

Her apartment was consistent in theme and style. The sofa and table were antiques. The chairs, the fan, the frames, clock and the cabinet were all retro as if out of the twenties or thirties. Her coasters sported Shanghai flapper girls and even her cat was a long-haired Himalayan that fit perfectly with his surroundings.

It took me a while to put it all together, but I got. Stephanie had just finished her Ph.D. in women’s literature. Her lifestyle, her dress and her apartment were all post-feminist expressions. Rather than feminism being equated with an androgynous woman, her interpretation was a throwback to the very strong and very feminine woman of the twenties.

My sister said that it all reminded her of Nora Dinsmoor from Great Expectations. Loony and living in the past, she wore an old wedding dress and had her mummified husband in her bed. The weird thing about Dinsmoor is that she spent so much effort on preservation. Many elderly, through laziness or fatigue, quit paying attention to new trends and fall behind. To Dinsmoor’s extreme, though, one would need to put intense effort to keep it up.

I recall the beginning of college when people put a lot of effort into image. Eventually, the various styles faded into t-shirts and jeans. People couldn’t be bothered to work so hard on their identity. It’s that or people conclude that identity cannot be faked.

Still, Stephanie is not alone in her lingering desire to craft identity. Many of may feel we should read the Post more and watch TV less. We may want to get into opera or jazz music, but just can’t seem to actually like it. We are pretentious and hope that if we practice being something long enough that we will eventually be it.

Code

2007-01-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

Socrates believed in an unchanging universal good that people found through truth. His belief in absolutes led to stubbornness and he essentially allowed himself to be executed rather than go against his beliefs. Socrates is lionized as a man of conviction and much of western society would probably claim to agree with his beliefs.

Paradoxically, while claiming to be a master of logic, Socrates was more a master of rhetoric (and, yes, when we say Socrates, we really mean Plato). In a very sophist manner, Socrates was able to make people contradict themselves in order to destroy their arguments and assumptions. Of course, the dialogs in which Plato is part of are comically staged. Socrates’ opponents constantly say things like “certainly,” “precisely,” and “true.” Ironically, it is their belief in absolutes that allows Socrates to make connections that eventually contradicts.

In the real world, morality, goodness and truth are messy. They exist in the relative and universal simultaneously. They exist in the theoretic and the practical. For this reason, we mistrust the legal system for its casuistry, yet a simultaneously, we dislike inequity.

Morality is affected by all sorts of complicating factors. For instance, opportunity is a huge part of morality. A man may believe he would never cheat on their wife, but if Angelina Jolie actually came over and attempted to seduce him, he may act differently. Luck affects things. People drive home drunk all the time, but if a child jumps out in the street and is hit, the driver suffers a very different consequence.

In the end, it is impossible to live by a set universal code. Instead, our codes are personal, dynamic, relative and ever-changing. They are living and changing things that allow us to deal with a living and changing universe. Being a good person is difficult because not just because people may disagree with you or because you may harm yourself. Being a good person is difficult because it is mentally exhausting figuring out the right thing to do.

Me and Galileo

2007-01-22T23:25:00.000-05:00

Galileo was the first to put forward the theory of relativity. He believed that there were infinite frames of reference, but within each reference, Newtonian laws applied equally and, in all frames of reference, time was universal. Galileo was in fact wrong. Newtonian laws sometimes do not equally apply and time is not universal. Things get all mucked up with special relativity and quantum mechanics. Oh well. Though Galileo was wrong, in every day life, he appears to be right. For nearly all motion and observance of time in our lives, Galileo is good enough.

Galileo’s ideas are seductive and people try to even pull them into our social world. We discuss and we argue in order to bring people around to our “perspective.” If someone disagrees, we assume that they are simply in a different frame of reference. If we bring them to our frame, they too will see the logic that we see. We assume that all people with the same information will come to the same conclusions.

After an hour of late night arguing with a friend about Reagan (I dislike the Gipper in case you didn’t know) and exhaustive attempts to find a common frame of reference, we finally realized it was far too late and quit. Time was universal in this case. Still, morning Dilettante was very angry at evening Dilettante. They have very different perspectives on time.

The social world is different from the Newtonian physical world in that we are not separate frames of reference. Who we are is dependent on who we are around. What we believe is dependent on what others believe. What we say is based on what others understand.

We are also creatures who grow and change. Ideas that we scoffed at earlier in life seem more rational later while others ideas grow to become impractical. Emotions dealing with our family, friends and mortality cloud every thought we have. They warp the truth like high-speed travel.

Additionally, we have subconscious minds that cause us to live with dualities. We have love-hate relationships and we want what we cannot have. We are scared and influenced by events we sometimes do not even remember and remember some events better than others for no logical reason. Like Schrodinger’s cat, ideas seem to exist and not exist in our mind simultaneously.

For our social lives, we must remember that Galileo is not good enough. In order to understand the social world, we need to grasp these other factors. Of course, to completely do this is impossible, even for an Einstein.

Loving Subjects

2007-01-18T15:16:00.000-05:00

Recently, I came across someone asking, “why do kids love dinosaurs?” www.philosophersplayground.blogspot.com

Of course, questions dripping with presupposition anger me. Do kids really love dinosaurs? I am sure plenty of kids have no interest in them. Also, lots of adults have interest in dinosaurs as well. Is the percentage of adults lower than kids? What are the data? Kids have interest in sports, robots, guns, fire, TV, dolls, video games, horses, knights, cowboys, Legos, the military, space ships, planes, bikes, pirates, aliens, pools, tree houses, throwing rocks, whipping sticks through the air and million other things. Where in the ranking do dinosaurs make it? Are kids really choosing to be interested in dinosaurs or do school, toy companies and entertainment push it on them? Do kids really love them or do we just perceive that they like them because we gave them a bunch of toys and took them to the museum? Is it more pleasant to think about children’s love for dinosaurs versus their love of Indian burns?

In my opinion, a more abstract question must be asked first. Why do people love subjects? We like things that are interesting and our interests define what we like. It is circular reasoning at its purest. It’s equivalent to Beavis and Butthead’s claim that they “like stuff that rules.”

Interest in a subject, at its root, seems to be more about avoiding boredom. Boredom comes from tedium and from non-recognition. Cognitive psychologists commonly do experiments with babies involving their attention span. Say, you want to know when a baby can separate the sound “ta” from “da”. One starts by repeating “ta”. At first, the baby is interested and then it bores and looks away. Now, one says “da.” If the baby regains interest, one knows the baby can recognize the new sound. If the baby remains bored, one know she cannot recognize the new sound.

One can do this same experiment with adult human beings. Repeat the same information over and over again and they will get bored. Enter new familiar information and they will be interested. Enter information that they cannot recognize (it is unrelated to their lives) and they will be bored.

Why do people love subjects? Because they have some knowledge of it and have the ability to absorb new information on it. In a pursuit of not being bored, their knowledge of something grows and grows by adding new familiar information. A schema in their mind grows like a snowball rolling downhill. The most boring things are things we know everything about and nothing about; merely “something” gives rise to fascination.

Why do kids love dinosaurs? If a kid does love a dinosaur, it can be assumed that someone introduced dinosaurs to him or her and allowed him to pursue knowledge on them. This first introduced knowledge allowed future knowledge to be unboring, making more and more dinosaur knowledge unboring.

In this question of chicken and egg, though, one must assume that society placed it on the child, in way or another, and not the other way around. Kids don’t love dinosaurs from nothing and people don’t love subjects from nothing. Society makes them interested by introducing a seed of knowledge in the first place.

Atlas

2007-01-08T15:20:00.000-05:00

In the war between the Olympian gods and the Othryan titans, Atlas was on the losing side. He was punished by having to hold up the sky at the western edge of the world. He has been holding it up continuously ever since (save a couple minutes when Heracles held it). Now, we are supposed to feel pretty bad for poor Atlas, who we imagine must be in a lot of pain. Few consider that Atlas is probably used to it and not in much pain at all.

Every day, our minds also bear a massive amount of “weight.” It does not seem like it, but the stress of all our motor functions, our linguistic centers and our emotions is enormous. It takes a year for children to figure out how to use their legs and arms properly. It then takes a couple years for them to figure out language. It then takes them another decade or two to get a grip on emotions.

Piece of cake? Hardly. It takes a third of our day through sleep to rest and recover for a sixteen-hour stint of self-management. Introduce a small amount of alcohol or fatigue and our motor functions, language and emotional containment begin to slide. Now, imagine what people who go through strokes or aphasia deal with. With that much fatigue, it is no wonder they completely lose the ability to contain any part of themselves.

This containment is so routine that we forget it is there. We do not image ourselves struggling to walk, talk and stay logical. We have the audacity to assume that our moments of clarity and alertness are the steady state. When we stumble, it is a “breakdown” or we claim we are “not ourselves.” In truth, a staggering, slurring and raving mad individual is who we are all naturally. Through focused work, we suppress our true selves.

After years of doing it, we have become unaware at what a Herculean task it is. In fact, it is more than Herculean; it is Atlasian