I can hear it.

“Listen to your own, inner voice” They say. The all-knowing They. But inside my head I hear a screaming sound. It may be a handcuffed pilot watching the plane go down. Or maybe it's the product of an America so obsessed with individualism and personal liberty that we have forgotten how to connect to community, driven by social media right into isolation, clicking “like” as we forget how to relate in the real world.

Bet my Burmese monk buddy could help,
despite no common spoken language
and betel nut stained teeth.

Whatever it is, that scream is annoying, and insidious.

“I read your blog...” said my new baker buddy.
“What did you think?” I asked, honestly curious.

The pause was expressive. “I don't want to offend you.” For the second time this week I found myself explaining that as far as I remember, I've been offended once, in 2006. 

She continued “Well... I like the person I hang out with a lot more than the person who writes that blog. That person is very...” What was the word she used? It could have been “self-obsessed.”
“But when we hang out, you're not like that at all.”

What's the opposite of offended? I felt that. 

This is a travel blog, but in the absence of travel, I wasn't sure what to post. Recollections didn't get much traction, and a writer I respect advised me to put more of myself in there. “Post all this doubt and uncertainty!” It sounded like a good idea at the time.

"Just relax and enjoy the ride" advises Sri Lankan train kid

 She may be right, probably is, but enough is enough. Eventually I'll figure out (or remember?) how to put more Me into these words without overwhelming them, but today I'm going to take the easy way out, saved by the calendar.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. That makes today the easiest day of the year for an American to spout 500 words. Just choose a top few things you're thankful for. I have a long list of those, but have already blathered away most of my word count. 

Thing I'm Grateful for #1: Family and friends.

My contribution tomorrow

 If I list the friends, we'll be here all day, so I'll keep that one in my diary, where I'll read it thrice. But tomorrow I will sit among family, the place I flew 8,000 miles to be. A Thanksgiving day so different from some in the past.

Three of my brothers won't be there physically, but that's alright, they're family, so they're there, manifested among my sister, parents, and two other brothers (I count sibling's partners, my family's not THAT big).

Family doesn't have to do or say anything, we'll just hang out for a little while. Eat stuffing. Serve pie. Drink tea. Some of the things that mean “family” to me. Tea...that one has long been a staple of family life, in our somewhat-British household... 

That screaming sound? Maybe it's just the kettle boiling, ready to pour.

Lunch vacation

Today is cold feet and hot cups of tea. Now sit down and be productive, damnit. Sunlight is tapping on my window, impatient for me to finish this healthcare website business, a bicycle ride in the planning, but the unsatisfactory numbers blur together and my hypothermic fingers nudge the mouse button more than click it, knuckles gone stiff in the chill, so wouldn't you know it, it's time for another cup of tea. Extra long pause to pet the smiling dog this time.

This feels like choosing which demon to feed my blood to, is there such a thing as a good insurance company? Do I give them too short of shrift? Perhaps it's just scar tissue from a high school job in a pharmacy, helpless before the confusion on the faces of the elderly, who got sick after years of paying premiums, then their insurance companies dumped them. “Can they do that? I guess so.”

Maybe the Affordable Care Act, embarrassing baby step that it is, will clear some of that.

Ug. This shit is enough to send me back for more tea. I'm going to die of hyperhydration. Is that covered? Time for a vacation. Right now.

A few sluggish pushes on the mouse, and here I am in Panama, the San Blas Archipelago. I've forgotten what socks are. “Sweater” is a noun to describe me, not an article of clothing. Why would you ever need more than a T-shirt? Warm water is right there, whenever you're ready, and again next time.

The Argentinians are drinking their mate, and the Venezuelan barters for more lobster from the men in the canoe, who laugh at his antics. Our game of rummy will last for hours, one hand every ten minutes, broken by dolphin breaks when dorsal fins appear within the lagoon. I'm the only one who swims there fast enough to see them, and my remorse at this is subsumed by a warm Caribbean soak that suffuses the salt with gratitude.

In a few days I'll disembark in Colombia, and my pack is lightened by a load of blissful ignorance, foolish belief that I have it all together, my secret manageable. It feels like helium, but is more akin to carbon monoxide. But for now, the world is laughing with me in sunlight refractions and pineapple fingertips.

I feel better. Now...what size deductible can I handle?

My poor machine.

My poor camera. So abused. I've carried the thing from the pitiless dry season of Nicaragua to the tangible humidity of the Amazon. I brought it to the snows of Amsterdam, then took it to the broiler of the Burmese summer. It's spent a lot of time on the beach and snapped on top of MountPichincha above Quito, 15,696 feet above sea level.

I can't really blame it for failing now and then.

It started about a year ago, when K went back to Belgium and I stayed on alone in Santa Cruz. My first attempt at a picture would come out nearly black, undecipherable and gloomy. It's not a sensor problem, all the setting are correct, from F/stop to shutter speed and ISO, it's some fundamental problem with the hardware. Every now and then it goes the other way and I'll get a whitewash of overexposure, glaring white that sears the retina and completely obscures the message just as effectively as the darkest shadows.

The problem followed me the breadth of Turkey and the length of Sri Lanka, popped up while trekking in Myanmar and on the beach in Malaysia. Not a big deal, it wasn't debilitating, and I still witnessed and paid homage to so much beauty in this world.

But I know I've missed some things, the underlying image I was looking for hidden by the malfunction.

There was the time in Turkey, when the sound of hooves approached through the ancient and crumbling streets of Mardin, and I had my camera pressed to my eye as an enormous man on a brilliantly colored donkey came around the corner. My shutter snapped, only barely faster than his hand coming up to shake a fist at me. The sound of the camera was drowned out by his cursing me in Kurdish, the message clear though the vocabulary was not.

The picture I took? A whitewash of confused lines, no subject, just a painful overexposure.

I guess it's no surprise that an instrument so poorly mistreated would fail to deliver a clear picture now and then. I forgive it. And if another instrument through which I perceive the world sometimes generates a darkened, opaque image, should I again be so forgiving? I think so.

Time to start a dream journal, and see if I can edit out some of the darkness. There might be a path in there somewhere...

How do you tell?

Homeless in Bangkok, now there's stress

Am I the only one who...?

I get the feeling that no matter how one finishes that sentence, the answer is an emphatic “no.” I doubt there are any problems humans have that are unique to themselves. And there are probably a few dozen blogs about each issue too.

Wordpress: flailing therapy for all. (Trademark. Call me if you want to buy the rights, wordpress, I'm a reasonable man.)

Malaysian rickshaw driver: more difficult life, better sleep

So I bet I'm not the only one who has trouble figuring out why they're stressed. Am I? Life is stress, I realize that (quit your whining, boy!), but even though I can think of a few decent reasons why, I am still surprised at waking up every morning with sore teeth and an exhausted jaw.

This morning I got up and was feeding our porch cat when I found a little sand grain of chipped tooth rattling around my molar's neighborhood. That can't be good.

Jerusalem cat wants to know what your deal is

And things are going well, damnit! What inner part of me can't see that?

I just read an account of slavery in Mauritania. Sweet Jeebus. And even my own memories of lifein Zambia (and researching the riots that broke out a few months after we left where three men were burned alive) remind me of how insanely lucky I am. So why the tension?

How do you tell what's bothering you?

Thank you, Batkid.

Lord knows I've griped enough about the negativity of our news apparatus, so I was delighted and refreshed to see the story of Miles Scott, a 5 year old who has been battling leukemia for three years, getting international attention.

In San Francisco today, the Make A Wish Foundation set up an adventure for the little hero who wanted to beBatman. He saved a damsel in distress, rescued our baseball team's mascot, and foiled a couple villains' plans before getting the key to the city from the mayor. Sometimes “feel good” stories feel a bit like anaesthesia, but this one is absolutely fantastic.

And it has a worthwhile purpose for all of us, not only in the gift of a smile or ten, but as a reminder. The world is insane, yes, and things happen like 2 year olds getting leukemia; that sucks on a level that the brain cannot fathom, and rarely do we forget that. But what we do forget is that people are actually pretty cool, and life (at least for those of us inconceivably lucky enough to live lives of safety and plenty) is a playground. I forget that part sometimes, so thank you to Miles Scott and the Make A Wish Foundation for reminding me.

Oakland last night: food, architecture, and gigantic Jesus.

The various houses of worship I have seen throughout the world have all impressed me in some way, with their assortment of characters, aesthetics, and iconography. From the Buddhist prayer flags of Myanmar to the cavorting Hindu gods of Sri Lanka. The studious silence of the synagogue in Jerusalem to the studious silence of the mosques in Malaysia. (It's amazing how much we humans have in common.)

I have also enjoyed time in the cavernous cathedrals of Europe, though their proximity to my own cultural foundation leaves them more vulnerable to critique, and I have trouble looking at expanses of gold without imagining how much blood was spilled to put it there. But there is a unique sense of reverence in their stony sanctity and stained glass.

But I ain't never seen a church like this one.

My corner of Oakland is an easy place to hibernate, which would be a waste in a city this diverse and vivacious, so last night I mounted my trusty green bicycle to explore beyond the boundaries of my neighborhood. I ate savory lamb samosas in Vik's Chaat Corner then headed downtown, where I found a spaceship sitting opposite Lake Merritt.

The website of Oakland's Cathedral of Christ the Light tells of the demise of the previous church (a more conventional building) after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. But the juicier story I heard was that after the old church was destroyed, the insurance company refused to pay up.

The Mausoleum, where contestants
begin and end

The community came together and raised the massive amount of money necessary to build a new and improved cathedral, but then the insurance company kicked in after all. Now the builders had twice their required budget. The result sits on Harrison Street like an extraterrestrial cocoon, has a mausoleum underneath that could host The Hunger Games, and the actual worship area was like none I have ever seen, watched over by a towering, yet relatively subtle, image of Jesus more easily seen during the day, when sunlight pours through the holes of the screen. Jesus Ra?

But the most stunning aspect for me was the acoustics. In between the snippets of hymns from choir practice I could hear every softly spoken word the choir master said as if he'd been standing behind me, instead of way on the other side of the nave (if that's even the correct term for a space like this). When they finished singing, the music continued for several seconds in the stunningly designed space. I thought Davies Symphony Hall was incredible, but this transcends even that acoustic marvel.

A little hard to see the Jesus image on the big white thing
at night, but I'm assured that during the day it's stunning

All that listening had made me hungry. Luckily Oakland is one helluva multicultural town, so a few blocks away I took a table near the window where ducks hung behind Chinese characters. To my left four old ladies debated something serious in Mandarin, behind me eight African American men knew the menu inside and out, and to my right three men conversed in the fricatives of Arabic.

Authentic Indian street food, a nice ride past Farmers Markets closing up shop, a tour of epic architecture, and now succulent duck and barbecue pork?

Yeah, I can live in Oakland.

Where do I go now?

Why do I feel so antsy lately? There are approximately 196 reasons, depending on how you count, but one stands out, and it's time it came out of the closet. Nope, no discussion of sexuality here, I'm still depressingly heterosexual, I mean the closet in a much more literal sense.

Lunchtime in Leon

It felt like dropping a beloved friend off at prison when I put my backpack on the shelf in my closet. I mitigated the pain by whispering “Don't worry baby, it may not be long...”

To my surprise I am committed to living in a fixed place for a while, and the pack is getting juuust a bit dusty.

So why so antsy? Because I am human, ergo I want both sides of every coin. Of course I want to have this cake and eat it too, can there be a more appropriately ridiculous expression? I want to have this home and leave it too.

I seem to have misplaced my pics from
Mexico and Guatemala at the moment,
so these are all Leon, Nicaragua

“But no!” I scolded myself without deliberation or articulation, “you need to settle down and stay put.” As with most arguments, this was needlessly fixed in its opposing positions, and it wasn't until this cup of chai that I realized I CAN have both, just with a little adaptation. I can't follow my beloved tact of buying a one-way ticket to a continent of Tantalus dreams, packed to go until I stop, but I can still travel. I'm thinking...two weeks?

The thought of pulling that bag off the shelf is erecting my bloodstream and stiffening my anticipation. My pupils are dilated in preparation of visions and vistas. So where do I go? There are approximately 196 options, depending on how you count.

It's gotta speak another language, and I don't want to forget my Spanish, so I'm thinking Latin America, which is una coincidencia muy buena for physical proximity.

I'd LOVE to go to Honduras or El Salvador, but trips there without an organization-endorsed purpose are purportedly a matter of hiding in one's hotel room the bulk of the time.

If I go all the way to South America I won't want to leave after only two weeks, and I fairly recently traversed Central Nicaragua down through Costa Rica and Panama. I've spent some time in Mexico's Yucatan, but have not yet been to Oaxaca, a land of colors, textures, and culture that has long called to me. (And has enough rumors of danger to keep me pleasantly on edge.)

I did a solid loop through Guatemala a few years back, but much has changed since then, within the country (for the worse) and within myself (for the better).

And finally Nicaragua, where I missed the northern section, which includes the “recently discovered” Somoto Canyon, where Jerry hurt his knee and you deal with locals more than tour companies as you swim through slot canyons and rappel into ravines.

Where do I go?

Mexico – Oaxaca

Mexico – elsewhere

Honduras/El Salvador

Guatemala

Nicaragua – north of Leon (with the option to cross the border into Honduras/El Salvador if the vibe and local reports condone.

Again, vote on the wordpress version of this blog.

It seemed like Spring for a moment

At the outset it looked like Winter, cold and gray. The air had no warmth, the sun had no power to enliven the skin, and the colors were muted. I'd worn the wrong clothes.

I picked up S and we drove up the coast along famously beautiful Highway One, still the most gorgeous stretch of asphalt I've ever driven, lined with wildflowers and good memories, though untouchable on the other side of the glass. We got to the gate of Big Basin State Park and stepped out into goosebumps and arms held tightly to our sides.

But things have a way of surprising you. Around a curve, over a hill, and I found premonitions and recollections of Springtime waiting in calm air that had nice things to say. The sun recognized our character, and gave us love and calm comfort, no need for protective jackets or muffling scarves. The yellows of leaves found us very amusing, and evergreens had seen it all before and loved us even more for it.

There is a beautiful rhythm in working muscles, harmony, and in legs carrying you towards the height you want to reach. We reached a point that was wonderfully lifted, vista for miles, not the peak, but that's okay, there is time for that further down the calendar.

We sat on warm soil and she introduced me to persimmons, laughing when it was the wrong kind. “Ug, I'm sorry, I got the ones you use for baking, not eating raw. It feels like there's hair growing on your tongue.” This I had to feel. She was right. We adapted, had apples instead.

The return was a fey sort of stroll, glens gone to slanted sunlight and deer watching us with wet acorn eyes. Even the poison oak was wearing its prettiest robes.

Back at the verge, the winter gloom had been chased offshore, and slid south in a purple wall with other places to go, held away by something unknowable. The brewery food was delicious, homemade meatloaf sliders with mashed potatoes on buttermilk biscuits for me, a thick veggie soup of mysterious components and savory succulence for S.

Initial portents of Winter chill had disappeared in the rising of somehow Spring and blooming, a year perhaps less destined for darkness than I'd thought, but within a few days I was back in my icey room for one, fingertips numbed, spiderplant persisting but without blooms. I guess it's Winter after all.