Perhaps prepared?

Good old SFO, at any time of day

In two hours I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to fly to Europe. Well, given that I’ve been to 34 of its countries, lived over yonder for a couple years, and work as a Best of Europe tour guide, I should amend that.

In two hours I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: I’m going to fly to Europe in the company of a five year-old. Now that, that is going to be a new experience. Luckily for me, he’s a remarkable example of the kind (Dutch pun intended) and we are well stocked with a game-thingy, colored pencils, reusable pirate stickers, and as a backup: homeopathic sleep-assisting herbal spray. Left up to my own devices, I would bring one of those Amazon blow-dart thingymajigs, but the buzzkills at the TSA would probably “confiscate” it to give to their kids. But all things considered, I consider us terribly well prepared. Which begs the question:

Are we terribly unprepared? Will the other passengers reach Holland to the announcement “Please use caution when opening overhead bins, as contents may have shifted during flight when they were pushed aside to fit either a five-year-old captive or a thirty-five-year-old asylum seeker”?

What else should we bring? Now that it’s far too late to do anything about it. But I can land, near the dam on the river Amstel, and see if any of your perceptions, predictions, and predilections were accurate. And perhaps add additional supplies for the return trip. Are kindergartner-sized hamster wheels VAT deductible?

And in case that beloved foreign land below the sea (level) snacks on minutes and devours hours, as I know it can, I wish all y’all a very happy holidays. In whatever way that means to you as an individual. (And if the holidays are not as chipper for you as the advertisers whisper and wail is obligatory, you can check out four things you can do if the holidays are hard for you.)

Has it really been a year?

I genuinely love these people

I have no sense of time. Made a salad last night, went for the dressing I bought a little while ago, and found, to my dry-rucola’d dismay, that the dang thing had expired. Last April. The bottle looked embarrassed, kinda deflated, the kid in the Jedi robe caught hiding in the back of the theater to watch it again.

And I guess I’m not under the threat of an arrest warrant anymore. Because, again to my surprise, a year has gone by since I was arrested at a #BlackLivesMatter protest. A year since I felt a sliver, a splinter of a sliver, of what it’s like to not trust the police, to see their uniformed bodies as menaces.

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear from the police.” (Always white) people soberly informed me. Was I doing something wrong? By peacefully exercising my fundamental American right in support of my community? By trying to get to my bicycle so I could go home? And the guy next to me, hands going blue in his plastic zip-ties? He’d been walking home from BART. He hadn’t even known there was a protest going on.

And in black neighborhoods, where standard police procedure is to pull up next to a man walking down the street, detain him, handcuff him, sit him down on the ground like a naughty child, in full view of his community, maybe his kids, treat him like a dangerous criminal, and only then actually talk to him? To ask what’s going on today. How does that feel? What does that do? And how does it feel to see, again and again, officers not even going to trial after they kill somebody like you? No matter how many eye-witnesses say it was an execution, no matter if the bullets go in their back. Or maybe they merely beat you into the hospital.

I kept going to those protests. And when I’d pass the ranks of police, faces hidden behind riot gear, hands gripping weapons, my body would release adrenalin. My body getting ready to react. Overreact? Survival mechanisms pulling me away from deliberation, the indefatigable animal asserting control over the precarious grip of higher human functions, the amygdala overruling the prefrontal cortex.

But what’s happened in the last year? If there’s been progress, it’s been shy. Perhaps under-reported? The Terrible seems to slide right into the news, while the Wonderful has to fight its way on. Plenty of terrible to see, from Trump supporters’ racism and determination to avoid thinking, to terrorists attacking Planned Parenthood and BlackLivesMatter demonstrations yet receiving only innocuous labels. But I have to believe in progress. I have to hope. I have to. I have to believe that Bernie can win, and can drag our self-sabotaging country forward. I have to believe that humanity’s progress will eventually be reflected in its structures. Because that is one thing I still believe, humanity, in its prefontal cortex, when given peace, wants peace. So with everything in me, may peace be upon you. Peace be upon us all.

Do not wail against the flow

My favorite of all the translated signs I've seen.
Rule #4: Do Not Wail Against the Flow
(All today's photos are from Hong Kong)

I tried to manufacture “poetry” one time by google translating a couple sentences through a few languages and back, hoping for bizarre and accidentally artful articulations. I think I had the best results with English → Chinese → Arabic → Japanese → English, but to my consternation (and nearly admiration) the sentences came out boringly similar to how they started. Or just garbled.

-“I will try again to make a good example” comes back “I will try again a good example.”

-“To my consternation (and nearly admiration) the sentences came out boringly similar to how they started” comes back “Boring of (close to longing) panic I similar resolution, whether it began how to.”

-And "Giant gooey gobs of snot" comes back "Huge nose of viscous tailings." That one's pretty good, actually, but still, not quite poetry. (Unless you’re in college. Then anything passes.)

Not sure what would happen if you tried to translate "GoFukU"
Tower, but Hungry Eyes Restaurant seems like a good idea

When the sentences came back largely unchanged, maybe just simplified to various degrees of error, it felt ominous. If computers can swap among languages, that’s bad news for language teachers like me. But beyond that, it’s bad news for anyone who values human-to-human contact. Like me. Like you.

But I think the programs are assigning the human utterance a syntactic structure, then just shopping that through. While functional, anyone who speaks more than one language knows the delightful and maddening truth that languages are not code for one another, not even on the syntactic level. There is just too much beautiful nuance in language.

So teachers still have jobs, and as far as generating the sort of accidental wisdom and slippery profundity that one finds, like caches of chuckles, as you roam around the world? That takes real humans, speaking real languages. God bless the semi-fluent.

Cute feet? Quiet feet? Better than either.
And what drives someone to write that? I love it!

The move towards machines feels inevitable, but I can trust that humans are always going to have a warm, fleshy leg-up on the devices, so I can relax in the face of our techno-progression. To say it another way, I will not wail against the flow.

Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter

I’m bushed. Today will be a day of heavy eyelids, caffeinated beverages, and standing up on a regular basis to maintain consciousness. And it is so very worth it.

“You should read something fun!” My lady enjoined me. But all reading is fun! That book about medieval history was fascinating, though it added a two thousand year old dimension to my fear of the Republican Party. And that last book of travel-writing was very interesting, though admittedly the parts from the Sudan, Afghanistan, and the Ivory Coast were a tad depressing.

“No,” she specified. “Not history for your tour guide job, not travel writing for your travel writing, just something for fun. No other motive.”

That did sound appealing. My traditional just-for-fun books were fantasy though. Swords and spells and species. And those tend to run long. Like 3-10 books of 800-1200 pages. But it is winter, after all…

Vernazza, last July

“Here. Read this.” She handed me the book she’d just finished. On the cover I recognized Vernazza. Arguably the most beautiful, and certainly the most photographed town in Italy’s Cinque Terre is not hard to spot. Uh-oh. Would that jeopardize the Not For Work rule? “Part of it takes place in the Cinque Terre, but that’s not really what it’s about, so you’re good.”

What kind of book was it, anyway? “It’s a love story.” She answered. Oh. Those are swell and all, but wouldn’t they be better if at least one of the characters wore a sword?

There was still a rather large segment of the book left when I got in bed to read last night. I might have chosen something else if I’d known that I’d be sending her a text at 1:57 AM saying “Jesus that’s a good book!”

She was right. It’s good to read something, just for fun.

Highly recommended

Sign language

Malaysian freeways are not for bikes. Nor ox carts.

So I’m riding down the street yesterday, right-hand lane like I’m supposed to, directly over the big puffy-paint bicyclist symbol that tells reminds cars that bicycles have a right to exist in three dimensions, and this morbidly obese land-yacht of a Caddy behind me starts honking at me. I know, right? Like I’m supposed to fly, or something. Plus, I’m already going as fast as the car in front of me, just call me Lance Armstrong Greg Lemond, but the peak fuel bugger behind me honks again. I would think it was that old urban legend about the car behind flashing his lights every time the murderer in the back seat rises up, except as fancy as my beautifully battered bicycle is, it ain’t got no backseat. But so I point right down at the symbols as I ride over each one. Bicycle lane, buddy. But no, he keeps tooting at me the whole way home. Toot toot you mother pheasant plucker. Some people.

That's one dangerously rugged floor you got there, Hong Kong

The only thing I can think is that the individual in question had at least one of four afflictions. One: terrible vision, couldn’t see the signs, in which case they shouldn’t be driving a car anyway. Two: couldn’t see the road over that urban Serengeti of a hood, in which case no one should be driving that car. Three: they’re lazy, stupid, and hate cyclists. Four: just don’t see signs anymore.

Signs can be informative. If only I knew which one
was being proscribed, on a train in Myanmar.

That fourth one I can kinda understand. We urbanites, especially in litigious and don’t-expect-people-to-use-their-thinky-parts societies, live in a forest of printed instructions, a melee of designations, a clusterfudge of prohibitions, demarcations, and condemnations. If one were to stop and read every sign, they wouldn’t have the literary bandwidth left to read more than tweets. (I may just have solved a mystery that’s been driving me cynically insane.)

But sometimes, one really should read the signs. For example when threatening the corporal well-being of someone who is doing nothing wrong, nor inconveniencing you in any way whatsoever. Or, when the signs are just plain awesome.

Wait, what don't you want me to do, tuktuk driver in Sri Lanka?
The hoodie mafia flashing....gang signs?...is extra credit.

The Wizard of Oz and I

(This will make much more sense after part one, here.)

Outside Il Mago's shop, in Orvieto

An eruption of sound, light, and motion, as the world below my eyes kicked into life, overlapping music box jangles and blinking lights. I’d come to see the Wizard of Oz, tucked away in a side street of hilltop Orvieto, Italy, and now that same gruff wizard was standing beside me, lights reflected in his glasses and smile.

“This carousel is in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in Paris. The oldest in the city, from 1879.” Looking at his tiny faithful reproduction, I could imagine the generations of children that have sat and shrieked on the original Parisian horses.

“Here is a ride from Coney Island, in your country.” The little roller coaster car rose to the top and slid down the track, tiny wooden figures throwing their arms up in an unaging joyous thrill. His artisan finger worked down the row. “This is the ice skating rink from Toronto. The ferris wheel of London. The tea cups of Disney.” We moved among the world’s remembrances, sharing each one whether we’d ever seen it or not. Each tiny world, handmade by this artisan.

“When I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be.” My assumption was beginning when he filled in the answer. “A cowboy!” He watched my grins over his bifocals for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to so much, that I did it, I ran away! I left my home and started towards Texas." Let that moment linger. "My mother caught me ten seconds down the road, gave me two big slaps, and brought me home. So instead of running away to be a Texas cowboy, I began to make things."

Orvieto is the sort of town where doing
things the old way makes sense.

Together we looked out over the delicate wooden toyscape of figures and memories. On the corner of his desk, beside the antique cash register, I noticed a familiar book. Seeing my glance, he picked it up. “Yes, Rick Steves. I am in his book. He came here and liked my work. Other companies want me in their books too, but they want money. It’s a commercial. Advertising. I am in Rick’s book because he liked what I do, so he put me in. That’s it. But I haven’t seen him in years.”

I told him Rick was my boss, that I was a guide, and that I’d learned of the toy shop in the current edition of the book. There was a hint of melancholy in the Wizard’s voice when he repeated “I haven’t seen him in years.” I assured him that even if Rick doesn’t have time, someone from the company comes around at least once a year to make sure we still believe in our recommendations, so we still appreciate his work. But there was something else.

Rick Steves and the Mago di Oz have something in common. Both are among the rare few who have created exactly the career they wanted. My eyes returned to one of the Wizard’s handpainted signs. Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality. These two men have done that, and I can only imagine they recognized something in each other.

Nothing against minions, but compared
to the 12th century Moor's Tower,
they seem a tad chintsy

I was feeling a peaceful sense of satisfaction and happiness in the presence of this gentle man when the door opened to admit a woman and her son, from one of the bigger bus tours that feed people through Europe’s Express Lane. Her hand held the cheap plastic Pixar balloon he’d wanted for a moment, and neither greeted Il Mago as they entered his space. I watched him monitor them with the same tolerant caution he’d initially shown me, and was thinking how nerve wracking it must be to have unknown entities always lumbering among your treasures, cheap balloons bonking into handmade zeppelins, when the woman took out her phone and lifted its little factory eye.

“No photo!” The Wizard’s snarl was instantaneous and sharp. Blunt force reminder at an Italian volume. “No photo!”

How does one bring the fragile lightness of childhood into the tenacious heaviness of adulthood? Not easily, I thought, as I watched mother and son endure that awkward pause to save face before fleeing the shop. But it’s only appropriate for a wizard to be a little scary. Booming voices and flaring flames of castigation, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, with his gentle love of a gentler life.

No, the Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take photos. But when a reminder of the texture of childhood is on offer, photos are not what you want anyway.

The Wizard did allow me one photo.
(Photo credit: some woman who did not take out her phone.)

The Wizard of Oz is Italian

The Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take pictures. Looking around his close-shouldered toyscape of fragile wooden forms and clustered vintage artefacts, that was understandable. Besides, I already had enough photos from outside, Orvieto, back in normal Italy.

The walls of Orvieto

Out there, looking through a lens brings the whole world more into focus, reminding me to notice the textures of the quotidian, and aiding a more deliberate examination of our scrambling world. But in Il Mago’s workshop I didn’t need that precision, in his world I was better served by the flitting fancy of a childlike eye, overthrowing the diligence of inspection for the relaxation of entertainment.

Around, above, and behind me, colors clustered and shapes lurked in delicate extravagance. Art nouveau iconography lounged in evening wear behind nostalgic paraphernalia in pajamas, stained glass butterflies hovered above Betty Boop’s Route 66 diner, and a parade of metal giraffes and jugglers was on their eternal way to childhood’s circus. Hot air balloons drifted up among Spitfires and B-12 bombers held en route to battles uncountable. Cowboys and Indians with stagecoaches to match, while the flappers and mobsters surrounded stylish cars in a sudden sense of speakeasy jazz.

No photos in Oz, but Ippolito Scalza's
Pietá is too beautiful not to share.

Such was the cacophonic harmony of an unexpected piece of this world, created by that man, who watched me from under alert eyebrows like foxholes. There was something of a residual frown on his face, until he saw the smile on mine. Then he approached, real casual like. Was there a wisp of the masked diffidence one might find in an unapologetic adult who was once a teased child? I couldn’t be sure.

“Let me know if you have any questions.” He offered, smooth but stern as old wood.

“Thank you,” I answered, and for a moment he watched while I gazed. “But truth be told, I’m not even sure what questions to ask.”

Maybe not all passion is easily shared, but the Mago’s is. His artisanal fingers pointed here and there as he explained that he finds some of the pieces by careful search through trusted sources, but that he makes most of them himself. That alone was impressive, in our modern age of Made in China stamps and supply chains redolent with karmic consequences that may last even longer than the plastic we buy and throw away.

Tragedy! Crisis! Death! Don't read
such things, cara Nonna.

My brain wanted to walk down those familiar penal paths of today’s dire adulthood, but from his basics beginning, “They come from me”, he quickly transcended to a more dreamlike place, where his various mottos, handpainted on slats of wood, were the rules of the game: “Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality.”

Maybe it sounds better in Italian, but in that place, it made perfect sense to me. I was nodding to the notion, but that didn’t seem to be the reaction he was looking for. “Put your dreams into your reality,” he encouraged me, and swept his hand at the array of silent creations. I had weeks of tour-work still to go, and putting one of his pieces of art into a backpack would be empirical blasphemy, but it didn’t seem like a sales pitch.

“Reach out and touch your dreams!” He was enthusiastic, expectant, and I felt like I was failing a test. “Reach out! Touch the dreams!” Reach out and touch? Was there a button hidden among the delicate arms and fragile beams? Feeling lame, my finger reached out, unsure whether to go left or right, so plodded straight ahead until it landed, just for a moment, right on the...

(Oops, late for work. See you tomorrow.)