Where should I travel next?

If travel is a religion, does that mean train toilets
like this one in Sri Lanka are churches?

Travel is a capricious deity. I see it as a Her, a capricious her, giving me a perspective I respect, experiences I appreciate, and a sense of life on earth that I find essential to understanding my place in it. But she also taketh away, that’s for damn sure. Case in point: the woman I love, and my entire capacity for romantic connection. Womp womp.

So what am I going to do about it? Well, I’m gonna worship. Not with the headlong devotion I used to, I’m keeping my apartment and only going for a couple weeks, but if this thing has taken me away from my relationship? Well, then I guess that’s where I am. Moving forward.

Latin America, where every small town (like this one in
Venezuela) has a park full of fiestas and patriotic chicanery

My window for adoration of peregrination is December. So, anyone who stumbles past this post, where should I go? The world is my oyster, and I’m reasonably sure I’m not allergic.

I don’t believe in passport-stamp-collecting, but as my tour guide job takes me to places that grow increasingly familiar (which I appreciate and delight in) I am drawn to go some place with a blank slate.

South America (outside of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela) seems the likeliest candidate. Fly to Buenos Aires then cross up through Uruguay, hopefully with enough time to reach Paraguay. I’ve got about three weeks to give. I miss using Spanish, and would love to get it flowing again.

My god welcomes others. Maybe it's
time again for a stack of Hindu ones?

But all of a sudden I look and see $400ish flights to Hanoi. Vietnam? Viet-why not?

And Africa, beautiful fascinating Africa, that I haven’t touched in years, it’s sitting just over there…

So? Where should I go?

Gratitude for refugees

Eritrea, Myanmar, Iraq, Senegal, Afghanistan, Syria. It’s not my Travel List (well, that too) it’s a sampling of my students. Refugees all, they came from backgrounds I cannot imagine, experiences I want to ask about but dare not touch, since the pain of these lives torn apart is not something I am qualified to handle.

So I’ll try to teach them some English. (I'm far from a professionally competent teacher.)

And they’ll teach me increased gratitude. For the places I come from, for the places I’ve been, and for the place I am now. For all the many places I can go. For what has been given to me that I did not earn, but that no one should have to.

And we’ll have fun. A whole lot of fun. Because all the refugees I’ve met here, there’s not one that I didn’t enjoy meeting. Not one I wouldn’t invite to my home, have tea with, and like to get to know better. Every single one, I’m glad they’re in my class.

Sure there was that one guy last year who was a bit of a misogynist dickhead, but hey, we have a whole political movement of those. (And ironically, they’d benefit the most from his signing on, since maybe he’d show them humans aren’t all that different after all. They could cut their idiocy down from anti-everyone-but-them, to just anti-women. Baby steps, with baby brains. #Trump #NotOkay) He’d come from a repressive culture that viewed women as objects, and I hope he hasn’t been seeing the side of America that agrees with him.

But for everyone else, this is still a land of opportunity, not necessarily because of upward mobility (cuz you have to already be pretty well off to have a chance at that in America) but because it’s a land of safety, with a decent amount of legal protections, and impressive economic stability. And water. And no real infectious diseases. And plentiful food. And green growing things that make you think the world is a healthy place after all.

The sun is out again today, and as much as I love the rain, the sun is good for bringing students to class. So that’s where I’m going to go. Too bad the xenophobes of our country aren’t coming with me, since they’d learn more than anyone. But truth be told, I like the class as it is.

It's raining, and that's good by me

It’s raining. In California! And it’s so ineffably lovely that for the moment it’s washed away the sulfur stink of this presidential election. It’s even soothing the bleeding core of me where my foundation of love feels torn. My apartment today isn’t cold, it’s just primed for a blanket.

I’m about to go have lunch with my brother. A beer tonight with my fantastic neighbors. A housewarming tomorrow for good friends, and an array of good books ready at hand for Sunday. And in the moments between, when it’s pain and worry? Well, those drops can fall from me too. I’m not running from them.

So instead of posting the well-meant words of inquiry into how our country got so confused and divided, I’m just going to listen to the rain. Look at the sensation of green on every leaf in sight. Make another cup of tea.

I’m going to soak in gratitude. For the safety I feel, despite all the threats of violence this year from outside our borders and from inside a candidate. I’m going to leave my door unlocked today, because I can. (And even if someone steals all my stuff? They’re in a bad time, the world is a good place, and stuff is just stuff.)

I’m feeling gratitude for the love I’ve found in this life. From family, friends, and a couple special women who walked with me awhile. Love doesn’t die out in me, ever, and optimism puts up a hell of a fight, so I’m going to let that feeling of bleeding inside feel like renewal, a cleansing, and trust that the future will bring me what I need.

I’m just going to enjoy where I am. This part of the world, this planet I adore so much, this town I call home. I’m going to let this rain feel like nourishment, for the soil and the soul. And I hope whether you’re under beautiful rain clouds or clear sunny skies, you’re feeling good today.

Happy International Day of the Girl, Trump notwithstanding

Daesh (ISIS), Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, the Taliban, all these despicable groups afflicting our species are obsessed with suppressing and oppressing women and women’s rights. They’re disturbing to learn about, but remind me of my pride and gratitude that I don’t live in a society so morally reprehensible and downright inhumane. (Because last I checked, women are humans.)

But then I come back to the US, where a racist, morally malformed demagogue routinely uses words like “bimbo, dog, fat pig” and the ever-reliable C-word to describe women, and yet, confoundingly, is still treated as a valid human being to exist on our national stage. I’m baffled by that. And I’m baffled as to why this latest tape is such a big deal. Was anyone surprised to hear him talk like that? He’s been talking like that for decades.

So are we no better than those desert addictions to misogyny? Of course we are. We’re a desert society too (are we not a Judeo-Christian, People of Abraham, monotheistic culture of relative intolerance with an emphasis on war and conflict? You betcha we are. Read more here) but we’ve made some exceedingly slow and agonizingly painful progress from our more barbaric cousins.

I doubt she said this, but I agree wholeheartedly anyway

The most obvious example right now is the remarkably qualified (and preposterously vilified) alternative to Trump’s hideous immorality. She has a long career of public service, bipartisan productivity, and actually listens to other people. All three of which are profound contrasts to, and advantages over Candidate Blumpy.

And in the darkness of his remarks, I'm reminded of my fantasy of all the women in America refusing to vote for Trump, and we watch the whole country unite in rejecting misogyny, racism, ignorance, and immaturity. Now there's an image of hope. Of making America greater than it has been so far.

So there is much work to be done, but much incredible progress being made, so today, International Day of the Girl, I’m going to go ahead and feel optimism for the West, for America, and for our species, that we’re going to move away from the sort of self-destructive ideology that puts half of ourselves lower than the other half. Because that? That’s just barbaric.

So many good choices for charities. I chose Plan International this year.

Who cares about cows?

Yeah, that looks like a homeland to protect and remember

Farm bills and agricultural subsidies are always a big deal, from the US to the EU, and definitely in Switzerland. This baffled me a bit. Swiss agriculture? In a country that wealthy and stable (take my word for it, or come on tour with me and I’ll explain) why are a few cows such a big deal?

The answer I always gave was national identity. The people of Country X want to see themselves as coming from pastoral roots. This didn’t make a ton of sense to me, since if you didn’t grow up on a farm why do you need to feel like your nation did? But I’m used to not quite understanding identity politics since I come from the rampantly, disastrously, shamefully dominant demographic set. Straight, white, middle-class, American male with full health, mobility, education etc? Having every advantage in life reduced the need for an identity to process it.

But other people will talk about such things until….(wait for it)...the cows come home.

Ain't she so pretty!

That expression was always a mystery to me. I’d picture farmers chatting on the porch until the cows meandered home in the evening light. Or was it that the cows would never come home on their own, so you’d talk forever? That could be, too, but let’s go with something else.

Because it’s wearing a floral headdress.

Every spring, the farmers throughout the Alps drive their cows up to higher pasture for the summer. They stay up there eating rich green grass and justifying Alphorns for the warm sunny months, giving some folks time off to talk endlessly (hence the phrase, I’m thinking) while a few heroes of national identity up in the mountain meadows churn butter and coagulate protein. (Ain’t that just the sexiest phrasing I could have chosen for cheese-making?)

Get on with your cow self!

Leave it to this last tour group I had, with their preternatural luck and timing, to arrive just in time for the almabtrieb, or viehscheid, the annual parade of cows returning from summer pasture. It was stupendous. The cows, dressed in their finest and caring not one udder about it, paraded through town in a ceremonious way that was most a-moo-sing. (You’re welcome.)

So what? So some cows walked through town, why should I blog about it, and why should legislatures spend so much time on ag issues?

In this year of an insane US presidential candidate, United Kingdomers choosing to leave the most successful diplomatic structure in European history, and Colombians voting to reject peace in favor of punitive measures and further bloodshed, well, it’s damn fine to sit back in the sun and watch something so hearty, so earnest, so down-home rustically peaceful and reassuring as a parade of decorated cows coming home.

Not a shabby looking place, that Switzerland

Is it worth it? All the tax revenue spent to prolong a procession of bovine ladies and tractors of cheese? Well, it did me good, and the whole town with me, so I guess the fiscal considerations are a moooo-t point.

A Parisian response to fear

I was focused on the situation so don't have
good photos, but man it was fun and loud

What do you do when terrorists want you to be afraid? To be closed off, fearful of strangers, and angry? To stay locked in your house, suspicious of others, scared of crowds and skittish of loud noises? Well, if you’re Paris, you throwing a mutha-phunking techno parade to draw in the crowds and blast out the windows, that’s what you do.

Because screw fear! Sucks to your divisiveness! And extremists can kiss my unafraid not-shut-in tolerant liberal western ass! It’s time for a party so loud everyone’s invited whether they like it or not. Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Zoroastrian, and Animist, I don’t care, if you have eardrums, you’re at the party.

And who cares if modern music seems to have forgotten musical instruments, because for the moment all we need is the sort of gut-thumping noise that makes everyone feel the rhythm in their ribs and the beat in the bloodstream as our hearts accelerate to match.

And if it’s my tour group, midway through my Paris walk, caught and beached somewhere between the converted church and the place where the boy king’s life changed forever? Oh well! Change of plans! We’re travelers: we adapt. And so we hold off on the French Revolution for a moment and instead lift cell phone cameras to the beautiful and blissfully idiotic thudding of a techno resistance movement. And if that swarm is hefting bottles of booze to the sky? Good for them. Ain’t nobody driving, ain’t nobody fighting, but all of everybody is moving and defiantly alive. Tolerating each other, who cares how you dress, if you can sing, or whether you pray and to whom.

Paris is unafraid, and these thousands of hoarse shouting, public drinking, sexual tension exploding, uncovered, unashamed, and celebrating youngsters are going to make sure you know it.

Because Paris is a city attacked. Once by terrorists, and repeatedly by fear. A city maligned by well-meaning purveyors of information, and by loving and thoughtful individuals who are right to feel fear, but wrong to act on it.

How did my group act on it? Did they stay home and huddle in front of the panic-inducing television? Nope, they came and saw for themselves. And when I asked them in the Champs de Mars if any of them felt afraid of Paris, they laughed. The correct response. They’d seen for themselves that fear on this global scale is a packaged commodity you don’t have to wear. And shouldn’t. Because locked inside, it’s quiet and safe and dead and complicit. But outside? In the traveler’s world, the citizen’s reality, the truth of the shared experience? It’s doing just fine.

Paris is alive and well. It is not unsafe, and it is not dangerous. Nor is it afraid and lashing out. It’s alive. It’s joie de vivre. It’s all those hearts beating defiantly together, celebrating and loud.  Can you hear it from there?