The undesirability of heroism

Hearing Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) discuss fungal infections, abscess scars, and which diseases merit treatment was a trip in itself. But it took me a day or so to realize these are far from the hardest part about what they’re doing.

At the end of my last post I casually labelled PCVs “heroes.” But are they? If you ask them, the result in clear and resounding: not remotely. A couple minutes after posting I heard from one of my PCV friends.

I don't have photos of their daily living.
This is Georgetown on our flight back from the jungle.

“I’m uncomfortable with labelling PCVs ‘heroes.’ We’re not.” But was it just modesty, or something more nuanced than that?

“The assumption is that we have a positive impact and that’s just not necessarily true. Good intentions don’t automatically result in positive impact. The effect we have can be really mixed.”

It’s unpleasant to admit, but I see at least two reasons this is true. First, the implicit conflict of trying to help a population become more self sufficient, sustainable, and not reliant on outside aid...via outside aid. How can you convince a population to not look to foreign wealth for help when your very presence shows how helpful (and immense) that wealthy help could be?

Second, a technique that works well in one area may be either useless or downright harmful in another. Culture is complex, powerful, and sometimes dangerously subtle (right up until the moment it eats you). And it’s one of humanity’s great tragedies that the advances we most need (like women’s rights) are often earned through the suffering of exactly the people you’re trying to help. Bring a women’s initiative to a place...then watch the patriarchy clamp down.

Bauxite refining in Linden, considered among
the most luxurious placements in Guyana.

Then there’s a more personal reason PCVs dislike the “hero” label.

“There are actual heroes doing heroic things. We’re just trying to do what we can in 24 months. I just go to work like a regular person. The pressure of the term hero is...overwhelming.”

PCVs have a shadow behind their eyes, if not outright in their words. They call it “Peace Corps Guilt” (click here for a short write-up that is well worth a couple minutes read). If you’ve traveled, physically or mentally, the feeling “Good lord, we throw away more than these people have, how can I be so selfish?” will be familiar. (Don’t worry, the article’s not that bleak!)

Valid concerns, true questions, serious doubts. But in the end, the same way a politician who speaks of “good and evil” is not to be trusted, we have to acknowledge that life is not a matter of dichotomies and dualities. Nearly everything exists in shades of gray. The Peace Corps is no exception.

Going to work for a paycheck is a perfectly acceptable motivation. Doing it for the good of others or society is a wonderful thing (salute to all the teachers, nurses, and social workers out there!) But leaving behind your life of developed privileges in order to hopefully help people who have never had them, even knowing it may well be a giant waste of time?

Seven hours racing down this mudswamp of a road,
two boat rides and a 4x4 had us still nowhere
near as remote as some of the placements.

I apologize to my Peace Corps Volunteer friends...but yes, to me, you are heroes. Imperfect, perhaps useless, maybe even harmful. But you’re trying. So: heroes.

Let me add one more note. The Peace Corps lists three goals in its Mission Statement. The first is the part about helping the people in the foreign country. The third is to fostering a better understanding of poverty and foreign countries among Americans. Nestled in the middle is something important.

“To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.”

At this moment when the US is being defiled by a president whose actions genuinely merit the term “evil” and who is tangibly damaging the standing of the United States on the world stage, your contribution to international harmony (and domestic sanity, at least mine) is crucial.

Thank you for everything you do.

The pig in me

If the woman is already naked when we begin our conversation, I never really know what to say. “So. How’s it going?” just doesn’t seem right. So it wasn’t that I really wanted to go there, it just seemed like a regionally appropriate suggestion.

The Thanksgiving holiday had been a great one, with most of my family and a wonderful cluster of friends in Portland, Oregon. Now it was Saturday night, many of us still in town, and we’d discussed meeting up. Where?

I have little interest in going to strip clubs anywhere on Earth...except Portland. Every year or two I find myself in one and find it a cross between a dive bar at its best and the ballet. Zero skeeziness, instead a blend of art, athleticism, and a respectful sincerity that approaches benevolence in our culture of sexual repression. To me (Portland) strip clubs aren’t sexual, they’re just honest.

Plus, I’d heard this particular landmark was “Woman (and family) owned and operated...very solid record of management protecting dancers and taking care of them when things happen in their lives” and I was curious to see it. Mostly I just wanted to have a beer with friends, and hey, this would be more interesting than just another friggin “dive bar” that manages to be pretentious as fudge-all anyway.

“Wait, it’s a strip club?” answered a beloved friend. “Hard pass. They’re squicky. Let’s go to a dive bar instead.” Yes there’s an eye-roll emoji, but I wasn’t even tempted to send it. The people were the point, not the venue. But so began one of those vague conversations with 30 minutes of radio silence between messages.

“Okay, I’ll meet you anywhere you want to go, just send me the address.”

“I dunno, let me look for one...”

“Want to Lyft across the entire city to hang out for maybe a few minutes, then turn around and go back?”

So that was good for an hour and a half of me wandering around downtown Portland in the cold, waiting for my friends to get their shit together. They never did, and I ended up walking home alone in the rain. I was tempted to feel aggrieved, embarrassed, and sorry for myself.

Then I realized that was just my pig.

You know that inner voice? The one that whispers that it’s all your fault, all about you, you should be ashamed, and nobody likes you anyway? The therapeutic philosophy that’s done me a world of good over the past few years calls it “pig.” As in the 1960s word for the avatar of oppressive culture, the abusive jerk cop. God I love hippies.

We all have that inner pig. In some it whispers that we have to earn our place on this planet since we’re inherently bad, in others it says we must be crazy, and at its worst it drives a damaged child to such depths of self-loathing and narcissism that they become president and crash the whole country.

In me, it said that my friends just didn’t want to hang out with me, and that I was some kind of pervert for suggesting we hang out in a bar where women take their clothes off. And oh, that I was a loser living a losing life. No way it was just that they were busy and tired, no, it had to be about me, and I had to be bad.

Luckily the leaves reminded me that was ridiculous.

Shining brilliant yellow and audacious red in the streetlamp glow, the autumn leaves giggled their quivering joy at what a beautiful night I was having. Dinner with my folks, already a win. Then walking around this interesting city, winter’s reflections in darkened windows, and conversations with the homeless who always feel like meeting my alternative lives.

“No, I don’t smoke, sorry. No, thanks, I don’t want to buy that umbrella. Nope, no bag of coke for me. Yes, I believe you it’s an incredibly good deal but I still don’t want the umbrella, have a good night my friend. Good luck.”

Portland is my kind of town

Now I was headed home to the incomprehensible blessing of a warm loving home, kissed on the cheeks by just the right amount of rain to make the air interesting and the streets shine like a dance floor. It wasn’t a horrible night at all. I’m not unwanted. And they were beautiful hours. I got home, typed this up, and now it’s time for a cup of tea with my folks. Then perhaps I’ll take a nice hot shower before getting in warm blankets with a good book.

Life is good. Go to sleep, pig.

I wasn't prepared for this

You love your friends and what matters to them matters to you, so of course you say yes when they invite you to come see their newborn baby. Of course. Over to the hospital you go. I am privileged to not be so familiar with these places but I recognize the elevator, the doors that open at the push of a button, the hallways that project medical ability, biological stability, hope’s reliability. Then into the room. Into her room.

And there she is. In her artificial womb of plexiglass and portals, wires and cables to monitors and screens, heartbeat over respiration over oxygen saturation and there is no normal but this one as you listen to the beep of alarm and watch it come back down to green before you breathe again.

Truth be told, promise not to tell? I generally think babies are kinda ugly. Amphibian creatures barely sapiens, born from a woman they promise but I’m tempted to look around for the spaceship retreating.

But this? This tiny person, swimming through the unfamiliar space of her newborn body, premature and perfect, this little girl is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And I scorn the scorn that whispers at the cliche because bugger me but it’s true.

And I don’t know what to say. She’s magnificent.

I’ve felt this way before, witnessing the small ones of kith and kin. Stood abashed before the splendor of creation. And I well remember the transcendent majesty of looking at my lady love’s son and feeling the gods’ gift of realizing “Yes, yes, for this I would die to protect.” And he wasn’t even mine.

And suddenly, on a normal Saturday night I’m feeling it again, the awe, the sheer dumbfounded reverence for what it is to bring a child into this world. Tomorrow I’ll rage at the idiocy that brings violence to remove them, as everyone is a child in someone’s heart, but for now I exist in little besides awe.

I am accustomed to seeing the Divine in Nature, the pulse of the universe in ocean waves, sand dune shifts, and sunlight through the leaves, but here I am in a concrete cave made by men and everywhere I look I see godliness. In the purpose of the space, the quiet skill and sleepless devotion of the staff, the faceless researchers who devise the tests and cures, and above all else: her, and the indomitability of her will to continue. What is god if not this newest person? Why would it be anywhere else?

Outside it’s a normal night. Cars each going to their own someplace, sports fans ribbing at each others laundry, friends talking too loudly on the lamplit street with words about nothing that manifest their love anyway. And it is a normal night. Another in the endless line of nights where somewhere nearby a miracle is breathing. And the awe overtakes me. I was ready to meet their child, but I was not prepared for this.

Shoes. OMG, shoes

Snowshoeing in Tahoe really did this pair in

No one had ever complimented me on my shoes. Why would they? They’re just, y’know, shoes. But that last pair I had, people loved those ones. Friends, colleagues, and at least one shopkeeper all dug my footwear. I appreciated it, but it was weird for people to have opinions about my possessions.

But I kinda loved them. As I usually do, by the end. Not for their style or materials, not the eyelets and sole stitching of their physical form, but for the time we trod together, the moments and their memories that we walked through. My shoes usually last about half a year. That is, an off-season and a tour season. By the end of the latter, they’re generally pretty ripe with Roman kilometers and their sweat, Parisian avenues and their petite piles of l’puppy poopoo, then perhaps a retirement on the pedals of my bicycle, hospice on the easy floors of my apartment.

These shoes were made for walking,

and not one time did they crash,

but after all these sweaty miles

they're going in the trash.

I walked from one part of my life
into another in this pair.

When the time comes to set them aside, it usually takes me awhile. “These have pretty much had it” I’ll think over the course of a week or four. “Time to get a new pair.” Then somehow I’m still wearing them.

I’m not a very good customer. Not skilled at consumerism, nor devout in my materialism. I feel satisfaction at wearing something out instead of throwing away a still serviceable item. I don’t get a rush when I buy something new, no pleasure when it’s time to purchase. Connection to things only comes at the end, for me. When I set them on the garbage can in Amsterdam, seeing it as a museum pedestal when I walk away to catch the airport tram. And I wanted to salute when I put this last pair, worn well beyond the norm, into the bin.

No, it’s not that I love shoes. They’re just useful for protecting my feet. But when their job is done, they remind me to say thank you for the miles. To give gratitude for every pace of living.

I wonder where the next pair will take me

I want your life

“I wish I had your life.” I get that a lot. “Must be tough!” they say with a smile. And I can’t disagree. I have it incredibly good. Incomprehensibly good. Sometimes I can feel the weight of the billions of lives lived and living that would give anything for a fraction of the ease, privilege, and pleasure my life has. I don’t know how to give adequate thanks.

I can’t complain.

Today was another good day. Of friends, interest, safety and ease. And rain, musical on the windowpanes, while out in it it’s something harder, gusting to feel like stabs, only softening to water to run down inside your clothes.

A friend and I walked around San Francisco tonight, from Market Street up to Grace Cathedral, down for a meandering burble about Chinatown before finding ourselves in Long Beach and going with it, until we stood on Coit Tower’s promontory with the storm blown in off the Pacific. Back through the Financial District to drip on Bart trains, he went south, I came east.

Then a bike ride through streets like faucets open to any nook of me that was merely soggy not soaked, changing that.

For a moment, the unadulterated wind behind me, I was sailing with the vapor snakes that gave form to every vagary of wind. Grey writhing things that slid on the wet black pavement and made me feel like an windborn seaborn waterborne god.

The road curved out of that harmony, wind rocking my frame and tugging my handlebars, sticks invisible in the undertree rubble kicking my wheel out at sudden angles, tire lost in a mush of sodden leaves that my mind registered would make braking impossible under the bobbing red stoplights.

But I made it home, equally soaked and in love with the world. Moved a snail off my doorstep. And felt something unexpected and familiar.

Because I have it good. Really good. I love my life, my freedom, the fact that today I bought two plane tickets touching three continents. I don’t want to give this up. But standing in the stoop under a single yellow bulb

I realized that if I’d done things differently. Lived a little bit otherhow. There would be someone here when I got home. Someone to laugh at my soaked state, help me inside, take care of my clothes and set an old towel under my bicycle while I climb in the shower.

Instead I’ll do it for myself. And it’s fine. Really is. But here in these quiet moments after midnight, when it feels like everyone else is in bed with their paired each-others, I find myself looking over and “I wish I had your life.”

My pigeon-approved way of lifeI've

I've spent years NOT taking photos of pigeons
but in Venice, all things are beautiful

Sunlight on the feather caught my eye. Sliding through sunlight down from the eave above. The exuberant swirl as the grey and black piece of flight made manifest danced its way down to mere earth. My steps slowed a little to watch it. I didn’t stop, places to go things to do, but I acknowledged its beauty for a moment.

It was rather the flipside of reading the news these days, where a truly abhorrent man defiantly drowning himself in rage and petty ego to try and cover his sadness is leading a coterie of foolish greed, down off the upslope of history. Pronouncements we haven’t heard since Stalin, combined with the deliberate destruction of hope and protection, and I’ll tell ya, it’s enough to get a fella down.

But you just look at those, acknowledge them, participate when possible, care, but keep going.

So here was an afternoon of sunny sidewalk, and a descending path of a beautiful feather, give it the same treatment of slow acknowledgement and recognition, but keep going.

And the universe endorsed my response. Or at least the pigeon did.

The first gigantic gob of fecal surplus landed right in front of me, where I would have been had I not slowed to admire the falling feather. Then the second splash of posterior production, avian anal abundance, landed right behind me, where I would have caught it had I lingered a little too long.

I was framed in falling pigeon poo, pristine and untouched as I made my way forward into the friendly future. Perhaps the political offal we’re seeing will fall to either side as well, fertilizer for something better.

And if not? Well. At least I didn’t get shat on, on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

No taxation without consternation?

The amicable woman behind the desk swiped my credit card and with my $75 copay I received another view of the great fallacy of American capitalist propaganda.

In Belgium’s universal healthcare system I paid 65 euros for a similar service, then two weeks later had 63 euros deposited back into my account by my health insurance, under which a full year cost less than half of what I pay per month now. But I don’t want to talk about how America pays more money for less care than anyone else. That’s been done.

Maximalius persuades Aurelianus to pay his taxes

No, instead of talking about the Republican’s last disgrace, let’s talk about their next one: taxes.

After all, that is Right’s attack line. “Sure healthcare’s affordable there, but you paid so much more in taxes.” I thought about that as I took one of the open chairs, upholstered as usual in an unfortunate camel color. Yes, I did pay higher taxes in Belgium, but I’m going to resist the desire to list the benefits I gained from them. Again, already well done elsewhere.

Because there’s something else going on, and sadly, it makes perfect sense. Vendors charge as much as consumers are willing to pay, which depends on what’s in their bank accounts. In the US we get a higher percentage of our paychecks into our accounts, and the prices go up. Then the bill comes due for all the services we want but haven’t paid for.

Public transit? Must be nice. Who pays for that?

Most ironic analogy? It’s like we’re paying taxes before making our deductions. That is, we pay our cost of living from our gross income, instead of our net. Then we pay for a (semi)functional system after the fact and wind up broke.

I just spent a few tortured minutes comparing the cost of living in my hometown to various beautiful European and Canadian cities, then did the same for New York since people like to talk about that place. I got data like this:

Consumer prices in Vancouver are 19.82% lower than in Oakland and 29.91% lower than NY

Rent prices in Paris are 46.60% lower than in Oakland and 57.33% lower than NY

Restaurant prices in Madrid are 29.99% lower than in Oakland and 38.92% lower than NY

Groceries prices in London are 34.07% lower than in Oakland and 39.77% lower than NY

Local Purchasing Power in Berlin is 21.40% higher than in Oakland and 11.55% higher than NY

Hey Marco, what tax bracket are you in?

Try it for yourself. The Bay Area is particularly expensive and Cost of Living is a complicated thing, but it seems clear to me that we in the US have been bamboozled into believing that not paying taxes saves us money, when it doesn’t. Especially not if we then want healthcare, education, roads, etc (not to mention the entertainment of bombing everywhere and giving festively massive tax cuts to extremely profitable oil companies). And paying taxes? We call it “government stealing my money!” Europeans call it “investing in our society.”

It’s all a bit dire, and I was feeling that squirmy feeling inside, the worm of fear for (and of) my country. Good timing for the next nice lady in scrubs to come tell me my test came back negative. Which is a positive. Everything’s all mixed up these days, but I’ll give thanks for what we have and work for what we don’t. And the sun is still shining. Happy tax season, everyone!

A Tahoe reminder

No signal. I love when it says that. In fact, seeking that elusive status was one of my reasons for going up to Tahoe in the first place. To spend two days in the white opulence of this year’s record snowfall on the branches of ponderosa pines that will carry three centuries of memory while they grow on slopes that slough off the passing of millennia. Puts these plastic pocket addictions into perspective.

It's not Tahoe without Emerald Bay

The absence of cell signal is getting harder to find. The previous day a millennial had told me his wild travel story “When I was in Morocco, I just, like, didn’t buy a sim-card for my phone? I just didn’t get one! I was there for three weeks, without a phone!” I waited to hear how this setup contributed to an adventure before realizing that being disconnected is itself an experience worth relating now.

Now up in the Sierras, the temptation of the phone tickled me. “I suppose I could post an instagram of this…” I thought, guilty maintenance of my sadly inactive account. But there it was: no signal. I smiled in the clear air and put the phone away.

A buddy and I snowshoed around Spooner Lake that first afternoon, trying out the clompy plastic flippers we’d rented. Walked a while before we realized the big snowy meadow WAS the lake, no indication of its watery underlayer except a small pool where winter-frozen fish floated belly-up in their silvery thousand, distracting from the darker wiggles of their still-living kin below.

“Maybe they’re just...hibernating.” One of us offered. “You know, that winter stasis thing.”

We watched the sluggish stirs of the living among the immobile remainders of their kin, inert and inverted. “No, probably not.” Snap a picture out of curiosity, then go check out those aspens…

The next day Fallen Leaf Lake was waiting for us, politely holding onto a layer of ice until we stood gaping at its side, then letting it dissolve in the crackled collisions of cold succumbing to an unseasonably warm sun.

Somebody benevolent left a canoe on the shore, so now we were paddling, jiggling in the wavelets kicked up by a wind that came to greet us when we left the stony shore behind.

Hot tubs were invented for cold nights beside snow embankments while stars monitor your relaxation below. Granted the electric lights killed them away years ago, but I could put them solidly in my mind’s moonroof anyway.

Hard to see the ski tracks down the western slope, and
trust me that that thing is even steeper than it looks.

Four lakes in two days has a certain symmetry, so we trudged out to Eagle Lake before joining the Sunday return. Snowballs rolling down the slopes to the snowmelt creek that earned its fame in the waterfall of name, and paid homage to the local lunatics who laid the sinuous tracks down sheer slopes when no one was there to see. What that must feel like, I can only envy.

Travel has driven home that America’s greatest treasure is its wild spaces. (Sorry Hollywood.) So it was nice to get out there and light a memory votive on the altar of one of California’s great ones. You can always count on a mountain to show things in perspective, and the signal was coming in loud and clear.

Seeing America as a Sri Lankan cop

Sri Lankan city of kings, one of the oldest continually-occupied cities on Earth, and focal point of Theravada Buddhism for centuries, Anuradhapura has many claims to fame, but I was having trouble seeing past the heat. The midday sun already felt like a sunburn in the sauna, and all I could think about was the relative cool of my stifling but shaded hotel room. But Anuradhapura had another surprise first.

I was sweltering, I don't know how these
guys survived to make the wedding

He pulled up on a thick-bodied motorcycle, ornate white cuffs on his uniform and a thick handlebar mustache that would have fit comfortably on a California Highway Patrolman. Some things say “cop” in any language. He stopped, appraised me through mirrored sunglasses, and waved me over without a smile. “You are a foreigner” he stated the obvious, then paused a long sweaty moment. “Where are you from?”

“America, the United States,” my customary answer covering both forms.

“Ah. America.” Another pause. It was the Obama years so I was relaxed, but the question of whose family might have been blown up by US weapons always lingers. But a grin split the stone crags of his face. “America, good!”

He asked me how I liked Sri Lanka and if I had already eaten lunch, then asked the question that I could see had been on his mind all along. “America, it is very dangerous there, isn’t it?”

There I was in northern Sri Lanka, one of the few tourists in a region abandoned by tourism during the atrocious Sri Lankan civil war. People all across Sri Lanka had urged me not to come to this region where land mines and trees decapitated by artillery fire were still common, but he thought America was the dangerous place.

“Um. No, not really. I don’t think America is dangerous” I said, anchored in the awareness that American fears are far outsized but not wanting to go into the fact that my white privilege gave me a different experience than people of color might report. And probably not a great idea to discuss police shootings with this policeman.

He leaned forward and asked “But is it not true that anyone can have a gun in America? Big guns. That there are millions of guns in the hands of normal people? Untrained people? Even mentally unwell and unstable people? Anyone who wants them, and as many as they like?”

He had me there. “Well….yes...” He sat back and grinned, having won his point and I had to concede that I was at more risk in the US than I was in war-torn Sri Lanka.

I remembered that perception of America after watching Trump humiliate our country in his meetings with Angela Merkel this week. Few people conflate citizens with their government, but that was easier when it was just policy differences. Now, when the very sanity and moral decency of our country is being daily called into question, I fear what everyone else on earth (outside of Russia perhaps) is thinking about us.

In one short month I’ll head back to Europe, including Merkel’s Germany, and I’m going to need these weeks to think of competent answers to the inevitable question “What the hell is going on with you Americans?”

The Dutch oven of modern politics

It’s disappointingly easy to convince people that The Outsiders, the They, are responsible for all your troubles and are a threat to your safety. Terrifyingly reliable, century by century. So I watched this week’s election in the Netherlands with massive trepidation.

Chandeliers over the canals of Amsterdam

The Netherlands. The country where so much of the freedom, liberty, and tolerance that form the foundation of Western civilization and success was born and developed. But also the most densely populated country in Europe, struggling with the shifts and currents of the world right now. So it was no surprise that they had their own “blame Islam” villain stirring up the darkest parts. But with such a proud tradition and identity as progressive thinkers, I had hope that the Dutch would resist the sort of self-sabotage that the UK and USA have embraced.

Particularly important, because what the Dutch did, the French and Germans would see. I’m not too worried about the Germans, who I think learned the lessons of the 20th century better than anyone, but a continental crack begun in Holland could spread. So how did it work out?

With impressive turnout, 87% of Dutch voters rejected the willful misunderstanding and moral weakness that have contaminated the White House and sought to spill like an overflowing septic tank into the canals of Amsterdam. I love the Dutch! Ik houd van Holland!

Of course there’s a but. Because Wilders was able to do the same as Trump in bullying the conversation. The voices with the least helpful contributions are doing the most talking, while misguided policies make things worse and a sinister power grows stronger. It’s up to the Dutch to show us how to handle this problem. No party has a majority, so the ruling coalition will include members with vastly different opinions. Which could go at least two ways:

Option 1: differing viewpoints lead to political brinksmanship and absolutism, ensuring that nothing gets done. Increased voter frustration feeds the extremist they just united to defeat and we all go down the tube. Let’s call this the “Republican Congress” technique.

Option 2: differing viewpoints give a voice to more people, and unity in the face of a commonly recognized danger leads to true compromises that no one loves but benefit everyone. Let’s call this approach “Democracy.”

That second one is tough. But if anyone can do it, it’s the Dutch. They’ve given us so much over the centuries, and we need them now more than ever.

P.S. I was delighted at the chance to guide two more of my beloved Best of Europe in 21 Days tours, and highly recommend them if you’d like to go over and see for yourself.