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.

Top Ten posts from a year I love anyway

Did you ever have a particularly brutal teacher? Who grilled you harder, left you doubting your fundamental competency, and didn't seem to notice when you turned in tear-stained homework? I didn't. Until 2013. When itstarted I thought the rug had been pulled out from under me, but the worst part was over.

Cute.

I'd like to say I understand the year and learned all its lessons, but the mere notion of summarizing 2013 just led to my wasting the better part of the afternoon watching the Daily Show, Colbert, and crocheting the start of a new blanket. Clearly I haven't processed it all.

But what I can do is fulfill the tacit contractual obligation to post my Top Ten Blogs of the Year. Wordpress has informed me which ones got the most clicks, but forget statistical accuracy, I'm going to list the ten that stand out to me.

10. AnUnexpected Chance to get Killed in Mandalay  Just a fun day in Mandalay, where circumstances reminded me of how much I love to travel, even if it occasionally increases the chances of severe injury.

9. IfI'd had a clue I wouldn't have met the Wigi  The places are incredible, but sometimes it's the people you meet that maintain the strongest hold on you.

8. WhatHappens to Men like Rudi? Same theme as #9, another trip, another country, another human person. I wish I had the answer.

7. BlueDragon It's so easy to get pessimistic, but hearing about people doing incredible work, helping each other and making a difference gives me so much joy. I hope I can spread some of it to you.

6. ItSeemed like Spring for a Moment Why is it so hard to be grateful and not greedy?

5. Mardin. This city is one of my all time favorites. Poignantly beautiful in its own right, I always feel a rush of vagabond adrenalin when I remember looking out over the Syrian Plain below, tantalized and tortured by the proximity to so much heritage, so much sheer human intensity, and so much suffering. In my mind I still sometimes watch the children of Mardin flying kites on their rooftops, held aloft by the exhalation of ages.

4. Twotravelgasms and a tragedy, Hasankeyf Part 2. I was already in love with Turkey, both halves of it, but that day cemented the region in my heart. Standing in ancient dwellings carved into the very stone, then walking alone through stunning mountain meadows of crimson poppies before descending to find myself in the company of a half dozen new friends? Now that's a good day. Did you sign the petition yet?

3. Is that a good start or a bad one? Jungle Birthday Part 2. It wasn't much fun at the time, aware that I was alone and stupidly helpless in the jungle, where sound does not travel and help is hard to find, but I can't think of a more appropriate way to start the birthyear: lost, angry, in pain from a dozen stupid little cuts, but on my way to what will hopefully be a good story. 

2. TheSystem's Broken, and the Fire Hasn't Even Started Yet. This post was just a set up for the Glow fire festival in Santa Cruz, but to my surprise, was chosen to be Freshly Pressed, and I am grateful for the increased readership that generated. So grateful in fact, that I can almost entirely overcome the pique that the tag which brought me there was not #Travel. #Transportation? Close enough.

1. Falling apart inAnuradhapura. This took no thought at all. The post itself is nearly irrelevant, but that was the pivotal moment of the year. At times I've felt a stunned confusion too guilty to smile about, that I had somehow minced through the minefield of romantic love without detonation, pain yes of course, but never the soul crushing agony. In Anuradhapura...

How to say this without reeking of self pity? The floor was dirty, long black hairs from tenants past, while ants and cockroaches commuted up and down the walls, but still I lay there most of the night and past the dawn, unable to uncurl from around a core of pain like nothing I'd ever felt before. It doesn't surprise me that the non-emotional account of the town was more popular. 

Well shit, I didn't mean to end on a downer. And I'm not.

Because seconds keep clicking, and months slip past while you're waiting on a minute, so here I am, unexpectedly stationary on the other side of the world from where I expected to be. And I like it.

Many things are not as I would have written them, but we don't write our lives. I guess they write us. And right now, I like where the story is headed.

Congratulations to all of you, for surviving the insanity of 2013. All my best wishes for understanding it, and all my earnest hope for a brilliant 2014.

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.

Two days in Tahoe

Several hives worth of buzzing words follow me around every day, but they are unruly little things, and refuse to fly out my fingertips when I ask them to. Instead, a few of them had taken to buzzing around inside my eyeballs, making my computer screen seem underwater. The cure? Trees. Mountain. Air. Cold water. Friends. Absence of screens.

I threw those keywords into a bowl, added two spoonfuls of serendipity and a quarter cup of flexible schedule, baked it with a few days' notice and when the timer dinged I stepped out of a rented hybrid in Tahoe. Magic.

We spent two days up by the lake that I will always think of as the liquid heart of the Sierra Nevada. It was three parts eating, two parts walking, and one part Romancing the Stone on a TV that was perfectly tiny, just the way I wanted.

Danny DeVito, man. Nice.

East Coasters sometimes hold seasonal leaf variation as a talking point against the West Coast, but wouldya look at that, yellow. Lots and lots of yellow, looking to the eyes the way the daytime sunlight felt to the skin.

The nights were chilly enough to make me grin with gritted teeth as the celestial gods of Tahoe reminded me of just how many stars there really are. Wow.

And just in case I hadn't realized this was perfect timing, how about a shooting star to say hello? Why yes, yes I will. Graag.

Fierce winds the first night put military formations of white caps storming the beach, and the next morning showed a corpse-ridden battlefield, though the crawdads never had a chance.

Jump in the frigid lake, because that's what you do, and stop off on the way out at Emerald Bay, where kids cuted, water lapped, and languages varied; Russian, German, Mandarin, and lots of French. Luckily there was some American in there too, or I would have grown depressed at our national ingratitude.

Tahoe is an easy place to spend a couple days, grow some friendships, and never consider checking off the To-Visit List. There's always more.

You can only go forwards

The corn is gone already?  How the hell is the corn gone already?  I swear it was just pushing up through the furrows, looking all green and eager and naïve.  Now it’s rows of mass-mowed stubs, Winter’s five o’clock shadow, and I never even saw the monster harvesting machine.

(Okay, it hasn't snowed yet, but I had to use a picture from last year.)

Summer left its sun behind though; it’s shining away up there, enthusiastically bright, and we walk around with our eyes squinted.  For some reason we squinch our mouths tightly too.  But Summer packed up the warmth when it left, like a departing college student who can only fit the speakers in the car and leaves the stereo.  So the sun is telling a story about picnics, volleyball and shorts, but it’s a newscaster on a muted TV and we turn away distracted, to find something else to do, like getting the heavy coats out of the attic.

But I can remember that I like Autumn, gall-darnit.  It’s warm cup of tea season.  Mug of hot chocolate time.  Blankets and books and thick slippers.  And holy shit, you can’t beat the leaves.  Those fresh green ones are a delight to see, but these wizened reds and purples and yellows can hold a better conversation.

This is actually a nice window of time.  The cows with their inexplicably muddy posteriors lounge on grass still luxuriously green, while the leaves obligingly take aesthetically pleasing positions around them.  Martha Stewart’s a chump next to Mother Nature.  (Or anyone else for that matter.)

We danced like grasshoppers (or should I say base-jumping venom-spiting/peeing spiders?) all summer long in the Nepali sunshine, washed in Indian Ocean monsoon drops, but already my legs have forgotten shorts and my feet are accustomed to socks.  The tan lines of my sandals are completely gone and my gloves wait by the door for morning departures.

I find myself again in Belgium.  Still not quite able to function in the language, still stranded in the boonies, still wondering what the fuck I’m doing here.  Still bouncing between admiration and irritation for the local particulars too.  They give you tons of free samples in the grocery store!  They charge you for a glass of water.  Internationally-minded people speaking tons of languages!  Who abuse immigrants in all of them.  And of course, the great healthcare system that is emphatically NOT bankrupting the country, and where we can get quality medical care nearly at a moment’s notice for a few bucks…but they’re going to take half my paycheck.  Once you factor that in, this new job I start tomorrow seems kind of ridiculous.

(Note, if the taxes just went for the social system like healthcare and supporting those in need, it would be easier, but Belgium has an overabundance of governments, and I can’t help but suspect that a lot of those shiny euro’s of not-mine go to bureaucrats and their paperwork.  I think the medical system should be amended to not cover paper cuts…)

Teaching English in Nepal was so groovy, I thought hey, why not do it in Belgium?  That was my original plan after all.  So I spent the last 2-3 weeks following a training course that was really more like boot camp.  They broke us down with theories, prohibitions, and critiques until we were all convinced we had made a mistake and were not suited for the job after all, then deployed us throughout Belgium saying “you start tomorrow.”

Most of my students will be adults, but tomorrow my first paid lesson will be with a 7-8? year old.  (I find it odd that the company doesn’t seem to know how old he is.)  I will teach him, one on one, for an hour and a half, and once you take away the price of my train fare and taxes, for the 4-5 hours of my Saturday it will take, I’ll earn about 7€.  Score!  That will almost cover lunch!

But I’ll see it as a means to an end.  I’m learning more about this teaching shtick, and putting a known brand on my resume, and hell, I still hold out hope that it will be enjoyable.  At least for awhile.

But that reminds me, anybody have any advice on Latin America?