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.

Hands Around Lake Merritt

Was election night as bad as it gets, or is the worst still to come? That sick feeling of disappointment, of alienation from your nation, of watching a big part of my demographic identity declare itself in direct opposition to everything in my mind, spirit, soul... Yeah, Tuesday sucked.

But faced with that question, if the worst is still to come, I just can’t find my optimism. He appointed a known white supremacist as his chief advisor! I can’t wrap my mind around that. We have a president who wants neo-nazis at his right hand. And Americans are cheering for him. It’s...disgusting.

All last week was trying to keep the spine straight, the head above polluted water, clinging to the emails, texts, and conversations of support and shared awareness, but even when those come from around the planet they feel small when the world at large has gone insane.

Then Sunday. A beautiful warm autumn afternoon in Oakland, when an estimated 10,000 of my fellow Americans gathered to surround Lake Merritt with a message of peace, opposition to bigotry, and dedication to the ideals that made America great in the first place.

My mother, awesome woman that she is, took us to an anti-War protest for the first Gulf War, and I’ve found my way to a few others over the years, but this was the first time I’ve seen thousands of people united in somber silence, peace signs held up in the air, saying without words that we as a country are better than what our “democracy” puked up on Tuesday.

Oakland has seen nightly protests of broken glass and tear gas as small numbers of people manifest their opposition. But this was something altogether more inspiring. Children played tag on the grass, dogs in sweaters, neighbors sharing food and hugs while everyone from old school Berkeley hippies to post-Millennials (have they named them yet?) shared a space and a message.

God it felt good. Restorative. Reassuring. Fortifying. There are four long years of resistance to (let’s be honest) evil ahead of us, but there are a lot of kind and genuine souls in my peaceful army, and I have faith in us. I found my optimism. They gave it back to me.

I want to stop there. But I can’t shake one other feeling. Nor should I. It’s fear, not for me (entirely insulated by my privilege and status) but for the children of America, the minorities of America, the refugees and the immigrants of America, all the vulnerable of America. So many groups are threatened by Trump’s inhumanity, but on Sunday they came together in one little boy. The demonstration was dissolving by then, everyone heading home for dinner, and I felt wrung out. Not ready for the pain of seeing a child having cause to ask this question.

This is not who we are. This is not who I will ever be. And you and I both will do everything we can to protect this child, won’t we? I’ll see you on the barricades if we have to, because this child deserves to live in a country where he never has to ask this question again.

Why Cambodia? Why anywhere?

Yeah, why would anyone come here?

“Cambodia? Why would you want to go there?” asked a surprising number of people. The question baffled me at first, after all, one need not know very much about the country to understand its appeal. I assumed that was the answer, that the people asking the question had somehow never heard of Angkor Wat, or the Khmer Rouge, each a blazing demand to be witnessed, albeit on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

But even without its chapter heading draws, Cambodia would still be undeniably worth visiting. Because it’s a place. They’re all worth visiting. (Okay fine, except Fresno.) So that’s the question they’re really asking. “Travel? Why would you do that?”

Reading list on a Phnom Penh street

This is a perennial question to the vagabond castes, and one I’ve mentioned before. But that’s fine because there are endless reasons, endless answers. Travel means different things to people at different times, and often simultaneously, to ever have a standardized rationale.

Last month was hard. Old burdens of childhood pain showed up for the holidays as they always do, their customary anxiety now equipped with the depression of too much time alone in my silent apartment, often in a queasy sauce of purposelessness, as the dream occupation of last year continues to offer me nothing but rejection, and the newer dream occupation 2.0 wavers in the face of extremist violence. I’m left with a desire to punch everything in the face, balanced by a fatigue that just wants to sleep, but is scared to try.

So a trip to Anywhere sounded pretty fucking fantastic to me.

Change of pace

Travel can be an escape. A refugee flight. I’m well aware of that. That’s what it was for me, for a long time, though I resisted admitting it. I have to laugh at the odds that I’m repeating that denial in the next sentence….but I really don’t think so…

Because I don’t think this was that. I wasn’t running away in Cambodia. But I did happily take a break. A change of scenery, temperature, and temperament. I gratefully lay back in the easy purpose of choosing where to go and making it happen.

But I came back. Fleeing one’s life takes longer than 11 days, and this ticket was round-trip from the get-go.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I don’t have a tidy conclusion. Those are in short supply these days, when my inner landscape is rather roiled, and the world at large seems dominated by deterioration, where the intelligent voices are defining the problems, but the responses seem dominated by the asinine braying of lunatics and extremists.

Ready to go anywhere, I started listing countries, and when both y’all illustrious readers and Lydia jumped on Cambodia, I bought the ticket without pause. Was I driven by intuition, wisdom, or cowardice? I had to go to find out.

Lumps of love, transmitted by wire.

My headphones endorsed the errand by playing the perfect cycling songs as I pedaled downtown to the bank, Toots Thielemans’ “Bossa Nova” gliding right on into Johnny Cash’s “Hey Porter”. We had account data scribbled on an envelope in my pocket, five hundred of your dollars lurking around the ether somewhere reachable, and the perfect cure for a morning of mental mud washing the blech off my spirit.

A venomous dose of intimidation, and a steaming and stanking dollop of why-bother, were little piles of self doubt scat on my shoulders when I started, but they dried in the sunlight, weakened in the rushing air, and were scoured away by the wash of your generosity. I had money to pass on.

I have yet to master bicycling photography, and banks just
ain't pretty, so here's a couple more from the community
center where Alvaro volunteers.

Byzantine bank protocols were navigated with an easy smile nourished by the kindness of the 13 of you who had donated to help rebuild Alvaro's home, to find the best way to send every cent. No one takes cash anymore, but it turns out the best way is still to physically walk a money order down the block.

Colleagues from my Venezuela delegation and others, family, friends, and names I didn't recognize arrived in my inbox over the last week, all stepping up to help put a roof back over a family. The bank teller may have been bored, but I wasn’t.

(The sense of wellbeing y’all gave me endured, kicking the doors off the hinges of the Oakland Parking Citations Assistance Center, and I was the happiest person ever to wait in line to pay an exorbitant parking ticket. Confused the bejeebus out of the clerk.)

Stub of the most satisfying money order in history tucked into my notebook, I grinned my way around the jetstreams of Oakland, the morning’s sick inefficacy forgotten, feeling the flow, reflecting the rhythm. And no one seemed to mind a good mood, especially the woman who honked and waved while her laughter escaped the cracked window when my stoplight dance included a little traffic direction. (John Legend’s “Stereo” just wanted me to tell the turn lane when it was their turn).

Three of five delegates, dancers, musicians, and a magician

My feet were still drumming the earth when I arrived home just now, and what did I find? Two more donors, another lump of love to send Alvaro’s way. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go back and do it again tomorrow.

(If you’d like to add to that errand, the fundraising page is still alive and dancing:  http://www.gofundme.com/AHomeForAlvaro)

(And since Tuesday’s blog pushed ahead of this one, I can update that to FIVE more donors, almost doubling our amount raised, bringing us within $50 of halfway. I’m going to need to charge my ipod for this…)

Why bother blogging?

I'm supposed to be writing a blog right now. Instead, I'm pretending to type while observing the hunched man across the communal table, who looks like Lewis Black fallen on hard times. His hair is greasy and thinning, spots on his amorphous button-up shirt, and a stained paper coffeecup close at hand, even though we're sitting in the coffeeshop.

He looks like a scientist who's spent too much time in the lab. He looks like the parents' least favorite bus driver. He looks like a calm madman, glaring at his crotch as if it holds the answer, and occasionally starting sentences like “I don't know why...” and “It would work if...” but never finishing them, just exploding in sighs and more staring.

Coffee, words, and a postre in El Salvador

Now from his lap he takes a clump of papers, green ink notes and revisions. He's a writer. Of course he's a writer. Crapola. It feels like A Christmas Carol, and he's the Ghost of Careers future. Why would I want to do that? A writer friend’s words come stabbing up from where they lodged in my ear: “You’re young enough, have you considered getting out of this bullshit profession before it’s too late?” Yes I have. Regularly.

Today is just one of those days. When everything is...just not...doable. I picked up the weights for my wee morning exercise, and...put them down again. Once doesn't count. Crunches are usually the easy part, but I lay down on K's old yoga mat and just...lay there. Feeling heavy. One, two. Three. So heavy. Breakfast happened. Cereal. The only crunching I'll do today.

Pollo and palabras in Peru

I should work on something more substantive, but the thought runs rancid in my stomach. Okay, let’s start with a blog. But here I am, almost five years into blogging, aware that whether I spend all day or twenty minutes producing a post, it will debut in a mild spasm of links and email notifications, then live maybe six hours before it withers, fossilized under a layer of sandwich instagrams.

Every now and then I get a notification of a comment in an old blog, and feel a spark of joy: those words live! Then I read the comment and find only google translated spam from accounts with names like Acne Scar Removal and Cheap Nike Air Max.

Havana lunch

(My personal favorite: “Thanks so much and I am taking a look forward to touch you.”)

So when I got a comment last night for a 2012 post about an orphanage in Ecuador, (link) I assumed it was just another spammer. But no! A real human read the post and now wanted to visit Hogar Para Todos. I emailed them the contact info, thinking Now that was a blog worth posting. It got information about something good out to more good people. That is what these e-things are supposed to do.

So that’s one. Then I noticed that one of y'all precious long-time readers had liked nine of my posts in a row. And the best part? The time-stamps showed that she actually read them. And to put frosting on the awesome: she donated to Alvaro's fund at the end of it. Another blog worth posting...

Journaling with mysterious food in Kuala Lampur

And I realized one other thing while rereading the blog about the orphanage. It’s...not great. Not awful, but...I’d write it differently today. So? So I’m not taking an MFA program, and haven’t been able to rummage up a writing group around here, but regular blogging does seem to be having an effect on helping me put words together. Given the more substantial project I’m working on, that alone is reason to continue.

So if old posts might come around the mountain (riding six white horses) and inspire someone in some way...

And if new posts might hold the attentions of other interesting people...

And if the blogging itself helps my main project...

But there's one other important factor: do I enjoy this?

Cai, diary, and Turkish breakfast in Fethiye

Well. My coffee's gone, but a vague smile remains. And somehow I don’t feel quite as heavy as I did this morning... I think I'll keep doing this. And, to help myself and my regular readers, I’m adjusting my posting intentions to every Tuesday and Friday.

And poor tortured Lewis? He never did finish one of those sentences, but when he left a minute ago, there was a certain giddyup in his gait, the ebullience of a man enjoying his life. Maybe this word-stuff isn’t so bad after all, at least, not once you get going.

See you on Friday, when I’ll tell you about the more uplifting rest of the day.

Take the good, take the bad, enjoy the moment

The texture of the thing is smooth, and it has a pleasant earthy stink to it before we light it on fire. It’s also surprisingly light; you’d think something with such a known name (and that conceivably could have cost me $10,000) would weigh more. But in the end, a Cuban cigar is just a little rod of leaves.

I’m not a smoker, never was. Maybe it was those years as a runner, and the preposterous notion of putting corrosive cigarette smoke in lungs that I’d worked so hard to improve. But there’s something about a good cigar, right now, seasoned with the elusive vapor of being Cuban and supposedly illicit, that makes it an essential part of the moment.

And it’s a good moment.

The day’s tasks, some completed and some waiting for tomorrow or next week or never, are set aside and dismissed. I’m here. Today my legs pedaled across miles, my lungs filled with clean air and pollen, car exhaust and song. I ate food both tasty and worthwhile, and reached out to an old friend or two who I’d never meant to lose touch with.

The air is that special summer edition of warm, perfect for shorts and sandals, but no sweat unless you choose it. Seems I’ve lost my girlfriend, and finished losing everything my last one too, but the dog loves me. Sure there are a pair of potentially serious health concerns that won’t be soothed for months yet, but today I feel invincible. Apparently having no verifiable address for five years while you wander the world is a problem when you come back and apply for an apartment, so I may be homeless in three weeks, but right now I’m going to sit on this porch stoop and enjoy the ending of the day.

The beer is cold. My friend and roommate is smoking the second cigar I brought back, semi-forgotten in the depths of my bag as they waved me through customs. Don’t forget to roll it as you smoke. Don’t draw it into the lungs, just hold it in your mouth like a lyric. And what else goes with Cuban cigars better than Cuban music? So put some of that on. Sounds good, good sounds.

The puppy doesn't actually live here, and the worries
won't always be here, either.

Passersby stop to chat. They pet the dogs, who love them for a moment then go back to fetch. This is a neighborhood, a dream we seek. Condensation on the bottles makes my fingertips shine, and the birds seem to sing just for the hell of it.

The worries aren’t solved; it seems that category never really finishes until you die, and right now, in the wrap of sunlight and ease, that’s fine with me. It’ll all work out.

Life is good.

The messenger

Lose your girlfriend? Lose your home? Lose the job you were hoping to start? Lose sight of the how and the who and the where and the what? And the when just seems to stretch forever?

Kinda sucks.

The world I left when I went to Cuba was not the world I came back to find.

And then it’s hard to get out of bed again.

But days just keep marching, stubborn bastards that they are, and forward is the only way you get to go. But it’s not that bad. The universe will remind you that it keeps moving forward in harmony, discordant atonal blaring harmony. So it sends a messenger.

His name is Stanley. He’s...young. He’s...cute. He’s...nonstop.

His world is a big place that seems hostile, but isn’t as bad as it seems, and there’s an awful lot of playful good time in there. Sometimes shit happens that just plain stinks (pleasantly literal for him. What’s in puppy food, anyway?)

Sammy wasn't sure what to make of him

So maybe I can be his apprentice. I don’t know WTF is going on either. Maybe I need some vaccinations, and surely some training, but the world is a chew toy, and in the end, it’s all going to be okay.

See Stanley's lesson via fetch on
the wordpress version of this post

Thank you Stanley.

How do you choose where to go? Ethical Traveler might help.

It's all a big search for updates, I guess.

My computer wanted Windows 8.1, so that's what I gave it. Now it can barely find the internet. What use is a computer without the internet? Even freecell needs it nowadays.

I tried to connect to my old hub. I had some suggestions, thought I'd troubleshot some shit, but I'm still dealing with the old version I guess, software out of date, the new stuff unknowable and incompatible. I'm behind the times.

But I have an event tonight, and the borrowed snazzy jacket to prove it. (Apparently people don't say “sportscoat” anymore?) I'm hoping the agenda includes my future; think that's too much to ask? But there is comfort in the tangible and external. This island will last me until tomorrow. Maybe I should stop renting rooms in Atlantis.

So there's an update. It'll do for today.

Do you daydream about your next trip? Wonder where you should go? Postcard images from all over the world pass through your mind like a screensaver. You can see Victoria Falls, or Windhoek, or lie on the beach in _____! You can almost hear the samba, gnawa, or gamelan. You drool over the enjera, ceviche, and monkey brain options. Well, maybe not the monkey brain.

Or Ais kacang, the Malaysian shaved ice dessert with
beans, corn, and gummy candies.

How do you choose?

I have a suggestion. Someone's troubleshot this one for you.

Every year EthicalTraveler.org publishes a list of The World's Ten Best Ethical Destinations. These are the ten developing countries who are making the best gains in criteria you agree with, like human rights, environmental preservation, and not being total ass*****.

Last summer I went to Myanmar. I never would have gone a couple years ago, in the days of “Don't let your tourist dollars pay for SPDC's bullets” fliers. Aun San Suu Kyi made that one easy, but how can you tell if Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Palau, and Namibia are making similar gains or not? (Yes, no, yes, no.) All that depressing research?

Maybe I'll just go back to Cancun...

Is that a welcoming smile, or fear?

This is the answer you're looking for. Instead of randomly picking a place or going with the easy option, you can go somewhere and feel good about supporting it. You can contribute to an international awareness, on the part of both governments and individuals, that there is a cost and reward basis for behavior. Accountability on an international scale, and you still get to lie on the beach.

The link above takes you to the 2013 rankings. The new ones come out at an event tonight. An event like that merits a snazzy jacket.

Happy Halloween, spaghetti arms!

Spaghetti arms. That term stuck in my craw as a teenager. “I'm a runner, okay? Excess muscle is a detriment in this sport! Among my scrawny runner buddies I'm bulky!”

That illusion lasted until I went to college. I walked into my dorm room the first day to discover my roommate looked like an ancient Greek statue of Perseus. David? Theseus? You get my point.

I tried going to the gym, but dear looorrrrd that's boring! Stand in front of a mirror and watch myself, or watch other people watching each other? I'd rather go for a run. (Rowing was nice though, especially when a gay guy hit on me. “Why thank you! No thank you, but thank you!”)

I later tried rock climbing, since the exercise component there is incidental to the enjoyment. It was a lot of fun (if anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area wants to go rock climbing, give me a call) but I soon learned that the trick to rock climbing is to let your bones carry the weight, not your muscles, and to be careful with your center of balance.

No giant muscles erupted on my arms.

It was better while traveling, since most of the world doesn't have the leisure time to lift weights for no particular purpose, they're busy lifting actual things that need to be lifted. I remember in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, a local guy wanted to give me a hug hello, next to the construction site where he carried bags of concrete mix all day. He was of comparable dimensions to me, but when we clapped a Man Hug on each other, it felt like he was made of sandbags, not flesh.

I've bulked out a little since my runner days (I'm more of a fettuccine now) and have long since come to terms with never being a muscle man or a gym rat. But then a funny thing happened. I moved into a house...with a kickboxing gym in the back bedroom. Muay thai, really.

Yup. It's bachelortastic around here.

I'm still not going to bulk up, but I feel a whole lot better after an hour in there, jumping rope, punching the bag until my arms get too heavy (which happens remarkably fast) then kicking it until my breath burns in my throat (again, unexpectedly immediate).

It also serves as a great decompression space after a couple hours of trying to mentally-constipated attempts at writing, or if I'm, say, frustrated that I didn't come up with a costume for my first Halloween back in the US, nor a place to go tonight, and am feeling like a social failure and borderline loser.

I was moping (with punches!) about my lack of costume until I noticed...I was wearing hand-wraps, boxing gloves, and a borrowed pair of shiny boxing shorts that look absolutely ridiculous on me.

I still don't have any place to go tonight, but that's okay. I've been to parties, and the holiday I'm really looking forward to will be spent with family in four weeks. So there will be a muay thai fighter handing out candy to the neighborhood kids here tonight, and I'm looking forward to it.

(Nobody'd better try any “tricks” though, because I've been working on my right cross...)

What happens to men like Rudi?

Rudi worked as a truck driver for decades, meaning he was on the highways throughout the Sandinista-Contra years. In his mid-fifties he was laid off, and now no one will hire him because he is only four years from retirement, which a new employer would have to pay for.

“At first I stayed home” he told me. “But that was...no good.” He looked down at his feet when he said this, and his voice was quiet. “No good.”

He paused, looked around with tired eyes. His mouth moved a little, but no words came out. His cheeks were sun-lined and rough with a light growth of stubble, turning grey. He doesn’t shave every day anymore. His eyes were dark, watery, but looked at the world with the steadiness of one who knows what his life is, and does not run from it.

“So now I come here. Sometimes somebody will pay me a few cordobas to go pick something up, or take it somewhere...” He trailed off.

Another man, another park,
same Leon afternoons

We sat in silence for a moment, me trying to think of something to say, he lost in memories. Then a sound like violence annihilated the somnolent stillness.

Twice daily, 7:00 AM and 12:00 noon, the city of Leon pays tribute to the cotton factories of the past by blaring the air raid siren that used to summon and dismiss workers. The trees shivered and the pigeons scattered like shrapnel. I imagined the plaster must be flaking off the colonial facade of the cathedral behind me. Rudi and I looked at each other helplessly, eyes squinting shut against the aural assault. Just another thing to be endured.

After all, there's nothing like a mind-erasing factory wail to remind you that you no longer have a job.

Once the echoes in my head subsided, I asked my new friend where the best place was to buy a batido, the fruit smoothies that the gods gave to Latin America out of remorse for the heat, and invited him for one.

Leon's parque central where Rudi spends his days

We walked, Rudi’s steps slow and steady, no need to rush anymore, to a collonaded room where a bored high schooler stood behind a chipped white counter. We ordered two pineapple batidos and sat directly under the ceiling fan. We drank the chunky sweetness and conversed as well as we were able given that my Spanish was still dusting itself off, and he had the thick accent of an elderly local who has lived his whole life in the same place.

When we were done I shook his hand and said goodbye. As I walked away I turned to watch him for a moment and he shuffled back to the park. What happens to men like Rudi?