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.

Friends

Tall and dark, their food was spiced differently and they spoke of a place called Yugoslavia that sounded exotic and sad. But it was all just texture for the aunt, uncle, and two cousins I grew up with. And it didn’t matter at all that instead of a genetic link of ancestry, we shared a history of morning drives towards afternoon picnics before evening dinners and piling into the streetlit car worn out and over-ready for bed. I referred to them as my “parallel family.”

Castle Rock with friends

We’d been family since before I was born. Back when our moms were college roommates. So I showed up for university with eyes wide for the first glimpse of the people who would someday be uncles and aunts to my own kids. No pressure. But impossible expectation is a supplementary explanation for why I am not in touch with anyone from my college years.

Within weeks of school starting, I was in a relationship that devoured most of my hours. Waking and sleeping. I basically lived in her apartment. (Is 15 years too late to send an apologetic fruit basket?) They were seven good years, but when they were over, they were gone with the girlfriend.

That was always my way. My romantic relationship had absolute primacy. Where I spent my time. If my She was unavailable, then I’d call up a friend. Familiar story, tragic mistake, but comfortable in the meantime.

So as I entered this phase of my life (single for the first time since...elementary school?) I resolved to do it differently. I just didn’t know what that would look like.

My turn

It looks like Mondays on rock climbing walls with East Bay friends. Tuesday Lebanese burrito in Dolores Park with my brother and his crew. Wednesday climbing with an amplified set of San Franciscans, before Thursday with my old roommate and his fiance. Friday’s Happy Hour will be well named for the company of friends from middle school, and Saturday we’ll socialize in the farmer’s market sunshine.

And the weekends? Driving to Point Reyes for green hillsides and ocean vistas before watching the sun set into my beloved Pacific Ocean, whose eternal beauty complements mortal friendships, whatever their scale.

Or drive down to Castle Rock to rappel down a granite slab then climb back up, sticking fingers in arachnid crevices and unknowable mammalian dens.

Or up to Tahoe, maybe snowshoeing, or a social maelstrom of mullet wigs, karaoke, and the conviction that no matter how weird the conversation gets, that’s cool.

Tahoe. Made sense at the time.

None of this is a shocking revelation. That friends are good. But that doesn’t lessen their importance. In our Social Media Age, murky medium of social isolation, I want to shout my gratitude for real human contact out into this inhuman ether, knowing it will reach the eyes of friends I’ve never met (yet?), and maybe even stir an additional gathering of friends or two.

Because whether we share genes or not, met in college or on the wall, with smiles or fonts, our lives are made richer by our Parallel Family.

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.”

Gratitude, sadness, and mom

Good morning Mom! How’s it going? Have you had a meditation time already? I’m going to do one at 11:00 if you want to do yours at the same time. I’m going to aim for 10 minutes, but 5 would be okay too.

It is the first day. This Tuesday. A Tuesday. The only one that exists, while we wait for it to vanish. But it’s the Tuesday after last Friday, that day of operation and inauguration, when every lung seemed to be holding what breath it could, waiting to see if the unthinkable would continue to happen.

It did. President Trump. Jesus Christ, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that. I fear I will. Trauma grown normal. And yes, the inauguration happened, followed by even more assault rifle spray of things to be upset about, from alternative facts to the ongoing competition for most unqualified cabinet pick (I have my “winner”).

But brutal circumstance gave me a different main memory for January 20, 2017, the day my mother had her heart surgery. She went in as scheduled, conscious sedation as discussed, and the surgeon did his thing as practiced thousands of times. It all went according to plan. Until it didn’t.

Bronze copy of Michelangelo's Pieta in the Grotto,
looking out over the Willamette River Valley.

The procedure failed. The problem was beyond their reach. I can’t imagine how it felt for my mother, when she came back to awareness and turned to ask the nurse “Did it work?”

How did it feel, when the nurse answered? “No. I’m sorry.”

I don’t want my mom to live forever. That would be a torture beyond reckoning. I just don’t want her to ever die. But here we are, confronted with the benevolent brutality that life ends. All of it. It’s a good thing in theory, but damn it sucks in practice.

But this is too dire. This personal talk of death. This national talk of dissolution. The future has its problems. Its ominous possibility. But today? Today the human spirit is strong. Love is strong. Stronger than doom. I love my mother. I still love my country. And on Saturday my mom brought smiles to everyone she met. And all across the nation the goodness in this country took to the streets to reject intolerance, to embrace support, to deny the divisiveness of a small-souled man who wants us to forget how much we love.

Unity in compassion and concern for each other. Such a beautiful sight. (NBC's photo)

My mom is wonderfully alive. Recovered from her surgery, she has many positive memories still to make. Some small changes can enhance that, and I’m not going to expect her to do them alone. Change doesn’t happen in isolation. Neither does democracy. So I’m going to join every day with a spirit of “What can I do today to foster the health and healing I want to see?”

It won’t solve every problem. No magician here, to polish the future to a paradise shine. But sure beats dwelling in gloom. Health, national or personal, doesn’t happen in an instant or in isolation. And in that interdependency, we are stronger.

Greece, and a benediction on the eve of judgment day

I confess, my 1st impression of Athens was of spray paint.
Ugly tags on buildings once splendid, scattered splatters on
shells that used to be homes, and chemical layers on
anything that used to have a purpose. Kinda dark, I know.

Democracy, theater, and literature. Mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Olive oil, feta, and loincloths. Greece is the birthplace of so many of western civilization’s highest achievements. But I had bandwidth for none of it.

All I could think of was the unthinkable, the pending, ongoing, seemingly unstoppable personal disaster that I somehow needed to fix. The right combination of words, the proper demonstration of the emotion in me, the right something to fix what was wrong. My lady’s flight would land in a few hours, and I had no idea what to do.

Okay so some of it was fun

My pen was useless, journal didn’t want to listen, and voices inside couldn’t agree on what to talk about. It was like Spain in there, everyone talking, no one listening. So I let my feet take over, step by step, looking for something to find.

Found a church. Went inside. Met a man who looked at me from the other side of our linguistic divide. Built a bridge of gestures, smiles, and a half-heft of my camera out of my bag, and he waved his hand in permission.

“Please. Yes. Photo ok.” He grew stern. “Please, five minute only. Then is… Greek economy.” He shrugged and I pretended to understand, until he moved a tapestry to reach the circuit breakers and flipped the lights on.

The Church of St Demetrius Psirri
Athens, Greece

Ah. No money for the electric bill. But economic concerns are no match for Greek hospitality and generosity, possibly part of what got them in the current mess, and certainly fundamental in what will get them out of it.

But I wasn’t thinking about the politics of unity or separation, the psychology of blame and castigation, or the economics of exploitation by the wealthy of the poor and by the poor of themselves. I was in a church. And what a church it was, this neighborhood chapel too unremarkable to show up on any maps.

Glittering chandeliers hung from fresco'd ceilings where angels watched over a gold-leaf landscape of heaven. Censers dripped their residual aromatic prayers, and the paint of ages flaked off the arches of history, all illuminated in the defiantly boisterous light of the electric lightbulb.

Don't you do it. Don't you
start humming Smooth Criminal

I was raised in Protestant simplicity, white walls and minimalist iconography, but here was a density of shining saints slaying dragons and offering their benedictions from behind ornate layers of polished silver. Saints with knowing eyes. A black madonna with a silver hand, and I tried desperately not to think about Michael Jackson’s glove.

It was impressive. But I still had no use for established gods, all of which still looked political. What I found holy was the smile of that man. His desire to show me something he found beautiful, and to give me a positive experience, no reward asked, no sinful motivation, just human kindness.

Now that’s an altar where I would light a candle. Even if it doesn’t solve my problems.

Attack of the anxiety

The human body is a lunatic. Why else would it get up, barely bothering to wake you, install a racing pulse, shaking vision, and burn so many calories that on a not-particularly-warm night you’re standing in your living room dripping sweat?

Or at least, my human body is a lunatic.

I’ve had those anxiety attacks, periodically episodically hellishly, for my entire life. Early on I’d run to my mother’s bedroom, pound on the door and retreat to my own room, waiting for her to come somehow stop the insanity that had wedged itself in my brain. I do not envy her those moments. From the disruption of sleep, which is annoying, to watching your child in terror, which would be much worse.

Then the self-reliance convalescence of adolescence (since babies, being so profoundly helpless, must be fundamentally self-reliant in a world where no comfort zone exists) and I started waiting them out on my own, hands shaking as I moved aside schoolwork to reach whatever might distract me best.

The couple in college were embarrassing. My roommate asked for no explanation at the time, for which I owe him a debt of gratitude and a truckload of amazement. That first one knocked me out of class for a week, then out of town for another, until I could come back medicated.

But I don’t want a chemical crutch, and don’t trust Pharma (even before the current face of punchworthy privilege arrived; in anger the other day I insulted a fellow driver as a Shkreli, and felt immediately bad about it) so after a year I weaned myself off it.

On down through the list of apartments and rented rooms. Hotel rooms here and there, hostel hallways. Those were terrible too. And always the underlying “What If…” that wants to tie me up. What if it happened on a plane? Mustn’t sleep then. What if it happened and I had nowhere to go? And the worst one. What if it didn’t stop?

That one’ll drive you mad. In body and mind.

But as I waited for the dregs of adrenaline to filter back out of my bloodstream, somewhere in the numberless hours of the night just past, I found the familiar thought “That wasn’t so bad.” The reality, never as bad as the fear beforehand. It’s a familiar idea. The dentist, the work engagement, the social situation, none as scary as imagination’s previews.

So that’s my reminder to myself this morning. And hopefully to you too. Your fears are worse than your future. Or rather, your future is better than your fears.

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.