Mercurial madness, retrograde riots

Congratulations, my friends. We survived another one. In that last post, I said something about the sun waiting in line for its macchiato on Mercury. Luckily for all of us, I was just going for the alliteration, because if it really had been on that erstwhile planet, there would have been no dawn that day, the sun arriving late, unable to call and tell us why, all its plans gone out of orbit.

Frickin Mercury, man. Always going retrograde.

Problems with communication and travel?
Signs might as well be in Icelandic then.

I don’t know a whole Hecate of a lot about astrology, but I have learned, the hard way, that when Mercury goes retrograde, maybe three times per year and lasting about three weeks each time, everything goes heels over head. These f’ed up weeks are characterized by miscommunication, transportation screwups, and plans generally going awry.

Do not sign contracts when Mercury is retrograde, cuz you’re misreading the fine print. Don’t buy new gadgets or appliances, cuz they’re going to have problems. And just to be safe, don’t travel, or try to talk to people. Just don’t leave your house. Be a Hermes Hermit.

Miscommunication and travel problems? Mercury Retrogrades are nature’s way of beating up on travel writers, since otherwise that life is absolutely as glorious as one would think it is if they’ve never tried it. Good thing I reapportioned my wordly ambitions, but those weeks are a good time to hunker down and just survive anyway. Batten the hatches, matey.

This year, the first day of the retrograde announced its arrival by putting my phone in airplane mode in the middle of the night, assisting me in missing plans to ride across the Bay Bridge with a friend. The next weekend a guy’s camping trip was weaned down to two of us by transportation and communication problems, that week an epic miscommunicationfest sent a friendship off the rails, a sister returning to Holland had all flights delayed, and bus irregularities abounded, making me late for appointments twice in three days.

I admit, I’m always 5-10 minutes late, but these times it wasn’t my fault. *shakes fist at the heavens*

I was going to use a photo of Mercury from Rome, but my
external hard drive isn't working right, so here's Ephesus
looking confused. Is it tomorrow yet?

It’s useful to know when Mercury’s gone bass-ackwards again. When the bus driver pulled up to the stop, turned the sign to “Out of Service” and said “I got an accident back there” with a thumb jerk over his shoulder, while everyone gushed out of the bus like explosive diarrhea, I didn’t have to ask for the nasty details, I could just shake my head, mutter “Mercury retrograde” and adjust my expectations. Arriving an hour late is still arriving.

I adjusted them further when my ipod decided to auto-erase all my songs and podcasts, leaving me auditorily at the mercy of the girl watching endless youtube videos about make-up products and how, like, totally amazing and stuff they are? Did I mention that technology doesn’t work well during a retrograde? I found sanity through the incorruptible goodness of a book until I arrived at the train station, where I took out the computer to investigate the ipod...and found that the computer had broken too.

Books books books! I frickin love books! No wiring no software no chicanery books!

But now we can all breathe a sigh of relief: it’s over. Or so say certain communications that traveled to me…

Wait. That’s an awkward sentence. Poorly communicated. Let me double check...damnit!

Mercury is in retrograde for one more day. Hold on. It’ll be over soon.

Why I travel.

Take me back.

Take me back to rotting garbage on dirty streets, where water is a luxury and stink a certainty. I want to feel unwashed and threadbare sheets on hard beds, and pay more than I think I should for it. I want suspicious food, where I savor every bite, knowing it might be the one that ruins the next day. I want to take nothing for granted, be vulnerable and love everyone who shows me kindness.

I want to be concerned about bed bugs, so I remember their absence. I want to be aware of the malarial menace of mosquitoes, so that I notice when my ankles are unblemished.

I want to be foreign to the irritation I felt on the BART train yesterday, “delayed” a couple irrelevant seconds by the guy who was too busy talking on his phone to put his ticket in correctly. I want to feel only incomprehension for the ambient discontent of the spoiled and comfortable, knowing that they are me. I want to stay shocked that people complain and grimace while they wait a few minutes for delicious, safe, nutritious food, prepared by people they won't even bother to thank, unmindful of the insane miracle that brings it to us, every single god-blessamned day.

That work, those wages...
a foreign experience

I want to look at those wrinkles everyone here has between their eyes, the scowl of the perpetually concerned, the mouths of unspecified tension, and feel a wash of gratitude that cleans my face and lifts my lips. I want to be aware of the masses that have so little, every country on Earth. I want to remember how scarce and precious food was for all of human history except the past tiny sliver, invisible on the timeline, and how horrifically we will return to that state...probably sooner than we realize, so that I can stand in awe in a grocery store again, unrushed, uncritical, reverent.

I want to move slowly.

I want to disconnect.

I want to be away from screens. I want to read a book.

I want to talk to strangers.

Here I have friends, but move among the distrusted, suspicious without reason, fearful until proven innocent. There is little danger here. Screw the newspapers, the evening news is a betrayal.

There I will know no one, but might move among possibility, alert and careful, but accessible and listening. The danger is much higher there. The intimacy with human brutality and human kindness, experiential and firsthand, the latter outnumbering the former, despite brutality's instant potency.

Here I can go in comfort. I can pass my day easily, accomplishing tasks in virtual reality, e-living in binary code that I can never touch, my life erased by a magnet.

There every hour will be uncertain, the world so foreign, so unknowable, that it might touch me at any minute. It will be under my fingernails and between my toes. Present on my skin and stained into my clothes. It's possible I will bleed. It's possible I will help, just a little. It's possible I will reach new magnitudes of suffering, or experience joy so visceral you'd have to pay a fortune to chase it.

Take me back. I want to travel.

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.

How do you tell?

Homeless in Bangkok, now there's stress

Am I the only one who...?

I get the feeling that no matter how one finishes that sentence, the answer is an emphatic “no.” I doubt there are any problems humans have that are unique to themselves. And there are probably a few dozen blogs about each issue too.

Wordpress: flailing therapy for all. (Trademark. Call me if you want to buy the rights, wordpress, I'm a reasonable man.)

Malaysian rickshaw driver: more difficult life, better sleep

So I bet I'm not the only one who has trouble figuring out why they're stressed. Am I? Life is stress, I realize that (quit your whining, boy!), but even though I can think of a few decent reasons why, I am still surprised at waking up every morning with sore teeth and an exhausted jaw.

This morning I got up and was feeding our porch cat when I found a little sand grain of chipped tooth rattling around my molar's neighborhood. That can't be good.

Jerusalem cat wants to know what your deal is

And things are going well, damnit! What inner part of me can't see that?

I just read an account of slavery in Mauritania. Sweet Jeebus. And even my own memories of lifein Zambia (and researching the riots that broke out a few months after we left where three men were burned alive) remind me of how insanely lucky I am. So why the tension?

How do you tell what's bothering you?