The Grumps don't win

The Venetians built a church specially-designed for Vivaldi. A pair of 14 year old twins can increase my hope for the future. And the reason cows wear bells is because their horns don’t work. Three of the many things I learned during this year of guiding tours of Europe for Rick Steves.

Not Vivaldi's church. This one's in Paris.

When I look back at the year I feel an overarching gratitude and admiration for the people I got to meet and share a trip with. The feeling glows and warms. And then snags. Because this year had something else too. For the first time in my (admittedly less-than-ancient) guide career, I had a tour member who...I don’t even know how to say it. I would not want them on another of my tours.

Rick Steves offers a tour experience far above the sort of shambling boredom I see on other buses and in clusters of clueless curmudgeons blocking the sidewalks and galleries of Europe. Largely, we just draw a fantastic clientele (thank you, PBS!) but part of the magic is our “No Grumps Policy.” The logic of it always made sense to me; negativity is contagious, and if someone’s not happy, they don’t need to be there bringing everyone else down.

In the Forum you can focus on the sun, or that you're standing in history. Your choice.

But it wasn’t until this year that I witnessed how subtle it can be. No overt tirades, nothing tangible enough to justify removal from the group, but as time went by nothing was ever good enough or worth appreciating, and I never once saw a smile. Several local guides recognized it immediately, but I just chalked it up to botox. But when the evaluations came in, I realized it was much worse than that. People who I know had a fantastic time were complaining about the size of the showers etc. It feels clear to me that if this person hadn’t been in there radiating negativity, those people would have brought home another positive memory instead of gripes about shower stalls.

Negative energy is problematically powerful. I sat with the person for one meal and was considering quitting my job by the time dessert came. At the very least, I was ready to sign off the tour as a loss.

Sure the view, whatever. Ugh, do there have to be so many people?

Then something happened. Perhaps inevitable and undoubtedly wonderful. I talked to other tour members. And was restored. I remember one lady in particular that night, enjoying the unexpected fireworks display the town put on, taking unmitigated pleasure in the light and sound and moment shared with the small beach community. The words are forgotten but I remember the healing power in hearing how much fun she was having, what the tour meant to her, and how grateful she was to be on it. I walked away from that chat ready to sign up for 100 tours on the spot.

It's all about how you....frame it.

Her positivity is reflected in the hundreds of tour members I’ve had, with just the one who bummed me out. That’s magnificent. And beyond that, it’s important. Because in a moment where the worst of us is degrading the Oval Office and contaminating the headlines, it’s good to remember that the vast majority of us are beautiful people. I can expand out to all the innumerable niches of Europe, rock climbing walls of San Francisco, classrooms of the IRC, streets of New Delhi and prayer-soaked hallways of Dharamshala, I can expand to embrace all the environments and moments I found this year and in the cast of thousands I see an incredible panoply of human goodness.

So, though the grumps are out there, the lovers and delighters outnumber them by a degree of magnitude that gives me hope. And I didn’t even tell you about the twins. Humanity is beautiful. And I can’t wait to go back to work.

I think that guy's going to need his own post...

So long, blogspot. It's not you, it's we.

Updating another blog, especially while abroad, just doesn't seem to happen much anymore. But I still try to post regularly on vagabondurges.com or my medium page (which courteously informs me that my posts generally range from 2 to 3 minute reads).

Posting about India again tonight...

Living the dream

I had a dream when I was a kid. A literal, “I’m asleep” kind of dream, that is. This isn’t an inspirational post. In it, I’m swimming along the bottom of the pool, my favorite place in all of Childhood’s Kingdom, when I realize I can breathe down there. Not fully, not well, but if I calm down and do it just right, modestly, I can breathe. I remember an infusion of calm and an understanding that everything could be fantastic. Could be better than I’d known to hope for. (It wasn’t until later that I suspected I’d just rolled over and was breathing through my pillow.)

Amsterdam welcomed me my first day

This morning I’m coming up for air. After 21 days of Best of Europe tour-guiding, I’m waking up to a day without appointments, no reservations to confirm or information to convey. Not even a city to depart.

The street is polite vespas and well-dressed Parisians, nothing on my plate but baguette crumbs and the promise of more good food to come, perhaps after a stroll by the Seine? And I remember that dream. Its epiphany that I can do something I really enjoy and get the air I need while doing it. And I realize that’s what I’ve been doing for 21 days.

Swiss Alpine calm

I’ve been swimming, diving into Amsterdam’s historic harbor before turning up the Rhine to reach Austrian Alpine passes, waterfalling down Roman roads to muse about Venetian canals before making my way through old Florence to reach older Rome, just to smile and drift up into Swiss glaciers, a liquid core of calm that persists when I slide down through the vineyards of Burgundy to wash up fully rational on Seine shores.

And I’ve been breathing.

Water was an element of my boyhood joy, and travel is essential for my adult satisfaction. Sharks and me, stop moving and we suffocate. But it’s not a compulsion, not addiction, neither distraction nor delusion. It’s adoration. Adulation. Celebration of our worldwide nation and the strokes that pull us all together.

Islam is supposed to be scary? Me and
the little girl don't buy it. You?

For years I traveled. Helpless before my vagabond urges. It was right for a time, but wrong in the end. Insufficient for the long term, serving nothing but my whims. Now there’s a purpose to my travel. In a world of multimedia capitalists who profit from our fear, who compete for the spectacles that widen our eyes and shrink our horizons, I find something more worthy than mere movement when I take others with me, show them these faces of beauty left here by centuries of human struggle and millennia of natural process.

For twenty one days spread across half a dozen countries we delight in the reality of the places, rooms in our global house, and I watch the tension of the first day dissolve into the ease of the last. Day One I see apprehension when I show them the train track that will reliably bring them home, Day Twenty I drop them off in Paris’s elegant metro maze and say “See you tomorrow” and they’re off without a pause.

And in the calm, when they don’t need me at all, I can imagine them going home, feeling merely tired, to be greeted by the anxious homebound with their pinched brows who desperately inquire “You were in Europe? But weren’t you worried? Didn’t you feel unsafe?”

And in my daydream I see their calm smile, perhaps wearing the appropriate regret for the incidents of the moment, but underneath is the deep understanding that the world is something other than the misconception made up by those make-up talking heads. And my traveling companions ease back to a full library of happy moments, warm welcomes, beautiful humanity and they can shrug off the constipated clench of petty terror. Stories they know better than to buy, now.

Think they wish they'd spent more time fearful and divided?

No, they didn’t feel unsafe. They felt free. If I did my job right. And the memory of every one of their smiles resonates within me, and I feel that dream’s sense of delighted astonishment, astonished delight, and can pull in deep lungfuls of fresh air.

Maybe it’s an inspiration post after all. For me, anyway.

Europe's normalcy and hospitality are waiting, on every boulevard and back street.

Feeling fine and Florentine

“The Tuscan Frying Pan,” Florence was earning its title that day, certified in sweat dripping down the backs and sides of tourists squinting in the Piazza della Signoria, and my hair felt, again, like one of those Russian fur hats. Time for a haircut. And wouldn’t you know it, Florence is the home of my favorite barber.

I went straight for the small shop, undistracted by the Basilica di San Lorenzo where one of my favorite Italians holds wishes on his tomb, not stopping at the old friend of a hotel (taken by a different Rick Steves group, the lucky buggers), and swerving around the periodic bulges of visitors whose shoulders relaxed bit by bit with every lick of their slowly melting gelato. Visciola e fragola? Va bene.

Old Town Florence is a tourism city for sure, and the crowds used to irritate me, but working as a guide has helped me see the ways they’re doing it right (improved traffic laws, cleaning the duomo, and coordinating the many marvelous sites) and given me an increased appreciation of the place and its importance in our collective past. So now they’re not the addled brains of people in my way, they’re international minds growing in appreciation and understanding of the birthplace of the Renaissance rebirth.

But yes, at the moment, I wanted them to move. I needed that haircut. Kindly get the inferno out of my way, signore. Before I get Borgia on your ass.

I made it. The slightly cooler confines of a barbieri who’s been cutting hair here since the 1970s and his colleague with a coif like Grace Jones on an ambitious day. They greeted me with their usual dignified and affable buon giorno.

Scissors snipped, buzzer buzzed, and when the razor had scraped the edges clean I felt like a renewed man, renaissance of the scalp. ready to stand on a pedestal if I must, sling in hand, and face the future with concentration and confidence and just a hint of gel.

Back into that Tuscan sun of fame and infamy, punishing and beautiful, try to escape it but don’t forget you traveled here to see it. Down the canyons of Medici streets, past Strozzi home and Brunelleschi dome, a little slower now, a bit more strut, something lyrical in between the paces. Feeling a tad more Italian.

Florence is a pilgrimage, and I wanted to pay homage to the great ones. Architects, poets, and the family of men who led nations, and they’re just the audience for the names we know. Galileo, Ghiberti, Machiavelli, and Dante, men whose deeds echo and dance and scheme and enlighten down through the centuries.

Then over to stand in front of the tomb of perhaps the greatest artist in human history. It was just me, the cooler air, dust motes painted by stained glass light slanting down through basilica space, and the tomb of Michelangelo Buonarotti.

He looked good. I looked good. Florence looked good. Travel, now that is good. Buon viaggio a tutti.

Tam Coc Bich Dong is even better than it sounds

The swarm of tourists, cameras around necks, visors against the sun, umbrellas against the rain, and socks up to the knees beat me to the entrance. Crud. But they milled a moment, waiting for someone to tell them what to do, so I smiled and slid through them like unfamiliar street food to get in line for a ticket.

I wanted to see Tam Coc-Bích Đông and its flooded caves, but preferably without 70 gawking foreigners. Granted they’d been born closer to this place than I had, but their mass seemed inauthentic, obstructive to the sort of Vietnamese experiences I was seeking. As with all other bajillion tourists, I wanted to be the only one.

The blob of them started oozing towards the boats, but in the unfocused way of passive participants. More of that time-proven tourism technique, aggressive-with-a-smile, and I cut through their shuffling tsunami to the line of waiting skiffs.

“Xxxxzzzz” I have no idea what she said, but the efficient woman pointed me towards the first boat, followed by the two women behind me. Our rower arrived, one of the women in conical hats who’d been chatting in the shade.

In my weeks in Vietnam I’d noticed a trend. Most of the people I saw working were women. The motorbike taxis and barbers were men, but women staffed the shops, hawked in the market, poured the tea, cooked the food, and now, rowed the boats. Most afternoons I’d take a low plastic stool by the side of the street with the men. They’d smoke and play a board game, we’d all drink a beer and share smiling motions before settling in for silent camaraderie. But the work? Women did most of that.

I’m not inclined to tell anyone how to run their culture, but having this lady do all the physical labor while I sat back and relaxed? Just not how I was raised. I accompanied my words of “Can I help you row?” with more useful gestures, and a big smile erupted under the conical hat. She passed forward an oar made from a section of a bucket strapped it to a piece of PVC pipe, and I dug in.

We passed through cave after cave, sometimes leaning low under the sharp karst stalactites and jagged cave mouths. We three visitors got out to explore temples and pathways, then rejoined our hostess in boat 11.

My companions were a mother and daughter from Hanoi, but that’s as far as our gestures could take us. They found it uproarious every time I thanked them in Vietnamese. “Cảm ợn!” they’d cry after I said it, and we’d all grin at each other. (I don’t think it’s supposed to have that dot under the o, but I’m lost in Fontlandia.)

As we moved from place to place, something else became apparent. We were the jet boat superstars of Tam Coc. I don’t really know what I’m doing with an oar, but it’s not hard to fly past everyone else when they’re not helping. Boat after boat of fit young men, doing nothing. It was weird.

My mother and daughter friends loved it. “Oh yeah!” the daughter would laugh and pump her fist every time we passed another boat, especially when they’d take up oars and try to race us, splashing ineffectually before falling behind. I admit it was a bit of an ego stroke for me, but more importantly, it was just fun. My Vietnamese ladies and I, out for a cruise on the cool green waters of Tam Coc, our laughter bumping around the karst canyons.

That set the tone for my time in Ninh Binh, smiles and Vietnamese encounters. A day-trip from Hanoi, it had its tourist enclaves, but if I avoided those I’d go days without seeing another white face. (It was a great place for local kids wanting to practice English.)

Yes, Ninh Binh was my semi-secret town, discovered enough to have good, cheap hotels, but not railroaded by tourism. Just as long as Hollywood didn’t come along and film a major blockbuster action movie in its gorgeous scenery.

Dang.

Patagonia? Nepal? Justin Bieber?

Italy gives 18 year olds 500 euros (~$540) for “cultural activities.” Museums, monuments, or sure, Justin Bieber concerts. With youth unemployment around 40% and a political system that doesn’t seem to give a merda about them, the program seeks to connect young males (let’s be honest) to western culture, hopefully protecting them from the siren calls of extremism.

This is supposed to LESSEN extremism?

It’s an interesting tool against the dissolution threatening most of the world after generations of “more money for the few.” But I’m especially interested since I’ll be taking another couple groups of fellow travelers through Europe in a few weeks. Tour season is back, and it’s occupying my entire horizon. Okay, most of the horizon. A little part of me is aware that I’ll finish in Paris on July 1, and wants to know where I’m going after that.

Back to California for family, friendships, and teaching? Easy laundry and my own bed. Perhaps writing.

Palate cleanser. Aaaaah. Nepal.

Or… I could go back to Nepal. I loved it there, but what would I do without those schools to teach in? Post-earthquake efforts and Annapurna temptations...

Patagonia’s been on the list for awhile, but I don’t really love three consecutive winters, and I don’t think I’d have enough time to do it justice.

Or I could finally attend to the gaping hole in my travel experience. The sine qua non of passport satisfaction. The filthy crown jewel of international experience. That is, I could go to India. July, possibly arriving just before the monsoon starts, experiencing the infamous heat and skin-crawling pre-wash stick of those last broiling days, then rinsed clean by the falling water of the Indian Ocean, refreshing the colors and transforming the thirsty landscape.

Or...well...or anything else on earth, more or less. With no romantic artery to rupture, the veins of my connections are elastic, and they say it’s all an oyster now.

So? Where should I go from Paris on July 1?

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?”

I want more women in my pocket

Estonian kroon

The pulled pork sandwich was delicious, the bun warm on fingertips rubbed safe-cracking sensitive by a good night of rock climbing. Then the best part of these nights: sitting around a table with a good group of friends. Now it was time to pay, and a multimedia presentation of plastic cards and paper bills fluttered onto the table.

“Who is on your money?” asked the visiting German. And I couldn’t resist. Ever since I found Estonia’s money adorned by painters, scientists, and chess players, I’ve been aware of our US proclivities.

“Our money has the presidents who killed the most people,” I had to point out.

The rest of the (short) post, and why Quakers, escaped slaves, and Joaquin Phoenix can help us redefine who we consider heroes on today's vagabondurges.com post, here.

An Athens inside

My socks had been cotton bayous in my tired shoes since leaving the hotel and I wanted nothing more than to lay down and read a book. But if it might be your only day in Athens, you have to walk up to the Acropolis. So I did.

View of Athens from near the church

Up stone streets where musicians played and babies sang, crowds of Greeks and visitors sweating in the same language, and onto the slopes of that historic place. Not yet to the big names, I came across a small church. Small. Too small to show up on any google map I can find.

Inside was cool and calm. Pillars and arches, some older than others, history’s refurbishment, and a few paintings whose holy figures have mattered much to many over the centuries.

I’m not much for dogma, and organized religion sometimes strikes me as distractions from any core message they purport to contain, but this place felt good, cool on a hot day, calm in a roiled month. I took a photo, then just relaxed to breathe the stillness within stone walls. It was just what I needed.

My wee chapel inside

And two tourists showed up, overly loud American conversation, clicking cell phone photos as they scanned for anything worth instagramming. Smacks of chewing gum and “OMG Sarah” clashed off the corners that had been quiet and they barged through behind the altar wall without any pause for deference or thought.

Bustled around, blabbered and dithered, then went on their youthful way. The lithic peace came back immediately. It hadn’t left. The calm of a longer perspective was there the whole time, no matter what jangling discordance of the moment intruded.

That’s how I’m trying to hold my soul today, as an Attorney General perjures himself and his party doesn’t seem to mind, as a sinister foreign plot contaminates my government, who receives it with open arms, and as common sense and human decency seem inadmissible to the court of public opinion.

They’ll probably bustle right back out again. In the meantime, I care, but I have within me a geologic permanence, as far as such things as stone can go. Quiet corridors of time that have echoed with centuries of errors and misfortune but come out sacred anyway.

Plus it’s Friday and life is good. Enjoy your weekends, my friends!

A gift from a fellow traveler

It was another vacation weekend. Sitting on the beach with two of my favorite people, my telephone far away, unchecked, the madness of the modern moment unimportant before the relentless majesty of an ocean.

Then back to this side of reality, the profanities of each day’s presidential manipulations and depredations. Trump standing in front of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, “This plane, as you know, was built right here in the great state of South Carolina. Our goal as a nation must be to rely on less imports and more products made here in the USA.”

Because it doesn’t matter to him that the fuselage comes from Italy. The wings from Japan. Passenger doors from France. That Boeing would suffer bigly under his backward agenda of tariffs and isolationism. He doesn’t understand or care that modern reality is not one of warring city-states but of progress through cooperation. The sad shriveled soul of an insecure narcissist cannot fathom cooperation or trust. They are not in his nature, and I pity the human in him.

But in the meantime he’s trashing the rest of us. And my mind wants to go back and hide on that beach...watching the waves...eating that sandwich...hearing the laughter and words of loved ones…

But what’s going on matters. And it’s bleak, in reality and in the headlines. So it was all the more precious to get an email from a former tour member:

Paris is picnics on the Seine.
Whether you're wearing a hijab or not.

“I thought of you today when I read about Trump’s bashing of Paris. I want you to know that the Paris you showed (my husband), me, and the rest of our wonderful group was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life...the amazing sites, the rich history, the art, the kindness of the people and well, of course, the food and wine. While Trump’s distortion of reality makes me feel quite hopeless at times, I know first-hand that his ‘alternate reality’ is dead wrong--thanks to you.”

And suddenly the sun feels warmer, my heart feels lighter, and I feel connected with the real human spirit, which is welcoming, encompassing, and kind. Which seeks to understand and support, not belittle and blame. Which is exactly the understanding we seek to foster on Rick Steves tours. It's immensely gratifying to know I succeeded at least once.

85% of those Dreamliners are sold overseas, and each one can carry about 300 people like my tour members towards greater understanding of each other, community with each other, peace with ourselves.

It’s still important to take short breaks from the dire headlines. But even more important to remember that they are not the full story.

Change of plans

The suspense is over. Trump’s vision of intolerance, division, and suspicion without understanding has won this battle. That’s what I see on the official form stating that I, as a US citizen, have not been granted a visa to visit the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It sucks. I was supposed to leave this Saturday. Think they’ll refund my flights?

The richness and beauty of Iran are plenty of reason to go, but that was just the beginning. To give a little business to my Turkish friends whose livelihood has been annihilated by world events was also a good reason. But most of all, can you imagine a more important time to travel than right now?

Right now, when our petulant toddler tyrant is stomping around the White House and the headlines doing daily damage to peace, hope, and the fabric of international society. Right now, when extremists on their fringes want us to mistrust and misunderstand each other. When the continued barrage of sinister manipulation relies on us not knowing better than to trust their insults and depredations. Can you imagine a more important time to go see the reality of our shared human nature?

Now is a very good time to go to Iran. Now is an essential time to go to Iran. But now is, apparently, an impossible time to go to Iran. And it’s breaking my heart.

Trump issued his anti-human, make America sinister again executive order, and Iran reciprocated. I can’t really blame them. A number of countries follow the quid pro quo principle, identical visa fees & restrictions etc. These countries are the most exorbitant and arduous to enter, that many of us tend to avoid. Makes sense, but sucks anyway. Barriers to mutual human comprehension and affection.

It’s rainy, I feel a little sick, and the forces of intolerance seem to be winning the future right now. Terribly tempting to get back in bed and hibernate until joy comes back or we sink into the sea.

Except I love the rain. Always have. Since childhood, running out to sit in the car to hear it better. And that subtle disturbance in the back of my throat isn’t a cold, it’s my body processing the last of the libations and inhalations of a Portland celebration. Manifest joy. And the pinch-mouthed forces that want to divide us? The Trumps and Islamophobes? Are they winning?

Yes. The battle. Because we let them make it a battle. But that’s inaccurate. Human society is not a battle. Human society is growth. It’s a plant, not a weed-whacker. Abundance, not violence. Progression, not transgression. The human character is built of love and kindness, it takes trauma to twist it away from that. And Trump is definitely trauma.

Unfortunately, damage is cyclical, hereditary, and easy. Easy as a stamp on a piece of paper. So I’m not going to Iran next week. But this is more important than my travel plans. This is the world we want to live in, aggressive or progressive, our choice.  So I’m going to stay here, nurture my kindness in the face of presidential bitterness, and wait until I can go. I will go to Iran. When reason returns. I’m looking forward to it already.