Wanderings

Desilusionado

2009-07-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

Al principio, aunque yo deseaba que el golpe de estado no occurriera, no apoyaba el retorno de Mel. Pensaba que el gobierno nuevo guardaba la paz, y el retorno el Mel instigaría violencia. Pero ahora es difícil seguir apoyando a Micheletti por la campaña de engaño y porque él desatiende su deber como mandatario.

Me parece que el engaño ha crecido hasta un nivel absurdo. Hoy el Heraldo dice que Chávez dirigió la manifestación cerca del aeropuerto en Tegus el domingo, lo que resultó con la muerte de un joven de 19 años. Los que apoyan a Mel manifestaban para exigir que el ejército permitiera aterrizar la aeronave que llevaba Mel, pero no lo lograron. Los soldados impidieron la pista y el avión no podía aterrizar. Pero hubo un enfrentamiento entre los manifestantes y los soldados, y le dispararon al joven. Dice el Heraldo que realmente, Chávez es responsable por la muerte del joven. Ayer, había una foto de Chávez señalando al televisor, y algo estuvo escrito en la pizarra. Dijo el Heraldo que la escritura era un código para una operación militar – dijo que Chávez planeaba una masacre.

Hoy escriben, “En el país, Chávez ha sido responsabilizado por dirigir una operación militar que tenía por objetivo que los manifestantes ingresaran a la pista de Toncontín, sin importar que la misma era custodiada por militares y policías. El resultado de esta operación fue un frustrado aterrizaje de Zelaya Rosales y la muerte de un joven de 19 años.”

Una operación militar, dice. ¿De veras?

1) ¿Cómo podría dirigir Chávez esta operación que ocurrió en Honduras desde Venezuela?

2) ¿Cómo podía recibir el Heraldo esta foto en el momento exacto que Chávez señaló al televisor? He visto que el Heraldo usa las mismas fotos en días distintos con leyendas distintas, entonces tengo dudas cuando veo fotos como esta.

Esta cosa con Chávez no tiene sentido, y no lo creo.

El Heraldo ya casi no tiene credibilidad, y me puse escéptico por esto. Entonces, cuando dice hoy que Nicaragua negó permiso de sobrevuelo a su espacio aéreo, estoy escéptico. Hay una copia de una carta que Carlos Salazar, el director general del Instituto Nicaragüense de Aeronáutica Civil, supuestamente envió al Coronel Sánchez del las fuerzas armadas de Honduras. La carta dice que Nicaragua niega el permiso porque el 28 de junio cuando sacaron a Mel por avión para Costa Ricas, lo hizo sin permiso - Honduras no le solicitó permiso a Nicaragua.

Esto no es irrazonable, pero ya no me inclino a creer al Heraldo en seguida. También estoy escéptico porque ya sé que Micheletti quiere que el pueblo hondureño piense que los gobiernos de Nicaragua y Venezuela son enemigos de Honduras. Entonces me deja con algunas preguntas. Primero, ¿por qué necesita enseñar esta carta como prueba de las acciones del gobierno nicaragüense? Segunda, ¿por qué están escritas en la carta frases como “Viva Nicaragua Libre!” y “El pueblo, presidente!”? Esta carta me parece muy desconfiada.

Además del engaño, hay el hecho de las escuelas públicas están cerradas todavía – no hay clases. Sé que no fue decidido por Micheletti; hay una huelga de la dirigencia magisterial (los dirigentes de los maestros de las escuelas públicas). Hay un microeditorial titulado “¿Y las clases?” en el Heraldo hoy que dice,

“No solo es una pena, sino una vergüenza la actitud de la dirigencia magisterial que ha preferido las calles, el molote y el tumulto en lugar de cumplir su misión: educar a nuestra niñez y juventud. Como si eso fuera poco, es condenable que los centros educativos estén convertidos en refugio de aquellos que han hecho de las vías públicas su escenario de lucha.”

Si yo fuera el presidente, abrir las escuelas de nuevo sería la primera cosa en que centraría mi atención. Pero no he leído nada sobre diálogos entre Micheletti y la dirigencia magisterial. Me parece que él pasa todo su tiempo anunciando la legitimidad del gobierno nuevo y haciendo enemigos de Nicaragua y Venezuela. (¿Mencioné yo que casi después de cada comercial hay un comercial anunciando la paz que existe en Honduras y repudiando los intentos de Chávez para violar su soberanía? Y escuché que Micheletti paga por estos comerciales.) Entonces Micheletti no tiene tiempo para preocuparse con la educación de la juventud. Pues, no digo que ahora quiero que Mel regrese, solo digo que la situación está bien jodida.

¿Quién Sabe?

2009-07-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

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Es difícil encontrar la verdad. Cada persona tiene su propia interpretación de lo que pasa; interpretaciones las cuales son a menudo completamente contradictorias (pero claro que la gente es así en todas partes del mundo). Si una persona opone a Mel, dice que la sustitución fue legal y que todo el pueblo hondureño apoya al gobierno nuevo de Micheletti. También dice que Mel quería continuar como presidente, y por eso no se debe ser permitido a regresar.

Si una persona apoya a Mel, dice que la sustitución fue un golpe de estado, fue ilegal, y dice que mucha gente quiere que Mel regrese. Dice que Mel no quería continuar, solo quería ayudar al pueblo. Y claro que dice que Mel no hizo los delitos de que le acusan lo demás. Cuando se pregunta a un partidario de Mel ¿qué opina de las manifestaciones que respaldan al gobierno nuevo?, contestará que los manifestantes reciben pisto para manifestar. Entonces, ¿cómo se puede saber si hay respaldo para el nuevo gobierno de verdad?

Otra cosa – el salario mínimo (claro que es una tema muy debatida en todas partes también). Mel lo subió y ahora muchas personas lo discuten - ¿era bueno o malo? Los que oponen a Mel dicen que muchos empresarios tenían que despedir a unos empleados porque ya no les podían pagar, y ahora subió el nivel de desempleo. Pero los partidarios de Mel dicen que los empresarios son tacaños – pueden pagar pero no quieren. Entonces, ¿a quién debo creer?

Engaño

2009-07-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

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Antes del cambio de gobierno del 28 de junio, el asunto más discutido era, por supuesto, la cuarta urna. (Si no saben que era la cuarta urna, era una encuesta para decidir si habría un referéndum en las elecciones de noviembre para crear una comisión constitucional). Habían manifestaciones masivas de gente que la apoyaban y de gente que no la apoyaban, pero no se habría sabido si se leyera solo un periódico. Si se leyera La Tribuna, se habría pensado que todo el mundo apoyara la cuarta urna, pero si se leyera El Heraldo, se habría pensado que todo el mundo se la oponía.

Al principio cuando yo leía los dos periódicos, estaba confundido. Las fotos en La Tribuna mostraban multitudes vestidos en rojo - el color del partido Liberal y de Presidente Zelaya. Pero en las fotos del Heraldo casi no se podían encontrar ni a una sola persona vestida en rojo; allá todos llevaban azul, el color del partido Nacional y los que oponían a Mel. Pensé que miraba fotos de países distintos. Pregunté a mi amigo Leví, quien me explicó que La Tribuna es casi un brazo del Mel, y solo escribe artículos que lo respaldan.

Por unos días, yo le creía a Leví, pero pronto me di cuenta de que El Heraldo es casi un brazo del partido Nacional. Cada día tras el golpe, El Heraldo corrió titulares como "Todos Apoyan al Gobierno Nuevo," y "El Pueblo Hondureño Manifesta en Desfiles su Respaldo Para el Derrocamiento de Mel." Además, en vez de escribir por ejemplo "Micheletti dice que la destitución de Mel y la transición del gobierno fueron completamente legal y constitucional," los periodistas del Heraldo solamente escriben "La destitución de Mel y su sustitución con Micheletti fueron completamente legal y constitucional," como si decir que todo el mundo está de acuerdo que fueron legal y constitucional - que no hay ninguna duda

Miren hoy el artículo titulado"Violación del espasio aéreo fue dirigida por Hugo Chavez:"

"Una operación con características militares, dirigida desde Caracas, fue la amenazante violación del espacio aéreo hondureño del jet venezolano en el que supuestamente el ex presidente Manuel Zelaya pretendió llegar a la capital.

"Medio escritos internacionales llegan a esa conclusión y destacan que el gobernante de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, coordinó la acción y celebró que “hemos logrado lo que queríamos”, pese a que las manifestaciones que se produjeron por simpatizantes de Zelaya dejaron un muerto."

No sé si lo puedo creer (realmente, creo que no). Micheletti nos ha estado contando de las tropas nicaragüenses cerca de la frontera hondureña, y pidió al Presidente Ortega (de Nicaragua) que no las mandara que cruzaran la frontera, que el Pres. Ortega no violara la soberanía de Honduras. Pero cuando Micheletti fue interrogado, sobre esto, dijo que no piensa que hay muchas tropas, y no piensa que el Pres. Ortega las está dirigiendo. Con esta contradicción, me parece que el gobierno vigente de Honduras trata de asustar al pueblo hondureño, de crear una imagen de un mundo amenazador, para que entonces pueda crear una imagen del gobierno de Micheletti como el protector de la gente. También especialmente quiere demonizar a los partidarios de Mel, como Chávez y Ortega. Es como una campaña de engaño para legitimizar el gobierno nuevo en la mente del pueblo.

Pues, hay mucha engaño también en los medios de comunicación de Los EE UU también, pero...no sé, este tipo de engaño me pone preocupado. Pienso que por lo menos hay maneras de encontrar la verdad imparcial en los EE UU, pero aquí no estoy seguro. Claro que hay un montón de gente que está feliz con la destitución de Mel, pero sé que también hay quienes todavía apoyan a Mel, pero tienen miedo de manifestar porque no quieren ser atacados . Y casi nadie no cuenta la historia de ellos. Cuando las personas tienen miedo de decir lo que sienten, y el gobierno trata de engañar el pueblo que no existe nadie contra ellos, esto me preocupa.

Pedir Respeto a la Democracia

2009-07-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

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Haz clic aquí para leer las ultimas noticias de CNN sobre el crisis en Honduras

Pues, claro que no conozco casi nada de la constitución de Honduras ni de la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) ni de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU). Entonces no estoy sequro si estoy de acuerdo con la decisión de la OEA y la ONU o no, pero la decisión me parece un poco extraño. Pidieron a Honduras respeto a la democracia, y exigieron que se restituya a Mel al cargo de Presidente adentro de 72 horas.

Mira, si el ejército tomara control del gobierno y destituyera a Mel sin escuchar al gobierno, sería una cosa. En ese caso, yo entendería si la ONU exigiera que se restituya a Mel. Pero, aunque ayer escuché algunas palabras militantes, realmente todavía parece que el gobierno está sobre el ejército. Entiendo que problamente el Congreso Nacional y la Corte Suprema de Justicia no siguieron el proceso correcto para destituir a un presidente, y debe haber un proceso juicio para decidir si Mel es culpable de delitos...pero ambos el CN y la Corte Suprema votaron destituir a Mel y después el CN siguió el proceso constitucional para escoger un presidente nuevo. Y la mayoría de la gente aquí apoya a Micheletti.

Además, es mejor analizar la situación para establecer lo que promovería seguridad y reduciría violencia, ¿no? Es posible que lo que es correcto no es lo que es mejor para el pueblo hondureño. Es posible que si se intentara en restituir a Mel, habría más protestas, más disturbios, y más violencia. No sirve para pedir respeto a la democracia (por la gente) y después causar violencia a la gente.

Aquí, hubo una manifestación pequeña esta mañana, pero nada más. (y la manifestación aquí fue en respaldo al presidente nuevo). Ya Mel no viene mañana a Honduras; dice que va a regresar el sábado. Vamos a ver si el regresa con fuerzas de la ONU y si le capturan.

Quizás Me Equivoqué

2009-06-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

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No hay un dicho igual en español, pero en inglés yo diría que quizás hablé demasiado pronto cuando dije ayer que todo estaba tranquilo. Al principio, me parecía que sí todo estaba tranquilo, porque no había violencia, el Congreso Nacional todavia tenía poder sobre las Fuerzas Armadas, y Roberto Micheletti ha asumado el cargo de Presidente. Pero ahora me temo que el domingo solo fue el comienzo.

Desde la mañana de ayer, ha habido muchas manifestaciones y también varias amenzas por distintos políticos. Hoy por la mañana se aglomeró un muchedumbre en Tegucigalpa en la plaza cívica Francisco Morazán. Cuando encendí el televisor, un general de las Fuerzas Armadas daba un discurso a la multitudinaria concentración - era el jefe del Estado Mayor Conjunto Romeo Váquez Velásquez. Gen. Vásquez gritaba palabras patrióticas a los 15,000 manifestantes que aclamaban con emoción. Todos meneaban banderas hondureñas o llevaban camisas de los colores nacionales para demostrar su respaldo al gobierno nuevo. Me alegré de ver que no intentaban en hacer daño a los funcionarios, pero ¿por qué aclamaban al jefe de las Fuerzas Armadas? Y lo que es más, cuando el Presidente Micheletti salió para pronunciar un discurso, la primera cosa que hizo fue celebrar las acciones de los militares. "Felicitamos a los héroes de esta jornada: nuestro ejército hondureño", dijo él, lo que fue recibido con muchos aplausos.

Me confundí, porque pensaba que el papel que desempeñó el ejército fue más pequeño. ¿Se empieza a rendir culto al Gen. Vásquez? No tengo miedo de un gobierno nuevo; lo que me temo es un gobierno militar. Lo más peligroso es si el ejército esté sobre el Congreso Nacional y el Presidente. Micheletti debe sea el mandatario, no Gen. Vásquez. Micheletti dijo algo más que me asusta. Al parecer, Hugo Chavez tenía planes de venir a Honduras (aunque ya ha decido que no), y la mayoría de los hondureños lo odían. Micheletti dijo a Chavez, "Señor en este país de las cinco estrellas de la bandera azul, somos 7 millones y medio de soldados." Espero que no sea la verdad.

Esa manifestación no era la única hoy; también había protestas contra el gobierno nuevo. Habían enfrentamientos entre estudiantes protestantes y las fuerzas militares protegiendo la sede del Presidente Micheletti. Solo había veinticinco heridos, pero los conflictos causaron que los empresarios cerraron las empresas. Además, hay huelgas de muchos trabajadores en el país entero, incluso los profesores. No hay paso de Olancho (donde estoy) a Tegucigalpa, y por eso mi amiga tenía problemas para llegar a Tegucigalpa esta mañana. Su vuelo fue hoy, pero no estoy seguro si pudo subir al avion.

También me preocupo por lo que dijeron La Organización de las Naciones Unidas, que no reconocen al gobierno nuevo. Exigieron que el gobierno hondureño restituya al cargo de mandatorio a Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya está en los Estados Unidos para una reunión extraordinaria de la Organización de los Estados Americanos, y afirmó que las Fuerzas Armadas le acatará cuando regrese. Pero el Fiscal General del Estado de Honduras giró una orden de captura internacional contra Zelaya. Dijo que si regrese Zelaya, va a meterle preso.

Aquí, todavía todo me parece tranquilo, pero Oscar me llamó para decir me que no saliera de la casa. Dijo algo de militares en la calle pero no los vi. Ahorita estoy al lado de mi casa y no salí por si acaso, pero realmente no sé si está peligroso or no. También hay toque de queda esta noche, entonces me tengo que ir, pero escribiré más mañana.

¿Golpe de Estado?

2009-06-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

Traducirla en español

If this is what a golpe de estado (a coup d'état) is like, I don't really see what all the fuss is about. Frankly, what transpired yesterday in Honduras couldn't have been much more peaceful. Not a single shot was fired, nor was anyone killed (although there were rumors for quite some time that the mother of now ex-president Manuel Zelaya had a heart attack when she was kidnapped). I did see some soldiers here in Jutilcalpa - about ten walking down a street in the morning and an army truck pass by my street in the evening, but there was no trouble at all. Honestly, it could have been a lot worse.

And it certainly seemed like it was going to be worse when I first woke up. At about 7AM Sunday morning, I passed by my landlord's brother on the way to the bathroom, who informed me of the coup. "It's really bad," he said. "The military kidnapped the president and his family, and they've cut out all electricity to prevent any new signals from reaching countries outside of Honduras. We have no power, and we can't make calls to the U.S. The scary part is that Hugo Chavez pledged support for President Zelaya ("Mel"), and said he would send Venezuelan troops if Mel needed help." The next person I spoke with informed me that Venezuelan troops and Nicaraguan troops had already arrived in Guatemala and were at the Honduran Border, preparing to enter. "No, no, they're in Nicaragua," my friend Ricardo corrected me. "And there have already been skirmishes on the border." His daugther argued that we don't really know for sure because "they're" not letting us hear any news (the infamous "they") "It's a conspiracy!" she exclaimed.

Thus is the nature of trying to parse through what the hell is happening in Honduras. (Though I'm not sure it's any different than in the U.S. where you also get a dozen different versions of the story depending on who you talk to). It turned out by the end of the day that there was no organizing of Nicaraguan or Venezuelan forces, nor had their been any skirmishes. Moreover, The lapse in electricity could have been attributed to normal everyday occurences (it is not uncommon to lose power here in Juticalpa), rather than a conspiracy to prevent news from getting out. I had no problem using my cell phone to call the U.S. yesterday. But such is human nature - we love to over-dramaticize to the utmost extreme.

The route by which we arrived at the present state is not entirely clear to me for several reasons: 1) It has a lot to do with the cuarta urna (a referendum), which nobody seems to understand, and 2) the two major newspapers seem to be very partisan and polar opposites of each other (one leaning to the left and in support of the ex-President, the other in opposition of Mel and in support of the coup), and very little of what people talk about on the street seems to correspond with what I read in the papers (admittedly, I've only just begun reading the newspapers and neither my comprehension of the papers nor of conversations is 100% yet). But I will try my best to recreate my understanding of what transpired.

It seems that everything can be traced back to the Cuarta Urna, which was a referendum that ex-President Manuel Zelaya proposed, and would have been voted on yesterday had the coup not taken place. When I first started hearing about the Cuarta Urna, all anybody said about it was that Mel was trying to change the constitution to allow the president to continue for more than one term. People were describing it as a vote for "yes, the president should be allowed more than one term," or "no, he should not." All the people who describe the cuarta urna in this matter were diametrically opposed to it, and thought it was a violation of the consititution in an attempt by Mel to become a dictator.

Upon talking with some people who were in favor of it, it seemed that there were more components to the Cuarta Urna than just this one questions - there were components that would increase the ability for the departments within Honduras to self-govern, and there were components to help alleviate poverty. Still, tons of people labeled the referendum "illegal" and "unconstitutional." I didn't really understand why people thought this, even if the referendum were only about whether or not the president should be allowed to run for more than one term. After all, Mel wasn't changing the constitution - he was putting up a referendum to allow the people to decide whether they wanted to change the constitution. And if the majority of people were opposed to it, what were they afraid of? If they all voted "no" the referendum would fail. Plus, Mel is so unpopular that it seems virtually impossible that he would be reelected even if the referendum did pass. But when I asked my friends who opposed the Cuarta Urna if they were going to vote against it, they said they weren't going to vote. They gave various reasons; some said voting was dangerous while others said they were pissed the referendum was even taking place and were boycotting voting for that reason.

From what I've subsuquently read about the Cuarta Urna, it seems that it was more of a pole than anything else. The pole would have asked Hondurans if they wanted to have a measure placed on the ballot in November to vote on whether or not they wanted the creating of a Consitutional Assembly. Should Sunday's pole and the subsuquent ballot measure in November succeeded, then the Consititutional Assembly would have had the option of modifying the consitution to allow the President to run for more than one term. All in all, this seems to me to be a very long, drawn-out, multi-step, democratic process. I don't know if the process contradicts anything in Honduras's constitution, but on the surface at least it looked benign. Yet virtually every organization in Honduras labeled the pole as illegal and unconstitutional.

Last week, the Honduran Supreme Court ruled the Cuarta Urna illegal, and demanded that it not be carried out. General Romeo Vásquez, head of the Honduran Armed Forces, said the military would see to it that the Court's ruling would be carried out, and Mel responded by removing him from his post on Tuesday. This was subsuquently followed by a Supreme Court ruling on Friday to reinstate General Vásquez and open an investigative committee to look at President Zelaya´s actions. Friday's paper hailed both the military and the President of Congress Roberto Micheletti for acting to restore order while avoiding a golpe de estado, while at the same time portending an ominous future for Mel. In fact, as I sat here this morning reading Friday's paper it seems the paper was all but describing the certainty of a coup.

Sunday morning, Mel was captured and deported to Costa Rica. Everyone called it a Golpe de Estado, but was it? When we got power back, CNN en español featured a debate on this very topic. The argument to the contrary sounded pretty reasonable: there had been a judicial order to deport Mel, and the military followed the judicial order. The military at no point had control over the government; they simply emptied the post of president so that the National Congress could go about the legitimate process of choosing a new president. The Honduran Consititution says that said in the absence of the president, the President of Congress would become president. Congress voted nearly unanimously to remove Mel from the office of President, and then voted to appoint Roberto Micheletti as the new president. Again, I don't know what the Honduran Constitution says about impeaching a president, but at least on the surface it appears that there were some democratic processes followed (of course I don't know if they were legitimate processes).

So we have a new president, a still-functioning government that never gave up power to the military, and no signs of the violence or oppression that is normally associated with coups. The only sign that anything is different is that the new president has requested a curfew (un toque de queda) of 9PM for last night and tonight. So while repeating the disclaimer that I don't have much confidence in my ability to grasp what is going on, for the moment I'm still of the opinion that if this is what a coup is like they're not so bad after all (this is obviously tongue in cheek). ¡Vamos a ver!

Pictures from Copan!

2009-06-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

Think Outside the Cone

2009-06-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

The following conversation actually happened (although in Spanish, of course):

Meg left school around 10am today so we could get an early start up to Catacamas, the next major town along the "highway." We were heading up to hang out with Meg's peace corp friends and go to the caves of Talgua the following day. We made pretty good time going up there, and after hanging out in Jarryd's apartment for a bit, we headed to the part to get a snack.

There's a little snack bar that serves soda, ice cream, and baleadas, and Meg was excited to order a nevada - basically an ice cream soda. Meg wanted mango ice cream with a Fresca for the soda. Little did she know what a problem that would be.

"Is that mango?" Meg asked, pointing to a tub of orange colored ice-cream.

"Yes," replied the employee.

"Great. Can I please have an ice cream soda with Mango ice cream and Fresca?"

"No, we don't have that."

"Oh, ok, you're out of Fresca? Can I have mango with Sprite, then!?"

"No, it's that for ice cream sodas, the choices are Vanilla and Coke, Orange and Sprite, Lemon and Sprite, or Strawberry and Banana soda," the woman behind the counter said. She was pointing to the pictures on the overhead graphic menu where there were four types of ice-cream sodas, displayed exactly as she had described them.

Meg paused for a moment, confused, then asked, "So you don't have Fresca?"

"We have Fresca."

"So is there a special way that you make the ice-cream soda?"

"We put the ice cream in the cup and give you the bottle of soda to pour over the ice cream."

"And you have Fresca, and you have mango ice cream?"

"Yes."

"So can I please have an ice cream soda with mango and Fresca?"

"But ice cream sodas only come in Vanilla with Coke, Orange with Sprite, Lemon with Sprite, or Strawberry with Banana soda."

Pause

"Ok...can I please have a cup with mango ice cream in it and a Fresca on the side?"

"You don´t want a cone for the ice-cream?"

"No thank you, a cup is fine. How much will that cost?"

"Let's see. Well ice cream in a cup is an unusual order, but you're sort of ordering a similar thing to an ice cream soda, so I'll just charge you the same amount as an ice-cream soda."

Meg paid the woman, thanked her, and walked over to the table to pour the Fresca over her mango ice cream and enjoy her hard-earned victory.

I opted to settle for Orange ice cream and Sprite.

El Hogar de Niños

2009-06-04T17:54:00.000-07:00

Today was the second time I went with Meg to the orphanage here in Juticalpa. Meg has been volunteering there all year, and the kids absolutely love here there. The orphanage is run by a catholic organization, and the location also houses a convent of nuns, a nursing home, a church, and a bakery whose proceeds are used to support the convent, orphanage, and nursing home. There are about 25 kids in all - 11 boys and 14 girls. It's amazing how joyful the kids seem to be, considering that they're not living with their parents. They dote on Meg, and they seemed excited to meet me as well.

Part of my idea in coming to Honduras was to find a couple of volunteer opportunities, and I really would like to try to continue some of the work that Meg has been doing at the orphanage. I spoke with Sister Isabel today, and I'm going to come in next Monday to spend most of thge day at the orphange to try to get a sense of the kids' schedule in case I want to try to organze some structured activites. Even just being at the orphanage for one day reminded me how much I love them. They're the most amazing, complex, surprising, wonderful little bundles of trouble in the world, and I learn something new from them every day. I'm very grateful to Meg for introducing me to the orphanage, and I'm super excited to start spending some time there every day.

The Dirty Dirty

2009-06-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

After a while you stop noticing the layer of grime that perpetually covers your skin, and it just becomes an accepted fact of life in Honduras. The fact that we don´t have water, while not the root cause of my dirtiness, certainly does't help. But the impossibiity of becoming clean is really caused by two factors: dust and heat.

Dust is simply a ubiquitous entity here in Juticalpa - like I said, less than half the roads are paved. When a car drives by on a dirt road, it kicks up dust like a sand storm. The dust combnes with the unfiltered, acrid fumes of the cars (which I can´t imagine are often brought in for tune-ups, judging by the way they sound and smell), to create a thick, hazy, suffocating fot that covers everything in town. and I mean everything. Even if you go into an upscale Pulperia, you'll find most products inside covered with a layer of dust such that the store employees who are hired to help customers find what they're looking for are also paid to carry around a rag and wipe dust off packages before handing them to customers.

What makes the dust worse, though, is that the intense heat of the Honduran sun makes you sweat constantly so the dust sticks to your skin the second it hits you, and it stays. Everytime I go to wipe the sweat off my forehead, I leave behind a brown streak of dirt on my shirt.

All this is compounded by the fact that we don't have water. In Juti, people either get their water from wells that are connected to their faucet system, or their houses are connected to the municipal water system. While most well systems have continued to provide water, the municipal system stopped providing awter a week before I came, and still is not working. Our apartment, of course, is connected to the municipal system, and so we are waterless. That means no showers to wash off tat layer of grime from your skin (I've only taken one shower since I arrived). That also means you can't flush the toilet unless you fill the back unit with water from some other source. Which means you don't flush everytime you use the toilet. Fortunately, you get used it it and you make do, but that doesn't make it any less gross.

To be able to have water for things like flushing the toilet when the faucets are't working, we have a pila, which is a tiled rectangular basin to store water on our patio and is filled by rainwater and/or by tap water. It probably has the capacity to hold around 40 or so gallons, but it has less than 10 at the moment so we have to be conservative about how often we flush the toilet.

Not having tap water also makes simple things like wiping off the counter a luxury. If theres a spill, we often don't have water to wipe it up right away, which leads to our cohabiting with many tiny six-legged roomates. Fortunately the ants in our house are so tiny they´re not really bothersome, and they're in pretty much everyone's house anyway. Just another fact of life that you don't pay very much attention to.

It's amazing hou in spite of such a big problem like not having water, life goes on as normal. There's no panic, no public outrage at the government, no media coverage of protests in the streets. People just make do by showering at neighbors' houses who have wells, buying water in 5 gallon jugs (cost = 30 lempiras or about $1.50 US), or simply going without showering for a while. It's a nice change to see people so relaxed, able to adapt to different and often inconvenient situations.

¡Viva La Vida Olachana!

Coca, Hielo, y Ron

2009-06-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

That was Fernando's answer to the question, "If you were on a desert island and could only bring 3 things, what would they be?" Coca-cola, ice, and rum.

The name of the game was "Three Questions," and it was similar to "21 Questions," except you're not trying to solve anything and you don't have to ask yes or no questions. Actually it wasn't much of a game at all - pretty much you just pick a person and ask them a question until you've asked three questions (but you don't have to ask them of the same person). Somtimes the questions were interest6ing or funny, but just as often not. It basically amounted us sitting around and bullshitting.

To the onlooker, it might have appered that the only source of a "party" was the rum - the holy grail of such gatherings here. And although as Fernando acknowledged, it is an integral part of such gatherings (except for me, Meg, Shige, and Yumi), the conversation is much more essential. That's why we get together, just to sit around and enjoy each other's company.

This would prove to be the standard nightly routine for the next few weeks - hanging out with Debbie, the fearsome foursome, and Meg, just shooting the breeze. Often we were joined by other teachers as well, and occasionaly by Oscar's brother Ricardo and his wife Daña. We talk about music, fútbol, culture, Honduran dialect (Caliche), women, government, everything. Sometimes, like tonight, we play games like Two Truths and a Lie or riddle games, but we often just talk. And honestly, I can´t think of anything I'd rather do.

La Barbacoa

2009-05-31T21:34:00.000-07:00

I think my stomach has finally decided to rest. Yesterday was a pretty awful (although not surprising) day of adjustment to Honduras cuisine, which involved lying on the couch and holding my belly in pain between numerous trips to the bathroom. It was miserable. Fortunately, I´m feeling better this morning, although I´m not quite sure if I´m up for going to a barbecue with Debbies boyfriend Oscar and his friends. Apparently at 11am people are going to head over to someone´s house just outside of town to hang out and grill some food. None of the gringos seem to know many details about the barbecue - what the occasion is, who´s all going, etc. - but by now I´ve already learned that this is a common theme.

10:30am
Debbie calls Oscar to see what´s going on. Oscar says we probably won´t be able to leave at 11, but he doesn´t say why. When Debbie asks him, he acts a little weird and just tells her everything´s cool, not to worry.

11:00am
Debbie gets Oscar back on the phone to figure out what´s going on. Oscar says Levi´s the only one who knows the whole plan, so Debbie calls Levi. Levi, however, stayed out until 7am this morning and is still sleeping. After a round of confusing phone calls to figure out what to do, it´s decided to push everything back until 12:30 to give people a chance to recover. I think I actually might feel better by then, so I´m happy with the decision. We´ll chill for another 2 hours, everyone will meet up here at 12:30, and then we´ll head out. Cool.

12:30pm
Debbie gets Levi on the phone, who says he´s on his way and he´ll be right over. Debbie, Megan, Oscar and I are sitting in the apartment dressed and ready to go, just waiting. Oscar suddenly gets up and leaves, without explanation.

1:00pm
Levi still hasn´t shown up, but when we call him he continues to claim he´s on his way (even though he only lives 5 minutes away).

1:15pm
Levi, Oscar, and Edwin show up at the apartment with a plastic grocery bag full of meet. Now we´re waiting downstairs on the sidewalk just outside the apartment building. Debbie tries to ask the Hondurans what´s going on, when are we going to go, but they just tell her to relax, chill, not to worry. They seem to be acting super sketchy about why we haven´t left yet. Finally Levi tells us that we´re waiting for their friend Sergio, who has the truck, to get off work. Why this was too hard to tell us in the first place I have no idea. But even now, we still don´t know who we´re going to meet up with or exactly when we´re going to leave.

John walks by and says he´d like to come, but doesn´t want to just stand around and wait. He asks us to call him when everyone is ready.

2:00pm
Sergio finally shows up 3 hours after the initial projected start time and we all pile into the back of his pickup truck and head on our way. No one calls John.

2:20pm
We arrive at a house on a dirt road just a little outside of town. It soon becomes aparent that we´re not meeting anyone here - it´s just the fearsome foursome (Oscar, Levi, Fernando, and Edwin) plus Sergio and us gringos sitting here at a house that is apparently Sergio´s second house (he also owns one right in Juti). So we waited 3 hours and drove 20 minutes to hang out with the same people we hang out with every day in a house identical to all the other houses we´ve hung out at.

There´s some discusson and some movement, and then Sergio and Edwin hop back in the truck and take off. They´re going back to pick up John and the other teachers (who could have easily fit in the truck when we came the first time). I´m learning new lessons about efficiency every day.

3:00pm
Levi and Sergio arrive back with all the other teachers in the truck, and we finally start to barbecue. All in all, aside from the ridiculous delay in getting started, we had a great time just hanging out, eating and talking. Not very diifferent from the usual, but we got to end this evening with a sweet ride in the back of Sergio´s truck, cruising down the highway with the cool night breeze rushing past us, Fernando and Edwin yelling "Tópelo, tópelo!" to encourage Sergio to go even faster. We had 6 guys crammed in the back amidst a stack of plastic chairs, a guitar, and a gril, so their wasn´t a lot of space to brace yourself for turns in the road. The cargo kept shifting and bumping into everybody, and at one point the wind whipped one of the plastic chairs so hard it flew off the stack and would have flown off the back of the truck had Fernando not caught it. Maybe not the safest way to travel, but definitely one of the most fun.

Juti, Juti!

2009-05-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

Juticalpa is perfect. It reminds me a lot of Matagalpa in Nicaragua. Small enough to have a community feel, where everybody knows everybody, small enough to walk from one end of town to the other in 15 - 20 minues but big enough that you can always find a new nook or cranny to explore. There are pulperias (small convenience stores) at every corner where you can buy fresco, tajaditas (fried plantain chips), and sometimes hot baleadas.

Only about half the roads are paved, the rest varying between dirt, gravel, or cobblestone, but they're all lined with the brightly colored buildings of buisnesses or homes, each a unique architectural feat. Horses and cows do wander the streets of Juti - often at their leisure, occasionally at the command of a gaucho. Olancho (the state in which Juti is located) is known for its guns-slinging cowboys, and there are some establishments where the dress code not only requires a cowboy hat and boots, but a pistol as well. If that makes you nervous, don´t worry - there are plenty of police hanging out on street corners watching everything go down while wielding enormous shotguns (Clearly, handguns would not suffice in Olancho). The police may be known for just looking on with everyone else during a rare lawless ruckus rather than engaging, but hey, at least they´re there with their shotguns for moral support.

Being a gringo makes it impossible to walk down the street without attracting attention, but at least I´m not a gringa. Meg and her American female friends constantly receive a barrage of catcalls from Honduran men - everything from kissing noises to "Oy mi amor!" to "I need your kiss!" While I have had the occasional kissing noise directed at me and have been hailed with "E, gringo!", most unsolicited comments from strangers are more innocent: kids saying hello or goodbye in English. Although ever so often I´ll receive a peeved look from a store owner if I´m butchering Spanish, overall my reception has been very warm. All Meg´s Honduran friends have been happy to meet me and accepted me right away as if I were their friend already.

Tonight Meg invited me to have dinner with one of her students´ families, Saskia. We arrived early enough to help cook - I was excited to learn how to prepare baleadas so I´ll be able to make them back home in the States. I made a decision to temporarily lift the restrictions of my vegan diet while I´m in Central America because it would be almost impossible to get adequate nutrition without eating dairy and egg products. Also, many of the dairy and egg products seem to be produced in more of a free-range, family farm style rather than a factory farm style, which doesn´t create an environment of intense suffering for the animals

Baleadas are very simple, but very delicious. They´re just flour tortillas with beans, mantequilla (not butter, but rather a liquidy sour cream type deal), cheese, avocado, and eggs. By the time we had arrived, the beans were already made, so Meg started cooking the ggs while I helped with the tortillas. We mixed wheat flour, baking soda, salt, and a little water until we got a nice, thick doughy consistency. Then we made 20 golf ball sized balls of dough. To turn the balls into tortillas you put a little oil on a plate, then place the dough ball on the plate and just push down on the edges in a circular motion until eventually the tortilla is flat and round.

To cook it, our hosts use a thin, flat metal disk that they placed over one of the stove elements, and cooked each tortilla individually. Moving the tortilla over to the pan was hard enough because they´re supposed to be as close to a perfect circle as possible, but their shape changes the second you pick them up. My first few attempts resulted in amoeba shaped tortillas, which roused hearty laughter from Saskia´s mom and aunt. That´s the great thing about this culture - If you can laugh a yourself, you´ll make friends very easily. Rather than demand perfection and put pressure on those who fall short, Olanchanos prefer to delight in the humor that comes from life´s natural imperfections.

Once the tortilla is successfully placed on the cooking surface, you wait, flip it once, wait, and then you´re done. The trick, of course, is to know when to turn it. Josmarie, Saskia´s aunt, insisted that the color change of the dough indicates when the tortilla needs to be flipped. Try as I might, I couldn´t for the life of me see a consistent pattern in when Josmarie was flipping the tortillas. They looked like a different color every time. When it was my turn to flip, Josmarie made me use a knife to raise an edge of the tortilla, then flip it with my hands rather than using a spatula (why? I don´t know - the spatula seemed to work just fine). After watching the first side of the tortilla cook I would ask her, "ya?" which literally means "already?" to which she would either reply "ya" or "falta" (which literally means "it´s missing something."

I noticed that the first side of the tortilla seemed to cook significantly faster than the second side, which didn´t seem to make any sense. The second side is already partly warm by the time it hits the pan, so shouldn´t it cook faster? After confirming my observation about the first side cooking faster with Josmarie, I asked her why this was true. "Porque sí," she replied. "Just because." This commonly used phrase has the same sentiment as when a parent says "because I said so" to a child, but "porque sí"also has a hint of humor, a self-awareness about it´s dismissive tone. Then again, maybe gringoes inevitably hear this response when we ask ridiculous questions that Hondurans know better than to ask.

Either way, the baleadas were absoutely delicious, and it was really incredible to be received so warmly and treated as a close friend right away. I think I´m going to like it here.

Acostumbrarme a una aventura nueva

2009-05-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get that "Oh shit!" feeling when you've committed to do something that you were sure about but when the day arrives to actually do it you start to wonder what the heck you were thinking? There was a moment of panic as my plane circled in the air over the sprawling mess of Tegucigalpa below. Why did I just get on a flight to another country without any guidebooks and without any plans whatsoever? All I had was a printout of some vague directions to navigate from the airport at Tegus to meet my one contact in all of Central America, and the idea of somehow becoming fluent in Spanish. In an instant my decision to come seemed downright foolish, and the mass of houses below started to seem completely unmanageable.

Tegus is a sharp contrast from Miami, where I had departed from only two hours ago. I'm sure I must have visited Miami as a kid, but I don't remember looking out the plane window to such a puzzling sight below. For a moment it almost seemed as if I was looking at residential areas constructed out of Legos; the impeccably engineered developments had the same right-angle effect as the children's building blocks. Along the shore, not only did the rows of houses extend out in perfect rectangles, but there were rectangular inlets of water between each row. The manicured sea scape looked like it had been produced in the sterile chambers of a bright white factory and then gently plopped over the existing landscape, bolted down like plates of sheet metal to cover the earth beneath. It was too perfect, too artificial to believe that wild, virgin land ever existed in the place now occupied by a dramatic feat of engineering. I marveled at man's complete mastery over the earth, then turned back to my book - this was not my destination, nor was I really interested in stopping there. I dozed off, and awoke a few hours later to a very different image.

I've been to Nicaragua before, so seeing a developing country isn't shocking to me, but putting Tegus side by side with Miami makes you wonder if you've landed in another planet with completely different laws of physics and of the environment. Where in Miami it's clear that man is the master of the earth, in Tegus the land dominates everything man-made. Roads are haphazardly strewn throughout the terrain, conforming to the curves of changes in elevation rather than carving out the hills to fit a grid like in many U.S. cities. Unrepaired cracks snake across concrete streets and the tiled blocks of the narrow sidewalks jut out at obtuse angles as encroaching tree roots creep below. Even newly painted walls soon develop cracks due to shifting forces underneath the foundation. It's as if nature is mocking man's attempt to master her.

* * *

I'm nervous as I step off the plane, but now I'm just thinking about the logistics of getting to my destination. I have to take a cab to a bus station, and then a bus from Tegus to Juticalpa. Sounds simple enough, but my tongue feels sluggish in my mouth, the once familiar words now sounding like mush, and I'm embarrassed to speak. I feel like an idiot...an impostor. My first attempt to ask for a location where I can catch a taxi is an utter failure, so I retreat to Aunt Annie's pretzel stand to console myself with a few bottles of cold water and regroup. The cashier at Aunt Annie's seems nice enough, so I ask him for directions. I can't understand a word he's saying. This is not going well!

The first floor of the airport seems devoid of taxi signs, so I decide to try upstairs. The Aunt Annie's cashier seems puzzles as he watches me ascend the escalator, and I see why immediately - the only thing at the top of the stairs is a McDonald's and a huge window looking out toward the runway. Clearly not the right place. I pretend to browse for something so I don't look entirely out of place, then I go back downstairs after a few minutes.

I finally decide to just walk outside and try to find a cab on my own. As soon as I cross the threshold, a man in a yellow golf shirt approaches me and asks if I want a taxi. How the heck could I have possibly made such an easy thing so difficult? After haggling for a minute over the price (he charged me 4 dollars more than Meg said he should), I hop in and I'm on my way.

My Spanish is still choppy, but I can understand nearly everything the driver is saying. Suddenly I'm in my element. As we navigate the chaotic streets of Tegus, the crowded, noisy chaos of a city teetering on the edge is now energizing. The driver and I crack jokes at all the taxis from a competing company that we see broken down on the side of the road. His laughter quickly transmutes into a snarl as he lays on the horn to convey his frustration to the slow moving motorbike in front of us. Not yet satisfied that they got the message, he slams on the gas to accelerate until we're neck and neck with the motorbike, and then starts veering toward the biker as if to drive him off the road. To my relief, he turns the wheel back to the right only inches from colliding with the motorbike.

I look around and realize my cabbie's behavior is far from out of the ordinary. It soon becomes clear that the primary rule of the road is that whoever drives most aggressively gets to make the rules. Stop signs only apply to those who don't have the guts to power through them. Fortunately, it seems there is a protective halo around my taxi, because we make it to the bus station in one piece. My fear and doubt having strangely subsided somewhere along the taxi ride, I bound toward the bus terminal eager to start my new adventure in Juticalpa.

US Road Trip Timeline

2009-05-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! Below is an outline of all the places I've traveled so far, as well as the places I plan on traveling. Some dates have links, which means I wrote a blog post for that day - click on the link to read the post! To see the pictures I've taken on my journey, click here.

Day	Date	Location	Notes
Friday	4/3	Seattle, WA	Arrived late, dinner with a friend from High School
Saturday	4/4	Seattle, WA	Went to Gasworks Park, saw Lake Union, walked along the canal to the Puget Sound, saw the Chittenden locks, Discovery Park
Sunday	4/5	Seattle, WA then drove to Portland	Visited OA frosh from Princeton, toured downtown Seattle and Queen Anne
Monday	4/6	Portland, OR	Bought an REI tent, went hiking in Washington Park
Tuesday	4/7	Portland, OR	Made the mother of all GORP
Wednesday	4/8	Portland, OR	last day with Portland friends
Thursday	4/9	On the Road Portland to Crescent City, CA	Beautiful drive down I-5 in Oregon. Took a detour at Cave Junction to see the Oregon Caves National Monument. Camped near the beach in Del Norte Coast Redwood State Park
Friday	4/10	Drove to San Francisco, CA	Went for a hike in the Redwood National Park - randomly met a guy who went to college with one of my Portland roommates. Drove the amazing Avenue of the Giants through Humboldt Redwoods State Park
Saturday	4/11	San Francisco, CA	Hiked in the Redwood Regional Park near Berkeley. Dinner at Herbivore vegan restaurant.
Sunday	4/12	San Francisco, CA	Castro-style Easter Celebration at Dolores Park! Bike ride through the Mission and downtown to North Beach to watch the sun set over the Golden Gate Bridge. I think I might have poison oak.
Monday	4/13	San Francisco, CA	Lunch with an old roommate from Newark, dinner with college friends
Tuesday	4/14	Drove to San Simeon, CA	Finally tried to address this horrible poison oak rash.Beautiful drive down US-1 along the California Coast. Camped at a state park.
Wednesday	4/15	Drove to L.A. (North Hollywood)	Met a couple from Estonia and talked about Obama. Saw Elephant Seals! Hike up Runyon Canyon with my sister near Hollywood where you can see all of L.A., from Santa Monica to Hollywood to downtown L.A.
Thursday	4/16	Los Angeles, CA	Venice Beach to see Ian! Dinner with Ian at the restaurant where my sister serves.
Friday	4/17	Los Angeles, CA	Hung out in Old Pasadena. Amazing comedy show in the evening!
Saturday	4/18	Los Angeles, CA	In bed, in agony from poison oak.
Sunday	4/19	Los Angeles, CA	Still in agony from poison oak.
Monday	4/20	drove to Las Vegas	How to do Vegas for Free
Tuesday	4/21	drove to Snowmass Village, CO	Breathtaking drive through Utah. Met a really interesting truck drive in Green River, UT
Wednesday	4/22	Snowmass Village, CO	Hiked with Dan and then dinner in Aspen
Thursday	4/23	drove to Denver, CO	lunch at Little Anita's with an amazing girl
Friday	4/24	Denver, CO	Hung out with host Mom, dinner and a movie with host sister
Saturday	4/25	Denver, CO	Met up with former Obama volunteers.I wish I were organizing right now.
Sunday	4/26	on the road to Santa Fe, NM	Explore the Plaza and surrounding areas in Santa Fe. Camped at Rancheros campgrounds just outside of Santa Fe
Monday	4/27	around Santa Fe, then drove to Truth or Consequences, NM	Visited the Pecos National Monument, Bandelier National Monument, quick visit to Albuquerque, and a little mishap on the road as I drove south along I-25.
Tuesday	4/28	drove to Austin, TX	Visited with my Aunt and Uncle
Wednesday	4/29	Austin, TX	Dinner with my Aunt and Uncle and a good Texas debate about Presidential politics
Thursday	4/30	Austin, TX	Toured Texas State University at San Marcos where my Uncle is a Vice President, failed attempt at finding a Vegan (or even vegetarian) restaurant in San Marcos and so settled on omnivorous Chinese buffet
Friday	5/1	Dallas, TX and Tulsa, OK	Visited Jenny Grumbles at her incredible store, Uptown Country Home, then onward to see Julie Niemi in Tulsa where we rocked out to Wayne "The Train" Hancock at the Crystal Pistol. Slept in my tent in Julie's living room.
Saturday	5/2	Little Rock, AR	Dinner with my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin
Sunday	5/3	Little Rock, AR	Toured Little Rock
Monday	5/4	Memphis, TN, and Birmingham, AL	Explored Beale Street and saw the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Arrived late at Samford University to hang out with a campaign friend.
Tuesday	5/5	Nashville, TN and Dawson Springs, KY	Arrived late in Dawson and hung out with Bob, husband of one of my volunteers during the Kentucky Primary
Wednesday	5/6	Madisonville, KY	Visited my friend Rodney's fish shop, hung out with Bob and Miss Shirley at Miss Shirley's underground home
Thursday	5/7	Chicago, IL	Went to a rockin Hey Champ Show! (composed, in part, by Jon Marks PU'05 and Pete Dougherty '06
Friday	5/8	Chicago, IL	Explored Hyde Park and downtown/Millenium Park with my friend from college, Aiala
Saturday	5/9	Racine and Milwaukee, WI	Spent a few hours with my grandparents and then went to see Hey Champ in Milwaukee
Sunday	5/10	Racine, WI	Cooked Eggs and Bacon for my grandparents (of which I did not partake), planted geraniums for my grandmother, and took them out to the Hobnob restaurant on the lake.
Monday	5/11	Racine, WI	Visited my Uncle Jon and spent more time with my grandparents.
Tuesday	5/12	South Bend, IN	Tried to visit with 3 Obama volunteers but only successfully visited with 1. People (non-students) on Notre Dame's campus are protesting President Obama coming to speak for commencement on the grounds that Obama "supports abortion."
Wednesday	5/13	Cincinnati, OH	Saw the corpse that Marihelen is dissecting at U Cincinnati Med School!
Thursday	5/14	Cincinnati and then drove to Pittsburgh, PA	interviewed Marihelen and arrived late in Pittsburgh at Megan and Greg Lapp's house
Friday	5/15	Pittsburgh, PA	Party with former Obama volunteers in Pittsburgh!
Saturday	5/16	Pittsburgh, PA	Recorded a few volunteers' stories, hung out with Megan and Greg Lapp who hosted me when I was in Pittsburgh during the Democratic Primary.
Sunday	5/17	Pittsburgh, PA, then drove to Collingswood, NJ	Recorded some more of my Obama Volunteers' stories and hit the road to Philly.
Monday	5/18	Philadelphia and Collingswood	Somehow ended up stuck in a crowd that shuffled me into the stadium at the University of Pennsylvania where I got to see the Commencement Ceremony, including a speech by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Visited with Princeton Alum David Weiss and ate a sweet potato burrito.
Tuesday	5/19	Collingswood, NJ then drove to Roseland, NJ = HOME	Relaxing and wonderful to be home, but as always, home falls short of the idealized fantasy that I dream up when I'm away.
Wednesday	5/27	Flying to Honduras!	-

Through a New Lens

2009-05-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

On August 16th, 1918, Marvin Earl Welfel was born to George and Anna Marie Welfel in Racine, Wisconsin. His father George was born in Germany and had immigrated to the United States as a child. Like many European immigrants, he started working in the brickyard making bricks. His method of stomping down the clay to pack it into rectangles earned him the name “Clay Feet.” At the time Marve was born, though, he was working as a foreman at Bell City Manufacturing, a sheet metal factory that produced threshing machines. Anna stayed home to raise Marve and Mildred (Marve’s sister 4 years his senior).

Through middle school and high school, Marve loved sports. His favorite was baseball. He loved basketball as well, but never made the high school team because he was told he was too short. He also never attended any dances in high school; he says he had no one to take because he couldn’t find any girls his size – they were all taller! After graduating Horlick High School in Racine in June of 1936, he made his way to Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he enrolled as a freshman at Wabash College. To earn his room and board, he worked in the kitchen at the Kappa Sigma fraternity house, washing dishes and serving meals. He had no money to speak of and so couldn’t pay tuition, but the college allowed students to attend on credit, which they would have to pay back at the end of each year.

At the end of his first year, Marve returned to Racine to look for a job in order to pay back his tuition debt, but couldn’t find a job until August! Unfortunately, that meant he wasn’t able to earn enough to go back to Wabash for a second year, and had to stay in Racine to work and pay off his debt.

Marve was working as a mailman at the Case Tractor plant in 1938 when he met Florence Ellen Valentine, his future wife. He heard about her from a friend, and although he had never met her he heard she was about his size, so he asked her to a dance. They dated for several years before getting married in 1942, during which time Marve started an apprenticeship as a tool and die maker at Case’s. He never finished the apprenticeship, because shortly after his marriage in October he enlisted in the service. Like all young men, Marve knew he was likely to get drafted to serve in the war, so he decided to beat the draft to the punch by enlisting in the branch of his choice – the aviation cadets.

After over a year of training, Marve graduated from flight school in January of 1944 and quickly rose through the ranks until he became a First Lieutenant and was certified as an instructor in both twin-engine and instrument flying.. He taught other cadets how to fly in Lubbock, Texas for the duration of World War II. His favorite plane to fly was a twin-engine medium bomber, the B-25 Mitchell.

When he returned home to Racine in January 1946 after the war ended, Marve had planned on continuing to work at Case’s, but the union workers had gone on strike! The strike lasted fourteen months, so Marve had to find other work. He tried to start a tool and die business with two other men, but when that didn’t pan out he went to work in the tool room at Massey Harris in 1950. He continued to work in the tool and die business until his retirement in 1982.

Marve and Florence didn’t waste any time in starting a family after his return from the military. Their first child, Cheryl Mae Welfel was born in 1946, followed by James Roy Welfel (my dad) in 1950, and Tom Welfel in 1956. Tragically, Florence developed cancer, and two years after Tom’s birth she passed away. Marve’s mother helped to take care of the children while he was at work, but things were very hard. In those days, a single man didn’t raise children on his own, and so Marve looked for another wife. By 1960, he had married Karen Hjortness, a daughter of immigrants from Denmark. Karen had also grown up in Racine, and had recently divorced her first husband. She had one child from her first marriage, a son named Gary. In 1961, Marve and Karen had a son of their own, Jon Welfel. Marve worked hard to provide for the seven Welfels (well, six – Gary had his father’s last name) living under one roof on Sheraton Drive, and wasn’t able to spend as much time with his family as he might have liked. But the family never went hungry, even if they had to eat liver and onions every night of the week.

And then, the kids grew up. First Cherie left for college, attending one of the University of Wisconsin campuses. Jim followed soon after, attending the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. After a year of teaching in Wisconsin, Cherie left to get masters from Purdue University in Indiana. Jim left to find a teaching job in New Jersey. Several years after graduating high school, Tom left as well, to work in a moving business in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. With Gary gone as well, seven became three. Jon, at least, stayed, and was able to visit regularly, but the other children visited at most once a year. “It sucked not seeing them,” Marve said, “but I supported them in whatever they wanted to do, and I knew there weren’t any opportunities here in Racine. But I sure wish they had lived closer.”

For a while, Marve and Karen took joy in having Jon, his wife, and three children close by – at least they could see one set of grandchildren grow up. “About once every two days,” explained Karen, “I would go over by Renee [Jon’s wife] and tell her, ‘I have to see my babies!’” But in time, Jon and Renee split up, and Jon’s two daughters grew up and moved to Colorado. And then there were none.

And then on May 10th of 2009, passing through Racine on my road trip across the country, I found myself in my grandparents’ living room, the only person to be with my grandmother on Mother’s Day.

I’ve told my grandfather’s story here only because I know it better, but my grandmother’s story carries with it the same feeling of working hard to raise a family, and then seeing them slowly leave. Her story, too, has reached a point of mourning and loneliness in her twilight hours. Neither she nor my grandfather is without any flaws, and they both certainly have butted plenty of heads throughout the years. But they are both loving people, even if they love imperfectly.

And yet there they were on Mother’s Day with naught but a few token cards and vases of flowers, a few short calls from some (not all) of their children, and I find myself hastily texting all my cousins, begging them to call Grandma to wish her a happy Mother’s Day (I think only one actually did). I tried to fill the void by cooking my grandparents breakfast, buying a flat of geraniums and planting them on my grandparents’ tiny balcony, and taking them out for an upscale lobster dinner; but it was only one holiday out of the several hundred that my grandparents have celebrated without many of their children or grandchildren in the 30 years since their children moved away.

The point isn’t to draw sympathy for the plight of my grandparents. After all, a few cards and flowers are more than some grandmothers receive, and my grandparents are fortunate to have any children that love them and call, even if their children live far away. They’re also incredibly fortunate to have grown up in a nation where the life expectancy is such that it’s not uncommon for a couple to live to be 90 (my grandfather’s age). Nor is the point to place blame on any of their children for having moved away or not making more of an effort to be in Racine for holidays. The point is that for the first time I was seeing Grandma and Grandpa as people instead of as grandparents. And I know that “seeing your parents as people for the first time” etc. is something that many, if not all, people go through, and probably earlier than at 25. But it wasn’t until the experiences I’d had over the past year and a half – organizing for Obama, organizing for Stand for Children, and traveling across the country – that I was able to see my grandparents in the light that I saw them at that moment.

I stepped back, away from the frame of viewing them as Grandpa Marve and Grandma Karen (a frame that rigid in its restriction of our ability to understand a person), and viewed them as Marve Welfel and Karen Hjortness, depersonalized and without judgment. I was able to see their occasional ignorant comments (at times even racist comments) for what they were – simply part of their way of thinking that is a product of the time and culture in which they grew up, rather than a moral blemish on their characters. This doesn’t make some of the things they said good or right, but rather unavoidable at this stage in their lives (believe me, I’ve tried at length in the past to shift their views).

Their occasional bickering and judgment was no longer idiotic and frustrating, but just a bump in the road that could be smoothed over by a polite interjection by me. Their judgment of my plans for the future and my outlook on life no longer bothered me. I didn’t take it personally, and I’m finally secure enough in who I am and in what I value that my grandparents’ uneasiness with some of my trajectories no longer provoked a gut reaction of needing to vigorously defend myself.

Because they are my grandparents, they of course still occupy a special place in my heart, but I no longer feel the need to revere them as infinitely wise nor do I become angry and frustrated when they fail to live up to that fantasy. They are just Marve and Karen, children of European immigrants whose parents moved to the United States in search of a better life. Even though Marve is now a grandfather whose progeny span America’s two coasts, he is still that short, shy boy who never asked any girls to a high school dance because they were too tall for him. And for that, I love him in a new and (I believe) more meaningful way.

Time Passed, Time Lost

2009-05-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

Don’t expect too much when you go up there,” my uncle told me. “Grandpa’s changed a lot since the last time you saw him – he’s not the same.”

Uncle Tom made it sound dire, like Grandpa Marve was on his last legs. I mean, I know my grandparents are old, and it comes as no surprise when I get news of the latest health concern. I know that things have been especially difficult since my grandfather’s vision completely failed and my grandmother broke her leg. But this was different, the way Uncle Tom was speaking. He wasn’t very specific about exactly what had changed – I couldn’t tell if he was trying to say that Grandpa wasn’t as coherent, or energetic, or what. I didn’t really understand why my uncle was speaking this way – I mean, I had spoken with Grandpa on the phone about my coming to visit and he sounded coherent enough. I put my hope in the fact that our elders often try to protect us from disappointment or other uncomfortable situations by preparing us for the worst – maybe things weren’t as bad as Uncle Tom said.

I pull up to the apartment complex at Lincoln Village Drive in Racine Wisconsin around 2:30 PM. I call my Grandpa to let him know I’d arrived, and he sounds a little disoriented. But that could just be because I’m asking him for directions to a place he’d moved into long after he became blind – he has no visual memories to describe to me. I find the entrance to my grandparents’ wing of the complex, and open the outside door to step into an atrium. The inner door is locked, so I have to call up to the apartment to be let in. There’s some confusion with how to buzz me in, but an elderly man nearby is able to open the door for me.

“Who are you here to see?” he asks me. When I tell him Marve and Karen Welfel, the names don’t seem to register at first. He asks me to repeat their names several times, staring at me blankly. He finally recognizes the name, saying, “Oh, the blind guy. Yeah he’s upstairs on the second floor.” This is who my grandfather is to people – the blind guy?

I open the door to Apartment 803 and see my grandfather sitting at the kitchen table. I stop short, in shock. Who is this ghost of a man sitting where my father’s father should be sitting? Grandpa looks about a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than when I last saw him. I barely recognize this tiny, frail person who looks like a light breeze could knock him over. Cautiously, I greet him and walk over to hug him gently, fearing that I might hurt him.

“How are you?” I ask.

“OK,” he replies.

“Just OK?”

“Well when you get to my age, OK is about as good as you can do. It’s no secret that I’m near the end, Scott. That’s what happens – life is a cycle, and my cycle is coming to a close.”

His words are matter-of-fact, as if he’s accepted it fully and is prepared for the inevitable. But his tone carries a haunting loneliness, as if he’s saying, “that’s all I do anymore, I just sit here and wait for the end.”

As we talk, he begins to vigorously rub his left eye, which is half closed and crusted over. I ask him if his eye is itching.

“It burns,” he replies. “Itches, burns, hurts like hell. My eyes are shot; I’m completely blind now, can’t see a darned thing. It’s no fun, living without being able to see, but that’s just the way it is these days.”

There’s a pause in the conversation – I’m not sure what to say. “Do you have drops for your eyes?”

“Yeah it makes them worse. The doctor says there’s nothing he can do for them.” Nothing to do but sit here in discomfort, waiting.

“Where’s Grandma,” I ask. He says she didn’t feel well, so she went to lie down. I guess she heard us talking, though, because the bedroom door opened and she slowly limped out. Her gait is hesitant, unbalanced, and my mind flashes back to a home video of me as a toddler, waking up from a nap and awkwardly walking down the stairs and then toward the camera. I greet her, and she suggests we sit in the living room, rather than the kitchen (the living room is attached to the kitchen, but has about ten square feet more space and slightly comfier chairs.) I consent, but I excuse myself to use the restroom first (I’ve been on the road for several hours).

As I look at myself in the mirror, my eyes well up, and I clench them shut to try to stop the tears from coming. But my lip starts trembling, and the tears come. I’m overcome with grief, and remorse, and the weight of the idea of living nearly a century.

I didn’t expect to feel like this. For the past several weeks, when describing to others the remaining destinations along my road trip, I would throw in a lighthearted, matter-of-fact comment about how my Grandma and Grandpa were at the end of their lives and I figured it would be good to see them one last time. I had talked about it void of any emotions, not because I was repressing them, but because at the time I really didn’t feel strongly when thinking about my grandparents’ condition. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I felt concerned, or scared for their health, or sad at the thought of them passing.

It’s not that I didn’t like them – I have many fond memories of summers spent in Racine, fishing and boating on the lake. I always looked forward to seeing Grandma and Grandpa growing up. But after a certain age, our visits to Wisconsin became less and less frequent, and many years would go by before I would see them again. It was only natural that our relationship grew more distant, and I felt less strongly for them than for my grandparents in New Jersey, right?

And then of course there was my grandmother’s pointed tongue and stubbornness that made many conversations unpleasant. Alcohol would file her tongue even sharper and loosen it to unleash a guilt trip or harsh criticism that brought out her entrenched prejudices. That in addition to her old fashioned sense that with age comes entitlement (“I’ll have some peas” to announce her culinary demand at the kitchen table), and it got to the point where I didn’t miss seeing her and Grandpa more frequently and frankly felt pretty emotionally detached to their situation.

And now it’s like all those years of lost emotional connection are flooding back at once. What have I missed, waiting until now to reach out to my father’s father? I don’t want to sit around and mourn with him about how the quality of his life has deteriorated and how he’s close to the end. I want to get to know him as a person, rather than the simple way in which a child knows a grandfather. I want to hear about his life, share stories, learn from his perspectives on things – perspectives that were forged in an era I have little ability to grasp. I want to laugh, and reflect, and look forward, and celebrate. Here is a man who has created a family, who sits as the solitary link, the linchpin of us all; in the twilight of his days, after retiring from the many years of hard labor that earned this family’s sustenance, he should be able to sit back and watch his beautiful family grow, take joy in that which he has created.

But he can’t watch. Because he can’t see.

But he can hear, and he can talk. And so we’ll sit, and talk. And sit, and talk. And I will savor every minute, coherent or not. Even with all I’ve missed, at least I have this moment with him. At least I won’t miss this.

Fortunately, Unfortunately

2009-04-28T00:54:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, my parents used to read me a book titled Fortunately, by Remy Charlip, which was a story told with sentences that alternated between beginning with the words “fortunately” and “unfortunately.” The way in which the story was told captured the continuously changing circumstances in which the main character found himself – rapidly switching between favorable and unfavorable situations. This was one of my favorite books growing up, and so I’m going to tell the story of my drive on the evening of Monday, April 27th in the same fashion (this is all true):

Unfortunately, at around 11:30 PM on the evening of Monday, April 27th, about 120 miles South of Albuquerque, New Mexico, an eighteen-wheeler either blew a tire or ran over a tire (it was too dark to see). I swerved in attempt to avoid it, but it was too close and so I ran over the tire on the right side of my Honda. I heard it thunk as it slapped the underbelly of my car.

Fortunately, I did not lose control of the car, and was able to safely pull over to the shoulder to stop.

Unfortunately, I now had to get out of the car to assess the damage, standing on the shoulder of the interstate in the black of night as more eighteen wheelers continued to blow by me.

Fortunately, I didn’t have a flat tire!

Unfortunately, I noticed that the right corner of my front bumper was hanging loose. And my rear bumper.

Fortunately, they didn’t look too bad, so they might not have even been caused by running over the tire.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t say much for me keeping a close eye on the maintenance of my car.

Fortunately, it looked like I would be able to hold the bumper up with duct tape.

Unfortunately, I think there’s a section in my owner’s manual explicitly stating that using duct tape does not constitute a legitimate repair to your vehicle.

Fortunately, I had “professional-grade” duct tape, which is capable of resisting wind, rain, and snow.

Unfortunately, it is also capable of resisting tearing, and I couldn’t break a darn piece of it off!

Fortunately, I came prepared with scissors.

Unfortunately, they were the little rinky dinky scissors attached to my pocket knife.

Fortunately, they got the job done – I was able to tape up both bumpers and get back on the road.

Unfortunately, after about 5 more minutes of driving, I heard a loud windy noise from the right side of my car, so I pulled over again, sure that I blew a tire this time.

Fortunately, I still didn’t have a flat tire!

Unfortunately, a piece of plastic near the front passenger-side tire was loose and flapping in the wind.

Fortunately, duct tape worked beautifully to reattach this mysterious piece of plastic. The car is finally all fixed and ready to go.

Unfortunately, my stomach picked that exact moment to let me know that I had to go to the bathroom – badly. And there wasn’t a rest stop for 20 miles.

Fortunately, there weren’t many people around for 20 miles either. I clambered up the hill on the side of the road to find a nice, secluded spot. Even if a car did pass, it was pitch black and so no one would be able to see me.

Unfortunately, it was pitch black, and so I wasn’t able to see either. And I couldn’t find my trowel.

Fortunately, with the aid of a headlamp and a rock, I was able to dig a hole and take care of business undetected. I made it back to the car and got on the road.

Unfortunately, there was still a rattling noise coming from the rear of the car.

Fortunately, I was too tired to investigate it at that point. I made it to Truth or Consequences, NM, and called it a night.

A Modicum of Vindication

2009-04-25T23:43:00.000-07:00

“Riinngg….Riinngg.”

“Hello?”

“Hi, Sher?”

“Yes…?”

“Hi, it’s Scott. From the Obama campaign.”

“Scott? Oh, hi! Wow it’s been months!”

“Yeah, I know. How are you doing?”

“I’m ok. How are you?”

“Good, good. Listen, I’m actually in town for the day, but I’m just passing through, and I’m leaving tomorrow. I know it’s really last minute, but I’d really love to see you, and I was wondering if I could come say hi, even if only for a few minutes.”

“Uh, wow. Well, I don’t know. When did you have in mind?”

“Well I just got done visiting with Nancy, so I’m actually right around the corner and I was thinking about swinging by in ten minutes or so.”

"Oh, wow. You really did mean last minute notice!"

I had this conversation about ten times today, calling my former Obama volunteers to ask if I could come see them. Being the ever so organized planner that I am, these conversations often took place within a half hour of me showing up at their doorstep to say hello. That they agreed (and that they put up with me in general) is a testament to how wonderful everyone in this group really is.

It was good to be back. Colorado feels like home – a place where I can let my guard down, kick my feet up, open my suitcase and let my clothes spill all over the floor. These are my people – I know them, I love them, and they would never chase me with pitchforks.

It was supposed to be my home. I should be returning to Colorado to begin organizing for Stand for Children in Denver, not passing through on some half-cocked dash across (and then out of) the country. I was supposed to be returning to start a life here with the girl for whom my heart still yearns, not depressedly musing over how sad it is the way things ended.

I should be organizing. As I sat down with my volunteers today, and they told me about the work they’re doing to organize my former Obama teams into a community organization of activists, I got freaking fired up. As each person told me a new segment of what they’ve been up to – organizing a food bank, creating issue-based subcommittees to track legislature on education, the environment, etc., creating a database of people to send out issue-specific communication to interested parties – the gears started to turn in my head. It wasn’t long before I was making suggestions, offering ideas for organizational structure. I could feel myself start to salivate as I envisioned the potential power of this grassroots network. This is what I should be doing! Not running off, out of the country, when there is so much work to be done. This is the time to organize!

Oh. That’s right. I almost forgot. I’m not “a fit” as an organizer. But as I recount to my volunteers this explanation of why I was fired, they burst out laughing:

“Not a fit as an organizer? You?? What do they call what you were doing for the last year of your life? Did your supervisor ever actually meet you? Does she even know the first thing about organizing? Does she know what our Obama teams accomplished here in Arapahoe County? You, not an organizer?!?”

Yes, she met me, and yes, she knows quite a bit about organizing, I assure them. And I’m pretty sure my volunteers are biased because of a shared genetic disorder wherein they lack the normal human response of running the other way at the sound of my footsteps (I can’t fathom any other explanation of why they’re willing to hang around me). But even so, I can’t help but feel a little bit better at the supportive statements of my volunteers. I mean, they did work with me for 4 months. If anyone knows how I am as an organizer, it’s my volunteers. They suffered through my trainings, sat through my meetings, and participated in my conference calls. They saw me at my worst: when I hadn’t slept in days and didn’t feel human; when my spirit was broken and despair was setting in; when I had long lost hold of the reason we were working for Obama, and just continued stumbling through because I didn’t know what else to do. And if, despite all that, my volunteers still think I did a good job, still think I’m a good organizer – well, that must count for something, right?

At the end of the day, all emotions aside, here are the bare facts: my volunteers worked with me for 4 months, and they are many. My supervisor worked with me for 1.5 months, and she is one. Sarah, my dear, I think you are a little outnumbered.

Vegas Fo’ Free Ninety-Nine

2009-04-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

Vegas is normally all about spending money, so I decided to go against the grain and do Vegas for free.* Here are 8 steps to avoid spending a dime in Vegas and still have a rockin time:

Arrive at 10PM and be prepared to leave early the next morning (it helps to have a 10 hour drive planned for the following day). The more amount of time you spend anywhere, the more likely you are to start spending money. And all the hoodwinkers and hobnobbers of Vegas will throw everything they have at you in an effort to loosen your pockets. The trick is to plan your trip to have the minimum exposure to Vegas necessary to reach the maximum enjoyment threshold before the urge to spend kicks in.

Upon checking into your hotel, one common pitfall is to be enticed by the free drink coupons. At first glance, this offer seems to be innocent enough – a way to partake in the delicious debauchery of Vegas without actually paying for it – but don’t be fooled! You know very well that as soon as you start to feel good from those two free drinks, you’re going to be sucked into keeping the buzz going, this time on your dime. Plus, it is not likely that you will retain enough willpower under the influence to resist the multitude of temptations that will be thrust your way. JUST SAY NO!

Ok, so you’re made it to the Strip with your judgment intact. Time to start exploring! Let’s start at Bally’s - the entrance is an automated walkway through a white corridor bordered by neon rings of light. It feels like you’re entering the Star Trek Enterprise! Ooh and look – there’s a hotel that looks like the entire skyline of Manhattan! And a castle… and a pyramid!
- At this point I should note that it helps to have been diagnosed with a medical condition wherein you continuously fail to exhibit age-appropriate interests, and seem to be stuck in a childlike amazement for simple things like flashing lights and tall buildings. Because of this, where others of your age will be attempting to flex their machismo at the Texas Hold-em table (I mean, they’ve watched plenty of World Series of Poker, so they’ll be fine, right?) or filling the lonely void in their romantic lives with strip clubs or by buying numerous drinks for pretty ladies, you will be curiously fixated on the giant yellow M&M’s pouch suspended from a glass building. And whereas the former activities are quite costly, the latter is spectacularly free.

Wandering inside the casinos can provide ample entertainment as well, and makes for great people watching. But be wary of the flashing lights of the slot machines! While at first they might simply serve to fill your childish mind with wonder, it won’t be long before you find yourself captivated by the glittering machines’ allure, wanting to play “just one quarter.” Fortunately, there is an effective antidote – the methylprednisolone pills (an oral steroid) you were prescribed for your poison oak! A convenient side effect of this medication is blurry vision and dizziness, so that half an hour of the slot machines’ flashing lights will make you feel closer to an epileptic episode than to sitting down to play. Danger averted!

Hunger is normally the demise of any plan to resist spending money, so come prepared with plenty of cliff bars and trail mix to ensure a full stomach for the duration of your evening. It also helps to be vegan – no matter how much you’re salivating, it’s unlikely you’ll find anything you can actually eat.

As you walk down Las Vegas Boulevard, you’ll see Latinos on the street corners slapping stacks of cards vigorously. The slapping noise is to get your attention, to get you to look up and make eye contact – avoid this at all costs! If you make eye contact you are almost guaranteed to have a card depicting a half-nude woman slipped into your hand, and there’s nothing you can do about it at that point. You might think that these cards are harmless, simply advertising local strip clubs. But no, they are most assuredly the business cards of prostitutes. Now you understand why no one else is accepting any cards.

If you’re looking for something exciting like a theme park ride, don’t be tempted into shelling out the 12 bucks for the roller coaster ride at the New York, New York Resort. Instead, try out the diagonal elevators at the Luxor Pyramid. The trick is to figure out which elevator goes to the top floor, and then wait around until a guest from that floor is taking the elevator up (the elevators are room key-activated). The view from the top is pretty sweet, looking down at the Temple of Karnak and a mini city of shops that looks like Agrabah from Aladdin. You might panic momentarily when you try to return to the elevator shaft only to find that it seems to require a room key to enter in order to go back to the ground floor. Don’t worry though – after you alarm a couple by following them down several corridor repeatedly whispering “excuse me,” they will inform you that the door you were trying to enter is in fact not the elevator shaft – walk to the end of the hall, take a right, and you’ll be fine.

As you walk over the elevated path from the Tropicana to the Excalibur, a beautiful girl will approach you and say, “Hey there.” Do not be fooled into thinking this girl has any interest in you. Beautiful girls have no business talking to you…unless they are trying to do business with you, that is. Yes, that’s right, she’s a prostitute. To throw her off your trail, when she asks you where you’re headed, tap into you’re your most awkward, dorkiest inclinations; stub your toe and almost trip as you throw your hands up in the air and say, “uh…er…um – just, uh, wandering around, I guess.” Even a prostitute will not know how to respond to this spectacular display of social ineptitude. Having thwarted the final threat, you’re free to stroll the Strip back to the comfort of your hotel room having had your fill of entertainment for the night without ever cracking your wallet.

*Ok, so I didn’t actually do Vegas for free - this should actually be called “How to do Vegas for $33.32,” which is the amount I spent for my hotel room. But I didn’t spend a single cent outside of the cost of the room and probably had just about as much fun as any other bloke stumbling about the Vegas Strip.

Spell It U-R-U-S-H-I-O-L

2009-04-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

I don’t know when I got it – it could have been from camping last Thursday night or hiking on Friday or Saturday - all I know is at some point between Thursday and Saturday in California I picked up poison oak.

While on a bike ride through San Francisco with my friend Paul, the back of my left leg opposite my knee started to itch (btw, what the heck is the back of your knee called?) I figured it was either a bug bite or poison ivy, and I was certainly praying it wasn’t the latter (or I would have, if I ever prayed). So, with these two possibilities in mind, here is the logic I used in my decision to start scratching my leg (remember that I have a degree in philosophy): if it’s a bug bite, it’s fine if I scratch it, but if it’s poison ivy, I can’t scratch it, cause it will spread all over if I do. So I’m going to play chicken with my itch. “You think you’re poison ivy? Well guess what, I think you’re bluffing, and to prove it to you I’m gonna scratch you. And there ain’t nothing you can do about it cause you’re just a little bug bite.” So I scratch it with the peace of mind that by expressing my overconfidence that it’s not poison ivy it will turn out not to be poison ivy.

I scratch vigorously all day, and by nightfall the itch is still there. The next morning it’s still there. And now there’s another spot on my leg. And a spot on my hand. So at this point I’m thinking, shit, it is poison ivy and I just spread it all over myself. Now I’ve had poison ivy before, and the rule of thumb is that if you can keep from scratching it, it will go away on its own. So I decide to ignore it and try not to scratch it.

Monday night comes, and it’s getting worse. I’m out at bar with Paul who encourages me to look up out to treat it. Now I’m pretty sure I know the basic gist of poison ivy, but I hadn’t ever done any actual research on it. Fine, I say. Let’s figure out whether it’s poison ivy or poison oak, and what to do about it. I have my Blackberry with me, so I Google “poison ivy.”

The first thing I learn is that poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac all produce the same toxin, urushiol, which causes an allergic reaction. I most likely contracted poison oak, which is prevalent in California. The type of urushiol contained by poison oak causes the strongest reaction. What this chemical basically does is “tag” your skin cells with a marker that makes your immune system think your skin cells are an invasive microbe or something, and so your white blood cells start attacking your skin cells causing redness and swelling. Freaking Fantastic.

Ok, so what do I do about it? I click on a link for “treating poison oak” and read the following instructions:

According to this article, the first tip in dealing with poison oak is to prevent contact. And it went on and on about wearing long pants when you’re going for hikes in the woods, how to identify poison oak to avoid it, recommending you wash your clothes and hands as soon as you get back, and some other helpful preventative advice. Great. Thank you very much. Well I’m already past that stage, so what the heck am I supposed to do now?

Next tip: how to treat it. Ok, this sounds more like it. If you do come into contact with poison ivy, the best approach is to make sure you treat it within the first ten minutes. You should scrub the contaminated area of skin with rubbing alcohol, then wash with cold water without soap (cold water keeps your pores closed), and then wash with soap. Wait - the best way to treat poison ivy is to respond within ten minutes? What percentage of people who come into contact with poison ivy respond within the first ten minutes?? I mean, you don’t know you have poison ivy until it starts to itch! Which, according to your website, doesn’t happen until 1-2 days after contact!

How is this information useful? You tell me, “don’t get it, and if you do get it, deal with it within the first ten minutes or you’re screwed.” In frustration I stop reading and return to savoring my Pliny the Elder IPA.

This morning when I get up, I decide that I better deal with the rash before I take off from San Francisco and go camping tonight near Big Sur, because I don’t want to be camping in the woods tonight and scratching all over. So here’s the plan: Don’t go back online and look for steps for treating poison ivy if you missed that magical ten minute window and symptoms have actually started to develop. Instead, just follow the advice that last night I thought was bullshit and hope that maybe I’ve been granted a grace period beyond those first ten minutes. And then I’ll go online and see what else I should do.

So first I gather all the clothes I’ve touched in the past three days and throw them in the wash. Next, I take rubbing alcohol and scrub down my computer, my phone, everything I’ve touched that can’t be thrown in the washer. Then I strip down and go over my entire body with rubbing alcohol – all the spots where the rash has broken out (of which there are now at least thirty). I then jump in the shower and wash off with cold water. I stand there for 10 minutes, shivering and letting the cold water rinse me again and again, hoping all traces of urushiol are disappearing. I then vigorously scrub everywhere with a wash cloth. Last, I apply soap and repeat the scrubbing.

I get out, and at this point I’m looking at my rashes, and I don’t think this is working. I don’t know what the heck this procedure did, because the rashes look worse - they’re starting to ooze. Is this good, am I getting the urushiol out? I hope so. To finish, I cover every spot of rash with Aveeno cream that contains calamine. Finally I’m sterilized, and I feel like it’s safe to touch my computer again to figure out what else I should do.

I Google poison oak and see a bunch of sites with “myths versus facts” of poison ivy/oak. Great. This is exactly what I need. OK, let’s see. Number 1 Myth: Poison ivy/oak is not contagious - the rashes cannot spread. Wait, what? That is the foundation of all my knowledge about poison ivy/oak, the fact that it does indeed spread.

Well, apparently while your rashes do look contagious because they ooze, once you’ve washed you’re skin they don’t actually contain urushiol anymore. Since urushiol is what causes the rash, and your skin can’t produce urushiol, scratching after you’ve washed your skin at least once will not spread the rash (though scratching is still not recommended because it increases the chance of infection). The rash only looks like it is spreading because your skin usually comes into contact with urushiol at different points in time. Because of the delayed onset of the rash, you will see a gradual development depending on when each are of skin was exposed to urushiol and how much it was exposed to. So my initial technique of scratching my leg did not actually cause this outbreak. And while washing my clothes was a smart move, my whole hour long song and dance in the shower was all for naught (I had already showered several times since contacting poison oak). Oh, and apparently calamine lotion doesn’t work, either.

So I’ve been standing here covered from head to toe in pink calamine lotion, wondering if I should stay in San Francisco to avoid getting poison ivy all over my sleeping bag and spread it further. But now that I realize I can’t spread it anymore, and since I look like a pink leper, I might as well get the hell out of town where other people won’t be able to see me.

The Landscape of Southern Oregon

2009-04-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

Turns out I did not need to drive down the Oregon coast to see the beauty of Oregon. I thought the I-5 corridor between Salem and Portland would be representative of the entire trip – industrial, developed, marked by more strip malls than trees. But when you start to near Eugene, the terrain just opens up and devours your urban sensibilities. It’s breathtaking.

I’m in my little 1995 Honda Civic, 5 speed manual transmission. I’ve packed it to the brim with all my worldly possessions, as I am trucking my life across the country back to New Jersey. I have my Kelty pack armed and ready for me to pull over to the side of the road and set up camp at a moment’s notice (I try unsuccessfully to hide my excitement over my new REI tent), along with 7 pounds of homemade trail mix (gotta love New Seasons), 3 jars each of peanut butter and jelly plus a loaf of bread, and several pounds of apples and oranges. Given the recent development of my conspicuous absence of any form of income, I figure that I can pinch pennies by forgoing travel restaurant stops in favor of buying cheap food in bulk to eat on the road. I’m also incredibly lazy when it comes to food; whenever there is an opportunity to explore more or drive further at the expense of meal time, I’ll gladly eat while driving. I just don’t have the patience to stop, and sit, and eat, when I could be seeing more of the country.

In addition to my backpacking gear, clothes, and food, I have 7 quarts of motor oil squeezed in my trunk. The Volta (my car) has 131,000 miles on her, and so she burns oil like it’s her job. I’ve learned to check the oil level religiously at every stop, to avoid the unfortunate occurrence of the cylinders welding to the engine block. Without leaking a single drop, she goes through an entire quart every full day of driving (about 200-300 miles). But she repays me for quenching her thirst by faithfully carrying me onward, through the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. The landscape along I-5 in Oregon has a different beauty than Colorado. The mountains here aren’t as towering – I’m not even sure whether these qualify as mountains, or merely hills – and you don’t quite get the drastic diversity between the golden foothills of JeffCo and the red-rusted peaks of Aspen. But as soon as you pass Eugene, you’re hit by this effervescent green that just overtakes you. It’s as if the grass is phosphorescent – actually producing its own light rather than simply reflecting that of the sun. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if these grassy fields were still lit up after dusk. The mountains here may differ than those of Colorado, but they certainly do not lack in any majesty.

At first I feel like I’m in the Shire, in the Lord of the Rings. I can hear Howard Shore’s flute melody play blithely as I watch the rolling hills of green grass spotted with homes and farms and livestock. As the road bends, the terrain abruptly flashes from soft and dreamy to jagged and jarring. Now it reminds me of the terrain in Nicaragaua. The green hills are covered with the standard evergreens, but also jutted by rock outcroppings that thrust upward from the grass. Interspersed throughout the evergreens are bare deciduous trees that have not yet budded, thrashing their skeletal limbs in a scowling contortionists’ dance. This is the wild, they say to me. We, not humans, are the rulers here.

Fifty miles north of Grants Pass, at a town called Myrtle Creek, the South Umpqua River suddenly comes into view. Only it’s unlike any river I’ve ever seen in person. The color – a shimmering turquoise – is so striking that merely looking at it induces phantom experiences of the water via the senses of taste and touch. I can feel the temperature and taste the freshness. The color reminds me of the Gatorade flavor “Glacier Freeze,” and I imagine myself, instead of driving on the highway alongside the river, actually rafting down the river, water splashing up in my face and quenching my thirst with its sweet electrolytes.

My little Volta’s speed starts to decline rapidly as I ascend an almost imperceptible hill. I’m used to this by now, and I no longer panic like the first time that I saw my speedometer needle plummet though my pedal was pushed to the floor. Now I simply shift into fourth and pick my speed back up. My Honda is actually doing great with her 4 cylinder considering all the crap that is loaded in the trunk. There’s the occasional rattling noise and the perpetual smell of oil burning, but she putters on.

The highway bends to the right without warning and is swallowed up by the evergreens that border it on either side. The rain has begun to fall harder; the raindrops vaporize as they hit the ground, creating a thick mist that makes it difficult to see where the road turns next. But I’m fixated more on the moment, rather than the destination, and so I just enjoy my beautiful drive through the fog.

Top 5, PDX Style

2009-04-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

In honor of the fact that I just watched High Fidelity, here are the Top 5 Things I’ll Miss About Portland:

Number 5: The Unemployment Rate:

I know, this is a bit of an ironic thing to miss, having just become unemployed myself. Seriously, though, the unemployment rate in Portland is over 10%. It seems like no one I meet has a job. Every person has some story about what they’re doing at the moment that does not involve a job. Here are a few typical conversations that evolve when people are prompted with the question, “So what do you do?”

A typical conversation with an artist:

“So what do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a painter.”
“Oh, wow you’re an artist! Do you have any stuff for sale or in a local gallery?”
“Oh…no, I’m still, uh…working on my first few paintings.”
“Ah, ok – just getting started, cool! Do you have a side job at the moment?”
“No I just, uh focus on my artwork.”

Alternatively, a conversation with an outdoorsy type:

“So what do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a climber at the local rock gym.”
“Oh neat, you work at the rock gym?”
“No, I don’t work there, I just go there to climb.”
“Oh, cool, I’ve been there a few times to climb as well. So do you work in Portland?”
“Not at the moment. I’m just climbing, pretty much.”

My coworker Kayla said that when she lived in Southeast Portland, she was literally the only person in her building who had a job that required her to get up earlier than noon and wear something other than faded jeans and sandals. And for that she was called “corporate” by the other people who lived in her building! This is someone who works 10 hours a day to improve public education in Oregon, called corporate because she actually has a job to wake up and go to. Only in Portland…

Number 4: The Recycling System:

Not only is recycling ubiquitous in Portland, but there’s also the possibility that Portland has curbside food compost pickup. I say possibility because I am still uncertain as to the definitive answer on the subject. While it’s not in question that our green curbside compost bins can be used for yard waste, it is unclear whether there is a unified policy on whether or not food waste is acceptable as well. From conversations with all other Portlanders, I was under the impression that food waste could be deposited in the green bins as well until my roommate got yelled was told the compost company would not empty our green bin. They will still take food compost, however, if you make sure to fill the top of the bin with leaves to cover the forbidden contents beneath.

But what I like most about the recycling system is the city’s very economical approach to determining the amount of resources to use in collecting recyclable materials. You see, when you look at the amount of recyclable materials produced and put in recycle bins, and then you look at the total volume that Portland has the capacity to pick up every week, there’s a gap. There are more recyclable materials put in curbside bins than could possibly be carried off by the number of trucks utilized each week. And yet, all of Portland’s recycling successfully reaches processing plants.

How, you ask?

The city government is aware of the fact that there are many homeless people who will go around and pick out of people’s recycling bins to turn in the bottles for money. It is the homeless can collectors who are responsible for making up the remaining gap in hauling capacity. Some of the homeless people are pretty sophisticated, too! They may not have homes, but they do have bicycles (which makes sense if you’ve ever been to Portland). On the back of the bicycles they have a trailer hitch that has of a sort of rectangular frame with wheels into which you can put a small recycling bin, and they’ll go around filling up the bin with recycling from various cans and hauling them off to get reimbursed. A bum-powered recycling system. Awesome.

Number 3 – Portland’s Cyclists

The bikers. They are everywhere. And in a good way. Not like scabies or chicken pox, but like beautiful women or, uh…chocolate covered marshmallows. Portland is such a haven for bikers that people actually move to the city because they want to get rid of their cars. They move here, sell their cars, and then they buy a bicycle that costs more the car.

The amazing thing, though, is not just how many cyclists there are, but that they have power, too. They have the power of a full-fledged lobbying group or a voting bloc. Most recently, cyclists in Portland pressured state representatives to sponsor a bill that would make cyclists exempt from traffic laws. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The bill (HB 2690) would permit the so called “Idaho stop” at stop signs. Cyclists will only have to slow down at stop signs, rather than stopping, and will only have to yield if there is other traffic present. Cyclists in Eugene, Oregon convinced the city administration to change its position on the bill, and now the City of Eugene no longer opposes the bill. I mean, cyclists in Oregon are serious about their bikes; these aren’t just pot smoking, no-carbon-footprint-wannabe hippies, these are representative-calling, letter-writing activists. If you’re a representative and you don’t listen to the cyclists in your community, you just might get a seemingly nice gift of a vintage water bottle – one that just so happens to have BPA, and will probably give you cancer. (all Portlanders now use metal water bottles to avoid BPA).

Don’t get me wrong, I love the cyclists. They’re fantastic. I’m not only impressed with their ability to overturn the law, but also their ability to thwart it. My roommate is part of a cycling social group called “Pub N Pedal,” and they have found a way around this age old conundrum: how to meet up at a bar with a bunch of people coming from different areas, have a good time at the bar, and yet make it home without endangering anyone or getting thrown in jail. I mean this has been a serious problem that many social groups still continue to face. Members of Pub N Pedal get around this conundrum by biking so they can get hammered at the bar, and not get hammered afterwards - for drunk driving, that is. Supposedly you can get a ticket for being drunk on a bicycle, but I hear it’s not enforced nearly as often. And it’s harder to notice because it is very easy to ride a bicycle safely and not wobbly when you’re drunk. I mean that’s what I heard. I wouldn’t know anything about that…

Number 2: The Vegan Scene

Yes, there is a vegan scene. Not just a vegetarian scene, like in many cities. I think there’s actually a commune of vegans living underground somewhere in the city where they don’t practice birth control, because man, vegans emerge from the woodwork here. It’s like you’re eating a nice steak dinner at a restaurant and then all of a sudden out the cracks in the floorboards you get 5 vegans who come up and swap out your steak for some marinated tofu and run around making chicken noises. Though a vegan myself, I don’t really understand it, to be perfectly honest.

There’s actually a vegan strip mall in one area of town that contains a vegan fabric store, a vegan bakery, a vegan grocery store, a vegan restaurant. There’s also a vegan option at nearly every regular omnivorous restaurant. There are even Friday night vegan Twister parties where groups of vegans get together play Twister naked while composting on themselves. It’s kind of weird at first but you get used to it after a while. There are so many vegetarians in Portland that the meat-eaters have actually had to start their own dating sites simply in order to meet other omnivores.

So how did vegetarians take over? Here’s my theory – they became chefs. I know what you’re thinking – vegetarians became chefs and simply stopped serving meat. But no, I think it was even more clever and conniving than this. They served meet, they just cooked terrible meat dishes. With sushi, there are only maybe 2 or 3 legitimate sushi places in town. The rest of the places are those sushi train places with the mass-produced sushi assembly line that goes around you on a conveyor belt. And in Portland they serve items on those conveyor belts such as tunafish rolls. No, not the tuna sushi you’re used to, which is a nice piece of raw tuna, often spicy. No, no – I’m talking tunafish from a can, the kind that is served with mayonnaise and occasionally celery. Yes, they put that in a roll with rice and seaweed and they call that sushi. So it’s through this subtle method that the vegetarians and vegans drove meat eaters away.

Number 1: The Weirdos

I love how there is a place in Portland for all the weirdos. People are just accepted here, even if they’re crazy, or smelly, or both. And there are a ton of weirdos here. At first I was a little alarmed, but I quickly started to find Portland’s weirdos quite charming.

There’s a woman at the Belmont Library comes in every day around noon, sits in on one of the tables at the back of the library, puts her stuff down, and spends about two minutes angling the chair so its back faces away from the person next to her at a 45 degree angle, as if to build a sort of barrier. She does this for two minutes: just wiggling the chair back and forth – arriving at 45 degree angle within the first 15 seconds, then moving it a little bit away, little bit back, until it sits at a 45 degree angle again. She then goes and gets 3-4 cookbooks, brings them back, puts them on the table (and at this point she turns her chair to face the table, negating her earlier work). And she just sits there, flipping through the cook book, looking at pictures of food. She just sits there for three hours, looking at food and muttering to herself.

That’s another thing, Portland has the highest population density of people who talk to themselves – and it’s not just homeless people who have been shunned by society, but people who are still an integral part of Portland’s businesses and/or families. I’m gonna miss the fact that people like that are accepted here. Even though I don’t walk down the street talking to myself, when I walk into the library among the weirdos, I feel like “these are my people.” The only reason I was taken aback at first is mostly because I was looking for someone to live with. Like I said, I like the fact that there is a place for weirdos in Portland; I’d just prefer that place not be in my home.

Finding Poetry

2009-04-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

People often compare Seattle to Portland, and, depending where you are, assert that one is the “better version” of the other. Portlanders, while allowing that Seattle still has that rad northwest flavor, claim that Seattle is too big, too sprawling, too corporate. Seattle is a version of Portland that has “sold out.” Seattleites, contrarily, contend that Portland just doesn’t have as much to offer as Seattle; Portland is what Seattle would look like if Seattleites suddenly stopped applying themselves to anything worthwhile and just sat around getting stoned all the time.

I’d like to say that I have some meaningful social insight on the subject, but my first impression of Seattle was much more mundane; fucking traffic, and fucking hills.

It’s funny how we often have such grandiose, almost theatrical expectations of new experiences; we imagine driving around a bend in the road, and then suddenly the Seattle skyline emerges, as if rising right out of the Sound, with Mt. Rainier towering majestically in the distance. Then of course we imagine that this profound visage will provoke some illuminating revelation, something to pen down for all to read.

In reality such events are far less literary. We cave to the impulses of our emotions: shouting at an aggressive drive who cuts you off, thinking about how you haven’t peed in four hours, nervous about getting off at the right exit. But we shouldn’t be disappointed by these moments –It is to be expected that they fall short of our hopes. This is because we are looking for poetry in the wrong places.

I think the real poetry sits not in an image of a skyline or a mountain, but in human interactions. The moments we share with random people – a server at a restaurant, a crossing guard, or someone we sit next to on the metro. I’m fascinated by the idea that two strangers – compilations of thousands of different experiences and millions of chemical reactions – can intersect paths just for an instant to share a common experience, and then careen off at different angles with completely disparate interpretations of that joint experience. What might be a meaningful human connection for me (and maybe my only one that day), could have been an awkward and forced conversation for you, one that you engaged in only because I was obviously lonely. Alternatively, you might be thinking, “Wow, I just met a great guy,” while I’m walking away saying “Geez, what an asshole.” To me, this is where true poetry lies – the beauty, tragedy, and irony in human interactions and human stories.

Queen Anne – a neighborhood in Seattle – has a reputation for being “uppity,” I’m told. It is home to Seattle’s wealthy residents, who sit up on Queen Anne hill and look down upon Seattle City Center and downtown. The houses are certainly beautiful, as is the view from Kerry Park on top of the hill – the postcard image of Seattle’s cityscape with the Space Needle in the foreground and the Puget Sound off to the left. Interestingly, though, there is a pocket on Mercer Street that has a hipster feel to it – with a used book store and record exchange.

The book store, appropriately titled “Twice Sold Tales,” is run by a woman in her mid-fifties named Jamie. Jamie squints up from behind her spectacles as my friends and I enter the store, greeting us chirpily. A grey cat sits in a bed on top of the first bookshelf – Sam is his name, Jamie tells me, and he’d be happier to see me if I had a treat in my hand. I start to browse the fiction section while my friend Paul heads over to sci-fi. Embarrassingly, Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons catches my eye as a potential book for the plane to Honduras – after all, The Da Vinci Code got me through a few weeks of teaching – when I look back toward the door and notice something peculiar. Jamie is holding a book in her hand, but I can see that she’s clearly not reading. Her eyes keep darting up from the book to watch the customers as they browse the shelves. What is she looking for? Does she think someone might steal?

As I round the corner to check on Paul, I see a second cat strutting forward from behind a bookshelf – this one is black, beautiful, and very friendly. He nudges my leg and circles me several times, letting me scratch his head and coo nonsense at him.

“Do you have cats?” Jamie startles me. Suddenly she is somehow standing right next to me. I stammer, no, I don’t have any cats, but my ex-girlfriend had a cat that I’m very fond of.

“That’s a shame,” she says. Thinking that she is referring to the fact that I’m no longer with my girlfriend, I start to thank her for her sympathy, but she quickly interrupts me.

“No, I meant I’m sorry that she kept the cat. When I broke up with my partner 8 years ago he kept all three cats, and I had picked them out and raised them from when they were kittens.” I express my sympathies, unsure of the correct response in this situation. Undeterred, she starts advising me on picking out a cat of my own. “If you ever get a cat, you should go to a rescue shelter and ask for a Manx,” she says. “Manx are the absolute friendliest. Yes go to a shelter and pick out a Manx – but be sure to be ask for a rumpy, not a stumpy.” (are those scientific distinctions?)

“Or a Siamese,” she continues. “Also very friendly, but they can be very loud. Oh, the Decibals! You could hear it ten blocks away! Oh,” she pauses. “I didn’t mean to go on like that – you don’t mind my going on like that, do you?” I assure her that her advice is most welcome, and repeat it to make sure I got it right (rumpy, not stumpy, right?).

Jamie returns to her desk, and Paul and I consult about a few last selections. We proceed to the checkout counter – I smile at Jamie as I present her with my unimaginative choices: Angels and Demons and The Hunt for Red October. Upon seeing the latter, Jamie becomes very excited. She’s sort of a “sub-buff”, she tells me. She describes how this was Clancy’s first – and in her opinion, best – book, and that he wrote it based on a series of classified conversations he’d had with CIA personnel (I don’t know if this is true or not).

She proceeds to cite the technical accuracy of the novel, based on Admiral Rickover – wait, you don’t know who Admiral Rickover is, she asks me. I don’t. Apparently, as a child, Admiral Rickover had a visionary idea that led to the invention of nuclear submarines. If not for this incredible man, we apparently would not have had nuclear submarines, and may not even have had nuclear power as we do today – no one would have, except for the Russians, she tells me.

I thank Jamie for her enlightening tale and she scribbles Admiral Rickover’s name on a piece of paper to ensure I’ll look him up when I get a chance.

She is a fascinating woman, a self proclaimed “buff” on virtually any topic you can think of (she told Paul she was a buff of some sort as well), and yet there is a self-doubting urgency to her conversations, as if she desperately needs to talk to you to convince herself that she exists, or to convince herself that her existence is worthwhile. There is a loneliness in her speech, the kind that easily echoes down a vacant hallway, searching futilely for someone to hear it. Now I know what she was looking for while she was pretending to read – she was just looking for company.

The Loneliness of Uncertainty

2009-04-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting on a post of a guardrail, at the edge of a bluff that overlooks the Puget Sound. Looking westward across the sound, I can see the Olympic Mountains. They’re covered by a thin veil of mist, and I’m almost wondering if they’re really there. They seem unreal...like most of today.

I’m in Seattle. I arrived here last night, and I’ve spend the day wandering along the Lake Union canal toward the Puget Sound. My walk is at once peaceful and serene…but also disturbing. The disturbing part comes not from the scenery, but from my mind’s reaction to this experience. I don’t quite understand it. But like I said, it almost feels unreal.

This morning I came to the Gas Works Park in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. The area used to be a plant that manufactured gas from coal, and it has now been turned into a public park. The park sits on the north end of the most lake-like part of Lake Union, directly opposite downtown Seattle. Sitting atop the parks’ prominent hill offers a fantastic view of the city’s skyline. The scene was beautiful and tranquil – overall a pretty normal experience thus far.

Departing the park, I went for a walk in quest of the stone troll that supposedly sits under some bridge in Fremont. I started to walk along Lake Union toward the Sound. As I walked, I fell into sort of a deep meditation. I was awake and experiencing the world, but I was also removed from it. Rather than simply being present, and experiencing the moment, it was like ever sight, every sound, every smell evoked some vivid memory into which my consciousness fell. I would see the boats and suddenly be back on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. I would smell the salt air, and be catching a Frisbee with my Dad at the Jersey shore. I would see the greenery of the northwest – the evergreens and ivy – and be traipsing again through the woods of New Jersey with my childhood friend Max, who’s now moved back to Switzerland. I was at once enjoying the beauty of my walk along the canal – the foliage on my left and the Seattle architecture of the industries on my right – and also not existing in the present; my consciousness was housed more in memory.

As I was experiencing all these memories, I was also experiencing false memories – memories of things I’d dreamt, but not actually experienced. A field in the back of Jake Krueger’s house – whose father my dad used to do carpentry for – with a horse that had run away, and we were chasing it through the woods. A playground near the baseball field in Roseland that doesn’t actually exist, off of which I would throw myself either to induce a state of flying or to end the dream in the darkness of a fatal fall. I’ve had many dreams like this; they’re not connected by any theme – they just have a very similar feeling. There are certain sensations I have, certain experiences that I always associate with these dreams. And when I experience those sensations in life, those dreams are evoked as if they were memories I’d actually experienced. There are even times when it takes me a few minutes to realize the memory is of a dream.

As I walked along the canal, experiencing these memories, I didn’t smile when thinking fondly of my parents, or remember the excitement when Max and I found an abandoned fort in the woods. Rather, the memories came back to me as pictures of loneliness. Not that I had been lonely in any of those times or that I was lonely now in remembering better times, but almost as if the memories had been modified – like an old home video where the tape is worn out and the sound doesn’t work anymore. You watch pictures of familiar faces, some of whom have now departed this world, people you want so badly to reach out to and hug and hold and talk to and hear their voices. But try as you might, in the end you know you can’t – they just move on silently, mouthing inaudible words to each other while ignoring you – because the tape has faded. It’s like looking at a place you want to be from behind soundproof glass, or watching a scene that was once filled with people and laughter and life, and now there’s just the scene… no people, and no laughter. Just a field, or an empty house, or a vacant window.

And yet, although the memories are modified, they are still memories that I’m experiencing as sort of a reflection upon my life. I withdraw from the world into these memories, seeking shelter within them. I occupy my mind by reflecting upon anything and everything…anything but the fact that I’m now without a job. I'm trying to keep from slipping into the terrible void that follows the end of a dream in which you felt like you had direction, that you knew what you wanted to do and could have actually made a difference. I’m now without vision, without work. Just wandering the streets, half here, half not…half in the past, half in a past that never even happened.

The people I’m remembering, the ones that still exist, seem so far away, so detached from my memories of them. It’s like I want to sit back in those memories again, go back to the festival on the shore of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. Sit in that picture and talk to the people as they were then, not as they are now – alcoholic, or in jail, or dying. The people in those memories were part of my life, and they people that they’ve become are not. Who they are now is utterly alien to who I’ve become, and trying to reconnect would just be futile.

I pause my meditation to look back out along the Sound. A man, standing on what looks to be a kind of kayak, or a paddle board – flat like a surf board, single paddle, alternating sides with his graceful stroke like a Japanese gondola – coasts his way half a mile from shore, stopping every now and to inspect the red buoys that bob up and down with unknown purpose. He looks at peace, but I’m projecting my loneliness onto him, as his is the only vessel within eyesight. Not the loneliness of wanting company, but the loneliness of uncertainty, now that I’ve been violently jarred off course in one fell swoop. Is the paddleboard man actually out there on the Sound, or is it just my mind creating a visual image of what I’m feeling, as if in an effort to explain it to me? In the past I’ve made a mockery of such questions, but now I’m really not sure. I just don’t feel very sure about anything, right now.