Vagabond Urges

A form of The Good Life, eh.

2012-03-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

Still a tad jet-laggy, we're living the good life today in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

We're staying in another airbnb place, this time the apartment of an excellent-sounding couple who is unfortunately in India at the moment, but their place is awesome, and superbly close to downtown. We slept in, wandered over to a brunch place for homemade granola and free-run egg scramble. Stopped by a quirky grocery store (where we continued finding out which products K has never heard of and I've forgotten, triscuits, butterfinger, jack cheese), then the rest of the day moving between the multiple vintage stores (I fell fully asleep in one of them) and the bizarrely common coffeeshops where I am exploring the range of chai lattes.

Given the modest population of Victoria and the Saanich Peninsula it sits on, I do not understand how the concise downtown area supports that kind of coffeeshop density. I don't think there is a single block in town that doesn't have at least 1.7 coffeeshops on it, of which only a few are Starbucks.

It's a rule-breaking sort of place I guess, since there are at least four bead shops and a half dozen other craft stores as well. All in all, it's my kinda town; the Religion section of the magazine rack featured monthlies called, among others: Magical Times, Faerie, and (my personal favorite) Mermaids.

With this kind of indulgent strolling, maybe it's no surprise we were asked for directions; I guess we just look comfortable.

Saturday morning stroll to the water tomorrow, then back to Seattle on the evening ferry before heading down to Portland.

Dinnertime in Seattle

2012-03-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

We left the famous and filthy streets of New York for the relatively spotless and anonymous byways of Seattle, and both of us were quickly enamored of The Emerald City. (I haven't felt camera-inclined so far this trip, but here's the New York subway and one reason we liked Seattle: the sticky pecan bun in the bakery cafe where we had breakfast.)

In lieu of a normal hotel I booked us a place on airbnb.com, where people with extra rooms/apartments can list them to travelers, setting their own prices and rules; it’s halfway between hotels.com and couch surfing.com. (I am going to list that comment on comparisons.com.)

We were staying in “contemporary artist loft downtown” which turned out to be in a building otherwise occupied by artists' work-studios, and I had kept it a surprise for K. When I stopped at a random building as we walked through the International District, K’s confusion was delightful. “Honey, that’s not a hotel…”

We were curious about the artists who have studios there, and as we left for dinner last night met one of them in a quick chat as we left the building together. We stepped into the mom & pop sushi place downstairs saying “I would have liked to talk to him more.” That’s the awesome thing about services like this, meeting normal (ie not working in tourism) people when you travel.

I read in the paper that the guy who wrote “It’s a Small World After All” died the other day, and they said that song is the most-played tune on Earth…not sure I believe that…but either way, it IS a small world, and a few minutes later the artist guy came into the restaurant and sat at the table next to ours. He was shortly joined by his co-renter (they are both tremendously talented comics illustrators) and we had an impromptu sushi dinner party for 4.

I love traveling.

Good (what time zone am I in?) from New York.

2012-03-05T18:21:00.001-08:00

Wow, a little bit of jet lag and lots of miles walked combine to leave me with few words tonight, oh and that early morning flight tomorrow, but I feel like I should put something up on here while in New York (and just in case anyone else got that last post backwards and thought it was a suicide note. It was not. Quite the opposite.)

New York. Um. We've enjoyed our couple days here, wandering around familiar places we've never been before. The hotel I found on sale is not nearly as fancy-shmancy outside as it looked on the site, but that's actually a good thing. The hotel in Dusseldorf was in one of those odd hotel/business park areas that are so artificial and isolated, whereas here we are just on some random backstreet in Brooklyn.

Maybe not an average street though, given that we're on the edge of Williamsburg, which is apparently the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Lots and lots of black clothes, forelocks, and eyes that won't look at you. It reminds me of Antwerp, but dirtier. Much dirtier.

Yesterday wandered through Brooklyn, Park Slope, Prospect Park, over to Manhattan to meander through Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho, East Village. On the street in that last one a hobo with lunatic eyes and crust on his sleeve zeroed in on K and before I could warn her, deliberately brushed that scuzzy sleeve against her, but it provided perfect karma because a second later we had the perfect celebrity spotting.

If K hadn't have said something I wouldn't have recognized Mathias Schoenaerts, arguably the top celebrity in Belgium right now (after his Oscar nomination this year). If we were going to see a celebrity, I really couldn't think of a better one to see in America than the top Belgian. Love it. We all looked at each other, took a couple more steps, then stopped and slyly looked back to see if the other one was looking, half-smiled when they were, and went on our way.

Okay, early flight tomorrow. Good night.

Looking back to tomorrow.

2012-03-01T12:00:00.002-08:00

I just wrote a letter. An honest to goodness, paper letter. How old fashioned. But it seems like that type of letter needs to be on paper, tangible, manifest. In it I told everyone who's still here how much I love them. The practical considerations were all taken care of yesterday.

Now I'm sitting here, on this bench, this beautiful view, and I can tell all the ones who are already gone how much I love them too. I've been so lucky in this life, so many good long years, the places seen and scenes placed in my memory. A very, very good life. Unbelievably lucky.
Getting cold.
My fingers are numb. These fingers have felt so much, so many things, but now they're numb, and they've felt their last. Thank you fingers.
There are my feet down there, gone to all my senses but sight, if I wanted to lean and look. They've taken so many steps, taken me so many wonderful places. Rest now feet.
It's getting colder now.
The religions of the world never interested me much, beyond their value as psycological indicators and social currents made manifest, but I like to think I'm a spiritual person. I believe after one dies their spirit can go back and revisit whatever parts of their life just lived they want to. Like a personal library, they can ride along behind the eyes, in the fingers, above the feet, through the good times, the bad, whatever the spirit wills, they've earned the privilege.

I know I have good times to go back and revisit.
Then when the spirit has had enough of those memories it can choose, to go back and be born again, another try, or it can embrace oblivion, maybe be recycled into another soul.
I don't feel cold any more.
I'll go back to a good time, an exciting time. I'll go back to March 2, 2012. I was leaving Belgium after a very good year and a half there, setting out for another adventure. First a train to a hotel in a new city, a nervous night there, then a plane across the sea, then...
Yes, I think I'll go back and relive that, because I know I made the most of the ineffable gift that is life during that time.
Goodbye. Thank you. Hello.

A couple more pics to clear out

2012-02-29T13:52:00.001-08:00

Those last couple photos were from "Castle Day" at the old mansion down the road in our wee town. It's set back on a fair chunk of land, with trees and whatnot, and they lined the road with art vendors and whatnot, and gave tours of the castle. I'm not sure where the rich people hid while us commoners trouped through their garden, but it was a fun Autumn outing, so here are a few more. (Why won't this dern website let me place those pictures the way I want to?)

Odds and ends

2012-02-29T13:18:00.000-08:00

Last couple days, checking things off the list.

Eat Belgian food: check. This is fricadellen met kriekensaus, that is: meat-balls in sweet cherry sauce. And of course, Belgian beer.

Saying goodbye to familiar places; we passed over the keys to our ex-apartment this afternoon. Last times driving through some of the fantastically named towns, like Grobbendonk, Waasmunster, Melkouwen, and Aarschot.

Fyi: “aars” in Flemish means ass (think Scottish: arse). “schot” is the sound for a gun firing (think: shot/bang/boom), “helen” means to heal, “was” is laundry (think: wash), “melk” is milk, “koeien” is cows.

So in summary you have the towns of Laundry-monster, Milk-cows, Ass-boom, and Ass-healing. And Grobbendonk, that one’s funny on its own.

Return the computer tomorrow. Found this picture from the airport in Marrakech way back, summer-themed advertising, not sure who thought Fahrenheit was hipper, but they should have checked their conversion rates. (For the Celsius people, 20 F is about -7 C.) Of course, it was about 45 C (113 F) in the airport at the time, so 20 sounded good on either scale.

Trying to use up all the tortillas I made some quesadillas today.

Did I take my pill with dinner? Last Wednesday after the junk market my throat felt scratchy. Thursday it was sore. Friday felt like someone had punched me in the throat (reminded me of my days as a cage fighter in Thailand) and Saturday night I realized I had tonsillitis and was going to have to cancel the whole trip to get surgery. Sunday was manly stoicism…whereby I crept off to bed while K stayed up to make a Dr’s appointment for me when the new hours came available at midnight.

Woke up Monday morning with goop around my blastingly red eyes. Tonsillitis and pink eye? F that.

Turns out an infection can spread throughout your head, moving from a sore throat to goopy eyes, who knew? (Seriously, did you know that? It’s kinda creepy.) Those are some fast-acting eye drops though.

I’m going to miss Belgian graffiti, although those kids should stop watching so much British TV.

We went to change our official residence in Belgian and the church across from City Hall has Tim Burton's version of Jesus (can you see his hands?)

The forests are watching you.

And if they don't like what they see they will send the little people to eat you.

Hokay, that about clears out the odd pictures lingering on the computer. Check.

How much for the race relations?

2012-02-23T05:47:00.000-08:00

Winding down, winding up! Our apartment is barebones, the mattress is on the floor, and the peripheral piles of miscellany were revealed. So: Wednesday junk market time. They open the hall for sellers to start setting up at 1:00, we showed up at 1:30 and the epic dustbunnies had already fled to the far corners to escape the chaos.

The main room was packed, these were the real deal junk marketers, elbowing for space, cigarettes poking out of their faces, so we were put in the back room, which was smaller, only large enough for a few basketball courts, a jumbo jet, or a moderate sized ferris wheel. K set up our little tables while I ferried stuff in from the car. The market officially opens at 5:00 but the pro's were already prowling, eyeing me with predators' eyes as I carried our crap in, twice stopping me to bid on stuff tucked under my arm.

We sold some things, chatted to some folks, and had some serious gold-star people-watching. These markets draw an interesting set of people and genetic codes. My favorite part though was the interaction of cultures. We heard Flemish, French, a bit of Arabic, and Russian/Polish (I can't tell them apart unless they use one of the handful of words I know). When the first customer dug out a handful of change from his pocket, it was a mix of Euros and Moroccan dirham.

Integration is always difficult, and Belgium is no exception, but at the market everyone mixed in the search. I can't assume it's pure roses (in particular cultural notions of bargaining conceivably lead to some tension) but I saw no evidence of discord. In the world at large, there are so many barriers to contact and familiarity, but last night frequent customers greeted frequent vendors, and people interacted, seeing that we're all people, and that is the best cure for prejudice.

Penultimate Belgian Weekend

2012-02-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

The first weekend of post-work and pre-departure has passed.

Saturday I woke up at 6:27, 3 minutes before my alarm used to go off for my Saturday teaching routine. I slept through the pre-dawn time when I used to stand on the train platform, Belgians smoking their morning cigarettes in the cold mist. At 9:27 I realized I would be half an hour into my first class, and wondered how that student’s 18th birthday last week went (take a minute and appreciate the absence of teenage angst in your life). That was my last teaching thought of the day.

Saturday night we went out with some colleagues from the old call center job. As always, I came home thinking “why haven’t we done more of that here?” We went to an Irish pub, where a lad with a guitar was playing Britney Spears, followed by the Spice Girls, then Metallica, Cat Stevens, Radiohead, Lynyrd Skynyrd and I don’t know what all. Normally either of those first two would get you drummed out of an Irish pub, but Belgium’s an amenable place, and the crowd was well pleased.

He was a funny looking little guy, kinda like this guy from the Pirates movies, only with a gap between his front teeth. But he was playing the guitar, playing it well (broke a couple strings) and singing popular songs, and my Theory (Truism) that playing the guitar is the #2 best way for a lad to endear himself to the ladies was born out this morning when K remembered him as being cute. (Out of self-interest I am unwilling to believe K has bad taste in men.)

Today was the day K’s brother-in-law and father could help us move the heavy stuff out of our apartment, so here I sit at our wee table which will fit in K's Corolla, the only piece of surviving furniture except for the two retro orange chairs sitting in front of the bare wall to my left. The refrigerator was the hardest thing to carry down from our fourth floor walk-up.

I’m pretty tired, since we didn’t go to bed last night until around 4:00 AM, so in a minute I’m going to go ~~to bed~~ to mattress.

Today I retired again. Moving forward.

2012-02-16T14:24:00.001-08:00

Good evening. My name is Tim Tendick, and I used to be an English teacher.

Last days are an odd thing. Every gesture and act, even silly small ones for saps like me, is noted with the slight smile of finality. Last car rental. Last coffee at the favorite cafe. Last tram ride, train ride, bike ride down the middle of empty streets with soft air wrapping my face. Last goodbye to good people I met.

By now I know the odds of ever seeing these faces again is slight, although on the other side of the coin I’ve revisited ones I’d never thought to see again.

But the face I am moving towards seeing again is another of my own. The traveler me.

I have enjoyed being sedentary. I discovered that I like living abroad as much as I’d hoped I would. That

Belgium

is a great country, endlessly interesting and brilliantly fucked up, just like everything else humans do.

When I got back from Nepal I took off my sandals, put on my normal shoes, and it felt weird. When it got cold here, the Belgian Winter my sometime mistress, I put on my boots, and it felt weird. Now the boots feel normal, the solid clock of the heel on cobblestones or in train cars is background noise. So it’s time to change again, back to the sandals of a traveler, and it’ll feel weird…at first.

But it’s nothing retrograde, it’s all forward. (After all, the Nepal sandals were imitation Teva’s and fell apart on my feet after two months.) But where will that forward motion take me?

First back to America. Back to my country. My country? This was on the cover of the daily newspaper that floats around trains here.

This is what people are seeing of America. I can’t tell which is the salient sign of insanity here. Is it the “Don’t believe the liberal media” sign clutched in her claw? The Gingrich sticker slapped on her frickin forehead? No, I think it is the fanatical light of idiotic certainty blazing from her frightened eyes that look out at an ineffably mysterious world and instead of bowing in abject love of the Beauty, instead seek the loudest jackass in the room to tell her How It Is. She needs a simple explanation. She needs an enemy. She needs a scapegoat and blinders to shrink the world down to something she can claim to understand, and can then dismiss.

My country? Do I have to?

But asking that question is exactly why I need to go back. She is not America. Part of it, sure, but that fearful need to bleach the world down to black and white is a human trait, not an American one…hopefully.

I need to see real Americans, not the ones on TV. I need to see my friends and family. I need open spaces, absence of pavement, presence of growing things, and TREES glorious TREES! Morning mist on the divine Pacific Ocean, the waves that don’t notice me but will lovingly kill me anyway if I let them.

I need to leave home. I need to go home. Then I need to rediscover that Home is inside myself, and that inside encompasses the whole world. Even the fanatics I guess.

Last day at work

2012-02-15T23:05:00.000-08:00

Today is my last day at work. It's been a long time, and a couple continents, since I was last sitting here.

(When I first quit the call center job it was unpremeditated the first time, and the second & third times they expected to call me back for another project, so there was little consciousness of departure.)

Students, today's vocabulary word is: bittersweet.

I think/hope/demand that I learned a lot there, and know there is a shit-ton left to learn...but them's're the breaks. (I'm also kinda embarrassed to have only worked there for a few months, but...yeah.) The students were a whole spectrum of groovy, but I haven't decided how much of that to put on here...and which ones might have this blog address.

The best part, bless the reality of it, was the coworkers. From the secretaries like queen bees running the place to the boss whose amiability and versatility were frankly amazing given the current of stress I suspect he swims in. The other teachers who always had a smile and kind word. The instructor coach, who I wish I'd had the chance to go get a beer with. In fact, I'd love to get a beer with any and all of those folks.

There's of course much more to say about all that, but...I gotta go to work. One more time.

Facing my fear.

2012-02-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

I share a fear with the man in front of me. So we cast around for opinions to protect ourselves.

We’re standing in the florist, it’s Valentine’s Day, and we are both afraid of being the clueless guy whose gesture of love is entirely determined by someone else. Neither of us wants to walk up and say “make something to tell her I care.”

Last time I bought flowers here I confidently asserted “no roses.” That’s good, right? Roses are too…easy. Right? Help? Because when I say “confidently” I mean “monitoring the flower guy to see if he scoffs or nods” especially because this particular flower-guy is the perfect degree of metrosexual to reassure me of his expertise and nonjudmentalism.

But then I began to suspect that roses were in fact appropriate for V-Day.

The guy in front of me “confidently” fills in his card. That is, he writes with a shaky and unsure hand, frequent pauses, peeking at me over his shoulder to make sure I’m not reading his attempt at an original message.

It’s hard being a man.

I ended up with the roses, red, balanced with some orchid-looking guys with tiger spots inside, fleshed out with some wide green leaves. Good. (Good?) Then the exuberantly awkward and entertaining walk across town with a big bouquet of flowers in hand. Although less noteworthy on Valentine’s Day, it still occasioned a couple sly and knowing smiles from grandfathers.

It’s easy being a man.

Lab Rattery and Tea

2012-02-07T22:39:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to get my results from the sleep lab a couple weeks ago. After a lengthy monologue featuring many numbers and a variety of graphs, the surprisingly young doctor (who I trusted more because he was balding) summarized that my sleep is utterly normal.

Just for comparison though, they had me go take an EKG, three letters that I remember from TV shows but wasn’t sure what they actually meant. This time at least, they meant getting a hairnet made of rubber tubing with a slew of wires and electrometer thingies attached to monitor my brain waves.

The even younger technician kid (I don’t mind celebrities being younger than I am, but it kinda bothers me when medical professionals are) had me close my eyes for a few minutes then open my eyes for a few seconds, repeating this several times. It quickly grew boring, so I began my own experiment, thinking about the taste of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, the color green, the feel of an unsanded wooden door, the sound of Carol of the Bells, and as many other sensory thoughts as I could come up with. I’m pretty sure I heard Tech Junior mutter “wat is dat?” and the process took longer than anticipated.

Then he went a little Clockwork Orange on me, using a robo-demonic box to flash strobe lights in my eyes at various speeds. It was peculiar enough to be interesting, but I’m glad that part didn’t last very long.

It’s still colder than a witch’s teat out there (admit it, you’re jealous you don’t get to use that expression more often) so I made us up a big ol’batch of potato, leek, and cauliflower soup. And after dinner the last bag of masala tea we brought back from Nepal. It’s sad to see it go, but exciting as a preparation for departure. Do you know what’s in (some) masala tea? (“Masala” just means “spice” so I assume it differs.) This one was: (all spelling copied exactly from the packaging)

Organic Black Tea
Greater Cardamomum
Cinnamom
Cardamom
Long Pepper
Hot Pepper
Clove
Ginger

I am tempted to try making my own…with someone else to taste test it…

Anybody speak Inuit?

2012-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Remember that legend about the Inuit having dozens of different words for “snow”? Are there any Inuit people reading this? What do you call the ice crystals like fine-grained shredded coconut? Cocosnow? Or the slightly larger ones like grains of kosher salt? Koshosnow? Do we combine them and call it cocosnolt?

The cocosnolt fell on Monday morning. It was the day of a nationwide strike, and I can picture all those buses sitting untouched in the yard somewhere, sprinkled in cocosnolt. It lingered in the shadows and outside the pathways all week since the temperature never got above freezing. No thawing here.

The birds were not on strike, and the food we put out during the winter makes our balcony popular with the avian population.

Friday afternoon I finished classes early, and the snow was just enough to crowd the sidewalks with past footsteps.

The crystals are sticky, and outline everything, each twig on a naked tree, each spoke of a parked bicycle, and the cold figures of the War Memorial in our town.

I got home about 2:00, put on the kettle for a cup of tea, and turned to see the first flakes falling.

By rush hour several inches had fallen, burying the cocosnolt in legitimate powder, and the radio reported 1,200 kilometers of traffic jam. That’s about three times the width of Belgium.

But I take the train am in love with the world, so to me it’s all coming up roses, strung with newly improved spiderwebs.

Today I understand

2012-02-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

It may not be this cold in Nicaragua…but right now I wouldn’t trade.

This week has separated out the thin-blooded immigrants from the Belgians (and thick-blooded immigrants; the Polish laugh at this temperature as they sit outside for a cigarette). A Canadian informed me that it was -45 C there and I wonder why (and how) anyone could live below freezing, but a second ago it all became clear.

As I finished today’s peanut butter & jelly sandwich…it started snowing.

There was already a bit on the ground since Monday, but it fell when we weren’t looking. Now I’m looking. And looking.

Now I’m loving.

Belgians always look at me like I’m crazy when I say I love the rain, and indeed it is a special goddess, but this…this is a whole different kind of beauty. I’m not going to try and think of something new to say about it, it’s all been said (better) before (especially about the almost tangible quietness of it all!) so instead I am brewing a hot cup of tea, in the big mug, and grabbing this excellent book, and I have a date with the couch and a blanket.

It's beyond me right now to make it look good, but here's what's on the other side of the window, getting heavier by the second.

Stay warm and quiet my friends!

The Countdown begins, with...Crepe Day?

2012-02-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

Happy February 2! And no, not because it’s Crepe Day, (although celebrating the “purification” of the Virgin Mary via crepes is reason enough for a party…but how do Catholics “purify” a virgin? In my religion it would be when she, ahem, "liberates" herself, but that’s another topic.) Nope. We start our trip one month from today. We are T minus four weeks and counting.

We've packed up a lot of the assorted materiel that accumulates when humans live in one place for awhile (especially if one of them has a well-developed sense of style, by which I clearly don’t mean myself). Packed in boxes are the candle holders, dessert cups, and neo-feminist/style magazines. The flower pots are already at her parents’ house and the bookshelf holds only the little gifts we brought back from Nepal for my family.

I moved in via backpack, and having added little to my collection since (I averaged 2 items of new clothing in each of the last 3 years) I am largely exempted from the packing process.

So I have been contributing in the kitchen, where we’re working our way through the various and sundry food items that do not factor into frequent meal plans. My lunches lately have included an influx of sesame seeds, quinoa, and lentils. The risotto, falafel, and polenta stand exposed at the back of a newly naked cupboard. They look like I interrupted them plotting something.

We both love tea, but usually only drink green, so I’ve been struggling and steeping my way through the Others. I am particularly proud of finishing the German sampler box, where I never quite knew what I was drinking, but all of them made me feel like invading Poland. (Too soon?)

I am also working through my impressive collection of mini soaps and shampoos, though I anticipate refreshing my stash in a month…a word of advice to housekeeping at the Condor Hotel in New York: don’t leave the cart in the hallway.

It’s odd how things are conspiring to make leaving feel right. In December I had half of my regular students finish their courses, adding to my sense of the end of a time period. This month I have a few more doing the same and it’s starting to feel like graduation. (When do we sign yearbooks?)

And driving. I regularly have “charter out” classes at a student’s house/work (note: car-sharing programs are frickin awesome) and it’s been the first time I’ve regularly driven in…can it be 3 years? It was fun to be back behind the wheel, and I enjoyed learning Antwerp and surrounding environs, but the novelty of navigation has given way to normalcy, leaving me vulnerable to the repercussions of vehicular familiarity, namely: insanity and stupidity at unnatural velocities.

Just today I saw two examples of incomprehensible driving: a mac-truck on the freeway drifting over to fully straddle the lane divider while he dialed his cell phone, and three luxury sedans driving full speed into a busy intersection with a dead traffic light, coming incredibly close to plastering the other three luxury cars that were only-slightly-less-incautiously insisting on their right-of-way.

(Have you ever left a cup of coffee/wallet/cell phone on top of your car and driven off? Too many people seem to leave their brains on top of the car. I assume they are normally intelligent and logical creatures, but behind the wheel, not so much. Sorry, I’ve gone off on this particular tangent too many times before, I know, but I can’t help it… Humans are clearly not ready for the automobile.)

When traveling I have something of a talent for getting lost, and have enjoyed a departure from that tendency, but…I’ll just have to try and enjoy it when I find myself lost again.

And speaking of enjoyment, it’s been below freezing for the past week or so. I enjoy the fortifying/shocking chill…for a while. But riding home from the train station tonight, one chapped hand clasping the hood of my sweatshirt closed over my face, I kept thinking “I bet it’s not this cold in Nicaragua right now…”

I love you Belgium, but I think we should see other people. It's not you, it's me.

Moonlighting as a lab rat.

2012-01-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

Mlugh. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m a bit tired today. I didn’t sleep that well last night, mostly due to plastic tube stuffed up my nose, although all those wires glued to my head didn’t help either.

You see, ever since I was a wee laddie, I’ve had an occasional tendency to wake up panicking, full-on fight or flight, heart pounding, vision shaking, and it sucks. I always just dealt with it, but since I am temporarily a member of a functional medical system, I figured I’d try to find out wtf was going on.

So yesterday evening at six o’clock I found myself sitting in the hospital lobby, watching everyone watch everyone else, all trying to figure out who was dying, and of what. (Kinda macabre, but be honest, you know that’s what’s going on in the minds of those people who aren’t particularly dying or visiting someone who is.)

They gave me room 339, fine, we went up there and checked in again, okay, then entered the room…kind of a shock. It was also a totally normal hospital room. But it was, you know, a hospital room. For me!

The narrow bed that can be raised in the back or the legs. The broad triangle handle hanging down to help the ailing one sit up. The bulky remote control, clunky like it just escaped from 1970, with two yellow buttons to turn off the lights, and a big glowing red one to call the nurse. The TV mounted up in the corner above a utilitarian visitor chair and atrocious curtains.

Thus far in life, “patient” has only been applied to me as an adjective, rarely before as a noun.

They asked if I wanted dinner. We’d quickly scarfed down a vegetable stir-fry before leaving the house, but I figured something more solid would be a good idea. White plastic tray. White IKEA plate. Two packages, sealed in plastic, each with two pieces of thin white bread. Two packages, in sealed plastic, each with two pieces of white cheese. Two pats of butter. A small cup of yogurt, cherry.

Why is hospital food so bad? I know some patients need bland and basic food, but at those prices, can’t the rest of us get a little flavour? Or at least a second color?

For beverage they offered coffee or black tea. Odd choices for dinner in a sleep lab, no? Can a brother get some chamomile?

After the monochromatic dinner the nurse dude came in and started gluing shit to my head. Well, first he strapped a plastic powerpack to my chest to which everything would be attached, starting with a belt around my stomach, a stethoscope taped to my jugular, and then the wires. Most of them went to my head and had a little metal cup on the other end, but I was mildly alarmed to see a pair of little alligator clips in the mess too. These were attached to little metal Frankenstein nubs sticking up from pads glued on my gut and shoulder. If they’d brought out a car battery I would have told them everything.

The cups at the end of the wires were glued on. Top of the head, sides of the head, back of the head, behind the ears, temples, two on the chin, and one smack dab in between my eyebrows. That’s 13 wires hanging off me. I expected a man with six fingers on his right hand to tell me it was simple really, he was going to suck one year of my life away…

Later the night-shift nurse added two more wires, connected to Velcro ankle-bands, and the plastic tubing stuck up my nose that I associate with the colossal case of emphysema my grandfather had, then said “call for the nurse if you need to pee.”

It’s all connected to a machine humming away in the corner, and there’s a camera on the opposite wall recording the whole time.

Sleep tight!

I sat there, wired up like the display at a tech museum, trying to decide if I felt closer to A Clockwork Orange or Captain America. Either way, I found it entertaining that K came to the US and saw things from the movies (like diner waitresses topping up your coffee from those big bulbous coffeepots, “regular or decaf hun?”) and I had the same in

Belgium

. I wonder if my amusement showed up on the screens?

I’m not sure how one is supposed to have a normal night’s sleep in those conditions, but I gave it the old college try, and after what only felt like 3-4 nights, the nurse charged in, slamming on the incredibly bright light and bustling brusquely about as only a nurse can.

She quickly bustled away again after plunking down a pair of feedback forms, in Dutch of course. As I was puzzling over those I started yanking the shit off, starting with the chin and jugular (the plastic tubing came off as soon as the light went on). By the time she came back to collect my forms I had ripped most of them out of my hair, and let me tell you, those f’ers didn’t come out easy.

Nor did they come out clean. They said the glue will come out after 5-6 showers. So I walked out and across the lobby, already busy at 7:00 AM, looking like I had been, shall we say “anointed”? by an impressively large seagull with an incredibly toxic diet. Must be the hospital food.

In two weeks I’ll go back to hear if I’m good at sleeping or not…

A couple days in Antwerp

2012-01-18T04:32:00.000-08:00

I love the way the seasons work. We’ve passed the apex of Winter, when Life, mostly unnoticed by us poor modern mammals, held still for a long night in perfect frozen equilibrium, a clear blue liquid depth, from which we are now slowly rising back towards the green air of Spring and the mythic yellow air of Summer.

But that warmth is still a long way off, and this Saturday morning was a loving reptile, slow to awaken in the cold but we don’t mind waiting. Sluggish buses, reluctant dog-walkers with arms clenched tightly to their sides, and a sun so bright and cold it can’t possibly be the same entity that will redden white Belgian posteriors on vacation in Spain in a few short months.

This winter has actually been remarkably mild, the cold only coming in Friday night. Thursday and Friday were borrowed from Autumn, which was great timing on two days where I taught in the morning, then had several hours of free afternoon before an evening class.

Thursday I wandered towards the University district through an urban crevasse of building facades, not quite united on a single plane and each unique to themselves, but united in a texture of Continental age, with walls of bricks chipped by centuries, or weathered gray stone showing a grayscale of accretions from generations of rainfall.

Cobblestones under the tires of small gray fuel efficient cars, with breathily metallic exhalations from trams that pass at an unexpected variety of velocities. Opposite a tidily imposing storefront of Romanesque columns that now shelters a gay bookstore, I found one of those perfect European cafes to stop and warm my hands.

The walls are rich dark wood chosen in full expectation of centuries of service, lightened here and there by mirrors. There is a coat rack. A silvered man in a well made sweater is reading the paper. Good coffee is served in small curvaceous cups, each coming with a small cookie. Two cubes of unrefined sugar in one of those little jars used in hotels for single servings of confiture (nothing so crass as jam). I wonder if the waitress is reading any of the same texts I read in college.

This place has nothing to talk about with Starbucks.

Three tables are occupied, two languages, neither of them English, the man reading the paper is alone. His sweater exults in cold misty mornings, and his hands are worn and confident. After a half hour he is joined by a younger woman with large startled eyes, whose own coat has repurposed some of its functionality to fashionability. He greets her with a nearly wordless calm that is clearly paternally pleased to see her. Happiness leaks out of him in small smiles during their conversation. His eyes disappear completely during his rare laughs, which seem like a newly acquired skill in a formerly harsh life.

On Friday I go to a funky young place for dinner. The façade is neon green, the front door handle is an indoor-rock-climbing hold, the music is Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, and company. I have the tortellini, with zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, arugula, and quality mozzarella. A little pesto drizzled on top of the hearty tomato sauce.

Outside the window a rainbow arcs down in shouting defiance of the northern European grayscale onto the theater building across the square where schoolboys are skateboarding with impressive skill and minimal image-consciousness.

Both Thursday and Friday were astrologically blessed, with lessons to be learned from observation, an Ipod with impeccable timing, and flirtatious weather that drizzled precisely the right amount of precipitation as I walked across Antwerp to my evening class Friday night.

Yup, I’m going to miss Belgium.

A Little Scratch on New Year's

2012-01-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

I am waiting, drowsing. Not too much longer, just another two turns of the calendar’s pages.

The calendar is hanging opposite the tankless water-heater in the little closet off our tiny kitchen where we cook our incredibly healthy vegetable stir-fry dinners that I will soon be missing. It was made and gifted by my folks and has pictures from their trip to Europe last September. Pictures of places in Belgium that were eye-grabbing to me too when I first saw them, my big traveling backpack on, but now I wear a functional day-pack and don't always notice them as I pass by in the fugue of the familiar.

I have accidentally and incorrectly given the impression that I do not like Belgium, that I don’t want to be here. I do, and I do. Belgium is still a great place, my vagabond feet don’t change the places they step. I am voraciously thankful for the shelter I have found here. The lessons and the growth. The smiles and sighs of contentment.

The deliciously maddening thing about sighs of contentment is that they’re a renewable resource… that needs renewing.

There is a new and delicious plate of food to go find. There is a new and gorgeous vista to go see. There are new and wonderful people to go meet. There are new and frustrating episodes to go through. There are new and important lessons to go learn.

There are urges, familiar and beloved, perhaps inimical. And maybe even dangerous? But Belgium is and will remain a haven of goodness.

We’ll see what happens to those urges in 2012. And to start the year, a little scratch of the traveling itch, courtesy of a Christmas gift hotel voucher from my folks. We found a place in Neiderbronn-les-bains, just across the border in

France

, that looked like a nice place to spend New Year’s Eve.

We packed basically toothbrushes and snacks, reaching a good ratio of healthy (homemade hummus and cherry tomatoes) and junky (peanut snack-things, Szechuan flavor), and stopped to get fresh bread on our way out Saturday morning.

This specific area of

Belgium

has it’s own New Year’s Eve tradition, where kids go door to door singing short songs and receiving little treats. It’s sort of a combination of Christmas caroling and Halloween.

With a 9 grain baguette in hand I got back to the car just in time to hear a handful of Flemish children, all bundled up, singing to a smiling old man:

Oud jaar, nieuw jaar

Twee koekjes is een paar

We wensen jullie

een gelukkig nieuwjaar

("Old year, new year, two cookies is a pair, we wish you a happy new year.")

Perfect. Geweldig.

It was only a 4 and ½ hour drive, and passed from Flanders, through relatively rustic Wallonia, into some snowy forests of Germany, then along winding Alsatian farm roads in France. I love Europe.

Unbeknownst to us, the GPS was set to avoid toll-roads, so we left a wide Teutonic freeway and drove the last hour through sleepy villages that can only plausibly be inhabited (in my mind) by Hansel, Gretel, and various other Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Worn brick walls built by hands that never left the village, long wooden beams bowing under the weight of centuries, street names in dialects particular to the village, and those winding streets that descended organically from whatever paths the horses felt like making.

Oh, and much to my giggling delight, one of those towns is called Bitsch (Bitche on the French side). I wish I’d taken a picture of the fork in the road that featured Bitche on one hand and some quaint-sounding village on the other…a metaphor for how we respond to the minor irritations of life. “Will you take the Bitche road, or the delightful little village path?”

Neiderbronn-les-bains is almost one of those sleepy towns, but is a little too enlivened by money, is now larger, and features a sizeable casino, yet remains ineffably picturesque. It holds to the regional integrity of prominently not featuring chain stores or modern blech like neon lights. There was of course a grocery store that is probably not full-fledged Mom-and-Pop, but it was small, packed to coziness, and locals were chatting away in the Alsatian blend of German and French. I would bet you dinner that they knew all about each other’s parents and children.

The hotel was the other exception to the no-chains rule, as it was a Mercure.

The first time I remember leaving the US was when we went to England to visit my little British granny when I was circa 8 years old. We hopped over to Paris for the weekend (a trip that included my first experience of throwing up on a train…I have currently thrown up on trains in 4 countries, and although the following 3 were all the results of poorly timed food poisoning) and stayed in a Hotel Mercure.

Thus, I have reason to believe that the first words I ever learned in another language, taught to me by my responsible mother, were “où est l’hotel Mercure?” Followed shortly therafter by my brother’s and my improvisational “où est l’merde?” which earned us a stern look from the severe old Parisian woman stalking past us on the Champs-Élysées.

Neiderbronn-les-bains (named, I assume, after the thermal baths located there, which I think the Romans were fond of) saw a second childhood return on New Year’s Day, when we went for a walk on the train tracks. No, that wasn’t the childhood activity, remember, I mentioned my responsible mother. Instead it was the practice of putting a penny on the rails for the train to run over. I assume I have several smeared slivers of ex-penny stashed somewhere in my parent’s house. This time the penny was knocked off almost immediately, so I have a slightly oblong and distorted 2 Eurocent as my new lucky coin.

The town is only a half hour away from Strasbourg, so after abusing my small amount of Continental currency we headed there to wander around. Strasbourg is a university town, one of the primary European Union capitals (European Parlaiment, Court, and Commission on Human Rights), where Gutenberg invented the printing press and Goethe fell in love, and takes quaint/epic old architecture to a new level.

It being New Year’s Day, all the Strasbourgians were abed or fled, leaving the streets empty of all but burned-out firecrackers and tour groups. Not the worst way to see a city, but a bit odd.

There were two eating establishments open, one of which had an entertainingly incomprehensible menu (it seemed to be entirely appetizers, drinks, and flams…without any explanation of what a flam is) so we ended up eating in an American-themed burger joint, with stacks of Prohibition-labelled crates under an American flag, Roy Lichtenstein’s cartoon pop art on the walls, and a Bonny & Clyde special of the day.

I could tell we were still abroad though by the indigestible Euro techno assaulting my heart rate and the order-taker guy who looked like a distinctly French caricature of J. Edgar Hoover, don’t ask me how. The cook was French Eminem, and had been in a fist fight within the last week or so against someone bigger than him.

Monsieur Hoover was very likable, which made it confusing when our food continued to not show up for an impressively long time. People who ordered after us got their food and my patience was somewhat frayed by the nonstop nnn-tss-nnn-tss aural attack, and I found myself wondering if it was that infamous French stereotype of arrogance and passive disrespect for foreigners…but I don’t think it was. He said the tape on the order machine had run out, and (after we ate) followed us out the door to apologize again, which he didn’t have to do. So Monsieur Hoover d’Strasbourg is still mon amie.

We took the toll roads home, thereby avoiding Germany in favor of Luxembourg, which ended just before I realized we were there. We gave a cheer to enter Belgium again, and listened with satisfaction as the Flemish radio stations came back in range.

Gelukkig nieuw jaar, everyone!

Universe's reminder

2011-12-16T04:02:00.000-08:00

I gave Belgium a little good-natured ribbing in that last post about being boring for following rules, and a couple hours later the Universe reminded me that it is very much my culture too. Yesterday evening as I was waiting for my train home, I was called upon by a unanimous resolution of God, Country, and My Stomach to indulge in one of Belgium's gifts to humanity: the waffle.

Tangent:

There is in fact a difference between American waffles and Belgian waffles. The latter are lighter, fluffier, and thicker, owing to the use of either a special waffle-only flour and/or yeast. The main exemplar of this is the Brussels waffle, which is properly served warm, with powdered sugar. They also sell it with whipped cream, chocolate, or fruit topping, which are all considered somewhat touristy here, though Belgians eat those too. (And Spirits of the Redwoods help me, sometimes I just have to get that chocolate waffle...so delicious and horrible...)

There are also Luikse waffles (Luik is a city in Belgium, "Liège" in French) which have a type of sugar crystal in it, so it has a sort of crunchy glaze texture. You can put the sweet toppings on Luik waffles too, but I don't recommend it, unless you have a large glass of beverage at hand, and/or the sugar capacity of a 7 year old. They also have a slightly different shape, with the batter not poured all the way to the outer part of the iron, so it is sort of circular.

There are waffle stands in most Belgian downtowns, and there is one in the Antwerp train station that fills the loitering area with a sugary smell of baking that is positively licentious on a freezing evening.

End of tangent.

So last night I got in line behind a young Belgian lass, who was behind a gleeful elderly couple paying for their Luikse waffles. As they searched for their cash a couple of guys from a different part of the world came up, one moving right to the front, examining the display, then ordering when the delighted older folks danced the two-step away with their waffles in hand.

So this fella cut in front of the Belgian lass and myself. She prickled and scowled silently, as we do, and I stared at the guy to see if he was aware of us at all. I don't think he was. Honestly. I really don't think he meant to be rude. He wasn't pushing ahead with a "screw you" sort of feel, he just didn't seem to have a concept of The Line. I don't think it's racist to say that there are cultures that do not use this system...is it?

Think back to elementary school. Teachers straining for years to get you and your shrieking little velociraptor friends to form a line. As natural as it seems now, forming lines is not an instinctive behavior. (Ants do it to follow a scent trail. Geese do it to draft off each other when flying. Those ain't lines in the sense we use.)

It reminds me of the first time I went to Morocco. I got off the boat with the Austrian fellows I had met onboard, and we tromped through the ferry terminal in Tangier. We got to the x-ray thingy and all lined up, put our bags on the belt, and walked to the other end...to see that there was no one else there. No bored dude planning his weekend with eyes glued unseeing to the little screen. We saw a device, made an assumption of a rule, formed our tidy line, and complied. Meanwhile the Moroccans on the boat were halfway to the medina.

Okay, this is a wandering ramble of a post, but it's a blog, you're just lucky I pay some attention to spelling.

The point (or thing closest thereto) is that standing in lines may be boring, but I'll take it over the alternative any day. A system of "whoever is loudest and most up-in-the-face gets served" engenders assholes, because let's be honest, in this context "assertive" is a euphemism for asshole. If that waffle stand in the train station just served the loudest first, that cuddly little old couple would have had to wait for their waffles, and that is just not right.

(I delayed posting this so I could take a picture of the waffle stand and some waffles today after class, but of course forgot the camera, but that's okay because they had set up a temporary stage and some chick was self-consciously covering Gnarls Barkley's Crazy on acoustic guitar, which, delightful as that was, is not the point. So here's a pilfered picture of someone else's blog, courtesy of google images.)

Reminding myself

2011-12-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

Ssssh. Quietly. Don’t wake me up. Another couple months of sleep… Then I can despertarme in Latin America.

It’s a rather productive slumber though. I’ve added some legitimate words to my resume, and I’m probably in the best physical condition of my life thus far. Granted I can’t run the 12 miles to the top of Higgins Canyon like I did in high school, but going to the gym takes longer now that I sometimes have to wait for the lumpy dudes in tank tops to put back the weights I want.

But I am managing not to identify with these changes. I guess I demonstrated my non-identification with the job when I gave my notice, and as entertaining as the physicality is, I am aware that it will melt off with astonishing speed, most likely before I say a single word in Spanish.

Hopefully what will stay with me are the things I’m learning. For example a few fundamental things to do/be as an English teacher. I wish I could go back to Nepal and be presumably much more productive.

And things I’m re-learning. My brothers, my sisters, I have seen a face of the enemy! It is a versatile threat, sometimes sleek, sometimes hulking, but can almost always be identified by the license plate at the back. Behold! The automobile is no friend to the human species! Perhaps I just lost my

citizenship in saying that, but my tragic affection for Porsche 914s notwithstanding, these exoskeletal beasts of internal combustion mayhem are the death of us, even when they leave our bodies unscathed, and the first thing they run over is our interpersonal humanity and reasoned thinking. The Belgians never saw it coming.

Belgians obey the rules. They wait in line, they pay their bills on time, they vote, save money and respect authority. It’s the underlying reason why the society is so functional, stable, and boring. Yet they drive like spoiled children on their way to the cake table! US drivers sometimes zip through a light as it turns red, but holy crapola, that doesn’t come close to what they do here. In a class last week I was commiserating with a French woman about how people here keep going through red lights, clogging the intersection with several cars who really should have stopped. Then of course the people blocked from going the other way glower and lean on their horns, then repeat the behavior at the next light. La Francesa assured me, “non non, we do not do zis in France.”

And I don’t want to give my poor mother high blood pressure, so I won’t tell you about the tailgating. At freeway speeds. Are we sure Nascar didn’t originate here?

Even K! My own little evening primrose is far more angelic than some chalk-faced cherub in a church, but if they drove like that in the heavens I would expect a whole lot more thunder and lightening.

Or maybe I’m just a crotchety old man already. (Oh crap, did Andy Rooney’s spirit move to my body? Heaven forbid. Chalky cherubs forbid.)

In fact, I fear I’ve done it again: focus on details that are interesting to me but sound like bitching and moaning. So allow me to be clear: I love Belgium. I have a deep affection and respect for this country and her people. K’s family in particular is a group of people who anyone would be blessed to know. While I will of course miss my family during the holidays, if I am spending them away, I couldn’t ask for a better place to do it. I have enjoyed my year (& a half) here, and would not mind coming back in the future.

That being said…get me the fuck out of here. Two (& a half) more months. Okay, I can do this. I can handle traffic jams. I can pass people with the deep creases of the chronically displeased between their eyes without slapping them and screaming “You have food! Water, shelter, clothing, medicine! No one is trying to kill you! Cheer the fuck up!”

Maybe, if I try real hard, I can even love them as my fellow man, and learn from the epidemic of non-appreciation that infects the West.

When I see some gross example of petty conflict, like road rage at a stop sign or bitching customers, I used to smile or even laugh in an attempt to block the negative energy from touching me, and just maybe helping someone near me keep the same perspective. But now, as I stand at the crosswalk watching people drive like sociopaths, that laugh sounds cynical, snarky and bitter. (Not to mention condescending and obnoxious.) I don’t want that!

So I take a quick dream-trip back to Stanyard Creek, on the island of Andros, in the Bahamas, in 1998. A couple hundred people in a town so small they hadn’t formalized the spelling, Stanyard, Staniard, however else you liked. There were two dirt streets, one on either side of a tidal river, then a few others that were more like paths dressed up for Halloween than actual roads.

On paper it was sheer poverty: no jobs, no commerce, and most of the food came from gardens and the day’s catch. As far as I’m aware there was neither a doctor nor police (when “Cracker” one of the leathery-faced older guys with eyes blasted nearly colorless by a life of the sun’s reflection on the sea got drunk and knifed somebody, it was a handful of village men who dealt with it; I’m not sure how, but I never saw him take a drink).

People passed on the street with the Bahamian greeting “alright alright,” treating the handful of us white kids the same as everyone else. We were invited to attend the local church if we wanted, with warmth and caring whether we accepted or not. We alternated meals between the one “restaurant”, the one “hotel”, and the town mayor’s house. (Wendy at the restaurant made the best soup, the hotel always had fresh fish, and the mayor made the best conch fritters.) In the evening Wendy would put on music, and the locals would dance with us, without a hint of mockery at our stiff movements. (It’s not entirely our fault, they were great dancers.) We were always welcome to join in the nightly game, whether it was volleyball, basketball, or soccer.

Granted I was 17, abroad, had a huge crush or three, and was swimming in the Caribbean every day, so there may be a tad of golden hue to my hindsight, but the juxtaposition with any wealthy suburb in the world shines clear and confident in my mind.

So the stressed out guy in the Range Rover behind me in traffic can keep his status symbol car, his lifestyle, his bald spot, and his mansion he never sees. I’ll take a bus. I’ll take a dingy hostel room. I’ll take smile lines over stress creases.

Alright alright.

Just my two cents.

2011-11-21T10:54:00.001-08:00

This isn't really a post, I just wanted to respond to a friend's facebook status, but without leaving a paragraph no one would read...so I'll put it here...where it can more easily be not read.

(The post was over which countries are more polite, with assertions that Americans are more polite than Europeans.)

It’s one of my inconsistencies that I think such broad generalizations are inherently pretty useless (no nation is that homogeneous) yet find myself interested in them and making them myself. So I won’t pretend to be an expert, but having traveled in 39 countries I can offer my impression.

With regards to politeness, the US varies so immensely it is almost obscene (see: political discourse, racism, sports fans) but if I put my rose-tinted glasses of optimism on, I would rank us as near the top for politeness in interactions with strangers. We smile and nod on the street, hold doors, talk to waiters and cashiers, and ask each other how it's going. (That last one in particular amuses people here, particularly on the phone.)

(I would say this politeness is more common in smaller communities, since cities are more of a nationality in themselves, regardless of which country they happen to be in, but that's another topic.)

So I would say America does very well…but only compared to other developed countries. (I have not been to Japan.) I have yet to find a single developing country that doesn’t kick the holy crap out of the US when it comes to hospitality and manners towards strangers*.

(* Caveat that this exempts a few highly-touristed zones, where the unscrupulous will try and rip you off, though even then I can only think of one country where I felt this way.)

From Guatemala to Zambia to Nepal, the level of openness and friendliness towards strangers beggars our behavior in the West. Of course it is not universal, there are assholes in every land, but I think one learns a lot about hospitality, priorities, and humanity from traveling in undeveloped countries.

Which reminds me of one image that continues to amaze me. In this secondhand anecdote it was in Kenya. If someone gets on a bus to find it empty but for one other person, they will go sit next to that person, to talk. I just love that.

My two cents.

Gratitude and siblings

2011-11-15T23:34:00.001-08:00

After posting that blog last night I went into the kitchen and started chopping veggies for dinner, and on the last cut of the onion sliced into my thumb. Not too bad, but there’s a chunk of nail and skin hanging off, and blood started flowing, and much to my disappointment I got a little shaky. Damn, I wanna be a mountain man who shrugs away compound fractures!

But I sat down for a minute to let the nausea pass and was thinking it’s not too surprising that I don’t like seeing my own blood. After all, I’ve gone without seeing it much, at least since childhood’s continuously skinned knees. And that lack of injury is something to be grateful for.

And holy cannoli, do I have shit-tons to be grateful for! I look down at my clothes alone…

My belt…I set my favorite belt aside when I packed up the rest of my stuff in Santa Cruz three years ago, then forgot to put it on the morning I left. My brother drove me to the airport, and when I noticed I was beltless he immediately whipped his own off and gave it to me. That was three years ago, and the belt’s come with me just about everywhere. And he is still sagging like a homeboy.

Hanging on the back of the chair next to me is the black hoodie sweatshirt I wear to the gym, given to me by my other brother when he heard I didn’t have one. Hanging on the retro coat rack (cuz we’re stylish like that) is my waterproof layer that a pequeño Spanish innkeeper on the plains of La Mancha gave to a poor shivering pilgrim.

Looking at this list I feel a tremendous gratitude (and a little embarrassment at my apparent lack of preparation and shopping skills) for the gifts I’ve been given, and these are just a few physical ones!

Another place in Spain gave me a hand-me-down cap that protected me from the sun all the way to Zambia where I traded it to a guy at a river-crossing for a wood carving to give to a friend who had donated very generously to our fundraising for the orphanages there. Is there a blessing greater than friendship?

My folks were here in September (which is yet another thing to be grateful for) but I was surprised when my mom asked if we really enjoyed Nepal. I guess my blogging tended to focus on the odd and sometimes uncomfortable aspects, just cuz I think they make interesting tidbits, but I was startled and frankly ashamed to not have expressed just how fantastic our time in Nepal was.

I mentioned two of my three brothers already, all of whom are fantastic buds that a guy is lucky to have, and all of whom I am proud to call my kin (plus my sister! I could go on but I feel like I’m bragging.) I am already blessed by them, but in Nepal I picked up more.

K and I lived in a room, in a building, next to a school, in a neighborhood, outside of Bhaktapur, in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. The owner of the building was a…shall we say: taciturn…little fellow, and though his wife smiled enthusiastically and greeted us with a robust “Namaste!” every morning, her total lack of English (and our Nepali being limited to “My name is Tilak, I like vegetables and the color blue”) made a more substantial friendship rather difficult.

But we were far from bereft of friendship, because in the school next door (Kalika, one of the two schools we taught in) lived Saroj Subba and his wife Anita (I never saw it written, so I’m not sure if that is a westernized form or not). Subba Sir is a teacher at Kalika as well as the property guardian, and was our liaison and assistance with all things scholastic. (That's K and Subba Sir on the third floor.)

Anita made our dal bhat, twice a day, delicious without exception, all summer long. The guest culture of Nepal is “The guest is a god” which included not letting us help with the preparations or clean-up, but we enjoyed a nightly game of seeing how much we could get away with helping. By the end I could sometimes wash a few plates before she ran me off, and K was allowed to help cook. (Which is great because now she makes a mean dal bhat herself. Here she's crushing garlic and ginger with the big stone roller.)

But Subba and Anita were much much more than just our feeders. They invited us into their home, in all the profound senses of the word. They invited us into their faith, culture, and family. Some of my favorite memories of Nepal are participating in the Hindu rituals of their humble home.

One of those rituals was Janai Purni. (Note: I will describe it according to my experience and explanation of it while there. When I looked online for confirmation, I basically found the same article plagiarized on half a dozen different sites, which describes something different from what we experienced. Thus this disclaimer. This blog is not a text on Nepali Hindu-Buddhist tradition, just what I learned while there.)

Where was I? Janai Purni! Janai Purni takes place on the first day of Gai Jatra, the weeklong Festival of the Cow. Gai Jatra is another whole post, in fact it’s second on my longstanding mental list of post-to-be.

On Janai Purni we were invited up to the Subbas’ room (Subba is their surname, but what Saroj Sir went by most of the time) where we had a tikka ceremony, but with something extra. After lighting the Ganesh lamp and incense, Anita performed a ritual cleansing with a pinch of rice (which absorbs your sins/impurities and is then thrown out the window) and sprinkling of water, then blessed me, as my sister, and tied a Janai around my wrist.

The Janai is a sacred thread that seems to have two manifestations.

The first (according to my googling) is as a marker of male adulthood, and is bestowed in a ceremony called Bratabandhan. This Janai has three threads, which represent body, speech, and mind, and when the knots are tied by a Brahman the wearer gains complete control over all three. He must wear the thread for the rest of his life. We did not have a Bratabandhan ceremony.

Janai Purni (or Purnima) is the day when these threads are changed, if they have become frayed or defiled (for example by touching a woman who is menstruating), and for us it was a single thread, which granted protection from evil spirits.

Anita had already blessed me, and afterwards I blessed her in kind, including a tikka and a ritual gift of money. (My Western money-consciousness wished I had known this beforehand and so brought more cash with me, to sneakily pay them back for all their hospitality, but I’m not sure this would have been appropriate.) This two-way blessing was repeated by K and Subba Sir.

Then the sisters served the brothers a portion of a special rice pudding, with dried dates, coconut, and raisins, which tasted better than anything, eaten there in a familial circle on the floor of their room, which was fairly Spartan in décor, but luxurious with hospitality. Subba set aside a little of the pudding as an offering to his mother, who died the year before.

The Janai on this day is tied onto each man by his sister. So when Anita tied one on me, and K tied one on Subba, done in appreciation and recognition of our time together, they became our brothers and sisters.

So I have four brothers and two sisters, spanning the West Coast of the US all the way to the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. And more blessings than I can count.

Another week in the life.

2011-11-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

Wait, wasn’t my last post about time moving quickly? Sheeyit, I guess it’s a theme because where did those last couple weeks go?

Do we all agree time goes faster when you’re in a routine? When it’s all familiar, unthreatening, and you have a good idea of what they next day is going to be like, that’s when the years act like months, the months look like weeks, and the weeks barely fit on your watchface.

When I started traveling I didn’t know where I would sleep that night, where my next meal would come from, and what anything would be like. After a year of this feeling it was only three weeks in. That’s an extreme example, and even then, the months started squirting away like that unripe cherry tomato on your plate at the fancy restaurant. (Just use your fingers next time.)

I thought I have enough uncertainty these days to keep them crawling, but I guess even if a day lasts a long time, it can be part of a fast week. Can I even remember last week?

Monday… Oh yeah, I had the day off so took the bike ride between Flemish farm fields to have lunch with K in our sandwich place, with kinda weird amateur drawings on the walls: a horse’s head, a duck flying, and a serious-looking baby with a bowl of spaghetti overturned on his head, noodles leaking down his neck and their misspelled slogan “no nonsens pasta.”

It had been closed for renovations by a new owner, and we were eager to see the new version. They put on nice tablecloths, removed the perchy bar, and painted it off-white, slightly violet and whatever. We weren’t sure if we liked the random old stuff, but now…the funkiness is gone, man! It’s basically just like a million other “proper” restaurants in Belgium/Western Europe/The West. Boooooring.

Faux-elegance is a stand-in for actual personality. (And real elegance is even worse, like boasting of that lack of personality.)

Tuesday my first class was late enough that I could go to the gym first. The gym is my best local site for people-watching, and I am enjoying learning the different crowds.

-During the day: is quiet, like a singles’ club on really off-hours. A few folks peering around, looking for each other, and showing off for the wrong audiences. Some beefy lad pumps iron for housewives who look more frightened that titillated by his grunts. Or that lady I mentioned awhile back, the blond in tight black spandex who comes and does lunges behind my bench. (Remember her? She got embarrassed after I caught her farting.)

-Early evening: is the working folk, efficiently checking Exercise off their To-Do List. They move faster, are in better shape, and don’t talk.

-Weekends and holidays: (unless it’s warm weather) are like the bars on Friday night, without the beer. It is preening, strutting, and pissing contests among the males. A stage crowded with solo acts. Highly entertaining.

-Weekday morning, opening hour 8:00 AM: was a new one for me. Turns out that’s Senior Time. Silver Citizens crowd the stationary bikes and circulate, a few at a time, among the rest. One distinguished fellow came to row next to me, and when I finished, a little lady with finely brushed hair and one of the squarest jaws I’ve ever seen came and took my place. She looked at him, he didn’t look much at her. When he got up and moved on, another retired fellow took his place. This one looked at her, but she didn’t look at him.

I love humans. We are all children on the playground. Or maybe sniffing dogs.

Work on Tuesday and Wednesday was functional but forced. Like when I tried to get new (to me) students to use the language in ways they weren’t used to from past teachers, and just looked at me in confusion. I’m still on the learning curve…and feel like a bit of a fraud. I fear I am less of a teacher, and more of a conversation partner who guides a bit and corrects your grammar. Wow, that would be annoying in real life, yet people pay beaucoup bucks for it in private.

Especially for the intensive lessons! They pay a boatload of cash to spend all day with a private teacher…we even go to lunch with them, speaking only in the target language. I had a kid (23) on Wednesday who was there to learn coffee vocabulary, since he’s going to coffee school in London next month.

Okay, we’ll talk about coffee. Only as soon as I started, he mentioned that no, he wasn’t interested in that at all, he’d learn it at the school, where he was going just for kicks. Okay then. So we talked about other stuff. Like “tell me about your home town” which provided a glimpse into Belgian xenophobia. That was awkward.

“In my town there are a lot of…strangers.”

“Okay, what do you mean by ‘strangers’?”

(Searching look. Probably realizing I am an immigrant.) “You know…foreign…Arab… You know, terrorists.” He continued “you can’t look at them, or they get angry.”

“Hmm. Are there a lot of fights?”

“No. Not for ten years.”

I am gratified that I still find it shocking when someone dismisses and judges an entire macro-group of people, even though it is a very common behavior. So common in fact, that I’m going to do it right now.

There is a lot of anti-immigrant feeling in Belgium. I’ll save my theories on why for another day, but I have to mention that sometimes I want to drive to the immigrant neighborhoods and twist some ears. On the news last week was a mass brawl between immigrants from Turkey and (I think it was) Azerbaijan. Started by a damn soccer game.

I’m sorry, but guys…GUYS! You can’t do that! You can’t come to a country where people, you know, behave themselves, and get in a gigantic brawl, throwing stones and shit, because your f-ing soccer team played! (Not even if your great-grandfather was killed by his great-grandfather. Sit down.) You wonder why Belgians talk about you like that?

Obvious disclaimer: not all Belgians nor non-Belgians act in either of those ways, in fact, most don’t.

I got home Tuesday and Wednesday at quarter to nine at night, in time to scarf a bowl of cereal (there was no slot in the schedules for dinner) and go to bed. That’s okay sometimes, but pretty quickly I find myself saying “I gotta quit this job.” Especially after I realized today that I paid 57% of my earnings in taxes and fees already? And there are more coming at the end of the year? Can that be right?

The air is getting colder and the sun is gone by six. Fingers on handlebars feel locked solid and the skin on the knuckles dries and cracks. Cheekbones feel prominent as the skin on top stretches tight in the chill, and even at 8:30 PM the streets are abandoned, humans huddling together for warmth in front of cold television screens that never lived.

(Did I mention you should get rid of your TV? The two Secrets to Wellbeing that I’ve discovered amidst all my profound cluelessness are to give up your TV and automobile; both are toxic to the human spirit. But that’s a soapbox for another time.)

Thursday was back to Brussels for the follow-up “Consolidation Day” to formally end my teacher training. I was eager to go, to see and catch up with my little teacher cohort. We were originally 9, but 4 had to teach, and 1 has already left the country, but it was nice to see the other three and hear that I’m not the only one…

The day was run by the internally famous regional head honcho, a rather severe woman whose flat looks and minimal expressions (that seem disapproving) leave people stumbling and stuttering in an attempt to figure out what she wants from them. How do I please this person?!?

Maybe it was having a small group, or that she was just back from vacation, I don’t know, but she was in rare form. We went over a new tool to use in class, and in a demo lesson Dolly Parton came up as an example. So here was the stern, inscrutable, and much-feared Chief Director of Something-Or-Other for Western Europe discussing Dolly’s boobs in the Causative: “Yes, she has had her boobs done.” It was awesome.

You can only go forwards

2011-10-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

The corn is gone already? How the hell is the corn gone already? I swear it was just pushing up through the furrows, looking all green and eager and naïve. Now it’s rows of mass-mowed stubs, Winter’s five o’clock shadow, and I never even saw the monster harvesting machine.

(Okay, it hasn't snowed yet, but I had to use a picture from last year.)

Summer left its sun behind though; it’s shining away up there, enthusiastically bright, and we walk around with our eyes squinted. For some reason we squinch our mouths tightly too. But Summer packed up the warmth when it left, like a departing college student who can only fit the speakers in the car and leaves the stereo. So the sun is telling a story about picnics, volleyball and shorts, but it’s a newscaster on a muted TV and we turn away distracted, to find something else to do, like getting the heavy coats out of the attic.

But I can remember that I like Autumn, gall-darnit. It’s warm cup of tea season. Mug of hot chocolate time. Blankets and books and thick slippers. And holy shit, you can’t beat the leaves. Those fresh green ones are a delight to see, but these wizened reds and purples and yellows can hold a better conversation.

This is actually a nice window of time. The cows with their inexplicably muddy posteriors lounge on grass still luxuriously green, while the leaves obligingly take aesthetically pleasing positions around them. Martha Stewart’s a chump next to Mother Nature. (Or anyone else for that matter.)

We danced like grasshoppers (or should I say base-jumping venom-spiting/peeing spiders?) all summer long in the Nepali sunshine, washed in Indian Ocean monsoon drops, but already my legs have forgotten shorts and my feet are accustomed to socks. The tan lines of my sandals are completely gone and my gloves wait by the door for morning departures.

I find myself again in Belgium. Still not quite able to function in the language, still stranded in the boonies, still wondering what the fuck I’m doing here. Still bouncing between admiration and irritation for the local particulars too. They give you tons of free samples in the grocery store! They charge you for a glass of water. Internationally-minded people speaking tons of languages! Who abuse immigrants in all of them. And of course, the great healthcare system that is emphatically NOT bankrupting the country, and where we can get quality medical care nearly at a moment’s notice for a few bucks…but they’re going to take half my paycheck. Once you factor that in, this new job I start tomorrow seems kind of ridiculous.

(Note, if the taxes just went for the social system like healthcare and supporting those in need, it would be easier, but Belgium has an overabundance of governments, and I can’t help but suspect that a lot of those shiny euro’s of not-mine go to bureaucrats and their paperwork. I think the medical system should be amended to not cover paper cuts…)

Teaching English in Nepal was so groovy, I thought hey, why not do it in Belgium? That was my original plan after all. So I spent the last 2-3 weeks following a training course that was really more like boot camp. They broke us down with theories, prohibitions, and critiques until we were all convinced we had made a mistake and were not suited for the job after all, then deployed us throughout Belgium saying “you start tomorrow.”

Most of my students will be adults, but tomorrow my first paid lesson will be with a 7-8? year old. (I find it odd that the company doesn’t seem to know how old he is.) I will teach him, one on one, for an hour and a half, and once you take away the price of my train fare and taxes, for the 4-5 hours of my Saturday it will take, I’ll earn about 7€. Score! That will almost cover lunch!

But I’ll see it as a means to an end. I’m learning more about this teaching shtick, and putting a known brand on my resume, and hell, I still hold out hope that it will be enjoyable. At least for awhile.

But that reminds me, anybody have any advice on Latin America?

First week of teacher training

2011-10-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

Tuesday October 4 – Taking the train home after Day 1 of teacher training, pulling into the station at Brussels North past shy behemoths of office towers loitering outside the station, waiting tragically for some executive to come make them feel loved. Their profane expanses of reflective glass look best when punctured and shattered in the post-apocalyptic cityscape; it will take the end of the world as we know it to make them interesting. I mean that in a good-natured way. Those institutions are not a means for the growth of human happiness and wellbeing. I promise I’m not listening to Marilyn Manson and wearing big black boots with lots of buckles right now.

Class was a pleasant event. Looks like work, and that’s a good thing. Looks like quality people, and that’s a great thing. My online TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) class was too easy/boring/non-practical, and learning is always worthwhile.

Cruising above traffic-constipated highways in a train that hums in a language fluent in speed is just plain fun.

Wednesday October 5 – I screwed up my demo lesson in class today worse than I’ve ever screwed anything up. It was even worse than that time in freshman year of college when I didn’t prepare a Spanish presentation on Sor Juana based on prior “knowledge” of a book I (didn’t) read for another class, and tried to stretch the statement “Sor Juana was a nun” into a 5 minute presentation.

Luckily it was the best possible scenario for a failure, with an instructor who can frame it as a mixed bag, and a class who can benefit from it as a learning experience. It wasn’t just me who flailed, it was us who learned… Though it just felt like me at the time.

I spent the next couple hours uncomfortable and tongue-tied.

The commute-time train is full of businessmen in their fresh black/navy blue suits; the air smells like a clothing store, not real life, and has a unique hush of lots of people uninterested in talking to each other, or maybe they’re just as tired as I am.

A woman who looks like Joe Torre with greasy hair to her chin reads a famous Dan Brown novel on a platform as we slide past, standing apart from the businessmen. She doesn’t look up as we pass by. Neither do they.

The graffiti is scattered politely across warehouse sides and farm field fences, colorful, legible, and uninspired. I’ve never tried that, seems like it would be fun. Maybe if this teaching gig doesn’t work out, I’ll give it a try… Your homework: tag 5 Starbucks. Starbuckses.

Thursday October 6 – The vagaries of human ebb + flow reliably defy comprehension and stubbornly exist, so I’m the only one to get off the train at my small station today, and I ride home in a patiently-complacently peaceful suburban silence, luckily with Chet Baker’s Almost Blue in my ears. In a backyard glimpsed between brick houses made entirely of 90-degree angles I see a brightly colored pinwheel spinning-shouting over bulgy plastic yard toys abandoned on their sides. It is the only motion, outside my own, in a world that has been eaten by long work hours and television. The former has relinquished its hold for the day, and the people have embraced the anaesthetic of the latter, which blink idiotically through window after window.

It’s a zombie movie, and I’m the only survivor of the plague, only the monsters refuse to leave their houses.

Friday October 7 – I can’t quite tell if I’m exhausted or eager in class, I think both. All I know is a very unexpected degree of nervousness. I’m uncomfortable in my own skin like I haven’t been since adolescence.

I’ve gotten off planes with no idea what to expect on 4 continents, and it never felt like this.

I find myself in a state of witness, detached, that I associate with physical danger. When the infamous California riptide is keeping me away from the beach, and my limbs are getting sluggish in the cold. Walking alone through a jungle that shivers in the rain to look for a rhino that the guide said was here before he disappeared, and my own feet look so small when I step in the tracks of the animal that could be behind any bush. Walking, alone alone, through an unknown city at night where I know no words in the language and no people in the country and have no place to sleep tonight and am 90% sure those guys from the alley are following me now. Walking alone alone alone through a village that seems abandoned other than the half dozen dogs who are surrounding me in growls and barking.

Those all felt fun, my heart smiling as it beat faster. This classroom detachment is more like nausea. Logically I find it unwarranted.

In the crowded train station I play the familiar game of trying to spot the pick-pockets among the crowd, college kids heading home with bags of laundry, and the businessmen with panic around their eyes as they negotiate sanity in an existence where they look forward to Friday all week, then get here and realize it’s just waiting in mild annoyance for Monday morning, when they’ll settle back to complaining about work with a sigh of relief.

(Oh, and that one businessman whose pants are way-hay-hay too tight. Maybe he’s Italian…)

But that’s not quite right, I don’t feel anger or depression at these facefree hordes with briefcases in hand, instead I feel empathy and respect for the tragic and unimaginable sacrifices made with varying degrees of willingness to a system of profane selfishness, desperate need, and idiotic exigencies. I wonder what the smiling poverty of Nepal would say on this subterranean platform.

But riding home I am filled with a screaming love for the world that wants to caress and smash the lot of it. I love my fellow man but he needs a kick in the pants and a hug.

Saturday October 8 – When I heard it was a two week training, I kinda dismissed it; how much can you expect to learn in two weeks? I am surprised at how tiring it is, especially when logically I understand it all, but just can’t manoeuvre it into anything functional. But enough is enough for now, so I spent Saturday without a thought for this job, instead trying to catch up with the world through the forum of an email each to my mother and brother, and 64 emails of political/environmental/social causes and newsletters. There are amazing and horrible things going on every damn blessed day.

My Saturday was with two of the amazing things.