Snow Days

Of all the days to be awake at 6am, it had to be the one when it snowed and the city shut down. These are the days you're supposed to sleep in, to stay under the covers and freeze time just as the world outside has been frozen. But no, I had to wake up at 4am and struggle with insomnia until I gave up at six. I took a shower and counted down the minutes until the cafe would open and I could go sit there for awhile and let Chris sleep.

I was, when I walked in Coffy Cafe around 7:30, the only customer aside from a guy who was sleeping on a couch who may have been homeless. A young woman was the sole employee for awhile. She was friendly in that I-don't-want-to-be-here way and sort of looked at me as if I were crazy for being out in the cold, white mess. I silently agreed with her.

I like this place. The owner is a DC teacher who took the opportunity to open a business in Columbia Heights, giving us a much needed coffee alternative to the inhumanity of Starbucks, the cramped space of Tynan's, and the not-really-a-coffee-shop-ness of Panera. The cafe is decorated with blaxploitation movie posters and a few other artifacts of the sixties and seventies, and you can hear Motown or rock music for grown-ups rather than that pretentious drivel that passes for music in many similar establishments. (I'm looking at you, Decembrists.) Crepes are the main fare; it's a nice addition to a neighborhood with not enough independent food options.

You would think that having been awake in the wee hours that I would have been watching the coverage of the Mandela memorial service, but I just couldn't. I know that CNN and MSNBC and those assholes at Fox News have turned the service into some marketing spectacle, replete with flashing graphics and a few photos that they use as if Nelson Mandela had been photographed very few times in his life. I'll catch the highlights later on.

I keep trying to write something about Mandela, but everyone's doing it and far too many people are using his death to promote their own causes. Truly great men come few in a generation, and Mandela is one of a handful from the twentieth century who deserves to be exalted by the world.

This wasn't going to be a Mandela post, but here I am sitting in a coffee shop owned by an African American woman in a part of the city that was too dangerous to walk through at night even ten years ago, and I'm finding myself amazed that I find it amazing that I even have to be amazed by this. The idea that it matters what a person's skin color is to so many people in the world blows my mind, that fifteen or twenty years ago it would have been difficult for the owner of this place to get a business loan, that it still is difficult for African Americans to get loans, well, it just doesn't make any sense to a rational mind.

Nor does apartheid, the legacy of colonialism, or this global economic system we've built on the exploitation of human beings. That laws could be made banning rights for one race or another and the global community accepted it for so long, that President Reagan vetoed economic sanctions against South Africa, that Republicans continue to this day to call Mandela a terrorist for daring to fight against oppression, that black South Africans continue to be oppressed by poverty and economic inequality, that blacks in the United States are as well, that White America has developed a deep hatred for our black president because he represents a threat to white domination....none of this makes any sense to me. (Don't give me a history lesson; I'm thinking abstractly.) Apartheid happened in my lifetime - not in a history book. Some of the people who supported apartheid in the US government are still in the US government, and they're the ones who are saying negative things about Mandela when the rest of the world is celebrating his life and his accomplishments.

I mean, what does it take to realize you're on the WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY?

That people like Mandela and Dr. King and Gandhi continue to be born, that apartheid did end, that Barack Obama is President of the United States, these are all good reasons not to shrug your shoulders and say, "It's always been this way." Because no, it hasn't - these are indicators of progress, of change. Yeah, it's molasses slow and frustrating and you have to deal with the opposition nutjobs assholes who fight to keep it the way it is or even take it backwards, but it IS progress, and every little step alleviates some of the suffering of others in the future.

That's why we celebrate Nelson Mandela today on, coincidentally, International Human Rights Day, to remember, to push forward, to be inspired.

What I learned from substitute teaching, soccer, and parents

I graduated before I was able to figure out what I wanted to do as a career. That probably had something to do with the fact that the student adviser assigned to me during my freshman year was on sabbatical, and instead of finding another one I just went at it alone. I don't know if he could have helped much; I went in to school thinking I was pre-law and came out of it with a vastly different outlook on the world. I only knew that I wanted to do something "international" but had no clue how to go about doing whatever that was. I took a post-graduate program in Europe and did an internship at a peace center in Ireland, but I didn't know what was open to me career-wise. That's how I ended up in the Army - I wanted to be stationed abroad and learn a new language.

While I was trying to decide my next move after graduation, I was the junior varsity soccer coach for my high school and a substitute teacher for the schools in the county. I had been the goalkeeper coach during the summers while I was in college; it was a no-brainer for our coach to hire me as the JV coach. The JV team had never won more than a game a season up to that point; we finished 7-7 with me as coach. I feel like I knew what I was doing then. I had silly rules like no cussing unless you used foreign language words - I even taught the girls the ones I knew. Merde was a common one. No one was ever carded that year for cussing, as was the rule in Ohio.

There are two days that stand out as life lessons during that period - one as a soccer coach and one as a long-term sub for an 8th grade English teacher. The soccer one had to do with a girl on my team who had been caught drinking. She was suspended from sports as was the rule, but if a student underwent alcohol counseling, she could come back from the suspension earlier. This girl chose the counseling option and was in uniform for a game that was very important to me, not only because it would show the league that we were becoming a good team, but also because it was the school district where I had gone to elementary and junior high and where my mother's family had gone. I had been, prior to our move to Sidney, penciled in as the starting catcher for the softball team of that district as well as a goalkeeper for the soccer team. They were the soccer powerhouse - I wanted to do well. In the past we had been handily defeated by double digit scores in the varsity games. It had been a crowning achievement in my own career as goalkeeper to have kept them scoreless for a half during my senior year.

The girl who had been suspended was a dreadful player, and she knew it and laughed about it. My game plan that day was to keep our best players in for as long as possible, spelling them for a few minutes at a time and getting them back on the field as soon as they caught their breaths. I also used a new defense - if you have the ball on the back third of the field, just kick it out of bounds!

The strategy worked well. While we lost the game, it had been by a razor-thin margin, and we showed everyone that we'd be competing in the league for a long time to come. But it meant the girl hardly got any playing time. After the game, her father yelled at me for not playing her, claiming he had spent the money on the counseling so she could play. My family had always had issues with certain families who thought their children were better soccer players than they were. They were jealous because my sisters and I always started and accused the coach of favoritism. Now I was standing in the spot where coach had stood for eight years. Instead of looking at the counseling as a benefit for his daughter that taught the perils of teenage drinking, he saw it as a waste of money since she didn't play much. Too much partying was causing her grades to slip, which was the important issue, but he was concerned about her playing time in a junior varsity soccer game. This kind of thinking allows the continuation of the bad behavior. Parents should set an example, not cause problems. But I wonder if maybe he were having financial issues and I were just the recipient of projective behavior.

The second standout day was the last day of my stint as a long-term sub for the 8th grade English teacher. I had been happy to be assigned to the long-term position, as it meant a guaranteed wage for three months. Only I didn't make it three months. I made it maybe six weeks.

I was 22 years old, fresh out of college with all the naive idealism that age brings. I had lived in Europe, so I thought I could teach those kids about the world. I was no longer a babysitter in a classroom - I actually had to teach and make lesson plans and grade papers. The honors class I had was a breeze.

The remedial class gave me a profound sense of disillusionment from which I've never truly recovered. One of the kids was seventeen years old, just biding his time until he could legally drop out. He never did any homework, and he was absent at least one day a week, usually more. You could tell he came from a broken home and that he'd be in and out of jail for much of his adult life, as he'd already been arrested several times and jail was on occasion an excuse for his absences. But he was gifted. When he actually did the work, he knew how to express himself in ways most people don't ever grasp. That was what was so frustrating about him. I could have ignored him if he were of a lesser mind, because there was no way I'd be able to change his habits in three months. But he had such potential. What a waste.

He was just one frustration of many in those classes. I couldn't believe the number of students who never turned in their assignments. All of those people who rail against "teachers unions" and "bad teachers" have no clue what teaching in an American public school is like. Teachers are supposed to work miracles. Are they supposed to go home with the students to make sure they do their homework? This particular frustration led to my last day as a sub there. One of the students with behavioral problems refused to even get out a piece of paper and write something down to turn in after I gave him a second chance to do the assignment. I lost it. I told him I had given him extra opportunities and he just didn't care. I told him that I gave up on him. That's when he came up to the desk and acted like he was going to hit me.

I was reassigned on that day and left for Ireland a few weeks later where I'd learn facilitation skills that would have come in handy in that English class. Oddly enough, working with kids who had grown up in a conflict area was easier than what I dealt with in those English classes. Some of their issues were the same - the broken homes, the poverty, the lack of opportunities for decent employment. Those who grew up in the lower classes were the ones who clung to conflict. When Ireland's economy started to improve thanks to years of EU structural funds, conflict mitigation became more successful. The two are not at all unrelated.

The only way we're ever going to fix our school systems is to eliminate or at least alleviate the economic conditions that allow for a lack of focus and discipline and the behavioral problems that come with it. No amount of standardized testing or common core curricula are going to feed a hungry student or ease the pain of a kid who's abused. Until we fix these problems, ALL students will continue to be affected regardless of social class.

I don't dream of London

"Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!" - Karen Blixen,
Out of Africa, 1937

I've been to London three times, technically. (Heathrow is another matter entirely.) I was introduced to the city when I spent a mere half day seeing the basic sites for the first time in my life. I skipped French class that day and headed up there before the arrival of my friends, who were meeting me so we could spend spring break in Scotland and Ireland. We took an overnight bus to Edinburgh that night. In those brief hours, I thought I loved London.

The next trip lasted a week, which was adequate time to get to know the city a bit. I was taking a post-graduate course on the political economy of the European Union, a six week course that went through six capital cities in Europe, so it wasn't all play. It was in many ways a better experience than a vacation, because we got to work with Londoners, including a member of the House of Lords, Dr. William Wallace from the London School of Economics (I remember his name because of the movie Braveheart), a representative of the UK to the EU, a banker or two, and other prominent members of the politico-economic class of the UK. That's when I went to Greenwich and stood on the Prime Meridian, from where we get all measured time on the planet, and it's also when I bought a pair of Doc Martins from the main store that I wore until they fell apart a decade later. (I have blocked the act of throwing them away from my mind; it was a painful experience.) Us students were such academic dorks during that trip that we were excited when we passed by the Financial Times building on a cruise of the Thames. I have a photo of it that I'll dig out when I begin to publish my journal from that time in Europe under the label "If we had blogs in 1999..."

The third time I went to London was nearly as brief as the first; my flight from Beirut to Washington via Heathrow had been changed, leaving me with a 19 hour layover. Spending ten minutes in Heathrow is a nightmare, let alone 19 hours, so for the first time in my life, I left an airport during a layover and spent the day in London.



It had been eleven years since I had set foot in the city. My trips to Europe in that decade plus had consisted of nearly two months in Bulgaria, three weeks in Budapest, five days in Istanbul, a day in Bucharest (all in 2007), four days in Cyprus (2010), and a week in Paris (2010), as well as the three months I spent in Ireland (and three days in Warrington, England) way back in 2000. I had been working in the Middle East field during that time and had seen Europe plenty of times from an airplane window as I headed to Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, but it wasn't until 2010 when I was in a decent enough financial situation where I could take vacations to Europe instead of flying over it for work.

But this trip to London was neither for work nor for pleasure. I had taken a chance when Safadi Foundation folded in October 2010 and I was left jobless, going to Beirut on my own to continue the work I had started there, but after five months I was unsuccessful in earning a living and had to come home, as my visa was about to expire and I could not justify getting another to the authorities. The war in Syria was about to erupt, anyway, and soon people I knew would be leaving for safer pastures. That day in London was melancholic. I was returning to Washington with no place to live and no job and there I was in London, a rainy, rainy London, walking around and trying to pretend that everything was ok. The day was March 31, 2011.

Queen Boadicea trying to get home before the storm

The rain didn't deter me from walking miles that day with my carry-on luggage weighing me down. I had just spent five months in Beirut; I had one large suitcase in the airport and what wouldn't fit in there was on my back. All I did that day was wander. I had seen all of these things before but it had been over a decade and besides, it was London and it felt more like I was in a movie than in real life.

I don't dream of London. It rains too much and maybe it's too much like American cities for my travel tastes. Most of all, though, is that something about that day sticks with me - that melancholy has never truly left. It wasn't that the next few months were unhappy times; indeed, it was something of the opposite, as I went to Colorado several times to visit The Cosmonaut, who had also left Beirut to return to real life, and I spent some time in Ohio writing and reading and in four months was back in Washington with a new job that I thought at the time was ideal.

It wasn't, though. It wasn't for one reason, and that was that the woman who ran the organization was crazy. I once led a mutiny of our entire staff - I was the first to go to HR about her and the other three members of our team  (the entirety of the organization) - followed suit and soon she was sent to sensitivity training and management training. Of course, I was to blame in her eyes, and the situation continued to deteriorate until I quit after only seven months. Four months later I thought I had found another ideal job at a progressive political research organization, but after a year it has amounted to nothing more than an admin job posting things from staff online because the powers-that-be are terrified of our brave new digital world and don't trust a political outsider with the publicity reigns. I don't even get to write. The firm has wasted my talent and my time.

What prompted this post and this reflection was watching Out of Africa for the first time yesterday. Good lord, could I identify with that movie. (Why have I never read the book?) It wasn't just that it was a travel memoir that connected me to it. It was about the end of a chapter of life, an end to a prolonged period of happiness, a time irrecoverable yet longed for all the same. It was freedom.

Karen's coffee crop failed and she had to leave Africa. She went on to become a highly successful and respected writer, but she never returned to the land where that chapter of her life had been written. There's something inherently sad about that.

I have yet to recover from my happy time in Beirut. I'm still searching for a job that provides contentment. Until I, too, can become a successful writer, I want to work for an organization that appreciates my creativity, my writing skills, my fearlessness and honesty and loyalty, and I want to be trusted when I want to do things differently than conventional wisdom. I want to be surrounded by people who don't care that there's no masters degree on my resume, who recognize that being well-read and well-informed doesn't come from a piece of paper but from intellectual curiosity and life experience. I want to work for someone who appreciates getting the work done, not the hours you sit in an office. I want freedom from the conventions, the rules, the social norms that Karen Blixen had in Africa, that I had in Beirut. I want life to be as romantic as it was when I could take a stroll down the coast of the Mediterranean, when my balcony was my office, when work was meetings in cafes with friends who wanted their country to overcome its injustices. I want that peace of mind. It ended before I was ready.

That is what that day in London represents for me, that melancholy, that longing to rewind the clock and do it all again. I'm ready to start a new chapter, to scratch out the drafts of the last two years and to find the contentment I had in Beirut. It doesn't have to be in Beirut. It can be in Bari, Italy or Paris or Istanbul or Brussels or even Washington. Is it asking too much? Do we only get one of these chapters of happiness in our lives? I don't believe that, but until I go back to London under different circumstances, I won't dream of London.

"When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them." – Karen Blixen, Out of Africa, 1937

Scraps of Beirut

I was looking through a notebook trying to find something I had written recently when I came across a few pages about Beirut that I never typed out and posted. They aren't dated, but I wrote them after To the Lighthouse, so it had be in November 2011. This post is bits and pieces of things I observed. I've only made minor edits here; I've left the substance intact.

* * *

 
Each morning I sit at a coffee shop to have my morning cup, and fortunately it is warm enough to sit outside. The terrace is not too far from this block's garbage bins.

Digging through the garbage is a full-time job, a recycling process forced into existence by sectarian poverty, a class of second class citizens of Lebanon. The endless stream of garbage that goes into the bins (how do people have so much trash?) is kept from overflowing by the nonstop procession of small trucks arriving to salvage whatever can be sold or recycled for money.

What it must be like to make your living from trash. Boys who should be in school are often part of this parade of humiliation, too poor to afford or appreciate education. The shame has long gone from them; they have accepted the cards dealt to them. What are their options? On Planet Earth, if you are born into poverty, that is what you are. There is no escape from it. That's why rags-to-riches stores are so glamorous to us - they are so rare they are notable.

Plastic bottles are treasure for them; metal of all kinds finds its way into the trucks. I watched a boy beat a portable fan against the pavement until it ceded its intestines to him. A rusty garbage pail, an empty butter container, a jug of vegetable oil. They are very particular, very quick, and it doesn't take long before one truck leaves and another takes its place.

I wonder about the situation of their women at home. Probably second-class citizens of the second-class citizens, cooks and cleaners and invisible souls held down by the ignorance of religion or the necessity of poverty.

* * * 

I just witnessed a guy wanting to park his car in a spot where another guy had put a ladder to save the spot. He made a turn, blocked the intersection, got out of his car to move the ladder, argued with a guy who explained the spot was saved, got back into the car, and ran into a parking post, cracking his bumper in the process. He left after a couple of minutes. Then, the car for whom the spot was reserved pulls up and runs into the car in front of him.

* * *

There's finally some grass growing in Sanayeh Gardens. It's not pretty; weeds and patches of brown throughout, but it is a vast improvement from the barrenness that had plagued it when I first started coming here.

Sanayeh sits across from the Ministry of Interior, a building in which I once sat in a meeting with Ziad Baroud, who was minister at the time. It's now controlled by Michael Aoun, who is best buddies with Hezbollah. I'm quite certain the man who followed me to this part of the park and is sitting on the bench across from me is some sort of "intelligence," though intelligence is hardly the proper word for the paranoid idiocy that goes on in this country. I can feel him watching me as I write this. Creepy.

It's quite nice to be sitting in a t-shirt in the sun. Autumn in Washington has depressed me greatly.

Good news on the Sanayeh front, as the "New" Sanayeh Gardens will open in May 2014. Looking forward to seeing the renovations. I doubt I get to Beirut before then, unless Santa Claus brings me a million dollars for Christmas.

* * *

[Written on top of the page: "A House of Many Mansions" Kamal Salibi, "La chatelaine du Liban" Pierre Benoit]

Martyrs Square, downtown Beirut. We hear the term in the Arab world and think "suicide bomber" or victim of dictatorial oppression. Martyrs Square in Beirut was the site where the Ottomans hung Lebanese journalists for daring to demand independence during the First World War.

The history of Modern Beirut is a history of __________ of journalists. From the executions at Martyrs Square by the imperial Turks to the assassination of Samir Kassir by the Syrian mafia, Beirut has been a gauntlet of danger through which many journalists have not emerged. Yet journalists are drawn to the city and the functional chaos. To many, if feels like the center of the universe, a "laboratory of modernity," as Kassir called it, the intersection of past, present, future.

The blank should say "assassinations" or "dangers" or something of that nature. I never thought of the appropriate term to use there. "Sorrow" might be appropriate.

* * *

[Here is a whole page of notes - I guess I had intended to write more about the journalists in leaving it mostly blank. "Laodicea - Seleucids" is written atop the page. Laodicea is the name of several Greek cities built by the Seleucid Empire in the 3rd century BC. Laodice was the wife of a Seleucid king who became heir to the throne. He cheated on her when he was emperor, so she poisoned him and started a war because of it, known as the Laodicean War or the Third Syrian War. I have no idea why I wrote the note.

The word "energetism" is written on the page as well. Energetism is a philosophy of science involving the primacy of energy over matter. German scientist Wilhelm Ostwald was the most enthusiastic proponent of the concept. I'm not sure why I wrote down the word, but it makes sense given that I'm interested in the world beyond the physical realm, that which is more than just materialism.

"St. Jude martyred in Beirut" is also scribbled on the page. This, according to various sources, happened in 65 AD. It's only appropriate that he was killed in Beirut, as he is the patron saint of lost causes.

"Khodr = George." I guess someone told me that "Khodr" is the Arabic form of "George."

Finally, someone named "Jimmie" wrote his name, email, and phone number on the page. I don't know who he is.]

* * *

[Top of  page: "THINGS TO GET: Bananas, candle, matches/lighter, t-shirt, notebook, phone card." Mmm...Lebanese bananas are the best.]

No matter the violence, no matter how many times they've tried to kill each other, the Lebanese of the various sects don't claim their version of God is superior to the others, not like American Christians who have the naive belief that America is a "Christian" nation and who would outlaw other religions if that pesky little thing called the first amendment didn't get in the way.

Lebanese sectarianism is tribalism in a modern mask, its chieftains are the leaders of wealthy families and the mafias often mistaken for political parties.

It's true. Tough for Westerners to understand that religion is just an excuse for powermongers to fight their turf wars, but Lebanese sectarianism is less about religion than it is about territory and control. Sect is just another word for tribe.

* * *

I see things as they have been and could be; the past is the present is the future because time does not exist. What is, is. Roman ruins still stand in alternative variations of what they had been, their purpose no longer the worship of gods but to satisfy the curiosities of tourists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, philosophers, writers, sociologists, psychologists, scientists...the temple of Bacchus, the God of Wine, stands very much intact in territory currently controlled by Hezbollah, who often closes liquor stores on the grounds that alcohol is immoral. 

How do we fight the greed of men who care not how many people suffer and die for their petty desires? How do we fight the ignorance that entraps youth who follow ideologues who tell them to fight for such petty desires? How do we provide the jobs for those youth so they don't fall into those traps? You're not going to change the minds of adults whose minds are firmly entrenched in the beliefs instilled in them since childhood; rare is the adult who is brave enough to look in the mirror and say, "What do I need to change about myself?" But it seems that it's easier to be drawn into the negative than to better one's self.

At this moment I'm staring at a table of Scientologists who are trying to recruit new members to their cult with falsehoods and deception. They're offering a free "Stress Test," in which they'll "reveal" to the desperate that the problems in their lives are a result of stress and offer Scientology as a means to alleviate said stress. Banned as a cult in France and German, these people have recently opened a new building they say will teach superpowers and "raise the dead." Who gets drawn into this insanity but the vulnerable, those who are unhappy with their lives? It's the same mentality of the people of the various sects of Lebanon. Despite the real and tested possibility of destruction, they go on with their sectarian insanity, hang their political banners in the streets to mark their territory, fight at universities, places that are supposed to be about higher learning.

Will it ever end? 

I believe that Lebanon is the answer to the problems in the Middle East. If you get Lebanon right, the dominoes fall. Forget Israel, forget Saudi Arabia, forget Syria and Iraq...if the Lebanese could just set up a functional state, if they could implement real democracy, if they could overcome corruption and fix their infrastructure problems, if, if ,if, if, if...

Jet Laaaaaag

I was looking through a notebook trying to find something I had written recently when I came across something I wrote in Beirut that I never typed out and posted. It isn't dated, but it was written after To the Lighthouse, so it had be around November 2011. I've only made minor edits here; I've left the substance intact.

At the top, I wrote a note. "Need to: get MTC card, notebook." MTC is a mobile phone company; I needed to either refill my account or get a new SIM card. Weird, because I only remember using Alfa.

Hamra at 6am is a peaceful place. The jackhammers have yet to break apart the quiet and people are not yet noising up the street. Missing are the car horns, the scooters, and the endless lines of traffic. The Lebanese seem to have agreed that it is an hour when they should all rest.

I have been reminded of this because I didn't sleep last night. The seven hour time difference has wreaked havoc on my circadian rhythm. I laid on the couch and watched some movie about a demon child and another about a guy whose brother died but comes back every day to play catch and another about some warped Australian girl whose obsession with weddings destroys her relationships with friends and family and still not a yawn would come. [I'm guessing the last one is Murial's Wedding?]

The jackhammers start a bit after seven, soon followed by an endless procession of Japanese-manufactured delivery trucks and bankers going to work and Syrians [I was told they are Syrian. I thought perhaps they were Palestinians.] picking through the garbage bins to find anything they can sell or recycle for money. Scooters and honking taxis add to the cacophony so by about nine the noise level leaves one longing for quiet.

But in the quiet I experience when I'm not in Beirut comes a longing for that noise.

[There's a note at the top of this next page: "Shamash/James -> Seamus, Amos," Shamash was the Babylonian god of the sun and justice. I was wondering if there was a connection to St. James. Although I know James is a variation of Jacob, which comes from the Hebrew Ya'aqov, Jesus's brother James in the Bible was known as James the Just. I can't help make an association.

On a side note, some people think that in Koine Greek, the word IESOUS is transliterated as Jesus. It comes from the words "uios" meaning son, and Zeus, the supreme Greek god. Son of Zeus. The consensus is that Jesus is a variation of Joshua/Yeshua, which means savoir, but it's still fun to think about the alternatives.]

I am not a morning person. It's not that I don't like mornings; it's just that I'm not very good at them. I would love to watch the sunrises and to experience the calm that exists before the world wakes up. But my soul and my body are out of sync, and the need for sleep defeats the need for beauty in the morning hours.

So it is a gift to experience a morning even if the bearer is jet lag. It is a gift to watch a neighborhood come alive and to ponder the petty things that people undertake to survive: deliveries of milk, pushing up a shop's gate, taxis taking passengers to work, an old woman sitting in the only patch of sunlight that sneaks between the buildings.

Even in winter the Lebanese sun is strong as it moves across the sky and marks this thing we humans call time. Lebanon is the land of Baal, the sun god from ancient times who rules over the country three hundred days a year. To think about Baal is to be reminded of history books; that people once worshiped the sun seems primitive, but how is it more primitive than believing a man walked on water or rode a horse from a rock in Jerusalem to a magical place called Heaven? If anything, worship of the sun is less primitive than today's religions, because the sun sustains us and makes life possible.

What is time? Time is history books and sun positions and mornings and gray hairs and science fiction movies. It means nothing. Human beings get about seven decades of physical presence if they're lucky, less if they live in places in religious or economic strife, and they spend most of it worrying about things that don't matter - material things like houses and clothing and cars. What really matters is the connections between people. If you've ever loved someone - a child, a mother, a husband, a friend - you know that love is not something that's physical, because you can feel it come from a place you can't explain. A heart is a symbol of love because love is felt in the center of your being. You can feel that connection even with distance between you, even an ocean. But sometimes the mind gets in the way, sometimes we try to rationalize relationships, sometimes we ignore the cosmic forces that throw us together because a relationship isn't convenient for us or because it doesn't fit with our preconceived notions of what life is supposed to be like. When we get trapped inside our minds, our lives can fall apart. I don't know what this paragraph refers to anymore.

Religion is of the mind. Today there are seventeen recognized sects in Lebanon, each convinced that its version of the sky genie is the correct one, each unable to understand the true nature of the human soul isn't rules and holy books. This land has always been home to warring religious sects and probably always will be, for surely human beings will cease to exist before religious hatreds are eradicated. Oddly enough, the one religion that calls for balance of the mind and soul, Buddhism, is not a recognized religion here, perhaps because it has no sky genie to believe in.

The irony of Lebanon is that while minds are polluted by the politics of religion, spirituality of an irreligious nature is present everywhere. There is soul in everything. Time truly does not exist here - the past, present, and future are wrapped together in a pita and dipped in locally grown hummus. Family and friendships are important and rare is the sense of isolation. Even through many Lebanese have emigrated due to conflict, they maintain ties to the people back home, and the sense of longing for the land of their ancestors never disappears entirely. It's odd to say that a place where so many have died in pointless conflict has such an insatiable love for life, but it's true. That's Lebanon, a land of impossible contradictions.

As Lebanon is drawn closer and closer to the war in Syria and the friends I made there are leaving for less greener pastures with stronger fences, my desire to be there has all but dissipated. This, the place where I knew the happiest state of my life, when I saved every penny for another trip back. The stupidity of individuals blinded by the sectarian brainwashing they've grown up with, continued corruption of politicans that everyone knows about but shrugs anyway, the deplorable state of infrastructure and the defeatist attitude of "Welcome to Lebanon..." I guess my relationship with the place has matured to the married state...

4 Ingredients to Put in Your Homemade Vegetable Soup

In the winter, I cook a lot of soup. I've literally eaten a gallon of my last batch over the last three days. The great thing about soup is that you can throw in practically anything and it tastes good. Here are some ingredients I frequently use in vegetable soups:

1. Worcestershire. This is sometimes used in soups involving beef but I haven't heard of people using it in vegetable soups. Do it. You don't need vegetable stock or chicken broth. If I have chicken bones, as I did for this recent soup, I'll boil them with the Worcestershire, but if I don't have them, the Worcestershire is fine.

2. Frank's Red Hot Sauce. Put a little flavor in your soup. I used about a half cup of it in my giant soup pot, which contributes to the nice kick (though not too spicy) in the soup. Frank's is one of the staples in much of what I cook.

3. Jalepeno peppers. Yes, jalepenos, not green peppers. They'll lose some of their heat during cooking while adding to the flavor of the soup. You wouldn't think about throwing jalepenos in with broccoli, green beans, cabbage, onions, carrots, and garlic as I have, would you? Well, start thinking about it.

4. Ground coriander. Sure, you may have heard of lentil and coriander soup or lemon and coriander, but to add to veggie soups? It provides a sweet compliment to the heat-adding ingredients listed above. Sometimes I'll add it with ginger or cumin (or both.) I've just recently discovered the pleasure that is coriander and how it can change an entire dish.


Here are the ingredients of my latest batch of vegetable soup:

1 large head of broccoli
2 cups chopped green beans
Half a cabbage
Half a large white onion, chopped
Whole garlic, chopped
1 carrot (I would have added more, but I only had one carrot)
2 jalepenos
1 cup white rice
1 cup red lentils
Worcestershire
17 Black peppercorns, whole
Half cup of Frank's
Coriander
Curry powder
Kashmiri chili powder
Ginger
Half cup fresh basil
Salt

How learning to appreciate food taught me to appreciate life

Growing up in the Midwest, you eat a lot of meat and potatoes. Pork chops, liver and onions, meatloaf, and ham are paired with mashed, au gratin, and baked potatoes in combinations that defy probability. We ate veggies, too, but they were nearly always frozen, and usually added as an afterthought, a "side dish" to go with the meat and potatoes. For years into adulthood, fresh broccoli scared me because I just didn't know what to do with it. I bought boxes and boxes of frozen spinach for the same reason. Our version of a restaurant was a chain like Olive Garden or Red Lobster - it was special if you got to go to one of those places. Sigh...

In college, aside from the year in Luxembourg, I lived in a dorm and never had access to a kitchen. While the dorm food wasn't bad, it was repetitive, and there were times when it just wasn't worth the effort to make the trip to the dining facilities. I had a small refrigerator in my room, and we had a microwave in the common area, so it was possible to radiate food, which I often did. To cure some of the food ennui, I'd come up with combos like strawberry yogurt and sliced bananas on a bagel. That was a sandwich. I also ate a lot of stuff from boxes. On the good days I could afford a pizza from Bruno's or a sandwich from Bagel and Deli, but as I already had paid boarding fees, it was a waste of precious gold to pay for other food.

In Luxembourg, I shared a common area with two other girls and we had access to our host family's kitchen. We had a bit of a food issue, which, looking back, was more of a cultural issue. Breakfast was supposed to be included in our school fees, but our host family never offered it to us. The problem wasn't that they were trying to get around it, but that they left in the mornings before we got up. Some students had breakfast prepared in the mornings; we were left to fend for ourselves, and I just think our conceptions of breakfast were different than that of our hosts. I didn't know that the goat cheese and salami were meant to be breakfast items. I don't think I even knew how to cook an egg back then.

In the common room was a kitchenette with a stove that didn't work, though our host father swore it did, because he could put his hand on it and feel heat coming from it. I tried to explain that if you can put your hand on a burner, it isn't hot enough to cook anything, but he didn't seem to get it. You could get water hot enough to cook pasta, if you had an hour, and I did eat quite a bit of pasta, including boxed macaroni and cheese, if you consider that to be pasta. At any rate, it wasn't the appropriate place to learn how to cook.

But Europe is where I first learned about food as something more than a necessity for the sustenance of body. From the very beginning I was exposed to fresh fruit and vegetables at small markets, and when I went to Cinque Terre, Italy early into that first semester, I tasted fresh pesto that opened up a whole new world to me. Eating in Europe and in much of the world is an experience, not a necessity, an esprit d'corps, something shared with friends and family and the occasional stranger. And in most cases, the food doesn't come from a box.

I learned to eat Indian food in Monterey, California, where I spent two years trying to put the Arabic language into my head. It was Stanley who introduced me to it; eating at the Indian buffet became a Sunday ritual for us. When we shared an apartment in DC, I picked up some key tips about food, as he cooked frequently, and his dishes always used an extensive list of spices.

Spice. That was an unheard of concept back in the Midwest. Sure, you had salt and pepper and oregano and basil, but you added those to casseroles and stuff written on recipe cards. Nobody ever thought to put garlic in the mashed potatoes, or to sprinkle some cumin onto cauliflower, or to put coriander and honey into some yogurt. That just wasn't the way it was done. Now, I salivate at spice markets and dare try the ones I've never heard. There's a great spice market at Union Market that I'm glad is sort of out of the way for me to go to, otherwise the bank would be calling for my head.

I started cooking in the house we shared after that first apartment and though I didn't know what I was doing, I experimented with flavors. I'm pretty good with the stove these days, but the oven is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I had to learn how to do basic things like browning and still can't fry an egg without worrying about breaking the yolks. But you have to start somewhere. I make a lot of the kind of stirfry pictured above - I perfected them - at least to my tastes - in Lebanon, where olive oil is a dollar a bottle and fresh vegetables are just a few doors down from you anywhere you go. They are so healthy and so good, and what's more, don't take very long to cook!

Try throwing the above recipe together if you're in a hurry but want something that is completely filling and gives you a lot of energy. I like to start by heating the olive oil with some chili powder, curry, and Frank's before throwing in the potatoes, spicing them as well. Once they start to get a bit brown, I throw in the broccoli, onions, jalepeno, and garlic. One thing I forgot to add to the photo was the half a zucchini I threw in there. You'll want to throw that in next. It's a nice complement to the potatoes. When everything is just about cooked, throw in the spinach. When that's shriveled, it's done.

There's an entire industry devoted to "health food," but a lot of that crap comes in boxes or frozen, and one has to wonder how healthy it really is. It's fascinating that we even talk about "health food." We need food to survive, and food that isn't healthy runs counter to our survival as a species. Think about how stupid that is, especially when it's so easy to throw something together as I've mentioned above. Food is necessary for health; therefore to label something as "health food" is ridiculous. We should be labeling "unhealthy foods" instead. Maybe it'd deter people from making poor eating choices.*

What we did for awhile was lose sight of two things: that eating is something we need to do to maintain our bodies and that eating is something to celebrate with friends. The drive thru window is an abomination.


*Every now and then eating something that isn't good for you is ok, but some Americans' entire diets are unhealthy.

If we had blogs in 1998: This is the end

The final entry in my journal from my year abroad in Europe in 1997-1998. Last trip to Paris. I remember the tiny hotel room where I wrote this, barely enough room for a bed, where I stayed so I could get up early enough to catch my flight home. I remember the feeling vividly, perhaps because it was the first of many times I was to feel it, that desperate longing to rewind the clock, do it all over again, every minute of it, even the unhappy moments. Many students study abroad; all are changed, but the MUDEC situation is unique from most other programs. It's set up for exploration. It gave me a permanent sense of wanderlust.

As always, spelling, grammatical, factual, and emotional errors have been preserved from the original journal. Today’s comments are in red.

14 Mai 1998

Well, it's over. I'm sitting at Hotel Carlton for my last night in Europe. Tomorrow it's home for me. 

Back to May 1: dinner with Andrea at Chi Chi's. I told her how I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. She gave me a bunch of ideas, though I'd thought of them all before. I had just been so depressed. It was a good dinner. She told me about her and Matt up on a wall next to Scott's the one night I had been so glad to see them and about how they were worried that we had seen them through the window. Then Saturday I went and saw the Rainmaker with them and Ryan and Brad, following a trip to Pizza Hut and Pub 13. Sunday was a study day. Monday was EDP & Haag exam day. I should have studied more for both. But the rest of the week was cake: Soc on Tuesday was a journal entry basically and French on Thursday was open book. Tuesday me, Erika, Molly, Kieran, & Emilee ate Chinese in Differdange. Thursday we (Andrea, Matt, Erika, Ryan, Brad, Molly, Emilee, Julia, & I) at at La Boulegerie in the centre. Then I went with Andrea to get world cup tickets for her family, then we said good bye to Erika, who was leaving for Poland. It wasn't sad. I don't miss her. Still don't. Then Andrea, Molly, and I went to find Molly a magazine. Then Molly left and I went with Andrea to her host family's house for a few minutes. Then we met Matt at the train station and sat there forever. I was grouchy & angry because I lost my jumbo card. Train pass We ended up going to Pizza Hut/Pub 13 and it was actually a little fun. We said our good byes, but it wasn't really sad, just strange. Matt, April, Dana, Lucy, & I took the 11:59 and finally did the Petange thing. It was hilarious and fun. Something about the late night trains. Woke up late the next morning, hung out at the chateau all day, listening to U2 in the cave, emailing, and just killing time. Andrea took Matt to the doctor because he was really sick and he came back with a pharmacy. Saturday I spent the day in the city taking pictures. I hung out in the park for some hours, starting my tan, listening to U2, reflecting on things. I rean into Matt & Andrea when I was going back to the train station, and I was glad to see them. A day alone is not what I needed. But then I became even angrier with Andrea when she told me that she and Matt would be staying in Dublin for two days, the same amount of time we would have spent there. I was really pissed. She chose to go with Matt rather than me. It's ok now though, because we had a good time in Paris. 

It was a few days of relaxation. The weather was incredible even a little too hot. I didn't realize that Paris got that hot. But Sunday I started the coughing. I was getting sick. Matt must have given it to me. But Andrea did get sick and she was kissing him. So I'm thinking it was still the same infection from study tour. I'm afraid for my ears on the plane. Sunday we spent $60 on lunch between the three of us, and it was not really worth it. (The soup was good though.) Then we decided  to go back to the hotel to nap. It's the story of the week. I started feeling worse. I slept for two hours. For dinner we went to McDonald's. I had deluxe potatoes deluxe, yeah sure and a large Coke and sat out yet another argument, this time about the founding fathers and slavery and the euro and some stuff that didn't fit anymore. Matt was taking the role of asshole. I was in agreement with Andrea though I was never allowed to say anything. Finally I just told them that they weren't listening to each other. That shut Matt up. He's always telling Andrea that he respects her opinion, but it doesn't seem to be true. But then she started talking about the guilt she feels about having so much, and I was explaining my disillutionment and guilt for not feeling guilt and then we got a bottle of cheap champagne and split it between the two of us. It was gone in an hour, but neither of us were buzzed. There was a movie about Elizabeth Barret Browning and they both were in heaven. Browning is Matt's favorite poet, and Barret is hers. Sickness was getting worse. I didn't want to get up in the morning. 

I did though, and we went to Versailles. It was closed. I didn't get to see it. And to top it off, we had to eat at Burger King. And they didn't have sauce for the chicken nuggets. Quelle horreur! But it was great, just being there with those two. Paris is our city. I hope the three of us go back some day. Nope, we never have. I went back with Matt once more a couple of years later but I haven't heard from him in ten years, and Andrea and I don't talk, either. We went back to the city to musee D'orsay but it was closed as well. We were glad though, because we were tired. And hot. That was when Andrea couldn't figure out where the Champs-Elysees was. It was all good fun. We went and lounged in the Tuilleries for a few hours. For awhile, I was perfectly content (except for the damn city birds). Back when tweet meant the thing the birds did way too much. Then I got hot and went to sit in the shade. I couldn't find Matt & Andrea, but I didn't look much. I was going to play the I'm sicker than I am act when Andrea came to find me, but it didn't work. I soon felt better, and we went to Hagen Daas and spent 10 bucks each on sundaes. They were good though. Then we looked for a good movie, but there were none. So we went back to the hotel and slept. Till 10:30. Then we went to Tex-Mex and ate. I ate a shitty chicken enchilada with ketchup instead of salsa, and drank a shitty pina colada with 3 shots of rum, or so it seemed. I still remember this awful meal. Parisians trying to do Tex-Mex. Ha! Then we went back to bed. I didn't sleep. I felt absolutely horrible. Poor Andrea probably didn't sleep much, with my coughing and tossing. It was awful. My ears hurt. 

They got up at 4am to go get Vicki. Andrea's friend who was going to travel with her for a couple of weeks. I stayed in bed. I wrote a Dublin itinerary for them. I took a shower. Then I finally slept. Then Vicky came. She's cool. She gave me Claritin. I started feeling better. We went to the Latin Quarter and ate at Segfried. I don't remember the name exactly, but it's our cafe. Segafredo. We got watered on from above. Assuming someone dumped water from a balcony or something. Andrea got coffee though it was hot outside. We bought Tropicana OJ and went to the Luxembourg Gardens, got kicked off the grass, watched others get kicked off, sat in the shade, slept on a park bench, then went to see Notre Dame for my third time, then Saint Chapelle. The stained glass windows were cool. Next: sleep at the hotel. I slept for a couple of hours. [I forgot: Andrea told me her UFO story at the Tex-Mex restaurant the night before. I couldn't help but laugh.] You know how they say it's the little things in life that matter? Well, sometimes it isn't. I woke up first and sat on the balcony. We had an awesome view of Sacre Coeur. I wrote Andrea a letter. I know I didn't say everything I wanted, but I hope it was ok. I couldn't help but cry out there a little, until they all got up at 9:30. We went to eat at a pizzeria. I had the worst pesto pasta ever. This is funny because I'd never heard of pesto until we went to Italy the previous September. We bought more champagne. That was a good night. We discussed U2. (I have to remember to tell Andrea that the live 'Please' CD counts as a studio album.) #firstworldproblems I didn't want to go to the Louvre, would have been rushed so it was decided that we'd sleep in and they'd go to the Louvre after my train left. Only I didn't know there was yet another train strike. #europe No train. So I called Hotel Carlton and said it'd be after 11 when I got there. We ate lunch at an Italian place near Gare de l'Est then went to the Louvre. I saw the Mona Lisa, Lady Leading Liberty, and the french paintings, then left. I went to the Virgin Megastore in the Louvre and bought little miss and mister books in french, and the new Natalie Imbruglia and the Verve old CD A Northern Soul and laid out about 70 bucks there. Jesus, what a waste. I mean, first of all, I see a few things in the Louvre then go to the freaking Virgin Megastore? Then, spend a ton of money on crap music? WTF? Then I went to the outside world and bought a world cup shirt I do not have that anymore and bought Matt a Champs-Elysees sign for his birthday. 

We then headed to Gare de l'Est, ate at McDonald's (it was too hot for me to eat. I had a shake and a Fanta.), then to the Gare. Saying goodbye is still vivid. Still is. Leaving Paris. Looking back, trying to get a glimpse one last time of the Tour. More tears. My European adventure with Matt and Andrea was over. I miss them now. I miss Paris with them. I'd rather be sitting at McDonald's with their arguing than sitting here alone. Why must all good things end too soon? In less than 9 hours, I will be home again. Why must all good things end to soon? The silence of my new loneliness is broken only by the ticking of my clock and the planes flying overhead, a reminder that time is up, time to go home. But I don't want to. But I must. But I don't want to. But I must. But I don't want to.

I sure did get the ending right. 

If we had blogs in 1998: Salzburg rats, lots of wine, and the Big Chicken

Nothing on Salzburg, plus the end of the semester ball. We're getting to the end of the journal, folks.

As always, spelling, grammatical, factual, and emotional errors have been preserved from the original journal. Today’s comments are in red.

1 May 1998

Salzburg is beautiful, I loved it, but it was also depressing as hell. I mean, I didn't have anyone to room with, and then I didn't have anyone to tour with. I was running out of money at that point. It was a great day, beautiful, warm, and I walked about 15 miles total. I couldn't afford the sound of music tour, so I saw as many of the things as I possibly could. The day wasn't bad; I got to nap on a bench by the river, but night was depressing. I went to meet Emilee and Jaime for dinner but they didn't show. I had hoped to see Emilee in the morning before she left but didn't. At 7:30 I headed to the train station, only I was on the wrong side of the river and walked way out of the way with all my luggage. when I finally did find the train station, I was sweating. I used the last of my shillings to buy a sandwich, a coke, some chocolate, and a trip to the bathroom. I sat alone at the train station for two hours, writing in my journal about the week see previous post for how much of a waste of time that was and watching the rats crawl around the tracks. Some people do the Sound of Music tour, I watch rats. Me and Becky got a compartment for the overnight train, but we were on the wrong cars and had to move. So we shared a compartment with another girl who spoke English. I actually slept about six hours. German train conductors check your ticket only once. They stopped checking and let us sleep. It was great, for an overnight train. We switched at Koblenz and I slept till Luxembourg. Then I slept when we got home.

The past week has flown by. We're done with classes - today is May Day so there are no classes. Last night was the ball. I have been so depressed all week. Poor Andrea has put up with me to this point. She gave me flowers yesterday afternoon. She's the best. Last night I was so mean to her. When we all got to the ball, I sat there until things started. I didn't want to mingle. I wanted to mope. When wine came I was drunk before dinner. It was my intention. Andrea just did not look like she was having fun. And why would she, everyone else was drunk, except Matt of course. But at Pub 13 I sat in a corner by myself. Actually, I just wanted to pass out. I spilled half a pint of Guinness on me. Somehow I started the night with 300 flux and I still have like 225 now, even after losing 50 flux in a hole at the Big Chicken. A late night fast food joint near the train station. I do not know what hole this was, probably a storm drain or something. If I recall correctly, this was something of a red light district. And I lost my Jumbo Kaart somewhere. My train pass I'm hoping it's at Pub 13. It's causing me anxiety because I'm on the train to the city right now and I don't have it. I can't believe I lost it. I hope I find it. Anyway, the reason that I am on the train is because I'm going to meet Andrea for coffee. I hope she isn't mad at me. I pulled one of my drunken disappearing acts last night. I think Matt was upset too. I bought him a coke from the Big Chicken. I brought fries. So how did I end up with more money than I started with? I'm clueless. Lucy must have given me a lot for those blank tapes I gave to her. That's all I can figure. I know Erika gave me 100 at the ball for no reason. It was nice. Hans, Jaime, and Julia did an awesome rendition of an Indigo Girls song last night. I think I had five glasses of wine & three beers at the ball. I sat with April, Patrica, Jessica & her host mom, Holly & her host mom, and one other person I can't remember. Jessica's host mom was extremely nice, but I could tell she was a Bonnevoie lady. I think that means she was from a wealthy neighborhood in Luxembourg. Dinner was excellent. Matt & Andrea both got scholarships. I felt this time all the scholarship winners except for April deserved it. April got it because of her internship. She was the last person to deserve a scholarship. Oh well. That was harsh. Don't know why I said that except out of jealousy. Sorry! 

If we had blogs in 1998: Study tour

I’m an awful person. Or is this kind of juvenile drama normal? Throwing a fit because I didn’t get in the hotel I wanted? Brooding because a friend wants to hang out with her secret boyfriend? Nuremberg, Prague, Budapest, Vienna...no wonder I was so tired this week. Could explain some of the crankiness.

The latest from my 1997-1998 study abroad journal. As always, spelling, grammatical, factual, and emotional errors have been preserved from the original journal. Today’s comments are in red.

 

20 Avril 1998

This whole study tour has sucked so far. Break was ok but I’ve realized I don’t much care to have Steph as a friend. She tried to force me to stay in a hostel because I missed the 11:59. Ryan was nice enough to let me stay there. I slept in Brad’s bed. Friday we went to Pub 13 and I bummed three pints of Guinness off of people. [Saw an awesome Irish band Wednesday the night before we left.] The bus ride to Nurenburg Yeah, I spelled it “Nurenburg” went quickly as we watched Never Ending Story and Ransom.

25 Arvil 1998

Saturday in Nurenburg. Went to the Volkfest and ate a ton. Went with Molly, Erika, & Ellie. The rest decided that they didn’t want to be around Molly so left. We stayed at the Volkfest for an hour, then walked around Nurnburg, which is an awesome city despite its Neonazi population. Um. Just because some hooligans spray paint swastikas on walls doesn’t mean the entire population are Nazis. Good lord. And a city is “awesome” even if it’s full of Nazis? Ignorant much? I love Germany. I wish I would have spent more time here. There’s that grammatical construction again. Ugh. Not that I would trade any weekend, but I just never realized how much I loved it until Strasbourg. I was getting sick by then. Erika, Emily, Julia, & Molly were in the room.

Sunday on the bus watched Goldeneye. We got no food for 12 hours. Emmanuel the bus driver never stopped for a bathroom break. We had three + hour long stints at times. We got to Prague & immediately went on a city tour. It was too long. The hostel sucked. There were no shower curtains. The beds were like sheets on plywood. It reminded me of girl scout camp. Andrea & Matt were in our room when we arrived. I guess they had a good time in Italy. Molly had to stay in our room again because of the problem, whatever the hell that was. I do not know what "the problem" was, but it sounds pretty funny now.

We saw the concert right after the city tour Eine Kleine Nacht Musik & Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It was good but not memorable. It was an awesome setting though. I do vaguely remember the setting, but I don't have to remember the music - those are two of the most overplayed pieces in the entire history of music. Vivaldi's "Spring" in particular makes me want to throw stones at new baby birds. Then we went for great cheap food. Andrea, Matt, Ellie, Erika, & Molly separated from the group & ate cheap. I had pork, red cabbage, dumplings, apple streudel, & good beer. We walked around a bit then headed for home. By this time I felt like shit.

Monday found it hard to get out of bed. Monday was also Terezin day. It was mostly a POW camp, most Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Then the museum came next. The pictures were ok, THE PICTURES WERE OK??? They were drawn by children who were forced into the camp! but all we did was see a ten minute film, look at them, fail to find something decent to eat, More concerned about food than what happened at a concentration camp? then left for the speaker who was owner of the Globe. A former Miami student. He was a bad speaker. Really dull. Typical Miami student type, & still hasn’t grown up. After that, we had free time. It was Andrea, Matt, Erika, & Molly. We ate at some restaurant with a seven dollar cover. What a ripoff. The food was good though. We sort of split up after that. Andrea, Matt, & I went to an Irish Pub because we couldn’t find anything else. I ended up cashing guilders & Swiss francs for beer money. When I came back from the bathroom, I swear I saw Matt & Andrea holding hands. I don’t know though. Good lord. Why did I care so much???

Tuesday morning brought a long bus ride to Nitra, Slovakia. I felt like shit again. I had to sit by Erika downstairs & we had volume wars. I could barely hear my headphones at times. Another pissy day. We went to hear about the ORVA project though I still haven’t much of an idea what it is. We went around with Slovakian students. Andrea & Matt hogged my student. I just sat there like a dumb ass.We met with university students from the school there. I remember it being somewhat awkward, but don't recall why, except I think that it wasn't very well organized and there was a language barrier.

Budapest Parliament Building, taken by me but not on this particular trip

When we left, we headed for Budapest with only ice cream to hold us till we got there after 9pm & actually found a place to eat (McDonald’s) after a long walk. We were all in pissy moods & everyone ate a lot. We got an awesome hotel. Me & Andrea were going to room together, but there were so many groups of twos that I got stuck with Molly & Erika and Andrea chose to go with Holly & Nikki. I thought we’d have problems with having a tv in the room, but there were none. Good sleep, not enough to keep me awake for the speakers. I don’t even have a  clue what the second one was talking about. I couldn’t hear or understand her. This is funny to me. I don't recall that day or either of those speakers. Went to Burger King for lunch. Went on a bus tour of Budapest. Stopped at some monument Heroes Square and also an awesome church St. Stephen's and a panoramic view of the city Fisherman's Bastion & the parliament building. Then we walked around the city centre looking for an outfit for Molly to wear to the ball. It was annoying. The best part of the trip was the ballet at the Budapest Opera House with the presidents of both Hungary & Greece. We got to see Giselle - it was a great choice by our professor. That was after cramps from hell & Wendy’s & Molly’s taxi. I guess that was the point of just being absolutely annoyed with her. I don’t know why I didn’t want to take a cab. We got there the same time we would have by walking. But then we got to the Opera House, which was amazing inside. The ballet was awesome, the highlight of the week. Giz got pickpocketed before the show, Rosemary was sick after Amy McKay had tonselitus, but the ballet was awesome. Sounds like everyone was doing SO well...

Afterwards, I sort of waited around for Matt & Andrea to see what they were going to do, but I felt extremely uncomfortable around them like they wanted me to go away, but I also felt unwanted around the other group. The feeling has yet to leave. I ended up going with Andrea, Matt, & Molly to Marsall’s down the street from our hotel, where I had French fries & good beer. Slept well but not enough. In the morning we were on the road to Wien. We got a little extra sleep but the bus ride was long, especially after we had a detour, wait, that was to Salzburg, nevermind.

When we got to Wien, we all had to eat chicken & coke at McDonald’s. Then we found our two separate hotels. I was going to have to stay at the other one, but I dug my bag out & almost was crying because everyone I knew was in this hostel. Good lord, this is juvenile. You can skip over the rest of this paragraph to miss all of the non-dramatic drama. Then Andrea wanted to switch to be in the same hotel as Matt. That really made me mad. I even said meanly to her that she would rather be at the other one, meaning to hurt. But it was ridiculous. And I’m still mad about it, even though me & her shared a room and talked half the night about her & Matt. Erika was there at first though she wanted me out. I threw a fit about it. We tried to drag out some secretes. I just want to be trusted to tell things to. Why is it that after the first week I felt like I had known Andrea all my life? And now she has become one of the best friends I've ever known, & only after three months of knowing each other. Too bad this is all over soon. I wish I hadn't been so tired so I could have had a better conversation with her. But that was all after a pointless lecture at the Celtes & awesome dinner (gas included). HUH? Great beer - Gosser, sauerkraut, potatoes, sausage. But Matt pulled this little stunt. First it started off with a comment by me, a joke to Andrea that hurt her. For that I am sorry. But I started off the discussion, and Matt obviously heard, for he started sulking, though nothing bad was said. Andrea went off to look for the restaurant she was told about in the chocolate store (Mozart balls - red - best chocolate ever). Instead of talking to us, he just wandered off. Then he said he was just going to go home after dinner, so Andrea took him to coffee. She asked me to go, which of course I wasn't going to do. So I got stuck with Erika, Julia, & Emily. We toured Vienna's ring. It was very beautiful at night. (Julia's "what do you know about romance" comment pissed me off.) We finally went back to our separate hotels. I shared a room with Andrea. Erika was there. We had a conversation about Matt & forced Andrea to tell us some things. It was just as we already knew. After Erika left Andrea talked to me for awhile. I was extremely tired and wish I could've stayed awake longer. Friday morning came too soon, but I'd rather stay up & talk to Andrea any day and be tired in the morning. We had to listen to a lecture at the Celtes again, though it was so hard to keep my eyes open. We had great sandwiches for lunch, however, and giant cans of Coke. Andrea & Matt stayed in Wien, while most of us went to Salzburg.

Why, oh why, didn't I write more about what I was seeing??? I referred to the Heroes Monument as "some monument" and didn't even bother to get the name of the church. I talked about nothing in Vienna or Prague! Nothing! You'd think I got nothing out of this whole experience! What a shame!

If we had blogs in 1998: Woman from Aran

Cut off the Ireland trip for some reason. Here are the last couple of days of that particular trip. We went to Galway, the Aran Islands, and back to Dublin. It's the latest installment from my 1997-1998 study abroad journal.

As always, spelling, grammatical, factual, and emotional errors have been preserved from the original journal. Today’s comments are in red.

14 April 1998

Inishmore, Ireland

Dark clouds circled around us on Easter but never dumped on us, fortunately. The sun was in the center of a blue hole in the sky, making it a good day. We walked a good 5-6 miles upon returning to Galway, where we ate at Fat Freddy’s. I had an awesome pineapple pizza. Then the search for a good pub and “You’re not 21,” my blunder. Then the Lisheen, three pints of Guinness, and some music including Christy Moore covers. Everyone was singing along. Awesome craic. I had fun, though Steph was bored. I don’t know if Ryan was having fun or no. Then afterwards I called Grandma’s and said I was in Scotland, which was dumb. Hmm. Lying to my grandmother for no apparent reason. Guess I didn't want anyone to know I'd been to Belfast. Oh well. Then I slept. Next morning we got tickets to the Aran Islands – Inismore. Cool place. 15 miles of walking. First was the Black Fort and its amazing cliffs. Plenty of pictures. We ate lunch there. Then the walking to the other fort. You could see the cliffs of Moher. Where did the sheep go? No sheep visible on the island that day, so how'd we get Aran sweaters? Ha! Atlantis. Sundial. Spar. Mainistir House. Galway this morning. Oh yeah, no electricity. Freezing for awhile. On train to Dublin. Stream of consciousness? No, just too lazy to write it all out. Back then, I thought I’d remember every detail always. Perhaps I remember more than most, but it has slipped away.

The Aran Islands are an interesting place, to say the least. They are a group of three islands in Galway Bay off the West Coast of Ireland, directly across the water from the Cliffs of Moher, famous for the winds that hold you up even as you lean over the 700 foot cliffs, the only force keeping you from plunging to your death into the sea below. (They were also featured in The Princess Bride as the "Cliffs of Insanity.") The limestone you see on the islands dates back 350 million years and is full of the fossils of ancient sealife, and glaciers had a heavy influence on shaping the landscape. The strange environment supports arctic, alpine, and Mediterranean plants, making it one of the most bizarre places to see flora, if you're into that kind of thing, which I wasn't at the time of this trip but am fascinated by now. Ancient forts and stone walls are found on the islands, as well as some monasteries and some ancient beehive huts from the early Christian period.

The islands served as refuge for Catholics from the tyranny of the British, particularly in the time of the Cromwell conquests. The towns make the feel like you've gone through a time machine, as the people still speak Gaelic and there's not a Starbuck's to be found. It's a little piece of heaven for those weary of modernity, but then there are the tourists. Among visitors are literary types and artists - I can see how you'd be inspired by spending some time there, especially in the spring or fall when the tourist hoards are fewer and you can spend time in isolation. Rock-climbing, fishing, and diving are among the popular activities in the summer months. We went in mid-April, so there were few tourists, but the wildflowers had begun to bloom among the limestone, making it a wonderful time of year to visit, though they say May is the optimal time to view them. 


I'd love to go back and see them through older eyes, even for a few weeks to do some writing.

15 Avril 1998

Dublin last night. Check in at Brewery Hostel. Eat at sandwich shop next to The Norseman. Good ham & cole slaw sandwich. Sat on steps in Temple Bar. A little chilly but not bad. Ran around Temple Bar looking for music. Went to Oliver St. Gogarty’s. Mark the dancer was there with his perma smile. So was the guitar kid. But the others were good. 2 pints of Guinness. Cereal dumb comment. Have NO idea. Went home pissed. (not drunk) Getting sick of travelling, I think. But this is Dublin. I wish Andrea & Matt were here. Maybe Andrea would appreciate this more. (Ok, now crazy lady comes in with 3 guys – all male room, blah blah blah. I hope she doesn’t make us move.) We're in a hostel. Anyway, I woke up this morning first & ate breakfast alone. We left around 11am & got our plane tickets at USIT, then headed over to the embassy so Ryan could use the fax. Brought back memories of U2 weekend. Then I dragged them to the National Museum to see the Viking exhibit & the Rebellion exhibit. Then we got sandwiches & ate them in St. Stephen’s Green. Nice day. Took them down Grafton Street & stopped in St. Anne’s church & received a long winded tour of the stained glass windows. Then spent two seconds at Trinity College (Protestant comment). Don't know what this means, probably some pro-Catholic sentiment involved. Stopped at Golden Discs, bought the Coors & Warm Jets before Trinity. Went to Virgin Mega store, bought Audioweb. Steph had to find Irish music. I was actually ready to go. She wants to go see music again tonight. I’m shocked. She always acts so bored at the pubs. Ryan got pulled off a stool last night and danced a kick line. Minus coordination. Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow.

Temple Bar is an area in central Dublin that has managed to preserve its medieval street pattern. The streets are narrow and cobblestone, and at one point it was a center for secret revolutionary activity. The area fell into urban decay in the early 20th century and was left for dead. At one point, the powers that be were going to tear it all down, but cheap rents began to attract artists and small shopkeepers to the area, who then fought to save it, as artists are wont to do. As a response, the government set up a non-profit organization to preserve it, and now it is a hub for Irish cultural activity. And lots and lots of tourists. Next time I visit Dublin, I may take a stroll through the area, but I doubt I have a pint in the area due to the volume of them.

I did spend a lot of money on music over the course of my time in Europe. A lot of it was native to the country I was in; some was not. I was, like so many other aspects of life, learning about music. I had already evolved somewhat - my first album had been Milli Vanilli (probably 4th-5th grade), and my favorite bands had been Def Leppard (6th grade), Winger (7th grade), Poison (8th grade)...you get the picture. Ugh. It wasn't until I discovered U2 (thanks to the song "One") when I began to realize how bad that other stuff was. At this time, I was still looking for new music, trying to discover new bands no one in the States had heard of (I was hipster before hipster was cool?) I had a lot of misses. A lot. I can excuse the Coors because they were native to Ireland and it was before they completely discarded what had made them unique - combining traditional Irish music with pop - and became just another crap Top 40 band. I can't excuse the other two I list. I should have bought more Chieftains or Dubliners if I bought anything. Or Pogues. Why didn't I buy more Pogues?

Pretty pathetic journal entries. We did a lot that week, and I hardly recorded any of it. I did have a great time during the week (see previous entry.) The Aran Islands were fascinating. Was beautiful to be at the ocean. 

How I miss the ocean. Any ocean. And the Mediterranean Sea. Especially that.

Read more about my adventures in Ireland here!

What I learned about maps and cults and churches

Some decades ago, a few downtrodden Irish and German people did something that set off a chain of events to put me where I sit at this very moment. They didn't know each other but their descendents eventually crossed paths, and the circumstances of history that brought them to America led to my existence on this planet. I am, like we all are, a product of fate, and Catholicism runs in my family.

At one point it became more than a burden and I was spared the excesses of the Church. My mother married outside it so it was never a big part of my childhood, but at one point we went to Sunday school and CCD classes, and in one or two summers we had to go to vacation Bible school, though that was more to get us out of the house than to learn about Jesus. I never thought much about religion unless we were forced to go to church or when I was contemplating the occasional U2 lyric.

Then I went to college.

The year was 1995. Bill Clinton was POTUS. Dave Matthews Band was on the radio; Friends was on TV. I had my first email address and no one could anticipate where online technology was about to take us. The United States had unprecedented growth and prosperity, Rabin and Arafat had won a Nobel Peace Prize, and the belief that peace in the world could be achieved was real. All I wanted to do was make friends with the girls in Morris Hall.

When Mackenzie Clark asked a bunch of us on our floor if we wanted to join her for a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting, I said, sure, why not? The event was held in a voluminous lecture hall that was located on a rather remote part of campus, and a certain density to the crowd embellished the significance of the event. We listened to speakers tell us what awful people we were and how the way we lived our lives was wrong, as if they knew us, as if our births were some sort of vicious crime.

For whatever reason, despite my desperation for friendship and the virginity of my mind, I realized rather immediately that something was off about CCC, and soon I came to understand that tearing people down to build them up again was a recruitment tactic of cults. I referred to it as such. I started to attend meetings of the College Democrats instead, where all people were welcome, even with their flaws. But my interest in religion didn't wane.

I took my first international anything class (excluding language courses) during my sophomore year - World Politics 101 with Dr. Jeanne Hey. I'd gone into Political Science thinking I was on a pre-law track; I came out of Dr. Hey's class with a decidedly different view of the world. It started with a map. She unfurled a map of the world in a style that had been common in our primary school classrooms, but I had never wondered much about them. The map showed the United States in the center, with Asia split right down the middle.

Dr. Hey's class also taught me how arrogant Americans are and how we think we're the center of the universe. "The best country on Earth," as so many who've never been to another country say. Hence the map that splits Asia down the middle as if the people in those places didn't matter. I'd later come to learn how few of us left the country, which greatly contributes to American ignorance about other places. Just having a passport put me in a rather elite category. Soon I would witness the consequences of our arrogance firsthand. We all did, actually, on September 11, 2001.

I don't know how many students that day learned her lesson, that our perceptions of the world are shaped by seemingly innocuous things as maps, but I did. I became aware that just because I learned something one way didn't mean it was the right way, that I had to ask "why" things were as they are, that I really had to think about things instead of accepting them, as there was a real danger in them being wrong. It's the nature of human beings to think they live in advanced societies. People who thought the Earth was flat also believed they were living in an advanced society. We have a robot on Mars but we can't go there ourselves. The truth is that we're still very primitive and until we learn everything there is to know, we're going to find out that from time to time what we think we know is completely wrong.

I took Dr. Hey's lessons to Luxembourg the next year. That was one of the reasons I didn't like some of the other MUDEC students (as I wrote about in my "If there were blogs in 1997-1998" series.) They hadn't learned the lesson on arrogance and treated Europeans as if you could just split Europe down the middle of a map. But I think in the end, they did get it. I had just had a head start.

I visited dozens of churches during that year in Europe, old churches with character, with soul, unlike many churches I had seen in America that felt like gymnasiums or bus station waiting rooms. Several of them were some version of churches that had been around at the time of the Crusades. Some claimed to have artifacts from various saints; one church in Brugges, Belgium claimed to have one of the thorns from the crown of Christ himself. I became enamored with the Catholic Church. I thought it was the religion that I liked, years later realizing it was a love affair with history that I was after.

I took this new interest in the religion back to the US with me and sought to be initiated into Catholicism during my senior year, enrolling in the RCIA course at the local church. I attended mass nearly every Sunday and went to the classes on Wednesday evenings. On Easter, I was confirmed. Even then, though, my interest was starting to wane. I stopped going to mass soon after, and aside from that Christmas, didn't set foot in a church for a year. Not coincidentally, I took a course on eastern history that year, which included the Middle East and the Mongolian Empire. There was a lot of religion in it. It involved a lot of fighting.

Then came the Army. Literally. I enlisted to be a linguist and was sent to basic training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. The Army practically forces you to go to church services at basic training - you either go to church or scrub toilets, clearly discrimination against atheists. I enjoyed going to mass, however, because it was the one hour a day when you were alone with yourself and your thoughts were allowed to be yours. The rituals became ritual once again for me, and I continued to attend mass when I was sent to Monterey for language school. But Dr. Hey's lessons came back to me as I was exposed to Arab culture for the first time, and the more I learned, the more religion didn't make sense to me. Oh, and I became friends with Stanley.

Monterey is a lovely little town on the Pacific Ocean, comprised of an eclectic local population, graduate students from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and servicemen and women from the Naval Post Graduate School and the Defense Language Institute. The town is full of coffeeshops, British pubs, and bookstores, and as I sat in Plum's Cafe one day, a stack of freshly purchased books sitting on the table, Stanley came in to get some coffee. He was, among the students, an elder, having enlisted at the ripe old age of 35, the last year of eligibility for enlistment. He was an academic, earning two masters degrees in German and Russian literature, and seeing me with all those books, he recognized something of a kindred spirit. I ended up learning more from him than most of my college courses. My reading interests diversified. Books on ancient history and comparative religion became part of my library. I read the Russians for the first time, and Orientalism, too. And the Arab cultural lessons from the language course continued. Eventually I came to one conclusion.

Religion is bullshit.

That's not to say that there's no such thing as a soul or that we're not all part of some collective conscience or any of that other spiritual or mystical aspect of existence that people talk about or even that unknowable thing people refer to as "God." I'm talking about rules, rituals, and holy books that drive people to think their religion is the only one that is correct, the mentality that causes wars and people to fly airplanes into buildings and create entire countries because they think "God" gave that land to them. Religion and spirituality are two profoundly different concepts that are nearly always confused by those who proclaim to be religious. If you study history, you learn that the religions we have today are based on religions of ancient times. (For example, the story of the virgin birth isn't unique to Christianity; many ancient religions also believed in a virgin birth of a deity, like the Egyptians. In fact, there are so many common threads among all religions that to cling to one is pretty insane.) Religion can be a means to practice spirituality, but one should remember it really is just a collection of ancient stories twisted to fit whatever culture is teaching it. Gandhi got this. He said he worshiped his maker in a Hindu temple because that's where he grew up and what he was comfortable with, not because he was right and everyone else was wrong. For me, I feel like a Catholic church is a perfectly comfortable place for reflection and meditation, as long as the priest isn't preaching some political nonsense.

Which finally brings me to the point of this piece. (If you've made it this far, thank you.) On Sunday, I found myself in a universalist church for the third time. I wasn't there for the religion or the spirituality. I was there for the music! Chris sings for the choir. He was asked to do it after St. Anne's Catholic Church disbanded the choir he'd been singing with for nearly two decades due to budget cuts. I don't go all the time, but if he's singing a solo or if there's a piece he particularly wants me to hear, I hop on the bus and go down to the church. The thing about it being a universalist church is that there's room to sing almost anything, so the conductor will choose music from Leonard Bernstein or Chopin to traditional hymns. It's actually quite liberating for him, and he seems to be the focal point of the music because he has such a talent and the building itself fits his voice perfectly. He is all of 5'7" but can produce decibel levels that sometimes can blow you away. He can truly fill an opera house with sound.

The congregation is quite small - I've never seen more than 18 people if you don't count the choir. That's too bad, because the music is wonderful and the church is welcoming to all people. They don't tell you you're going to Hell; I don't think they even believe in Hell. They allow congregants to talk in church if they have something to share. Afterwards, they have coffee and snacks, which I suppose is the luxury of a small church. They barely mention Jesus except when they read from a gospel. It's rather refreshing that they don't offer a prescription for life, just love and support for other human beings.

I better end this now. I don't know if I've even made a point, and I think I've run out of steam. But if you appreciate good music, come to 16th and S at 11am on Sundays. It's worth your time.