Sour Mind Grapes

Life is generally good. It hasn't always been this way, and things could certainly change in the future. But at the present moment, my affairs are pretty peachy. I won't comment on yours because any number of terrible things might have happened recently in your life. Hopefully they haven't, but fortune is fickle and bad stuff goes down all the time. Serfs revolt and loot your granaries, an ex-wife gets custody of the purebred Arabian racing stallion, Poseidon sinks your pleasure yacht.

But I haven't been forced to deal with any of those problems lately. Or even more common calamities like the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the foreclosure of a cherished family home that Great-Grandpa Tom built with his own two hands. I can safely say that life is good in my corner of the world, as I fidget in my chair and knock on every piece of wooden furniture within arm's reach.

So then, as the proverbial bartender once asked the horse, why the long face? Because lately I've been feeling kinda low. As depressive funks go this one has been pretty benign but it still sucks eggs, for lack of a more eloquent phrase. I don't like being sad. At least, I think I don't. But then again, I wouldn't trust me farther than I could throw myself, which I would imagine is approximately zero inches, although I've never tried. Maybe some part of my subconscious gets its rocks off on bumming out. And if that's true for me, it is probably true for (at least some of) you, too.

All of us have dozens of stories frolicking around in our heads all day long, little rapacious bastards feasting ceaselessly on our mind grapes. They're produced by some mysterious internal narrator that everybody recognizes but few can locate. Mark Nunberg, my meditation teacher in Minneapolis, likes to say that these stories are the product of unhelpful habits we've carried for years, the end result of our inability to let go of past misfortunes and misguided attempts to find easy explanations for complex issues.  He says that, if we want to actually become happy and compassionate people, we can try to recognize the mental narrator when he starts and allow him to pass by without latching on to his message. We don't have to push him away, or prevent him from popping up like a cranial Whack-a-Mole, but we simply don't have to believe the stories he's telling. Like the way most people handle FOX News.

Last week, as my existential funk deepened and became obnoxious instead of amusing, I decided to give Mark's approach a try. When you're new to the meditation/Buddhism game, as I am, it's really easy to slip back into old habits without noticing. The wagon is mighty slippery and fall off-able. But as the great philosopher Ice Cube once commented, life ain't a track meet - it's a marathon. Plenty of time to get back in the race, and might as well get started now.

I decided the best strategy was humor. Also, self-deprecation. Because the self is the Ego and there's nothing that the Ego hates more than someone laughing at it, much like a teenage girl or a person trying to tell you about the Austrian school of economics. Ferris Bueller warned us against taking life too seriously, and despite Matthew Broderick's underwhelming track record since 1986 I still accept him as a credible source.

Thus, "Rich White People Problems" was born. I don't know where the phrase originated but it has become a very helpful mantra (in the colloquial sense), and I see no shame in benign plagiarism.. Those four words, stuck together, sound funny to me and always produce a smile, just like Facebook memes and "Shit _______s Say" videos don't. I try to remember it whenever I feel annoyed during the day - try to remember to breathe deep, understand that things are relatively fantastic, and slap on a grin, even if it feels forced. Fake it 'til you make it - the body can't recognize the difference 

So, in closing, here are some of the notable "Rich White People Problems" I've encountered lately, dignity be damned. I have, for at least several moments, been legitimately upset about all of the following. With any luck, a public display of my problems' triviality will hamper my Ego's subsequent forays into Negative-Nancyhood.

Rich White People Problems: Jan. 1 - Feb. 26

• A lady cut in front of me in the bakery line. She is buying at least twelve individually wrapped snacking items; I am buying a single loaf of bread. Now she is asking for a discount, and her conversation with the clerk is taking a long time.
• My 2nd favorite pair of jeans has a red marker stain that won't come out.
• I had to take pictures with my kindergarten class for a student's birthday, and the photographer-wench insisted that we make a series of cutesy Korean hand gestures.*
• There was no new episode of Modern Family this week.
• Contrary to multiple advertising posters' claims, the "Mexican Taco Pizza" at Pizza Maru contains no jalapeños, very few chopped red peppers, and entirely too much processed ham.
• None of the musicians that I like ever come to Korea, except for that one time that Eric Clapton came last year, and he didn't play enough stuff from the Yardbirds/Cream era.
• Why does this restaurant ruin a perfectly good omelette by smothering it with cold ketchup?
• The school's cook claimed that foreign teachers were using all the milk to flavor their coffee - I don't even drink coffee, but I'm still insulted that we as a group were blamed for a milk shortage.
• Most of the foreign films I downloaded don't have working English subtitles.
• According to several sources, my incoming class of kindergarteners is poorly behaved, mostly incompetent, and has a 7:1 boy-to-girl ratio.**
• It's too goddamn cold outside.

*To be honest, I'm still somewhat bitter about this one. If anyone has ideas for helpful strategies, I'd appreciate them.

**Ditto, except more so.

Permed Kindergarteners and Benevolent Apathy

His eyes are really big for a Korean kindergartener, which should make him cute, but they are annoying me. They are staring at my eyes, and I don't know how to make them stop. The rest of his head is obnoxious too. Seven year olds with perms make me uneasy. Males with perms cause the same reaction. I don't like it when the two subgroups are combined. His nose is runny and a hand is moving up to wipe away the snot. Now that same hand grabs my leg. This is gross, but I don't have the energy to object too strongly.

We are sitting in a large room at our school, and the Song Contest is almost over. Two more classes to go. He's pulling on my pant-leg pretty urgently now; maybe he has to go to the bathroom. This kid has already had one bladder-control malfunction on my watch, and I'd prefer that he not piss himself in front of the lady who signs my checks. I really wish he'd just sit still and shut up though, so I'm going to ignore him and hope he loses interest.

A Korean co-teacher leans over and says, "He really likes you." I like it when she speaks in short, information-rich sentences, because I often have trouble understanding her. So in most cases brief declarative statements like this are a relief because I don't have to spend five interminable seconds trying to analyze what she said, guess what she actually meant, and respond somewhat appropriately. She's really nice so I don't want to make her uncomfortable by letting her know how utterly confused I am after 75% of our conversations.

 I'm not sure what she means here, though, because how do you know if a kid actually likes you or is simply incredibly starved for adult attention?* I've worked at two schools so far, with a total of probably forty co-workers. Some of them have been really warm, nurturing, pleasantly outgoing people. A sizable number have been pretty beige, and a few have been downright frosty. All of us get hugs in the hallway, though. And, like arrogant old housecats, children will climb into your lap whether they are wanted or not, so long as your lap is more comfortable than the floor.

*When did I become an adult, and how did this happen without me noticing?

So I'm skeptical that this kid actually likes me. His dad has been "away on business" since I started six months ago, which could mean one of four things: 1) Dad actually is working overseas, 2) Mom and Dad are divorced, 3) Dad is doing that we're-not-gonna-live-together-or-have-any-real-relationship-but-I'll-keep-paying-your-bills-as-long-as-you-don't-cause-me-public-embarrassment-thing that happens in countries like Korea sometimes, or 4) bear attack. The kid probably just wants a male authority figure to acknowledge his existence. Isn't that what Freud or Jung or Nietzsche or some other creepy old Germanic fellow would say?  In any case, a good chunk of my brain thinks the kid has no more emotional connection to me than I do to toilet paper. Sometimes I need it, and if it's not there then life sucks, but no single roll has any special importance. Any soft, pliable tissue will do fine.

Still, I'm holding his hand and dragging him back to the classroom. I think he's trying to skip, but his legs are really short and he's kind of chubby and for someone with such a low center of gravity he has terrible balance. I guess he's sort of bouncing now. So it's more like escorting a large, whiny basketball with arms down the hallway. I'm looking down at the kid and feeling kind of annoyed; I feel this way about him maybe ten or fifteen times a day. Sometimes he'll redeem himself by conjugating a verb correctly or remembering what month comes after February. Also, when he can tell I'm annoyed, he likes to plop himself down on the floor, wrap both arms around my shin, and gurgle, "I love Nick Teacher." Once in a while this is endearing but usually it just makes me stumble and get more irritated.

I'm still trying to figure out if this kid really likes Me as I cram a pile of notebooks into his cheap, school-issued green backpack. I'm wondering if he will remember Me after I get out of this soul crushing dump in a few months. I spend a few thoughtful moments contemplating how the replacement teacher will be compared to Me, while simultaneously helping this uncoordinated mini-lout pull on his mittens and hat and tragically girlish jacket. Then he's ready to go. 

"Bye-bye Teacher!"

"Peace dude - catch you tomorrow! Don't let the snow leopards eat you on the way home!"*

We're smiling a lot and laughing - I'm not sure if my own laughter is forced or genuine. Compelling arguments can be made for either side. But I'm showing the right signs, at least. He'll be back tomorrow, and we'll have pretty much the same set of interactions, and once again I'll be thankful that sometimes our thoughts have no impact on how we actually live our lives. 

*This is the way I actually speak to my kids. I'm not sure why I haven't been fired yet.

If Reincarnation is Real

Suppose, for a minute, that reincarnation is real. That we, at least the part of ourselves that we consider to be "we", have the possibility of being reborn as any creature currently present on Earth. Forget about scientific definitions of "ourselves". In fact, forget about the word "we", or "ourselves", or any related pronoun. Really - please forget about them. Because I'm neither qualified nor bored enough to provide any satisfactory definition of those ideas. And metaphysics sucks, as I'm pretty sure the Buddha once said.

Just consider the concept. You could be existing as an alligator, or a panda, or some type of bacteria. Anything that is currently living on the planet, with apologies to fans of the Yangtze river dolphin and golden toad.*

*I learned about these two animals in my Korean kindergarten class. Enlightening young people has never been so depressing.


Of course, if you were currently an alligator or panda, chances are slim you would be reading this essay (I doubt that scientists would waste valuable research dollars on a bacterium). Unless you were involved in some especially sadistic zoologic study, there is absolutely zero chance you would be reading at all. If you, as a semi-literate human, are reading these words right now, then you made a conscious decision (to be confused and possibly bored).

So...what's so great about being a homo sapien, then? How does the capability of conscious thought give humans any kind of conceivable advantage over less-observant species like the common ground squirrel? With the proper amounts of due respect to the order of rodentia, let me try to make a brief argument.

I will, for the purposes of this argument, use myself as an example. Not only does this eliminate any need for tedious interviewing or research, but it also allows me to easily twist the facts as needed in order to illustrate my point. Specific thoughts may or may not have actually passed through my consciousness, but I promise that I will limit my embellishments strictly to those necessary and/or entertaining.

To begin - I make lots of terrible, terrible choices. Some of these have to do with money, and the loss of it. As of yet I have not purchased lucrative bridge-property or cubic zirconia mines, but we shouldn't rule out the possibility. In my defense, these terrible choices do not seem terrible at the moment they are being made. Only the slow lapse of time permits me to see the true shitiness of my decision-making ability in terms of fiscal responsibility.

I don't make these decisions because I get some intrinsic pleasure from actions that devastate my bank account. Most of them are actually pretty defensible at the time they are made. Of course I will need five pairs of stylish trousers to impress my school's CCTV-watching parents. Fashion is God in Korea, and you gotta spend money to (continue) to make money. I must offer to buy drinks for that group of attractive girls in order to prove that chivalry is not, in fact, dead. Let's go out for lunch today because the fried squid-and-kimchi odor billowing from the kitchen is making me nauseous. I NEED that enormous stuffed radish. Why? Shut up - that's why.

Other lousy decisions concern personal relationships. During my 18-month stay abroad, I have established an impeccable track record as a shitty returner-of-emails. Periodic episodes of inexplicable moodiness and extended periods of unilateral silence have served as a reminder that it is impossible to outrun your personal demons. I like to think that the damages haven't been too severe, but who knows? Perhaps I've alienated the potential best man at my hypothetical wedding, or thoroughly pissed off a girl who has a friend who's dating a guy that works for Frommer's. My DeLorean's flux capacitor is still fucked up, and there's no real way of knowing.*

*Even apes would agree that Back to the Future is a kick-ass movie.


But I can learn from these mistakes. All of us can learn from our mistakes. In fact, I'd argue that all of us do learn from our mistakes, and the mark of an intelligent person is this: they effectively learn lessons from far fewer fuck-ups.

Every person who has temporarily blacked out at a shopping mall knows the gut-punch feeling of that enormous credit card bill. Every binge drinker knows how unbearably awful it is to wake up with a raging hangover. Every compulsive man/womanizer has woken up next to a terrible mistake. Every drug dealer has emerged from a hash-induced stupor to realize that the cops are knocking at the door.

So what separates us from the "lower animals"? We have the potential to learn from our mistakes in a far shorter span of time, and to adjust our actions accordingly. We can recognize what makes us feel bad, and what makes us feel fuckin' terrific. We can understand that practicing yoga for an hour after work produces good feelings, and that two pizzas + a bottle of Scotch will probably make us sick as shit. If we pay attention we notice that snarky comments about our co-workers cause lingering feelings of paranoia and resentment, and that these feelings suck. We understand that harboring resentment toward our families brings nothing but suffering. If we are extremely lucky, or observant, we can learn these lessons without having to experience the full dose of pain that accompanies them.

Animals, as is my understanding, do not possess this luxury. Some bears learn to avoid stepping in traps, perhaps by viewing unluckier bears. Some fish never encounter a jiggling nightcrawler and are thus spared the indignity of a two-inch hook through the cheek. But most non-sentient creatures cannot make conscious choices to avoid suffering. They are slaves to their biological imperatives, and cannot train their minds to rein in their most ruinous impulses. If the lights sparkle brightly enough they will come.

We, humans, have a choice. We can chase dragons, or we can trudge after true happiness. We can indulge every conceivable passion, hoping that the next pleasure will finally fill that obnoxious emptiness. We can edit ourselves to fit some definition of "respectable", in hopes that the admiration of our peers will one day prove filling.  We can ignore the consequences of self-destructive behavior, secure in the delusion that we will be the first people to finally cheat death and utter loss.

That mindset seems quite stupid to me. And I failed university math three times.

I think it is much better to recognize our mistakes, and to learn from them. To see the many ways in which we fuck up, without passing judgment on ourselves as failures or quitters. To recognize how these lousy decisions make us feel, and to appreciate the peace of mind that comes with pursuing worthwhile goals. To understand that killing time does nothing but kill time, and that time is precious. Who knows when we'll have this opportunity again? Angels don't have blogs.

The Genius Fish

"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life believing that it is stupid." 

The words above were spoken by Albert Einstein. They are inspiring and reassuring and utter bullshit. Some fish can climb trees. And those fish are the genius fish.

Lately my reading habits have resembled the trajectory of a tetherball, whipping frantically through dozens of essays then slowly coiling around novels of monstrously epic size before settling in for a spell of complete inactivity. Then it starts again, following much the same pattern. Plate after plate of hors d'ouvres and then a carb-heavy, horse-choking plate of carbonara.

Most of my reading-related energy has been focused on two authors - Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. I've attacked their works with all the creativity of Coldplay's songwriters. Infinite Jest usually got a mention when people discussed the most difficult books they'd ever tried to read so it seemed like a good one to start with. Gravity's Rainbow earned the following paraphrased recommendation from a friend of mine: "It's set in WWII, the guy is trying to find a rocket bomb, then he goes to find some hash, and everyone is doing drugs and getting laid in weird ways the whole time. It was pretty good but I didn't finish it."  Got it.

And on the list it went. Mason & Dixon, Girl with Curious Hair, Broom of the System, Against the Day, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again...bordering on full fledged addiction. Which isn't exactly positive, since one of those authors (Wallace) is dead and the other is roughly six hundred years old. It will be hard to get a fix once the existing stash is gone.

The process of reading these books has been simultaneously one of the most inspiring/horrifically depressing experiences of my life.

Imagine you are a musician. Well, not a real musician...you've never actually performed a live set. Or recorded a single track, for that matter. But when you were in high school you really, really enjoyed playing in the band. And you were pretty good. You secretly enjoyed practicing chords and simple melodies while the others bitched and moaned their way through rehearsal. Bi-yearly concerts could be described with minimal hyperbole as better than sex. You even liked evaluations, because it was a chance to be validated by an objective outsider (sorry, mom - you don't count). And at those moments you really felt like you had a special gift.

Then you went to college, and you never got around to joining a music group. Course work/a job/significant other/stress/enthusiasm for drugs/apathy/_________ meant you never felt like there was any time, you  know? Sometimes you'd see a drum circle on the quad, or half-listen to some duo jamming at a coffee shop, and it would remind you that people of your age and station and socio-economic background were chasing the music dream. But they always sounded so painfully mediocre. From your vantage point as an intelligent and disinterested observer you could easily discern that their efforts currently sucked and were likely to also suck in the future.

Maybe you felt a bit of superiority, witnessing these three-cord abominations and off-key vocals drowning in a sea of percussion. The ego loves a hot mug of smug self-assurance. But really your detachment was about remaining safe. As long as you didn't try and fail, your gift would remain special. It would just be hidden. Nothing could hurt the gift - your diamond would never be exposed as cheap zirconia. Mike Jordan once said you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, but airballed free throws end up on YouTube. Fans watching at home, on the other hand, are seldom publicly humiliated.

In three semi-concise/coherent paragraphs, then, I have described my relationship with writing. I love it, and it makes me feel good. I wish I did it more often. I have always liked to imagine that I am a good writer - it is perhaps the one self-identifying fantasy that has survived all the moods, trends, and complete reorientations that people usually go through between the ages of 5 and 21. Like a cockroach or can of condensed soup, the fantasy is seemingly indestructible.

Then I started reading Wallace and Pynchon, and hey presto! there goes the fantasy. Goodbye self-protective non-involvement, hello realization of mediocrity. It shouldn't be that shocking I guess; most of us will be mediocre at most of the things we do. This isn't a bad thing, in many ways - there needs to be an baseline level of competence (at any activity) to help us distinguish greatness by comparison. Even if the baseline gets higher, some people will always be THAT MUCH better than the baseline, and thus be defined as "great". Two hundred years ago, I bet 99% of the people in my apartment building would have totally kicked ass at literacy - they'd read and write circles around the competition. Today the accomplishment is not as impressive.

David Foster Wallace was great. At this point in history, I have been slightly better than him at not suffering from insurmountable depression and eventually committing suicide, but I can't approach his level at anything else. He was an athletic prodigy - one of the highest ranked junior tennis players in the U.S. at one point. He was a mathematical genius - try reading his explanation of the game Eschaton in Infinite Jest without developing a fierce hatred for calculus. He was also able to understand and express how it feels to be a human being. The Buddha taught that we can know others through our suffering. Few people could do this as well as Wallace. In an essay he wrote while a junior at university, Wallace described how it feels to be really, really sad.  He did it with humor, without self pity, and with heartbreaking honesty. I can't read these words without a clenched jaw and blurry vision.

On the other hand, I can't read his commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005 without feeling incredibly hopeful about being alive. I want to applaud him after every paragraph because he's just so goddamned magnificently RIGHT about things...have you ever seen a little kid start to pump his arms and legs and run around like a madman, hollering nonsense at the top of his lungs, jumping on furniture and crashing into more sober-minded adults, spasming and twitching and literally moving every part of his body that he can control simply because he's so flooded with excitement and joy and delight and sugar or whatever? And you know how annoying that kid can be, because he's basically acting like a small noisy tornado in a place where humans are supposed to live and work, except when you remember how great it was to feel like that and then a part of you feels sad that you don't feel like that anymore and wish you could genuinely experience that unfiltered lust for all-encompassing life again. Usually I'm a grown-up, but Wallace's speech makes me feel like that kid. I want to do a thousand amazing things all at once and then dive face-first into a chocolate ice cream cake.

I don't think I'll ever write anything like that. Which is OK - you need to tell kids they can become anything they can imagine, but not everyone grows up to be cosmonauts and linebackers and beatboxers and Nobel Prize-winning chemists. If those were the only career paths to satisfaction the human race would, probably, be entirely fucked in terms of ever being somewhat happy. It's important to learn how to be happy with being "average"; unsubstantiated delusions of self-importane are among the least-attractive delusions out there.

I love reading these books by Wallace and Pynchon, but my ego does not. When in the midst of an especially brilliant paragraph or extended ramble we often have this type of exchange:

Me: Oh my god...yeah. Yeah, that is right. That is so goddamn right and it's beautiful. He is incredible.

Ego: Totally; he's saying what I've been thinking for years! He's saying what I've been thinking!

 *continue reading for a few seconds*

Me: How did he make those connections? How has he managed to tie all these bizarre plot lines and characters and streams of thought into something legible? Where does he get these ideas? Whose mind actually works in these ways - emotions and mathematics and savage low-brow comedy and endearingly shitty poetry? HOW DO HUMANS MAKE THIS?!

Ego: The last part kind of sounds like something I...ah fuck it.

It hurts a little to read these books, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to do so. It's thrilling to witness transcendence from people who (conceivably) could have once walked and slept and ate in the same places as you. And it's humbling to watch the masters play chess.

Maybe it'll make me better at checkers.

Why I Wait - A Vietnamese Travelogue

It was almost midnight when I crawled up to the top bunk of a cramped hostel dorm in Saigon. My first day in Vietnam, with two sleepless nights preceding it. Exhaustion and sensory overload cocktailing nicely into a state of delirious joy far more potent than the cocaine and prostitutes offered by the streets of the backpacker district. The sensations of simply being alive in that place and time filled me and left no urges to be satisfied; a state of utter contentment cherished because of its rarity. Everything is OK. A bright flash of light, fading to a dull glow. And then, unexpected joy. More than I had allowed myself to dream of, even in the most hopefully delusional moments...


I'd been planning my trip to Vietnam for a few months. To clarify - my definition of "planning" is mostly limited to choosing a country and daydreaming about a few things I'd like to do there. Here's what the list looked like for Vietnam:

• I knew I wanted to scuba dive. Diving has been the driving force behind most of my recreational, occupational, and financial decisions since I first back-rolled into the ocean. Vietnam isn't the Mecca of the diving world (or even Cordoba for that matter), but the country's combination of warm water and low prices was pretty attractive.
• I wanted to visit the country that had unleashed such a massive clusterfuck upon American consciousness.  The fear, confusion, madness, and desperate sorrow of the war expressed through film and prose has been an uncomfortable source of fascination for me since I was young. To walk through the streets and jungles that shattered so many minds and dreams and deeply held conceptions of righteousness/duty/truth...then it's firsthand, then it's real, then I can touch the warplanes and see the pictures and read the words and understand that Vietnam is a real place with real people and real suffering, and not simply a chilling metaphor for everything that is fucked up and corrupt and rotten about the 20th Century American Dream.
• There wasn't really a third point. 

It was going to be relatively easy to achieve the second goal. Saigon crawled with remnants of the war; palaces once occupied by the Diem dictatorship, American and Chinese military hardware strewn across the courtyards of museums and memorials, former Viet Cong hideouts reborn as chic coffee houses, backstreet markets selling canteens and wristwatches and ammunition scavenged from fallen GIs, vivid socialist posters featuring men and women holding guns, ratchets, babies, sycthes (sometimes all at once). If there was anything I cared to see outside of the city (and there was), a few thousand "travel agents" operating in the backpackers district would be happy to help, for a reasonable fee.  Small price - good for you, good for me. No worries on that front.

Still I couldn't sleep, despite my utter exhaustion and obnoxiously good spirits. Because for the past week, bad news had been brewing in the South China Sea and after unloading a furious barrage of death and devastation on the Philippines, Tropical Storm Washi was making its way northwest. Right past my intended dive site at Nha Trang, a small city on Vietnam's southeastern coast.. Before leaving Korea I had exchanged emails with many of the dive operators in Nha Trang, anxiously prodding for information about the current conditions and any predictions about the weather to come - but I hadn't heard anything for a few days.  Since I was due to hop aboard a night train bound from Saigon for the coast in less than 24 hours it seemed wise to check if anyone had emailed me back* before committing 40% of my vacation to a place that (for all I knew) could be getting hammered by a typhoon.

*People check their email more often than they eat, drink, make love, or shit. Even if you combined these four activities, email-checking would still win the Frequency Contest in a landslide (I'm pretty sure). So why is it noteworthy to mention that I checked my email in Vietnam? Primarily because as soon as I leave my home country, I immediately shun technology with a ferocity that would make a Luddite uneasy. I have never brought my laptop on vacation, my phone is turned off and wrapped in a ball of dirty boxers and socks. My iPod is used strictly to soothe rage provoked by crying babies on airplanes. 

This isn't because I consider technology to be bad, really. But it seems so terribly ordinary, and I like to imagine travel as the  continual experience of the extra-ordinary. Technology makes my ordinary life less boring and monotonous because I can easily access new information that interests me, or communicate with many people. All of this is secondhand, though - I can't actually touch the carved stone steps of Chichen Itza, or pour a cup of coffee for the Branch Davidian who wants to tell me how the media totally fucked up the story in Waco. I'm only getting a distillation of the real thing. Which is better than nothing, I suppose. But when traveling, when there is something real and beautiful that I can touch or see or smell or hear or taste or sense in some way directly, well at these moments I can't imagine being a slave to the screen for even a second. I'm terrified that I will miss something subtly mind-shaking as I send a text message, or that a fellow wanderer will notice my ear buds and decide not to ask for directions. I have to be vigilant for the experiences of the present moment, and technology interferes with that openness. But anyway...

In any case, I managed to extract my iPod from its dank-boxer-cave (loudly crinkling several plastic bags in the process and, no doubt, thoroughly pissing off the other people in the room). Type in the WiFi password, hate myself more than a little for becoming another e-tourist. The device connects, a single bar flicking weakly in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Out of sheer habit my thumb taps the Facebook icon; I still don't believe I consciously moved those muscles. I realize my mistake and am about to exit the app when I notice the message box has a red "1" hovering above it. I read the message. Then I read it again, again, again. Then once more, and just once more, over and over, with my eyes too bloodshot to stay open and my heart racing too fast for sleep.

About an hour later, as I lay silently staring at the ceiling, still as an suspiciously joyful corpse, I had to chuckle at the whole scene. Every cell of my body was flooded with hope and happiness. All because of a  message written on a social networking website. I refuse to buy a Kindle or iPad; I love paper books.  I cherish handwritten letters more than any other post from home. I'm a tireless (if overenthusiastic and ineloquent) opponent of the cheapening of communication in the digital age. And yet I couldn't deny that these words, black Times Roman on a glowing yellowish screen, had shook me more deeply than anything I had ever read before. I thought that the medium counted for something, at least to me; maybe I was wrong. I had just violated two of my major principles: 1) disengage from technology while traveling and 2) never put much stock in any message that could potentially be erased by a well-placed magnet. I'd violated the hell out of these principles, in fact, but I felt great. What if Sal had been summoned to the road by a Facebook message from Dean and Carlo Marx? Maybe that would be OK.  

Somewhere near the Rocky Mountains, there is a girl who I love. I love her completely. I can't explain my love for her with words, or even thoughts - somehow that pure feeling gets diluted as soon as it is expressed outwardly. Sometimes I try to send my love directly from my heart to hers in a beam of light-energy, across oceans and interstates and pine forests. I like to imagine that she senses this connection, even if she doesn't understand it, and feels happy for a while. I often write to her. And sometimes she writes back.

I woke up the next morning and stumbled downstairs into the lobby. I wrote to her, and used the hostel's phone to call a divemaster in Nha Trang. It doesn't look good, he said; visibility is only one meter underwater, the sun hasn't shone in days, and there's a hellacious wind that refuses to calm down. Sorry mate - no dives this week.

I couldn't stop smiling.

My mind was full of her - when I closed my eyes I could see each word that she wrote, clear as you like. A mind full of love. But a mind relaxed, and easy-going as well - none of the clutching, analytical, planning, paranoiac tension that too often passes for love. This love left room for life and otherness and fluidity - it was not jealous of my attention, anxious for action, greedy for further validation. The love simply brightened everything around it - lighting thousands of candles without diminishing its own flame, just as the Buddha said.

And it was, for lack of a better term, pretty fucking terrific. Let me try to explain...

The Cyclo Tour 

This guy.

As I walked out of the hostel, a chubby man with a round, cheerful face wheeled his cyclo into my path. 

"Hey my friend, you wan' city tour? I take you ev'ywhere, no problem. Good price!"

I've always been fascinated by cyclos. No other mode of transportation seems to fit as neatly into the motif of Class Struggle as the cyclo - the fat, opulent bourgeoisie lounging in comfort as the worker sweats and strains to propel him to his destination, rewarded by a few pennies carelessly plucked from a wallet bulging with cash. History and vivid imagery...I love it.

So as I'm trying to sidestep the guy, trying to ignore the irony of him offering me (citizen of the capitalist/imperialist aggressor that once tried to crush the Vietnamese People's Revolution) a chance to reenact centuries of oppression on a blisteringly hot Saigon day, she pops into my mind. And I imagine sharing the ride with her, and laughing about it years later. I smile. She would love this moment. This is life. And the next thing I know, I'm buying giant bottles of water for us and hopping into the seat for a whirlwind tour of Saigon.

Whirlwind might be a bit of a misnomer, actually. Because cyclos are slow. Like glacial, it'd-be-faster-to-backwards-crab-walk slow. Really goddamn slow. But oh man, there are very few rides I have ever enjoyed as much. The snail-like pace allowed me to see everything in the city - not just the big impressive buildings, or the handful of places where we stopped, but the life of the city. Shirtless guys washing motorbikes with buckets of dirty soapwater and ancient brown rags. The old women in Vietnamese hats using one hand to pinch one nostril and blast out a snot-rocket while making a baguette sandwich with the other. Children wearing the bright red scarves of the Young Pioneers on their way to school, the girls with long, shiny black hair and thick round glasses trying to avoid the taunts and flirtatious slaps of the boys behind them. All the people of the city, doing the things that people do. Even the plump European tourists with their high black socks, fanny packs, and permanent confused scowls - I saw them all and loved them. I thought of her, and I loved her, and them, and the city, and life. 

The Trip to Phu Quoc 

A heart full of love was wonderful. Still, I wanted a mouth full of saltwater as well. Or at least a logbook full of dives. So I booked tickets to an island called Phu Quoc off the southwestern coast of Vietnam, not far from Cambodia. Phu Quoc was a former French and American stronghold, famous equally for its delightfully relaxing beach getaways and brutally sadistic prison camps. Luckily the prison camps had closed, but the beaches were still open. It was a bit remote, requiring six hours of bus travel and nearly three hours by hydrofoil ferry to reach the island, but I bought tickets for the night bus started off, looking forward to the murmur of ocean waves after two days with the howling, honking motorbikes of Saigon.

On the intercity bus to the terminal, I met a Spanish couple from a city south of Barcelona. I can't remember the name. Having not spoken more than a sentence or two of Espanol since I came to Korea, I felt a little uncomfortable talking to them at first. I struggled to remember the correct tenses for verbs, I spliced in Korean words (chincha means absolutely nothing in Spanish, I'm sure), and generally felt exceptionally embarrassed for being stupid enough to ask them "A donde van?" 

Fifteen minutes later, we were making plans to have dinner on the island when we arrived. The man was incredibly kind - encouraging me to speak comfortably without being condescending, offering corrections and clarifications when I was confused, even talking about politicians from my home state of Minnesota with shocking accuracy (for example, Jesse Ventura had some hilarious ideas about conspiracy theories and Michelle Bachmann is a shameless idiot). I felt such warmth and gratitude toward these couple for including me in their journey when it would have been so much easier to offer a few polite sentences and gradually drift into silence. I felt her beside me again at that moment, and I smiled. I smiled because of the kindness of people we meet on the road, and the unlikely stories that we hear, and the joy of sharing our experiences with others. I smiled because life was OK.

Fast-forward -  we were locked in a heated argument with the Vietnamese bus driver over a ticket snafu. It seemed that the travel agents had told us our tickets were for the 11pm bus, when in reality they were for 1am. Since it took six hours to get to the ferry, which left at 8am, and the Vietnamese roads were not known for their high speed limits or well paved-ness, we were quite worried. The Spanish man became extremely upset, gesturing angrily at the bus driver and two men who (I thought) were employees of the company. Eventually it turned out that there was one seat available on the bus. I wished the Spaniards bueno suerte and climbed aboard, feeling more than a bit guilty. I told them we would meet again on the boat, and not to worry. And the strangest thing was, I really meant it. I knew they would be OK. Because life was OK.

As I searched for my seat on the bus, I discovered something - the two men who had been talking to the Spaniards were not employees at all. They were passengers. One man was sitting with his wife, who held a small baby girl in her arms. She was obviously worried, especially when I mistakenly sat down next to her. Her husband, who had been talking to the bus driver, smiled at me when he walked back to his seat. "You can sit there, is OK. I can sit next to my wife." 

They were beautiful, sitting there together. Only a few minutes ago I had seen him as an obstacle, frustrated  by his inability to perform what I thought was his job. Now I saw him as a human being who had acted out of real compassion. Maybe he wanted to aid some confused foreigners, maybe he just wanted to help the bus driver get things settled down so nobody else on the bus would be late. But some type of kindness was at work here. His wife snuggled in against his shoulder, the baby wrapped in a scratchy green bus-line blanket, and he sighed. I looked at them and felt her again, felt love for her and them too.

The other man was sitting right across the aisle from me. He was short and slender, with carefully arranged hair and new blue jeans. His glasses looked like Lennon's. He was also with a woman, a beautiful young lady with large dark eyes. They looked kind. I leaned over to him and thanked him for helping us with the tickets. I asked him where they were going, and he said they were going to his wife's hometown to spend some time with her family before the Tet New Year. She showed me a small bag of gifts they were bringing to her parents. And I felt that certain kind of warm happiness, always felt especially strong in the chest cavity, that usually ends up in tears, for me at least. 

As the bus lumbered out onto the highway, I began to listen to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. After a few minutes, I skipped directly to "If You See Her, Say Hello". Then I listened to "Visions of Johanna". And finally, "Lay Lady Lay".

And I knew that she will always be the best thing I have ever seen. I slipped into the half awake/half dream state and thought nothing coherent, except that I loved her.

The Motorbike Diaries

The owner of the hostel shrieked as I skidded out of control across the narrow alleyway, barely avoiding a telephone pole. A group of English girls slightly older than me looked up from their Tiger beers and shouted something typically dense and British, the only intelligible part of which was "Oy!" Finally by some stroke of luck I remembered to release my grip on the handlebars, killing the motorbike's engine. I was inches away from the wall of a neighboring cafe. I took off the helmet, handed it to the lady with shaking hands, and informed her that her motorbike is very nice but no thanks, I will be walking to the dive shop.

Phu Quoc is not a huge island, but neither is it small. Unless you are staying in one of the resorts in the heart of Duong Dong (the rough equivalent of a city center, I suppose), it takes quite a while to walk anywhere with people. Which can be a problem, if you are depending on some of those people to take you scuba diving.

After twenty minutes of walking, I realized that I did not want to spend half my time on Phu Quoc as a pedestrian shuffling between the hostel and the harbor. This conclusion was simple; however, there were some factors that complicated the equation. First, my disdain for bicycles. I just don't like riding them. Not much to it. Second, and more complex, is the mixture of infatuation and abject terror I have for motorized two-wheeled transportation. 

I had never driven a motorcycle. Or a motorbike. Or a scooter, dirtbike, etc. I love the idea of going fast, and I love the idea of feeling the wind in my hair and face and being fully open and exposed to the area through which I'm traveling. I love these concepts. What I don't love, however, is the possibility of falling off and needing skin grafts from my ass to reconstruct my scalp. So I've never tried it before.

There weren't many options on Phu Quoc, though. Car taxis were extremely rare and expensive. Motorbike drivers were plentiful, but prone to charging outrageous fares and delivering you to the wrong destination. Bicycles were....lame, I guess. Wasn't going that route. So I had to bite the bullet and try a motorbike.

I can't explain the feeling I had when I kicked the bike into 4th gear and hit 60 km/h down the windy road along Long Beach. I know it's not that fast, really, but I felt as if no human being had ever traveled so effortlessly and freely. Just wind, all around me, just air moving back and forth, under my shirt, through my hair, between my toes, rattling around in my ears...simply air. 

I came to the end of the paved road, where the smooth asphalt abruptly changed to rough red rocks. The handlebars shook as I swerved from side to side; I decelerated quickly and came to a stop. I wasn't ready for this. Rough terrain ahead. Time to turn back; it's been a good run, but no need to get reckless. And then I imagined she was sitting behind me, not saying a word, not trying to change my mind, just sitting fully present in the moment. And suddenly I was full of joy again, no fear or doubt. Charged with excitement, grateful and amazed by the road ahead of me, ready to do anything. I whooped (yes, literally "whooped"), buckled the helmet, and tore off again.

Whipping past coconut trees, ramshackle buildings with corrugated tin siding and bright blue tarps as roofs, a herd of cattle mooing with annoyance as I hummed past, the acrid smell and taste of smoke rising up from roadside fires, the grit of fine red dust kicked up by passing trucks in my eyes and teeth, the warm touch of the sun on my back and shoulders, the relentlessly subtle steady shaking of the motorbike's engine shimmying up my arms and spine, the sudden thump-a-whump of rocks and holes in the road, the easy feeling of complete freedom in the moment. I'm glad she was there. I'm glad I didn't turn back.

One night, I rode my motorbike to the north of the island. This time, the obstacles were man-made: dozens of other motorbikes, recklessly speeding buses, oblivious tourists reading maps in the middle of the road, shop owners spraying fish guts and refuse off their patios with high-pressure hoses. At times I felt tense, and wanted to turn back. Have a coconut shake on the beach, relax, sit and be still. But I thought there might be something beautiful out of that road that I could share with her, so I rode on. Gritting my teeth each time I rode blind through a giant dust cloud, always thankful that I emerged on the other side.

When the sky was black and air turned cool, I stopped at a small cluster of homes and shops by the side of the road. People were walking all around, carrying bags of rice and fruit and small tools, bartering under the thatched roof market, drinking coffee in small plastic chairs outside the cafes. I was the only Westerner in the town. I spotted an old man pushing a food cart by the corner, and I walked over to him. He was selling something that like looked like vegetables on a stick. I pointed to them. He grinned; he was missing several teeth. He pulled out a battered old box from the bottom of the cart and pulled out two crinkled bills. 3,000 Vietnamese dong. I paid him and took the food - I don't know if they were vegetables or not, but they tasted good. Warm, substantial, spicy. 

As I sat on the seat of my motorbike, slowly eating the food cart offering, a parade of people passed by. They all turned to look as they passed by, but I don't remember anyone seeming suspicious or annoyed. We smiled at each other, and I really loved each person I saw. I really did - I loved them. My love for her was flowing into love for every person I saw, without losing any of its own beauty or strength. At first I thought of taking a picture of the village - something to remember it by, you know, because it was so special. Then I thought it would cheapen the moment - cheapen whatever connection I was having to this place and these people. It felt sacred, holy, like an unintentional pilgrimage to a shrine I never knew existed.

Lost in these thoughts for a moment, I didn't realize there was a man staring at me. He was only a few feet away. He had no shirt, only khaki shorts and rubber sandals. He had short gray hair, a generous paunch, and thin arms. His entire face looked kind, like you might see on a statue of Hotei. Kind eyes, kind mouth, kind wrinkles. He spoke to me in Vietnamese, and I felt incredibly embarrassed that I couldn't respond. He pantomimed sleeping - "Where are you staying?" I pointed sadly down the hill - just a tourist, wandering into the primitive boondocks for a "authentic" adventure. Exposed and outed. I'll be leaving now.

He laughed and said something again. Don't go yet. I smiled back at him, wishing I could tell him that I am a real person too, that we might have things to talk about, that I would like to hear his stories about life and love and all the sadness that goes along with them. I fidgeted on the seat of the motorbike, and he pulled out his wallet. In the pale golden glow of the streetlight I could see a blue Filipino banknote - five pisos, crumpled and stained by the sweat of many hands and miles. He handed it to me. A token of otherness, presented to the other. I don't know what he meant by it, but he looked happy as he did it. 

I grabbed my own wallet and pulled out a 1,000 Korean won bill. I handed it to the man; he had obviously never seen Korean money before because he promptly called over at least a dozen people to look at it. There were little kids running through the crowd, alternately staring at me and light-heartedly threatening each other. One little girl, chubby and impossibly cute, stopped right in front of me and asked, in perfect English, "Hi, where are you from? What's your name?"

My heart went out to this little girl. So fearless, so curious, so alive. I spoke to her for a few minutes, as her friends stood behind her and looked mildly amazed that she knew so much English. The old shirtless man was still standing less than a meter away, still smiling, still holding the Korean won in his hand. Some of the kids were looking at the money in his hand, unable to hide their interest but too shy to ask questions about it. I opened my wallet and saw I had no more Korean money - only American dollars and Vietnamese dong. So I took all the dollar bills and handed them to the kids. I actually spent more money in that moment than I did to rent the motorbike, fill it with gas, and buy food for three days. I could not have been happier with the decision as I started up the motorbike and pulled out of the village, waving goodbye to the people in the shops and cafes.

A few kilometers down the road, surrounded by the thick cool jungle and blanketed by the kind of darkness that only comes in places where people have never built lights, I hopped off the motorbike and tilted my head toward the sky. Thousands of stars, bright bright bright, just shining there. No significance to them that I could see, beyond their beauty. And that was enough. It was enough that they be beautiful and bright in that moment. Nothing more was needed from them. 

"I love you."