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Archive: June 2008

You Can’t Go Home Again + Jun 30, 2008 +
Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island + Jun 26, 2008 +
In Love With a View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty and Living Well + Jun 07, 2008 +

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In Love With a View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty and Living Well

+ June 7, 2008 + + +

Tim Patterson, editor of MatadorTrips.com, recently published an article entitled How To Travel The World For Free (Seriously). There are some good tips in the article, even for the seasoned travel vet.

But what's far more fascinating is the response from commenters many of whom tore into Patterson, calling him everything from a "rich, privileged, arrogant hipster" to a "dirty hippie." + +Here's a random sampling of some comments on Patterson's post:

+
there are three possible answers for how he can do this and not have to worry about his obligations. 1). He's a jobless loser that contributes nothing to society... 2). He's a rich, privileged, arrogant hipster who, while preaching a lifestyle of no consumerism and organic foods, really travels around in a BMW, listening to his iPod, blogging on his Macbook Air, contributes nothing to society... 3). He's a 14 year old idealist who's parents were hippies, but now work for Haliburton.
+

That's the sort of cynicism that just depresses me. Why are you so convinced that everyone else is a selfish privileged asshole? At long last, have you no sense of decency sir?

+
Trusting people you don't know while you sleep in their house is a good way to end up half-naked, raped, dead and in a ditch.
+

Mom? Is that you?

+
In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get... and, eventually, you reach places where the word 'culture' is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger.
+

My personal favorite though is the commenter who cites the words of a Pulp Fiction character as an example of how to live. Wonderful, murderous assassins are who you look up to?

Why Vagabonds Make People Mad

So why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult and hey, you can even go right now.

Part of the negative reaction comes from the widely-held belief that travelers are a privileged lot -- privileged because, unlike you and I, they can just drop their lives and leave. People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't patronizing and yes, elitist -- how dare you tell me what I can and can't do?

But when I dig a bit deeper into this sort of thinking, I generally find that by elitist, most people really mean enviably rich.

It may be splitting hairs, but I find that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, Americans actually admire elitists. To paraphrase and twist John Stewart a bit, we want advice from elitists. We don't want advice from people that believe everyone's a murderer.

But we also don't want rich people who've never struggled telling us that it isn't hard to drop everything we're struggling with and head out into the world.

The irony of course is that, in this case, the hostile reaction comes in response to an article that has ten tips on traveling cheaply -- in other words, it's trying to show you that you don't need money to travel.

That said, you'll never find me denying that I am very, very lucky and have been handed an incredible amount of privilege in my life, especially relative to the rest of the world.

But 90 percent of America is in the same boat. Troops do not storm our houses, bombs do not fall on our cities, Malaria, Dengue Fever, schistosoma and other killer diseases are unknown here (though that may change).

We are all privileged. For one American to call another privileged is a pot-kettle-black debate.

The privileged part is just a cover for a much deeper and more personal issue in our lives.

So why do we attack the author as an elitist? It's a psychological defense mechanism.

Stop and consider for a moment what Patterson is really saying: it's not hard to drop your life and travel.

Living Well

The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your "life"? The unspoken assumption in that statement that ticks people off is the implication that everything you're doing is trivial -- that the life you're leading is so meaningless that it can be abandoned without a second thought.

That's why the attacks on Patterson are so personal and so vehement, because Patterson is, consciously or not, attacking people's most cherished belief, that our lives mean something and are important.

Obviously no one wants to think otherwise.

But I've done it -- dropped everything and left -- and, for me, as much as I am loath to admit it, it was true. Everything I thought I needed to be doing turned out to be totally unnecessary and yes, meaningless.

In fact I spent the first month of my trip wrestling with that. I was caught between feeling like I was finally doing something that did matter and beating myself up about having been suckered into the previous life, now rendered meaningless.

In other words I understand why some people reacted to Patterson's piece the way they did.

The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your "life"?

American culture tries to convince us that if you do the right things, you life is very valuable. There are some long standing, deeply-ingrained, fundamental axioms that lead us to believe that relaxation, travel and not working are contemptible. Instead, we're told, you need to work hard to "get ahead."

The notion that the importance of your life is dependent on your ability to "make something of yourself" is pretty well ingrained. Advocating otherwise is going to bring you some hostile reactions (as Patterson recently discovered).

I'm not saying I'm immune. If you learn anything traveling, it's that you can never escape your own culture. That's why I spent most of a week in Goa, India feeling guilty. Guilty that I was enjoying my life rather than working for some future enjoyment. Guilty that I had apparently been wasting my life for some years prior to that moment. Guilty that I was able to finally escape that when so many people never do. Guilty for all sorts of contradictory things.

And scared. Scared that when I got back, jobless and penniless I would end up homeless and starving to death. Scared that I might not make it back (India's bus system will do that to you).

This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about how I came to peace with it all. But the truth is that never exactly happened. In India I ended up meeting an Englishman who had a seemingly endless supply of excellent scotch and I quickly forgot about my guilt and fear. But it comes back.

I know, that's not the answer you were looking for. Bear with me.

Making Something

Let's go back to the notion of making something of yourself. I do believe in "making something of myself." And I am aware that that's a uniquely American idea, or at least western, since we seem to have somewhat successfully exported the idea to Europe as well.

What's interesting is how we define the key variable in that sentence -- what does it mean to make something of yourself?

In defending his co-writer, fellow Matador author Josh Kearns offers all sorts of ways that travel can lead to a more meaningful definition of who you are. He cites Alan Watts, Lao Tzu and some other very wise men to point out that in fact traveling can be exactly what you need to "make something of yourself."

But in many ways that simply begs the question -- if you're open to Alan Watts and Lao Tzu, you probably didn't disagree with Patterson's original argument. If you think Alan Watts was a communist and Lao Tzu comes with Kung Pao chicken, Kearns' argument isn't going to say anything to you.

How you answer that question -- what does it mean to "make something of yourself" -- greatly affects how you view the world around you and will determine how you react to a stance like Patterson's.

It's pretty easy to see how the more vitriolic commenters answer the question, all you need to do is reverse engineer the thought process. For instance, it's not hard to imagine that the person quoted above, who says staying with strangers is dangerous, lacks a strong sense of faith in humanity.

I have no idea why, but I'll make a guess -- one way to make something of yourself is to make nothing of everyone else.

If you see everyone around you as a murderous bunch of rapists and psychopaths, you get to see yourself and your family and friends as shining examples of humanity. You've made something of yourself -- You're better than the murderous bastards out there -- without doing anything at all. You're most likely going to lead a miserable existence, but it is one way to answer the question.

For others the answer to the "make something of yourself" question is tied up in western technological superiority. Like the man who says that the further you go "the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get."

In order to think that you need to believe that your society is superior to everyone else's because we have all the things we value and they have none of the things we value -- never mind what they value, that's irrelevant. So you can say you've made something of yourself because you're part of (by your own definition) a superior society.

But here's what I think Kearns and Patterson are trying to say -- these might not be the best ways to "make something of yourself." In fact you might need to get completely outside yourself in order to make something.

If your definition of living well is making something of yourself and your primary means of making something of yourself is making less of everyone else then it's not surprising that anyone who suggests temporarily abandoning your life and your society is going to make you confused, angry, fearful and perhaps guilty.

The View From Here

Which brings me back to my own experiences in Goa -- fear, guilt, anger and confusion.

No, I never have entirely come to terms with the guilt or the confusion, but the fear and anger did go away. I quickly realized that there was no point being angry with myself for failing to leave my life sooner, I took comfort in the fact that at least I left eventually.

The guilt is still there. Much as I enjoy sitting in hammock in Nicaragua I spend a good bit of my time sitting there thinking about how I should be doing something with my life -- writing a novel, building a website, at the very least writing something about my travels.

You name it, I've felt guilty about not doing it.

But this last trip I started thinking about something else more troubling -- have I turned back into someone who thinks their life is important? Have I forgotten that feeling of total freedom that comes from abandoing your "life," that relief of realizing that all the things I agonize over in my "real" life, are actually quite meaningless?

See unlike the commenters who don't buy the vagabond argument, I suffer from a different American cliche.

For me, America ingrained its devil-may-care adventure motif far more than its make-something-of-yourself cliche. From Lewis and Clark to Jack Kerouac, there's a strong cultural legacy of lighting out for the territories.

Now I'm in an entirely different situation than I was when I left for my last trip.

I'll be married later this month. The common wisdom is that traveling with a family is somehow impossible, in America there's a myth that once you're married and have kids you have to settle down and that butts up against the myth I've been buying into all this time -- Kerouac and the rest.

I still don't know if it's my idea or just me replicating that devil-may-care cultural meme, but I reject the idea of settling down and I've met enough traveling families to know I won't be the first to reject it.

It may be more difficult to travel with a family, I'll have to get back to you on that, and fear not, I will get back to you because I will do it.

But the thing that strikes me is that, if I hadn't already set out, rejected my own life and gone through everything that I went through, adding a family to the equation might well make the whole idea seeming completely unfathomable.

And that's something I think many of these self-styled vagabond travel writers leave out of their "anyone can do it" travel pieces.

Anyone can do it, but it takes a hell of a lot more courage and effort for some than for others. I have no doubt that Patterson and Kearns are both aware of that and I understand that including the nuances just isn't something online journalism generally allows for, but it's a shame because it ends up alienating the people who could most benefit from some encouraging.

So while I agree with both authors, I think the "just do it" incantations are every bit as hollow as a Nike ad -- even when they're true.

And the glibness of most travel writing, particularly those of the so-called vagabond stripe ends up having the opposite effect that the proponents intend (Rolf Potts is a notable exception).

I'm not going to tell you that it's easy to drop your life and take off to see the world. +However, I will say that it isn't as hard as you think. Your job isn't as valuable as you think, there's probably someone who'd love to rent your house and your kids will thank you when they're older (mom, dad, thanks).

I'm also not going to say that I don't buy the idea that you should strive to "make something of yourself," but the important thing about the "making" is that you define what that means. For some it might mean sticking to one job and providing for a family. For others it might mean dragging your family around the world on a grand adventure. Both answers are valid -- just make sure that it's you, not your culture, making the decision. And make sure that you realize both really are valid possibilities -- the only limitation to your life is your own imagination.

For me, making something of yourself is a never-ending process and one of the key elements is exploring all the different ways people around the world answer that fundamental question -- what does living well mean?

[VGB image from Rolf Potts, cartoon from the ever hilarious xkcd]

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41a5db8 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.html @@ -0,0 +1,442 @@ + + + + + In Love With A View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty And Living Well - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

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In Love With a View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty and Living Well

+ +

Athens, Georgia, U.S.

+ – Map +

+ June 7, 2008 + +

Tim Patterson, editor of MatadorTrips.com, recently published an article entitled How To Travel The World For Free (Seriously).

What’s far more fascinating than the functional tips though is the response from commenters many of whom tore into Patterson, calling him nearly every name across the spectrum from “rich, privileged, arrogant hipster” to “dirty hippie.” Make up your mind people.

Here’s a random sampling of some comments on Patterson’s post:

+
there are three possible answers for how he can do this and not have to worry about his obligations. 1). He’s a jobless loser that contributes nothing to society… 2). He’s a rich, privileged, arrogant hipster who, while preaching a lifestyle of no consumerism and organic foods, really travels around in a BMW, listening to his iPod, blogging on his Macbook Air, contributes nothing to society… 3). He’s a 14 year old idealist who’s parents were hippies, but now work for Haliburton.
+

The number of unexamined assumptions here is staggering — does having a job contribute to society? How? Is contributing to society a things you should do? Why? And so on — but it’s really the cynicism that depresses me. Why are we so quick to assume the worst in everyone? Oh right, the internet.

This one is probably my favorite:

+
Trusting people you don’t know while you sleep in their house is a good way to end up half-naked, raped, dead and in a ditch.
+

Mom? Is that you? Seriously though, this one is uniquely American. Only Americans live in fear of everyone. I’ve spent years trying to figure out where this belief comes from and I still don’t have an answer. My best guess is that the mediocrity of our lives is somehow more tolerable if we cling to the belief that everywhere and everyone else is much worse off.

Even good old fashioned western colonial pretentiousness finds its way into the comments, which Matador should really just turn off because there’s nay a voice of intelligence among its readership:

+
In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get… And, eventually, you reach places where the word ‘culture’ is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger.
+

My personal favorite though is the commenter who cites the words of a Pulp Fiction character as an example of how to live. Wonderful, murderous assassins are who you look up to? Oh right, ‘merica.

Why Vagabonds Have Always Made People Mad

So why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept — that traveling doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, isn’t all that difficult, and hey, you can even go right now?

The first negative reaction comes from the widely-held belief that travelers are a privileged lot — privileged because, unlike you and I, they can just drop their lives and leave. Americans love to make a great show of hating privilege¹, which explains the first comment I highlighted. The great irony is that this reaction is in response to an article that has ten tips on traveling cheaply. It’s trying to show you that you don’t need money to travel, but that gets to the second reason people hate vagabonds.

Consider for a moment what Patterson is really saying: your life isn’t so important. Actually it’s so unimportant that you can just chuck it and travel.

Americans especially tend to have a lot of their personal identity and sense of self-worth tightly intertwined with their jobs, the status symbols they’ve acquired and so on, in other words, their life.

If it’s actually quite simple to toss all that aside and do something else then that’s not so subtly saying that all that stuff, our lives, have no value. Tell people that and they’re going to hate you, no matter what their culture.

Living Well

The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas — just how important is your “life”?

What if the life you’re leading is so meaningless that it can be abandoned without a second thought? That doesn’t make anyone feel good and that’s why the attacks on Patterson are so personal and so vehement, because Patterson is, consciously or not, attacking people’s most cherished belief: that our lives mean something and are important. No one wants to think otherwise.

But I’ve done it — dropped everything and left — and, for me, as much as I am loath to admit it, it was true.

Everything I thought I needed to be doing turned out to be totally unnecessary and yes, meaningless. I spent the first month of my first stint of long term travel wrestling with that. I was caught between feeling like I was finally doing something that did matter and beating myself up about having been suckered into the previous life, now rendered meaningless.

I understand why some people reacted to Patterson’s piece the way they did.

American culture tries to convince us that if you do the right things, you life is very valuable. There are some long standing, deeply-ingrained beliefs that lead us to believe that relaxation, travel and not working are contemptible. Instead, we’re told, you need to work hard to “get ahead.”

The notion that the importance of your life is dependent on your ability to “make something of yourself” is pretty well ingrained in us.

I’m not immune to this notion. If you learn anything traveling, it’s that you can never escape your own cultural assumptions, not even when you realize them for that they are — culturally-bound assumptions. That’s why I spent most of a week in India feeling guilty. Guilty that I was enjoying my life rather than working for some future enjoyment. Guilty that I had apparently been wasting my life for some years prior to that moment. Guilty that I was able to finally escape that when so many people never do. Guilty for all sorts of contradictory things.

And scared. Scared that when I got back, jobless and penniless I would end up homeless and starving to death. Scared that I might not make it back at all (India’s bus system will do that to you).

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you about how I came to peace with it all. But the truth is that never exactly happened. Fear goes away, you learn the useful things it has to teach, you set aside the less useful parts. Or at least you learn to live with it. Or you don’t and you go home. That part is simple.

Finding meaning in your life to replace the meaning you lose when you step outside your culture and discover that “your” beliefs are not yours at all, just constructs you absorbed without thinking about is much harder because there is no transcendental culture. To replace the meaning you lose without your culture you can either stubbornly cling to your culture by belittling all the rest or you can enter the realms traditionally covered by religion, that is, the search for truth and meaning that transcend human culture.

I know, that’s not the answer you were looking for.

Making Something

The easiest thing to do is what the commenters above did — prop up your own culture by ridiculing other cultures. Like the man who says that the further you go “the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get.”

In order to think that you need to believe that your society is superior to the rest because you have all the things you value and they have none of the things you value and never mind what they value, that’s irrelevant.

If you see everyone around you as a murderous bunch of backward rapists and psychopaths, you get to see yourself and your family and friends as shining examples of humanity.

To go back to that great Americanism, you’ve made something of yourself.

You’re better than the murderous bastards out there. Best of all you didn’t actually have to do anything. You’re most likely going to lead a miserable existence, but it is one way to answer the questions travel poses.

The View From Here

My last trip to Nicaragua got me wondering if I have turned back into someone who thinks their life is important. Have I forgotten that feeling of total freedom that comes from abandoning your “life,” that relief of realizing that all the things I agonize over in my “real” life, are actually quite meaningless?

See, unlike the commenters who don’t buy the vagabond argument, I suffer from a different American cliche.

For me, America ingrained its devil-may-care adventure motif far more than its make-something-of-yourself cliche. From Lewis and Clark to Huck Finn to Jack Kerouac, there’s a strong cultural legacy of lighting out for the territories at Twain put it.

Now I’m in an entirely different situation than I was when I left for my last trip. I’ll be married later this month, my wife and I would like to have a family. The common wisdom is that traveling with a family is somehow impossible, in America there’s a myth that once you’re married and have kids you have to settle down and that butts up against the myth I’ve been buying into all this time.

I still don’t know if it’s my idea or just me replicating that devil-may-care cultural meme, but I reject the idea of settling down and I’ve met enough traveling families to know I won’t be the first to reject it. It may be more difficult to travel with a family, I’ll have to get back to you on that, and fear not, I will get back to you because I will do it.

But the thing that strikes me is that, if I hadn’t already set out, rejected my own life and gone through everything that I went through, adding a family to the equation might well make the whole idea seeming completely unfathomable.

And that’s something I think many of these self-styled vagabond travel writers leave out of their “anyone can do it” travel pieces.

Anyone can do it, but it takes a hell of a lot more courage and effort for some than for others. I have no doubt that most writers are both aware of that and I understand that including the nuances just isn’t something online journalism generally allows for, but it’s a shame because it ends up alienating the people who could most benefit from some encouraging rather than banal “I did it you can too” articles. While I agree with the notion that any American can travel, I think the “just do it” incantations are every bit as hollow as a Nike ad — even when they’re true.

I’m not going to tell you that it’s easy to drop your life and take off to see the world. However, I will say that it isn’t as hard as you think. Your job isn’t as valuable as you think, there’s probably someone who’d love to rent your house and your kids will thank you when they’re older.

I’m also not going to say that I don’t buy the idea that you should strive to “make something of yourself,” but the important thing about the “making” is that you define what that means.

For some it might mean sticking to one job and providing for a family. For others it might mean dragging your family around the world on a grand adventure. Both answers are valid — just make sure that it’s you, not your culture, making the decision. And make sure that you realize both really are valid possibilities — the only limitation to your life is your own imagination.

+
That said, you’ll never find me denying that I am very, very lucky and have been handed an incredible amount of privilege in my life, especially relative to the rest of the world. But 90 percent of America is in the same boat. Troops do not storm our houses, bombs do not fall on our cities, Malaria, Dengue Fever, schistosoma and other killer diseases are unknown here. We are all privileged. For one American to call another privileged is a pot-kettle-black debate. ↩
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Fauna and Flora

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Birds
- American Robin
- Blue Jay
- Brown-headed Cowbird
- Brown Thrasher
- Canada Goose
- Carolina Chickadee
- Chipping Sparrow
- Downy Woodpecker
- Eastern Bluebird
- Eastern Towhee
- Gray Catbird
- Great Blue Heron
- Hooded Warbler
- Northern Cardinal
- Northern Mockingbird
- Red-bellied Woodpecker
- Summer Tanager
- Tufted Titmouse
- Wood Duck
- Yellow-rumped Warbler
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Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

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+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9206ae0 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we.txt @@ -0,0 +1,106 @@ +In Love With a View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty and Living Well +============================================================= + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Saturday, 07 June 2008 + +Tim Patterson, editor of MatadorTrips.com, recently published an article entitled [How To Travel The World For Free (Seriously)](https://matadornetwork.com/notebook/how-to-travel-for-free/). + +What's far more fascinating than the functional tips though is the response from commenters many of whom tore into Patterson, calling him nearly every name across the spectrum from "rich, privileged, arrogant hipster" to "dirty hippie." Make up your mind people. + +Here's a random sampling of some comments on Patterson's post: + +>there are three possible answers for how he can do this and not have to worry about his obligations. 1). He's a jobless loser that contributes nothing to society... 2). He's a rich, privileged, arrogant hipster who, while preaching a lifestyle of no consumerism and organic foods, really travels around in a BMW, listening to his iPod, blogging on his Macbook Air, contributes nothing to society... 3). He's a 14 year old idealist who's parents were hippies, but now work for Haliburton. + +The number of unexamined assumptions here is staggering -- does having a job contribute to society? How? Is contributing to society a things you should do? Why? And so on -- but it's really the cynicism that depresses me. Why are we so quick to assume the worst in everyone? Oh right, the internet. + +This one is probably my favorite: + +>Trusting people you don't know while you sleep in their house is a good way to end up half-naked, raped, dead and in a ditch. + +Mom? Is that you? Seriously though, this one is uniquely American. Only Americans live in fear of everyone. I've spent years trying to figure out where this belief comes from and I still don't have an answer. My best guess is that the mediocrity of our lives is somehow more tolerable if we cling to the belief that everywhere and everyone else is much worse off. + +Even good old fashioned western colonial pretentiousness finds its way into the comments, which Matador should really just turn off because there's nay a voice of intelligence among its readership: + +>In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get... And, eventually, you reach places where the word 'culture' is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger. + +My personal favorite though is the commenter who cites the words of a Pulp Fiction character as an example of how to live. Wonderful, murderous assassins are who you look up to? Oh right, 'merica. + +###Why Vagabonds Have Always Made People Mad + +So why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult, and hey, you can even go right now? + +The first negative reaction comes from the widely-held belief that travelers are a privileged lot -- privileged because, unlike you and I, they can just drop their lives and leave. Americans love to make a great show of hating privilege[^1], which explains the first comment I highlighted. The great irony is that this reaction is in response to an article that has ten tips on traveling cheaply. It's trying to show you that you don't need money to travel, but that gets to the second reason people hate vagabonds. + +Consider for a moment what Patterson is really saying: your life isn't so important. Actually it's so *un*important that you can just chuck it and travel. + +Americans especially tend to have a lot of their personal identity and sense of self-worth tightly intertwined with their jobs, the status symbols they've acquired and so on, in other words, their life. + +If it's actually quite simple to toss all that aside and do something else then that's not so subtly saying that all that stuff, our lives, have no value. Tell people that and they're going to hate you, no matter what their culture. + +###Living Well + +The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your "life"? + +What if the life you're leading is so meaningless that it can be abandoned without a second thought? That doesn't make anyone feel good and that's why the attacks on Patterson are so personal and so vehement, because Patterson is, consciously or not, attacking people's most cherished belief: that our lives mean something and are important. No one wants to think otherwise. + +But I've done it -- dropped everything and left -- and, for me, as much as I am loath to admit it, it was true. + +Everything I thought I needed to be doing turned out to be totally unnecessary and yes, meaningless. I spent the first month of my first stint of long term travel wrestling with that. I was caught between feeling like I was finally doing something that _did_ matter and beating myself up about having been suckered into the previous life, now rendered meaningless. + +I understand why some people reacted to Patterson's piece the way they did. + +American culture tries to convince us that if you do the right things, you life is very valuable. There are some long standing, deeply-ingrained beliefs that lead us to believe that relaxation, travel and not working are contemptible. Instead, we're told, you need to work hard to "get ahead." + +The notion that the importance of your life is dependent on your ability to "make something of yourself" is pretty well ingrained in us. + +I'm not immune to this notion. If you learn anything traveling, it's that you can never escape your own cultural assumptions, not even when you realize them for that they are -- culturally-bound assumptions. That's why I spent most of a week in India feeling guilty. Guilty that I was enjoying my life rather than working for some future enjoyment. Guilty that I had apparently been wasting my life for some years prior to that moment. Guilty that I was able to finally escape that when so many people never do. Guilty for all sorts of contradictory things. + +And scared. Scared that when I got back, jobless and penniless I would end up homeless and starving to death. Scared that I might not make it back at all (India's bus system will do that to you). + +This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about how I came to peace with it all. But the truth is that never exactly happened. Fear goes away, you learn the useful things it has to teach, you set aside the less useful parts. Or at least you learn to live with it. Or you don't and you go home. That part is simple. + +Finding meaning in your life to replace the meaning you lose when you step outside your culture and discover that "your" beliefs are not yours at all, just constructs you absorbed without thinking about is much harder because there is no transcendental culture. To replace the meaning you lose without your culture you can either stubbornly cling to your culture by belittling all the rest or you can enter the realms traditionally covered by religion, that is, the search for truth and meaning that transcend human culture. + +I know, that's not the answer you were looking for. + +###Making Something + +The easiest thing to do is what the commenters above did -- prop up your own culture by ridiculing other cultures. Like the man who says that the further you go "the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get." + +In order to think that you need to believe that your society is superior to the rest because you have all the things you value and they have none of the things you value and never mind what they value, that's irrelevant. + +If you see everyone around you as a murderous bunch of backward rapists and psychopaths, you get to see yourself and your family and friends as shining examples of humanity. + +To go back to that great Americanism, you've made something of yourself. + +You're better than the murderous bastards out there. Best of all you didn't actually have to do anything. You're most likely going to lead a miserable existence, but it is one way to answer the questions travel poses. + +###The View From Here + +My last trip to Nicaragua got me wondering if I have turned back into someone who thinks their life is important. Have I forgotten that feeling of total freedom that comes from abandoning your "life," that relief of realizing that all the things I agonize over in my "real" life, are actually quite meaningless? + +See, unlike the commenters who don't buy the vagabond argument, I suffer from a different American cliche. + +For me, America ingrained its devil-may-care adventure motif far more than its make-something-of-yourself cliche. From Lewis and Clark to Huck Finn to Jack Kerouac, there's a strong cultural legacy of lighting out for the territories at Twain put it. + +Now I'm in an entirely different situation than I was when I left for my last trip. I'll be married later this month, my wife and I would like to have a family. The common wisdom is that traveling with a family is somehow impossible, in America there's a myth that once you're married and have kids you have to settle down and that butts up against the myth I've been buying into all this time. + +I still don't know if it's my idea or just me replicating that devil-may-care cultural meme, but I reject the idea of settling down and I've met enough traveling families to know I won't be the first to reject it. It may be more difficult to travel with a family, I'll have to get back to you on that, and fear not, I will get back to you because I will do it. + +But the thing that strikes me is that, if I hadn't already set out, rejected my own life and gone through everything that I went through, adding a family to the equation might well make the whole idea seeming completely unfathomable. + +And that's something I think many of these self-styled vagabond travel writers leave out of their "anyone can do it" travel pieces. + +Anyone _can_ do it, but it takes a hell of a lot more courage and effort for some than for others. I have no doubt that most writers are both aware of that and I understand that including the nuances just isn't something online journalism generally allows for, but it's a shame because it ends up alienating the people who could most benefit from some encouraging rather than banal "I did it you can too" articles. While I agree with the notion that any American can travel, I think the "just do it" incantations are every bit as hollow as a Nike ad -- even when they're true. + +I'm not going to tell you that it's easy to drop your life and take off to see the world. However, I will say that it isn't as hard as you think. Your job isn't as valuable as you think, there's probably someone who'd love to rent your house and your kids will thank you when they're older. + +I'm also not going to say that I don't buy the idea that you should strive to "make something of yourself," but the important thing about the "making" is that _you_ define what that means. + +For some it might mean sticking to one job and providing for a family. For others it might mean dragging your family around the world on a grand adventure. Both answers are valid -- just make sure that it's you, not your culture, making the decision. And make sure that you realize both really are valid possibilities -- the only limitation to your life is your own imagination. + +For me, making something of yourself is a never-ending process and one of the key elements is exploring all the different ways people around the world answer that fundamental question -- what does living well mean? + +[^1]: That said, you'll never find me denying that I am very, very lucky and have been handed an incredible amount of privilege in my life, especially relative to the rest of the world. But 90 percent of America is in the same boat. Troops do not storm our houses, bombs do not fall on our cities, Malaria, Dengue Fever, schistosoma and other killer diseases are unknown here. We are all privileged. For one American to call another privileged is a pot-kettle-black debate. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5bf9d88 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.amp @@ -0,0 +1,194 @@ + + + + + + +Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island

+ June 26, 2008 + + +

This is a first -- going back to somewhere I've already been. Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. However, given a rather small window of time for our honeymoon, Corrinne and I decided that the vaguely familiar would be more fun than something totally unpredictable and new.

Of course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new. Other than the Best Western, still stolidly sitting directly across from the Managua airport, coming back to Nicaragua has presented a host of new and interesting experiences.

For instance we weren't counting on the fact that the increased gas prices have severely pinched the average lobster fisherman and to protest the fact that lobster prices remain at their pre-expensive gas levels, the fisherman converged on the airstrip on Big Corn Island and proceeded to blockade the runway with trucks and their own bodies, effectively cutting off the island from the mainland for four days. + +All inbound flights were forced to stop in Bluefields, leaving stranded travelers milling around a town with very little to offer. Those looking to go the other way, back to Managua, were in even worse shape -- no incoming planes meant no outgoing ones either.

Those desperate to make connecting flights onward from Managua were forced to charter fishing boats for up to $1200 and suffer through what had to be a very punishing ride across rough seas all the way back to Bluefields where they might be able to catch a (now very crowded) flight back to Managua.

Fortunately the same sort of blind luck that has gotten me this far prevailed and the fishermen gave up the strike the morning we were set to leave.

Stranded on Big Corn

Unfortunately, the drivers of the panga boat that runs between Big Corn and Little Corn didn't feel like there was enough business to bother with the evening trip the day we arrived. So Corrinne and I, along with a dozen or so fellow travelers, were stranded on Big Corn that night.

Being stranded on an island in the Gulf of Mexico probably doesn't sound all that bad, but if the island happens to be Big Corn, well there just isn't much worth seeing or doing on Big Corn. And everything nice on Big Corn is at the south end, but our ferry was set to leave the next morning from the north end, so heading out for an explore seemed like a good way to miss the morning boat and possibly spend yet another day waiting.

We holed up in a guesthouse just off the public shipping dock and spent the the afternoon and evening drinking and talking to the other people stuck in the same situation. Most of the local restaurants were closed, though we did manage to find a decent plate of shrimp and of course, plenty of Victoria to go around.

And I made a hilarious discovery that proved a revelation to even the two dive masters who lived on Little Corn -- topless lighters. The store across the street from the Big Corn ferry sells the sort of cigarette lighters that have built-in flashlights, but rather than a simple LED flashlight, the manufacturer decided to go to the next logical level and packed in an image that looks to have been pirated from 1970s-era Playboy pinups. The result is a spotlight of a half naked Playmate, which provided no end of amusement to our stranded group.

In fact, Big Corn would have been pretty much okay were it not for the dog somewhere in the vicinity of our guesthouse that sounded like it was being skinned alive. It wasn't, though the next morning several guests volunteered to do so, but it barked, yelped, cried and otherwise howled from around the time we went to bed until just before dawn. I actually didn't hear it much since I can sleep through just about anything, but no one else got much sleep that night.

The Wet Season

The first day on Little Corn we managed to find a bit of sun in the afternoon and somehow were already under shelter every time the rains came. Shelter is an interesting thing in the rain though, finding a roof isn't enough because the rain is almost completely horizontal thanks to a steady onshore wind, which has been increasing in force ever since we arrived.

The first night we ate dinner at Casa Iguana with the owner's brother, who is currently involved in a sun-dried fruit project that might, if all goes well, one day be on the shelves of your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's market. We sat a while afterward drinking mojitos with Camilla, an English girl we met the day before when we were all stranded on Big Corn.

Still tired from a lack of sleep during the five-day party that was our wedding and the dog from the night before, we turned in early, this time with earplugs firmly in place.

However, we somehow ended up in the cabin with no window blinds and around midnight a pretty massive storm blew in with winds that howled and horizontal rain driving straight under our porch awning and lashing against the window. But that wasn't what woke me up, it was the lightening flashes that turned night into day and somehow managed to burn through my closed eyelids that woke me up.

Lightening doesn't especially bother me, I do after all live in Georgia where it's a near daily occurrence in the summer. But as I lay there in bed watching the torrential rains and flaying palm trees in the eery white glow of distant flashes, it suddenly occurred to me that we were sleeping in metal-roofed hut pretty near the highest point on the island -- basically a lightening rod with walls.

So I lay awake thinking that being killed by lightening on your honeymoon was exactly the sort of horribly cheesy and predictable plot line that life seems to love -- up there with the super athlete contracts cancer, the day trader who suffers a heart attack on the first day of retirement and all the other things that Alanis Morrisette would say are ironic, but of course aren't. They're just strange coincidences. And I fear strange coincidences.

I lay awake for an hour or more considering safer places to be in the storm and didn't really come up with anything since just about every building on the island has a metal roof. In the end I decided that being struck by lightening in my sleep would be somewhat better than the same while you're awake so I drifted off again and woke up to windy, but sunny skies.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..89820a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.html @@ -0,0 +1,366 @@ + + + + + Returning Again &Mdash; Back On Little Corn Island - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home → + +
+ + jrnl + + +

+ + +

Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island

+ +

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua

+ – Map +

+ June 26, 2008 + +

This is a first — going back to somewhere I’ve already been. Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. However, given a rather small window of time for our honeymoon, Corrinne and I decided that the vaguely familiar would be more fun than something totally unpredictable and new.

+ +

boats, big corn island photographed by luxagraf

+ +

For instance we weren’t counting on the fact that the increased gas prices have severely pinched the average lobster fisherman and to protest the fact that lobster prices remain at their pre-expensive gas levels, the fisherman converged on the airstrip on Big Corn Island and proceeded to blockade the runway with trucks and their own bodies, effectively cutting off the island from the mainland for four days. + +All inbound flights were forced to stop in Bluefields, leaving stranded travelers milling around a town with very little to offer. Those looking to go the other way, back to Managua, were in even worse shape — no incoming planes meant no outgoing ones either.

Fortunately the same sort of blind luck that has gotten me this far prevailed and the fishermen gave up the strike the morning we were set to leave.

Stranded on Big Corn

Unfortunately, the drivers of the panga boat that runs between Big Corn and Little Corn didn’t feel like there was enough business to bother with the evening trip the day we arrived. So Corrinne and I, along with a dozen or so fellow travelers, were stranded on Big Corn that night.

+ +

harbor, big corn island photographed by luxagraf

+ +

Being stranded on an island in the Gulf of Mexico probably doesn’t sound all that bad, but if the island happens to be Big Corn, well there just isn’t much worth seeing or doing on Big Corn. And everything nice on Big Corn is at the south end, but our ferry was set to leave the next morning from the north end, so heading out for an explore seemed like a good way to miss the morning boat and possibly spend yet another day waiting.

And I made a hilarious discovery that proved a revelation to even the two dive masters who lived on Little Corn — topless lighters. The store across the street from the Big Corn ferry sells the sort of cigarette lighters that have built-in flashlights, but rather than a simple LED flashlight, the manufacturer decided to go to the next logical level and packed in an image that looks to have been pirated from 1970s-era Playboy pinups. The result is a spotlight of a half naked Playmate, which provided no end of amusement to our stranded group.

In fact, Big Corn would have been pretty much okay were it not for the dog somewhere in the vicinity of our guesthouse that sounded like it was being skinned alive. It wasn’t, though the next morning several guests volunteered to do so, but it barked, yelped, cried and otherwise howled from around the time we went to bed until just before dawn. I actually didn’t hear it much since I can sleep through just about anything, but no one else got much sleep that night.

The Wet Season

The first day on Little Corn we managed to find a bit of sun in the afternoon and somehow were already under shelter every time the rains came. Shelter is an interesting thing in the rain though, finding a roof isn’t enough because the rain is almost completely horizontal thanks to a steady onshore wind, which has been increasing in force ever since we arrived.

+ +

little corn island photographed by luxagraf

+ +

The first night we ate dinner at Casa Iguana with the owner’s brother, who is currently involved in a sun-dried fruit project that might, if all goes well, one day be on the shelves of your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s market. We sat a while afterward drinking mojitos with Camilla, an English girl we met the day before when we were all stranded on Big Corn.

Still tired from a lack of sleep during the five-day party that was our wedding and the dog from the night before, we turned in early, this time with earplugs firmly in place.

However, we somehow ended up in the cabin with no window blinds and around midnight a pretty massive storm blew in with winds that howled and horizontal rain driving straight under our porch awning and lashing against the window. But that wasn’t what woke me up, it was the lightening flashes that turned night into day and somehow managed to burn through my closed eyelids that woke me up.

Lightening doesn’t especially bother me, I do after all live in Georgia where it’s a near daily occurrence in the summer. But as I lay there in bed watching the torrential rains and flaying palm trees in the eery white glow of distant flashes, it suddenly occurred to me that we were sleeping in metal-roofed hut pretty near the highest point on the island — basically a lightening rod with walls.

So I lay awake thinking that being killed by lightening on your honeymoon was exactly the sort of horribly cheesy and predictable plot line that life seems to love — up there with the super athlete contracts cancer, the day trader who suffers a heart attack on the first day of retirement and all the other things that Alanis Morrisette would say are ironic, but of course aren’t. They’re just strange coincidences. And I fear strange coincidences.

I lay awake for an hour or more considering safer places to be in the storm and didn’t really come up with anything since just about every building on the island has a metal roof. In the end I decided that being struck by lightening in my sleep would be somewhat better than the same while you’re awake so I drifted off again and woke up to windy, but sunny skies.

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + + + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + +

+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08c3631 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/returning-again-back-little-corn-island.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island +================================================== + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Thursday, 26 June 2008 + +This is a first -- going back to somewhere I've already been. Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. However, given a rather small window of time for our honeymoon, Corrinne and I decided that the vaguely familiar would be more fun than something totally unpredictable and new. + +

+ +Of course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new. Other than the Best Western, still stolidly sitting directly across from the Managua airport, coming back to Nicaragua has presented a host of new and interesting experiences. + +For instance we weren't counting on the fact that the increased gas prices have severely pinched the average lobster fisherman and to protest the fact that lobster prices remain at their pre-expensive gas levels, the fisherman converged on the airstrip on Big Corn Island and proceeded to blockade the runway with trucks and their own bodies, effectively cutting off the island from the mainland for four days. + +All inbound flights were forced to stop in Bluefields, leaving stranded travelers milling around a town with very little to offer. Those looking to go the other way, back to Managua, were in even worse shape -- no incoming planes meant no outgoing ones either. + +Those desperate to make connecting flights onward from Managua were forced to charter fishing boats for up to $1200 and suffer through what had to be a very punishing ride across rough seas all the way back to Bluefields where they might be able to catch a (now very crowded) flight back to Managua. + +Fortunately the same sort of blind luck that has gotten me this far prevailed and the fishermen gave up the strike the morning we were set to leave. + +###Stranded on Big Corn + +Unfortunately, the drivers of the panga boat that runs between Big Corn and Little Corn didn't feel like there was enough business to bother with the evening trip the day we arrived. So Corrinne and I, along with a dozen or so fellow travelers, were stranded on Big Corn that night. + +

+ +Being stranded on an island in the Gulf of Mexico probably doesn't sound all that bad, but if the island happens to be Big Corn, well there just isn't much worth seeing or doing on Big Corn. And everything nice on Big Corn is at the south end, but our ferry was set to leave the next morning from the north end, so heading out for an explore seemed like a good way to miss the morning boat and possibly spend yet another day waiting. + +We holed up in a guesthouse just off the public shipping dock and spent the the afternoon and evening drinking and talking to the other people stuck in the same situation. Most of the local restaurants were closed, though we did manage to find a decent plate of shrimp and of course, plenty of Victoria to go around. + +And I made a hilarious discovery that proved a revelation to even the two dive masters who lived on Little Corn -- topless lighters. The store across the street from the Big Corn ferry sells the sort of cigarette lighters that have built-in flashlights, but rather than a simple LED flashlight, the manufacturer decided to go to the next logical level and packed in an image that looks to have been pirated from 1970s-era Playboy pinups. The result is a spotlight of a half naked Playmate, which provided no end of amusement to our stranded group. + +In fact, Big Corn would have been pretty much okay were it not for the dog somewhere in the vicinity of our guesthouse that sounded like it was being skinned alive. It wasn't, though the next morning several guests volunteered to do so, but it barked, yelped, cried and otherwise howled from around the time we went to bed until just before dawn. I actually didn't hear it much since I can sleep through just about anything, but no one else got much sleep that night. + +###The Wet Season + +The first day on Little Corn we managed to find a bit of sun in the afternoon and somehow were already under shelter every time the rains came. Shelter is an interesting thing in the rain though, finding a roof isn't enough because the rain is almost completely horizontal thanks to a steady onshore wind, which has been increasing in force ever since we arrived. + +

+ +The first night we ate dinner at Casa Iguana with the owner's brother, who is currently involved in a sun-dried fruit project that might, if all goes well, one day be on the shelves of your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's market. We sat a while afterward drinking mojitos with Camilla, an English girl we met the day before when we were all stranded on Big Corn. + +Still tired from a lack of sleep during the five-day party that was our wedding and the dog from the night before, we turned in early, this time with earplugs firmly in place. + +However, we somehow ended up in the cabin with no window blinds and around midnight a pretty massive storm blew in with winds that howled and horizontal rain driving straight under our porch awning and lashing against the window. But that wasn't what woke me up, it was the lightening flashes that turned night into day and somehow managed to burn through my closed eyelids that woke me up. + +Lightening doesn't especially bother me, I do after all live in Georgia where it's a near daily occurrence in the summer. But as I lay there in bed watching the torrential rains and flaying palm trees in the eery white glow of distant flashes, it suddenly occurred to me that we were sleeping in metal-roofed hut pretty near the highest point on the island -- basically a lightening rod with walls. + +So I lay awake thinking that being killed by lightening on your honeymoon was exactly the sort of horribly cheesy and predictable plot line that life seems to love -- up there with the super athlete contracts cancer, the day trader who suffers a heart attack on the first day of retirement and all the other things that Alanis Morrisette would say are ironic, but of course aren't. They're just strange coincidences. And I fear strange coincidences. + +I lay awake for an hour or more considering safer places to be in the storm and didn't really come up with anything since just about every building on the island has a metal roof. In the end I decided that being struck by lightening in my sleep would be somewhat better than the same while you're awake so I drifted off again and woke up to windy, but sunny skies. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..baa76ac --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.amp @@ -0,0 +1,202 @@ + + + + + + +You Can't Go Home Again + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

You Can’t Go Home Again

+ June 30, 2008 + + +

The wind became constant on the second day, changing from the occasional gust that would precede an hour or two of torrential rains, to a steady 20-25 knot blow as if Zephuros himself were paying a visit to the island.

Once the wind became constant, silence retreated back to wherever silence goes in a world where squalls rule. At first you just notice the clattering palm leaves and of course the near deafening roar of the the rain on the tin roofs. Both mingle with the background of surf breaking just below the bluff where our cabin sits, facing east -- to Cuba and the oncoming clouds. + +But on the second day I started to hear other sounds -- the low steady groan of a turbine, like the sound you make when blowing on the top of an empty bottle. Then there are creaking screws and rusted hooks that hold up the hammocks on my porch. And of course the hammocks themselves, finely woven Nicaragua cotton battered about in the wind.

When the rain comes it's horizontal, making awnings and porches a useless defense. The only way to stay dry is either inside or pressed against the leeward side of a building.

The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine.

This time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place.

Naturally I wasn't really expecting it to be the same. I knew the weather would have changed, I knew the people we had met would be gone, save a few and I knew that it would be a different experience.

But I wasn't entirely prepared for how different it would be.

When I first returned from Southeast Asia, I wrote that it was impossible to go back. That travel was singular and unrepeatable.

My actual words were "You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. You will want to return even after you have left. You will want things to be the same when you return. But they will not be the same."

For all the overly-dramatic certitude, that was just a theory. Being the son of a scientist I hate to spout untested hypotheses, but now we've tested it and I can definitively say that I was right -- there is no going back.

Going back must mean going again, otherwise it would imply that you, the place and everyone in it are static, fixed, immutable, and of course that simply isn't the world we live in.

The danger in going again is that we will compare the present to the past and for some reason the present rarely fares well in that comparison.

So yes, you can go back, physically, but be prepared for something entirely different -- for instance, here on Little Corn not only are the people different, but the very island has morphed and changed -- the rain comes daily and the beaches are almost non-existent.

Ali, Little Corn's self-appointed medicine man, tells me that the shifting tides pull much of the sand back out toward the reef and the considerably bigger waves breaking on the far side of the reef would seem to prove his point. Eventually, come December, the tides will shift again, bring the sand back in.

But in the mean time the island has literally shrunk. The beach where we spent most of our previous trip is now under two feet of water at high tide.

I was sitting up at the Casa Iguana restaurant area yesterday thinking about how much even places can change, not in a matter of years, but months, even days. The remarkable thing about traveling is that it's not simply a matter of moving through space, it's time as well.

In fact it might be one of life's more undisguised illustrations of the intrinsic link between space and time.

Arriving somewhere is somewhat like a game of pool slowed down.

When one pool balls strikes another there is that infinitesimal period of time where the balls actually compress, changing shape as they transfer energy.

If you were to slow time and and magnify space sufficiently, you would see the balls compress as they touched -- that minute moment of contracting and expanding, the transfer of force, the temporary mingling of color and atoms, the kaleidoscope of impact -- somewhat akin to what it's like to spend a week in one particular place.

You travel somewhere for a week, a month; you exist in that compressed space, impossible to observe from the outside, but very tangible and obvious within the kaleidoscope of the moment. Everything slows to near stop in relation to the outside world.

To an outside observer there is merely the impact, some photos on Flickr and the balls are already headed in opposite directions, vast expanses of blue-green felt suddenly between them.

From the outside it looks like mere mechanics -- people and places collide and some record of time is produced -- but from the inside the experience is very different.

As the one-time champion of the Denver pool halls, Ramstead Gordon (who was later dethroned by no less than Neal Cassady), once said "This is not a game of physics, it's a game of magic."

No two shots will ever be the same, no two or three or ten balls will ever cluster exactly the same way twice, no matter how similar they might seem from the outside.

Duplication is almost certainly impossible, why else would our culture be so obsessed with the things we can duplicate if not as some defense against the things we cannot?

So yes, as in pool, the places and experiences of travel are finite and you can never go back. But you can go again and bask in the changes because that's part of what makes it so interesting -- just don't try to fight it.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1bee378 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.html @@ -0,0 +1,383 @@ + + + + + You Can’t Go Home Again - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

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Home → + +
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You Can’t Go Home Again

+ +

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua

+ – Map +

+ June 30, 2008 + +

+ +

Once the wind became constant, silence retreated back to wherever silence goes in a world where squalls rule. At first you just notice the clattering palm leaves and of course the near deafening roar of the the rain on the tin roofs. Both mingle with the background of surf breaking just below the bluff where our cabin sits, facing east — to Cuba and the oncoming clouds. + +But on the second day I started to hear other sounds — the low steady groan of a turbine, like the sound you make when blowing on the top of an empty bottle. Then there are creaking screws and rusted hooks that hold up the hammocks on my porch. And of course the hammocks themselves, finely woven Nicaragua cotton battered about in the wind.

When the rain comes it’s horizontal, making awnings and porches a useless defense. The only way to stay dry is either inside or pressed against the leeward side of a building.

The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine.

This time it’s the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place.

Naturally I wasn’t really expecting it to be the same. I knew the weather would have changed, I knew the people we had met would be gone, save a few and I knew that it would be a different experience.

But I wasn’t entirely prepared for how different it would be.

When I first returned from Southeast Asia, I wrote that it was impossible to go back. That travel was singular and unrepeatable. My actual words were

+
You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. You will want to return even after you have left. You will want things to be the same when you return. But they will not be the same.
+

For all the overly-dramatic certitude, that was just a theory. Being the son of a scientist I hate to spout untested hypotheses, but now we’ve tested it and I can definitively say that I was right — there is no going back. Going back must mean going again, otherwise it would imply that you, the place and everyone in it are static, fixed, immutable, and of course that simply isn’t the world we live in.

The danger in going again is that we will compare the present to the past and for some reason the present rarely fares well in that comparison.

So yes, you can go back, physically, but be prepared for something entirely different — for instance, here on Little Corn not only are the people different, but the very island has morphed and changed — the rain comes daily and the beaches are almost non-existent.

+ + + +

little corn island, nicaragua photographed by luxagraf

+ + + + + +

view from a hammock, little corn island photographed by luxagraf

+ + + +

+ +

Ali, Little Corn’s self-appointed medicine man, tells me that the shifting tides pull much of the sand back out toward the reef and the considerably bigger waves breaking on the far side of the reef would seem to prove his point. Eventually, come December, the tides will shift again, bring the sand back in.

But in the mean time the island has literally shrunk. The beach where we spent most of our previous trip is now under two feet of water at high tide.

I was sitting up at the Casa Iguana restaurant area yesterday thinking about how much even places can change, not in a matter of years, but months, even days. The remarkable thing about traveling is that it’s not simply a matter of moving through space, it’s time as well.

In fact it might be one of life’s more undisguised illustrations of the intrinsic link between space and time.

Arriving somewhere is somewhat like a game of pool slowed down.

When one pool balls strikes another there is that infinitesimal period of time where the balls actually compress, changing shape as they transfer energy.

If you were to slow time and and magnify space sufficiently, you would see the balls compress as they touched — that minute moment of contracting and expanding, the transfer of force, the temporary mingling of color and atoms, the kaleidoscope of impact — somewhat akin to what it’s like to spend a week in one particular place.

+ +

To an outside observer there is merely the impact, some photos on Flickr and the balls are already headed in opposite directions, vast expanses of blue-green felt suddenly between them. From the outside it looks like mere mechanics — people and places collide and some record of time is produced — but from the inside the experience is very different.

As the one-time champion of the Denver pool halls, Ramstead Gordon (who was later dethroned by no less than Neal Cassady), once said “This is not a game of physics, it’s a game of magic.” No two shots will ever be the same, no two or three or ten balls will ever cluster exactly the same way twice, no matter how similar they might seem from the outside.

Duplication is almost certainly impossible, why else would our culture be so obsessed with the things we can duplicate if not as some defense against the things we cannot?

So yes, as in pool, the places and experiences of travel are finite and you can never go back. But you can go again and bask in the changes because that’s part of what makes it so interesting — just don’t try to fight it.

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + + + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

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+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4168c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again.txt @@ -0,0 +1,67 @@ +You Can't Go Home Again +======================= + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Monday, 30 June 2008 + +The wind became constant on the second day, changing from the occasional gust that would precede an hour or two of torrential rains, to a steady 20-25 knot blow as if Zephuros himself were paying a visit to the island. + +

+ +Once the wind became constant, silence retreated back to wherever silence goes in a world where squalls rule. At first you just notice the clattering palm leaves and of course the near deafening roar of the the rain on the tin roofs. Both mingle with the background of surf breaking just below the bluff where our cabin sits, facing east -- to Cuba and the oncoming clouds. + +But on the second day I started to hear other sounds -- the low steady groan of a turbine, like the sound you make when blowing on the top of an empty bottle. Then there are creaking screws and rusted hooks that hold up the hammocks on my porch. And of course the hammocks themselves, finely woven Nicaragua cotton battered about in the wind. + +When the rain comes it's horizontal, making awnings and porches a useless defense. The only way to stay dry is either inside or pressed against the leeward side of a building. + +The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine. + +This time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place. + +Naturally I wasn't really expecting it to be the same. I knew the weather would have changed, I knew the people we had met would be gone, save a few and I knew that it would be a different experience. + +But I wasn't entirely prepared for *how* different it would be. + +When I first returned from Southeast Asia, I wrote that it was impossible to go back. That travel was singular and unrepeatable. My actual words were + +>You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. You will want to return even after you have left. You will want things to be the same when you return. But they will not be the same. + +For all the overly-dramatic certitude, that was just a theory. Being the son of a scientist I hate to spout untested hypotheses, but now we've tested it and I can definitively say that I was right -- there is no going back. Going back must mean going again, otherwise it would imply that you, the place and everyone in it are static, fixed, immutable, and of course that simply isn't the world we live in. + +The danger in going again is that we will compare the present to the past and for some reason the present rarely fares well in that comparison. + +So yes, you can go back, physically, but be prepared for something entirely different -- for instance, here on Little Corn not only are the people different, but the very island has morphed and changed -- the rain comes daily and the beaches are almost non-existent. + +

+ +

+ +Ali, Little Corn's self-appointed medicine man, tells me that the shifting tides pull much of the sand back out toward the reef and the considerably bigger waves breaking on the far side of the reef would seem to prove his point. Eventually, come December, the tides will shift again, bring the sand back in. + +But in the mean time the island has literally shrunk. The beach where we spent most of our previous trip is now under two feet of water at high tide. + +I was sitting up at the Casa Iguana restaurant area yesterday thinking about how much even places can change, not in a matter of years, but months, even days. The remarkable thing about traveling is that it's not simply a matter of moving through space, it's time as well. + +In fact it might be one of life's more undisguised illustrations of the intrinsic link between space and time. + +Arriving somewhere is somewhat like a game of pool slowed down. + +When one pool balls strikes another there is that infinitesimal period of time where the balls actually compress, changing shape as they transfer energy. + +If you were to slow time and and magnify space sufficiently, you would see the balls compress as they touched -- that minute moment of contracting and expanding, the transfer of force, the temporary mingling of color and atoms, the kaleidoscope of impact -- somewhat akin to what it's like to spend a week in one particular place. + +You travel somewhere for a week, a month; you exist in that compressed space, impossible to observe from the outside, but very tangible and obvious within the kaleidoscope of the moment. Everything slows to near stop in relation to the outside world. + +

+ +To an outside observer there is merely the impact, some photos on Flickr and the balls are already headed in opposite directions, vast expanses of blue-green felt suddenly between them. From the outside it looks like mere mechanics -- people and places collide and some record of time is produced -- but from the inside the experience is very different. + +As the one-time champion of the Denver pool halls, Ramstead Gordon (who was later dethroned by no less than Neal Cassady), once said "This is not a game of physics, it's a game of magic." No two shots will ever be the same, no two or three or ten balls will ever cluster exactly the same way twice, no matter how similar they might seem from the outside. + +Duplication is almost certainly impossible, why else would our culture be so obsessed with the things we _can_ duplicate if not as some defense against the things we cannot? + +So yes, as in pool, the places and experiences of travel are finite and you can never go back. But you can go again and bask in the changes because that's part of what makes it so interesting -- just don't try to fight it. -- cgit v1.2.3