Hello from Houston

Tags

coronavirus, COVID-19, home, pandemic, quarantine, rule breakers, rule followers

The group of friends moved together on the pier, jostling and laughing, one boy hip-checking another, three girls giggling in a group hug … “Noooooo,” I find my brain screaming,”Separate! You can’t be that close to each other!”

Six feet apart, fellas, six feet!

Is my hometown another place where people are not following government restrictions on gathering? Well, yes, sort of, in a few places, but that scene described above is an example of what I’ve been yelling at people in movies and on the pages of the books I’m reading! Our new normal has become so firmly entrenched in my mind already that I am not even distinguishing real-life physical contact with fictional or virtual closeness. What will this do to our post-COVID lives and attitudes, I have to wonder?

Silly reactions and philosophizing aside, we are here in Houston being rule-followers, like many of my blogging friends from all over the world. We canceled our trip to Southeast Asia in February for fear we might get stranded there, and now we are looking at those destinations as perhaps safer places to be right now than in our own individual-liberty-obsessed land (1).

My beloved running routes along the bayous are now packed with stir-crazy people wanting to get out of the house. Most are well-behaved, sticking to their side of the paths and maintaining appropriate physical distances. Some are still way too bunched-up with groups of friends, and a few infuriating idiots are passing balls and tackling each other, climbing over the closed dog-park fence, or taking turns pressing their grubby fingers down on the water fountain spigot. As of today, I will be running in the streets; they are emptier anyway, and I am less likely to work myself up over the rule-breakers.

Here in my house, my husband is working non-stop from an upper floor, trying to keep his company and its customers solvent. We are lucky to have his continued salary and the ability to buy some extra food and leave a few generous tips when we get takeout meals. My own paltry pay (barely worthwhile in normal times) has stopped as I cannot do much work for my employer from home. Last week I was a whirlwind, cleaning and baking and organizing, and now I’m feeling like a lazy slob.

Yesterday, we escaped with an outing a few hours west to see the bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes that sprout each spring on the roadsides of Texas. The giant freeways were empty on our way out of the city, the shopping centers and car dealerships eerily deserted. Being in the country was therapeutic and temporarily calming, but now we are back in the house, J very stressed and I at loose ends.

I’m aware that this is the worst post I’ve ever written – disjointed, incohesive, and just plain boring – but like others, I wanted to connect in some way with the wider world (2). Please stay safe and healthy and sane as we all work together to stop this virus.

ADDENDA:

(1) It bears noting that I greatly value the individual freedoms our country affords us, and I am very lucky to have been born here. But I also value science, common sense, community spirit, and public health, so sometimes those personal rights need to be subjugated for the common good, and I think there are people and places that are understanding that better than we are right now.

(2) I need you, readers! My three kids have about had it with my incessant texts and emails, jokes and cartoons! 🙂

Out with the Old, In with the New!

Tags

change, moving, new horizon, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge

Is it the nature of things (or simply me and my itchy feet?) that just as I have (semi-happily) settled into my newest environment that I should suddenly find ahead of me a tantalizing new horizon? Its confirmation awaits the final details … stay tuned until after the holidays on this one!

Meanwhile, 2016 – an annus horribilis for me in many ways – is nearing an end. The year started in a fine way, with a trip to Bogota and Cartagena, Colombia, followed soon after by a much-needed solo trip to Nicaragua. Things were looking good – back-to-back Latino-flavored trips in my favorite kind of weather – warm!

Unfortunately, the latter getaway was bookended by (much) less relaxing journeys to take care of my ailing mother. February/March followed up with a relocation from long-time home Chicago to less-than-eagerly-anticipated Washington, DC., and the beginning of multiple back-and-forth drives between those two cities, usually with elderly dog in tow, for the next few months.

I did get a few kicks out of hoodwinking many of you for April Fool’s Day, and I also escaped to Aspen, Colorado, for a glorious string of days in the mountains, even as I struggled with sleeplessness (so not me!) in a bad bed, myriad frustrations in a tiny apartment with non-functional appliances, and a decline in health and fitness in my new urban lifestyle.

Summer brought another series of trips to and from the new DC residence, the old house in Illinois, and the parents’ house in Pennsylvania, but again, the stress of this peripatetic lifestyle, and worries about aging parents and dog, were salved by one of the most amazing trips of my lifetime – to Mongolia – chronicled in an embarrassment of posts in August. Two little side trips to Seoul rounded out that month quite nicely!

I bitched about DC more than I should have (in spite of landing a great new job at American University), lived vicariously through my daughter and her stint in Ghana this fall, and then finally came to terms with Washington by late autumn, just in time to contemplate leaving for greener pastures!

I plan to enjoy my family and our soon-to-be-listed home in Chicago over the holidays and just afterward, I will pop into Cuba for a week before facing head-on the next wave of changes about to wash over me. It’s all good – this time I’m up for the ride! Can’t wait to tell you more about it!

 

 

Meatless in Mongolia?

Tags

culture, customs, hospitality, meat, Mongolia, nomads, traditions, vegetarianism

I’ve been a vegetarian since 2009 and have rarely felt any need to eat meat since then. My reasons for choosing a meatless diet were many and varied, ranging from a waning interest in the taste of meat in general to the environmental and health concerns of raising and eating animals from huge, industrial farms. (Truth be told, my aversion started even earlier – after I read Alive, the book about airplane crash victims in the Andes who ate human flesh to survive. But I digress, unappealingly.)

I have not been a zealot about my stance, however, and many people outside of my family and closest friends are not aware I’m a vegetarian, even when I share meals with them. I’m reluctant to ask dinner hosts for special foods and have always quietly found plenty of things to fill my plate in almost every setting. When I’ve traveled, I’ve sustained myself perfectly well, even on arduous treks in locales where meat is prized, like Nepal, where I hiked for weeks in the high Himalayas, fueled mainly by carbs and eggs (and the occasional protein bar!).

So why am I even considering eating meat in Mongolia next month? For one, the traditional Mongolian nomadic diet is highly meat- and dairy-centric, with vegetables and fruits very hard to come by in the grasslands that cover much of the country I’ll be crossing. They are not easy to grow in the strong winds and harsh climates (both summer and winter) out on the steppe, and the nomadic population is on the move from season to season and could not tend them anyway.

(Pixabay)

Animals, on the other hand, move along with nomadic families and provide a consistent source of meat and dairy products to their owners. I’ve read that I can’t even count on eggs here, as I have in other meat-oriented cultures; Mongolian herders do not keep chickens because they are considered dirty (not to mention difficult to herd!). Beyond logistics, Mongolians also believe that meat is critical for the spirit as well as the body; in fact, they are often disdainful of vegetables, considering them food fit only for animals.

This disapprobation would not be enough to persuade me, but one other factor might: the strong sense of hospitality that Mongolians dearly value. In the nomadic grasslands, travelers are always welcome in any ger, the round tents that herdsmen and their families live in. The custom is to walk into any tent, even a stranger’s, and there are many greeting rituals that include vodka, snuff boxes, tea, and food. Much of my upcoming trip will be spent in the grasslands, staying in ger camps and meeting the local people. I’ve been told to bring along some small gifts, and I know from previous travels that refusing what is offered to me may be considered rude or offensive.

(Pixabay)

Will I need to eat a few bites of meat to be polite? Will I find enough to eat during my days on the steppe without resorting to meat? I don’t think I have a philosophical problem with it; many of my objections to meat are moot in Mongolia, where animals are treasured and raised responsibly. The bigger question is whether it will be at all appealing, or even bearable, to eat some of the animal products I may be served?

Have you ever had to, wanted to, or refused to put aside your preferences or beliefs when traveling?

Seasons of Life

Tags

aging parents, life stages, moving, seasons, seasons of life

Spring is around the corner, but my life has taken a nosedive; instead of feeling the impending euphoria of a climb out of winter, I’ve seen my days get metaphorically shorter and darker in a fall-like plunge. I’ve been in the same two winter outfits for a week even though I am now on a balmy island off the coast of Georgia. I have no idea when I will get back home, wherever that is right now.

A week and a half ago, I left the Chicago area on a frigid day and flew to Washington, D.C. for an apartment-hunting trip, just in time for a winter storm with sub-zero temperatures and snow, sleet and ice, then rapidly rising temperatures, heavy rain, and all the not-so-pretty melted snow, slush, and road salt.

The surroundings matched my mood – a smudge of worry, then a storm of panic and uncertainty. After making a very hasty decision on a place to live for the next year, I suddenly needed to change my plans. I was not going home to my dog or to help pack up for our move across the country. I was flying to Georgia, to a hospital complex, to try to figure out what was wrong with my mother – a bright and active woman who had led book discussions, played competitive bridge, and socialized non-stop a few short months ago.

I am happily in the full summer of life in general. A month ago, I had a job that let me travel widely several times a year, a well-loved house in a charming little village, a comfortable and stable lifestyle, and healthy kids and parents. I did know change was in the wind; my husband had been pursuing a position in Washington, D.C. for some time, but our idea was to ease into the move. I planned to keep my job, staying on in the house with our older dog, traveling on weekends (and longer when the school year ended) to be with my husband. It sounded like such an exciting adventure – a small apartment to test out urban living, and proximity to the eastern seaboard and friends and family.

More sobering than the temporary darkening of my own days is the realization that my parents truly are in the winter of their lives. I just wrote recently about the invincible summer I am lucky to have inside me, so right now my hope is that my optimism and (usually!) good cheer will cast a ray of sunlight into my parents’ lives for a bit. I just wish I could do it in something other than my waterproof snow boots!

[With my own changing of seasons, my posts may be few and far between for a while, but please know that I am slowly reading and enjoying many of yours even if I merely hit the “Like” button!]

 

Invincible Summer

Tags

optimistic, summer, Weekly Photo Challenge

When I was a teenager, I was so cranky in the wintertime that my mother gave me a little framed quotation by Albert Camus. (On a normal day, she was more likely to give me an earful for my griping and whining, but I think she secretly sympathized.)

In the years since, I have gazed upon that little frame so many times, willing a little shoot of green joy to poke up through the dirt of midwinter. Of course, Camus was talking about much more than two seasons, and it is that daily rush of renewed hope and optimism – that invincible summer within – that I hang onto for dear life.

I was born in February, the darkest, meanest month of all – a month of short days, low sun, and a paucity of plant life. By then, we have descended at least three months into winter, and there are many more weeks to go before we can climb up and out, until life and warmth return to my part of the earth. Glistening snow has turned to filthy mush, and the cozy glow and attraction of hot tea and cozy throws and fires is on its last flicker.

In a literal way, I escape winter by physically seeking summer – flying south as far as necessary to chase down some heat and sun. In recent years, I’ve made it to Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia and, just last week, Nicaragua, in the dead of our winter and have thawed my bones enough to get me into spring.

But I don’t think that’s what Camus had in mind, and the kind of summer I keep inside me is a different and truer source of warmth. Although you will frequently find me bitching about the weather, the summer sun burns inside me in other ways. We live in a mess of a world, but I stubbornly see more lightness than darkness, more good than bad, especially in my travels.

In the midst of dire poverty, I have seen incredible generosity – the poor helping the poor and even offering the rich the little they have. After the worst days of clouds and rain, I have witnessed the best sunsets. And trite but true, the happiest people I have met have the fewest material goods.

Even at home, my invincible summer dawns every day. It starts with coffee, and builds through little things like a bit of fresh air, a job well done, a smile from a stranger, a new book suggestion, the dawn of comprehension in a student. On the darkest days, in the depths of winter, that tiny flame somehow stays lit, and I am grateful for it.

Prompted by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Optimistic

Here and There

Tags

home and away, need to roam, nomadic lifestyle, restless

Here, at home, I’m firmly connected, beyond sentimental. My home is my haven, the familiar everywhere. The screen door bangs; kids’ footsteps echo. Here is my old leather chair, the smell of cut grass in the air. Sometimes I wake from bad dreams where the house is sold, we’ve grown old, and I’m bereft.

But disquiet sets in; like the seasons, it comes year after year. It’s time to roam; maps and plans are everywhere. Something quickens inside; the serenity suddenly cloys. My bags are loaded, attachments eroded. I wake miles away, reborn, a new day. I’m refreshed when I’m there.

Here, routine rules, structure comforts, everything in its place. Morningtime in the car, same route (and egg) every day. Lunch with the Trib, the dog eats at four. To the bakery for bread, a book in my bed. I swear I’m content, devoid of intent; I’m satisfied.

But inevitably it stirs, the soft breath of restlessness. A pang here, a twinge there, for days wide open, no one the same, anywhere, everywhere. Mountains beckon, deserts call, cities appeal, dreams soar and wheel. I relinquish the rules, the future unspools. I’m free when I’m there.

It’s hard to reconcile these two halves of myself. Here is the mushy creature of habit, devoted to the here-and-now, to love and connection, snugly bound to memories and people and home and even things. But inside there is another creature; it lies dormant for months, until it begins to push more insistently, day by day, to be let free, and I can’t imagine not setting out somewhere. I have to go, and often the destination matters little. Attachments loosen, and things seem superfluous; what I want now are experiences.

I don’t miss home when I’m gone; I often selfishly forget people – no postcards, no emails, no gifts, not even a thought sometimes. I’m the traveler who doesn’t want the trip to end; while fellow voyagers begin to talk of home, their own beds and routines, I attach to my destinations almost as much as I attach to my home. Like a gecko, I stick where I land; I’m tough to pry away, from anywhere.

I am intrigued by and drawn to a nomadic lifestyle, but I wonder if I could do it, given the strings that hold me in the ‘here’ and the bond that quickly forms between a new place and me? But just when I feel serenely stable – here or there – the open road stretches out before me again like the first day of summer. After a trip, I re-enter real life poorly, resentful and bored, twitchy and agitated. But the settling inevitably comes, and the humdrum takes over, and feels good once more. Over and over, the cycle repeats. When will it end? Will it end? Do I want it to end?

Mind Travels: The Murky Middle Way

Tags

Balance, moderation, polemics, the middle path

 One Foot Out the Door means one foot is often still in … while I started this blog to document and ruminate on my travels, I can’t step out of my regular life every day or even every month sometimes, so I decided I should also write about what’s going on inside the door on occasion.

***

In between trips right now, I’ve been on some other journeys in my mind (and I don’t mean just planning my next voyage, which is a constant activity!). I’ve been thinking about one of the things I’ve learned by wandering the world: that there are so many different ways to approach life and to get things done, and that many times those ways are not as clear or defined as we’d like them to be. Often all muddy and unformed, they can make us profoundly uncomfortable if we have a my-way-or-the-highway outlook on life. In essence, I’ve learned that on the road or at home, balance and following a middle path are not signs of weakness but are the source of strength and, ultimately, peace and happiness.

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.” (Thomas Merton)
Photo from the Herminita Peninsula, Argentina

One of these nebulous areas is the way things get accomplished in other places. On a work tour in Costa Rica a number of years ago, we were introduced to the concept of the “servant learner.” That is, we were not there to impose our methods on a small, rural community but to help, or serve, them in their work with open hearts and open minds, letting them take charge of the work and direct us in ways that may have seemed unproductive to many of us. We had to understand that we would eventually leave and that the community needed to approach its work in a way that led to self-development and self-sufficiency and not dependence on our “outside” way of doing things. It was occasionally frustrating, but dampening our own need to control things would be more beneficial to this community in the long term.

Likewise, as I’ve trekked in out-of-the-way places like Nepal, Tibet, and Peru, I’ve come to greatly admire many local guides who have steered me safely through strange lands, confusion, and even fear. Many have, at first acquaintance, appeared disorganized and unfocused to my structured, western mind, yet all have blown me away with their ability to navigate not only a trail but any problems that have arisen. They may not have handled things exactly as I would have, but their way worked on their turf; their subtle, almost invisible, way of managing seemed, at second glance, to be more powerful than the commanding type of leadership many of us are accustomed to. They bent like proverbial reeds in the wind as the situation demanded; no unyielding, mighty oak could have weathered some of the unexpected storms that cropped up regularly in the wilderness.

“Softness triumphs over hardness,
Feebleness over strength.
What is more malleable is always superior over that which is immoveable.
This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them,
…of mastery through adaptation.” (Lao Tzu)
Photo from Lhasa, Tibet

Some participants on my trips have not been able to summon this flexibility or ability to see things from a different perspective. These are the people you see yelling at guides, becoming exasperated and impatient with service workers, and refusing to let go of a personal mindset that is not doing any good as they go about a task. On top of making fellow travelers and local people upset, they nearly always succeed in ruining the trip for themselves as well. Tolerating or even embracing a different way of getting things done is not easy, and traveling and working in fuzzier ways than we’re used to can be challenging, but for me they’ve been therapeutic and mind altering.

The result is that when I get back home, the polemics and closed-mindedness that have become a hallmark of our developed society can bother me even more. Some examples of the rigidity I find hard to stomach are uncompromising partisan politics (either side), blind allegiance to some authority, and religious intolerance. We all have stances on controversial subjects, but clinging to them for dear life and shouting down our opponents feels like a mental barricade to me; wouldn’t opening the door – just a tiny crack – to another idea make for a learning experience on both sides? I like the idea of muddying up the middle, taking a little from here and a little from there and coming at solutions from both sides.

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard.” (Kurt Vonnegut)
Photo from Doolin, County Clare, Ireland

Some might call me naïve or just afraid of confrontation, and they may be right. But a phrase that keeps popping into my head when I think about polarizing issues these days is “the middle path.” A Buddhist teaching, the middle path (or middle way) is not something I have studied deeply and I am in no way an expert on Buddhism or this particular principle. It just seems to summarize how I feel about a lot of things; I am not wishy-washy nor indecisive nor fickle, but I don’t see any value in plunking myself down on one side of an issue and never, ever budging from it. Although the origins of the middle way were part of the path to achieve Nirvana through moderation rather than the extremes of austerity and sensual indulgence, the middle way is now seen more broadly as “… the actions or attitudes that will create happiness for oneself and others”¹, or explained even more simply, “this vision is to see things as they are, rather than as we think or want them to be…” ²

I understand this best while traveling. The way things are in Costa Rica or Tanzania or many other places can be messy and frustrating (or the worst of all sins – inefficient!), but closing your mind to the local way of getting something accomplished does neither you nor others any good. The way flights are into and out of the Himalaya is sometimes they can fly and sometimes they can’t and don’t. You can sit at the airport and fume, or you can walk outside and think about how lucky you are to get a few more hours to soak up some fresh air and mountain views.

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”
(Anatole France)
Photo of Yamdrok Lake, Tibet

One of the most fascinating, and counterintuitive, theories I studied in graduate school in Linguistics was that many societies that use and accept multiple languages tend to be more stable than those that prescribe the usage of only one national tongue. Seeing their overall population as it is, rather than how one group would like it to be, creates happiness for more than each individual group. In my part of the world, we could use some practice accepting the way some things are, not fearing the middle, muddled gray areas, and appreciating the stances and thinking that fall between the left and right, one religion and another, and so on. I wish everyone would try traveling into the middle ground sometime, and wallowing in the murky mess; it might be less comfortable and tidy than perching safely on your side, but it’s a mind-stretching, life-enhancing way to exist and – better yet – to create happiness for oneself and others.

¹SGI Quarterly, July 2001,  ²Buddha Space