You humans do good math

You humans do good math

(said the Mountain)

always calculating value

adding to your sum totals

increasing your margins

subtracting your losses

ensuring a healthy bottom line,

all while waving the camouflaged banners

of “hard work” and “fairness”

as your justification.

You are still too young 

to comprehend the universe’s justice

(said the Mountain,

the Wind whispering her agreement through the trees)

Do you see my cracks and ridges?

How many millions of years

of trembling earthquakes

do you think I’ve endured 

for these?

For how many seasons

do you estimate

Lightning has scorched my pines

Rain has drained me of my brown blood

furry creatures have feasted from my caches

winged ones have skimmed from my canopies?

How much wealth

do you appraise

your own brothers have violated me and my brothers for

without permission

raiding my jeweled veins?

And yet still I stand here

(said the Mountain)

old, worn, humble

available 

to feed your souls

whenever you decide to remember

our kinship.

But you pale humans

prefer to do math

calculate your imaginary values

and complain

that your $20 massage

was 15 minutes too short.

You should get five back

Or maybe

you should leave the counting

to the Stars.

Patacancha: Rural life in the Sacred Valley

I soak in

The stillness of the mountain

And its life

Never dull

As the colors of the lliklla and poncho

Match the February flowers

And the birds that peck at them.

“Allinllanmi,” people respond when greeted

With a smile and a joke.

Indeed, what would cause one not to be well

In this Andean paradise?

With its grazing llamas

Its prolific papa

Rivers flowing majestically down the mountainside

Front yard pharmacies

Terraces that the Incas discovered long ago would defeat erosion

Adobe houses rich in their modesty.

Am I in the shire?

A people who shine in their humility

Whose language enchants

And warms hearts with its fraternal sweetness

Who avoid the complexity and anxiety of urban “modernity”

In favor of the ancient complexity of style and symbol 

embedded in their textiles.

What could possibly disturb the peace of this allyu, of this llaqta?

Only the state, the police, the church, the forces of so-called “progress.”

And the community responds when it needs to.

But kunan p'unchay, all is well

____________________________________________________________________

lliklla - colorful woven blanket that women from this region wear around their shoulders. It serves multiple uses, including carrying children as well as items.

Allinllanmi - "I am well" 

papa -  potato

allyu - family

llaqta - town

kunan p'unchay - today

    Since the beginning of February, we have been staying in the enchanting town of Ollantaytambo, nestled in the Sacred Valley just outside of Machu Picchu. We are volunteering at a beautiful boutique bed and breakfast with stunning views all around us. Compared to the rest of our trip, in which we were roughing it pretty hard, this is a much more relaxing and comfortable experience. We work thirty hours per week, mostly doing reception and working in the garden, in exchange for a room at the hotel, breakfast, and a small allowance for lunch. Our colleagues are all super laid back and sweet, the job is chill, and there are a ton of hikes within a really short distance. Here are just a few pictures of the town and area:

    I wrote the above poem while we were staying in Patacancha, a traditional Quechua-speaking town of about 200 families about a 40 minute van ride from Ollantaytambo up to the mountains. One of our colleagues was nice enough to set us up with a family there, with whom we spent two nights. It was an amazing weekend, to say the least.

  We knew from the minute we stepped into the colectivo (minivan) to Patacancha that this would be a unique experience. The vast majority of the passengers were wearing the traditional dress of the area, and everyone was speaking Quechua. Everyone (besides us) knew each other and was laughing and joking for most of the way. It felt more like a happy hour than a bus ride, minus the alcohol. Everyone in Patacancha speaks Quechua; some speak Spanish, but many, especially the older folks, do not. I had been dabbling a little bit in learning Quechua, and so was pumped to try out a few phrases. After studying up with my little phrase book for an hour in the colectivo, I mustered up the courage to ask the driver "How much?" in Quechua when it was time to pay. To my great pleasure and surprise, he actually understood. The problem was that I didn't understand his response, because I could only count to three in Quechua at that point. But we figured it out eventually.

    Since everyone in the town knows each other, the driver was able to connect us with two girls standing around the drop-off point, who were waiting for us but too shy to say anything. We followed them up a muddy hill—more like a cliff, to be honest—before one of them peeled off and the other, who was one of the daughters of the family we were staying with, took us to her house.

The girls who met us at the bus stop

    I think my favorite part of the whole weekend was when we first arrived. The mother of the family was peacefully sitting on the floor and weaving. She was warm and welcoming and pointed us to the tea that was on the table, but didn't go out of her way to entertain us. There was no TV or music; she was just peacefully weaving while we drank our tea—we had a variety of choices, all freshly picked leaves from around the area. Once in a while she would ask us a question, after which we'd sip our tea in peaceful silence. There was none of the normal anxiety of hosting, which I appreciated so much.

The tea selection from the garden, way better than lipton

The other reason I enjoyed this moment was because I was able to practice some Quechua. Basic phrases, of course—"I want to learn Quechua; we're from the United States," etc.—but she humored me enough to make me feel like I had actually learned something. Throughout the rest of the weekend, I was able to pick out words here and there, and once in a while a whole phrase, and it felt awesome. (Since then Mere and I have hired a teacher—Spanish for her, Quechua for me—to make use of our down time here, because we have quite a bit of it.)

The whole weekend ended up being yet another experience of unplugging, unwinding, and unlearning a bit of the anxiety-ridden way of being that we're accustomed to back home. There wasn't much instant gratification to look for, so what more could we do other than just BE? Of course we didn't just sit around the whole time: the father of the family took us out to plant about 30 trees, literally on the side of a mountain. (Unfortunately the electricity wasn't working the night before, so our phone had died and I don't have pictures of that.) He showed us around the farms, taught us some things about adobe houses, and let us guide his horses down the mountain to a new place to graze. We also got to watch the mother and her daughters weave, and helped them weave a bracelet for each of us. For dinner we went down to the fishery in town and bought some trout, then cooked it up in the dark because the electricity went out just for an hour right around dinner time. It was storming pretty hard, and that is a common phenomenon. At night, we slept with (literally) eight or nine blankets. They didn't have heat, and it was COLD up in the mountains. One woman we met told us they're used to it and it didn't feel cold to her, which was astounding to me.

I was surprised at one point in the afternoon when the father welcomed two people into the house who clearly weren't from the town. One was a twenty-two year old Norwegian guy who had traveled all the way to Peru to do a (presumably undergraduate) thesis on Spanish-language education in Quechua speaking communities, and the other one was his guide and translator, since he didn't speak enough Spanish to conduct the interviews alone. I confess I was immediately annoyed with their presence, mostly just because here we were in this idyllic town and I didn't want it to be disturbed by tourists. But, we were tourists too, of course, and if the family didn't open their doors to tourists like them, well, we wouldn't be there either.

But the interview, too—conducted with a 30-year old woman from the town who had agreed to do it—rubbed me the wrong way. From the moment the Norwegian student took out his shiny, white apple laptop and sat behind it typing, the atmosphere felt so sterile, impersonal, academic, Western-centric. The computer felt to me like a metaphorical barrier between him and the woman he was interviewing. If I were her, I would have felt like I were on display, being studied like some kind of object. At one point the translator/guide, who was from nearby Cusco but still obviously had his stereotypes about the indigenous people in the rural areas, said something like "Far away from here, close to France, there's a country called England," as if she would never have heard of England! I could tell by her response that she obviously had. It felt like they looked at her as a child. His questions, too, has assumptions behind them, and it caused quite a bit of confusion in the translation. Not to mention, my Spanish was decent enough by then to pick up on the fact that the translator misunderstood some of the questions the student was trying to ask, and also changed her answers slightly to fit his own preconceived notions and narrative. And to think, his work will get passed off as "research." Granted, he's an undergraduate student, but I wonder how much similarly problematic stuff gets passed off as legitimate research by people earning more advanced degrees. To cap it off, as a token of gratitude for the interview, he gave her a notebook that probably cost the equivalent of 75 cents—at least he let her choose the color, though :-/. 

To be clear, I don't blame the kid; he was 22, and nice enough. I could easily see myself at that age having been caught up in some similarly grandiose idea. As usual, I blame the system and culture we're a part of. I blame the whole institution of the western university, which apparently thought in this case that it was a good idea to send someone tens of thousands of miles away from home to "study" how a people felt about Spanish- and Quechua-language education—neither of which he spoke—and write conclusions about it which will benefit...whom? Certainly not anyone from the town. All because he heard Quechua being spoken on the radio once and thought it sounded cool. Don't get me wrong: I think his research question was a good one. I just don't think he should be the one doing it, at least not as an undergraduate student. But once again, that's one of the many problematic things western- and white-supremacy does: gives white folks the privilege to travel the world and pursue whatever hare-brained idea sounds interesting to them, with no requirement to do anything that actually benefits the people whom they're "studying," or even to get to know them on any real level, for that matter.

As a white traveler myself, is this just the shadow of my own guilt and self-criticism coming out? I'm sure there's some of that, though I like to think I'm slightly more conscious. But regardless of my own personal motivations, I still think the point I'm making is valid.

The family was very welcoming, not just to those two. Their niece made an unexpected visit with her two year-old, and of course they received them joyfully. It made Mere and I sad and jealous that the unexpected visit, so taken for granted in most places we've been in Peru, is virtually non-existent in the U.S. Maybe you'll get an unexpected visit once in a blue moon back home, but in communities like these, people are ALWAYS visiting one another unexpectedly; people are ALWAYS together with other people. By comparison, it feels like folks back home—and again, the wealthier the community, the more this is the case—people are nearly always alone and isolated.

The father and I talked a lot about cultural differences, like the one I just mentioned above. He agreed with me that it was a shame how individualistic we can be in the U.S. He also shared lots of his beliefs and some stories with us. I learned that he has a big problem with some of the Christian pastors that do ministry in the area, because they have tried to prevent locals from doing traditional dances or weaving certain designs into their clothes, because it is supposedly from the devil. It's infuriating to me that in the 21st century you still have people coming to indigenous communities with that kind of narrow-minded, harmful mentality—intent on destroying cultural practices that go back hundreds and hundreds of years—but I guess things haven't changed as much as we'd like to think.

He also told us about a very interesting altercation with the police. Many rural, indigenous communities in Peru have a contentious relationship with the police, for similar reasons that minority communities in the U.S. do. At one point a group of arrogant officers came up the mountain to the town to "serve justice" regarding something that the community was in complete disagreement about (I'll spare the details). In an amazing display of self-defense, dozens of people from the community, men and women alike, surrounded the officers and physically forced them off of their land, telling them in the meantime that they never want to see them up there again. He told the story with pride. If their behavior sounds "aggressive" or rubs you the wrong way, I just wish you would have been with us while we stayed with the family, and seen how incredibly peaceful and warm they were. They just knew, as oppressed groups do, when it was time to get serious. Which is what I was alluding to at the end of the poem above.

Most of all, for me, our weekend in Patacancha was another opportunity to get to know people with a way of being that is much more embodied, centered, grounded, and free of anxiety than anything I've experienced in the U.S., and another opportunity to reflect on how we want to live our life back home. The only question is how to do it when everything in the culture surrounding us goes directly against a more tranquil lifestyle.

Here are some more pictures.

They immediately gave us a poncho and a lliklla.
 We wondered why, but figured out that it was
most likely both a mix of wanting us to fit in with
the community, and to protect us from the cold. 

Weaving is huge in rural communities in the
sacred valley. They use sheep or alpaca wool, and
 dye it in natural ways, like with these flowers.

Literally right after our host finished something
 she had been working on for months, she
started a new project, which was going to be a skirt.

Went to the fish farm for some trout. Our host
said we could go fishing in the river ourselves,
 but if we didn't catch anything we wouldn't eat.

The finished product. Fresh and delicious.

The whole family (minus the mom). Man I'm so grateful to them.

The U.S. Government is not the Good Guy

    Imagine thousands of protesters hitting the streets in Canada because the Canadian government refused to sign a trade agreement with Russia and China, and instead opted to keep close ties with the U.S. Imagine Russian lawmakers and diplomats traveling to Canada to express support for the people revolting, and plotting about who would be the next Canadian president. Imagine that the revolution eventually succeeded in toppling the democratically-elected Canadian government, and that for the next eight years, Canada became increasingly estranged from the U.S. and closer to joining a military alliance with Russia and China. 

    What do you think the U.S. government would do? Would it simply allow Canada to get buddy-buddy with Russia as it pleased? Or would it invade Canada to protect its interests?  

    Switch Ukraine for Canada, and reverse the roles of Russia and the U.S., and that's basically what has been happening with the Ukraine/Russia situation since 2014. Imagining it happening in our own back yard, with Russia plotting to install an anti-U.S. Canadian government, offers a different perspective.

    I do not support the Russian invasion of Ukraine by any means, and I hope the Ukrainian people can fend off the attack. Nor would I support a U.S. invasion of Canada if the above hypothetical situation were real. I admire those Russians protesting the war openly in their own country, and I'm sure plenty of us here would do the same if our own government were the aggressor.

    But my concern is the sentiment I'm seeing in the States—advanced by the mainstream media, of course—that Russia is the unequivocal bad guy, engaged in heinous acts that the good ole U S of A would never be a part of. It's false. The reality is that the U.S. has done far worse and with far less legitimate threats to its own national security. There are many recent examples, the most obvious one being the war in Iraq. Many of us remember the U.S. government straight-up lying about having proof of weapons of mass destruction, and then using that as an excuse to topple a government tens of thousands of miles away that posed no real threat to its own security. It was a disaster with far-reaching consequences in the middle east for years to come. In fact, Putin referenced that in his speech as justification for invading Ukraine. “If you do it, we can do it.” 

    The full text of the speech is worth reading. It's clear that the real enemy in Putin's eyes is not the Ukraine, but the U.S., due to its long history of manipulating and/or forcing the rest of the nations in the world to act in a way that serves its own interests. You can't really argue against that point.

    There are other parts of his speech that are flat out wrong or exaggerated, from my understanding. His tone was one of resentment at his country and people having been treated unfairly. This is scary, as it's the same type of nationalist resentment that was widespread in Germany before WWII, as well as what underlies white nationalism in the U.S. and part of what led to the Trump presidency. The fact that he made clear allusions to using nuclear weapons if anyone tried to interfere makes it even more terrifying.

    But we can't afford to put blind trust in the U.S. government as the “good guy” in the situation—it's not. NATO amassing more troops on Russia's border is NOT a solution. I'm not sure sanctions are either. Not only will they escalate tensions while likely not doing anything in the short term to help Ukraine, but I don't believe the U.S. government has the moral authority to take such actions. 

    I've noticed that FOX News and CNN have been offering basically the same political take on the situation—FOX even toning down its critiques of Biden—which raises serious alarms for me. It could indicate that the ruling class is united in patriotic fervor, ready to drum up support for war when the need arises. Will we be equally anti-war the next time the U.S. government bombs or invades a sovereign country?

    The Russian Federation is a big geo-political bully in the world, yes, but the world's biggest bully by far is the United States government. We should not allow our disgust at Russia's attack on Ukraine to translate into our unequivocal support for our own equally complicit government. How can we support the U.S. government being the world's super power, when we know back home that same government is overseeing outrageous economic equality, imprisoning more people than ever before in the history of the world, doing nothing about the thousands murdered by police every year, refusing to take action on climate change despite being its biggest contributor, to name just a few of its crimes? As a people, we need to be focused on reshaping our OWN system, not supporting it in escalating a conflict that could lead to nuclear war. Meanwhile, we have to trust the Russian people to rise up and deal with their own. Let's support the Ukrainian people in defending themselves, but not confuse our own solidarity with them as a people with the U.S. government's political maneuvering in the region. 

Pro sports have their problems—but they meet important needs in our society

Sports are more than just entertainment. 

I know a lot of good people who are completely indifferent to professional sports, or even write them off as useless or destructive (like in the meme above). I can relate to a lot of the reasons. However, I would like to offer some thoughts that I hope may add nuance to that outlook.

In short, I think pro sports serve an important purpose in our society, even though there's plenty to critique about the industry. 

I started thinking about it while following our beloved Bengals' recent Super Bowl run, which unfortunately ended just short. I've always been a big fan, but the past few weeks have been an unprecedented whirlwind of excitement for the whole city, which made me reflect on why, and what benefits people get out of watching sports.

First let me confess that I can be an extraordinarily judgmental person, and there are many cultural norms, habits, and trends in the U.S. that I have lambasted throughout my entire life. Certainly, there are many criticisms to be made about professional sports in our country. Here are a few:

• As a country, we spend A LOT of hours in front of the TV watching sports, much more than we spend participating in them ourselves. Just like movies, shows, and everything else in the entertainment industry, it has a pacifying effect on us, and distracts us from societal problems. At least some of that time we could be spending doing other things that have a more tangible benefit to our communities. These days, I try to limit myself to mostly just watching games in which my own teams are playing.
• The cultural milieu surrounding sports often promotes toxic masculinity. A good player in most sports needs to be fast, strong, fierce, competitive, and confident. That in itself isn't the problem; the problem is that other opposing qualities—vulnerability, softness, humility—are looked down upon and denigrated throughout the mainstream culture of sports-watching. In men's sports, the role of women is limited to cheerleading and serving as a trophy or object of reward for the winners. Much more has been said about this by people more knowledgeable than me.
• Sports culture can also be anti-intellectual. Players are expected to entertain using their physicality. When they step outside of that box to express political or philosophical views that conflict with mainstream culture (like Colin Kaepernick or Muhammad Ali), they take a lot of heat. Fans, too, are expected to limit their observations to the games themselves. Too much curiosity and reflection—outside of the actual strategy of the game—is met with distrust by other fans.
• The amount of money in sports, and the inequality it represents, is pretty disgusting. I won't fall into the trap of blaming players for striking when even the highest paid among them earn a fraction of what the owners do, but nor do I believe players (or anyone) should be multi-millionaires.

These are all valid critiques of the culture around professional sports in our country, and probably throughout the world. Each of them could probably be made about other industries as well though; I think they are more a reflection of our capitalist-consumerist society than they are of sports themselves. 

So what positive role do sports play in our society?

Well, first let's keep in mind that the sedentary, post-industrial, tech-oriented world we live in, for better or for worse, is vastly different than the hunter-gatherer societies in which our species evolved to be what it is. Because of that, there are certain human needs that were met more "naturally" in the societies of our ancestors (and still are in many societies around the world), but that in our culture have to be satisfied in different ways—as strange or unnatural as they seem—because the previous options no longer exist. 

So first of all, I'm a firm believer in Carl Jung's idea that humans have an unconscious, inner-longing to adventure and complete some hero's journey, and watching professional sports gives people a way to satisfy that longing. None of my teams have ever won a championship, so I don't even know what it feels like to actually complete the quest. But what keeps me following those teams is the IDEA that they one day COULD. Watching them allows me to vicariously live out that journey, one day accomplish the mission, and come home. No matter how bad things get (and they've been bad for us Cincinnati sports fans, trust me) there's ALWAYS that hope that things will change. And so just like good mythology, sports mirror the challenges we face in life and provide much-needed hope and motivation for continuing on. 

Could there be better ways to satisfy that hero's journey? Sure, ideally. But we don't live in an ideal world; there is much alienation and misery and feelings of meaninglessness in our current society.  In hunter-gatherer or other non-industrialized societies, I imagine those needs are satisfied through the hunt, or ceremonies, or ritual story-telling. I think such methods are probably healthier, and I fully support efforts to try to reclaim some of them in the modern world. But that isn't easily accessible to the majority of folks in the U.S. So if sports provide a temporary sense of meaning, however artificial, isn't it better that they exist than not?

Similarly, sports also allow people, especially men, to express emotions they aren't allowed to express otherwise. We're usually not supposed to express sadness, but no one would look at us sideways for crying after losing an important game. We're usually expected to repress excitement and passion, but it's perfectly acceptable to scream and shout for joy after winning one. Should men have other ways to get in touch with their emotions? Absolutely; it's a journey I've been on for some time and will continue. But for those who don't have other ways readily available, sports provide an outlet to be emotional.

Secondly, I've heard it said that sports prepare people for the patriotism necessary to convince people to support war efforts. I could believe this. But could it also be that sports provide an alternative way for people to get out their aggression and tendency to make some other group into the "enemy?" People chanting or posting rude things about another team may seem crass, but it's a lot less harmful than racism, homophobia, nationalism, etc. (Unless you could convince me that sports rivalries ENCOURAGE those things—but I don't think that they do.)

Lastly, belonging to a group is something that humans are hard-wired to seek. But nowadays many of us lack a strong sense of community. Again, sports fill that gap by providing a common interest and goal for people to rally around. One of my favorite former students put it this way in a social media post right after the Bengals won the game that would send them to the Super Bowl:

"As the bengals won yesterday and I was hugging a random tight in the bar. I realized that sports really unites people! 

I ain’t know that man from a can of paint but baby we hugged when that clock hit 0:00 like we was meant to be 🤣 WHO DEY"

I couldn't express it any better, and I felt the exact same way hugging people I'd just met at a bar in Cusco every time the Bengals scored a touchdown last Sunday.

So instead of writing off professional sports as a whole, I think it would be more productive to critique what needs to be critiqued while also acknowledging their value. They provide important outlets for human adventure, combativeness, and need for community. Plus, they're just fun! Learn the rules, watch some games, and you'll see for yourself.

"Wait—the Bengals in the Super Bowl? This Year?" —The Curse of the Traveler.

Oh the woes of the Cincinnati sports fan. Years, and years, and more years, then decades, with nothing but drought. A flower would bloom once in a blue moon, only to be clipped at the root as soon as it heard the word "playoffs."

But this year, of all years, beyond all expectations, the Bengals emerge from the jungle to take their rightful throne—of the AFC for now, of the entire NFL by tomorrow night.

Meanwhile, I'm in the real jungle, like actually in the Amazon rainforest. Which typically wouldn't be something to complain about. But now? Lord, why did it have to be this year?

I suppose I can't be too surprised. It's not like it's the only time I've spent an extended period out of the country. I was living in Berlin as an exchange student in 2005 when the Bengals made their first playoff appearance since I started watching football. Internet not being then what it is now, I had no way to watch the game, other than wait for cartoon helmets to move every 60 seconds on ESPN game cast. And I was in an apartment in South Korea when the Reds made their own first post-season appearance in 15 years. Meanwhile, in this present moment, a big group of my best friends from high school are in L.A. and are actually going to the Superbowl tomorrow. Wow.

Yes, as much as I love living abroad, missing out on things back home is just part of the game. I've heard it called the "curse of the traveler."

It's not just sports that I've missed. It's family reunions, holiday and birthday celebrations, funerals—those are just a few of the occasions I wished I could have been home for. But more importantly than the events I've missed out on are the relationships. I'm blessed to have dozens of people that I've kept in touch with even throughout my sojourns in other lands, but I'm sure we're not as close as we would have been had I stuck around Cincinnati my whole life. The memories of shared experiences and good times will always be there, but there's something about the lack of physical proximity that creates distance in a relationship as well. I think the sheer amount of hours you spend sharing space with another body determines how close you'll end up feeling to them. Which is why people are usually closer to their family, or whomever they lived with when they were younger, than anyone.

Maybe the most devastating part of the curse is that when you return, you find that people's perspectives on life haven't shifted in the same ways yours have. As logical as it is, there's always something jarring about coming home and finding that you can't quite relate to your best friends as much. The memories of past times and the feelings of comfort are there; it's the worldview and philosophy that are often different.

I have a lot of friends from childhood who I still keep in touch with, but have unfortunately grown apart from. I started noticing around our mid-twenties—right after several years living overseas—that our priorities and interests simply didn't match up anymore. It's sad, and the older I get, the more it weighs on me.

I've been thinking about this a lot, as we recently spent a whole month in Iquitos, so deep in the jungle that you can only take a boat or fly in; there are no roads connecting it with the rest of Peru. The vast majority of people we saw on a day to day basis will never leave the country. In fact, a friend we made there had never left the state of Loreto in his sixty-three years of life, and I don't think that's uncommon. This has everything to do with privilege and inequality—he even said that it was a money issue that kept him from visiting other places—and I will always advocate and fight for a world where that is no longer the case. 

On the one hand, those who haven't had the privilege to "broaden their scope" through travel, as Malcolm X called it, sometimes hold opinions that come off as provincial or narrow-minded. But on the other hand, I've started to realize that people who spend their whole lives in one place, whether by choice or by circumstance, have something that I don't.

They have community, relationships, bonds forged from spending every single day, week in and week out, year after year, with basically the same people around them. They know how to LIVE together, to resolve conflict, to find ways to love their neighbor, whomever it is, because they can't just move away. I was amazed at how unprotective people in Iquitos were of their property, especially compared to North Americans. Doors to houses were left wide open, even when they butted right up against the sidewalk of a busy street, and neighbors from all around would come and go regularly. On a tour down the Amazon river, our guide would just walk into folks' houses unannounced, and they didn't seem the least bit perturbed.

Someone once told me that people often travel because they have unresolved trauma or pain that they haven't yet faced back home. I know that was true for me in the past, and perhaps it still is to some degree now. I wouldn't trade my experiences abroad for the world, because they have opened me to so many different ways of understanding, interacting with, and simply being in the world. They have made me who I am.

Yet I sometimes wonder what my life would look like if I hadn't had both the privilege and adventurousness that propelled me to leave so often. Certainly, it would be different. I'd be a lot less knowledgeable about a lot of things. But I think I would have something within me that I wish I had more of: the resilience to go with the flow and take life as it comes. Additionally, I would be closer with some of the people I've grown apart from, and what's more important than that?

The curse of the traveler primarily only affects the privileged, which in the world we live in, means mostly white folks. And yet in light of what I've been reflecting on, this turns into another of the many paradoxes of white supremacy: that by taking advantage of the privilege to travel, we risk neglecting something that is even more important, which is our relationships with the people closest to us. Surely, there is a balance somewhere. Everyone should be entitled to do some traveling, to live out the adventure that humans seem to yearn for from deep within in our unconscious—just not so much that we sacrifice our connection to community, and not so much that it prohibits others from doing so. I point this out because it relates back to something I've long been convinced of: that an unequal world creates imbalance and suffering not only in the lives of the oppressed but also, in a much different way, for those who benefit from that oppression. What that means for me personally is something I will probably be trying to figure out throughout my whole life, but in the meantime, hopefully this post provides some food for thought for both the traveling and the sedentary readers out there.

Last but certainly not least,

WHO DEY

I'm confident we'll be Super Bowl champs by this time tomorrow.

Learning from life in the Amazon

We spent the month of January in Iquitos, the biggest city in the Amazon. We thought a month would be a good amount of time to spend there and booked a flight out before arriving. But once we got there, we realized we were going to have to be creative to fill the time. We spent a few days on a now-abandoned farm that my sister had volunteered at years back, took a seven-day jungle tour, and rented a room from a woman we met at a museum. 

I'm posting a few entries from my personal journal, which I've left mostly uncut, because I think they get across some of the personal struggles I was going through. They're a little more open and vulnerable than most of my writing, but that's probably a good practice for me. They make it clear that being in the jungle wasn't all excitement. But if you're more interested in the fun stuff, just scroll through the pictures.

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Muggy Iquitos

Where there's too much time to kill

Trapped, body and mind

I wonder to what degree the climate in Iquitos is responsible for the melancholy, mental malaise, and general feeling of hopelessness that follows me around here. I have to assume it affects me a lot, but that fact doesn't do much to comfort me when my thoughts get strung up in the ever-churning gears of self-flagellation. We still have 22 days here; that I'm aware of the exact amount should indicate how I'm feeling. I do generally feel, in a complete shift from the western mentality toward time that I'm plagued with, like I want the days here to end quickly, that there's nothing I could be doing to “make use” of the time. It's like surviving is the only thing my brain has space for: water, food (though we consume less of that), and shade—AC if very lucky. Instead of looking for something fun or interesting or stimulating to "make use" of the time, I just want it to pass. Perhaps that is what the universe is trying to teach me in this rugged circumstance: simply to accept what is, and stop trying to make my life or myself more interesting, stimulating, or worthy. But even with that proposition, my mind plays tricks: it is unwilling to spend a fully wasted month in Iquitos; only if the “suffering” of boredom leads to some kind of personal or spiritual advancement will it feel worthwhile and therefore acceptable. Otherwise, if I can't look forward to some tangible benefit, I want out. Bumping the flight up already feels more and more appealing. The main force within me arguing against doing that is my self-sacrificing impulse that sees suffering as growth.

One of the main struggles for me personally right now is the constant back and forth my mind is engaged in with itself. Should I do this or should I do that? Which one is the correct choice? Which will lead me to be happier? Which will make me feel better about myself morally? And not only about the present and the near and distant future, but directly and even long after I've made even the smallest decision, I go over it again and again in my head until I've decided what I did or said was okay, in which case I can finally move on. But if I decide that I decided wrong, the judge in me punishes me heavily, and a long period of repentance and atonement follows.

I'm not sure if it's the climate, the poverty—and my own non-poverty—or simply something I'm cycling through, but Iquitos has brought this struggle on in me in a more forceful way than I've felt in awhile. 

I wrote that on the very first of our 3-night stay on the farm we stayed at. Things got better, as hopefully these pictures indicate, but a lot of what I described stuck with us.

Our first night the mosquito net was too
small, which meant we were eaten alive. Another
 example of being forced to roll with the punches.

Wild grapes

Mere weaved a basket with vines from the jungle.

More open-fire cooking

When it got dark, that was it. No electricity.

                                        

Friday, January 27, 2022,

    Looking forward to this trip, I was expecting that I would be “filled up” with something. I guess that something was knowledge, especially of how to live a more “whole” life. But more and more throughout our journey, I sense that the universe is leading me toward the opposite: an “emptying out.” More and more I feel called to empty myself of pretensions, of preconceived notions of how things “should” turn out, and simply "surrender to the current" of our circumstances, and see it as a part of the oneness of all things. Seeing how people live in the jungle, "surrendering to the current" of the Amazon, is my biggest instructor. “We can sleep anywhere,” our guide tells us when we found out his assistant would be sleeping under plastic with no hammock or mosquito net, after they spent close to an hour setting ours up. When, feeling guilty, I ask him the next morning how he slept, he responds “Bien!” with bright eyes and a smile. The night hike through untamed jungle with dozens of mosquitoes and other bugs buzzing at the ears: what more could I do but surrender? We made it through and it made us stronger. I surmise that only through accepting my lot and contenting myself with it will I overcome the curse of anxiety of always feeling like I need to figure out and then pursue the “right” course of action.

Didn't expect to see a gerbil in the rainforest, but..

Saturday January 29, 2022,

  Well, we made it through a week in “la selva amazonica,” and it was quite an adventure. We are tired, but surprisingly not too much so. If anything, it's the heat of the beating sun over the past two days that has us frazzled. But what a great experience disconnecting, yet again, for a relatively extended period, and adventuring deep into the Amazon. 

  Life in the jungle was rough for us. For the folks that live there, it's what they're used to. “The sun doesn't bother us, nor the mosquitos,” one woman from San Rafael, the small town of 80-100 people that we visited on our last night, told us as she cooked us tacacho and pescado. “We're accustomed to it.” The water, too, they can drink straight from the river, but our guide made sure we had fresh water because we'd get sick if we drank from the Amazon. (In fact, I did get sick with something, but we were able to cure it with a drink made by boiling the bark of the Ubo tree, which apparently is "hog plum" in English.) The fact that for half the year the whole Amazon floods, submerging all the towns so deeply that they have to use canoes to get anywhere from their house, is hard for me to even fathom. But again, they're used to it. And yet still, you couldn't say life is “easy” there. Our guide insisted that there was at least enough food. “We have poverty of clothes here. We don't have poverty of food. Everyone knows how to fish.” But people get by with very little, and in difficult weather conditions. And yet the life seems to be simple and... quite nice.

  So my goal for the week, I guess for the whole month, because you see traces of this in Iquitos, has been to take lessons from the people of the Amazon in accepting life as it comes. I suppose this has been my mission for at least a few years, in some way or another. It's hard to even explain what I mean. I think living in the city, in the modern world, in the cyber-world, with the constant input of information and stimulation into us, creates in me at least a kind of paranoid volatility of emotion. The cycle is like this: 

1. Stimulus
2. Trigger
3. Emotional jolt
4. Self-soothing OR unconscious and unhealthy reaction to the emotional jolt.

The initial stimulus could be anything, from something I read online, to something someone says or does that causes me to feel triggered. The emotional jolt—usually anxiety, anger, guilt, sadness, disgust—is strong, too strong of a feeling to be able to digest when experiencing it on a daily, hourly, minutely basis. And then since it's such a strong emotion, I often react to it by lashing out at someone around me, or engaging in some unhealthy form of self-medicating, or, the best option of the three, sitting there meditating and self-soothing for a time. But the self-soothing isn't easy when we have to do it so often. And then our emotions are heightened, while our ability to deal with them is diminished, so the next time a new triggering stimulus comes (which could be seconds later in this digital age), it's even harder for us to deal with, and the cycle continues in a downward spiral. I have to imagine that the people I visited with here in the jungle don't deal with that cycle NEARLY as much. Sometimes, of course, but in bearable amounts. 

  So what I tried to do with the week was just take things as they come. To shed myself of the pretentions I have of how things “should” or “shouldn't” be, and just take life as it came at me. Throughout the week there were endless circumstances that for John Klingler, and what I am accustomed to, were inconvenient, uncomfortable, annoying, etc. But I thought about the sun, and the mosquitos, and the 30ft of rainfall that folks here have to deal with their whole lives, all while using outhouses and living with chickens brooding in the kitchen and sleeping on the floor or in hammocks—and how they just get used to it, and don't worry too much about it. All the while they seem much more calm, embodied, and level-spirited than the vast majority of us up north, at least us white folks, especially those with money.

  But of course I was also left wondering how I will apply all these realizations once I'm back home, where the culture constantly hurls commands at us of what we "should" be doing. My whole adult life I've lived by the principle that I need to constantly be questioning my behavior and trying to be “better.” I sometimes wonder if that's a direct influence of American Christianity, even if my idea of what it means to be “good” doesn't exactly line up with the standard Christian one. I don't think that people down here have the privilege to be so obsessed with what's "good." Their goal is mere survival. I don't mean that in a desperate sense, because most people didn't strike me as desperate, though they were poor. I just mean that that is what takes up their time: focusing on how to survive, to create and sustain a family. And I'm sure plenty of "good" is done that way, without being hyper-focused on it. I envy that for myself back home. I suppose it is possible, but it would require a lot of giving up. 

For fun I wrote a haiku at the end of each day of our jungle tour. Here they are, along with pictures from that day.

1/23/22

Amazon Jungle

Breathtaking beauty and sounds

Still, thoughts bombard me

A very typical-looking tree down there

1/24/22

Wake to pink dolphin,

Monkeys. Enchanted boat ride

At night. Such loud sounds!

This was one of the most enchanting places I've been

1/25/22

Six hours down river,

Motor repairs, Pepe’s town,

Shots, rain, adventure

Our guide, Pepe, at his brother's (the mayor's) house 

These girls followed us to the dock in pouring rain.
Clearly they weren't used to foreigners

1/26/22

Splendid morning birds

Wild night hike for crocodiles

Haven in Hammocks

1/27/22

Chopped down trees and fished

With piranha bite to show

Great food, though no sloths

We ate "heart of palm" from this tree in our salad.

The staple foods were fish and plantains

1/28/22

Long day of travel

And forgotten belongings

But full of culture

Distillery for local "Trago" made from cane juice

Before plastic, the shells of these fruit were
 used as containers/buckets

1/29/22

Woke up in hammock

Back strong, poop solid. Monk games.

Ready to go back

More pics for kicks

Pet parrot