Threatening Myself

I roamed the planet near and far as few before me have had the privileged opportunity to do. Together, Jenny and I floated amongst the supposed dangers of the earth, embracing risk, only to invariably emerge unscathed (barring a few travelers gastro-tracts and a highly controversial possibility of a broken foot in Ethiopia). It was not until our return to the land of supposed comfort and security that the highly anticipated catastrophic (as seen through the eyes of a few) or merely mundane (as seen through the eyes of others) yet life-changing (in the short run for sure, and long run only questionably) event would befall us (me).

The singularly unexpected succession of events that continued the lives of constant unknown solidified what everyone already knew, of course - thoughout this journey, the single biggest threat to our own health and well-being was, well, ourselves. There was no one around me that day in the trees as I skied through a foot of new powder. Andy was well off in the distance by the time I inadvertently launched myself off of the unassuming mini-cliff in the woods of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. And there were no familiar faces, only strangers, to call to as I lay beneath the vengeance of the stoicly unmoving boulder laughing in its stationary silence at the encounter that had left it unscathed, and had left my kneecap in something more than a dozen pieces.

I did reap the benefits once more of hospitality of strangers (albeit strangers salaried to reinforce my safety) to slide into the ski patrol sled and wave an unemotional, nonchalant adeu to the moderately brutal end of my ski season and, temporarily, to my return to the alpine mountains.

Now, a few weeks later, I sit in my room looking just as it did in High School and wonder at how all the ambitions to keep travelers eyes through forced movement within my own city have taken a slight hiatus as instead I spend quite a number of hours staring into the pages of books or the niches in the ceiling (though I have emerged from the cavernous existence to wander to cafes and an occasional bar in the mix - my freedom is not obliterated. Now Hiroshima so much as Baghdad - swirling in the midst of an enforced chaos, waiting to emerge to the light of oppression-less days.

Of course, I don't look at this accident as unfortunate. I simply see it as being what it is. The next necessary step in a journey towards whatever comes next. I'll hobble my way toward that end; and Jenny will find a new ski partner; and Matt will find a new ski partner; and Andy will have to assault the Tetons without me just as I (sort of) did without him when he went and screwed himself up. In the meantime, I'll be on the couch doing curls with soup cans.

Deliberance

I typically tell people that culture shock isn’t happening too much. The way we came home was too perfect to allow for any sort of self-pitying grasping for what was. We walked into the United States, and we were still traveling. We threw our thumbs up on the highway, and we were still traveling. We had a bacon burger in a Flying J and we were still traveling. We rang the doorbell and we were still traveling. And we saw our friends one by one, and we were still traveling.

It’s been three weeks since we hopped on that significant number 6 bus – slightly less than the time I spent in Burma to change my life, and exactly the time spent in Thailand by my companion on the same number 6 westbound today who spent 30 minutes telling me his southeast Asian stories (the weeks and the stories were, granted, preceded by a year working in Thailand during the Vietnam war.) I am still traveling, and I am not.

Slowly, the easiness of US of A creeps back into my life as a bike ride across the city at 10 pm seems like a solid task to be prepared for rather than an obvious option; beds become beckoningly comfortable (I made myself sleep on the floor last night); snow tires begin to look like necessities rather than luxuries; and submersion into the everyday thoughtlessness of easily banal life makes the repetitiveness of “how was it” and “what was your favorite place” seem permissible.

Where did you go to school? CU. Oh, how was it? What was your favorite class?
When did you learn algebra? In eight grade. Oh, how was it? What was your favorite part?
Where were you when the twin towers fell? Cooking eggs in my house. How were they? Which was your favorite bite?

People simply do not ask these questions about other life-altering events. To focus on eggs in the face of defining moments of lives and history is to belittle the entire truth. We do not emerge from a meditation that has provided us with a novel, simple truth to analyze “how it was.” The past year and a half of my life was not anything. It was not good, bad, in between, astounding, depressing, revitalizing, or mediocre. It simply was everything that it needed to be. And it was as real as algebra.

There is no favorite moment that I can re-tell to you, there is no deep understanding that I can pass along. There is no country that I feel I can say I know. There is no universal view of the world that I can expound upon. I did not find what you would find. I did not see what you would see.

What was the best part of the trip? It was Jenny and I in our secluded selves, learning what we would make ourselves see.

In three weeks we emerged from the shrouded woods of uncertain existence in the every day to find plans sucking us into them. Tuesday at two be here. Thursday at one be there. Tonight eat this. Have this beer with this person for precisely one hour, and then not run into him again for two weeks. Arrange. Plan. Solidify. Execute. Be efficient. Kill spontaneity – except in easy options like switching up your regular lunch order or changing the particular story you choose to tell when inquiries of “what was your favorite place” slap you in the face like a racquetball gone wrong.

But travel sneaks its way into permanence (hopefully), too, in sleeping on the floor or spending an income-less afternoon wandering to Sokura Square, to a downtown mall lined with Russians selling the “American” hot-dog to whities walking past beggars, drunks, and businessmen alike, or to the library to see what histories can become presents; or to the art museum to find bits of the world thrown together in philosophical thoughts ranging from evolution of the concept of portrayal to how one can present “Ethiopian Music” without proper representation of the lyrics bouncing through the Addis Streets like “Hello. Hello. Hello Ethiopia.”

So, yes, culture shock has sent its charge my way, if I’m honest, but I’d prefer the use of a more tailored term. I am not culture shocking in the way I would have before, or in the way most would suspect. I am not cringing at the excesses of Christmas season shopping in the most widely wealthy of nations (In sheer per capita, Equatorial Guinea has us beat. Luckily, there are 300 million of us.) or at the idiocy of driving to the store four blocks away (though failure to recognize that parking lots and 18 lane highways cause distance between open and genuine interactions does drive me buggy). All that stuff I see as though through a window, or through the traveler eyes passing by a foreign country. South Africa, say.

My body and mind are spinning the idea of shock into a more accurate microscope of what it truly is. Culture shock has never been an inevitability for anyone – though the big silver flying tube of excessive speeds certainly makes the task of dodging it that much more daunting. Culture shock is a reflection of the self. A movement toward self-hatred for acting your unquestioning part in the role of everything you are. Perhaps it is a finely tuned American (or, to be wrong in a different way, human) desire or need for everything to be uniform everywhere – beginning with the printing press evolving directly into Starbucks.

I tell people that I can now recognize a bit more clearly this re-immersion syndrome detrimental self-blame cum culture shock, and I am now a bit more comfortable in removing myself from the equation of a culture where existence means being part of a target market; where it means seeking uniformity in food, clothing, wall-color, and road quality. I tell people that I can see my own individuality in, and my own responsibility for, all of that. And it’s glorious.

The more thoughtful people tell me I’m dreaming. “How are you not a part of all that now?”

Over the course of three weeks, I see more clearly that I inevitably am a part of excessively packaged rice or deceptively clever commercials portrayed as spontaneously humorous, and I see that much of the world is too. I realize that goals to be more in tune with my environment will fail, inevitably, so long as I continue to dream of cooking Thai food or, say, curried rice in the middle of a Colorado winter. As long as I want to have December tomatoes, I am defying the lessons the third world can teach. The question that seems intent on drugging my newly idealist heart is whether I really want to eat eighteen different varieties of wheat and corn every day, with an occasional peach (yes, Jenny, Peach) or raspberry in August. Obviously, I don’t. So traveler thoughts (which become so much less impressively philosophical or ground-breaking, and so much more hippy in countries with “Whole Foods” and “Wild Oats” marketing the hell out of them) turn to an existence where balance must be sought.

And that’s the experience I’m going through - the “shock” (which is more of a low buzz) of immersion back into a steady culture that has my history, but has no history; a culture of which I am a part, but which deliberately has no homogenous shape; a culture that borrows foods from the entire globe without hesitance of breaking non-existent local traditions; a culture whose own idea of itself is evident only in intellectual books rather than on the shiny hole-less streets; a culture which fiercely blows its own horn on how “free” it is while only mildly shrugging at the revelation that Dubya has been spying on Americans traveling abroad (though it didn’t take a genius to know he was doing that, anyhow). The mobile traveler has the luxury of floating above all that he sees, dipping down to immerse only so long as he sees fit. As I land in Denver as a stationary traveler like John Glen in the ocean after a spin or two, I remember that most people can’t comprehend why I’d sooner ride the bus than drive or why my intent to avoid comfort has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of pity for the places where we’ve traveled. I have to figure out how to interact for more than a week again. I have to figure out just how to put me back into a job, a house, a car, a regular bus route, and the mountains without ruining everything we’ve done. And how to tell the next person who asks to see my pictures that I’d just assume burn the visual images in front of them to demonstrate just how pitifully inaccurate a 4 by 6 is at capturing experience. (Why is it that people want to see pictures of Africa, but no one ever asks to see pictures of fourth grade?)

As I re-realize time and again that the need to deliberately challenge lest we end up floating above Tanzania looking at lions without the requisite dips in paradigm shifting understandings doesn’t stop in Asia, perhaps I’ll get a little better at making myself pierce the pin-drop silence of a rush hour full RTD bus intent on letting 55 new worlds go unexchanged except for the inevitable “I guess I’ll sit next to you if I have to” sort of way. Maybe I’ll work up a bit more courage to pluck those earphones right out of ears and fill them with unexpected inquiries – and change a bit more of me toward what I should be.