My Time as a Human

The Real Reality?

Being back in Austin feels like I just popped into the bathroom and wandered back out. It was a year, but everything looks and feels basically the same. Some wonderful people who were together are even more together by marrying. A few have replicated themselves. Life rolls on. There are a few tweaks around the edges of things. A new swanky restaurant or bar in the once poor part of town. A few more ultrahip people who, apparently, can’t afford jeans big enough to fit them.

A small southern town in China changes more in two days than the last year in Austin. Maybe it’s just that my sense of scale has been completely thrown off by buildings that go up in fifteen days and restaurants that turn into clothing boutiques in one.

Learning to nap

The odd thing about returning to a familiar place is that the completely different world I inhabited for a year now seems so far away that my experiences there can’t possibly be real. Then I step into a Chinese restaurant and find myself talking to the owner in Chinese. Suddenly I can’t deny the reality of having been in China, and my time in China seems like the real reality… and who are all of these strange people around me?!

Correction

Since posting this next section, I’ve had a lot of worried phone calls. I edited it a bit to be more clear but I thought I should also say upfront that everything is basically fine, I just have to take it easy and not overdo things the way I used to. Lisa also pointed out that my complaints are essentially that I’m no longer able to stop bullets with my chest and fly!

The CO Brain

I haven’t been able to be as crazy active as I’d like. I did really well the first few days but then started getting tired while talking to people in the intense way I love. The CO brain is still doing its best to slow me down. I cancelled all of my meetups (two-three a day) for the rest of my time to take it easy and make sure I was getting enough recovery rest. I’m now trying to schedule a maximum of one event every day and take one day breaks in between.

I’m also trying to learn how to nap, but failing miserably. How do you people do this?! When I get tired, I can’t do anything but lie around bored. If I do fall asleep it’s for several hours and I’m an irritating grump as I crawl through the wake up process. (That part is perfectly normal!)

The result of all of this is that despite being in Austin for some time now, I still haven’t seen many people or do all of the things I love to do. I managed to make it to one Tango class and a writer’s group and then couldn’t power up for the Milonga (Tango dance) that night. Fail. I’ve barely begun the giant list of people I’d like to see, although couch surfing has helped make some of that happen.

Hilariously, some of my friends are getting to like this new version of me. When I showed up a little wound down to meet with Lisa Kaselak, she thought I had a marvelous gravitas and loved that there were pauses in our conversation and fewer simultaneous topics roaring along at ninety miles an hour. As a conversational speed freak it drives me nuts, but perhaps bodes well for my future as a 道教 (Daoist) monk.

I’ve extended my time in Austin a bit to see if I can work more in gradually. I do appreciate time with friends when I get it and access to Yoga and Tango. 慢慢来。 (Màn man lái : go slowly).

Joan sat beside me, grinning, an acupuncture needle protruding from her forehead directly between her eyes. I turned away but it was worse. I was now looking directly at Joanne as she gleefully cracked open a case filled with gleaming metal points. She looked up at me and smiled, like a polite tiger asking her prey, “ready”?

You can punch me. Kick me with combat boots. Beat me with rods. I’ll gladly bleed before letting a needle touch my skin. I once made my friend Ori pull over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in Arizona and wait, silently, barely breathing, while I dug a splinter out of my hand because I couldn’t take it any longer. There’s something horrifying about a sharp object breaking the barrier, piercing through from what is not me into what is me.

In hospitals I give a little speech each time. Then I sing loudly, staring at an opposite wall and gripping the chair arm for dear life while the hapless nurse giving me a shot struggles not to laugh. Or doesn’t bother struggling. I keep explaining that it’s not the pain. There isn’t much these days beyond a quick pinch but that little sting tells me all I need to know: something sharp and manufactured is now a part of me and out of my control.

And now there I was: in a room full of needles. It was worse than a room full of cats.

OK, ok, a room full of cats when you’re as deathly allergic as I am. Maybe you cat lovers can imagine cats brandishing needles. Not knitting needles! OK, skip that, moving on.

Joanne showed me how simple the acupuncture needles were. Tiny. Wobbly. It didn’t help. “Just go for it,” I told her, gripping my knee and casting around the room for something to stare it. I started deep breathing and extended my right arm. I was supertuned to the slightest sensation, and so the moment of puncture was like a bone snapping. “Gah!” I winced and held my breath for a second, then remember to go back to deep breathing. “Did it hurt,” she asked, genuinely amazed. “No,” I breathed, “I can’t even feel it. I just know it’s there.”

Then I started the process. Just a peek at first. I could see it, a metal flag of the enemy having staked a claim. I was going to turn that into my victory flag. But first, I had to look away again as fast as possible and keep breathing. Bit by bit, minute by minute, I built up the courage to look longer and longer. The needle just sat here, in my arm on the couch. It was right in one of the points I’d learned to use when grabbing and throwing someone to the ground in Kuk Sool Won. That was so much easier.

Eventually I was able to get myself swept up in conversation. The needle got smaller and smaller. After about an hour I could look right at it. At last, I owned it. It was part of me.

This was round one. I have a ways to go. There’s something so invigorating about facing fears. In fact, my new fear is that I’ll love facing this one too much and soon enough you’ll see posts of me in suspension… Gah! I just looked at that site. Maybe not.

images always link to photographer’s site

My uncle Norman once told me a joke about a farmer who won the lottery. When asked what he would do with his millions he responded, “keep on farming till it’s gone.” He then delighted me with his laugh, something that started with a little quiet, slow steam engine sound that shook him slightly, tugged at the edge of his mouth, and then bloomed upwards into a huge grin.

At Norman Alger’s memorial service this weekend in his hometown of Mantua, Ohio I thought a lot about what would make someone choose to be a farmer. My dad grew up on a farm but turned to physics. Despite this, he and my mother churned up the soil surrounding every house we ever lived in to make space for food to pour up from the ground. My friends used to laugh at the fact that my father worked with a particle accelerator all day and came home to drag a huge homemade wooden plow through the mud. He told me there was something about the magic of seeing things grow that was hard to explain, and for a farmer that used to also mean the independence of running your own business and playing directly with the forces of nature.

While it’s easy to imagine the thrill of the wind in your hair and walking your own land, plenty of people remember Norman as the guy dozing off on the lounger because he’d already been working hard since four in the morning. The neighbor across the street remembered Norman yelling at the cows when he got frustrated, cows he’d named after his ex-girlfriends. Being on a farm you can’t put off your chores or wait until later. There are animals that need your constant care, and crops that have to be harvested at the precise moment they have the most nutritional value but haven’t been soaked by the next rain. You learn to get out and get things done, and that work ethic can carry you your whole life.

When uncle Norman was carried away on a submarine in World War II he kept a collection of pictures in his pocket. It’s not hard to imagine those guys curling up in their bunks at night and trying to make a connection with home by looking through the window of a photograph. There were no phone calls, no email, no sights or sounds for months at a time; just a black and white image of a couple of your brothers or friends grinning around a tractor, waiting for you to come back and help them out.

Now the farm is quiet. The silos were pulled down a long time ago, and the storage bay that replaced them is cold and barren, nothing stored for the next year. Eventually the innovations ran out and there wasn’t any oil or gravel left to sell to cover the costs and keep farming. Norman, like so many that worked so hard for so long, had to close down despite all he had accomplished. He had gathered local farmers together in a milk coop, and was even able to get everyone healthcare, but these days there are forces bigger than individuals, families, and collectives. As in America, now in India and China, factories are replacing personal connections with the land and farmers are packing up and moving away.

And yet, here in America there is a little green sprout of a movement. Couples unleash chickens to roam their back yards. Gardens are appearing in unlikely places, on rooftops and in two foot wide yards. Guerilla gardeners sneak into alleys and onto the edges of constructions sites and leave kale and tomatoes. Somehow each of these unlikely farmers caught a little of the sunlight, the warm glow of seeing something green break through the soil. Somewhere in each of them is a bit of what lit up my uncle Norman’s smile.

When you’re on the road your smart phone is a translator, currency converter, map and often your only contact with home and, potentially, rescue. Now that I’m a full time ultralight wanderer, it is one of the two most expensive items I own and very hard to replace. If you are even a marginally active traveler, by my rough count there are only five thousand ways your phone can be stolen, lost or destroyed while traveling. This hack eliminates at least four thousand five hundred of those.

On the road I collect stories. Countless fellow travelers lost their phones to pickpockets. Others simply forgot them somewhere, never to be seen again. One had a phone snatched from his hand, while he was chatting, by a guy riding by on a motor scooter. (This is actually a common technique in a lot of southeast asian countries.) I myself almost left it behind when it fell behind a seat, almost dropped it countless times, and may have avoided any number of pickpockets. Why almost? Because I heard enough stories before I started that I thought up this ridiculously simple solution. I didn’t lose the phone behind the seat because as I got up go, it tugged on me. The dropped phone swung down towards the ground and then lazily, and safely, swayed back and forth eight inches from the ground. I never even noticed the pickpockets and didn’t have to.

Easy for Me – Hard for Pickpockets

I thought about clips and locks but I wanted to be able to easily pull it on and off. This way I can quickly and easily pull the phone in and out of the loop, but for someone else to make the same gesture they’d have to get the thing out of my pocket, pull at my waist and yank a line way out, then slide the phone through… if they figured all of this out and then managed to execute it without my feeling it or knowing, I’d be amazed. Yes, they could use a knife (I never did find a good chain) but 1) I’d probably notice someone hacking at my waist with a knife AND digging into my pocket and 2) much more likely, and the most important rule of keeping your stuff safe as a traveler: you only have to be more annoying to steal from than the people around you. Just like running from a hungry bear. You don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your hiking partner.

Why belt level

The belt loop lanyard is the way to go. I wanted it attached to my belt (instead of my neck) because it’s a lot more comfortable. No weight. The distance is also just right for getting to my ear, but just short enough to not hit the ground when it’s hanging after I’ve been stunned by a text message and dropped it. This also makes it really easy to drop into my pocket after I reel it back in.

iPhone Otter Box Lanyard Hack

In my case, I modified the already super tough Otter Box Defender case for my iPhone 3. (Link is for newer case.) You can see from the photos that by shaving a little slot in the edge of the clip on the bottom half of the case (using a leatherman file), I was able to put a keyring through the clip. This makes a really solid connection and I’ve, er, tested it in the field many times. Blundering for science.

I’ve actually gone a little crazy with this idea. I’ve leashed all kinds of things to my day bag or pockets. I love never having to worry about theft, drops, or forgots and it clears my mind to worry about other more interesting things. What if a tsunami suddenly sent a massive tidal wave over that row of trees and on top a huge blue whale was surfing towards me… could I get airborne fast enough as the wave slammed into me to catch a piece of driftwood and surf next to him?