While Times Remains

This is the first I've written here in almost four years. It may be one of the last things I write for a while or for forever. The last post for this blog I wrote was in 2020 while I was still in South Korea. The pandemic was in full swing and the presidential election between Biden and Trump had yet to lose his reelection. My wife and I had not started the Green Card process, and I was at the beginning of my Master's Studies. 

Flash forward to today and I have that Master's degree. My wife has her Green Card and Trump is once again president. While so much went forward for me the US went backwards. 

So much has gone backwards globally in the past two years. The world I knew has changed, fundamentally in ways I profoundly feel but which I can't fully comprehend at least in this moment. What I do know is all of us, Democrat, Independant, Republican, MAGA, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, Jew, Gay, Bi, Straight, Man, Woman, Trans, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, American, non-American, Documented and Undocumented; we're going to have a hard road ahead. It will be dark, it will be bitter, and destructive, and soul destroying. 

And, hey, maybe I will be proven wrong. Maybe by 2028 all of us are able to be in Trump's Golden Age. I'm 1000% open to that possibly and would gleefully accept it. 

But that won't be. It would be naive to pretend otherwise, especially for those of us who have opposed MAGA and Trump. The best-case scenario, frankly, is that he and his people are not as terrible to not as many people as they could. But, again, I think that won't be. 

I've lived in authoritarian states at different times of my life. I've seen how ugly it can get. But to have that authoritarianism on the horizon for the first time in my country of birth, is profoundly sickening and unnerving. 

I'm frightened for those of us outside MAGA. Those who don't have the privilege I have of being a white dude will suffer far more. But there is no good future ahead for anyone, at least for four years, and probably beyond. The America and the world order I knew and experienced in my travels is fundamentally, going, going and will soon be gone. Whatever will be in its place will not be not be what any of us want, including I believe most of who voted for Trump who will also be hurt by what he and his clique have planned. 

I am profoundly aware that with all the branches of the federal government under MAGA control, there will be nothing after January that will stop Trump from indulging in the worst of the worst of human cruelty. We're in there hands, from Florida to Oregon, to Arkansas to Ukraine, to Mexico, to Israel, to Gaza. Whatever they decide we will suffer from it. 

I, like many, am trying to figure out for myself and the ones I love what to do. Colleagues of mine already are planning to leave the red state we work in for a blue, coastal one for some semblance of protection from what's coming. 

We will try to do that ourselves very soon. We were planning to already but what has happened solidifies that we need to try our best to go somewhere But in truth the fascism (and yes, I will name it) that Trump embraces will spread across the world very soon too. Other right-wing parties across the world will feel profoundly emboldened and will be on the march to take control of their governments soon too. There is in truth, no safe haven, for anyone for what's coming and while I'm profoundly, utterly afraid in many ways, I am picking myself up shard at a time while looking back and looking forward. 

I am grateful for the life I've led up to this point. For the thirty countries I was able to see in 36 years. For the privilege of teaching students and helping them succeed as best I could. For completing a Master's Degree and for getting a job directly related to that field (which in truth, I fear may not be around for much longer due to Trump's return). For self-publishing one novel on Amazon and publishing a few articles here and there over the years. For meeting the love of my life and being able to marry and experience the world with them. For being blessed enough to give her a couple years away from work so she could recuperate. For the amazing parents and sisters and friends who have filled my life for joy. 

I am also looking ahead to the two to three months we have before the start of the darkness. A time to cherish what and who I have still profoundly. If I have one piece of advice to give all of you who are afraid of what's coming, it's this. Take these next few months and live as earnestly and passionately as you can. Love those around you. Make plans for how you can cope and be safe as best you can. Find a way to save the pieces of art and beauty that might be taken away after January. Steel yourself for the darkness and read about the dark times that came before. It's hard but it will help. Mourn for this loss for the US and the world. 

We have a long way to go. Darkness is coming, but we are the lights we seek. However small and isolated they may make you feel, you are, never have been, and never will be alone. Find a way to remember this yourself should the time come when there is nothing else left. I wish you well, I mean this more than I ever have, and for those I know or who I may never meet or know I'll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite films: 

"An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the worlds turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you."

Our Screaming Neighbor- A Scary Story

Scary Hallway- Will Hartl

A couple years ago, I got engaged to an amazing woman. My fiancé and I decided to move into a small studio apartment in her city. I had been working in a small town a few hours south of her when we first met and since we couldn’t see much of a future for us in my area I jumped at the chance to try on life in the big city. We found our studio in our second week of apartment hunting. We were looking for a small place to live in for a few months since we were just starting out and didn’t have much saved. It was a little cramped for two people but clean and in a convenient area close to her job and her parent’s home. The room was also remarkably cheap, especially because the surrounding neighborhood was home to a lot of doctors and medical schools. We jumped on the place and about a month after putting down the deposit we started moving in.

***

I was the first one who spent a night in our new place. I commuted to and from the city from the small town I had been working in every weekend for about two months before the wedding. My goal was to gradually move my stuff into our new place before my contract with my small-town job ended. The second or third weekend our new queen-sized bed arrived at the studio and I decided I’d spend Saturday night there rather than driving to my soon to be ex home in my small town on the same day.

My fiancé joined me for home cooked pasta (my specialty) at our new place before leaving to finish some work at her office. I felt bad that she had to work on the weekend and that we couldn’t spend a full night together, but I understood. After she left, I cleaned up, read a book and played a game on my laptop before I started to get drowsy. I tucked myself into the fresh, crisp sheets of our queen-sized bed, stretched out and within a couple minutes I was drifting off.

I was almost fully asleep when I was startled awake by a woman’s terrifying shriek. It was so startling that I sat fully up in the middle of the bed, eyes wide. I scanned desperately for the source of the noise. Yet there was no one. I wondered if I had experienced a lucid nightmare but some part of me knew that what I had heard was real.

Slowly, I got out of bed and after putting a jumper over my night-ware I decided to step out into the hall. In my mind, I was wondering if the scream had come from someone in another apartment. Was one of the neighbors in some kind of danger? I opened the door and stepped out into the white fluorescent light of the hallway. The doors to all the other studios on the floor were shut tight; the hall was empty. I stood alone for a few moments waiting to see if something would happen. It did. Another scream split the quiet. I flinched and tried to determine where the sound had come from. It sounded close but I just couldn’t tell what the source was.

Another minute or two passed as I waited to see if anything else happened, but nothing did. No one came out of their apartments and there were no other sounds. More confused at that point than fearful, I ducked back inside my studio. I tried to go back to sleep but all I could think about were those two random screams. The next day, I called my fiancé and explained to her what had happened. She thought the situation was strange too. She didn’t have any explanation apart from a neighbor having nightmares. I drove home late on Sunday and when I stayed in the apartment the next weekend all was silent at night.

***

At the end of October, I fully moved into the studio. I barely spent any time there over the next three weeks as I had to help my future wife move her stuff in and get ready for our wedding. We tied the knot in the middle of November and spent about a week on our honeymoon before we returned to our new home. While we had stayed in the studio off and on since I had heard those two screams, neither of us had experienced anything out of the ordinary during our nights there. We had completely erased the incident from our minds by the time we returned from our honeymoon.

Apart from our bed, the single room that made up our studio had one small table with two wooden chairs and a small shelf next to the kitchenette. Since my wife and I were both still young we hadn’t accumulated a mass of stuff yet to put in our place. Even so, we were squeezed together, but it didn’t bother us too much. We had started looking for bigger places to move into the next year.

A couple days after we got back from the honeymoon, I was at our table searching for apartments on my laptop. It was about midday on a Sunday and my wife was watching a program on our TV while lying on the bed. I had my headphones in, listening to Queen, when my wife suddenly sat abruptly up and turned off the TV.

‘What?’ I asked, as I took off the headphones.

My wife had barely opened her mouth when I heard it. A quick but heart skipping scream followed by a hard slam. We waited a few seconds in shocked silence before another scream split the air.

This time, we could tell that it was coming from the wall behind our TV. I got up and pressed my ear against the wall. No other noises or sounds came.

Since we assumed the noise was coming from the apartment next to us, we decided to check and see if our neighbor was ok. We went out into the hall and rang her bell a few times but there was no reply.

 

‘She’s probably going through some personal issues.’ My wife surmised. ‘Let’s just try and ring her later.’

We went back in and a few hours later we left to meetup with some friends for dinner.

***

Over the next three months, the screams continued. At first they came at random times but eventually they started happening mostly at midnight and at around three or four in the morning. They were always the same; loud, shrill and quick. They usually happened in clusters of three or four within ten minutes to half an hour of each other. We knew that our next-door neighbor was the source. Yet despite repeated attempts to contact the lady inside she never opened her door. She also didn’t respond when we started yelling back at her through our shared wall either.

We got so fed up that we went to our building manager to complain about the noise. He told us that none of the other people on our floor had complained about any screaming from that apartment and that the lady who lived there had, mostly, been a great tenant. He did admit that the lady had some severe mental issues that kept her from working and that she almost never received visitors. Her bills were paid by her grandmother who, though she was well enough off to care for her financially, didn’t have the heart to come and see her very often.

While we certainly felt bad for the girl, my wife and I were losing a lot of sleep. Unable to get our building manager to take any action we decided to ask some of the tenants on our floor if they would agree to help us force his hand. When we talked to three of our other neighbors though, they all said that they had never heard any screams from the room. They genuinely had no idea what we were talking about.

That baffled us but we guessed maybe since we were the only ones directly next to the screaming lady’s room that maybe we were the only ones that actually heard her. We decided the only thing we could do was speed up our search for a new home.

***

One night around the beginning of December, my wife went on a business. I was left on my own in the apartment for almost a week. I went to my day job and returned to the apartment only in the early evening. It was during those nights when I was home alone that I started hearing new sounds from next door. The screams continued but they were sometimes followed or preceded by the most maniacal cackles I’d ever heard. The woman’s laughter was as loud as the screams, but it lasted longer. Sometimes it stretched into almost half an hour of incessant, maddening laughs that rose and fell like some rumbling storm of insanity.

I became more frightened of the laughter than the screams. I lost more sleep and my condition got so bad that I seriously contemplated renting a hotel room until my wife returned. In the end, I opted for another solution. I started drinking more at night and it seemed to numb my sense enough to wear I was no longer bothered by the laughs or screams.

Then, the night before my wife was due to come home I drank almost half a bottle of whiskey and passed out early. I was and still am someone who doesn’t handle hard liquor well. I woke up around three am to vomit up everything I had swallowed earlier.

Our bathroom was close to the hallway, so as I clung to the toilet bowl like a dear friend, my ears picked up a sound coming from outside. The sound must have distracted me because my stomach immediately calmed. I listened intently from the bathroom floor. The sound I was hearing was a door opening. The creaking and squeaking were so slow but so loud that I could pinpoint whose door it was; our screaming, laughing neighbor’s.

As soon as I figured this out, I got up and softly went over to our table to get my phone. I had gotten a doorbell camera installed at our studio a few days before my wife left on her trip. I could turn it on using an app from my phone whenever I wanted. I switched it on and watched the feed as the camera turned on.

I waited, but all the feed showed was the empty hallway and the door of the studio directly across from ours. As I kept my eyes glued on the small screen in my hand I kept listening for new sounds. One minute passed and then another. The empty hallway looked back at me from my palm. It was like some invisible presence was daring me to make a move.

I was almost about to open the door when suddenly, the doorbell rang. I still couldn’t see anyone on the camera feed. I took a few paces back from the door watching the empty space in front of my door in shock as the bell rang a second time. I didn’t want to open the door.

Instead, I yelled in my angriest voice ‘What do you want?!’  

The feed abruptly went into static and I heard the screaming neighbor’s door slam shut. That was followed by the sound of two feet madly rushing back and forth across the floor of the next-door apartment.

I stood in frozen fear watching my empty wall as the pounding of the feet went on and on back and forth like an insane marathon. Then the screaming started again but this time it was different. Instead of the quick frequent bursts that had come before, this scream was one long continues shriek. I could follow it moving back and forth on the other side of my wall in rhythm with the feet.

I decided then and there that I’d had enough and called the police. I told them what had been going on for the last few months and told them that I needed someone there immediately. Of course, as soon as I had finished explaining the situation to the operator the running and the screaming stopped.

Two officers came to my door first along with the building manager. I opened the door for them. While the officers were initially skeptical of my claims because of the smell of alcohol in the apartment, when I explained that the neighbor had a history of mental illness they agreed to try and speak to her. They rang the woman’s door several times and identified themselves as officers. When there was no answer the building manager agreed to open the door for them. After it was unlocked the officers went inside, followed by the manager. I stayed in the hall.

Even though I was about an arm’s length away from the open door, the terrible, rancid smell that emerged from the room overwhelmed me and I nearly vomited again. The building manager emerged just a few seconds later. He stumbled into the hall and fell on his back against one other studio doors.

He fainted as I tried to attend to him. I heard the officers inside the woman’s room radio for a corner and an EMT. The manager had just come too when one of them stepped out and said that I would need to be questioned more and that officially, the woman’s room was a crime scene.

I spent the next couple hours in my apartment talking to detectives and investigators as forensics people and other officials entered the neighbors’ room. I told my story again and again to the detectives and while they didn’t suspect me of foul play, I knew they didn’t really believe me. Still, they eventually let me go saying that they would be in touch if they needed anymore information from me.

My wife arrived back home from her trip as soon as the investigators had finished talking to me and I hugged her tenderly for a while as I tried not to cry.

I wouldn’t find out the full story until the next week when I talked to the building manager who was still shaken from, he had seen and read some more details in the local news.

So, apparently when the officers and manager had entered the studio they had immediately found the young woman who had been renting the apartment dead in her bed. All around her were a series of manic suicide notes which she had scattered all over. Yet when the coroner was able to do an autopsy on the badly decomposed body he said he couldn’t find any proof that the woman had died from anything other than natural causes. To make it even more strange, he had determined that the woman had been dead since at least the beginning of October; meaning she had been lying dead in the flat for the entire time we had been living there.

Why Blind Skepticism Isn't Always the Smart Approach- The Many Realities of Covid-19

I’ve spent a great deal of time the last couple of months watching the US struggle with the Coronavirus from afar. I count myself lucky that I found myself in a country (South Korea) where the government’s and society’s response to the Covid pandemic was swift, comprehensive, and undoubtedly effective. While many people I know Stateside have needed to go into lockdown, stock up on supplies and socially distance (or else do work deemed essential and risk infection) my wife and I have not had our lives impacted to nearly the same extent. Apart from having the start of ours schools’ academic year pushed back, spending more time at home and spending less money because some our income was curbed, we’ve been able to live our lives with a great deal of normalcy, which can’t really be said for a lot of my fellow Americans.


It’s surreal to contrast the way the US has been impacted on this virus to the experiences of South Korea, and many other countries, who have dealt way more successfully with Covid-19. There are a lot of reasons for why the US is struggling so much. Certainly, the US has a larger population than many other countries and it is a very large global trade center. There’s also the matter of America’s extreme lack of adequate social safety nets in the form of affordable healthcare, an emergency UBI or unemployment system and lack of any kind of rent or mortgage freeze. It also hasn’t helped that US national leadership (not just the Trumpster Fire but also his administration) has botched the response badly, being slow to act in the beginning and then failing to provide adequate testing and essential medical supplies. Every subsequent failure of the US government gets deflected, especially from conservatives, onto China, even though the virus’ origin has no correlation to how widely it was allowed to spread inside the US once it made landfall. Both South Korea and the US had their first confirmed Covid-19 cases on the same day (January 20) yet in Korea we have yet (as of this date) to break 11,000 confirmed cases. That’s including the recent second wave outbreak that happened in Seoul recently. The US has almost 123 times the number of cases South Korea. It (America) does not have 123 times the population.


Yet out of all the factors that I think have contributed to America’s devastating struggle with Covid, there’s one that’s stood out to me a lot with the recent anti-lockdown protests and the viral surge of conspiracy theories. Fundamentally, Americans, even in what should be a very unifying moment of crisis, can’t agree on a single set of facts about the pandemic to base their reality on. The sheer volume of ‘information’ on the virus online and the vast number of narratives, counternarratives conspiracies and general bullshit about the Coronavirus means that Americans can absorb themselves into whatever version of the crisis suits their biases or desires. We’ve become so used to having our view of the world spoon fed to us through social media and a proliferation of ideologically polarizing media that we’ve made it impossible for us to see a single comprehensive but unified Covid-19 crisis. 


A lot of the time, the BS information about the virus and the effects of the pandemic has come from corporate media outlets with strong ties to one particular ideology or ‘alternative sources’ of information. Often these alternative sources of info are little more than a few memes online or a website that often fails to have any scientific or academic backing to the bogus data or arguments they are making. This includes videos like ‘Plandemic’ or the ‘Two Bakersfield Doctors’.



To me, the popularity of these kinds of conspiracies and alternative narratives goes hand in hand with the general lack of trust in any kind of ‘expertise’ or ‘authority’ that comes from what someone dubs ‘mainstream media’ or any kind of establishment institution. This isn’t just big media conglomerates like CNN or MSNBC. Even medical experts and scientists are being lumped in as part of the ‘establishment’.


Over the past few years, I’ve encountered more and more people who seem to have what I consider to be a blind distrust of any kind of establishment or mainstream worldview. On one level, I get where that skepticism comes from. It is important to be critical of any source of information, even if it’s one you trust. Large corporate media outlets and even universities can undoubtedly hold certain biases that influence the information they give. What’s always intrigued me though about people (especially online) who loudly and vocally criticize mainstream narratives or sources is that they often don’t apply that level of skepticism to the alternative sources they rely on. They don’t ask if maybe their blind skepticism of everything mainstream, is itself a kind of bias or cognitive dissonance and fail to see that a source or theory that has an alternative voice isn’t by default more authoritative or authentic.


The appeal of alternative sources also lies in the fact that they can, on the surface, seem more authentic and thereby more legitimate. Often, there’s something very raw about a seemingly ordinary person talking to you, directly through a Youtube video or a radio speaker. There’s something cool and unique when you find an obscure article in a corner of cyberspace that lends credence to a view a lot of people around you don’t take seriously. It gives us the sense that we are in on some special insight or knowledge when it comes to understanding the world. And in an individualistic society like America that’s a very appealing state of mind. You want to be seen as someone who’s both outside the norm but outside the norm because on some level ‘you get it’ more than your friends or family members who watch CNN do.


On some level I also think our recent infatuation with alterative sources is a product of our consumer culture. We live in societies now where our default setting is as a customer or a consumer. Everything is expected to be tailored to our every desire. Every time we order a dish at a restaurant we expect that if we’re not satisfied with something that the staff will do everything in their power to change their product so that it fits our desires. We’ve become so accustomed to the idea of ‘the customer is always right’ that now a lot of us feel justified in tailoring our media and information consumption to suit our own biases, prejudices and what we want to be true about the world. When we encounter a piece of information that counters or goes against the narrative that we’ve been telling ourselves about how the world works and how we work in it we feel justified in saying that’s ‘fake news’ or ‘the source is biased’ or ‘MSM lies’ because we’re the customer and by default we’re always right. If I want to believe the Chinese government deliberately started Covid-19 to destroy America I can. If I want to believe that Trump didn’t really mean what he said about injecting disinfectants and he was really referring to seemingly scientifically sound, I can. If I want to believe that Covid-19 isn’t actually very dangerous and or that the lockdown in the US is just an excuse to curb civil liberties and create a police state I can. I’m the customer and whatever worldview I want is right by default.


Obviously though, reality is reality. America leads the US Covid 19 cases and Covid 19 deaths. You don’t get to that place by having a great or even adequate plan to counter the virus in place. What we are seeing now in the US is the limitation of having multiple views on reality play out in the public space. What we are seeing is what happens when people trust their guts with something like a pandemic that requires trust in academic and professional expertise. What we’re seeing is that blind distrust of any and all kinds of authority is not the smarter or more rational position and that sadly a lot of people have died and will continue to die unnecessarily in the States because the ordinary person can’t bear to be wrong.

Thoughts From Coronacountry

Carrying on.

I live in Seoul, South Korea (as many of you know). I first heard of the Coronavirus while I was traveling in Vietnam at the end of January. The day I found out about it, I had come from visiting the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi. There I had stood in line for a little over an hour with several dozen (maybe more) Chinese tourists.

When I read the news about the virus, my initial reaction was one of 'Wow, that's crazy' and little else. It was a big story but like most people who heard about Covid-19, it felt remote. Sure, I had rubbed shoulders with Chinese tourists but they probably weren't from Wuhan and they probably didn't have the virus. Besides, the media always hypes up things anyway.

For the next two days the story grew. When I flew out of Hanoi back to Incheon, all the customs and immigration officers in Vietnam and Korea were wearing masks. Posters explaining the symptoms of the virus were up in both airports. By the time I got back to my apartment, the virus felt more real but for the next few weeks the proximity to the danger I had felt in the airport faded. The remoteness returned. Covid-19 went back to being something on the periphery of my life.

A poster I saw in the Hanoi Airport.

That break only lasted a day or two as I quickly realized many Koreans were concerned about the virus. Some were so fearful of Korean citizens evacuated from Wuhan arriving in the country for quarantine, that they staged angry protests against the government and pelted officials with eggs.

Yet for the most part life continued for me. Sure, people around me were more fearful or concerned about the virus. Masks and medical supplies started running out in pharmacies. Some people I knew had travel plans interrupted. But for the most part things were as normal as they were before I left for Vietnam.

Then a large outbreak in Daegu (a city in central Korea) shot up Korea's rate of infections. Suddenly, the virus was more real than ever. My wife and I, both teachers, had the start date of our school year pushed back by several weeks. As the days went on fewer and fewer people could be see out and about in our neighborhood.

In about two weeks, Covid-19 went from a story I mostly saw through my screen to being something that I saw in the world around me. It was there in the massive stacks of groceries I saw being stockpiled outside local super marts for home delivery. It was in the empty spaces that started growing bigger and bigger on sidewalks and highways. It was in the darkened interior of cafes and restaurants shutting down earlier than they had before.

Home delivery boxes at a grocery store near my home.

By 'it' I'm not referring to the virus, but the shadow it and the attention around it have cast over people's thoughts and lives here.

As I've seen 'it' grow over the last few months becoming more and more real to those across the world, I've tried to hear out the two voices I hear whispering to me every time I click on a new article or see a new post. Those voices are- Be concerned, Don't panic.

The stronger voice was 'Don't Panic' in the beginning. It was a voice that reminded me of media hype and hyperbole, the dangers of social media exacerbating human emotions, the racism and prejudices that can be stoked into harmful actions when people don't pause and accurately asses the true danger something like the Coronavirus really possesses to them.

The closer the virus got to me, the more 'Be Concerned' grew in strength. As of last week, I only go outside with a mask on. My wife and I have made sure to buy plenty of them along with medicines. We've decided not to try and travel anywhere this year (despite how naturally travel hungry we are). Partly, this was out of concern for the virus itself but also because so many countries are now setting restrictions on travelers from South Korea.

'Be Concerned' reached its highest level last weekend when my wife came down with a fever. Thankfully, she recovered within a day and showed no other signs of the virus. Since she usually gets some sort of illness during the winter months, we felt safe concluding that she didn't have Covid-19. Yet it was the first time that we had to confront the serious possibility that we might both have to be quarantined.

After the brief scare of the fever, 'Be Concerned' has gradually become more even with 'Don't Panic' as I think it should be. I'm glad to be in Korea during this outbreak. I can access the high quality and highly affordable healthcare system of the country if I do get sick.

The extra time away from my full time job has given me plenty of time to read, write and watch some movies in the Netlflix queue. The atmosphere in my life is one of wait and see. Wait for the rates of infections to go down and then see how to move on from there.

In a way, technology and the internet have made self-quarantine easier than ever. While 'Be Concerned' and 'Don't Panic' ebb and flow depending on which article or mocking meme I click on, I'm certain that 'it' will pass and when 'it' does they'll be plenty of good things waiting on the other side.

Thoughts on the Shallow Traveler

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” -Mark Twain

"Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite 'market of experiences', on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets or hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country - they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfill our human potential, and make us happier." -Yuval Noah Harari 

Like a lot of people who have traveled frequently and or have lived abroad, I've heard Mark Twain's quote on how 'Travel is fatal to prejudice...'. Yet as I've gotten older, and as I've become more familiar with many kinds of tourists, I've become less certain that traveling in and of itself is enough to make people less narrow-minded and more wholesome in their views.

As someone who loves traveling and experiencing different cultures and countries, I feel so fortunate to be living in this time. It's never been easier for people (especially with Western and first world passports) to experience parts of the world that are different from the corner you come from. You can book flights, trains, hostels and tours with a few swipes of your fingers. 

At the same time, I've also begun to notice the shallower aspects of modern travel. Like most everything in our world of smartphones and social media, people seem less interested in experiencing something new and more focused on making sure they're seen experiencing it. Travel is less about a traveler seeing a place and more about a traveler seeing themselves in that place. (Thanks Jens Hieber for that great bit of wisdom ;) ) 

Getting the perfect selfie, finding the right monument, landscape or human backdrop that makes your gorgeous face seem adventurous, cultured and global. To an extent, everyone who travels does these things. I definitely have.

I also try my hardest though to dig, at least a little, into each country I visit. Sometimes I read a book about or set in that place. I watch a documentary or two. If I manage to break my introverted shell when I'm in a country, I'll ask some local people questions about their views on certain issues or topics. I delve into aspects of the local culture or nation that are not always particularly easy to talk about or insta-worthy. 
In my view, travel shouldn't have to be shallow in order to be a good experience. In fact, I find greater meaning in my travels when I confront a difficult issue that forces me to confront my feelings, prejudices or biases. 

On my recent trip to Vietnam, I made a point to visit a military cemetery for Vietnamese war dead (mostly from the Vietnam and French Indochina War) outside Hoi An. This small town near the coast, is an extremely popular place for foreign tourists. It has a well maintained old town near a river. That means it's easy to get great selfies and photos in exotic and clean looking surroundings while also shopping for souvenirs and good food from around the world. 

The military graveyard had not been something on my initial itinerary but because I was keen to learn more about the local angle on the Vietnam War I made a point to go. I was especially intrigued because I could find very little detailed information on the cemetery online (at least in English).

I found a ride from the old part of town pretty quickly and within ten minutes I was at the cemetery. During the fifteen to twenty minutes I spent there, I was the only visitor. When I left I couldn't help but feel melancholy. I was sad not just because of the heavy atmosphere the cemetery conveyed but also because I knew how overshadowed this place was by the way more selfie-genic streets of Hoi An which were just a few minutes away. Out of the hundreds of foreign tourists I had seen taking photos in the market and at the riverside, I would have thought at least a few would have bothered to come over.

None of this to attack Hoi An. It's a very cool place. I would easily go back there. I myself took a lot of photos in the old town and I could easily spend more time in that part of Vietnam if I had the chance. It just saddens me that so many travelers don't want to see and learn more about the places they are wandering through. While traveling has never been easier, it's also never been easier for tourists and foreigners outside their home countries to insulate themselves from the people, history and places they visit.

When people think of a 'clueless-tourist' the image that often comes to mind is of an older person who stays in a resort on the beach in a developing country, never leaving except on a guided tour to a famous monument or a tourist market; every aspect of the program tailored to their cultural norms and personal whims. 

I think though, there are many ways tourists can fall into having shallower and more insulated experiences than they might think. Hostels and backpacker restaurants and bars can be just as much of a bubble as a luxury resort. A twenty something who goes to the south of Thailand and gets drunk every night while lying on a beach everyday with people from their country will not really understand anything about the lives of Thai people who have to try and make a living there. A young French and American couple, who get frustrated with local people begging for money in Vietnam, but won't ask how they're countries' bloody and vicious history in Vietnam contributed to those people's lives. 

As such, they may come back to their home countries with a lot of experiences but will they be the kind of experiences that really make them understand the world more? Will they question themselves, their previously held beliefs and their place in the wider world? Will they learn how to be better and conscientious consumers of the countries they visit in the future? 

In some ways, I'm sure they will. However, when I look at how many prejudices and narrow minds pervade and flourish in our globalized interconnected world, I can't help but think that travel itself is only eye opening if you are willing to open them yourself. 

Why I Have No National Pride

For better and worse (these days more often than not worse) I'm an American. That's my (only) citizenship. The US passport is the only one I've ever carried. 

Combine that with being a tall, white (relatively heteronormative) male and I certainly have a ton of privileges wherever I decide to live and work.  

That said, I've never felt 100% comfortable identifying solely or primarily as an American and I can't say I have any national pride to speak of. 

When I've talked or written about these sentiments in the past, I've sometimes gotten negative reactions from other Americans who think I harbor hatred or bitterness towards my country of birth.

It's true that there were times in my life, (especially high school) where I did have very poisonous feelings for the US. I've moved on though. Hatred (no matter how warranted it may or may not be) is always a waste of time. 

These days my feelings to the US alternate between ambivalence and a sense of somber duty. I try not to be the ugliest version of my country to the outside world. By sticking to what I think is ethical and by owning and challenging the ugliest parts of America, I hope I present a better face to the world than the one we have now.

Yet I don't take pride in being that American or any other kind of American. I don't feel compelled to have pride towards my nationality. This isn't because America is somehow worse than other places in the world. It's just that on a personal and more rational level I just don't think anyone should have to be proud of the country they were born or raised in.  

I grew up outside the US and I've spent a lot of my adult life living in other countries. Growing up a Third Culture Kid (someone raised outside of the home country/culture of their parents) means that I don't have the same personal attachment to the States as people raised there do. 

Not all American TCKs are like me. Some are quite comfortable living Stateside and are truly at home in America. For me though, growing up in Thailand and living abroad in other places has shown me that it's possible to be at home anywhere in the world. My formative memories from childhood and youth largely come from my time in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai and it's that place I identify most often as my hometown, when I'm asked. 

Growing up outside the US, also showed me from an early age that human beings don't need to have the same nationality, cultural background, race etc. to coexist, get along or even create real and even profoundly deep bonds. 

Nationality for me, is something incidental. I happen to be American but my being American is not something I'm especially attached too nor do I choose to let it define me even though it definitely informs my worldview.

Defining your self-worth by your nationality and more importantly assigning lesser value to other people based on theirs, is flooding our world with toxic nationalism and xenophobia. 

This toxicity was on display most recently in El Paso and I saw it earlier in the year at the terrible mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand.  I've seen it on display recently in Korea as a Korean-Japanese trade war continues to escalate. I can see it playing a part in the rhetoric of the Beijing government as it tries to repress the discontent in Hong Kong.

All too often, when national pride is invoked it's in the name of attacking an enemy. Group think sets in and blinds those who think of themselves as patriots. Problems between nations become all but impossible to solve and individual citizens are incapable of seeing any solutions. Your country and your people become the right country and the right people. Those who are not part of your country or your people are in the wrong. The facts no longer matter. You are right by default and they are wrong by default. The hypocrisies, shortcomings and faults of your own nation disappear as soon as you become wedded the idea that the other side is irredeemable because of what they are and you are the righteous because of what you are. 

To me, the saddest part of the value that so many people ascribe to their national identities, is how flimsy and arbitrary the foundations for that value is. None of us chose the countries we were born into. None of us chose which country or culture we were raised in. Yet somehow so many cling to this identity they were born to and allow it to determine their worth and the worth of others in their eyes. They do this, I think, for a pretty simple reason. It's what they know and they assume, without really consciously being aware of it, that how they were raised to see the world is the way the world truly is.

It may ultimately be, impossible, for any of us to truly escape ourselves and see other perspectives 100% clearly. However, by not wedding ourselves to the countries and nations we happen to be a part of I think we can at least begin to see each other more clearly. 

The Twin House: A Scary Story

When I was a kid, I would spend summers at my grandparents house. I have a lot of good memories from those months. My brother and I would spend practically whole days exploring the woods that were part of the property. They owned a couple miles of woodland around their house, a large Victorian style home that was a little out of place in the rural farming community they were a part of.

When I say rural I mean very rural. There home was several miles away from the nearest neighbor. Because of this, there weren’t many other kids around for us to play with. My brother and I were mostly on our own when we played. We didn’t mind though. In fact, the open woods and the lack of people really allowed our imaginations to run wild.

 One summer, when I was ten and my brother was around eight we headed off to a portion of the woods that we had always avoided before. For as far back as we could remember, our grandparents had warned us that this particular area of their property was off limits. It was marked by a creek that was almost always dry in the summer and by several piles of rocks that were spaced out every five feet or so. These piles were made of smooth round stones taken from the creek bed.

While it might seem a little strange in hindsight, as kids we didn’t really question these stone piles or why this part of the woods was considered off limits. When we wandered, my brother and I usually stayed pretty close to the house and my grandma or grandpa were almost always somewhere nearby keeping an eye on us.

But that day, our grandparents were working on some home repair projects and were busying supervising the men they had hired to paint their house. This meant my brother and I could slip away.

For the first time we went down into the dry creek bed and climbed up the other side. I remember we paused just at the edge of one of the stone piles. We briefly hesitated at crossing this threshold but we were both too curious to head back.

Since I was the oldest, I went ahead of my little brother keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. Our grandparents had always told us that this part of their property was more wild than the other parts and that was definitely true.

The further and further we went beyond the stones, the more dense the trees and vegetation became. The branches were so thick that only a few slivers of sunlight could get in.

We were both used to the woods though so we didn’t feel scared. That was, until we found the other house.

At first all I could see in the distance was some faded wood paneling, but as we got closer the trees began to get less tight and the full shape of the structure came into view

We came into a clearing and I finally saw the structure in its entirety. The building was a house but not just any house. It was an exact replica of my grandparents house. Same Victorian design, same layout.

This twin house though had clearly been abandoned for years. The windows were broken and the wood was flaking and the structure inside and out was rotting and falling apart. Moss and ivy had also started growing on the outside.

This was not the creepy part of it though. As we took in the site of this large Victorian house sitting abandoned in the middle of the forest my brother said: ‘Dave, there are scratches.’

He pointed and I followed his finger to the outside of the open front door. Sure enough, there were scratches all over the doorway and not just random claw marks but odd pictographs. Eyes and triangles and what looked like stick figures.

We must have looked at these weird carvings for a few minutes before I said: ‘Alright, let’s go in.’

‘No!’ Dave said. ‘I’m staying here!’

Deep down I was as scared as my little brother but I’ve always been a curious type. Sometimes too curious for my own good.

‘Ok, you stay here.’ I said. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

Even though he was scared, my brother nodded and stood where he was. I took several baby steps up the steps that led to the house’s veranda. The boards held my weight alright, so I kept going.

The first thing that struck me as I entered was the layout. Inside, the house was the same as my grandparent’s home. There was an entry room with a staircase leading to the next floor. The kitchen was on my right and the living room on my left.

But that was where the similarities to the other house ended. The paint was faded and chipped and many of the floorboards were rotting and torn up. There was no furniture in either the kitchen or living room and the whole house had a very eerie feeling to it.

After testing the first few steps on the stairway, I decided it was stable enough and slowly made my way up to the second floor. It took a while as I was constantly trying to make sure I didn’t make a wrong step and go flying through the boards.

When I finally reached the upstairs, I felt a sudden chill come through me. There were three rooms; again, just like my grandparent’s house they were laid out in the same way. In their house our bedrooms were all on the second level.

Like the first level though, the second floor of this house seemed completely empty. The room that was in the same place as my grandparent’s bedroom was empty so was the smaller room to the left of the stairs that was the our shared bathroom. Then, there was the third room. In our house, this was where my brother and I slept. And, just like at my grandparents’ place, the third room had a bright sky blue door. It was the exact same color.

I stared in shock at the bright blue door. It was the only door I had seen in the doppelganger house. It was also perfectly clean. The paint was fresh and unchipped.

I might have turned back then but something pushed me to step forward and put my hands on the door and I slowly opened it.

What I found inside is hard to describe to this day. Inside was a bed, a chair an old dollhouse and bookshelves. It was a fully furnished bedroom and it was entirely intact and clean. Like someone had come inside that day and dusted everything off. It looked like someone’s, a child’s bedroom. Unlike every other room in the house it was pristine. It was like I had crossed into a completely different realm.

I stepped inside and took a closer look at everything. There were vintage books and toys. Stuff that looked like it was from the 1930s or 40s.

None of this however was in the room I shared with Dave back at my grandparents house. The room might have had the same antiquated style but our room had two beds and there were no toys. I wanted to explore more but just as I was about to sit down on the bed, I heard a scream. I ran to a window on the second floor and looked down outside to see my brother hiding behind one of the nearby trees.

‘What the hell happened?!’ I yelled from the window.

‘I I don’t know.’ Dave cried. ‘Just come down and let’s get out of here!’

So we did. We ran from those woods and didn’t stop until we were well back behind the stone piles and the dry creek bed.

We didn’t tell our grandparents about what had happened, and it took a while, almost another two days before Dave told me what had happened to him.

It turned out that while I was in the room, he felt a shiver and he went completely cold. Despite the sun shining and it being a hot summer day, Dave said that he felt as if he was inside a freezer. And as he started to shake from the cold suddenly something picked him up from behind and spun him around in a circle. He said it felt like when our dad would pick us up and spin us around when we were really little. Only, after he was let go there was nothing there.

It was never clear to us what happened because the next year when we returned to our grandparents’ home for our summer visit I went back and the stones and the house were completely gone. No trace of them left.  When I couldn’t find the dilapidated home I asked my grandpa that night about it and he said scolded me pretty harshly. Saying, ‘That part of the woods, is no good. Just trust me and never go back there again.’

I never did and eventually my grandparents sold their property and moved to a new place. Their land was turned into a cattle ranch and the woods cut down. To this day I don’t know what happened to us or why but every time I think back to that blue door, I can’t help but feel cold all over.