Children Are Not Innocent...Just Themselves

Children are not innocent. I love the little ones I teach. I love their spirit, I love their zeal for living but honestly they aren't innocent creatures. At least not in the idealized way people sometimes think they are. They are naïve. They are largely unaware of how convoluted and dark the world they've entered is. They are highly-impressionable. But innocent? No, not innocent.

 I've taught first grade students in Thailand for over a year now. Out of three hundred and sixty five days in 2013 I spent about eighty-percent of them interacting with six and seven year old boys and girls. I am by no means an expert on child psychology. Yet I think I can say with a great deal of certainty that children don't fit the dictionary definition of innocent. That definition, just FYI, is 'free from moral wrong.'

 What have I seen to bring me to this conclusion? Well, just about everyday I see a child crying because someone hit them, or because someone took a treat or toy from them, or because someone called them a name. I hear kids lie to me when they say they don't have a notebook only to find that it's in their cubby-hole and they never bothered to look for it. I see kids cheat on tests by looking at their neighbors sheets when it's been explicitly explained you don't do it. I see kids be vindictive, petty, mean for no clear reason other to inflict pain on others for their own enjoyment. These children have a concept of right and wrong, primitive as it may be, yet they disregard it on a regular basis.

 I also know, children are not innocent because interacting with my first graders has pushed me to look back at my own foggy memories of grade school. I realized I too, I wasn't innocent at their age either or any other part of my youth. For the truth is, we've all been bullies at one point in our lives. True, I doubt most of us have been the kids who thrived in the world of thuggery. Most of us didn't demand other kids' lunch money...but at some point in our schooling we instigated or participated in the marginalization and abuse of one of our peers who was a bit different. Maybe it was with a rude comment or a bit of name-calling maybe it was actually physical maybe it was teasing. But we were all mean to someone without reason to be.

 Now, please, when you read this don't think to yourself 'What a cynic! Does he really dislike his job so much?' Well, like everyone I do loath my day job at times, but it's rarely because of the children. As I stated before, I love the buggers. What I love most about them though is that they are themselves, unabashedly unashamedly themselves.

 I think this is what many people truly mean when they talk fondly of the innocence of children. They are innocent, not because they don't know the difference between moral wrongs and rights but because they are innocent of social constrictions. More than anything else, I feel we adults wish we could be more of ourselves. We yearn to be true to ourselves in a world  where circumstance and the sweat of making a so called living more often than not get in our way.

 We also yearn, to not feel the pressure to appear a certain way at a certain time. We sometimes wish we could truly and freely express our fears about the unknown, express our ignorance of so many aspects of life. The stiff-upper lip the nose to the grindstone. It would be nice if it could vanish from time to time. We all wish at points we didn't have to appear invincible, competent and composed. We wish we didn't have to appear a certain way to others just because it's expected. Children, small children, have few pretenses. Few grand deceptions in their lives. They are the only people I know, who can truly live moment by moment. They are so caught up in the moment that their pain evaporates just as quickly as their joy. The slights I mentioned before are almost always forgotten in a short span of time.

 The children I teach are exactly themselves at exactly that moment and every moment after. They allow themselves to be happy when they are happy, they allow themselves to be sad when they are sad, they allow themselves to be vindictive and mean spirited when that is what they feel. They are not innocent. They simply have not been taught to hide and in some cases fear aspects of themselves as far too many adults have. Society has not taught them to conform to repress to excuse who they may be or what they may be for the sake of unity, harmony or the benefit of society.

 Don't misinterpret me here either. Society is necessary and finding the right balance between a true self and a healthy concern for the well-being of our fellow man or woman is something generations of thinkers and leaders have meditated on for generations with limited success.

 I do think though that learning how to better preserve the inhibition of the small ones, which we so admire in them, would go a long way towards making sure grown ups can recapture some of the zeal and contentment they had in days gone by.
 

Story Corner: The Parable of the Unveiled

 

'Universal Edge/Majestic city of Taldria' by Art-Calevera.

           

There is a story, about a land. A land that may or may not have ever existed depending on who you ask.

            Yet the story is real. It is here, it has been here and it will be here for as long as people are willing to read it. And it goes like this.

            There was a land, a land of great beauty. And in this land, there was a city as majestic looking as nature's greatest masterpieces. Yet though the metropolis appeared beautiful to all outsiders, it was in fact an enormous fantasy as empty as the air coming out of your nostrils. For you see, most of the people who lived here were great conjurers and illusionists. With their minds they could create images of majestic towers and clean cobblestone streets, or markets overflowing with food and precious jewels. With this power they could make themselves and their homes appear far grander then they actually were. The greatest makers of these illusions ruled the city and established a council that worked day and night to maintain the fantastic and shimmering appearance of their beloved city.

            For centuries the illusionists maintained the fantasy, drawing the envy of many outsiders who were often unable to see the people for who they really were. The people of the city themselves put just as much effort into  embellishing their own looks as they did their city. Anyone could make himself taller, darker, lighter, prettier and muscular and soon the people of the city were as glamorous and perfect in appearance as their homes and streets.

            But though the visions of high shimmering walls and gorgeous people fooled many on the outside, deep down the people of the city always knew that their illusions could crumble if someone was skeptical enough to see through them. Thus, the people of the city were trained from a very young age to maintain their illusions, to maintain a perfect and idealized appearance and to adore the illustrious visions of their ancestors. All they valued was the surface, for the surface was all that made them unique.

            Yet there were always a few who did not conjure. These people were known as the Unveiled. Some were skeptics and cynics who could not stomach the idea that their entire world was a fantasy. Others, were dreamers whose dreams were not limited to perfect strait hair, perfect bodies and perfectly grand castles and walls their society valued. Still a few others were so innocent that they could not stand to take part in the grand deception. These people could not or would not change their appearance or build the perfect marble palaces that their peers and society treasured. A few of these lonely souls, could sometimes be seen wandering the streets of their city with their wounds and blemishes exposed, their hair unkempt, their skin cracked and dried by the sun. Not all were ugly sometimes they were attractive but always they were themselves, openly, unabashedly themselves, and for this they were shunned and ridiculed by the illusionists.

            Because of their low stature in society, the Unveiled were often given the menial jobs of farming, milling, hunting and gathering. For you see, the illusion of a bountiful field is not the same as a bountiful field. A vision cannot be eaten no matter how lovely. The illusionists, who could make the world look so gorgeous, could not make their illusions consumable. Nor could their perfect walls stop the storms or winds.

            It was the Unveiled and their practical efforts which allowed the illusionists to build their fantasies. For though the illusionists would spend all day in their fantastical kingdom, they were in fact in, in hovels and simple stone huts pieces together by the Unveiled. Once inside they would conjure up images of great and cushioned chambers to make their environment more comfortable.

            The Unveiled themselves would stay in a stone fortress a good distance from the city. There they would sleep, eat drink sing and dance in their own company, content with their ordinariness. They would listen to raw, unfiltered stories and legends from their storytellers. Every night the Unveiled would do this, and every morning they would make the long walk to the fantasy city prepared to be mocked and scorned by their perfect looking superiors in their perfect homes.

            Thus, the city existed. Thus, the Unveiled and the Illusionists lived for many, many generations.

            Then one day, a clear and bright day, a marauding army from a distant place arrived at the city's gates. Enticed by the many, many tales of great wealth and prosperity that the illusionists had spun, the soldiers were embittered and disillusioned by years and years of plundering, killing and raping. Immediately, they saw through the illusionists fantasy with their cynical eyes.

            The city walls, which would have appeared to the less bitter to be as tall as mountains and decorated in gorgeous frescoes, were simply stacks of unadorned stone, merely a knee high. The golden many halled palaces with illustrious gardens, were nothing more than simple wooden huts with small vegetable patches. And the people? They were, truly as ordinary and as ugly as the soldiers themselves.

            Unswayed by the illusionists' conjuring, the rampaging army felt cheated and in rage ransacked the community of hovels and put their illusionists to the sword. The best illusionists conjured up as many terrible visions as they could to scare away the army but the soldiers saw straight through them and slew all the great fantasy makers.

            Only the Unveiled, who escaped behind the sturdy walls of their well built castle survived. Though the army tried time and again to assault their walls and break down their doors, their fortress was built strong and sturdy and in the end the hoard moved onto other lands leaving the illusionists and their illusions exposed on a burning plain. No city, before or since, has ever rivaled the physical beauty that the Illusionists created. For in the end, the illusion and the fantasy of grandeur was all the people of that poor city ever had.   

A Night Under Curfew in Thailand

It's 8:21pm: I'm alone in my apartment. I've just gotten back from eating dinner. I've seen the empty spaces around Tha Pae gate in the center of Chiang Mai. Something in my gut tells me these empty spaces are different from previous ones I've seen on other nights. Perhaps, the statement of martial law I heard announced on Tuesday is in the back of my mind. Yet I dismiss this feeling from my mind. I can't tell, as I'm writing this, if there was anything special about those moments or not.
 

It's now 8:24pm: I've typed the first paragraph of these reflections. Now, I turn towards the moment when I switched on my TV and heard Al Jazeera report on the news that the Thai army has assumed full control of the government and arrested rival political leaders at a gathering. I saw this report at a little past 7pm. I keep the TV on for an hour, flipping between International News networks, to see if anyone has new information. I make a call or two. I send a text message. I'm not sure if I'm fueling panic or not by writing these to post on my blog tomorrow.
 

At a little before 8:20pm: An AJE reporter on my box says that International Networks are being disconnected and local stations have already been taken off the air. Within less then a minute, the signal for AJE cuts out along with all other signals. By this point, I've tried several times to get online. My apartment's internet is out. It's a poor quality and often cuts out. I begin to wonder. Was the signal overloaded as it often is? Or was it disconnected by the powers that be.
 

It's now 8:32pm: and I've finished recounting everything that led me up to this sentence.
 

I pause, wondering what to write next, wondering why I started writing these thoughts down in the first place?

First, it's to calm my nerves. Coups, I suddenly realize, are a sign of incredible uncertainty. There has been incredible uncertainty in Thailand's political system for a long time.

Second, I've lived through one very intense period of political upheaval before. I saw the rise of the Arab Spring in Cairo Egypt in 2010. I also saw the trial, violence and painful change it caused for real Egyptians, real people, not images on TV sets or internet lives streams.

I fear seeing this pain again. I fear it.

Yet, Egypt is not Thailand. Thailand is not Egypt. I have no way of knowing of whether the army coup will turn out as it did in Egypt in 2010 or how it has now in 2014. 

I check my internet connection again. It's still not working. I check the time. It's 8:42pm. There's less than two hours until the army's 10:00pm curfew goes into affect.

 I think back to uncertainty.

 Silence and quiet: They are pervasive now in my apartment, in my building in the world outside. The loudest noises I hear are Geckos chirping, going about their lives on the walls and in the bush. I don't hear the sound of anyone talking. I don't hear my neighbors' doors slamming as they go out or come back from eating.

 Only Geckos, my fan, bugs buzzing. These are the sounds I hear.

The lack of noise, is the most disturbing thing about this night. More emptiness and unknown. That's what I think I will remember the  most about this coup I think.

 I realize how silly a fear this is. Human existence has always been subject to unknowns. A coup or an event such as this, simply throws this more into perspective.

 Our lives, are rather ordinary and routine lives, can be suddenly put on hold by forces we don't understand or comprehend, not truly. Sometimes it's a human force like an army, sometimes its nature.

 There's not much we can truly do about it.

 I suddenly get up and switch my TV on again to check if I can get new info from there.

 It's 8:53pm: The signals are all still out. My internet won't come back.

I debate about going out before curfew: I would like water, maybe I could find an internet cafe airport at 3am in Cairo during a curfew and still managed to get a taxi to take me through the deserted streets of a city of 20 million people without hassle.net cafe, maybe buy a few beers. I realize though I don't really need any of that, not now. Except, for the internet cafe but I know the one closest to me is closed and I doubt I could reach any-others before curfew and get back in time.

 I decide to stay, after debating with myself about whether to go or not. I wonder if my friends and family will worry. Some will more than others, I'm sure. But when the curfew ends tomorrow at 5:am, i'll be able to go out.
 I remember how some of the curfews in Egypt were only loosely enforced. I remember how I arrived at t 

 I remind myself, how Thailand isn't Egypt. I decided again to stay in my apartment.

 I start thinking of myself and others again.

 I wonder if people I know in Chiang Mai are more aware of what's going on than I am. I wonder if everyone has news about the curfew and if they're sitting in their homes as I am right now.

 I think of my students. I think both of the ones I've taught and those I'm teaching now. I think of the small seven and six year old faces I've seen today, today which was a normal day of school.

 I wonder if they are aware of anything that's going on in their country. I wonder if they are asleep now, dreaming. I wonder if they are playing. I wonder if they've seen or heard something from the world around them that makes them feel unsafe on this night. I sincerely hope they do not.  I deeply, lovingly hope they have not.

 I find myself wishing them and everyone they know a great night of rest.

 I wonder if I will have school tomorrow. I highly doubt it.

It's 9:09pm: The world is still very quiet, apart from Nature's children. I decide to try and watch a movie and give my fingers a rest.

It's 10:03pm: Curfew has been in affect for three minutes. I might go to sleep now. I found out I won't have school tomorrow because of events in Bangkok. I find myself surprised by how relieved I am that I won't have to wake up at 6:50am tomorrow. It's a comfort. I'm also surprised my school was efficient enough to send out an SMS to us so that we knew about the country wide school-closures.

 I've tried watching a movie but unfortunately I wasn't in a mood to see any of the films I have on my computer. TV still out, as is the net.

 I wish I could update myself on what's going on tonight. I have a feeling most of my friends and family outside of Thailand will know more than I do about this night than I will.

I'm struck by how ordinary a night this has been. It's really not been very different from previous nights. I went to school, worked for over eight hours and then went home at 4:00. I ate a meal at a local restaurant, I bought some water, went home and crashed on my bed.

 This is something I do all so often...only now it's being imposed on me. It's an odd kind of normalcy. So much of what happens during times of crises like this is mundane, I've found. It never grabs attention in the media.

 I imagine most people in this country are going to wake up like me tomorrow and wonder how mundane their Friday will be. Yet most will doubt awake, we will breathe we will blink we will feel the heat touch our skin and we will stick our heads out the door to see what awaits us.

 So, with that, I end my thoughts.

 It is now 10:21pm. 

An American Olympus- Gettysburg, the Civil War and National Mythology

 

"Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are." -Joseph Campbell

Gettysburg is a name that most Americans and, some non-Americans, recognize. It's a name associated with booming cannons, charging rows of people in blue and grey coats and other men in black and white photos with rather absurd looking facial air. 

Today, Gettysburg's cannons are silent. The men who fell there no longer litter the empty fields and gaps between rocky hillsides. They lie underneath white headstones; some in the national cemetery, others in graveyards in the American South. The men who led them to their death, men with names like Lincoln, Lee, Meade, Sickles and Pickett are also gone, living only as words and pictures in books and documentaries. 

Today, the small, rural Pennsylvania town is different from what it was in 1863, along with everything else. Yet the past ripples through here. It reverberates and resonates, it calls and knocks at the doors of many minds and many hearts. Time doesn't necessarily heal all wounds, but it can leave beautiful scars, scars that remind us of how much we humans can endure, scars that remind us that the rain comes and leaves as often as the sun.  

When I arrived in the small Pennsylvania town a few days ago, it was raining. It would remain cloudy and wet the whole time I was there. The lousy weather created the perfect mix of somber and melancholy needed to tour a battlefield where over a hundred thousand men stabbed, shot and bombarded each other over three days in July some 150 years ago. 

One of the first things that stood out to me was the historical nature of the town itself. Architecturally Gettysburg's streets remind me of 19th century London. The brick walls of buildings and roundabout in Lincoln square could easily convince someone who teleported there that they had landed in Europe. 

Yet this is not the Gettysburg of 1863. The neat sidewalks, paved roads and cozy boutiques are stark contrast to the large black and white photo of the town that greets you when you head past the ticket counter at the museum and visitor center. This Gettysburg is small, wooden with one church steeple poking out from it's center. 

The museum is informative, detailed yet succinct. The war is explained, the background of the war is revealed. Slavery, free-labor, Bleeding Kansas. 

The what and the how of soldiering life in Union and Confederate forces is covered in great detail here. I learned a lot about the time. 

But what about the why? Why did 600,000 men and several hundred thousand civilians die in five years of fighting between 1861 and 1865? Why did neighbors and families become divided? Why were hundreds of towns and cities destroyed across the South? Why did so many men feel compelled to die? Why was so much blood spilled?

The why is often the hardest question for we humans to answer when discussing wars of this scale or any tragic event in history where human kind eagerly, ravenously sheds the blood of others in numbers that we find excruciating to visualize.

The why is addressed at today's Gettysburg, alluded to at the museum, hinted at in pamphlets, implied in a section dedicated to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address. All the facts remain, to the museum's credit, yet their meaning is given by the powers that be. And in giving us this meaning some facts become obscured or overshadowed by others deemed more noble and exalting.

'A new birth of freedom' a government 'by the people, of the people for the people' that 'wouldn't perish from the earth.' An end of slavery and mistreatment for those in bondage. A country divided, united. A land where everyone should be equal, a land for everyone to be included.

It's a story we Americans have been told many times. In elementary school, (in the Northern schools I attended anyway) the civil war was often summed up with the phrase 'Lincoln freed the slaves'. 'the war was about freedom.'

Yet this line is more than a story. It's part of what I call National Mythology.

I don't mean mythology in the sense of fable or fiction as it is so often utilized today. I mean myth as a foundational tale meant to explain the universe we live in and our place in it.

Like every country around the world today, we in the United States have a mythology. We are taught nationalism (aka patriotism) through these tales. George Washington is our Zeus. Thomas Jefferson, our Prometheus. Names such as these and the names of those such as Lee and Grant become demigods in their own right. We in the present infer meanings into their lives and into the lives of hundreds of thousands of other men and women we know so little. 

The myth that the war was abut freedom -of slaves- is taught and passed on and we believe it. It is passed on not because it is 100% factual as we would like it to be but because it is what we in the decades and century since would like to build off of.

Like early man watching the sun set and rise we humans need to assign purpose to what happens and has happened in our world. We want to give over a half a million erased lives meaning. We want to believe it was worth something. And often, when people are confronted with the vast, convoluted complicated grey nature of actual events, they prefer the myth.

I am not an expert on the history of the American Civil War. Like most Americans, I studied it briefly in school. Unlike many Americans I read books and watched many documentaries about the time period. As an avid student of history though, I know that the simple narratives and myths given by governments and society often don't truly capture the real story.

 

As someone who's historically minded, I have a strong distrust of nationalism and the national mythology I've started.

Yet as I've stated before the myth that Gettysburg represents is not a fable. There is something truly remarkable about the nature of America's Civil War. It may have only evolved into a war about freeing slaves and empowering black people. Union soldiers may have been more motivated by a day of food and more worried about losing their jobs to free black men and women than simple textbooks would let us believe. Reconstruction may have failed and brought about another 100 years of discrimination prejudice and bigotry that we are still trying to do away with.

And yet and yet, I can and was moved. After leaving the museum I drove around the battlefield, several miles of rolling hills interspersed with idyllic barns, chapels, forests and fences. Even a short jaunt around the area allows you to see a small selection of the 1,300 memorial statues scattered around the American Olympus of Gettysburg. Most of these statues are dedicated to specific army regiments that fought in the battle. Charges, counter charges and other essential events of the three day battle are marked by them.

There is a Greco-Roman style to these memorials, like many monuments in Washington DC. Stone men, some mounted, some standing, some charging, some aiming, Union and Confederate stand eternal drenched in icy Pennsylvania April rain. 

Seeing this moved me. It still moves me and reminds me.

It reminds me that in all the years since Confederate general Pickett sent 12,000 men across an empty field to certain death, since the Confederacy's demise, since the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, there has not been a second American Civil War. A two century old, highly unjust and highly profitable institution, slavery, never reared its head again. Crops ravaged by Union soldiers in Georgia were replanted, cities rebuilt. The deaths of hundreds of thousands did not become a cry for victor's vengeance in the North nor a cry for a resurrection of the Confederacy in the South. 

This is truly remarkable. Remarkable and commendable and perhaps it makes the myth of Gettysburg one worth swallowing with a mouthful of cautionary, salty history.

Seduction Capital: Why Humans are not Iphones

 

I watched a TED talk not too long ago. Like most lectures on the site it was dynamic and thought provoking. The topic? Love. 

 

In the talk, French philosopher Yann Dall'Aglio elaborated on how the nature of romantic partnerships in Western Society have evolved from relationships based on fulfilling gender and societal roles. Before modernity, men were bread winners who deferred to their elders and social betters. Women were caretakers who submitted to the men in their lives. Now, with roles and positions no longer clearly defined according to gender we base our romantic choices on personal preferences and on something else. Dall'Aglio defines this something else as 'seduction capital'.

“Indeed,” He says in his rich native language. “our consumer society is largely based on seduction capital. It is said about this consumption that our age is materialistic. But it's not true! We only accumulate objects in order to communicate with other minds. We do it to make them love us, to seduce them. Nothing could be less materialistic, or more sentimental, than a teenager buying brand new jeans and tearing them at the knees, because he wants to please Jennifer. Consumerism is not materialism. It is rather what is swallowed up and sacrificed in the name of the god of love, or rather in the name of seduction capital.”

While consumerism may not be the same materialism, it seems that we are a generation of pure consumers and that we devour everything in our lives like materials, including the people around us.

We are such consumers that we treat people and relationships like products to be bought and adjusted according to our preferences. We buy each other not necessarily with cash or credit but with 'seduction capital', charisma and, inevitably, a large amount of false self-advertising. We market ourselves to others like a drink or a brand new car. Like in all advertising the product is never quite what is show in the commercial or poster. Nevertheless, we buy the illusion. Only to eventually discover a flaw with our latest purchase. The person doesn't fulfill every need as advertised, they don't match the ideal image in the commercial or come with all the features and benefits we thought they did. Eventually many people discard the person, like they would a latte that didn't quite have all the ingredients they wanted. And the cycle keeps going. It will keep going until we realize that people are not lattes, iphones or cars that can be perfectly tailored to all our individual whims.

I realize this is not how many people approach relationships. However, I do think it's very telling that so many in contemporary societies approach relationships in a way they would approach choosing an outfit or selecting a particular brand of coffee.

We live, people from the 1^st world, in age where everything is tailored to personal preference, completely, succinctly. Is it any surprise that so many approach romance and partnership with the same expectation of total satisfaction in all fields? We expect a person, our partner, to have all the right apps, to keep us perpetually entertained and provided for. We always expect the best performance. Yet no one can deliver all the time.

It's a sad mentality to be caught up in. I've certainly 'bought' into it to an extent.

I think' like Dall' Aglio, we need more tenderness in our romantic relationships. We need to be willing to remember and be open with our frail humanness. We can't be perfect machines. So why pretend not to have so many weaknesses?

Realizing we are fallible, recognizing our faults and weaknesses doesn't mean that we can't improve ourselves. This also doesn't mean glossing over personal weaknesses and or problems. Actually, I believe being opening to our loved ones about our blemishes means committing ourselves more fully to self-improvement. People can learn. It's one of the best aspects of being human. In certain areas of our lives we can raise the bar. We can alter bad habits and develop good ones. But it takes time; a lot of time. In an age of instant gratification, that can sometimes seem impossible to remember. We can't download a program to make our operating systems run smoother.

However, we can't be an Iphone. We can't ever be it all or have it all. We're human and we shouldn't have to be anything else but that. 

 

 

9 Things I Learned While Flying Across the Pacific in 2014

While flying from Thailand to the US I jotted down some thoughts in a notebook. It turns out you can learn quite a lot in those exhausting 15  or so hours. Between all the sitting, waiting and more sitting, there are many things you can reflect on. Here are a few tidbits from my recent journey.   

 

 

 

 

(1) There are honest tuk-tuk drivers in Thailand

As a Westerner there are many benefits to living in a developing country like Thailand. One drawback though, is the tendency for some people to see you as a walking dollar sign and give you a farang (foreign) price for services. This is especially true with tuk-tuk drivers. Fortunately I got a great driver who was able to take me to the Chiang Mai Airport for this trip. He was helpful and ultimately charged me a fair price for the ride. It goes to show that there are honest people everywhere. 

 

 

(2) The connections between people are precious and sacred

At the beginning of the British Rom-Com 'Love Actually' there's a nice montage of people meeting loved ones at Heathrow airport. Hugh Grant provides a touching narration which goes:  

 

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport...It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends... If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.” 

 

I had a similar sort of feeling after seeing a couple parting ways at the security checkpoint guarding International Departures. I haven't had the best record with relationships so I can be a bit of cynic when it comes to romance. Still, watching these two prolong their embraces and kisses  before leaving each other made me appreciate just how beautiful the relationships between people can be.

 

 (3) Loud elderly people are more obnoxious then crying babies

I've been on a lot of planes in my life. In my years of sitting in tight rows of seats for hours on end, I've been lucky to avoid sitting next to disruptive people. That wasn't the case when I boarded the flight from Thailand to Seoul. Three elderly Korean women sat behind me and for the first hour of the flight their loud banter made certain that my headphones were firmly lodged in my ears. They quieted down after the stewardesses talked to them...three times. For the rest of the flight the low hum of the planes engines was broken only a few times, mostly by crying babies. This didn't bother me nearly as much though. After all, an infant has no other way of letting the world know it needs something. They also can't be taught social graces. 

 

 

(4) An actor can make you smile instantly when they appear on screen

Long airplane rides are an excellent chance to catch up on the latest films you were too lazy or cheap to see in a theater. One of the films I saw on the Thailand-Seoul leg of my journey was 'Saving Mr Banks.' It featured some of my favorite actors. Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti were wonderful in their roles as usual and as they appeared on screen I realized their mere presence was making me smile.

 

 

 (5) Airplane navigational technology is amazing

 As we landed in Seoul the weather was so foggy that I couldn't see the wings out of the cabin windows. When we touched down, it was completely unexpected because I couldn't see that we were approaching the ground. I imagine the pilots weren't able to distinguish anything beneath us anymore than I could. Nevertheless, we landed without a hitch. It's an amazing testament to human technology and skill.

 

 

 

(6) Rice soup is truly the best food for a long flight

On the Seoul-Chicago stretch of the trip my dinner choices were between Chicken Beef and Korean. Since I was flying Korean Air I decided it was only fitting to the pick the last option. I was glad I did. The rice soup they served me was everything airplane-food should be. It was simple, unadorned and filling. I feel I would gain more satisfaction out of the meals served by airlines if they served base meals like that instead of trying to dress up half-thawed microwave dishes as something special. 

 (7) Stephen King's 'On Writing' is amazing

I managed to finish the book between awkward minutes of sleep in my chair. It was one of the most helpful works I've read when it comes to writing. I was pleasantly surprised that I had reached so many of the same conclusions King had on pacing, grammar and character development. I also know I have a lot to improve on. 

 

 

(8) Caramelldansen is a decent song to have stuck in your head 

I listened to the song by the Swedish pop group before leaving my apartment in Chiang Mai for the airport. It popped into my head off and on throughout my journey. It's not the best song I could have had stuck but it lightened my mood when I needed it. 

 

 

(9) On Korean Air you actually wait for the fasten-seatbelt sign

Often when a plane I've traveling on touches down, passengers immediately get up and start getting their bags out, regardless of whether or not the fasten-seatbelt sign is on or off. Passengers in the Middle East and Thailand tend to that I think. Not so with the passengers on Korean Air. In my view, there's no point in getting up early. It's not like you'll be going anywhere immediately as it usually takes a few minutes for the plane to get to its gate.

Story Corner: The Gate

A story from my 'Memoirs of a Dreamer' collection.

 

Once, on an auspicious night, I was in the desert alone. I had to reach a destination as quickly as I could. Yet, I had no clue where I was going or why. I scaled dunes as deep as ocean waves and as cold as melting glaciers. The moon, a thin and wily smile on an enchanting ebony face egged me on. Her grin was bright enough to bleach the sand white. 

 

Transfixed by her, I broke my concentration when I came to a strange and special dune. I had, in all my travels, never beheld sand shaped in such a way. A tall, cone dune was what I saw, ringed by an ensnaring road that seemed to be cut out of its side. At its peak, I two closed mahogany doors, with each hinged on a square column, standing alone like vigilant sentries.

As I recall, I reached the peak in the span of an hour. I could see the moon over the doorway, staring down with her smirk. Gingerly, I approached the doors and pushed them aside. I expected to find the moon and the distant cliff faces I had spotted at the ziggurat’s base. Instead, it was as if I had stepped backwards in time, to the moments before I had reached the gate. The moon was once again opposite me, as were the cliffs. I attempted several more times to pass, but with each try I found myself in the exact same place unable to go anywhere, accept the top of the dune. 

 

Finally, after some rigorous cursing, I fell on my back. The stars blinked back at my helpless stare for several hours. I rose at the sound of a sputtering tailpipe coming from far below.

Across the dunes, the lone figure of a traveler appeared. He navigated by the moonlight, set atop the seat of an old motorcycle. Dressed in white, he shined in the darkness like a silver minnow traveling across the sea. Eventually, he reached the bottom of the dune. Turn by turn, he made his way to the top. His Bedouin tunic and pantaloons were complemented by a gold and white keffiyeh pulled down over his face and tucked into his collar. Part of his cloth mask was wrapped around the top of his skull like a laurel and tied off behind his skull. The remaining fabric blew loosely in the wind like locks of long hair as he switched off his engine. Somehow, he suddenly seemed less of himself. I didn’t know why that was the case.

He sat back on his mechanical steed and raised his face upward. I could sense the power in his stare, even though his eyes remained hidden from my sight. 

 

“You can’t get through the gate, can you?” He said, after he had absorbed the scene.

“No,” I said, feeling slightly ashamed, though not greatly.

“It takes time to find the secret.”

“Is there any chance you could tell me?” I wondered.

He extended his, gloved, index finger at me. The rider was so intimidating, even the smallest part of his body seemed solid and unwavering.

“Where are you going?”

The question was benign, so was his tone. Nevertheless, the pointing hand made me feel suddenly vulnerable. 

 

“I’m following the moon.” I answered. 

 

“You follow it for its own sake?” 

 

“I follow it because its light gives me direction; I can’t follow the sun without going blind.”

 

The rider’s head fell back slightly and he folded his arms; I had a feeling he was smirking.

“Understood, but following another’s light won’t get you through the gate.”

“I can’t follow the moon?”

 

“You can but the purpose of your journey will never be clear to you. You will only be chasing a destination you can never reach. You may have direction and momentum but no destination.”

I thought about what he had told me.

“Should I know my destination? Rather…what I mean is, do I need to know my destination? They say the journey is what really matters, not the end of it.”

“They do and they are like you, following the moon, or stars or satellites because it’s the only light that seems available. The truth is, they don’t know where they want to go so they follow the path that’s most clearly lit but it isn’t meant for all. Only a few, like me, have the journey as our destination.”

“Like you?” 

 

“We are born in and die in momentum. Whenever we stop moving, we are, temporarily, away from our home. Most who claim to live for the journey, do so because they forget that they have a home, a place they need to be. That place lies beyond this gate. All come to it eventually, not all pass through and not all realize they have chosen the wrong road to walk.”

I knew I was included in that class of wayward vagabonds. I felt mildly ashamed.

“How can I pass?” I asked him.

“Like any other door worth entering, you need a key.” He replied, moving his hand up to the motorcycle’s handlebars. “The materials are different for each of us, but the make is the same in the end. Once the key is in our possession there’s nothing to stop us from reaching the end.”

“Where can I find mine?”

The rider nodded to the south and for the very first time I saw a ruined city of roofless walls and sand-swamped boulevards. The craggily mud-brick structures seemed as naked and forsaken as an abandoned skeleton.

With nothing more to reveal, the rider bid me farewell and switched on his engine. Home again, he passed gracefully through the gate and vanished. Left alone, I loitered on the hill before swallowing any remaining doubts about this new twist in my long and meandering quest.

I descended, traversing the sands to reach the outskirts of the city. 

 

I could still see the dune and the gate as I trudged through the sand that had overwhelmed the city’s avenues like a plague. Mud brick windows and doorways hovered hungrily over me like ravenous mouths waiting to be fed. As I found my way through alleyways and what had once been people’s homes and businesses, I decided to feed the blackness with my imagination.

I pictured carpeted and stone floors over the sand, wooden shutters where the doors had been. Old women were soon gossiping in the corners of walls. Children swatted at each other with nimble hands and delighted smiles while lovers kissed and groped in the narrow gaps between buildings away from judgmental or envious gazes. As I traced the path of a donkey cart bumping across coarse cobblestones, my eyes rested on a slender form nestled in a wide chair beside a dry, marble fountain carved from gold and white stones. Only then, did I realize I had come to the center of the abandoned metropolis. I crossed a wide avenue encircling the fountain and approached the figure. 

 

Like the rider, his head and face were wrapped in a gold and white keffiyeh. Silver streams of white hair poured from beneath the cloth laurel wrapped around his scalp dripping across the jalibaya that covered his spindly body. He put his weight on an ivory cane in his right hand and stood. With his left hand, he clutched a withering book and pressed it to his heart. He pressed the aged text so close to his chest that I wondered if he was trying to slide the book under his ribcage.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him; queerly, suddenly, struck by how the fountain’s stones shined like silk.

The man, whose voice groaned and creaked under the strain of his words spoke.

“Because of my love of history.”

He seemed satisfied with his response; I wasn’t.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“A long time ago, I came to the gate atop that dune. I had to find a key to pass through so I searched the city until I found the amphitheater.”

He pointed over his shoulder and beyond the fountain, to a stone aqueduct partially buried in the sand.

“I searched there and eventually I found my key. Only then did I realize where I belonged.”

“Here?” I asked, wondering how anyone could make their home in an empty city.

“Yes,” He said, tapping his book. “This is the city I always dreamed of finding as a small boy scouring the stories of Alexander and Caesar in my Grandmother’s library.”

I paused and thought, mostly of my own childhood and grand stories I had yearned to be a part of.

“Sir, do you think I can find what I need, beyond this aqueduct?”

“Most definitely,” He answered.

I thanked the man and left him to his book and chair, passing under one of the aqueduct’s many arches. It took only a quick turn of my head to find the amphitheater lying before my feet. I made my way down the many rows of empty seats to the stage in the center. A blank slab of circular concrete, the stage was surrounded by a deep trench filled with treasures looted from the past, gold, silver shattered pottery and the greatest scientific discoveries of humanity. The faces of Roman gods mixed with the stoic eyes of Chinese philosophers, while Khmer heroes stood idly beside the abandoned crown of a Pharaoh.

Slowly, firmly I dug through the rubble and debris. I could find no end to the mass of greatness. Yet I through aside all the great wonders I came across, including the death mask of Tutankhamen’s, Darwin’s origin of the species, Karl Marx’s Das Capital and the various tomes of philosophy and science I had poured over in my youth. I also sorted through the visages of saints and holy men, politicians and revolutionaries, lovers, near lovers and dear friends. 

 

Finally, behind the portrait of an Ottoman Sultan I found my key. I recognized it immediately but by touch. It was the creased, checkered cover of my grade school notebook. I rested my haunches on the edge of the stage and poured through the pages. Finally, near the very back I found my key written in blue ink. It was the very first tale I had ever put to paper.