Dipping churros into chocolate, I could feel the blood throbbing in my left knee.
After walking 26,986 steps (13.34 miles) on a mostly-still-broken foot, inside a surgical boot that was actively coming apart, it was time for new shoes.
Most people don’t put hundreds of miles on their surgical boots.
Most people don’t buy a second surgical boot so both feet will be even.
Most people don’t sprint through Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in surgical boots when the announcement says they have three minutes to board, even though their ticket insists they really have eighteen.
I am not most people.
We landed in Madrid at 5:45 a.m. By 6:45 a.m., we were failing to locate our Uber and choosing the subway instead.
Our exit train from Madrid left at 4:45 p.m.
Ten hours in Spain’s capital.
After eight of them, my feet were finished. The boot—kept out of an abundance of caution—was now increasing my risk. Three weeks ago, I’d been cleared to wear normal shoes. I hadn’t. I’d stuck with the boot.
Safety, it turns out, has an expiration date.
I spotted a discount shoe store.
Since I return to France on Friday, I only needed shoes that would last five days.
The clerk showed me a pair of decent-looking sneakers: twenty euros. I tried them on. He only had the left shoe in size 44 and the right shoe in 45. The clerk agrees to a discount, and apologizes he cannot give us a greater one. After all, what shoe store only sells mismatched shoes?
Little does he know, my right foot is the broken one. Mismatched shoes is actually a plus!
I ate a second ham croissant. It rivaled the ones I’ve had in France. (It wasn’t a croissant in the way they make them there. But it was delicious.)
We strolled through Madrid’s central plaza. We passed photos of gored bullfighters and Jimmy Carter.
I learned I could buy an apartment of the same cost and size as my future one in this square. I concluded I’d rather have mine.
Why do people prefer the artsy second city?
Melbourne over Sydney.
Barcelona over Madrid.
In both, I have a strong preference. In both, it’s the business hub.
I prefer places where real people are real. Where life isn’t a reflection or performance of itself. And in Madrid, the live music is more prevalent than in Barcelona.
Ten hours. Too-big, mismatched shoes.
Clown.
[Get the title? Squeaking? Like clown shoes? How they squeak?
Just to the left of my navel, I learn a truth. Not about facts or the world, but about how a topic feels to me I think this is what people mean when they say “follow your heart” or “speak from the heart”. It troubled me for many years — still does — because that place is not my heart. It’s at least five inches below my heart, and two to the outside.
We also advise “trust your gut”. Is the place I found not my heart but my gut? Am I misusing each location for its maximally effective purpose? Follow your heart in love; trust your gut in business?
After casting about for a writing theme a few days ago, a friend suggested I write as the ideal version of me would.
Hemingway says write the most true sentence. Then the next true sentence.
The truth is, I feel scared. Not all of me, but a good 80%. I’m pushing and shoving toward the biggest financial decision of my life. I’ve capped my downside risk at an acceptable amount. I’ve run the numbers by family and friends more risk-averse than me. The answer is go.
Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s action while in the presence of fear. In this case, it’s encircling the fear with my flabby squeezers and hugging it while I jump the two of us jump into an abyss. Most of the time, the bungee cord holds. Take a situation that would otherwise be frightening: if you add safety, it becomes thrilling.
The fear is not me. The fear is not anything. Both it and I are transient (that’s a pun). I see why people turn to religion in times of stress. God is what we call the experience of being healed. There’s something addictively reassuring – especially in our most fearful moments – in believing someone is looking out for you, sending positive outcomes your way.
Let us run then, you and I As the sun surmounts the sky The icy clovers frost with dew Let us dive then: me and you.
I fear nothing, though fear is present. Fear is my friend. I stand atop its shoulders. Together, our future rolls out a carpet to greet us.
In which Our Hero plants a seed so grass may grow.
For the last 7 years, I’ve known my next destination only upon leaving my current one. The farthest ahead of time that I bought a plane ticket was one month, and I ended up changing that flight. More often, I’m choosing the next place less than a week ahead of time.
In many ways, it’s magical:
Carrying everything I need on my back gives me complete self-sufficiency. Like a human turtle.
Traveling light became a necessity. A dear friend has a tattoo that says “Travel light.” A good policy.
I’ve learned to make friends quickly. When lost, I talk to strangers. When found, I do the same.
I’ve shared small moments that mattered: teaching a baby to use an airplane tray table; splitting mangosteen with a man in Laos.
Surprising reconnections: three people I knew in high school, all in northern Thailand. A man I met in Indonesia who later booked a room in my flat at clown school.
Humans are the same everywhere. Then again, culture is real.
In others, it’s tough:
Feeling unrooted. I’ve sacrificed depth for breadth. (Depth within breadth is its own type of depth. But it only goes so far.)
Insufficient community. The people you see every day or week are the people you build strong bonds with.
Lack of habit. I used to be a habitual person. Moving into a van really changes things. Selling the van without a new place to live changes things even more. It’s hard to eat your normal daily breakfast when the monastery you’re visiting fasts until noon.
Today I received the final document for my apartment purchase. I’d like to live there for a long time. I’d enjoy tacking my kids’ heights on the doorjamb until they eventually leave to find their own Laotian mangosteen.
The deal isn’t done yet, and then there’s still renovations, so I’m hesitant to get too excited.
In which… “something, something, cultural relativism. But definitely only a weak version of it.”
A while ago I wanted to play trivia at home with friends. I had stumbled upon a British trivia show that inspired this notion. We played together (i.e. watched the show while guessing along). The problem: we didn’t know the British popular culture.
I then went on a hunt for equivalent shows that we Americans might be able to enjoy. Ultimately, I arrived at… Jeopardy.
That’s right: I hunted around through around a dozen shows and ended up at the quintessential American trivia show.
Why?
Is the format familiar to me?
Is it coherent within my culture?
Does it have form that fits my expectations, simply because I was raised on it?
For a while now, I have been of the opinion that most human preferences are not real but learned. Your influential parent enjoys eating spicy food → you learn to enjoy spicy food. A leader of your country speaks with a lisp → people are still speaking with a lisp centuries later.
It really removes many beliefs about the meaning of “good”, doesn’t it?
Still, some things are clearly worse than others.
I’m reminded of a friend who concluded (after much analysis) that “good” simply means safe and “bad” means dangerous. (Both in roundabout ways.)
How do you branch out? How do you discover other good things? And when is it okay to go back to what you grew up with?
Tonight, my partner and I made enchilada casserole. She grew up eating it with green sauce and was hesitant to make it red. We ended up making two: one red, one green. It was a fun game to compare: the safety of the known alongside the adventure of the new. The verdict? Red won.
It’s fun to play games where even if you lose you win.
My team won at trivia. Thirty percent of trivia is assembling the right team. Thirty percent of trivia is knowing the right answers. Thirty percent of trivia is accurately knowing your knowledge. And the last thirty percent is knowing how to give 120%.
In the team-assembling category, my team excels at movies, science, games, literature, and mythology. We are weak at sports. This week, there was only one sports question rather than an entire sports section. That’s lucky.
In knowing the right answers, we performed strong. We missed only 6 of the 22 questions. While that might sound like a lot (it’s almost a third!), our big advantage is in the next point…
We know what we know. When one of my teammates says “I know this one”, we bet hard. Today’s trivia involves a point-wagering system: for each round of three questions, you assign one a small number of points, one a medium number, and one a large number. You submit your point wager when you submit the question, before you know what all the questions in the round are. So a team that gets only one third of the answers right can equal a team that gets two thirds of the answers right, so long as the first team assigns points correctly and the second does not.
And then there’s knowing how to give 120%. When we know the answer is “Mississippi mud [something]” and my team is waffling between Mississippi mudslide and Mississippi mud pie, Your Humble Narrator (in his acting role as Team Captain) submits the answer as “Mississippi mud (pie)”. Ergo, when the answer is revealed to be Mississippi mud *cake*, Our Hero’s team receives the point. (Deservedly? That’s not mine to judge; I’m just here to get points.) This gamesmanship also manifested in Your Hero’s tracking of the points (so as to note that we were shorted 2 points in the theme round, and then get those reinstated).
And I guess one final part: uniting people to a purpose. Trivia is not important. We’re fighting for a $30 giftcard when our table is spending twice that. This doesn’t matter.
At the grocery store to purchase oranges for non-alcoholic New Year’s mimosas, I tossed oranges toward my partner so she could catch them in the plastic bag. A simple game; a fun game; a game that hurts no one.
My partner caught the first one.
A store employee approached us.
My partner caught the second one.
The employee stood beside us, continuing to watch.
My partner missed the third one. (I shorted the toss.) She retrieved the orange and placed it in the bag.
“Could I ask you to do something?” the clerk said.
“Sure,” I replied, expecting him to tell us to stop. I had expected him to tell us to stop since the moment I saw him walking over.
“I had cataract surgery recently. Could you toss me one of those oranges? I want to see if I can catch it.”
“Sure,” I said. “Tell me when.”
“Now’s good.”
I tossed the orange. He caught it. His face released sunlight it had been holding back for years.
“I used to juggle three balls,” he said. “Not well, but I could keep ‘em in the air. Then cataracts got to me. It’s good to be back.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I didn’t want to ask a friend to toss me something. That would be too intimate. So I figured I’d ask a stranger.”
“Glad I could help.”
My partner and I returned to our toss-and-catch with the oranges. We purchased six pounds of oranges and drove home.
Too often, we stop playing out of fear that someone will tell us to stop, when all they wanted was to play along.
In which Our Hero remains visible without belonging.
Let’s talk about social place.
In 2018, I bought a van. My most formative non-familial relationship was ending, and I was on a personal journey.
I spent seven years seeking my place. Living in a van, driving around. My place had been shattered, my foundation upended. I sought the right group of people, the right social place.
I found the regional Burning Man community. Not the community at the big Burning Man festival itself, but the smaller independent organizations that circle the same principles. I found, perhaps for the first time, a community that accepted me and to which I wanted to contribute. I made art that touched people’s lives. Some of them still speak about it, 5+ years later.
I moved to New York City in search of a partner. Nearing 30, with my friends all partnering and beginning to spawn, my situation became one of “Is this a part of life you want to have? Because you can seek it later… but it’s much easier if you try now.” One woman broke my heart. I flew to Australia to write a play. Returning to New York a year later, I met my now-partner. Our first date was 11 days long. For our second date, we drove across the country together. She sublet her apartment, and joined me in nomadicness for the last 2 years.
I wonder sometimes about social place. I occupy an unusual position. Enough of a dilettante in most areas to be able to hold my own. Friendly and affable, generally found to be helpful, but without roots.
For most of my childhood, I had a single dedicated friend. Schoolwork was trivial; most of my fellow students I found uninteresting. I’ve left each major experience with some dedicated friends. And a host of pleasant acquaintances, too.
I’ve never really been a group guy. I have the sort of preference: “Instead of camping with your Burning Man group, how about I camp next to you and we hang out every day?”
If part of life is finding who you are and doing it on purpose,
at some point it’s worth accepting that I’ve never found a group to be home.
And probably never will.
Perhaps my belonging is episodic, relational, and lateral (not collective).
Today I drove in silence. My partner in the passenger seat, surrounded by calm empty space.
Usually I drive with music or a podcast. This drive was 3.5 hours.
For the first two hours, just being.
Once in a while adding a comment. Saying something. Mostly quiet.
It was nice.
—
It reminded me of some time spent on stage. The increased comfort that comes from increased experience. The greater ease that comes from an acceptance of emptiness.
I’m reminded of the idea variously attributed to Miles Davis and other musical greats: playing the spaces between the notes.
It’s pleasant to play the spaces between the notes.
It’s even more enjoyable to let the spaces between the notes play.
Today I delivered gifts to poor families. The town I’m in does a “Christmas effort”: you drive your car to a designated hub; they load in gifts and food; you deliver them to the address.
And once in a while, you see a child jump for joy.
Today, for a few seconds, I experienced that pleasure.
We delivered five boxes in total. Five families whose Christmas gifts and food, from shopping todelivery are provided by donors and volunteers. And by virtue of being at the end of the steps, I get the joy of seeing a 9 or 10 year old jumping up and down with glee.
If I didn’t see this, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. A friend’s friend’s mother volunteers for this organization as a shopper. That project is a puzzle. It’s trying to answer questions like “what would X person want for Christmas” where the only information you’re given is “12 year old”, “boy”, and “speaks only Spanish” and then you’re limited to the piles of gifts that have been donated. The puzzle might be engaging, but it’s not as visceral. You get pleasure from knowing you’re helping.
I got pleasure from seeing the boy happy.
Comparatively, I did little work. The organization’s coordinators. the financial donors, the shoppers, the wrappers: all did more to actually help than I did. I’m just the last mile. Yet I get that actual, real-time pleasure.
It’s a funny trait consistent in many areas: those who are on the ground, at the end, being the boots: you see the people, you get the experience. But the people before have much more impact. (As a simple comparison: what if we were to pay people to do each bit? Shopping for the gifts $50; the gifts themselves cost $100; organizing a team even more. But replacing me with an Uber would be only ~$10.)
The upstream people must be driven by some internal elements instead. By a rich imagination? A strong internal model? A complete lack of presence.
A clown exists in the moment. By (at least my school’s) definition, they interact with the audience in real time. How much is planned? Sometimes a lot. But the interaction itself is live and present.
I wonder if people enjoy different elements. Not everyone wants to perform. Some wish to be agents or producers. Some care enough about the organization or the mission to rise in the ranks.
I think that’s it. Those who care enough – for whatever reason – are willing to undergo the effort to achieve the outcome. And the effort includes leadership, struggle, and trials.
Find what you care about. Dive into it. Give to others.
Over eight years living nomadically, internationally, on the road, I’ve sought my people. I’ve historically found them few and far between. But those who I do like, I adore. Is it a genetic difference? A difference in interests? An unusual focus? Are they just the right kind of autistic? For whatever reason, they’re eccentric and have impactful ideas. We dive deep into our areas and share our experiences. We see ourselves and the world as porous interactions. I contribute to their lives and they to mine.
