Mach Zandy Road Trip Part 1: Kentucky – Niagara – New England

Ordered thematically rather than chronologically, below are some thoughts and observations during my recent travels with my wife:

Music: Bourbon and Beyond, Louder than Life, and Explosions in the Sky

One thing I missed most while living abroad during Covid was access to live music—at least live music that went beyond local cover bands, so I committed us to a massive dose of it early on in our trip in the form of a few festivals.  I learned several things while doing so:

1) Prices in America for events like this are insane—not so much the entry tickets themselves (which are high but reasonably so given the number of bands you get to see at these festivals), but rather food, drink, and hotel stays.  Even budget hotels cease to be too budget-friendly if a major event is going on.  

2) People can and will wear almost anything at a music festival; the people watching was almost as fun as the concerts themselves.  A few examples of the attire (or lack thereof) included women with varied exposed body parts, a crowd-surfer in a full unicorn costume, multiple cape-wearing individuals, a man wearing an electronic sign on his head with a ticker running across it that said “Fuck Limp Bizkit,” and all sorts of varyingly comical and vulgar slogans such as a hat that read “Mama tried” and a whole fundraising line of merchandise proclaiming “Fuck cancer.”

3) Live music all day is still really fun in my mid-30’s.

4) I get tired much more easily than in my mid-20’s.  

5) Folksy bands often have the best performances; in this case I’m thinking of Old Crow Medicine Show and Flogging Molly.  Each was filled with so much liveliness and crowd interaction, and you could just tell they loved doing what they were doing.  

6) Most people, even metal-heads in mosh pits wearing death-themed attire, are actually pretty nice and easy to get along with individually.  

I also already knew that several bands were good, and they lived up to that perception.  These included amongst others Green Day, Foo Fighters, Tool, AWOL Nation, The Black Keys, and Explosions in the Sky, the latter of which we saw individually outside of the festivals.  

Friends and Reunions 

We had the good fortune to be able to spend time with Mandy’s college friends in Murray, KY from when she studied abroad as well as some of my college friends living up in Boston and Salem.  It was so nice in that time to…

A) be able to still connect on the same level with everyone even after much time had passed;

B) meet the friends of my spouse and be welcomed like family.  I felt right at home in my first visit to Murray, KY so much so that I started to think small town life might even be for me despite having lived in big cities for the last 10 years.  The people are super friendly, with many of them actually being friends and many more behaving that way even when meeting someone for the first time. Prices are cheaper than elsewhere.  Ethnic food is present to a surprising degree and quality.  When I was told I could make myself at home, I actually believed it and felt comfortable doing so.  And I went to a high school soccer game that was much more exciting and contentious than many pro games I’ve watched; 

C) and see old friends thriving in new ways.  My Boston pal, for instance, is fully and embracing his nerdy side which I knew about and cultivating a more artistic side that I didn’t know existed.  My Salem friend and former roommate is now raising a family while still pursuing work that’s in line with her humanitarian ideals.   

In short, it feels both good and worthwhile for the soul to make an effort to maintain connections from the past as well as to form new ones for the future.  As an old friend that I have sadly fallen out of touch with once told me, “There is no such thing as having too many positive relationships.”  

Nature

We’ve spent much more time in nature than we usually do, and in the following places/ways:

1) Niagara Falls is both a waterfall and the city it’s adjacent to, and it’s worth the visit for a day or two.  The falls are powerful as well as beautiful, and it’s a lot of fun to stand at the front of a boat being surrounded, blasted, drenched.  Everyone told me beforehand to go to the Canada side, and they were right.  You can take a boat from either side, but the view is much better from Canada.  There are multiple hotels that have rooms with a view of the falls, including ours which was called Four Points by Sheraton, and the rate there was quite reasonable compared to other things we’ve seen.  We paid about the same for a large falls-view room there as we did for an attic with a shared bathroom in Boston or a budget room in Louisville.  The town is very much a tourist town, so lots of entertainment and restaurant options.  Those can be quite pricy, but our hotel did give us a whole bunch of discount vouchers when we checked in.  Not sure if that’s common practice or if it’s because we went during a slow season.  

2) We went whale-watching out of the Boston harbor, and it was a lot like watching baseball: mostly nothing happens, but it’s very exciting when something does.  We saw two humpback whales, which is fewer than desired, but the company did offer us vouchers to come back again for free.  I think as long as you like being on boats, it’s a pleasant experience even if you don’t see many whales.  However, if you’re prone to seasickness or you’re not sure if you are, be wary: there was a lot of vomiting on our journey.  

3) Camping was a new experience for us both.  We’d each done it a little, but always with someone more experienced, so really this was our first time taking full responsibility for finding the campsites, bringing the right supplies, setting up the tent, building the fire, etc.  There were some setbacks; we didn’t for example, bring a lid for our cookware and so we didn’t know how to make food on a fire without getting ash in the food.  As a result, we mostly ate food requiring little preparation, and we occasionally went to restaurants.  Mandy also didn’t realize how loop roads worked, so when I wasn’t with her, she took an excessively long time to walk out of our campsite by walking around ALL of the other campsites instead of straight to the main road.  Otherwise, the experience was great. In particular, it’s amazing how long you can just sit around watching a fire and be completely content.  

4) Acadia National Park was beautiful; we went at the beginning of leaf-peeping season, so the red and yellow leaves were starting to emerge from the green.  The whole park is on an island also, so you get this great combination of landscapes: seaside, mountain, forest, and even some marshland.  I was surprised at how spread out the park is also with pockets of parkland interspersed with pockets of civilization.  The main in-park campground is called Blackwoods, but it was fully booked up, so we stayed at the Seawall campground and had to drive over to where most of the hiking was.  There’s a quaint town called Bar Harbor between the two that’s worth a visit; I imagine people not inclined to camp might just stay at an inn there also.

5) White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire was our last major nature stop; here we went on a 7-hour hike up and down Mount Washington, which is notorious for its fast-changing weather.  Sure enough, by the time we were reaching the summit, a thick fog had descended, and during our descent, we got hit by some increasingly steady rainfall.  It was a fairly challenging climb, in a mostly fun and occasionally scary way—scary because of the weather and fun because it actually involved climbing, which is to say rather than walking up a series of switchbacks you actually have to scramble over and pull yourself up rocks of all sizes and shapes.  

Food

We often just cooked for ourselves or munched on fruits and nuts, but when we did go out, we had some good stuff.  In particular I want to give a shout-out to the state of Maine, where I went 3 for 3 on delicious food.  The best by far was a full lobster dinner acquired behind a gas station near Acadia at a little place called Island Take Out.  It included the entire animal cooked to perfection alongside a bunch of potatoes, sausage, and corn—and all of it in a kind of jerk-butter sauce, with extra sauce on the side.  Also good were some lobster tacos at a place called Testa in Bar Harbor and giant sandwiches at Big G’s Deli in Winslow, which we stopped at on our way between Acadia National Park and White Mountain Forest.  

Accommodation

I’ve talked about this a little already, but I want to mention some of the more unique places we stayed that weren’t quite hotels or hostels or traditional campsites.  The USA doesn’t really seem to do hostels the way many other countries do; however, there are several hostel-like options we are discovering.  One, which we did in Boston and Hartford, occurs when someone takes a normal house and then divides it up into separate rooms with shared bathrooms and/or kitchen spaces and then calls it an inn.  These are a decent way to save some money, but they’re a gamble that really depends on the neighbors you get.  Our Hartford neighbors were great… Boston not so much.  Another option good for novice campers like us occurs when farm-owners lease out their land for camping purposes.  It’s not free, but it’s much cheaper than a hotel and you can have some amenities like a shower or potable drinking water that you won’t get with a more on-the-trail sort of camp.  

Discoveries 

We aren’t always the greatest planners, preferring as often as not to live in the moment, and sometimes as a result we discover some cool and unexpected experiences:

1) While on the road through Vermont, a rest stop advertised a place called Artisans Park in Windsor.  We went there and had two cool experiences.  One was a jam shop where you are encouraged to sample pretty much everything.  They had a variety of unique jams that ranged from traditional berry flavors to more unique options like ginger, French onion, and jalapeño. The other experience was “the path of life,” a sort of thematic sculpture garden that included a hedge maze representing the navigation of one’s adolescent adventures and a labyrinth representing a quest for enlightenment in one’s later years.  

2) In Hartford, CT, the Parkville Market which we happened to be staying near offers a series of food vendors offering food from a range of cultures.  They were having an Octoberfest celebration on the weekend of our stay, and as a result we ended up taking part in a stein-hoisting competition where you had to hold a full one-liter beer stein straight out in front of you for as long as you could.  Mandy made it about a minute, out-lasting a couple of the other women, and I made it about three and half minutes, putting me in the middle of the pack amongst the men.  

3) I’ve been surprised about just how many Spanish speakers we have come across all over the place, having visited several businesses such as grocery stores where the entire staff seems to be communicating primarily in Spanish.  It is refreshing to be reminded of how diverse a place America is.  

4) We did plan to go to Salem, MA, but it was still fun to discover while there just how much they have leaned into the part of their identity associated with the notorious witch trials of 1692.  For the entire month of October, we learned, the city becomes a massive tourist destination with all sorts of witch-related museums, haunted houses, and crafts markets.  We aren’t super into the occult ourselves, so we were also pleased to be able to take a break from all of that at a pretty solid museum there called the Peabody-Essex Museum or P.E.M. for short.  

If you’ve read this far, I’m glad you are interested.  I’ll stop there for now, but you can expect further posts every few weeks to a month.  The next leg will take us through the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh where I’ll be visiting old friends, going to some shows, and getting nostalgic about my college experiences.  

Hitting the Play Button on Life Again

 Well I haven't written on this blog for about 5 years for a whole host of reasons.  For much of 2018 and 2019 I was extremely bored and burnt out on my job and therefore not inspired to write; to make matters worse, my father died in that same time period, adding sadness and loss to the existing boredom and lack of inspiration.  The summers of those years were the exact opposite with a whirlwind of excitement including getting engaged in 2018, getting married in 2019, and traveling to such destinations as Mexico, Spain, Portugal, and Japan as well as home country destinations like Vegas and the Grand Canyon.  

Then 2020-2022 saw us hit with the Coronavirus Pandemic, and life for a lot of people was put on pause in one form or another.  For many, that meant working and/or studying at home and online.  Traveling was reduced.  Friends and family saw each other less.  It seemed like a lot of people started marrying and having kids out of boredom, but it could just be that I'm at that age when people naturally do those things anyway.  Regardless of reason, many friends became less regular in their visits into my life, which for 3 years followed an incredibly steady routine that consisted mostly of 6 things in descending order of frequency: working, sleeping, drinking, video games, board games, and football.  

A steady routine, in my experience, is the enemy of inspired writing... unless of course writing itself is a part of that routine.  Sadly, though, I did not prioritize this.  When you do the same things every day or every week or every year, things stop feeling noteworthy.  When people stop seeing each other in person, they start posting a lot more online... to the point where it can seem overwhelming to a casual user like me.  So the explosion of online activity from others was overwhelming, my own frequency of needing to work online was increasing, and the amount of novelty in life was decreasing; for these reasons I stopped writing almost entirely.

Now it is 2023, and China, my home of the past 9 years, has finally lifted the increasingly annoying restrictions related to Covid-- and life feels like it can resume freely.  Opportunities and possibilities abound.  I am planning a long-term sabbatical to travel and see friends and family, while also seeing if we can't get my wife immigrated.  In that time, it is my hope that I will become much more regular in my writing and reflection.  Perhaps my wife and I will even start up some sort of video channel/travelogue about road tripping, international travel, multicultural relationships, language learning, or immigration.  A lot of excitement lies ahead... preceded by a lot of work preparing.  

I am hitting the play button on life again.  

How Hard It Is to Platonically Club

As a rule, I don’t generally like nightclubs.  They always strike me as overpriced and kind of shady.  The staff rarely strike me as friendly.  The atmosphere rarely strikes me as comfortable.  I rarely know the songs being played.  I can have fun dancing for short increments, but eventually someone steals my drink or all of the songs start running repetitively together or a weird/creepy/drunk stranger makes things awkward.  

But clubs are really good at expediting a 3-step process of drinking —> dancing —> hooking up with someone.  For this reason, no matter how or why I’ve found myself there, a nightclub always seems to carry this sexual charge, these erotic shades of meaning. Every time I interact with someone new, I wonder whether the meaning behind the interaction is the same for both of us.  Do we want the same thing?  Do we want anything?  

I was out with some newly acquired travel friends (known for 2-5 days) the other night, and we found ourselves at a club— the type of place where it is acceptable to jump up on a table and start dancing— which is what we did.  And it was fun as hell… for a while.  But my usual dance partner— my girlfriend— was not present, which means (if I’m a mostly decent person who doesn’t cheat, which I am) that I was platonically clubbing.  This is a seldom discussed concept, one that the internet has not devoted much time to.  What does it feel like to go to such a sexually charged atmosphere knowing that no sex will come of it?  

It feels confusing.  You’re out with friends, and you’re spending money, so you want to have a good time.  But exactly where is the line between a good time and a morally questionable one?  Is it fine to dance with people who aren’t your girlfriend?  I think so.  What about really close dancing?  Less sure.  What about close dancing with someone you do find rather attractive?  Or someone who feels that way about you?  What happens if you’re just dancing for the sake of dancing, but your dance partner interprets it as a romantic advance?  

Perhaps you’re thinking that you should simply be a mature adult and communicate your situation clearly.  If so, you’re probably right except for one thing.  Alcohol.  It affects communication, blurs it, rubs down its edges.  What happens if someone who’s drinking becomes attracted to you and will not take no for an answer?  What happens if you drink enough that you start leading them on without realizing it?  I mentioned some of these ideas to one guy whose response was, “Just don’t put it in anyone and you’ll be fine.”  I think it’s more complicated than that, but maybe I’m just thinking too much.  

In any case, night clubs make me feel awkward.  They are fun in small doses with the right people, but I always hit a limit where I no longer want to drink or dance, and I never wanted to hook up in the first place (although the atmosphere brings this notion to mind)… which makes for a very lonely and boring club experience.  So I leave.  

It is hard to platonically club.

Boys and Men

        A boy walks alone at night in the summer heat.  He is crying and singing "Here I Am Lord."  He is full of inspiration, devotion, faith, innocence, loneliness, and confusion.  He wants to do great things in this world but wants for direction.  

A man gets home from work and makes a cocktail, then plays video games for 2 hours, enjoying another cocktail or two along the way.  He is not overly stressed, thoughtful, lonely, or ashamed.  He simply wants to give his brain some rest and enter a fantasy world crafted by others.  

A boy realizes too late that he has feelings for a girl.  She is blond and smiles a lot and is smart and seems to care for others.  She seems to like him, but he isn’t paying attention.  She will go on to form relationships in a seemingly continuous chain until finally marrying and mothering.  He will go another 10 years before entering a real relationship.  

A man patiently endures the verbal abuse of a maladjusted boy because he does have kindness and patience in his heart but also because it is his job to do so.  The boy might feel that he doesn’t belong in the group home in which he’s found himself or that he’s been punished unfairly or that the man doesn’t really care and is only there for the money.  The man knows this latter sentiment is ridiculous because the money is crap, but he understands the rest.  

A boy is having a panic attack.  His stomach hurts.  He’s left the classroom to go to the bathroom multiple times already.  He’s sweating.  His heart is pounding.  He forces himself to breathe deeply and count.  He thinks of songs that contain the lyric, “everything is gonna be alright.”  In this moment, there is nothing in particular he’s afraid of— only his own anxiety.  It’s a vicious cycle, as they say, because his fear and anxiety cause each other.  

A man goes to a therapist while attending grad school because it costs no money to do so and he’s been less happy than average with less sleep than average lately.  He talks about his childhood with a stranger and cries in front of her.  It is a strangely liberating experience just to talk about these things.  Minimal advice is given.  No drugs are prescribed.  Meditation classes are suggested.  But mostly the man just talks, the therapist listens, and it helps.  

A boy attends the funeral of his grandfather.  He cries a lot, especially when they sing "On Eagles Wings."  His stomach hurts and he has to leave to find a bathroom in the middle of the service.  It is his first real encounter with death and tragedy.  What will the next family gathering be like without grandpa around?  It all feels so sudden and overwhelming and unfair.  

A man attends the funeral of his grandfather.  He has become accustomed to the inevitability of this event for some time as he has watched his grandfather deteriorate over the last several years, not always recognizing each of his grandchildren as such.  He handles things mostly stoically, hugging the right people at the right time, realizing that his role here is a supportive one.  He does tear up when they play "Taps," slowly and sadly, on the trumpet.  

A boy attends the wedding of his cousin.  He does not know most of the people there, but he knows his other cousins, and they are all at a table together.  It feels kind of awkward because they only see each other a couple times a year.  Conversation moves in fits and starts.  But the venue itself is rather large, and there are disposable cameras on all the tables.  The boy finds great fun in becoming an impromptu wedding photographer, though few of his photos are of any of the major players in the wedding.  He and another cousin mostly just photograph each other and explore the old building.

A man attends the wedding of a college friend.  He does not know most of the people there, but everyone at his table is young and attractive, and it is great fun to be flirtatious and conversationally explore the lives of others.  He drinks.  He dances.  Pictures are posted online.  People “like” this.

A boy one rainy day decides to build little rivers within the sands of a muddy volleyball court.  He finds great fulfillment connecting bodies of water, finding paths, feeling the mud between his fingers.  On another day, he and a friend dam up a creak to see how effectively they can stop flow.  The work is sweatier but still fulfilling, still challenging.  

A man sits in an airport sometimes watching people go by, sometimes occupying himself with writing, sometimes trying to plan lessons to be taught at a later date, and sometimes simply tilting his head whilst pinching his sore eyes with his thumb and forefinger.  He is wishing, not for the first time, that he wasn’t traveling alone.  

A boy anticipates Christmas morning with joy in his heart.  He wakes up excited and goes downstairs to find a pile of presents under the tree where yesterday was maybe one or two presents.  

A man wakes up on Christmas mildly hungover and wonders whether his gifts will be enjoyed or whether he truly has little idea about the interests and desires of the people he loves.  

A boy is horny as all hell.  Everything turns him on: clothing catalogues, lotion commercials, someone giving him attention, the feeling of a blanket on his skin…

A man is tired as hell.  New things start to make him happy: sleeping in past sunrise, having no plans for a whole Sunday, staff meetings being cancelled…

A boy wonders what will happen.

A man wonders what has happened.  

Belated 2015-2016 Reading List

Hi folks,

If you're looking for new things to read, I'm here to share the things I've been reading.  I'll start with the things I most highly recommend, but that will be followed by everything in case our tastes don't quite align but you just need some ideas.

Top Recommendations (in no particular order):

1) Different Seasons by Stephen King: 4-part collection of novellas, 3 of which were made into the movies The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, and Stand by Me.  Just really compelling, solid story-telling with a weirder 4th story-within-a-story at the end.  The characters are so well-developed that they feel relatable, even though many of them are not.

2) The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling: not a Harry Potter book!  This is a story of small-town politics as well as teen angst.  Lots of different characters all developed pretty well.  There are one or two that are just meant to be hated, but most are imperfect and realistic.

3) Fall of Giants by Ken Follett: part 1 (and the best installment) of a trilogy that spans the 20th century.  It's a giant book that centers around World War 1 with a good bit about women's suffrage as well.  Again lots of characters and lots of opportunity to learn about history while also being entertained.

4) Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner: a short, nonfictional collection of observations and research about out-side-the-box problem solving that uses a lot of real-world examples that make it very entertaining rather than overly theoretical.  By the same guys that wrote Freakonomics.

5) The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson: There are two storylines: the present tense story of an old guy on the run with a stolen bag of money and the past tense story of the rest of the guy's life.  It reminded me a lot of Forrest Gump in that the man just finds himself in an absurd number of history-affecting circumstances-- and it is just as entertaining as Forrest Gump as well.

6) Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: This one is a bit dryer, but it's worth it.  It's a nonfictional exploration that looks at the development of human civilization to explain why certain groups of people became powerful while others did not.  It is very educational and is also useful in dissolving a lot of myths about the superiority of any given race or nation.

7) A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman: This is a rare focus on a curmudgeon of a main character-- that guy who just always seems dissatisfied with everything... and it somehow makes you really empathize with him.  It's the kind of book that sneaks up on you in a great way.



The Rest of my Reads (in no particular order):  Most of them are worth a shot, unless I say otherwise.

8) The Case for Reincarnation by J. Allan Danelek: a brief look at the beliefs held about spiritual reincarnation.  Interesting but hard to take too seriously as much of it is speculation.  However, there are some accounts of people who seem to accurately remember past lives, which is quite compelling.
9) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros: a series of vignettes about growing up in a Latino community in Chicago.

10) The Dark Volume by G.W. Dahlquist, lengthy sequel to the thrilling Glass Books of the Dream Eaters.  Unfortunately it falls short.  The villains are less compelling, the mystery is less compelling, and the ending is extremely dissatisfying.

11) Why I Write by George Orwell: a collection of essays

12) The Hatchet by Gary Paulsen: story of a boy who crash-lands in the Canadian wilderness and must survive on his own.

13) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Classic tale of a man who stays young by having a portrait age for him and collect all his sins.  It felt like my version was incomplete because it seems like almost nothing happens in the story.  I was like, "Did China censor the story?"  There are some compelling philosophies, but there are also many parts that drag.

14) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami: I remember liking this one a lot, but I didn't put it above because I couldn't remember many details.  It's about a guy who's in love with a girl who's kind of crazy.  I think I liked it because it has the quirky characters Murakami is known for but a more realistic story and setting than he is known for.

15) Winter of the World by Ken Follett: part two of the Century Trilogy, it focuses on WW2.  I enjoyed it, but was sad to see many of the characters from book 1 older and less important.  It was also less educational because I knew more about WW2 than I did about WW1.  However, the new characters are still pretty compelling, most of them being the children of the 1st book's characters.

16) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami: possibly Murakami's most famous work, but a weird combo of off-the-wall things happening in juxtaposition with really boring almost-nothing happening.  It was quite jarring, and the meaning is hard to pin down, but there's a lot there to unpack if you want to try.

17) Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett: 3rd book in the Century Trilogy, centered mostly on the fight for civil rights.  I would not recommend reading this one.  It stretches on for the longest amount of time in terms of both the physical length of the book and the in-story time.  The characters are not compelling enough to make you want to read for that long.

18) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: creative work of fiction that is told from the perspective of an autistic boy (though the text never directly says he's autistic).  It's really interesting to read about something that seems very abnormal from the perspective of someone for whom it is normal.

19)  Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut:  as with many Vonnegut works, it's hard to really summarize exactly what this is about.  Basically it tells you that the main character is going to lose his mind, and then it takes you through the few days leading up to this happening.

20) Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan: a lengthy fictional look at the same spirit being reincarnated into different animals throughout the history of the Communist Revolution and then the reign of Mao Zedong in China.  I loved the initial donkey section, but then the narrative perspective changes and starts alternating between sections, which I found off-putting because I liked the second narrator a lot less.

21) The Complete Short Stories of Roald Dahl, volume 1: unlike his most famous works, these are not children's stories.  A large number of them focus on war, specifically fighter pilots.  His style is quite compelling.

22) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: lots of stuff to unpack, and maybe one of the greatest fictional works of all time, but the reasons for this status are becoming less relevant, in my opinion.  I wrote an in-depth post about it last year, if you wish to look in my archive.

23) Unwind by Neal Shusterman: young adult dystopian novel where abortion is illegal... until the child is 13, and then parents can elect to have them "unwound," which basically means they are cut up and all their parts are used to heal wounded and sick people.

24) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: the story of two competing magicians whose competition occurs in the context of a circus over the course of many years.  Lots of magical, poetic passages, but I found myself not really believing the motivation of the two characters to participate in this life dominating competition with almost no information from the men who compelled them to be in it.  I much preferred the side stories about people who were inspired and drawn in by the magic of the circus.

25) The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe:  a memoir of the last parts of the writer's mother's life and their time spent discussing books and life.  Lots of good thoughts about outlook, meaning, and of course books.  Although I must admit I have only been compelled to read one book from their list so far.

26) Watership Down by Richard Adams:  It's about bunnies!  Bunnies travelling all over the place to try and create a new home.  It's an adventure so lots of stuff about leadership, friendship, trust, and risk.

27)  The Fault in Our Stars by John Green: sort of a love story, but not quite... it's more about having cancer (or some other equally massive problem) and still living your life anyway.

28) Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks: lots of thoughts on childhood, autism, and loneliness told from the perspective of an autistic boy's imaginary friend.  Halfway through it becomes a mystery, and then later an adventure.

29) Six Years by Harlan Coben: mystery thriller about a guy who falls in love and is unceremoniously and without explanation left for another man.  Six years later, that other man dies, and our main character decides to look the girl up... but she's nowhere to be found!  What to do?

That's it, folks.  You may notice that this two-year list is a similar length to past 1-year lists.  And you may think that I'm getting lazy with my reading.  And I will say to you that at least 8 of these books were quite long, so give me a break!

Anyway... try something out.  Happy reading.

When You Travel Alone

When you travel alone, you will find yourself going through a range of experiences and emotions.  Depending on the makeup of your personality, your age, and your travel experiences thus far, you could experience them in any order and in any level of extremity.  But you will likely experience them all at one time another on any given trip of substantiality.  

You can expect to feel some anxiety, maybe even fear.  “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” you may ask.  “What am I doing here?  How did the chain of cause and effect result in this random outcome?”  This line of thinking is the almost inevitable result of going outside your own comfort zone.  Some people feel it in a somewhat darkly humorous way, a mild masochism where they are able to observe their own discomfort and find amusement in it.  Others may feel borderline paralysis, the feeling that they have jumped into the deep end of the pool without being able to swim.  Some may feel they are somewhere between these two.  Some may go back and forth between the extremes.  I know because I have felt all of these things, on different trips, at different times.  

You can also expect to feel intense joy at the novelty of it all, the discovery that there is so much out there in the world, that so much of it can be so different from your past experience and so beautiful-- not necessarily beautiful because it is so different, just beautiful in its own right.  And the fact that you can see both beauty in your own life and in the lives of those so completely alien to you gives you a sense of prideful accomplishment and wonder regarding all the yet undiscovered beauties that this world might have to offer.  

You will likely experience intense loneliness.  You will miss those people whom you love and who have not come with you.  You will want to call them, Skype them, Facebook message them, write blogs for them.  Some of this is because you simply want them around.  They are important to you because they care about you and because you care about them.  Life is just better when they are around.  But some of this loneliness comes from other places.  It comes from not having talked to anyone for longer than usual and just really really needing to speak.  It comes from talking to others but not about anything of substance, perhaps from having the same small talk conversation three or four or five times in a row.  It comes as a result of a fresh connection with our own weird individuality which it is very easy to ignore when surrounded by those we know, but which comes out guns blazing in the absence of strong outside influence.  It can come from being misunderstood.  It can come from realizing that you’ve misunderstood yourself or some other part of the world.  It can come from discovering and understanding something new about yourself.  Regardless of the source, you are likely to experience or re-experience your individuality in a fairly intense and aching way.  

If you are single, you are likely to feel excitement and arousal towards others of your sexual orientation-- countless thrilling possibilities and/or successes and/or frustrations that may result from these feelings.  Be it positive or negative, you can expect an extra charge to things that is not there in everyday life and that makes you more alive than on your average day.  

If you are in a relationship, you could feel that aforementioned loneliness at being separated from them, perhaps guilt for having left them, perhaps resentment for them not having come with you.  You may feel the aforementioned pride and sense of self at being your own person, a ME instead of half of a WE.  You could feel incredibly secure in meeting new people-- able to do and say anything because you know you have someone who loves and supports you, so you don’t need the approval of anyone new.  Their approval is nice of course, but you do not need it.    

You could instead feel tempted, desiring of others, and yet restricted from giving yourself fully to an experience with them, held back by your existing devotions.  

You will most certainly feel empowerment in your ability to handle yourself out there in new circumstances with people you don’t know, languages you don’t understand, and places you’ve never been.  The successful navigations.  The conversations you understood with foreigners, however basic the topics may have been.  Perhaps amazement at how easy it sometimes seems for this world to feel and be meaningfully, usefully connected.  Is it really this easy?  Are you just more capable than most?  Are you luckier than most?  Is this world really this nice?  Are people really this kind?  Whatever the answers to these questions, you will likely feel more able than you did before.

You may feel insecure, perhaps not wanting to speak to locals as a result of either the embarrassment of not knowing their language or fear of being taken advantage of -- or perhaps not wanting to speak to fellow travelers for fear of revealing your own loneliness or a comparative lack in experience and understanding.  

Or perhaps you’ll feel the opposite-- that you are more experienced and understanding.  This may make you look down upon these others and feel that to talk with them might be a waste of your time.  Or it might make you eager to share what you know and help others to see the beauty that you yourself have seen in this world.  How you feel and act is largely your choice. 

You will likely feel free to a rare degree: no job to prepare for, no people to see, no chores to complete.  You do not need to consider anyone else’s opinions when planning your day.  You do not even need to plan your day.  You can be yourself.  You can be someone else.  You can be several someones in different circumstances at different times.  You can find the time to do those things that are so easily put off until later because of the pressures of every day life, those self-growth type things like writing or meditating or reading or traveling itself-- which is more than anything a physical embodiment of our striving to grow through experience.

You might feel bored.  There is only so much time you can spend reading museum displays, walking around cool places, and taking photographs  (or doing anything, really) before it becomes tedious.  If you sense this boredom coming on, there are two healthy reactions.  One is to change it up.  Do something completely different to keep things varied and stimulating.  One of my favorite change-ups is going to a cultural show of some kind.  Some people try unique sporting activities.  You’ll still feel very tired afterward, but in a good way.  The other reaction is to simply rest and do something normal, typical.  Have a coffee and surf Facebook.  Go back to your room and lay down.  Have a beer and chat up the bartender.  Do one of the self-growth things mentioned before.  Mine is writing.  

You will likely feel irritation with someone.  

You will likely feel grateful toward someone.  

You will likely feel ripped off in some exchange.

You will likely feel like you got a bargain in some exchange.

You may at times feel strong, spiritually tapped in, even all-powerful-- the stallion that mounts the world.  You may also feel overwhelmed and insignificant- a speck in the great scheme of things.  But excluding adolescence and some key highs and lows of life, lone travel is something that best gives rise to new feelings and thoughts, whatever forms they may come in.  

So expect to feel and think.

Lessons from the Concentration Camp

        I spent some time at the Sauchsenhausen Concentration Camp outside Berlin, and I was amazed at how freshly the Holocaust can hit you, no matter how much you have learned about it already.  Two things stuck with me in particular. 

The first came early on when our tour guide gave us some background knowledge on exactly how someone like Hitler or Mussolini was able to come to power.  The guide was a gifted speaker, his rhetoric was poetic in its parallelism which consisted of a sequence of descriptions that always began, “A fascist will...”  And the thing that struck me most about this description (and it is possible that it was intended this way) was that nearly everything that was said could also have been applied to talk about how Trump has recently come to power.  

For example: a fascist will contradict himself.  Mussolini would make speeches to farmers about how the people in the cities were living like kings while the farmers did all the hard work and had nothing.  Then he would go to the cities and talk to factory workers about how people in the country were living like kings while the factory workers were doing all that hard labor and had nothing.  And as a result he gained widespread support-- because everyone felt like he understood and spoke for them, but he didn’t speak for them.  He said what he thought they wanted to hear.   

And you may think that, yeah, that could have worked back then, but now we have smart phones, mass media, and the internet-- so if someone contradicts himself, everyone will know and that person won’t be able to do what the fascists of the past were able to do.  But you would not be right about this because people still hear what they want to hear.  They latch on and identify with ideas that resonate with them, and once this happens they are willing to overlook everything else.  Yeah, Hitler says the Jews are bad, they might think, but Hitler doesn’t mean Jews like my friend David.  He means those other bad Jews.  Yeah, he imprisons political threats, I guess, (shrug) but he’s going to make Germany great again!

       

       These last four words, by the way, were one of Hitler’s political slogans, because a fascist uses nationalism to his advantage.  He uses ideas of large-scale pride and change to get people on his side.  Your average voter is not politically savvy.  They simply want somebody they can identify with, someone who seems to tell it straight.  They do not want to listen to some intellectual outline in detail a specific plan and the research backing it up.  They can’t identify with this intellectual.  They want the guy that speaks their language.   

        

The second thing which has stuck with me (very much related to the first) was how things escalated to such an extreme where tens of thousands of German people were willingly contributing to the horrific acts that occurred. It’s easy to blame the leaders, but they were not able to do what they did without a lot of people going along with them.  How did Germany go from being a strong nation contributing on many levels to the development of the world before 1915 to a less strong but still proud country by 1925 to a broken country where a guy like Hitler is gaining popularity in 1935, to the mass-murdering enemy of much of the world by 1945?

In summary, Germany got screwed by the combined results of World War 1 and the Great Depression, which allowed a persuasive speaker like Hitler to get a following.  Because people listened to him (and because people were so anti-Communist) they allowed him into a position of power knowing he had extreme ideas because, hey, at least he wasn’t a Communist.  Hitler than recruited the police and the military to his side and got them to eliminate all of his political opposition.  These police and military men made other people so afraid that more and more people became informants and/or joined the Nazi party simply to try and avoid being considered a political threat themselves.

Hitler also rewarded extreme ideas in his leaders, which understandably resulted in those leaders seeking further extremes in order to gain favor themselves.  This encouragement of selfish thinking was dangerous. 

More dangerous (and ingenious in some ways) was the diffusion of responsibility that enabled the mass murders of the Holocaust.  It started out with Nazis simply being ordered to shoot people en masse.  After a while, Himmler recognized that this was having a negative psychological impact on the soldiers doing the shooting.  Only after that did they start using things like gas chambers.  The idea was to divide up the responsibility of the mass murders so that no one felt individually like a murderer.  If a bunch of people were to be suffocated with exhaust fumes, one soldier would put the people in the van.  Another would connect the exhaust pipe to the interior.  And a third would actually drive the van around.  If people were to be individually and unknowingly executed, one man would lead them into a room.  A man in a different room would press a button causing death without seeing it.  Then another man would come dispose of the bodies.  The Nazis were able to do this much more easily and with less psychological downside for them. 

And the mass murders were not always part of the plan.  It got to that point in phases.  It started out mainly as imprisonment and isolation of people who were considered political threats.  Then it was realized that all these people could be economically useful (in the form of free labor) and so they were inhumanely exploited.  This stepping stone of less humane treatment combined with Hitler’s strong personality-based leadership combined with the war turning against the Nazis in the last few years all made it easier for the mass murders to take place.

Something the Germans have really taken to heart, which I’ve seen in museums and on tours, is the idea of learning from the mistakes of the past.  They do not try to cover up or deny any of the awful things that happened here less than a century ago.  Other countries (and I’m thinking especially of China and the U.S.A. right now) would do well to have a more similar mindset.  China still censors its people in many ways and it is taboo to talk in detail about any of the questionable acts that have happened during and since the Communist revolution.  Americans and their politicians frequently make short-sighted decisions using incomplete reasoning as support for these decisions in addition to downplaying their overly domineering military presence in the world both past and present.  

It is easy and common for people to still associate Germany with Nazism, but I urge folks to (if they must to this) do this not in a condemning way but rather with a conscientious mind, one that seeks to find some meaning in all that happened and use that meaning to ensure that the world continues to be a better place than it was in 1945.  Because phrases like “make Germany great again” or “make America great again” have something inherently false about them.  There was never a point in the past where either nation was without flaw.  Progress in general is such that in most cases, both countries (and most countries) are at their best right now-- with memories of past greatness being greatly influenced by nostalgia or better circumstances for individual people rather than the nation as a whole.  Phrases like these are designed to ignite nationalistic fervor which, once ignited, is very easy to manipulate.  

Reflections on the Berlin Holocaust Memorial

         As you approach the Holocaust Memorial of Berlin, you see that it consists of a series of dark stone rectangular prisms with no signs or labels of any kind (other than a possible assortment of temporary messages drawn in snow).  Upon seeking a meaning for this presentation of rectangles you may find yourself noticing that the approximate size and shape of each one matches that of a coffin.  But in between each coffin-sized rectangle is a 2-foot-wide space which allows you to easily walk further into the memorial.  Upon doing so, you quickly realize that there are a great number of these stones, and that the further in you go, the larger they become.  They go from being coffin-sized to being as tall as you are, and then taller, and then twice as tall.  At this point they are surrounding you, towering over you, dominating you.  

They are organized in an almost perfect grid, one that you’d think it would be easy to escape from, should the need arise.  And yet, you may just find yourself on edge, trapped, claustrophobic.  You may find yourself wondering whether or not those footsteps you hear around the corner might just be those of a sinister intent.  

And if you go in the winter, as I did, you will likely find the path slick with ice and not always to be trusted.  You may find yourself holding on to those dark stone walls-- those same stone walls that are dominating this temporary world of yours, those walls which are making you somewhat uncomfortable, those walls which make possible the cold that keeps ice frozen here even when the normal streets nearby remain perfectly walkable.  

And if you venture beneath these stones, you will find the names and stories of the 5 to 6 million people who died as part of the Holocaust-- this does not include those who died as a result of the war, only the Holocaust itself.  The word murder, which is not used in connection with war, is used frequently.  The stories of the 5 to 6 million  who were murdered-- that’s what you will find under the stones.  They are underground.  Although, not all of the stories.  It would take quite a lot of time and space to tell 6 million stories.  And half of the stories are unable to be told anyway, as they happened too quickly, or in places too obscure, or to people who were not writers, or to people who had no one left to write to, or to young children, or to the mentally handicapped, or before the victims yet knew for sure what was going on.  

Then when you emerge from this underground museum, you are back amongst the stones.  They are large and well-organized.  They are also very similar to one another, never exactly the same, but quite similar.  They are dark.  They are blank.  They are hard.  They are cold.

Anna Karenina: Interesting, but Not the Greatest of All Time

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is often ranked highly as one of the world's greatest novels and sometimes as the greatest-- that's right, the number one spot.  So I decided to give it a read.

And what I found was that this 800-pager was not particularly fun.  I realize of course that books have purposes beyond entertainment, but to attain maximum attention, readership, and respect I do feel that entertainment should be part of the equation.  But the reason this book is famous is more because it is fun to analyze rather than fun to read.  There is so much in there to unpack, and I respect this quality.  I did, after all, finish the book (something I only do about 75% of the time).  However, just because there is a lot to unpack and examine does not necessarily make it a great book.  It seems kind of messy to me and much longer than necessary.  All of the central messages could be told in far fewer words and might leave a stronger impression were the reader not forced to slog through 800 pages of loosely connected events and countless side characters.  One of the most obvious examples of this sloppiness is the choice to name the novel after Anna while choosing to spend perhaps twice as much time writing about the character of Levin.  Another example is the misleading back cover of the version I read which says, “Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature.  Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density.”  Why is this misleading?  Well, Anna is not a heroine, I did not find her particularly loveable, and she does not dominate the novel; Levin does.  On top of that, these two main characters meet exactly one time in the entire 800 pages, and nothing significant comes of the meeting!  It is as if Tolstoy had at least two separate stories to tell but was too lazy to actually tell them separately.  But he is a highly respected writer, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his choices were intentional.  If that is so, my interpretation of the connection is as follows.    WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Levin and Anna do inhabit the same social world and interact with many of the same people.  And through the vastly different life outcomes they experience despite coming from similar social and economic standing, we can infer that we are meant to examine the differences in moral character that must be there as a cause of the differences.  

Why must it be moral character that is the difference?  I base this mainly on a revelation that Levin has in the final chapters. Because it is so near the end of a lengthy novel, I have to suppose that it relates quite directly to the central message and purpose.  That moment and message can be found in this quote:

             “Theodore says that Kirilov, the innkeeper, lives for his belly.  That is intelligible and reasonable.  We all, as reasoning creatures, cannot live otherwise.  And then that same Theodore says that it is wrong to live for one’s belly, and that we must live for Truth, for God, and at the first hint I understand him!  I and millions of men who lived centuries ago and those who are living now: peasants, the poor in spirit, and sages, who have thought and written about it, saying the same thing in their obscure words—we all agree on that one thing: what we should live for, and what is good.  I, and all other men, know only one thing firmly, clearly, and certainly, and this knowledge cannot be explained by reason: it is outside reason, has no cause, and can have no consequences. 

            ‘If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness [and] if it has a consequence—a reward, it is also not goodness.  Therefore goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect.” 

            

           Levin here realizes that doing good for others is the most essential way to live in order to feel both close to God and purposeful as an individual.  And one should do good simply because that's the right thing to do-- not for any personal gain.

So let’s look at the main character of Levin, the novel’s namesake Anna, and the man who is their link, Oblonsky, in relation to this revelation.

 We start the novel in Oblonsky’s household where we learn that there is a dispute between he and his wife which arises from his having cheated on her—an action which he continues to do throughout the book.  Oblonsky is a social man who does do good for others: regularly treating people to dinners, connecting people professionally, and intervening on his sister’s behalf regarding the seeking of a divorce, for example.  But he also causes harm (mostly to his wife and himself) by “living for his belly.”  He seeks money and spends it excessively.  He seeks pleasurable company outside of his marriage.  He gets his wife to sell parts of her estate so that he can pay his debts and continue to live this way.  He exists in a very surface way, doing both good and harm, but never really thinking deeply about it, attaching much meaning to any individual occurrence, or even seemingly remembering key occurrences longer than the time it takes for a new interest to grab hold of him.  As a result, he never really learns from his mistakes, fully understands the perspectives of others, or changes himself. 

Anna, surprisingly, does not seem to be the heroine of the novel, but rather the foil to Levin and an example for the reader of what not to do.  Like Levin, she is concerned with deeper things.  However like Oblonsky, she “lives for her belly.”  As a result she makes a lot of selfish decisions while all the while remaining unsatisfied on a deeper spiritual level.  The key selfish decisions are cheating on her husband, leaving her husband, abandoning her son, and then behaving jealously and vindictively toward her lover while all the while making no effort to fully resolve the conflict between her still legal marriage and her current love, causing ongoing conflict for all involved parties.  She recognizes all the conflict, accepts some of the blame, but also pushes the blame on others, and wallows melodramatically in her problems instead of actively engaging in the struggle necessary to disentangle herself.  So she sees the deeper meanings.  She knows that she has done wrong, and she knows that others have also done wrong to her.  Her reaction to this is to stubbornly persist and survive rather than struggle to change and adapt.  Ultimately she allows her selfishness to take the most melodramatic step possible and kill herself in order to punish her lover Vronsky for all the dilemma she’s feeling—very little of which is actually his fault. 

Levin is the only major character who undergoes positive change.  He engages with all the struggles of life: seeking purpose and meaning, facing rejection, trying to improve the economy on macro and micro levels, wooing the woman he loves, navigating marital conflict, watching his brother die, and beginning to raise a son.  He frequently recognizes imperfection in both the world and himself, but always pursues better understanding, improvement, and that which is morally good, regardless of how much inner conflict he may feel or how much outer conflict he ends up engaged in with others.  As a result, he ends the novel rewarded with a happy family, a spiritual revelation, and a sense of purpose. 

So we have three major characters who are set up as a lifestyle comparison.  We have one man who has the capacity for both selfishness and selflessness but only so far as any given situation allows him—he has no sense of the long-term nor of deeper spiritual significance.  We have a character who perceives deep spiritual significance but mostly only in negative ways resulting from selfish actions including the ultimate selfish action of committing suicide.  And we have a character who is deeply concerned with spiritual matters within himself while all the while acting for goodness and selflessness and struggling through life’s conflicts.  These three characters end up unchanged, dead, and happy, respectively, as a result of their outlooks and choices.

This comparison is the main reason I can see for having a novel named after Anna but featuring Levin.  However, it does not explain the countless other characters who get an awful lot of "screen time" as well.  Let's compare a few of them, just for fun.  

Through the 3 major women characters, we get to see 3 different ways of handling flaws in relationships.  Through Anna, we see changing relationships.  We see the boredom and resentment of someone who has lost respect for the man she’s married to (having originally gotten married for status more-so than love).  We see the excitement of an affair and the turmoil and conflict that inevitably must come about when she is unwilling to end either the marriage or the affair.  Then we see crazed jealousy and vindictiveness when she suspects that her lover is in turn having another affair. 

Through Dolly, Anna’s sister-in-law, we see stoicism in a family woman dealing with a long-existing relationship who has chosen to stay with her cheating, money-wasting husband mostly for the sake of the kids.  She learns to ignore her husband most of the time and lives mostly for said kids. 

Then we see Kitty, the youngest woman and eventually Levin's wife, who must deal with the conflicts involved in new relationships.  First she must deal with balancing two men who are both wooing her, then with rejecting the one she wants less, than with being rejected by the one she wants more.  Later, upon entering into a new marriage, she must handle all the unexpected and often petty conflicts that arise when learning to live with someone new in addition to dealing with the bigger issues of giving birth and supporting her family during tragic times.

Anna’s two men, Karenin and Vronsky, also get a lot of time, and I found both quite similar in some ways as well as quite a bit more interesting than Anna herself.  The key quality they share is ambition.  The main difference between them is that Karenin’s work and position come before everything else, and Vronsky puts Anna before everything else.  However, Karenin does still care for Anna, and Vronsky does still have many other concerns.  It is Karenin’s inability to fully express personal, emotional things that mostly drives Anna away.  And despite Vronsky and Anna’s love for each other, Vronsky insists on still having ambitions and a life beyond their relationship as any normal man would.  It is this insistence combined with Anna’s poor societal position (resulting from her awkward status of a wife living with a man who is not her husband) that make her vindictively jealous toward him. 

Then there are countless side characters set up as foils or models that the main characters either come into conflict with or try to imitate.  There’s Koznyshev, Levin’s half-brother, who is too caught up in political issues to have the time or desire for personal relationships.  There’s Nicholas, also Levin’s brother, who is sickly and volatile.  There’s Lydia Ivanovna, a religious extremist, who comforts Karenin and plays a role in his preventing Anna from seeing her son.  There’s Vasenka Veslovsky, a youthful flirt that worries Levin in his first months of marriage.  There’s Sviyazhsky, a political man who has read up on and can accurately discuss any topic but gets a shifty defensive look anytime someone pushes him to say which view it is that he truly believes.  And there are many many others: peasants from whom Levin learns, society women that judge and gossip about Anna, soldier friends of Vronsky’s, house servants, children, etc. 

Ultimately it ends up being just a bit too much text with not quite enough payoff.  Are there worthwhile elements?  Tons!  But for me the whole was not any better than the sum of its parts.