Multiculturalism, Music and Moving

Not sure where we left off, somewhere between Mexico City and Montreal. I've been traveling in between, but arrived in Montreal one month ago. No home, no job, no idea of what to expect from this new world.

I am getting a feel for the way Montreal swings and sways. The multiculturalism here is unlike anything I've seen before. Traveling, inevitably we become part of the World culture, but nothing could have prepared me for the wonderful mixture of races, cultures and traditions that Montreal encompasses. Obviously, I've been able to pick out many Mexicans and Chinese people, but when I go out on the street I meet people from Algeria, Morocco, Portugal, Japan, Venezuela, Chile, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel and every other place you can imagine. There?s Anglophones and Francophones and somewhere in between. There are Mexicans playing African drums, Africans selling Chinese food, Chinese learning Quebecois French, and I'm right here in the middle of this muddle of a triplex-lined city.

The multicultural theme spills into the music, which is where the Montreal International Jazz Festival is to be mentioned. Musicians and visitors were from nearby and far away, and very far away. I've never been to such a welcoming festival before. More than 500 shows over 11 days and over half of the shows are free! I frequented the festival and usually I would arrive with Denya (my young daughter) on the bike. After the first visit, I stopped by one of the festival tents where they lend out strollers for the day. These weren't just any strollers either, cup holders, basket to carry my backpack, reclining seat for Denya, and all I had to do was return it before midnight. After having gotten in trouble at a previous Children's festival when I had the wagon out for longer than an hour, I was impressed with the Jazz Festival's lenient and trusting gesture. Oh yeah, it was great music too, really great.

So that's multicultural and music so we must be moving right along. On July 1st most housing contracts expire in the city so July 1st is moving day for a big chunk of the population, and I was no exception. A few days before July 1st, and for one or two days after, streets are lined with moving trucks and trailers, and people are walking with huge bags and dollies and hands full of furniture, clothing, appliances, you name it. I don't know if this is common elsewhere, but I've never seen it before, one moving day. There is another spin-off result of the grand moving day ? people begin about a week before moving day throwing out everything they don't want to move. The streets are like second-hand superstores. There are scouts who diligently seek recycled goods for their homes, and I was certainly on the prowl for good finds.

My best find was about four blocks from my old residence where I came across a metal futon frame, black, simple, good shape. I tested the quality by laying it out flat and returning it to the couch position time and again. When I got back on my bike I was thinking to myself, "If no one picks it up by the time I get back, I'll take it." I wasn?t entirely convinced though. I would have to bring the dolly back and figure out a way to take it, and I was riding my bike at that moment with my daughter in the baby seat. How would I come back? Besides, I would need a mattress for the futon anyway. Just in the middle of that thought I spotted a futon mattress folded on the curb, navy on one side, white on the other, no stains, no smell, both critical criteria. I quickly threw the mattress, folded, over my bike. Only a block away from home, I rushed and quickly unloaded baby and mattress, locked up my bike and got the dolly. Denya was happy when I suggested she ride the dolly and even happier when we started going really fast. "Run Mama," she urged me on. When we approached where the frame had been, I got nervous. Maybe someone had come for it already, such a street gem. Luckily, no one had arrived for the futon, and the only other customer at the sidewalk giveaway that day was an older gentleman looking at old long-play records. I fiddled and fussed and explained to Denya that now it was the futon's turn to ride the dolly. The man asked me what it was, and I told him excitedly about futons that change from couches to beds. When he replied, his Quebec accent was so strong that I had no idea what he was saying. I think he was speaking French, wasn't he? Meanwhile, I found a way to mount the futon, but I had to balance it on my shoulder while pulling it on the dolly. Denya walked on the sidewalk while I went down the street keeping my eye on her and shifting the futon frequently to avoid extreme discomfort. A passerby helped me take the futon up to the flat. He grumbled yes when I asked him to help and then didn?t say another word. I thanked him profusely, but it was evident I was not welcome. I barely noticed? I was in futon heaven.

Some of my street gems are a multi-level clothes drying rack, a great sturdy, old dresser (currently being repainted), a reclining armchair, a children's shelving unit, and even a huge area rug and matching hallway runner rug (yes, they need to be cleaned). It can sometimes be expensive when moving to a new place and settling in, but not this time. My main expense was renting a moving truck to move all my new found belongings to my new place, which I find pretty funny.

Oh, if you're wondering why everyone moves on Canada Day, which is what I asked, it's because here in Quebec we don't celebrate Canada Day, we celebrate St. Jean de Baptiste Day, June 24th. It's Quebec Day when everyone puts on their blue fleur-de-lis and gets drunk. So you just change the date, the color you wear and the plant (not the maple leaf) and it?s exactly the same as Canada Day... a lot of fun! Cheers Montreal!

Here's a photo of Denya enjoying her huge ice cream cone at the Restaurant that has two dishes: Chinese Noodles and Ice Cream. Strange?

Tasting the Music

During my first season in Yellowstone National Park, we had the kind of spring that has become a distant memory now that the region has been in drought for years. During that spring, it rained hard every day in the afternoon, and even snowed off and on through the end of May and into June. We worked outside, so by mid-June, we were ready for it to stop. It did: on the day of the summer solstice, June 21, the afternoon sky was free of clouds, and we had almost no rain for the next two months. In early July, when I was beginning to get used to this new, sunnier Yellowstone, I made a trip that stirs me still.

One weekend day, I got up early (on a day off, "early" was, like, noon) and drove my rattletrap car from my home at Old Faithful north toward Mammoth Hot Springs. My route took me up the less-visited west side of the park, where the traffic was still light. Just past the midway point of my trip, I approached a matched-set pair of lakes called, of course, Twin Lakes. Shallow and not especially large, the lakes are ignored by the summertime masses (usually: our company maintenance man once drove into my station to report that he had watched a big family merrily fishing one of the lakes, "and they were having such a good time I didn't have the heart to tell them that there aren't any fish in Twin Lakes"). On this day, I caught a glimpse of the lakes through the trees before I reached them. I saw sunlight on blue water. I saw green trees in front of the water, and green trees on the ridgeline above. In the sky, I saw nothing but the most intense blue. And it all hit me at once.

Why that particular scene affected me so strongly, I will never know; it was just a generic Yellowstone scene, containing the same sorts of things I would be seeing all day, and all summer and part of the fall. Maybe it happened because the scene was so typical: it was a slice of pure Yellowstone. I had a moment of revelation, one of great intensity.

My problem in writing about it is that I cannot say for certain what was revealed. The state I entered--it lasted not quite a full minute--is itself not easy to describe, a cognitive state in which, at the same instant, I felt that all things were perfect, and yet somehow would get even better soon, or could get even better if I made the right moves. It was a desire to freeze the moment and at the same time progress to greater moments. As I have explained before on this blog, I came to Yellowstone get away from an unhappy life in Los Angeles, so this cognitive state was unfamiliar. It felt, in fact, like an abnormal condition--like a flash of déjà vu, which has been shown to be associated with temporal-lobe epilepsy--and was so intense as to affect senses like taste and smell. Specifically, and most strikingly, I felt hungry. I was not actually, physically hungry; I had eaten before the drive. It was as if my stomach had gotten its wires crossed with the language centers in my brain, and was creating a metaphor. The perfection of this place had made me hungry to experience ever more of it.

The feeling passed quickly, and I drove on. It was never intense enough that it felt scary-weird, as, say, a hallucination would have been (hard to say, however, what I would have hallucinated at that moment: maybe Tony the Tiger pouring trees and lakes into a cereal bowl and saying "They're grrrreat!"). That strong hunger I had experienced was pretty odd, though, and I wondered about it until quite recently, when I started teaching a class on writing for medical students at UC Davis. One of my students wrote a paper about synesthesia, the term psychologists use for a condition in which a person experiences one sense through another. Familiar to those who experimented with psychedelic drugs in the 1960s, who often had the experience of putting on a Hendrix record and "seeing" or "tasting" the music, synesthesia can also happen after a stroke, or it can arise among people who are otherwise perfectly normal. It can also appear in any of the senses: one can hear colors, see odors, etc. I can only assume that my hunger was an unusual instance of synesthesia, although I cannot find any examples of it in reference works I've looked at (if any research psychologists want to ship me to Yellowstone to do a study, I'm available). I am treating the phenomenon scientifically; another person would likely use religious terms.

The feeling came to me again at peak moments throughout that first season, but faded over time; after a few seasons in the park, it never happened at all. I could get it back in memory; to this day, I can close my eyes, picture Twin Lakes as I saw them that day, and call up the feeling, or at least a less forceful version. I thought that the more intense version was gone for good. After living in Yellowstone, I went off to graduate school and endured a long exile away from the park; then, starting about four years ago, we started coming to Yellowstone for increasingly lengthy visits. To my surprise and delight, it started happening again. To take one example, here is what happened one morning at the start of a recent visit:

I wake up in a place that seems familiar even though I've never been here, a little rustic box that smells of dry wood and dust. A cabin? I have been traveling, so I am actually uncertain as I first open my eyes. I look around: a cabin, yes, cold now in the morning air. Sunlight glances through cracks. Motes of dust, plenty of them, spin in the shafts of light.

I rise and walk to the door, feeling bits of volcanic gravel under my bare feet. Though dressed so informally that I wear no pants, I open the door. We never worried about that sort of thing too much when I worked here.

Outside, the sun is shining, although it rained last night, pretty hard. In the cratered obsidian gravel before me is a little lake, a puddle of rainwater that is just now beginning to subside. Lodgepole pollen makes a bright yellow bathtub ring, showing that the water has dropped one half inch. The parent trees are all around, classic lodgepoles, beanpole-straight and thirty feet tall. These are unburned trees from before the 1988 fires. The ground beyond the gravel is covered by brown needle-litter and this year's crop of wildflowers. Harebell and fireweed predominate, as often here at Old Faithful. I can make out the hills along the northern side of the valley only as a gray shadow behind the lodgepoles.

No clouds yet. The clouds will come later in the afternoon. I can hear only the faintest of breezes, and a seemingly outraged squirrel, behind me somewhere. Otherwise, no motion, and nothing dramatic to look at, just a forested half-acre, one of forty million half-acres in Greater Yellowstone.

Peace, yes, but also possibility, wide-open possibility. Anything can happen on this high-summer day. The satisfaction I feel arises from the certainty that something will happen, something extraordinary. I literally hunger for it, feel actual hunger pangs, even though it is far too early in the morning for me to want food. The depthless blue of the sky makes the hunger all the stronger....

So the feeling is back, intensely pleasant, and more available today than it was when I lived in the park (Yellowstone, by the way, is the only place in the world where it happens). I used to think that it was connected to exotic adventure, of the sort Sam the Hobbit gets because he is brave enough to leave home; in the early years, that exotic adventure was one of the more valued qualities the Yellowstone experience had for me. Yet here the feeling was again, even though I don't do much swashbuckling any more.

And when I am in the park, it always comes eventually, these days. That is the only reliable thing about it, because it is otherwise confusing and contradictory; when the mood is on me, I feel at once both perfect contentment and a promise of some spectacularly greater experience, and those two states do not match. It's a bewildering puzzle, and I'm fine with it.

A Legitimate Showdown

Many people that have worked seasonally have come across this situation. Whether it's river guiding, waiting tables, working a hotel front desk, or running a chainsaw for the Forest Service, the season eventually comes to an end and the comments start raining like bombs over London.

"When are you going to get a real job?!"

"You're spending your money on another plane ticket?!"

"You should really buy a few pairs of nice slacks..."

And so on.

I'm not interested in debating or defining what constitutes a real job. There are infinite variables and emotions that go along with that debate, many of which most seasonal employees embark on with some amount of regularity. However, I am interested in what happens when that real job unexpectedly presents itself to you, in the middle of the seasonal dream.

It seems obvious that most seasonal employees work seasonally because they enjoy the lifestyle. I know I do. I enjoy working for a season, living in a place that people dream of visiting, saving some money, and buying a few plane tickets to various foreign longitudes. Many employees, at least many that I've worked with, don't actively pursue the hunt for career permanency while they've got their youth. When you're young and free of mortgage and familial commitment, what's the point? Why trade living in paradise, traveling, relocating to another paradise, traveling, etc. for a stagnant job that provides two weeks of annual vacation time? Where's the good deal in that?

And yet that real job has snuck in through the back door and presented itself to me, kind of catching me off guard.

Two of my closest friends work for a company that I respect, located in a small Northwestern city. The gig: franchise development. The benefits: my own house a stone's throw away from the shores of a beautiful Northwestern lake and more salary than I'd know what to do with. However, if I were to sign on, my job would essentially be to promote globalization, an idea that I'm not particularly fond of. If I reject the offer, the pressure of finding that real job will continue, either directly with sharp comments intending to light a fire under my wanderlust butt, or like that of a finger held an inch from your forehead--indirect, but the same amount of sensation ("You know, Mark's doing well these days... He's the political programs manager for Company X, and he's only 25! He just bought a house and has two black labs and 100 shares in Home Depot! Isn't he doing well?!).

So what is it worth? Is sacrificing the unattached globe trekking lifestyle worth a handsome salary and two weeks of annual vacation? To me, the answer is no. Not yet. I'm only 24. Plenty of time to experience the world, while I've still got my youth. Yet the idea of living lakeside and working with two of my closest friends is enough to propagate the dilemma between the two lifestyles.

Despite the showdown between my current life of travel and the life of career and salary what-ifs, I think I'm pretty comfortable. I've got decades to worry about job offers similar to this one. No point in rushing into things. I'd rather pick through bazaars in Albania and worry about my immediate safety in the face of a grumpy hippo in Malawi than sit on my couch and read about similar experiences, regretting never having done so.

But who knows what the future holds. For all I know, in three months I could be sitting in the same spot in which I currently sit (on my front porch of government housing, overlooking Sepulcher Mountain and a dozen elk calves), or shaking hands with future financiers of a new store in Bangore, Maine.

And there's a potential, unmentioned opportunity waiting for somebody in Anchorage...

No room for speculation now, though; we'll see what happens...

Perhaps.

Holy smoked salmon puffs batman! It's the 4th of July and I completely forgot! It wasn't until I was walking to my school this morning that I realized what day it was. And I love the 4th of July, and everything about it. I guess it's easy to forget about when you're in Korea and it's not really mentioned by anyone. None of my other American friends remembered either. I tried explaining it to some of my kids. A few understood. I drew a picture on the white board, of fireworks, and myself waving a flag. And a grill in the background. (See where six years of art school gets a girl these days.)

Although I did eat watermelon this morning, which is the one fruit I always associate with the 4th of July. But I also eat it just about every day here. It's my favorite. I never get sick of eating it. And my favorite part is buying one here. I walk down to the street market on Saturday mornings. There are lots of people selling them, but I always buy them from the same girl. She always smiles at me, and usually knows what I'm there for. I smile back and say "han-nah," which is one in Korean. (And for anyone who knows Korean, knows that there are two different sets of numbers, which always confuse me.) But it helps to hold up my fingers while I say the number. I always walk back with the watermelon against my stomach, embracing it with both arms, like carrying a baby. If I'm holding other bags, I'm sure I look like a mad woman trying to make it 10 blocks without dropping anything. But I refuse to take a cab, unless absolutely necessary. Even in the rain. Cabbies are fearless here, and red lights don't really mean stop. And it's always a crazy experience. I either get hit on, yelled at, or completely ignored. The last cabbie I rode with was on the phone, watching the baseball game, and still pulled over to pick me up. He went about five blocks (in the wrong direction) before even hanging up the phone to ask me where I was going. So yeah, needless to say, I threw him a couple bucks and got out.

I have a few vacation days coming up at the end of July that I'm really excited about. Teaching is exhausting, and I have so much more respect for teachers. I'm hoping to take a bus to Busan, and then catch a ferry to Japan and stay there for a few days. I'm dying for some amazing sushi. I went to a sushi place here in Gwangju a few weeks ago, and ate a vegetarian roll with American processed cheese on top. Definitely not what I had in mind.

The summers are pretty hot here. A lot like the southern east coast back in the states. Hot and humid, bad mosquitoes. I can deal with it, but I definitely don't like it. I miss Alaska whether. Perhaps not the extreme -70 degrees that I experienced in Bethel, but I do miss the milder temps, and the snow. I hear we don't get too much snow here, but who knows.

I officially dropped from my Korean class. My school started offering them in June, and I went for two weeks. I learned the alphabet, numbers and a lot of helpful words and phrases. And I wish I had the motivation to continue on and see how fluent I can become in the next ten months, but I'm exhausted. At the end of a long day teaching, the last thing I want to do is study for a test late at night, and then wake up for class early the next morning. I try and justify my withdrawal by saying that I'll study on my own. But I won't. I'll go to a restaurant and order something that I didn't want, because I thought it said something else. And then I'll be reminded that perhaps I should have stuck it out a bit longer.

Three Places/Three Spaces

(If this appears to be submitted by Patty, forgive the technological madness. This comes from Greg, though the techno demons initially chose not to allow him to lay claim to the work.)

The research for this blog was shamefully easy. It consisted primarily of nursing a beer and watching people go by. Three different places, and three different spaces. Rough job, eh?

Scene One: My first venue is Pa-in, the town closest to where I work. It?s a 4-minute ride via motorcycle taxi, and getting there is easy.

As a side note, getting back is more noteworthy. The road to Pa-in is a major highway, complete with a concrete barrier separating the flow of traffic. For the ride back, the motorcycle taxis drive AGAINST traffic, hugging the curb. Providentially, I am sometimes lulled into a sense of immortality by the alcohol consumed in Pa-in. Stone-cold sober, it?s a daunting ride.

I get off the cycle, maneuver through a large collection of market stalls, and emerge at a restaurant located on a busy side street. Another English teacher is already here, which is no big surprise. He typically spends a few hours here every day.

I join him at his regular table, which is situated almost on the street itself. The restaurant is three-walled, so the effect is a third-world sidewalk café.

This is an ideal place to people-watch, and the flow of passing humanity is constant.

While it?s true that I see all ages and types, it?s most often the women that catch my eye. Guess I?m just hardwired that way. And in this country the women are not mere eye candy. They?re eye sustenance. More like a visual five course meal.

But I find delight in the rest of the scene, as well. Factory workers, heading to or from their 12-hour shifts. School children. Families. Street dogs. The occasional truck making its way down the street, almost touching buildings on both sides?.

A whole lot of smiles, and a birds eye view of a bustling Thai town.

Scene Two: Khao San Road is the Thai Mecca for backpackers and budget travelers. It is a very long block, filled with budget hotels, bars, restaurants, stalls and shops. Small alleyways branch off like arteries, and lead to more of the same.

Khao San is also filled with a mix of people from across the globe, and it?s an excellent milieu for observation.

Tourists with backpacks are commonplace. The ones one their way out move more purposefully; places to go and schedules to meet. The new arrivals meander more slowly, taking in the atmosphere and keeping their eyes peeled for inexpensive lodging. Other tourists, already checked into some $3.00 room, are shopping, eating, drinking and checking out the scene.

As in most foreign melting pots, English is the lingua franca. Indians, Europeans, Japanese (and the Thais interacting with them) communicate with varying degrees of success.

There are regular vendors who troll these international waters. Food sellers, naturally; a plate of pad thai goes for about 60 cents, and a large egg roll for about a quarter. Pushcarts filled with roasted insects offer culinary adventures for the bold. Knock-off zippo lighter salesmen walk the street, flashing a foot-long demonstration model to advertise their wares. Young kids are peddling flowers. Women from northern hill tribes, wearing colorful and intricate dress, are selling jewelry. Men from India, allude to their own enlightenment, and, for a suitable monetary donation, will explain your life?s karmic purpose.

The shops themselves? Pirated CDs and DVDs sell for three dollars, including the movies just released in the theatres. Fake Gucci handbags and imitation Rolex watches are plentiful. Fake I.D, from university diplomas to press cards, range from the ridiculous to the well-crafted. Used books. Silks. Buddha images. Garment shops, offering custom-made suits at amazingly inexpensive prices.

I end my evening on the second floor of a Burger King; watching life unfold below, but insulated by air conditioning and Western marketing formulas.

Scene Three: Bangkok has a not undeserved reputation for its red light districts. These days, Patpong is probably the most well-known, and also boasts a sizable night market set up on the street. For some, the retail bargains are the extent of their nocturnal journey. For others, touts beckon from the doorways of the establishments lining the street. Some display place cards, describing the acts that take place inside, and leaving little to the imagination.

Soi Cowboy is another popular destination for sex tourists. It?s similar to Patpong, but on a smaller scale and without the market.

Tonight I head to Nana Plaza, where all things sexual are available, but it?s also possible to simply have a beer and a burger.

The majority of ?working women? in Bangkok come from Issan, a large region in the Northeast. It is a poor area, and many of the women here are supporting parents and families back home.

My perch overlooks a small Buddhist shrine, and the women coming to work routinely stop and seek the Buddha?s blessing.

The bars at Nana are relatively low-key. Women are available in all of them, but if you are only seeking food and drink, they?ll respect that. The go-go bars however, are a harder sell. Dancers and performer wear numbers, making it easier for a customer to request them specifically. And here the voyeur is not left to himself. A succession of women will offer their services, and their sales techniques range from the subtle to the blatant. Eventually the customer will capitulate or move on.

It?s an interesting paradox that, despite its international reputation for sex tourism, Thailand is a relatively conservative country. While Patpong exists in all its glory, there are also women being chaperoned by friends and family as they venture out on dates. Two parallel worlds, existing side by side, and the denizens of each inhabit separate realities.

Three places; three spaces. And many, many more?.