My Old Blog

I talked to this guy on the phone today about a book he is doing: Europe from a Backpack.

He was telling me all about the submission guidelines and asking about my travels……all I could think about was how he got the project together. I mean, it is a serious undertaking to coordinate all that goes into a submission based travel book. I asked him some questions but he didn’t really want to answer them.

Maybe its a secret? I wanted to know how he got his contacts and whether the book was already sold or not….did he have a lawyer draw up the contract, did he have any experience in the publishing industry…etc. He was nice and answered a bit, but seemed more excited about my submissions than my interest in his business.

Oh well. On the upside, I have done a lot of travel writing over my seven years abroad…..I don’t know which journal entries I’ll submit, but I’m sure I can find something worthy of publishing.

He said the book would be arranged by location in Europe. All I need to do is pick something about a place that few people have gone to and I’ll have less competition.

The mythic Giant Squid has been found in the waters off Antarctica, proving the sailors of old were not only drunken pirates, but true scholars as well. I guess fish stories aren’t always as exaggerated as we might expect.

In related news, an unconfirmed source has reported spotting a mermaid bathing on the shores of Atlantis.

This is Marmaris in Turkey. I remember the morning I took this picture. The entry I made in my personal journal pretty much sums up why the next few years of my life will suck: Nothing can compare.

I think I was half delirious when I wrote this:

There is nothing like moving….nothing. I had the most bestest time in Rhodos and I’m hungover at 7:00 in the morning waiting on a boat to Turkey. Everyone is asleep…the whole city. And I’m singing at the top of my lungs….singing…at 7 in the morning. I even hate mornings.

Travelling can erase even that. If I weren’t so fucking happy, excited about the coming day, in a new place, another country, I would be sad. I left a great girl…too fucking early to think. What else on the planet can make 7 in the morning and hungover one of the best mornings of your life? Only if you’re a month and a half on the road and going to Turkey, the sun rising over the city walls on empty streets.

These other people are just misreable, but they’re all looking at me, and I’m waiting too…and they’re better for it. There is nothing like moving…like an exclamation point in the book of your life. If I described my emotions they would scream fun, fun, happy, happy, way too early, I’m one of the luckiest people in the world, eat my ice cream and drink my coffee and just fucking enjoy it. Moments like this make everything worth it.

I got really drunk last night and bared my soul to an almost stranger….and she pretty much understood…in just one night. It is nice to have someone listen and more than I could ask that she actually get it. Amazing…Travel can be like a ticket off the planet…suspend nearly every rule I have…and it works. Imagine that??

Travelling really can be an ephiphany. At the end of the day we are all chasing that feeling anyway. We may look for rational explanations, but they are after the fact.

Life is an emotional act. We invent a rationale that suits how we feel about a given situation and wrongly assume we’ve made a rational decision. If our emotional reaction to a situation changes, we simply find a new rationale to suit how we feel.

I was at a bar last night. Everyone was watching the TVs and they all said the same thing: War with Iraq has begun. And then they showed this live feed from Baghdad of an empty street. It didn’t much look like a war, just an empty street.

This girl we were with was really drunk. She started talking about politics….in a bar. I told the girl she was talking to that everyone knows you can’t talk about politics, religion or past romantic relationships at bars. It is a serious buzzkill.

This chick takes issue with everything I say. I think she likes me or something. Like in elementary school when you used to be mean to the cute girl with blond pigtails. But she did bring up an interesting point.

When is it proper to talk about politics and religion? Or more specifically, when do I talk about it? Honestly, almost never. She took that to mean that I have no opinions and don’t care in general. While it is true that I am often apathetic, I do have strong opinions. I just keep them to myself.

In my experience, people just like to hear themselves talk when it comes to stuff like that. It makes them feel good to express their opinion, but it does not make them feel good when your opinion is different than theirs.

People cannot keep from taking it personally. When your view differs from theirs, they always somehow associate that with an attack on themselves. They feel judged. And the discussion digresses into arguments of semantics and then things just get plain petty…then ugly.

I have opinions. I’ve expressed them in the past. It mostly got me judged and pigeonholed. You stand to gain the most when your opinion is the same as the majority or the side that will eventually win. I didn’t really like learning that and have trouble doing it. There is some strange attraction to telling everyone what you think, especially when you’re in the minority. Galileo did it, was proved correct and change the world forever. On the flip side he got put to death for it….alot of good it did him.

So….do I have an opinion about the war? Not really. What is done is done. Let it be speedy and decisive and let us move on with our lives.

The weekend was rather slow, but enjoyable.

It is supposed to rain all week, until friday, so I don’t anticipate that I’ll have a very good week. I don’t like rain, except in the middle of the summer when it is really hot and you get an afternoon shower that cools things off and I am at the lake so I can see the raindrops hit the water and then have a cookout after it stops and maybe pitch some horseshoes…….other than that I don’t much like the rain.

All those transcendental people are always talking about living in the moment and not letting thoughts of the past or future distract from each precious second of existence. Great idea in theory I suppose but it doesn’t work worth a crap for me.

I love the past. I love planning for the future. If it weren’t for future plans and memories of the past I don’t think I’d be able to endure the present.

On a different note I got my first mosquito bite of the year today. Spring is coming.

Here is an excerpt from my book, which is actually an entry from my personal journal….which is largely how I wrote an entire book in about 3 months:

Travelling is the Great Reset Button. Whatever you thought or thought you thought can and probably will be erased with enough time on the road. Everything you hold dear is useless somewhere in the world. What were your problems can become your assets; what was taboo is accepted. There are places sex is free and religion never heard of. There are people whose beauty will be ugly to you and whose paradise would be our prison. Travelling wipes it all away, sometimes the good with the bad, but it’ll show you that life can be so many different things and how dare anyone claim they have a monopoly on the truth.

People get their cars and phones and TVs and a little money and they think they know who they are and what life is. But they’re too stationary to know anything. If you drive that car, and talk to the same people, and sit on the same sofa everyday you’re a fixture the same as the your living room furniture. Those things you think you control have become you. They’ve defined your life for so long you’re not separate from them. If you took all that stuff away you would be left with someone who’d finally realize they didn’t know anything except how to use that money to buy a phone to talk to those same old people about stuff they’d forgotten why they cared about in the first place.

But thats how you come to know. Remove every one of the things that you have and strap on a backpack with a change of clothes and a tootbrush and just go without direction. Don’t let anything define your life. Let reality pass by so fast it blurs and whatever is left is you. That is the only way to really know yourself. If you learn something sitting still it only applies if props stay the same, but when you learn something travelling you know it for good and always..

I don’t really know if I agree with that anymore…or at least wholly. It is true that there are things you can only learn about yourself on the road.

It is very easy to get lost in the things and forget why you were doing it in the first place. It is true that the props define your life for so long they become you. And that is the place where I disagree with myself: The props become part of who you are. You can’t leave them and learn about yourself on the road because you have literally left yourself behind. The person you would learn about on the road would not be the person you really are….that person is partly defined by a set of props.

I guess my main departure is that before I considered the props to be a hinderance to learning about who you really are. But props can be good. You are defined by where you live, the sports you play, the friends you keep, your car, clothes, house, job, etc. Most people don’t really care that these things control their life….most people would consider these things as having a life. And that is one of the downsides of travel.

Travel has allowed me to know myself in a way few will ever experience. I know what I am like when nothing from the past and nothing familiar defines me. I know who I am at night when there is nothing else there. But I am not sure it has allowed me to know myself better…just differently.

I wrote a book one time. I go back and read it when I feel like it. I can’t say its a masterpiece, but it has a value to me. And some of it is not only good, but bordering on perfect. When you say exactly what you want and it expresses that unspoken thing in so few words and you almost feel like it must’ve felt to live it.

And that is the great achievement of literature, one that still stands far above the achievements of science: Literature can help you understand how it feels to be someone else, to live in their shoes. Science tells us everything about the conditions of existence, but brings us not one step closer to knowing what it would be like to be someone else, to live that alternate life.

Science will put an astronaut on the moon, but only a book can send a janitor.

I have a cold. I wanted to go sing karaoke tonight, but alas…even that small pleasure is taken away. Instead I have to resort to another boring night of trying to figure out mysql and php. Hopefully I’ll sleep ok tonight. I couldn’t sleep for shit last night.

I don’t know if any of you read my entry about Mr. BigFatBlog that I posted on 2/8/2003. I actually wrote Mr. FatBlog an email asking him what he thought of what I thought.
This is what he said (excerpts from my email to him are in gray):

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Hi Elliott,

Thanks for writing.

> However, there are some other points he makes that brought me to my
> final opinion: “The only thing that’s ‘wrong’ about a fat person
> wearing a belly shirt is that society sees it as ‘wrong’.” What???
> You could make that argument about anything….the only thing ‘wrong’
> with a dead person as a best friend is that society sees it as
> ‘wrong’. The only thing ‘wrong’ with sleeping with blood relatives is
> that society sees it as ‘wrong’.

I think you’re exaggerating to the extreme here, and really comparing
apples to oranges. The idea of having a dead friend, or sleeping with
a blood relative, is really a sociological more; fat people wearing
belly shirts is just a value. The value is something that has been
simply promoted by modern society, although it may be based on some
Puritanical roots (at least in America). There are definitely two
types of “wrong” here.

> Here is my favorite: “You should love your body, no matter what it
> looks like.” Really?? I tell a slight variation of that to all the
> really hot girls I meet.

That’s a personal stance that you have to deal with, then.

Loving one’s body is the key to acceptance, no matter what size one is.
For women, this is something that is entirely different than men;
there are many levels of pressure, mostly societal, encouraging them to
hate their bodies. The size of clothing is inconsistent; diets are
promoted as a way to really live and enjoy life. There is absolutely a
lack of people loving their bodies, and they should. You should, too.
So should any girl you date, but chances are very good that she really
doesn’t.

> “You should like me even though I’m not as hot as the guys you usually
> date.” Or how about potential employers: “You should hire me, no
> matter how lazy I am.” How about the NBA: “Don’t discriminate
> against me just because I’m short, white and have no talent.” It just
> isn’t realistic. And if realism isn’t your bag, it isn’t desirable
> even in that perfect world we’ll never find.

Again, these examples are wildly different. Loving one’s body at any
size is a lot different than not meeting requirements for a job – these
are two different things.

If anything, people in the fat acceptance movement are very much into
realism. We deal with the realism on a daily basis: discrimination in
the workplace, discrimination in society, a littany of outmoded
stereotypes, mass ignorance… if that’s not realism, I don’t know what
is.

> And here is my final opinion about fatness: All things being equal,
> it is better to be skinny than to be fat. Being fat usually creates
> problems. Being skinny can occasionally create problems. Fatness
> isn’t always the worst of personal issues, but it can add to whatever
> is. So…all things being equal, it is better to be skinny than to be
> fat.

In our modern society, it is “better” to be skinny than fat. But have
you truly questioned why that is so? I have, and continue to do so;
millions of others are doing the same. “Being fat usually creates
problems” is a woefully vague and undersupported argument. Why? How?
When? Where? The same goes for being skinny.

Thanks for writing,

– Paul

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Woefully vague and undersupported argument??? Maybe….but that doesn’t make it a wrong argument.

And finally I’ll say this: If Mr. FatBlog spent as much time and effort trying to lose weight as he spends trying to convince everyone else on the planet that its good to be fat……..well I think we’d have ourselves a solution =)

Am I unsympathetic? I can hear it already: “I can’t lose weight. My body is built like this.” Ok. I will accept that you can’t lose weight if Mr. BigFatBlog accepts that you can’t convince everyone else that it is ok to be fat. In fact, I am confident it is possible to lose weight long before it it will be possible to change the opinion of the entire world.

The third, and most desirable, option is to accept that you are fat and accept that it will always put you at a disadvantage. I think that is what the fat acceptance movement should be about: Fat people personally accepting their disadvantage, instead of trying to convince the rest of the world that it is acceptable. We all have our disadvantages.

Actually, I think fat is ok. I admit it. I have no strong anti-fat feelings…..but its fantasy to believe that fatness is simply an issue of perception…that if somehow you percieve fatness to be acceptable that it is. The fat acceptance movement will always be about fat people secretly resenting the fact that the world shows favoritism towards skinny people…and that they are not one of those skinny people.

It smacks of sophisticated whining. Didn’t they all learn in High School that whiners just get beat up and laughed at?

In fact, it is just like High School. There is always envy of that group you’re not in that is cooler than you. You want to be in that group. They are more fun, smarter, better…whatever. But no matter how many times you try to convince everyone that your group is actually the cool group or that you are now a part of that group…no one buys it. And they never will. The fat group will never be the cool group.

I would also like to thank Paul for returning my email. It has been a fairly civil exchange about a very sensitive topic. I respect that.

I learned some stuff the other day about the unconditional acceptance of others.

I liken it to laissez-faire capitalism. It isn’t that laissez-faire is the best economic model. Markets do not always function perfectly and sometimes need our intervention. However, the questions then becomes: When do you intervene and when do you let the market work itself out? When do you do more harm by intervention than by simply letting the market function inefficiently for a while? History has not shown us wise enough to consistently make the right decision.

That brings us back to unconditional acceptance. It is not the best idea. Ideally one should accept what is acceptable and intervene in the unacceptable. However, am I wise enough to judge correctly what is acceptable and what is aberrant? Even if I judge correctly, do I create more problems than I potentially solve by the confrontation?

And so, it is often a good idea to practice unconditional acceptance of others because I am not smart enough to decide what is or isn’t acceptable nor can I predict the potential harm the intervention itself might cause.

There is one last point to make about this: Unconditional acceptance is a pretty good idea, probably under-utilized…but it is not a great idea. There are times when intervention is necessary and a judgement must be made. Unconditional anything, whether it be acceptance, love or laissez-faire is easily used as an excuse to do nothing when action is necessary.

So…when is action necessary? Well…it is necessary when you believe that it is. It comes down to your faith in right or wrong. A man with no convictions is truly capable of unconditional acceptance, because nothing will ever call him to act. A man with strong convictions will constantly be called to act.

It is surely possible for a man to have strong convictions and be very wrong about them. Nevertheless, he will be called to act. And there will be others with strong convictions that will also be called to act…all with varying degrees of rightness and wrongness. So who is right?

I can appeal to reality to settle this argument. History has shown that he who is winning is right. He who has the biggest stick and reproduces the most is the most correct.

This is always true, no matter how much we may wish it otherwise. You may point out that history books show that winners are sometimes wrong. But that is only because the current winners have a different viewpoint than previous winners. Although history may have judged a winner to be wrong, I assure you that they felt very right at the time, and since they are all dead now, our judgement of their wrongness has no real consequence.

The religious among you may point out that rightness is not just a matter of who is winning. I point out that religion itself is a consequence of the rightness of the winner. You believe that your religion is right because its previous believers had the biggest sticks and reproduced the most. Otherwise the religion would not have continued to exist to allow us to have this discussion. A religion’s rightness is determined by its number of believers and the strength of their convictions.

This little interplay with people of varying strengths of convictions being called to action has a name. It is called Life.

I now point out that this is a very uninspiring opinion. I started out by learning about unconditional accpetance and ended up with a Darwinian attack of religion and the advocacy of ethical relativity. That sucks, but I can find little fault with my arguments so I guess I’ll stick by it.

Hmm….so I suppose there isn’t really a point to be made here. Just that those were the contents of my head….a brief example of how my brain jumps from one thought to the next. I started with an opening sentence and just wrote whatever popped into my head.