Tales and Shots from a World of Adventure
Ross Freshwater


Amsterdam


Whistler, British Columbia


French Quarter, New Orleans

Lake of the Volcanoes

Mayan Church Yard

It's been ten days since we arrived on the lush shores of Lake Atitlan, in Guatemala’s mountainous west, via a ride with the chicken bus driver from a Talladega night. His was vehicle number two of five during our two-hour journey from Antigua. His school-bus chariot lived up to its flame paint job as over sixty of us crammed into seats so wide they left just six inches of aisle in the middle of the thing—with Mayans, Mestizos, and two clueless Gringos sitting six across, clutching onto seat bars for dear life as the driver rocketed within inches of every turn, all the while the nice English-speaking gentleman next to me remaining calmly focused on his Latin American edition of the New York Times.

The whole time, the driver’s assistant, dressed in a dusty White Sox cap, stood on the steps by an open doorway and smiled in good-humored conversation with the amped pilot. They’ve gotta lose a few of these guys a year to the G-force. They must. The Guatemalans were really good to us, pointing out where we needed to go, slinging bloated backpacks under dashboards. We owe major karma to them. Without their kindness, we’d likely have been lost in Nicaragua this afternoon rather than standing on a raptor’s perch overlooking one of the world’s most beautiful lakes.

After a hard day of hiking, my buddy Andy and I just saw what we both agree may be the most incredible view we have taken in along our many life travels. Imagine being on a restaurant patio with soft bongos and Latin guitar in the background. Before you, five miles across a placid azure lake, sits a 10,000 foot volcano. On its left, in a valley five miles long, sits a blanket of satin white clouds, rich dollops hanging over the foothills just above the lake. To the right, a five-mile spread of small mountains, their pointed peaks purple-black from the scarlet glow of the setting sun just behind. Atop the grand behemoth, a small puffy cloud perfectly encircles it in the fading blue twilight, as if some holy headpiece were required for this perfect Sunday evening.

We had just returned from conquering – okay, surviving – our ascent of this very marvel. It is not the highest in the Guatemalan neighborhood—the one next door is 1,000 feet higher—but 10,000 feet is not bad for a day’s climb by two guys who had committed the prior evening to watching World Cup Soccer amid a crowd of beer-drinking fans. I’m proud to say I outpaced Andy and a young German venture capitalist who exudes so much fitness he had gone so far as to purchase a gym membership for his month of Spanish study here – This is where I also admit that, today, the German’s intestines had just emerged from a two-day bout with Montezuma´s Revenge.

Prior to our hike, we had been instructed by our Lonely Planet travel book and the locals to hire a guide. Finding one is seldom a problem, as there are a flock of them awaiting one’s arrival at the ferry boat dock at Volcan Atitlan’s base. There is a common warning on the street here: If one doesn’t spring the ten bucks for local accompaniment on the steep ascent, one will likely be robbed by bandits along the trail. Although the rest of Guatemala has a reputation for random and violent crime, it is also well known that the country’s police force has made it a priority to keep Lake Atitlan safe for a burgeoning tourist industry.

Our conversation with a couple of guideless English climbers who had in fact been victims of banditry, however, did reveal that criminal activity was alive within these hills—albeit in a more benign form than guide book lore. When these bandits found that the hikers had no money, they kind of scratched their heads, looked at one another, and replied, “Well then… Give us your sandwiches.” Was this the work of bandits or an informal labor union? Regardless, our American teachers’ salaries made us wealthy guests in a foreign land. We hired Jose as our local guide and headed up the mountain.

The first few thousand feet consisted of a ride in the back of a pick-up truck. From there, we were dropped into a corn field, which rose several thousand feet up the side of the volcano. I wondered if the risk of a lost crop to rolling lava flows from a major eruption every twenty or so years is offset by the returns reaped from the loads of free fertilizer regularly dispersed by the mountain’s rich volcanic ash. The recent wreckage of a town in the valley below, however, revealed the perils faced by the valley’s economy. Entire neighborhoods were torn to bits, half submerged in the hard black rock that had consumed them while in its glowing and flowing form. Across the lake was another town torn asunder by the elements, this one’s houses, even a cement playground, thrown into a now-shallow river by mudslides triggered by torrential rains. Yet the locals carry on with all forms of boxes and bags on the backs of trucks, rickshaws, motorbikes, and persons, rebuilding atop the old as their ancestors have done for eternity.

On we climbed, moving from field to forest, the lack of switch-back trails so commonly found in the United States now apparent more than ever as we clambered for roots and tree branches to pull our way straight up the side of a rocky face, past the tree line onto a solid rock perch, where we found ourselves on the roof of an emerald and sapphire world.

Lake Atitlan is breathtaking, big enough to make opposing shores seem distant in the mist, and dotted with enchanting towns all around. Each has its own ambient niche, often connected only by ferry service and the watery reflection of three active volcanoes that ring the flooded valley forming this crystal blue, thousand-foot-deep lake.

Spanish language schools are everywhere and cost a mere $135 per week. They include one-on-one instruction and a family home-stay with three meals a day. How can it be that affordable? We Americans are clearly blessed with the currency of a strong economy. Mayan Indians are also everywhere, clad in their brightly stitched craftsmanship from head to toe—the men, too, with one brightly patterned vest over another brightly patterned shirt on top of another brightly patterned pair of pants, all underneath the light beige of well-tended straw cowboy hats.

The place is also surprisingly hip, with high-speed internet cafes, discotheques, and big-screen World Cup Soccer mixing with the goat herds, motor rickshaws, and Mayan craftswomen carrying colorful loads on balanced heads to sidewalk markets. The motor rickshaws are imported from India, yet they carry the Thai nickname, tuk tuk—a fun tidbit of commercial history to be explored.

Gazing down from our heavenly peak at the sparkling dots of humanity sandwiched between the emerald and sapphire landscape, West Guatemala seemed like a super place for an extended stay. Nicknamed the “Land of Eternal Spring” for its ever-pleasant weather, it is also a great spot for Spanish language immersion on the cheap. Perhaps a whole summer here would be a wise way to go if one truly wanted to make inroads with Spanish, on a weekly budget one could easily blow on a Saturday night in the States.

(6/23/06)


Volcan Paddle


Volcan Storm


The Chicken Bus



The Zocalo

The Art of Border Crossing

Honest Day's Work

5:30 A.M., we make our way groggily to the curb to catch the once-a-day minivan from Lake Atitlan in Guatemala to Chiapas, Mexico. You can imagine our annoyance when, at the next stop, the curb was bare and the scheduled pick-up still in bed. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes the van idles while the driver disappears into a hotel to wake this guy up. We had been running bleary eyed through dark streets with stray luggage when it seems we could have had the driver powering up our kitchen coffee maker.

Finally, a forty-something-year-old Mestizo, with rumpled clothes and hair, emerges from the gate with a large worn backpack. There is a loud PLUNK as it is slung through the back door of the hold. I think, finally, we are on our way. Then the guy disappears again into the hotel and another three minutes pass. Another large duffle bag. PLUNK. Then another. I glance over the seat to notice that, with the help of the driver, he has rearranged our Gringo bags so that they are on top and his are on the bottom. Finally situated, we are off on our eight-hour journey. About an hour in we stop for gas. The guy disappears into the bathroom for another good twenty minutes. The driver patiently waits. We throw one another an inquisitive look. What the heck is going on? And what might this guy be packing?

Also on board is Lincoln, a 55-year-old expat from California who has taken up Mexican citizenship to make his mint in local real-estate. He is quite a character. Claiming to be good buddies with Bill Walton, the former basketball star, he seems to know other heavy hitters all over the United States, yet he has abandoned the USA altogether to strike his own gold in Mexico. He, too, notices the odd behavior of our rumpled passenger, and the fact that our stuff has been placed in an inconspicuous mound around his own in the hold. The van stops for lunch. The three of us and the driver sit down in a Mexican truck stop cafe. Lincoln orders a large steak, strikes up good natured small talk with our fellow passenger in Spanish, then steers the conversation toward our inquiry with a sly smile: "So, what's in the bags, man?"

Our new friend returns a knowing smile and jumps from his seat for a trip to the van. I think to myself, have I just unknowingly entered some Colombian drug club? A minute later he reappears with several plastic bags in hand. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. He unwraps them one by one. Out of each emerges a statue; heavy, blue-green, intricately carved, pure jade; thousands of dollars of the stuff, pulled from deep within the Guatemalan Earth where the finest jade in the world is made by the fiery compression of two continental plates. The Guatemalan government is well-aware of the value of this treasure, and for this reason, transport of raw jade across its borders is illegal.

My brain wraps itself around the fact that this guy isn't a drug runner coming down from a reckless binge. He's an artist, using diamond saws to turn the second-hardest substance in the world into the likenesses of early Mesoamerican folklore. Out of his stash he pulls the primitive round head of an Olmec Indian and then the intricately detailed square head of an Aztec jaguar. Then, for a good laugh, he pulls out a picture of Bill Clinton in his San Cristobal shop.

It was a mere twenty miles back that he had transferred this weighty loot across his carefully chosen border—a single raised red and white crossing gate on a two-lane highway crossing the hilly frontier. The driver of our connecting van waltzed from Mexico to our Guatemalan parking spot to assist our former driver in the transfer of the artist’s bags. The few border guards milling about what appeared to be seamless commerce on both sides of the border took no notice as we passed under the “Welcome to Mexico” sign, our unchecked passports in hand. This guy clearly had them all paid off. And three children's college educations paid off, too.

(7/21/06)


The Preacher Man


Hill Taxi

The Emerald Isle

O'Connell Street, Dublin, Ireland

It's New Year's Day, and I'm in Dublin. Flat broke from a week of converting the failing dollar to the high flying euro, but consoled by pints of Guinness that have broken high double digits at this point. There is a saying that it is impossible for two Irishmen to walk into a pub and order just one pint. This is due to the fact that it is terrible etiquette to purchase just a drink for oneself. Beers, cigarettes, and whatever else you may consume in a pub are gifts that are to be exchanged and re-exchanged for the even greater gift of gab. A pub filled with good conversation is termed "good for the craic" (pronounced crack), and we have yet to find an establishment that has proved otherwise.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Irish are a stew of characters from all over the North Atlantic, who sip away days in the dark warmth of brightly painted pubs harbored from the shifting rains outside. Their brogue makes their wit as light as it is dark, and if you can match them for a few rounds of good-natured jostling, the ideas that then pour forward are a testament to a people for which literature and conversation are a high art. All art depends on benefactors, of course, and the fact that Ireland is now the "Celtic Tiger" of Europe has maybe spun hours in the pub out of control. Dublin is now more expensive than London. The average Irish person enjoys an income far above most of the world, and as its high tech economy makes it the crown of the EU, its citizens are snapping up fast jobs, fast cars, and fast living.

Couple this with the free fall that priestly indiscretion has wreaked on the Catholic Church, and you have a full blown social extravaganza in a country where birth control was illegal just a little over a decade ago. Along with the cheerful banter yet to be overcome by the rising tide of materialism are chipper Irish women in mini-skirts who, still matching the men word for word in the pubs, have donned a scanty style thoroughly un-Catholic and to whom the Polish woman we are staying with roles her eyes with the word "Irish!"

The mists part about every three hours for a spot of sunshine between the rain drops. On every lawn, hill, wall, and unused driveway there is green. Everywhere—in the crevices of bricks, in the crooks of trees—the island is an eternal spring green, accented by brightly colored doors and brightly colored pubs. Though the internet is lightning quick, half the pubs don't even have music—for it gets in the way of the craic. Outside their front doors in Galway, old men are jumping off the public dive into the December Atlantic, while young men watch soccer matches in the pub, women are loaded with shopping bags, and the population shakes its good natured head at the fact that, this Christmas, slews of Irish did their shopping in New York.

Ireland has an income tax like the United States—low—and a sales tax like Europe—high. The Irish speak English and sit between the two continents. Ireland has severed itself from the English pound, going Euro all the way, yet it remains connected to the States as well: 25% of Americans are of Irish decent, while Irish who have spent time in the States are in every pub. I feel very at home here in this very familiar place. This may be due in part to a bit of family history I learned in the past week. My people come from Waterford County, an early Viking settlement from which the Ostmen raiders would pillage the rest of the island. My middle name, Foley, in Gaelic means "plunderer." Many of my youthful indiscretions are beginning to make sense.

I cannot help but marvel at the fact that my predecessors emigrated from an Ireland that was dirt poor in 1848 and that had also been so for several centuries prior to that fateful day my great-great grandfather had his final run-in with an English tax collector and moved to the United States. Ireland remained poor right on through my own college days. Yet in ten short years, the tech boom has turned England's former whipping post into the Silicon Valley of a continent.

The rustic Guinness Brewery I remember from a visit five years ago, with its hops-covered wooden floors and homey tour guides, is now something akin to Disney World, gutted and redesigned by an architect better known for big city art museums. On the field where not a hundred years ago Irishmen were gunned down for nothing more than playing their native games, an immense Super Bowl caliber stadium now stands to celebrate those very Celtic sports.

Perhaps most intriguing is the Spire. In the middle of O’Connell Street, across from the old post office that stands like a Roman ghost, where in 1916 Irish freedom fighters were crushed with English shells, a metallic needle, no more than ten feet at the base, shoots 300 feet into the air. It is free standing, made with some new feat of engineering that allows its sharp point to shimmer far above the rest of Dublin. As one looks at the chipped yet grand pillars of the old post office, one can still see the scars of war. Turn around, and the sun's rays illuminate the polished metal of the Spire like an electrified wand; so bright, I thought, that on a clear day standing on the English coast, one could detect a glint on the horizon to the west.

(01/02/05)

World Cup

Italia! (World Cup Victory)

“Viva Italia!” These words are echoing from sidewalks all over San Cristobal, Mexico, as Italian tourists have poured out of the bars and taken over the city’s streets. The World Cup Soccer title is now theirs, following a tie-breaking shootout with France that came down to the last man, a victory that was the product of a month of hard-scrabble tournament play.

By chance, our trip to Central America began at World Cup’s start and would wrap up a day after its exciting end. We’d first landed in Mexico, to witness that country’s first win in Germany alongside the locals that had packed every bar with a TV to the gills. Quite a festival followed. We then saw U.S. hopes for the cup dashed while at a beachside bar in Belize, alongside a group of Mexican snorkelers who saw their own team perish as Angola, Portugal, Italy, and Argentina’s players rocked various TV screens with fancy footwork we Americans don’t often get to see in U.S. sports.

Then we were off to Guatemala where everyone was rooting for Argentina to kick Mexico’s butt—revealing in no subtle way that rivalries with its next door neighbor are alive and hot—only for us to then see this allegiance shift like the wind when Germany took on the victor, Argentina. “Argentines are snobs!” Their cultural difference was acutely revealed as Guatemalans jumped off their bar stools with screams of joy and arms raised high to a German goal.

Since most of the Europeans we’d met this trip were Dutch, we picked Holland as our new favorite after the U.S. bowed out. But then the Portuguese took them down with numerous spats more reminiscent of hockey than soccer. We needed a new team to root for, and a sign to guide us there. A Latin American team would probably win the most friends, and just by chance, the bar owner of the Guatemalan town we were studying in was from Brazil. Sold!

Not even the hustlers in the roadside marketplaces could peel their faces from the soccer matches on their tiny TVs. If walking down the sidewalk this month in Latin America you are suddenly enveloped by a collective roar, somewhere in Germany someone has just scored a goal.

Ten days ago, my buddy Andy and I had just finished up our first week of study at a Spanish school in Guatemala. We were piled high with Spanish vocabulary from the hours and hours of rich one-on-one conversations with our very cool and cute Mayan instructors. However, their burgeoning accusations of our being slackers drove us to a clear conclusion:

We could give up two-dollar beers and World Cup Soccer at the local pubs, and engage in the homework of serious students... Or, we could take a week of “independent study” of written Spanish in the mornings, and take the afternoons to immerse ourselves in World Cup Soccer crowds, where we might also endear ourselves to jubilant locals with our flowering Spanglish. Abandoning our accommodations with the Spanish school, we set out on our own to find a new place to live.

We soon lucked out with an ex-pat acquaintance who asked us to housesit for his pets for the week. This twist of luck also allowed us the opportunity to host garden pre-parties for fellow travelers before each new tournament game. We soon found ourselves walking away from language lessons altogether—in the spirit of the broader cultural exchanges that orbit so passionately around the final rounds of the world’s most popular sport.

A week later, we are back in Mexico, awaiting the World Cup’s final match, a day prior to our return flight home. In San Cristobal, La Revolucion Bar’s two ground-level rooms are packed, and a distinct difference is evident among the mass of people in each. In one, French tourists are swaying back and forth in somber lines, arm-in-arm, singing their national anthem with a shared gravity that keeps their feet firmly rooted to the floor. In the other, the Italians are swooping a flag back and forth amid a motley crew that is jumping up and down, as they too sing their national anthem, in a collection of raucous voices that stands in stark contrast to their opponents’ next door.

If good soccer defies gravity, the Italian tourists’ bouncing all over Mexico right now are a testament to their nation’s World Cup victory.

(07/09/06)


Penalty Kick, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala


Pick-Up Match, Dalat, Vietnam


Assist, World Cup Qualifying Match, USA vs. Venezuela, Cleveland, Ohio

Carnival

The Morning After, Old Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

The party's over. As Ash Wednesday faded into today, somewhere between the stars that were blazing like an ancient road map off the wing of our 767 and the deep black carpet of the Amazon below, this very zoned out celebrant rested his eyes against the window, transfixed by how pockets of thick humid air would temporarily drown out the stars as the plane's strobes electrified the moist darkness with pulsing throbs. Then, back into the dryer black night, constellations again gleaming their brilliant crystal rays over the absorbent jungle canopy below. No humans down there. None. A natural decompressant following five days of frolic amid a dancing mass of humanity at Carnival in Salvador, Brazil.

Your passes into parties there are the clothes on your back, last night’s being electric blue Lycra tank tops ablaze with speckled tridents and fluorescent orange and yellow liberty spikes around the neck, accented by bright yellow ankle-length shorts. These duds give you two options—to dance a marathon with thousands along a five-mile parade route, or to boogie in-place atop an elevated tent city that overlooks the river of revelers passing below. Pushing the current are pairs of stretch semi-trailers, their beds stacked with amps, bands, and bars, as far as the eye can see. Around each rolling duo is a thick rope as wide as the street and as long as the block, carried by hundreds of thick bouncers who ring the flowing party, while those with electric blue tickets bounce along inside or above.

Your fluorescent pass costs about 20 bucks, a day’s pay in Brazil. Outside the ropes on the ground, it’s a madhouse. It is here that the everyman has his party, elbowing his way back and forth in a Latin punk rock dance that might afford two minutes of limelight next to the band that the paying customer gets to roll aside all night long. Inside the ropes, planted elbows give way to the river of humanity bouncing forward with the drums on the semis above. The playlist for most groups consists of about ten songs, and as each band belts them out ten times an evening from their drifting stage, the swirling human river turns to water, as drums and sweat roll the partiers into sweeping currents along the winding parade path that follows their favorite tunes – complete with swirling eddies and DJ-constructed dams behind which the crowd grinds to a halt in a stand still bounce, to be unleashed in a bounding horde as the flood gates are opened by the band’s “1,2,3!”

We spent two nights running the river and two nights dancing in-place on our perch in the tent city above. Our last night, we were again running the rapids inside the ropes. Our ships this time were captained by the percussion band, Timbalada. It looked like there were ten of them atop the semi, all donning white stripes on their faces and shining bodies, a blurring rhythm and counter-rhythm of hands pounding on piles of skin drums.

This time, we dove inside the rope maybe a mile after the ships left their docks and were greeted almost immediately by the captain of this run. She was African, donned denim cutoffs beneath her fluorescent tank top, and wore the biggest smile I saw in all of Carnival. Her feet carried her rhythm in every direction at once, and she wanted everyone to—and was convinced that everyone could—follow right along. Hardly anyone could, yet her smile just grew bigger as charged revelers gave it a try. She gave each a look as if to say, “Come on! It’ll come!” Whether it did or it didn’t, she was happy to share a dance. She owned the entire crowd—in which there was one person who believed that smile enough to truly rise to it. Our friend, Kabral, came bounding out of our ranks and landed face to face with her, feet bounding all over the pavement. Within a tenth of a second they were in sync, their limbs and bodies mirrors that defy description. Every muscle shook, their feet bounding left to right so fast they appeared to float above the ground. Gravity disappeared.

Our new friend and Kabral at the helm, we soon wound our way from a bright urban canyon alongside the tidal pools of an Atlantic beach. Atop a grassy bluff stood a lighthouse—or rather, a fortress with a lighted cement tower rising majestically from the center of it. My buddy, Christian, nudged me. We’d logged in about a mile at this point and had heard our favorite ten songs at least two times over. He motioned toward the light. I nodded. We dove under the rope, and threaded our way through the working man’s masses, quickly finding grass and open land leading to the ancient tower beyond.

The light stood at the top of a gentle hill that rose up from the street, its slight rolls covered with lush green grass, made wispy by the ocean somewhere beyond in the night. We meandered our way up an old path, making ourselves pint-sized along a massive twenty-foot cement wall. In a perfect line it continued on for maybe a hundred feet before a ninety degree turn sent it to the left, overlooking a high cliff. We slipped around the corner into the darkness.

The pounding music and lights from Carnival’s river were all but gone, deflected or absorbed by the behemoth behind us. There was a warm and still silence, made ponderous by the light wind and waves brushing the jagged rock shoreline below. Milling around were probably thirty or so folks, all men that I could see, spaced out alone or with a buddy every ten feet or so, taking advantage of a moment to turn Carnival off and turn their minds toward the black ocean respite beyond. The scene in some ways bordered on shady. My Chicago street sense along with Christian’s formidable height, however, kept my caution light at a mellow yellow.

Christian lit up a smoke and within seconds two characters had made their way over to us, asking for cigarettes. Christian obliged and the four of us passed around two drinks as our new friends rapped with us in Portuguese and we rapped back in English. We talked about the party, we talked about good drinks, and to our answer for, “Where ya from?” they exclaimed, “Michael Jordan!” with broad smiles on their faces. Each of us barely understood a handful of the foreign words exchanged—but their meaning was made clear by the universal human language one is blessed to find in mutual celebrations and the shared beauty of Mother Earth. At the base of this wall overlooking the South Atlantic, just out of ear shot of the world’s biggest party, we had both.

(3/05/03)


Convenience Store, Old Salvador, Bahia, Brazil


Carnival's Current, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

The Monster and a Punjabi Beauty

Awoke yesterday to a warm day of sunny splendor – one of the first in these Chi-town parts since balmy last August – and figured it a fine time to test out my new kayak on a serene waterway that would pass a lazy day. Since the Chicago River is only a hop, skip, and jump from home, I called my buddy Sam and recruited him for an urban paddle. We started off the morning at the local Hari Krishna breakfast joint, grabbed a few beers from the fridge, then threw our craft in the water, forty blocks from our endpoint beacon, the Sears Tower, its two white-pointed spires rising like goal posts from its 110th story. Having just been upgraded from toxic to merely absurdly abused, the river was a metallic, chocolate hue with a fragrance that was not all together repulsive in the yet-to-explode Chicago humidity.

We set off, past a shanty town of wintered-up lake boats, among whom dwell a few hearty souls who call their floating digs home; around a large and ominous dark, gray, and rusted cabin cruiser, piloted by a bunch of barbequing, black concert t-shirt wearing, good ol’ boys straight out of some meandering scene from Apocalypse Now; then onward past the many under-bridge dwellings that a unique assortment of folks call home. One had a queen sized bed under it, one an entire boxing gym – punching bag, dip bar, and stationary bike – arranged in a concrete living room on the brink of an eight foot drop to the current below.

There were some signs of animal life, including a few geese with goslings – though I must admit, the quietest bunch of the species I've ever crossed—and a healthy population of ducks contently floating among the discarded drink bottles, basketballs, dodge balls, soccer balls, and amorphous petri blobs of shmung. We continued to float past two new and gated industro-condo communities with surprisingly few fired-up grills; past the loading docks of Costco, Office Max, and Home Depot; past glass boxes of corporate offices with stacks of white signs declaring "No Docking!;" and on to the meat of what made this city.

I'd heard my dad talk about the wacky industry on this river. When I was a kid and his paycheck came from Procter & Gamble, he'd come up here to have a look at their riverside soap factory. Across the water was this metals recycling plant, with a grinder that could supposedly gnash a ‘78 Chevy to confetti in seconds. Apparently, now and then the thing would get the hick-ups and—BOOM!—send a huge chunk of metal hurling hundreds of feet into the air and across the river into some unsuspecting neighbor's factory roof. As we crossed 3000 North, I began to hear the hum of the few die-hard companies that still churn ahead of us. They got loud fast, and as we passed the next bend, in a wide stretch of dead river, there she was in all her glory, probably having an easier time of it with the fuel-efficient car bodies of today, but loud as ever as a conveyor belt laden with piles of discarded metal did her feeding.

Slowing river current, ever-rising roar, walls throbbing in angry breaths that coughed out shredded metal: We paddled like hell to get past that thing. Then, onto the hundred-foot piles of rusted confetti no one seemed to have a use for, brown twisted tributes to tetanus taller than most Illinois hills; past the gurgling cement plant encased in the shell of an old towering steel factory – two buildings side by side, skin and roofs entirely made of sheet metal, each a block long and a hundred feet high, the tin housing of a conveyor belt running along the top of each - not so loud, but immense.

Past the old swinging bridges with gears bigger than most life forms and a weighted hundred-foot high black iron railroad drawbridge, on top of which some brass-balled spelling bee flunky compensated for his deficiencies through painting in five-foot letters the courteous warning, "TRANE!" Past caved-in docks, twisted rails, decaying pilings, and 4x4 foot cement erosion control cubes stacked against the steep shore and bursting at their beltline. Under weathered draw bridges of a distant era with quaint lookout houses still bolted to their sides, municipal employees enjoying a very mellow watch.

Around the next corner the water grew wide, a quarter mile maybe. On the left, huge open air warehouses sat on a barren flood plain; and beyond… the sound of rock and roll music - say that again!? Eyes squinting, we spotted a red-tour bus on the far right shore. We rounded the bend. A bar sat on the bank, leaning decrepitly over the water, an array of colorful window panes swung out over the water like the cabin of some jovial pirate ship marooned on a sandbar. Not a boat at its dock, yet hordes of people above, hanging out the windows, on the roof, ambling about floors as untrue as a water-warped deck. We took one look at one another, tied on, and climbed up.

Immediately, we were greeted by two lovely lasses who picked on us incessantly for our redneck entrance and non-Cinqo-de-Mayo-like Aussie and Gilligan hat wear. We’d paddled right into a Mexican-American holiday. Nonetheless, our campy spirits paid off, as the med student and the PhD in philosophy hung with us for many Coronas under the sunshine of the city’s first truly spring day. The med student, a six-foot Punjabi beauty, kept asking inquisitively of Sam, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" They weren't sure but carried on, one increasingly interested in the other. "Thailand, yeah, been there, love it!" and on and on and on. Seventy bucks on drinks and he utters his last name… "Johnson?! Johnson! You were my teacher!!! Back when I was a JUNIOR!... We thought you were gay." He'd been a student teacher at the time, actually, finishing up college. She was now 23.

Things got wilder when the band Rusted Root appeared at the circus tent on the street in front. PhD girl had an actual Aussie boyfriend who made a late entrance, so at the ripe hour of 10:00PM I gave Sam a wink and shoved quietly off in the boat, alone. I should have just bobbed there seated in the thing, as many a cute reveler leaned out a window with raised glasses in approval of my floating steed. Nonetheless, I was out seventy bucks, flat broke (as was the ATM), and Sam was too. But heck, he had a future doctor as company. He'd make it home. I pushed off into the darkness, which isn't really darkness anywhere in this town, the perma-glow of the human race ever steady. I could only connect the dull glint of four of the Big Dipper's dots. The cement mill was asleep, as was the monster; though a few other smaller neighbors chugged on.

The cell phone rang - I know, not exactly getting back to nature, but we might have needed the poison control center at some point today. So, fully charged in my pocket, I pulled it out. "Dude, come back!" As gorgeous as she is? No way! Find your way home, bonehead. It rang again. And again. And again. The Punjabi beauty's voice: "Freshwater! I've got his phone number, now come get your friend!" I should have left him. Nonetheless, blasted integrity kicked in and I doubled back through a sea of bobbing bottles to pick Sam up.

A lingering dockside kiss and he jumped the railing to the boat. Two bottles of brew from below deck and his story: "Ok, here's how I view it. At first, I was cute, cool-guy-in-a-boat, hook-up for the evening; then I was former-teacher-gotta-jump-on-this conquest; then she realized she actually really likes me - and with that comes an early night. So, alas, I have a phone number." And, wow, was she cute! And of course, women have telepathy. So, as we dug in our paddles, the spirited glow of a good night pushing us zig-zaggedly along, the cell phone rang, other interested lady friends of ours wondering where the heck Sam was for the evening – in a kayak of course, paddling an obstacle course of refuse, under an urban moon.

(05/06/2003)


Damen Avenue Bridge


The Monster


Pre-Monster

Post-Monster


The Scout

Monsoon Morning

Hindu Ruins, Orcha, India

Awoke this morning to the pounding sound of the monsoon rains, which made their belated and annual entrance last night on the tail of our landing plane. Prior to our shared arrival in New Delhi, the city had been a sweltering 118 degrees. However, as I and eleven other Chicago teachers stepped foot out of our air conditioned rooms into our first Indian day, we were greeted by a "comfortable" 95 degree morning.

Eager to explore a little piece of the country we would be touring on scholarships for the next six weeks, a few of us decided to go for a walk to check out a park recommended by our professor. The rains, having fallen for barely five hours at this point, had already turned many of the streets and yards into rivers and lakes. The drops fell straight down, in huge yet gentle sheets, turning on and off at random with no particular way to predict what seemed like Mother Nature’s playful flicking of a switch.

The streets in the Golf Links neighborhood of New Delhi look a bit like England's; well paved and well marked, with painted warnings on the curb that advised these American pedestrians to “look right” before stepping onto the crosswalk. Above the pavement was a different world, as Indians drive just about anything with an engine and wheels, veering, gunning, and beeping like the mad drivers I've witnessed in Central America or Rome.

Exiting zipping chaos, we slipped through a gateway into the park and entered a landscape of gnarled trees and green grass. We followed a winding pathway past iron benches and granite monuments. If it weren’t for the streams and pools that had just submerged half the grounds, I'd have taken it all in from one of the seats fast disappearing beneath the rising rains.

The birds were in jubilant hysterics, sparrows frolicking in fresh puddles, blue-black crows strutting across low branches while flapping wet wings, flocks of green parrots calmly claiming large random trees, and hawks circling in the sky high above.

All the while, spring peeper frogs kicked in a chorus that seemed to thicken the humid air. Couples strolled down paved pathways on leisurely walks, while teenagers sat in a circle on a slab of raised concrete and passed around a joint. It was in many ways like a park back in the U.S. – in, say, a Louisiana flood.

We then topped a crest on our water-logged path. Instead of an expected fountain or gazebo, there stood a mosque--or rather the ruins of one. It was 500 years old. Fifty feet high, raised Arabic script covered the length of its red sandstone walls. As we moved closer, remnants of midnight blue-colored tiles were revealed in the curves of its worn doorways. Beyond it stood a tomb that was even bigger. And beyond that, munching calmly on a patch of tall grass, strolled a sacred cow.

07/05/03

Primates, Highway Rest Stop, Tamil Nadu, India

Taj MaBike Rack, Agra, India

Rickshaw Rant

Cruising with Kannaki

Traveling via rickshaw is an amusement park ride. But, be warned, there are no safety bars on the Indian subcontinent. Hold on and prepare for a trip into a video game. Forget terrorists. They're minor. It’s cows, trucks, buses, whirring rickshaws, marauding pedestrians and a family of four on a moped that are likely to turn out your lights around the next bend. The rain was so deep last night our driver had to double back through random alleyways before we drowned. No headlight, then the electricity all over town went out. Drops gushing sideways through the canopy in buckets, oncoming traffic splitting in a mad last second rush around us, all moving objects, save for cows, laying on the horn - bovines being the quiet unmolested random sacred islands drifting where they please, with all currents shifting within inches of their horned heads. Wow. Forget sky diving. Just go for a drive in India.

8/15/2003

Three Faiths

Taj Mahal, Agra


A Mosque

Whereas most buildings in India reflect the deep reds and browns of the country's clay and sandstone, most mosques glow brilliantly in the tropical sun, their white-washed simplicity standing crisply against the cacophony of the subcontinent’s pluralism. This was a big one, with three onion domes and two fifteen-story towers at each end. We were actually on a school campus in Bhopal, a madrasa where teenage boys live and study an Islamic education. Inside the mosque, which opened wide on a courtyard, a few boys were randomly scattered at low-lying desks, bobbing their heads to the rhythms of recited lines from their open Qurans.

In the middle of the courtyard, at a rectangular pool, a small group of boys was taking in a relaxed evening bath. They passed around a bucket, pouring water over happy heads, sticking toothbrushes into the pool and back into lathered mouths. The ritual seemed as much about mellow hang time as a bath, a chance to cleanse the teenage spirit along with a sweaty day. One of the boys caught sight of my camera, smiled, and attempted to throw his friend in the pool.

Evening slowly passed along, and we probably could have let it pass in its entirety right there, as a soft nasally voice floated from a high speaker somewhere beyond and above. It was the evening call to prayer. I'd come to realize over the past weeks that a number of Muslims consider prayer to be a private time among their own. The folks here were a smiling and welcoming crowd. However, we wanted to respect what customs we'd come to understand, so we exited our peaceful respite and moved on.

A Hindu Temple

Boarding a bus outside the mosque, we headed for a Hindu temple in the suburbs. The doors swinging open at a curb by the temple gate, we were greeted by a sea of little smiles, all pushing a handful of flowers to our adult heights. A bit disoriented by the floral cornucopia before me, I was then told by our professor that the flowers were an offering for puja and that I needed to buy some. No sooner had she spoken when a bold boy opened my hand and closed it around my purchase.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I traveled to India without even knowing what puja was. As I walked up the driveway toward the temple, I found myself in the company of a number of families. The women were dressed in the bright colors of their formal saris, the men in khaki dress pants and collared shirts. A middle-aged gentleman motioned for me to step through the gate ahead of him and his wife. As we filed through the temple courtyard, he engaged me in small talk to pass our time in the crowd.

Immersed in our conversation I had fallen behind my group, only then realizing I didn't know exactly what I was expected to do next. The temple was the size of a modest chapel. Built of what looked like smoothed adobe, it was painted a mustard-yellow with white trim, with red rectangles on the four sides of a steeple above the door, and white reversed swastikas spaced out in red circles around its outer trim.

The nice gentleman seemed to understand I was a lost duckling and took me under his wing. We made our way around the side of the temple, where two small marble shrines sat in small open shelters, opposite each other in the courtyard. Small groups of worshippers were lining up in front of each, their floral offerings in hand. The gentleman directed me toward the shrine to Lord Shiva, represented by a smooth, phallic shaped statue of dark gray granite centered in a small round pool of the same stone – a reflection of the union of the male and female spirit.

One by one, worshippers climbed the few small steps to the shrine, leaned toward it, and tossed their flowers onto the large aromatic mound that was accumulating with the crowd. Placing hands flat together in a reflective silent prayer they then bowed for a moment of respect and moved on toward the temple.

When it was my turn to step up, I couldn't help but notice the cloud of delighted bees buzzing drunkenly around the floral treasure. "Careful," said the gentleman, "don't get stung." I was raised on Catholic schooling and therefore banking on the notion that an act of human piety, whatever the faith, might find a soft spot among the stinger-laden busy bodies whizzing before me. On this day, I guess, I’d behaved.

I followed the gentleman and his wife up a set of stairs to a veranda outside the temple, where each person reached up, grabbed the string of a large brass bell hammer, and gave it a bold clang before passing inside through wide open doors. Within, white marble walls were etched with Sanskrit and English scripture, the words “Don’t be too prideful” echoing past advice passed on by my own Jesuit teachers.

I was then instructed to hold my hand out before the temple guru, much the same way it would be done with a Catholic priest at communion, and was handed a ball of sweet rice. The rice apparently embodies a deity making an offering to you in return for your own floral offering to them in the courtyard outside. Instead of the guru then placing black ash on my forehead with a thoughtful finger mark of the cross, it was red turmeric placed thoughtfully in a short vertical line. He then one-upped his Catholic counterparts by marking both my ears and neck. The Catholics perhaps strike a balance with this artistry through the adornment of the priest himself, whose bountifully decorated robes stand in sharp contrast to the meager loin cloth that serves as the attire for most Hindu gurus—picture Gandhi with wavy hair and a thick beard. This guru delivered my sacrament with a wise and warm smile.

A Buddhist Birthplace

The next morning we caught another bus, this time to Sanchi, a tiny village that sits at the base of a long 300 foot hill. It was at the crest of this hill, 2,300 years ago, that the emperor Ashoka sparked a legacy of grand structures dedicated to the new Buddhist religion. Today, only three of the more than a dozen monuments still exist. Few history books even make mention of the spot in their global survey of the faith.

Yet, before us, interspersed among winding paths, were three structures that testify to Buddhism’s strong role in India’s past. Behind granite gates akin to the wooden ones found at the entrance ways to modern cities’ Chinatowns, these stupas look a lot like partially buried planetariums built of granite cobblestone, and are every bit as big. They are memorials. It is believed they contain within their cores the partial remains of the Buddha himself.

After meandering around these architectural wonders, we knocked on the door of a retreat house adjoining the site. A young man of no more than thirty emerged to greet us. Six feet tall, with horn rimmed glasses matching his buzzed black hair, he donned the orange and brown robes worn by monks the world over. It was obvious, on this hot and placid afternoon, he was not expecting guests. In true Indian hospitality, however, he offered us tea. Having just drunk quite a few pots over lunch, we politely declined.

It was clear that both parties wished to make an effort to accommodate the other, so we kept his offer for a tour to a short jaunt around the compound while he shared tidbits in broken English about their branch of the faith. His sect is now based on the island of Sri Lanka far to the south. He is now the lone proprietor of this ancient site, serving a four-year term as flame keeper for the now empty birthplace of his global faith.

A Universal Spirit

Just before our rural highway faded into the Bhopal suburbs, our driver pulled over to offer us a twenty-minute visit to a small village. We mulled it over. Would we be disrupting the calm of a traditional day with our cameras and Western ways? He reassured us that the residents were plenty used to visitors. Having just immersed myself in the inner-workings of three faiths, I wasn't sure if I was prepared to ingest anything new in my already loaded Western head. At that moment, an old woman stepped out of a doorway with a welcoming smile. She greeted all of us heartily, slapped Ben on the back, then pointed knowingly with a shared
laugh toward the approaching monsoon. The children's posse then found us, and we were soon afloat in a sea of excited youth. The beauty of children is the lack of veils that culture has yet to place over their personalities. Their varying antics, expressions, and unbridled curiosity provided for me a mental pathway toward a common bond. Much like that old lady sharing a laugh over the weather with Ben, I realized that at the heart of a vast array of religions and cultures, there is an elemental spirit that makes us all very human.

(Summer, 2003)


Indian Graffiti, Agra


Train Porter, Chennai


Jain Shrine, Madurai


Jain Carving, Madurai

The Headmistress and the Shaker

Rascals Outside the Temple, Madurai


I have finally arrived on a wave-washed South Indian beach and, alas, am a bit spent from a night of singing with "Shaker," an old voice in South India’s Tamil world of rock & roll.

Spent the past week in Channai, the economic hub of South India, a carefree, smog-ridden metropolis that is the Motor City of India—their very own Detroit. The proceeds of the auto industry here have sprouted large scale mega malls where one can competitively barter with the best of Kashmiri rug, Tamil leather, and Rajasthani linen dealers, then duck out for pizza in the food court, where people watching includes a hijab-clad Muslim woman with Harley style motorcycle helmet under her arm, and housewives sneaking into the mall's garage-level bathroom for a bit of water to wash the evening cookware they've collectively stacked up in metallic clusters on the outdoor parking ramp. A culture of contrasts, for sure. Five minutes to let the rug dealers ponder their prices, then back up four escalators for another round of haggling.

Those were our afternoons. Our mornings were spent at two all-girls schools founded by a Brahman doctor and the German wife who accompanied him back from his studies abroad before World War II. Caste blind and multi-lingual, the Children's Garden School and the Ellen Sharma Memorial School recruit young ladies from all religions, castes, and parts of the country. Page one of every text book reads:

"Untouchability is a Crime"
"Untouchability is a Sin"
"Untouchability is Inhuman"

In their dormitories live Tibetan, Nepalese, and Sri Lankan refugees. The strength found in the German pronunciation of the word "Kindergarten" has been blown into a full twelve-grade curriculum by the three Tamil-Deutsch daughters who now roam its campus wearing saris, bindis, and the fair and chiseled face of their German mother. The students create a hum of active learning, producing an air that is confident, inquisitive, and self-aware. They are, without a doubt, a group of very capable young leaders, a product of the opportunities that same-sex education can afford young women in a male-dominated world.

Each day at the school was filled with hours of lecture by visiting Indian academics – their monotone delivery a testament to the diligence and discipline exercised by the honor students sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of us – while afternoons were spent in whirlwind visits to various teachers’ houses, their families eager to share an abundant meal at each stop. In one afternoon I ate four times and almost popped.

It was humbling to have students drape fresh garlands or Kashmiri scarves around our necks each morning, or, even more so, to have an entire room full of students stand up in a show of respect for the guest teacher paying a quick visit to their class. As welcoming a contrast as these actions were when placed next to those of the rambunctious and challenging students in my own Chicago classroom, there was also something about them that made me smile at thoughts of my American homeland. Ironically, these feelings were buttressed by a multi-page article I read in a major Indian newspaper during our stay. Titled “Do Teachers in India Have Too Much Power?,” the gist of the piece was that educators were squashing critical thought with their too stringent expectations for student obedience.

A breath of fresh air blew into our rigid week when on Friday, Shaker, guitar case in hand, walked through the school’s front door. As he placed his case by the lunchroom wall, our Brahmin-German host cast an inquisitive gaze toward his instrument. "What style do you play, sir?" Her short, skinny, smiling guest quickly replied, "Rock & roll!,” as he slipped behind a squat table with an ease half his fifty years. Hands clasped behind her back, the headmistress answered with a mild nod. I felt like a school boy myself when Friday afternoon finally rolled around and I bolted to the bus where Shaker and his good friend Sally, our professor, had been rekindling the excited energy of their days playing together in a band. As we rolled toward a beach resort to spend the weekend on the Bay of Bengal, I knew a welcome American release was in store.

Shaker grew up in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, when American draft-dodgers passed through in droves to escape the Vietnam War. What had been quiet seaside villages erupted in an explosion of Hippie excitement as soul-searching Americans mixed their drugs and their music with Eastern philosophy and mysticism. A number of young Indian folks joined in to bring the exchange full circle. Shaker was one of them, and while Sally studied in India in pursuit of a degree, the two of them spent their evenings jamming in a band that covered 60s and 70s rock & roll.

Today, they both work for study abroad programs in India, she stateside, he from the Subcontinent. Whereas Sally seems to have a friend in every Indian hippie hamlet, Shaker responds in kind with good buddies in U.S. towns like Boulder and Madison, where his kids also go for summer camps and he gets to nod approvingly at his daughter’s opportunity to date boys. That Shaker was on our own trip to India was a treat, made even better by our peer John, who lugged along a $90 acoustic guitar he had purchased at Costco for just such an opportunity.

Shaker and John whipped out their instruments before our first dinner together was even finished. Twelve teachers and their professors belted out the lyrics to many classic tunes as a Shaker cyclone ripped his pick into song after song, and John happily tried to keep along. His English verses a bit rusty from disuse, Shaker nonetheless belted out words in a voice that would make Creedence Clearwater Revival proud. He also repeatedly placed the flats of his hands together and against his forehead in an Indian sign of homage, respect, and apology for the occasionally botched line. Then in a flash, smile and hands would tear into the GCD chords of the next verse.

The Indians and Europeans scattered among the patio tables had quite the accompaniment with their beachside dinners. The manager strolled in broad circles around our table. Would she shut us down? A Bollywood agent at the next table over handed Shaker his card. We jammed on and on. Few moved from their seats and we kept on going. Many hours later Shaker glanced around:

“Do you all know David Byrne from the Talking Heads? A couple of years ago I got a phone call from my record company. We do a lot of work with American labels. So when David wanted to make a trip to South India they called me. I went ahead and prepared for his visit by sifting through his music and finding a tune I could rework in Tamil. I was a bit scared at first he might freak out over copyright infringements. I had all these images in my head of this rock star character getting off the airplane. But when he stepped off his flight he looked more like a tennis player. We spent a week together. He’s a great guy. And he loved my remake... Wanna hear it?”

With that, Shaker slowed down for the first time that evening, his strumming taking on an intense tone. The words were in a language with no parallel to my own, but the familiar notes and his expression shared every line. Psycho Killer in Tamil: A captivating version of a haunting tune.

The eternally twenty-year-old, fifty-something rock & roller then stood up and took a bow. “Ladies and gentleman, as I rode on a train all night to get here, it is time for me to turn in." The secret to rocking into your golden years became apparent: Never lose your inner-teenager, keep on jamming, and turn in when the moon is still high.

(8/01/03)


Summer Sundries, Orcha


Barbershop Quartet, Khajuraho

Lakshmi

Ram, Malibaliporum

Rode a night train today; all the way from the brisk air of a funky mountain hamlet, back to the familiar beach of Mahabalipuram on the Bay of Bengal. As our future rooms were still occupied, I meandered my way to the beach where I was greeted by Lakshmi, the pretty twelve-year-old fisherman's daughter whose acquaintance I'd made the week before. "You go for a boat trip with my dad today, yes?" Her smile was broad; two long black pig tails, radiant dark South Indian face. How could I say no to that? "Tell your dad we'll meet him in an hour."

Freshwater rounds up the road-burned troops, all hung over the furniture watching Terminator on the resort big screen since our rooms aren't ready yet. Creaky comrades, but if I can only get 'em to the beach, reserve tanks will no doubt kick in.

Last week, we had ridden on a full blown boat. Granted, a Boston Whaler type; open, outboard motor, plenty terrifying enough when the adrenaline-pumped fishermen are gunning the thing up and through the walls of three-wave breaks, black smoke whirring, paddling furiously along with the engine, bowman digging his 2x4 into the crest of a wall to pull the thing through; spinning head round to alert his stern man, shouting, smiling, shouting, shouting, smiling, muscles tensed the whole time; his feet never left the deck as he hunkered over on the bow, while his seven passengers were airborne on the back of a bull.

Have you ever stared a wall of water in the face? There's something primal about it. It breathes life into you in a way that makes you ten again - which, other than Lakshmi's irresistible face, was of course why I had to say yes and then go find my friends.

When we returned, there was no whaler. Today, the wealthy owner of that boat was beyond the horizon bagging his twenty-dollar fortune. But there sat Ram, all 130 pounds of him, a compact frame of shiny black muscle, shaved head, smiling. He jumped up and took both my hands. "Hello friend! Today we take you on my catamaran!"

I'd been watching the inventors of this craft for a week. Nothing but a bundle of curved logs bound together, and an outboard motor with the longest driveshaft I'd ever seen bolted to the back. You oughtta see these guys launch them; seems like half the village carries them down to the licking surf, before leaving it to the three crewmen who rock back and forth with each dying wave, waiting for just the split second to lunge their craft into the retreating water.

"You can take seven of us on that thing?" A confident nod was my answer.

So, what is the difference between a whaler and a catamaran? Well, when you are on a pile of logs you are as much in the sea as on it; you are as much brushing those walls as riding over 'em; you rise and fall on the very surface of the water, as Ram’s people have done for ten thousand years.

We swam in the open sea. Ram goofed around under water as if he were a shark. "My English very bad! Only seven years of school." Yet we talked about his four daughters, his wife, his mother; the family that resides in his small but tidy beach-side house. This is a family dynamic that is no easy feat in old India. Marriages are arranged and brides require a dowry. Ram shakes his head in shared recognition of this fact, yet his demeanor reveals the great dowry that lives inside his girls, and a business mind that is modest but solid.

As I glanced over the glimmering water in the afternoon breeze, in slow and deliberate English I said, "This seems like it could be a good life." Ram wasted no time pondering his response. "This is a poor life. The life of a fisherman is not a good life. You are a wealthy man, I am a poor fisherman. I work very hard and have very little in return." Except for a fantastic family; and a hoard of men there to greet him every evening, to grab a hold of him and his boat when the last wave of his twenty-four hour day sends them crashing onto the beach. I didn't know quite how to convey this to him though, so I moved on. “Are your daughters married to fishermen?" "No, no. No fishermen; a mechanic; a teacher. They have all moved away; Chennai, Pondicherry."

After we crashed onto the beach, into the strong hands of his waiting posse, we were invited back to his house for coconut juice. As we sat on the cool tile floor, Lakshmi shared with us her sea shell treasures, while dad scaled the backyard palms and went to work hacking out coconut cups with his large machete. The best part about Ram's cups is you get to eat their sweet meat from the inside when you're done drinking fresh juice.

As we sat talking in his narrow entryway, I took in how Lakshmi interacted with a visiting uncle. It became quickly apparent to me that he had tremendous respect for his young niece. Their conversation seemed more like one that would take place between two adults; two folks with a warm respect for the insights of the other; passing a hot summer afternoon in relaxed conversation, cross-legged across from one another on the cool cement floor. We had all noticed how she had interacted with the boys on the beach. It was clear that they had deferred to her, and that she was a leader among them. I think we all, at some point in the day, had commented on her to Ram. He smiled. "The name Lakshmi means 'fortune'. The day she was born we caught many fish; many shrimp; many prawn. Lakshmi makes even the old people of the village jovial." She has no doubt made their family a wealthy one.

Ram continued, "For her we have arranged the best marriage of all. She will marry my wife's brother's son." As strange as it sounds in our culture, in Tamil Nadu such a union is held in the highest esteem. If some genetic mutation doesn't double on itself, I have faith that Lakshmi's marriage will be a happy one. In a land where wifely subjugation is all too common, her interactions with her future father-in-law appear a good omen.

It seems fitting that I would spend my last weekend in India on the coast of the Indian Ocean; along a shoreline where humanity first discovered the riches of an aquatic harvest; upon which were built the first great civilizations; next door to a people who, other than the outboard motors they have slapped on the back of their vessels, still practice their craft as it has been done since the dawn of history; who now also live on the edge of one of the greatest seas of modern humanity.

Their future visions, however, are no longer gazing seaward. Instead of looking into the blinding rays of the rising sun, they will be looking at the interior upon which it shines. An interior that is teeming with one-fifth of the world's people; a nuclear power; a country with one flag and five-hundred languages; a democracy in which secularism is the norm but Hindu nationalists are threatening disharmony much as the Christian right is doing in the U.S.; a country with some of the brightest engineers, doctors, and writers in the world, and beggars on every other corner, many living beneath crude tarps, their feet and arms eaten by leprosy or the machetes of desperate parents looking to earn a pity-filled buck; an emerging market in which business men broker deals via their cell-phones while on the back of bicycle rickshaws, and posh shopping malls spring up from urban decay—also allowing neighborhood women to do the day's dishes in their garage-level bathrooms. Family is everything. Religion is bountiful. Color is everywhere. Traffic is an insane videogame of buses, bicycles, trucks, cows, sedans, and the occasional elephant; with me sprawled leisurely in a rickshaw's back seat, my senses now immune…

…Save for a few tranquil days on a timeless beach, as the guest of a fisherman—who casts his boat each day from a subcontinent of contradictions into the purity of an ancient and noble craft.

(8/11/2003)

9/11/2001 - Within a Chicago High School & Ground Zero

Ground Zero, New York City
O’Hare-bound, I jumped onto an El train Friday morn. Accustomed to the typical sea of black roller bags protruding from the resting hands in occupied seats, I was greeted by the loud echo of vacant metal on uneven tracks. Disembarking on the silent platform at the end of the line, the nation’s busiest airport seemed akin to an empty cathedral on a random day. It was 9:00 AM, October, 2001. The sun was shining and the sky was blue.

I approached the sole agents working the long string of American Airlines ticket counters, picked up my boarding pass for New York City, then weaved my way through the empty web of turnstiles toward the apprehensive security guards manning the x-ray machines beyond. Though most of my fellow countrymen had clearly dropped air travel like recalled merchandise, I couldn’t help but think that, at that moment, I was traveling on the safest day of the year. And besides, I was headed to the wedding of two dear friends. There was no way I could let recent events dampen their attendance.

As our small collection of hearty travelers boarded the aircraft, we were greeted by attendants that appeared to carry the weight of an anvil in their throats. Upon settling into our seats, one picked up the plane’s microphone, attempted a cheerful good morning, then stated: “Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please look at your neighbor to the left and say hello...” We each did, a sense of relief emanating from a neighbor’s earnest response. “Now, if you could please look at your neighbor to the right and do the same.”

Eye contact and smiling nods continued to melt the tension, as our group of strangers assembled a web of trust throughout the aircraft. The stewardess then continued on with requisite info about our flight, in a swelling tone that ended with a “Thank you for flying Am…” as a corporation’s appreciation was drowned out by personal tears.

***

A month ago, I’d been bolting up a staircase at school to ensure I was on time for my next class, when a fellow teacher came barreling by and shouted “Did you hear!?” hurling the news at the steps toward which I was bound, “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” Being a Chicago Public School, televisions and computers are a rare commodity. The little snippet from the stairs was all I would have for the next 45 minutes. I collected myself in the hallway, stepped inside my classroom, and shut the door. I looked down at the ground for a brief second then up at five rows of anxious eyes. “Did you hear, Mr. F!? Did you hear!?”

I nodded, but keen teenage eyes were clear on the fact that I did not truly know what was going on. My simple statement that a plane had hit the World Trade Center was answered with a peppering of flourished versions of this story that were the obvious products of a chain of morphing shouts up and down the school’s halls. The room was raucous, save for Sara from Pakistan, who sat quietly at her desk in her scarf and white shirt, gazing at me and about the room. I quickly delegated a task and set the students to work.

Surprised by the silence that quickly accompanied the movement of thirty pens, I moved to the window and tried to ponder the weight that was somewhere out there in blue sky. I did my best to look reflective and not nervous or mad. I would not see Sara again – nor most of the school’s two hundred or so Muslim students – for the next two weeks. Their parents would not let them out of the house. A wise move I think, given that an Indian mother was pelted with fruit in a supermarket parking lot a day later, her Hindu faith having been lumped together with Islamic extremists.

A few weeks later, at a school assembly brimming with a slow-cooking teenage mass that had been scouting the hallways in search of justice, an upperclassman from Afghanistan emerged from the crowd and took the stage. The MC up until that point had been our benevolent dictator principal, and the look on her face made it clear she had not expected him. He politely said "Excuse me, Ms. Hernandez," then gently took the microphone from her hand. Rendered immobile by this young man's brash yet considerate act, our leader let him proceed. Surveying his curious audience, the young man then raised the microphone to his mouth, paused for effect, then shouted in blunt Chicagoan, "YO! My name is Kabul! And I'm from AFGHANISTAN!" The auditorium grew quiet. "Listen y'all... I see what you been sayin' to my Muslim brothers and sisters in the hallways. I got one thing to say to y'all. Our parents came here because they wanted the American Dream!" A few cheers rose from the audience. "We're here because we want that dream... The American Dream!" Loud applause. "Because We... Are... AMERICANS!" The crowd roared. 

And the halls then mellowed.

***

Exiting the plane and then the subway at Times Square, I was greeted by the warm sun and a handful of old friends. We had all traveled from distant places to reunite for a knot tying, and we had an afternoon to kill before a rehearsal dinner that would take us deep into the fall foliage on the other side of the Hudson. After a half hour of happy embraces our posse had rounded out. We settled on the inevitable course of our day and headed for Ground Zero.

I can’t remember just what subway stop we exited at, as the usual stop at the Battery had been pulverized by the falling towers. I just know that immediately, when the train doors opened, we could smell the smoke. It reeked of jet fuel, burned metal, and I’m guessing, the deceased. And it was everywhere. As we climbed the stairs to the street above, I did not feel the familiar sun. All around us was dust, thick, heavy, and deep grey. Wheelbarrow-pushing volunteers and silent tourists worked their way methodically around chunks of battered metal and concrete that dotted the sidewalks, while clusters of police officers chatted in front of barricades that shielded foot traffic from what mysteries lay beyond. Every volunteer and officer wore a respirator, though a handful of these folks let them hang unused around their necks, the ease of conversation clearly taking precedent over healthy lungs. I wondered about their long-term health. After a mere twenty minutes of unfiltered breathing, I was beginning to feel ill.

We passed by a men’s formal wear store. A large African-American salesman stood with an at-ease stance in beige trench coat and purple respirator outside the front door. A block later, the shops were closed, their windows blown out. Through the metal grate of a pull down gate we peered into a Levis store. Neatly folded shirts, posed mannequins, registers, and every inch of counter and floor were coated in a three-inch layer of toxic dust. Every business on the street was shut down and covered, save for a small snack stand that had dug itself out of the mess. Open for its first day of post 9/11 business, its shiny mushroom shaped exhaust fan spun through the haze above its freshly shoveled roof.

Finally, we arrived at Ground Zero, or rather the tarp-covered fence that surrounded it, and joined the handful of people that had perched themselves atop hydrants, waste bins, and newspaper machines to attempt a closer look. Once again, I saw the sun’s rays, careening through the gaping emptiness where the twin towers had once crowned the Borough of Manhattan. On every side of this void in the skyline stood buildings that were riddled with pockmarks and gaping holes. It looked like a meteor shower had hit New York City.

A block further and we came upon a church. Hanging from its exterior was a giant quilt for all to sign. We reflected upon the hundreds of thoughts scribed by mourners from around the world. Someone handed me a magic marker. I pondered for a minute, then bent down toward a clear spot awaiting the placement of my thoughts – May the pragmatists of the world bring peace.

(10/13/2001)


Formal Wear, Ground Zero

Liberty's Heart, Statue of Liberty