...do it tomorrow

All I kept saying was rad. The people, totally rad. The weather, the view, totally rad. The activities, professions, museums, performances, all rad. But what an outdated word for New Mexico! It is no longer the 80s, Simon; no one’s saying rad. Except me in New Mexico, apparently. But I couldn’t help it.

The Midwest is back there...ahead is the South West

Before I left I had a feeling I would like the South West, and I did. It began the moment I crossed into the state…something in the air shifted, perhaps. We were no longer in Kansas—thank God—and Oklahoma was behind us too. We were officially in the South West. The landscape responded immediately, as if to greet us from a deep sleep. First there were the easy, deep breaths in rolling hills. Then the mesas—glorious mesas!—rose in first movements and fresh eyes. That kind of love only morning sees gently grew into mountains in  the seated position, eyes rubbed with clouds. And that sun, fully awake, smiled at me and said ‘hello’ in a ‘good morning’ kind of way.

Omega Bridge outstide Taos, NM

Our first stop was in Taos, an artsy spiritual town unsurprisingly nestled in the heavens. In every direction you can see for miles and miles and then up even higher to surrounding peaks. In one corner lies the land of the Pueblo Indians, the other has a shrine to poet D. H. Lawrence, and in between are the shops and restaurants of tourist-fed wares and well-fed tourists. Indian artifacts and artwork, cowboy garb and southwestern spices were in the windows of shop after shop. But it is becoming with a view. Maybe even quaint. 

Easter sunrise in Arizona

At the Taos Diner II we interacted with genuine gals more concerned with contact and communication than orthodoxy, and I enjoyed every bit of it, from the off-color jokes printed on their menus to the casual way they poured coffee, to the matter-of-factedly way they denied service when the power went out. We sat and drank coffee until it went cold or the electricity came back on and told stories of bears in the mountains. Outside the restaurant the cook toked on her cigarette and laughed with the neighboring businessman about the situation.

It is the land of mañana, apparently, so this is par for the course. I met a transplanted New Yorker who told me that first when he explained the difference between “the way it works” in the North East and South West. Cowboy poet S. Omar Barker (aka Ol’ SOB) said it this way:

Mañana is Spanish word I’d sometimes like to borrow.

It means “don’t skeen no wolfs today that you don’t shot tomorrow!

An’ eef you got some jobs to do, in case you do not wanna,

Go ‘head an’ take siesta now! Tomorrow ees mañana!

Le Canyón Grande

But I like it this way—not so fast paced and crazed, with less stress clinging to us like our wintery garments.  I like that it is markedly different in the South West. The character is distinct from other state clusters. Maybe that's why I'm on the West Coast and finally getting to this haphazard post. Santa Fe is growing on me. Or maybe that’s why everything was rad—because it wasn’t cool, like California, or wicked like the North East. It isn’t awesome or tight or right-on. It’s just, totally rad.

…get the hell out of dodge

It’s been day after day, it seems, in deceptive listlessness. Like plains rolling into farms rolling into fields—the experience one has crossing Kansas—these recent weeks have been monotonous, though anticipatory.

My travels back from Nicaragua went as anyone’s would. I was able to spend my final hours on the stoops of the Ometepan locals, a joy I often miss on the fenced porches of the States. It takes a certain kind of life to end the day sitting outside, peaceably, watching children pass, conversing with neighbors, content with stillness. In Palestine they understood this secret pleasure. So too did those in Nepal and Jordan. I was reminded of my sweet life in the West Bank as I tried to speak Spanish, both jokingly and seriously, which are hardly different to the local. I sat through dusk into darkness; the volcano silently faded into the navy night and a host of starlight broke through the sun’s waning cover. Paradoxically, the conversation was light, but the contact much deeper, like Michelangelo’s God touching Adam. These moments of connection are so delicate, intricate, even beautiful, and they occur wherever we are able to really meet with someone as ‘other-worldly’ as a Nicaraguan, or United Statesian or wherever-ian.

However, I had to say adios beneath hopes of return and a smoky volcano. I rode the ferry across the choppiest waters I’ve ever experienced and I marveled at the fact that we docked. For a moment there I honestly had no idea how or when we’d stop and what we were going to smack into and from where I will jump to save myself. Good thing I don’t have an iPhone to get wet—I thought (yes, these are my concerns). Luckily the plane ride was smoother.

The PoeMobile gearing up for departure

Home was freezing, my back peeled completely from a burn and I discovered I had developed shingles across my side. So when folk asked me how was Nicaragua, I found myself replying with a kind of love-hate paradox. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it, really; it was packing time! My father were to be off to the West on another leg of the Dead Poet Tour—this one exploring from Santa Fe to L.A. to Seattle. And there was much to do.

As I write this, on our way to our first stop in Taos, New Mexico, we are in the windy, cold, precipitous tedium of Western Kansas. The phrase “get the hell out of dodge” was first said in reference to Dodge City which we just passed through. It makes sense. Three titillating days of sunshine in Kansas City and Wichita spoiled us. Now all I am hoping for are the sunned clay homes, mesas and cacti of my imagined Southwest as we chase the horizon.

Westward Poe!

Ever westward. Towards occidens, the setting sun. It is a historically poetic direction in which to explore. Eden was in the East, and so lay our beginnings. From our exile until Lewis and Clark, until now, even, we have been headed West. It seems it is as Kerouac says, the east of my past with the west of my future. It is in the west our days end, unreachable but chase-able. And so in the hand of Discovery is the hand of Dusk, and they are inseparable.

So let’s get the hell out of dodge and head westerly. There’s nothing here for us anyway.

...sleep lightly

I implied it in the last two blogs--to put away the technology and that it is hard to sleep here in Nicaragua. In writing those words I didn't suspect how they would turn around to both spite and protect me.

I met up with the group I would be traveling and working with in Managua and we began our trip toward Isla de Ometepe--the Island of Ometepe. As we moved we met people who asked where we were from. I caught myself a handful of times:

"I'm American--I mean, I'm from the United States." After all, I haven't left Greater America, and I share a continental, maybe hemispherical identity with the Nicaraguense who are also "American." In fact, it was in modern day Brazil that the name "America" was first planted, so perhaps I am only getting closer to real deal. Not surprisingly, it is an easier question to answer in Spanish, where my only option is Soy de Estados Unidos. They have understood this concept far longer than we have.

Despite ourselves, we arrived on Ometepe after half a day,  smiling and excited, and were carted over to the orphanage, CICRIN, where we were to spend the next week doing construction works. Indeed, exciting it was, even by the first night.

I have always been a light sleeper--or perhaps an ever-aware sleeper--and something near me stirred my senses the first night at the orphanage. A moment later I heard the delicate sound of two lips separating and curiosity led me out of subconsciousness. I softly turned my head and opened my eyes to a crouched figure, pawing through my friend's luggage, looking up intermittently in caution. I suppose you never think you are being robbed until it happens--it is too far-fetched to happen to me, I thought without thinking--and so I sat up calmly. I looked over, hoping my friend had just risen early in the darkness for a morning stroll and didn't want to wake the others. Instead I caught sight of the burglar darting out of the room on noiseless feet and in the instant I was able to make it to the door, he was gone with only a crunch of dead leaves left behind. He made away with my friend's money and my beloved iPhone. An iPhone I care little for except for the photos he stole with it.

It goes without saying that I spent the entire rest of my stay in Nicaragua not only without a way to contact home but also without a camera; I could only memorize the beautiful sights, not immortalize them. And this is much to my chagrin because I love to take pictures of my travels and use them to color this blog or my desktop background or just to armchair travel in the future. Either way it forced me to have even fewer barriers between me and my experience than before. A camera is a wall, and the call of Instagram and Facebook, a distraction. This situation gave me a more unadulterated perspective. And what came into focus was an older world than I would have thought.

I noticed that there is something antiquated about this place, perhaps in their faces which still have the markings of ancient peoples (some of which are even Asiatic, reminding me of the great migrations during the Ice Age). But the sun seems older here too. They wear it on their skin and in their wrinkles. The toughness of their high cheeks, the trenches that crack in expression, the flat foreheads, they are all tanned by a hereditary sun. This is not like me, who gets it on vacation; it is a recent and fleeting color. At the beach where I waited for the ferry to leave, I saw young boys in their underwear chasing one another into the bar for a quick, sopping look at the Real Madrid-Barcelona score. They are various tones of brown, and in their skimpy attire I notice that the color is everywhere. There is no tan.

The sun bakes the land like a tortilla in this dry season where everything is dead or dying--something I wouldn't have been able to notice if I wasn't told since I come from the barren northern winters. I feel like we are harvested maize, popping under heat or puffing like souffles in the rolling hills. I look around in my stuffed minibus ride (what the locals call inta mortales, or something like that, meaning "on your way to die") and see an aging orange haze that takes me out of the bus and into the realm of the Olmec, Zapotecan and Mayan civilizations which thrived for hundreds of years, each adding to the menagerie of technological and agricultural innovations. They produced uniquely accurate calendars, great religious structures and the world-changing maize. Quite a bit has been discovered about these peoples, and quite a bit more is left undiscovered.

But perhaps all this is what I want to see--the vestiges of a glorious ancestry--because it helps me with my Euro-Caucasian guilt for spilling their blood so thoroughly and systematically, and for destroying those rosetta's stones of cultural information. With it I'll sleep better, but even the young men with gelled hair and tight shirts clicking their tongues at the passing women seem more American than I. Their eyes are Mesoamerican and their blood reaches possibly farther back in time than mine does, even if I trace mine back to Mesopotamia. Everything here is baked--a timely process--like that tortilla, dry and crumbling but rich in flavor and reaching far back into traditional and cultural history. I am a gringo, a microwaveable import.

Well, maybe not. I decide a stolen iPhone isn't such a great big deal and I relax into the views passing outside the windows. Sitting in that bus, my knee in the crotch of the man facing me and his nearly in mine, I take the trip from Managua to Jinotepe to Rivas to San Jorje to Isla de Ometepe as a local, as an American. 

...swing like monkeys

I awake to warbles and cuckoos I've never heard before. There's this continuous coo, a passing crick-crick-criiiiiiick, staccatoed chirps--I start because someones creeping into my room only to realize somewhere out my window there is a bird that sounds like a slow squeaky hinge. I go outside and catch just the glimpse of a species I've never seen before, not even in pictures or television specials. I look up and see mangoes to my right, still green, and coconuts hanging higher; this place is ripe with biological diversity. The sun has been up and by seven in the morning is already bright and hot if you stand in it, or sit and read, as I did. A fairly consistent breeze greets us in the morning, though (and will rock us to sleep later at night).  

Perhaps we knew it would be a good day when we turned the car on with a chug-chug-eeeeerk and the blessed air conditioning worked. The cool air almost immediately caressed our sticky foreheads and necks. Air conditioning is a novelty during the hottest part of the year in Nicaragua, especially when your car is ancient, has an unfamiliar name, and is a chronic in-patient.  Before we left I thought about changing into a t-shirt for the sleeves so that I didn't stick out so clearly as a gringo, but kept on the cut-off to keep out the heat. I'm 25% taller than everyone here, and 95% whiter, anyway....not much chance for blending in.

But my friend's rig dig swell, and took us all the way to Granada (and back) with only one minor keys-locked-in-vehicle situation. We passed through dirt cow trails onto paved highways that yawn between rotaries, like arteries connecting the urban organs. Amidst chatter I watched as camels' backs rose lazily from the earth and were being herded as their peaks jockeyed with one another as my perspective changed. Elsewhere the green extended into near-jungle complexity, and beyond that the dust-veiled mountains were jagged like sharks' teeth.

Granada is a colorful town that sits on a big lake in Nicaragua and has all of those pesky characteristics found in touristy towns all over the world: carts selling promises of handmade wares, coffee shops  and bars, nice hotels, shops full of trinkets you can buy anywhere even though they claim their prices are lowest or quality highest, and so on. This town is strange though--at least, the central square is anyway--because you feel like you stepped awkwardly back in time. The architecture is clearly colonial, an uncomfortable reminder of the historic collision between native and European, a reminder which is augmented by all the Nicaraguan service and foreign patronage. I feel antiquated as I stroll through the park entertained by a big drum-and-puppet show and watching horse-drawn carriages cart people around. I find that it is easy to feel guilty, being a descendant of the conquistadors and colonialists and explorers who so unintentionally brought over genocidal microbes and (fairly intentionally) racial superiority and religious arrogance.

Grenada is a beautiful place, though, where buildings are separated more by vibrant color changes rather than spaces or fences or yards, and the people are kind, however persistent. We greet each other with a simple Bueno--Nicaraguans drop the "s," informally, it seems. We took a boat ride around Las Isletas and were struck not only by the incredible beauty, but also by the great divide between locals, who erected shacks on the islands they inhabited, and the others (mostly foreigners--we saw the Stars and Stripes hanging outside one), who have constructed mansions and pools and bars and docks on their paradise escapes. 

When we dock I ask my friend to take me to his favorite restaurant, expecting one of those dingy spots managed by someone's grandmother, one of those shacks you'd pass by otherwise, unaware of the magical meal provided, but no--instead he took me to TipTop, Nicaragua's KFC, where his eyes went wide with childlike excitement. It was good, but had no grandmother's recipe.

Nearby the city we went for a zip-line adventure where I just about maxed out the system's weight and size limits. Guided by friendly--quite friendly (they put my harness on for me and I thought about asking them if they'd like my number first!)--Nicaraguans, we traversed through a Robinson Crusoe kind of course. From treehouse to treehouse, and in all kinds of positions, we swung through the air, quite like monkeys. Well, quite unlike monkeys, being strapped in a harness and attached to a cable. But still, potato-potahto.

 My favorite line was the highest and longest one, where I was attached in the back and flew like Superman high above everything else, and I thought, This must be what flying feels like...And then I thought, This is probably not what flying feels like,  seeing as my harness was cutting into me and I couldn't breathe and this Nicaraguan was holding my legs like I was giving birth upside down...like I said, potato-potahto.

The good day ended well though, bruises aside. I may not be too monkey-ish myself, but I did get to play with a real, live monkey. Dexter is a white-faced monkey who was initially intimidated by his more advanced cousin, but quickly preferred my predictable touch to the childrens' erratic behavior. He clung to my arm with all five appendages, ate the bread I fed him and curiously pulled the feathers of our parrot friend who stood on my shoulder. What an incredible species! And after washing my arm quite well, I found myself in bed, being lulled by a fan which blocked out the chatter going on outside. As interesting as it is to listen to and interact with, it's near impossible to fall asleep amidst.

...switch all electronic devices to the off position

I am surrounded by people mostly transfixed by the pallid glow of LED light hovering before their eyes. Ten years ago this would have been the scene in some freakish distopian movie set in the distant future; now it's a reality.  There are a couple families with young children who are devoid of the technological distraction. Good. The news above squabbles the results of a recent study which reveals that parents who put their phones away at the table have better behaved children. This is news?! 

Isolation can be a crowded environment.

It certainly changes the way we travel. We don't greet the person next to us on the plane, who might happen to be an interesting, theatrical person on his way to work at an orphanage in Nicaragua, an orphanage which sits underneath an active volcano, and who has read the very book you are reading and lives in the same city. No, that could be too uncomfortable. But the Atlanta-based belles in blue order us away from our touchable screens, so I stuck out my hand--I'm Simon, he's Mike--and a couple sentences later we were a mile-high and swallowed in the pages of the books we brought. At least they weren't iPads, like everyone else. At least we said 'hi,' unlike everyone else. 

We are so eager to get where we are going we forget that there is something bound up in the process of getting there, something we would be remiss to miss.

But I am guilty myself. I sit here click-clacking away, occasionally looking up for a passing descriptive word or an  inspiration rushing to her connection. And I check my watch hoping that more than three-and-a-half minutes have passed and I'm closer to ending this layover in Atlanta. However, this is the doldrums of travel and they've existed since Amerigo Vespucci sat in the Atlantic wondering where the wind ran off to. Well, even before then, but we didn't much know of their existence. The lull is a part of this process--it forces you to sit back, actually look around and think. You may even meet a nice guy named Mike who works as an event salesperson who does business with an army base in Georgia and lives where you do. But you have to work up the courage and say 'hi.' May we continually be unafraid to greet one another. We're only human, after all. Each one of us.

...arrive, already

I have this need to write, right? It is that itch on your back you can’t reach until you do and then—ooooh, that’s the spot. Or perhaps that elusive itch on your foot somewhere you can quite find exactly…right under the Tibia’s medial malleolus, perhaps, or the Fibula’s lateral malleolus (either way, it’s the ankle). But it is there, and I can feel it, and so I pen this and that, but nothing to publish, or even keep. I have a journal for sneaky midnight dances for which I slip out of the covers and click on a light. Often it’s just a waltz, but occasionally my fingers tango. This journal is filled with private thoughts, my silent sounding board, my record keeper. It is the place to answer the nagging question:  About what shall you write? But journals can get ingrown. I did this, then that happened. I feel like…it is cyclical.

But it persists. This need to write, this molten lake within one’s mountain of creativity is a volatile force. It can be grumpy! One can wipe clean entire cities, leave mothers clinging to their crying babes because of it.

So I write, but I am unsatisfied. These words are not interesting, nor are these events noteworthy. This description is not poetic, not even dryly real. It is crumpled into the garbage, deleted from existence. The very world is in turmoil around me, but I am frozen.

Is this writer’s block?

But I wrote.

But I still want to write.

And so it seems my need is not really to write; my need is for something to write about. Like Clifford “Cliff” Bradshaw of Cabaret, who city-hops through Europe in hopes for his novel’s inspiration, countless travelers have run away to write. They chase the story; run from the stale. Krakauer climbs into thin air and descends with a horrifically beautiful tale. Steinback travels with Charlie in a romantic way, that horn-rimmed romance held up with suspenders and traced with typewriters—the kind of romance that rides the Trans-Siberian Express or sails to South East Asia and finds enlightenment somehow.

I have this need. It is wanderlust and itchy fingers and writer’s block, all an infant growing within, and he’s got his feathered cap and longjohns on already. And I shall call him Adventure, because he will save me from my stillness.

Adventure. From Latin advenio, meaning arrive. From where we pass through adventus, or arrival, but Advent has gone by. So now we cling to adventurus—future active participle—something about to arrive. In the vocative I name that which I speak to—adventure­, come forth!

...pay for tea

View from Landruk

On the first day of our trek we stopped in a little mountainside village called Landruk. We sat down after many long hours of trekking and it felt good, ordered some hot lemon tea and began stripping off anything wet or muddy. We indulged in that wonderfully simple pleasure of taking off your shoes after being in them all day. And then we took off our socks in euphoria. What a sweet truth in life it is that putting on clean socks feels so gratifying, and taking them off does too. There were quite a few young Nepali girls who waited on us, with coconut skin and vanilla bean hair. They flitted around, working, half-playing, watching the strangers that come into their home day after day. They find my inability in Nepali to be a grand comedy and as we get ready to leave the next day in the pouring rain, they chuckle behind veiling hands when I learn how to say "I'm crazy."

But we have an evening in front of us, nestled in the slowly disappearing mountains. A young Dutchman approached us looking for company and we couldn't help but like him and we invited him to join us for the tea that was brewing. We sat and shared stories of home and of culture and of trekking. Nathan's agnostic, we're Christian, and so our conversation even touched on religion and life, as it does often in the non-Western world. We're loud Americans; he's actually Czech, but was raised in the Netherlands. He told us that in the Netherlands people are "cheap" and never pay for one another. Even if you are invited over to eat, be prepared to pay something to help cover the cost. We balked at this, said good-night and he went to his own lodging. He didn't pay for tea. How Dutch.

In the morning we looked for our Dutczech friend, but sadly had to go before he woke up. The torrential downpour was a bit hard to navigate through, anyway. It was here, looking down the face of the mountain, when I said “I’m crazy.” But eventually we got moving. However, we came to discover that what follows is typical. Almost a week later two of us were on our way to dinner in Pokhara and spotted a hairy-faced, v-neck and flat-cap wearing oaf. We laughed and embraced and invited Nathan to eat with us. He accepted, but only for a drink, he said. 

photo cred: Bonnie Cohee

At Shiva's Tea House we shared even more stories and traded pictures of mountains, but as we waited for our food Nathan dove back into questions of religion and faith and life and morality. Nathan is one of the best question-askers I've ever met, and his blunt honesty is why. He ordered a beer and drank it and when we couldn't finish all the momos, he gladly accepted our leftovers. We parted ways again, smiling and satisfied. We bought the food, he bought the beer.

A week later, after we'd arrived back in Kathmandu, we decided it was time to go get some good lattes. Himalayan Java is the Starbucks of Nepal and so we rolled up, bleary-eyed and annoyed by the urban cacophony for some real espresso. We ascended the stairs, turned to sit and were staring directly at a smiling Dutchman. A chorus of love and reunion erupted between hugs and laughter and short stories. We coined the term/hashtag "smc" for "small world connection" and immediately set to posting pictures to Instagram (simonwskold). We all ordered something caffeinated and spent our time sipping in the pleasure of this serial relationship. 

photo cred: Bonnie Cohee

We expressed our growing fondness for each other, exchanged information and gave open invitations to our homes and cities and when Nathan departed in a flurry of smiles and hugs and ‘Namaste’s’, we set about our own business. We even mentioned to one another how much we were blessed and impacted by Nathan’s friendship.

And after an hour or so, we went to leave and asked for the bill. The man behind the counter, however, looked funny and said "that man before paid for you all." Our jaws dropped. We couldn't help but comment (loudly, of course) on how sweet Nathan really is, how much we really do love him and how un-Dutch he'd become.

photo cred: Bonnie Cohee