Christmas is almost here, so everyone has to be happy. If you aren't, go sit in the corner until you come back with a hearty dose of Christmas cheer and you're ready to sing loud for all to hear.
Go. Celebrate family togetherness. Be thankful for what you have. Put on an overly colorful sweater and drink some eggnog. Enjoy some time away from work.
You have to. Whether you like it or not. Even if your family doesn't really like you and your life is lacking what seems most important (including an ugly Christmas sweater) and you don't get any extra time off for the holidays.
It's Christmas time, so plaster a smile on your face. Go shopping. If you buy things for people, they will like you. Right?
Today's the Macy's Day parade
Night of the living dead is on its way
with the credit report for duty called...
When I was a kid I thought
I wanted all the things that I haven't got
Oh, but I learned the hardest way...
Listen to the Christmas carols on the radio and see the pretty lights. Watch Elf and It's a Wonderful Life and drink some hot cider and get warm and fuzzy all over, whether you feel it or not. Most importantly, go spend some money. That's what our society promises will make you happy. Isn't it?
...then I realized what it took
to tell the difference between thieves and crooks
a lesson learned for me and you.
Give me something that I need
Satisfaction guaranteed to you.
What's the consolation prize?
Economy-sized dreams of hope...
And while you're at it, don't forget to take a moment--just a moment--to reflect on the deeper meaning of the day. It's the day that God personally came down to earth so that he could relate to the struggles we face first-hand and ultimately overcome them. And in his name, all oppression shall cease.
Eventually.
But probably not this Christmas season.
(I scraped my knees when I was praying
Found a demon in my safest haven.
Seems like it's getting harder to believe in anything
But just to get lost in all my selfish thoughts...)
Count your blessings this year. So many dreams have come. So many hopes fulfilled. So many seemingly impossible challenges that are now only distant memories. You did the right thing, and you always got rewarded for it, right? Right? Good things always happen to good people, after all. Because they deserved them. Just like you did!
(...I want to know what it'd be like
to find perfection in my pride
to see nothing in the light
Or turn it off, in all my spite
In all my spite, I'll turn it off...)
Or maybe you can't find much worthy of celebrating this holiday season and find yourself going through the motions instead.
Maybe the only thing you really want is a little break, but instead your Christmas looks more like your overly burdened regular life, only on steroids. Maybe life circumstances have you feeling like Christmas is going to fly by this year without you even having a chance to stop and notice it. Maybe it doesn't feel like Christmas because something's missing from your comfortable routine, and there's no way to get it back. Or maybe the whole enterprise is lost in the midst of a bigger life drama. Who can be excited about Christmas when you can barely survive the day?
(...And the worst part is
before it gets
any better we're
headed for a cliff
but in the freefall, I
will realize
I'm better off
when I hit the bottom)
-Turn it Off (Paramore)
If any of the above sounds familiar, don't worry. Despite what our culture tells you, you don't have to be happy this Christmas. Feel free to hit rock bottom instead. Things can only get better from there, and sometimes you have to find the point where all your plans and hopes go awry before you can set free your sense of control.
So, your plans for life didn't work out. It doesn't mean there isn't a better plan out there. And as Hayley Williams suggests above, you'll get farther by turning off your own expectations than by turning off your faith. Maybe that thing you'd hoped for wasn't the right thing anyway.
...Cause I'm thinking about a brand new hope
The one I've never known, and where it goes.
And I'm thinking about the only road
The one I've never know, and where it goes
'Cause now I know
That it's all that I wanted.
-Macy's Day Parade (Green Day)
So, maybe it's been a crappy year and you're in a bad place in life. Maybe your troubles won't actually be far away this Christmas. It doesn't always have to be this way. There's a beautiful story out there to be lived, one where the hero gets through the conflict and finds a happy ending. That story might as well be yours.
The things we think we want are often smaller than the things that will actually bring us joy and peace. That new car won't make you happy. That broken relationship wasn't bringing out the best in you. That loneliness has made you look deeper into your soul and think about how to re-focus your energy. That disappointment wasn't the end of the line. But while you're dealing with it, buying stuff you don't need isn't going to make you happy.
You might want to turn off your faith in all that sustains you right now, but ultimately, it will be the very thing that guides you through.
So if you can't find much to celebrate this Christmas--if you can't find anything to celebrate at all--at least take comfort in what you can hope for, allowing for the possibility it might come in a different form than what you had planned. And take even more comfort in the idea that maybe there's something even better out there for you than what you've allowed yourself to hope.
And when it comes, maybe you'll know that it's all that you ever wanted.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Bad Christmas Songs
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, which means the music on the radio is beginning to sound a lot like crap.
As we discussed in this space last year, few things irk the soul quite like bad Christmas songs. While plenty of wonderful Christmas songs help to make the season bright, on the flip side, just because a song mentions something about Christmas or snow doesn't make it good.
Plenty of songs are overly sappy or nonsensical, or in some cases, send appalling social messages.
As suggested by a reader last year (thanks Niki!) nothing epitomizes the latter category quite like "Baby It's Cold Outside," which she appropriate referred to as "The Date Rape Song."
The premise of the song is that the woman needs to go home for the night ("I really can't stay...") but the abusive jerk with whom she finds herself alone won't let her go. ("Baby, it's cold out there. It's up to your knees out there.")
Her family "will be suspicious" she says. "Your lips look delicious," the wicked, tone-deaf pervert replies.
She asks for his coat to counteract the cold on her way; he offers to pour her a drink. "What's in this drink?" she questions, clearly having determined the character of her would-be assailant. In response, he changes the subject in a transparent admission of guilt: "there are no cabs to be had out there."
"I ought to say no, no, no, sir," she implores.
"Mind if I come a little bit closer?" he replies, presumable with electric carving knife in hand.
And so it goes.
The tune of this horribly awful song is unfortunately catchy, so people ignore the lyrics. But there's really no reason it should be played at Christmas time. Like Jingle Bells, or "Let it Snow" the narrative takes place in winter, but there's nothing specifically Christmas-y about it. If they are going to play these songs on the radio, there's no reason to limit them to December.
And speaking of Jingle Bells, have you ever actually listened to those lyrics outside of the chorus?
A day or two ago
I thought I'd take a ride
And soon Miss Fanny Bright
Was sitting by my side
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And then he got upsot
Oh jingle bells, jingle bells...
The events described are horrible. This is what passes for holiday cheer?
That poor, overworked animal needs to be put out of his misery, or maybe sold to a gentle farm where he can graze lazily in the pasture instead of carrying his master's lazy bones (not to mention his "Fanny") through a snowstorm on an ill-conceived joyride.
But when the chorus hits, we're left to forget about the poor equine and asked go bopping along to the cheerful chorus.
Frosty the Snowman fares no better on the social-message scale:
He led them down the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop
He only paused a moment when
He heard him holler stop.
In other words, when Little Suzy gets flattened by an oncoming semi-truck, you can thank her little snowman friend. The same "friend" who teaches kids to listen to ignore authority figures in favor of their "eccentric" 6-foot friend who for some reason only likes to hang out with little children.
But not all bad Christmas songs sent negative messages. Some are just odd.
The answer to "What child is this?" seems pretty obvious. It was Jesus.
I don't know why anyone "saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas day." Bethlehem is not on the coast, and the wise men didn't even come from that direction.
"Do you hear what I hear" implies that the shepherds heard "a child, a child shivering in the cold" and decided to "bring him silver and gold." Actually, the Gospels don't mention silver, and it was the wise men who brought the gold. And if they heard the Christ child cry from Bethlehem to Babylon, then he really did have a divine set of lungs.
Some songs are bad, but at least entertainingly so. Last year's favorite "Feed the World/Let Them Know It's Christmas Time" is a good--errr--bad example.
George Michael's "Last Christmas" is another. Let's start with the chorus:
Last Christmas I gave you my heart.
The very next day, you gave it away.
How, exactly, did that transaction work? Who did he give it to? Did he take it to a soup kitchen? Give it to some other lonely dude? (if so, how come that didn't work out?) Return it for store credit at Macy's?
Was it like the time my 8th grade crush gave my valentine to her little sister?
Whatever the case, that line doesn't make any sense, which is especially aggravating because the line so easily could have read "the very next day you tore it apart." That makes much more sense, and it even rhymes!
If you can overlook that line, the song is a poignant reflection on love lost but not entirely forgotten can overshadow holiday joy, and it's much more relatable to modern life than songs about riding in a one-horse open sleigh, whatever that is.
But it's hard to keep the inexplicable word choice from ringing in your ears long enough to think of anything else.
Or at least it is if you hear what I hear.
As we discussed in this space last year, few things irk the soul quite like bad Christmas songs. While plenty of wonderful Christmas songs help to make the season bright, on the flip side, just because a song mentions something about Christmas or snow doesn't make it good.
Plenty of songs are overly sappy or nonsensical, or in some cases, send appalling social messages.
As suggested by a reader last year (thanks Niki!) nothing epitomizes the latter category quite like "Baby It's Cold Outside," which she appropriate referred to as "The Date Rape Song."
The premise of the song is that the woman needs to go home for the night ("I really can't stay...") but the abusive jerk with whom she finds herself alone won't let her go. ("Baby, it's cold out there. It's up to your knees out there.")
Her family "will be suspicious" she says. "Your lips look delicious," the wicked, tone-deaf pervert replies.
She asks for his coat to counteract the cold on her way; he offers to pour her a drink. "What's in this drink?" she questions, clearly having determined the character of her would-be assailant. In response, he changes the subject in a transparent admission of guilt: "there are no cabs to be had out there."
"I ought to say no, no, no, sir," she implores.
"Mind if I come a little bit closer?" he replies, presumable with electric carving knife in hand.
And so it goes.
The tune of this horribly awful song is unfortunately catchy, so people ignore the lyrics. But there's really no reason it should be played at Christmas time. Like Jingle Bells, or "Let it Snow" the narrative takes place in winter, but there's nothing specifically Christmas-y about it. If they are going to play these songs on the radio, there's no reason to limit them to December.
And speaking of Jingle Bells, have you ever actually listened to those lyrics outside of the chorus?
A day or two ago
I thought I'd take a ride
And soon Miss Fanny Bright
Was sitting by my side
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And then he got upsot
Oh jingle bells, jingle bells...
The events described are horrible. This is what passes for holiday cheer?
That poor, overworked animal needs to be put out of his misery, or maybe sold to a gentle farm where he can graze lazily in the pasture instead of carrying his master's lazy bones (not to mention his "Fanny") through a snowstorm on an ill-conceived joyride.
But when the chorus hits, we're left to forget about the poor equine and asked go bopping along to the cheerful chorus.
Frosty the Snowman fares no better on the social-message scale:
He led them down the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop
He only paused a moment when
He heard him holler stop.
In other words, when Little Suzy gets flattened by an oncoming semi-truck, you can thank her little snowman friend. The same "friend" who teaches kids to listen to ignore authority figures in favor of their "eccentric" 6-foot friend who for some reason only likes to hang out with little children.
But not all bad Christmas songs sent negative messages. Some are just odd.
The answer to "What child is this?" seems pretty obvious. It was Jesus.
I don't know why anyone "saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas day." Bethlehem is not on the coast, and the wise men didn't even come from that direction.
"Do you hear what I hear" implies that the shepherds heard "a child, a child shivering in the cold" and decided to "bring him silver and gold." Actually, the Gospels don't mention silver, and it was the wise men who brought the gold. And if they heard the Christ child cry from Bethlehem to Babylon, then he really did have a divine set of lungs.
Some songs are bad, but at least entertainingly so. Last year's favorite "Feed the World/Let Them Know It's Christmas Time" is a good--errr--bad example.
George Michael's "Last Christmas" is another. Let's start with the chorus:
Last Christmas I gave you my heart.
The very next day, you gave it away.
How, exactly, did that transaction work? Who did he give it to? Did he take it to a soup kitchen? Give it to some other lonely dude? (if so, how come that didn't work out?) Return it for store credit at Macy's?
Was it like the time my 8th grade crush gave my valentine to her little sister?
Whatever the case, that line doesn't make any sense, which is especially aggravating because the line so easily could have read "the very next day you tore it apart." That makes much more sense, and it even rhymes!
If you can overlook that line, the song is a poignant reflection on love lost but not entirely forgotten can overshadow holiday joy, and it's much more relatable to modern life than songs about riding in a one-horse open sleigh, whatever that is.
But it's hard to keep the inexplicable word choice from ringing in your ears long enough to think of anything else.
Or at least it is if you hear what I hear.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Thankfulness
It's been a tough year, but that only underscores the need to appreciate what's gone right. Here's what spring to mind:
1. I don't have to go to work today.
2. The good health of those I love, after a rough stretch last year.
3. People who care.
4. I don't have to go to work tomorrow.
5. That the turkey I made last night (I named him Jeremy) just might be the best one I've ever done.
6. New friends and new beginnings.
7. I don't have to go to work on Saturday--and there's football.
8. The memory of hard times overcome and promise of better things ahead, through he who gives me strength.
9. Loving the city I live in now, and the thought of breathing the salty sea air when I back where I grew up tonight. It's awesome to live in cities that have unique identities.
10. I don't have to go to work on Sunday--and there's more football.
11. Not having to conform my thoughts to conventional top-ten lists.
12. Vacations.
13. Blog readers.
Have a wonderful thanksgiving, and don't forget to be appreciate what's in front of you. I'll see you soon.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Reader Mail: On Holiday
Every few months, Andrew Smith makes up fake questions to which he offers ridiculous answers in his running feature: Ask Andrew. This isn't one of those months. Instead, it's merely a regular question and answer session. For reasons to be explained, you should lower your expectations accordingly.
Q: Andrew- Are you going to blog this December or are you going to re-live your tradition of Mailing It in for the Holidays? (As described here.)
A: As much as I'd like some rest this holiday season, there's just too much good material to pass up. I'm especially looking forward to revisiting more Bad Christmas Songs. But I do need a little break, so I'm going to take a few weeks off in November instead. My birthday was last week and this little break is present to myself.
I checked with my wife, who keeps up with these things much than I do, and we can even afford this one.
Q: So, how long are you taking off? And why?
A: I just need a few weeks. My current life schedule is so busy that I don't have time to keep a calendar. Instead, I just wait for the panicked calls of others asking me why I'm not wherever I was supposed to be half an hour ago.
This way, I don't get stressed about everything on my plate. Life is simpler that way. At least for me.
But those around me would probably tell you that I need a little break. At least, they would if they weren't on their phones trying to figure out why I missed my latest appointment.
Q: Wait, this was supposed to be "Reader Mail," but the second question here clearly built upon the first one. I don't see how that's possible.
A: That's not a question.
Q: So what are we to do without you this month?
A: Well, for one thing you migh--
Q: Ok, stop. You're clearly making up these questions. No one would actually ask you that.
A: Umm...
Let's just move on.
Q: Last week was your birthday. Don't you usually do a post about what you learned this year in your life?
A: Yes, but there's no time for reflection in my life these days. That's why I need this break.
But ok, since I'm here, 5 quick things: (1) the raccoon in your attic is not your friend. (2) There's no reason to get to a movie theater until at least 20 minutes after the listed start time unless you expect it to be sold out. (3) the lower you set your expectations, the more disappointed you'll be when they aren't met. So sometimes it's best not to have any at all. For example, if you failed to heed my initial advice about lowering your expectations for this blog post, you are most likely sorely disappointed by this point. (4) Forgive. (5) It's weird that being "disruptive" is bad, but being "ruptive" isn't even a thing.
Q: Any closing thoughts?
A: Funny I should ask. I need a fourteen hour nap, a long vacation, and answers to a couple specific prayers. But since I can't count on getting anything more than a long weekend (thank you, Veterans!) and a trip to upstate New York to see my awesome Aunt and Uncle, I'm going to take a few weeks off from the blog to get some rest.
I'll see you back here somewhere around Thanksgiving. I think the blog will be better for the break, but if the blog still doesn't meet your expectations, well, you should take my advice and lower them.
Q: Andrew- Are you going to blog this December or are you going to re-live your tradition of Mailing It in for the Holidays? (As described here.)
A: As much as I'd like some rest this holiday season, there's just too much good material to pass up. I'm especially looking forward to revisiting more Bad Christmas Songs. But I do need a little break, so I'm going to take a few weeks off in November instead. My birthday was last week and this little break is present to myself.
I checked with my wife, who keeps up with these things much than I do, and we can even afford this one.
Q: So, how long are you taking off? And why?
A: I just need a few weeks. My current life schedule is so busy that I don't have time to keep a calendar. Instead, I just wait for the panicked calls of others asking me why I'm not wherever I was supposed to be half an hour ago.
This way, I don't get stressed about everything on my plate. Life is simpler that way. At least for me.
But those around me would probably tell you that I need a little break. At least, they would if they weren't on their phones trying to figure out why I missed my latest appointment.
Q: Wait, this was supposed to be "Reader Mail," but the second question here clearly built upon the first one. I don't see how that's possible.
A: That's not a question.
Q: So what are we to do without you this month?
A: Well, for one thing you migh--
Q: Ok, stop. You're clearly making up these questions. No one would actually ask you that.
A: Umm...
Let's just move on.
Q: Last week was your birthday. Don't you usually do a post about what you learned this year in your life?
A: Yes, but there's no time for reflection in my life these days. That's why I need this break.
But ok, since I'm here, 5 quick things: (1) the raccoon in your attic is not your friend. (2) There's no reason to get to a movie theater until at least 20 minutes after the listed start time unless you expect it to be sold out. (3) the lower you set your expectations, the more disappointed you'll be when they aren't met. So sometimes it's best not to have any at all. For example, if you failed to heed my initial advice about lowering your expectations for this blog post, you are most likely sorely disappointed by this point. (4) Forgive. (5) It's weird that being "disruptive" is bad, but being "ruptive" isn't even a thing.
Q: Any closing thoughts?
A: Funny I should ask. I need a fourteen hour nap, a long vacation, and answers to a couple specific prayers. But since I can't count on getting anything more than a long weekend (thank you, Veterans!) and a trip to upstate New York to see my awesome Aunt and Uncle, I'm going to take a few weeks off from the blog to get some rest.
I'll see you back here somewhere around Thanksgiving. I think the blog will be better for the break, but if the blog still doesn't meet your expectations, well, you should take my advice and lower them.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Happy Halloween: The Trick's on Me This Year
This year, when I open my door on Halloween night to kids announcing "trick or treat," I'm opting for "trick."
Of course, I won't dare any wayward schoolchildren to play a trick on me, although I'd be interested to see whether any of them had thought through a "Plan B" for this kind of situation. I won't even deny them the handout they sought when the knocked on my door.
Instead, I'm giving out tricks disguised as treats.
Anyone can hand out candy on Halloween. The prudish among us can hand out apples or floss or bags of tea. People who hate children can hand out rocks. Fundamentalists could hand out "tracks" that explain the salvation process, which I'm pretty sure I received a few times growing up in semi-rural Alabama.
But who among us can hand out packets of Splenda?
I mean, besides me.
This has been a dream of mine for a couple of years.
Two years ago, I stocked my house with just enough candy to survive Halloween night. When 8:00 p.m. hit and we were down to seven pieces of candy in the house, I tried desperately to think of a backup plan that didn't involve going out to the store. Walgreens was only 2 blocks away, and I really didn't haven anything else to do, but it was dark outside and I was fighting for Principle. Or possibly just laziness.
But either way, I wasn't going back outside. Instead, I scavenged the house for back-up plans to distribute once my seven pieces of candy disappeared. When the results of my search were 2 apples, an assortment of tea bags and two partially unwanted cats, I got a bit nervous, but I was absolutely committed to the plan.
Thankfully, only five other kids came to my door that night, but the evening taught me a lesson: never again would I risk running out of good candy and having to resort to giving out something ridiculous.
Instead, I would stock up on ridiculous things to start with. This way, if I run out of stuff to hand out, no one will be disappointed.
The only rule of this exercise is that nothing I give out will be so utterly ludicrous that it is self-evidently meant as a joke. There will be no rubber chickens, no pocket-sized New Testaments (with Psalms and Proverbs included, for reasons never properly explained), and no bags of rocks or condoms. Instead, everything I give out will be something that someone, somewhere, might actually think was appropriate.
So, this Halloween, I'll be the old lady handing out bags or tea or muffin mix. I'll be the weirdo handing out Star Wars trading cards and leftover Valentines Day candy or cards with the names still visible. I'll be the cheapskate distributing my unwanted old VHS tapes, including the homemade ones.
I'll save my best stuff for the teenagers to old to be doing this, or the parents with one-year-olds who are clearly looking to score for themselves, because their kids can't even eat solid food yet. These groups will get yogurt. If the container busts before they get home, that isn't my problem.
So if you need some Mardi Gras beads, come on by. If you're out of long underwear, I have some extra that I don't need. If you need a vacuum cleaner that only sort of works, or that Singing Butler painting that was popular 10 years ago at Bombay Company, you know where to find me.
And thanks to Starbucks, I have both more packets of Splenda and more temporarily trendy CDs from now-faded artists than I know what to do with.
Or actually, I now know exactly what to do with them: give them to you and your bratty little children.
What's more, if you don't have a place to put all these things, I'm pretty sure I have some old, deep, baking dishes left over from my last yard sale.
You're welcome to them all.
It's my treat.
Of course, I won't dare any wayward schoolchildren to play a trick on me, although I'd be interested to see whether any of them had thought through a "Plan B" for this kind of situation. I won't even deny them the handout they sought when the knocked on my door.
Instead, I'm giving out tricks disguised as treats.
Anyone can hand out candy on Halloween. The prudish among us can hand out apples or floss or bags of tea. People who hate children can hand out rocks. Fundamentalists could hand out "tracks" that explain the salvation process, which I'm pretty sure I received a few times growing up in semi-rural Alabama.
But who among us can hand out packets of Splenda?
I mean, besides me.
This has been a dream of mine for a couple of years.
Two years ago, I stocked my house with just enough candy to survive Halloween night. When 8:00 p.m. hit and we were down to seven pieces of candy in the house, I tried desperately to think of a backup plan that didn't involve going out to the store. Walgreens was only 2 blocks away, and I really didn't haven anything else to do, but it was dark outside and I was fighting for Principle. Or possibly just laziness.
But either way, I wasn't going back outside. Instead, I scavenged the house for back-up plans to distribute once my seven pieces of candy disappeared. When the results of my search were 2 apples, an assortment of tea bags and two partially unwanted cats, I got a bit nervous, but I was absolutely committed to the plan.
Thankfully, only five other kids came to my door that night, but the evening taught me a lesson: never again would I risk running out of good candy and having to resort to giving out something ridiculous.
Instead, I would stock up on ridiculous things to start with. This way, if I run out of stuff to hand out, no one will be disappointed.
The only rule of this exercise is that nothing I give out will be so utterly ludicrous that it is self-evidently meant as a joke. There will be no rubber chickens, no pocket-sized New Testaments (with Psalms and Proverbs included, for reasons never properly explained), and no bags of rocks or condoms. Instead, everything I give out will be something that someone, somewhere, might actually think was appropriate.
So, this Halloween, I'll be the old lady handing out bags or tea or muffin mix. I'll be the weirdo handing out Star Wars trading cards and leftover Valentines Day candy or cards with the names still visible. I'll be the cheapskate distributing my unwanted old VHS tapes, including the homemade ones.
I'll save my best stuff for the teenagers to old to be doing this, or the parents with one-year-olds who are clearly looking to score for themselves, because their kids can't even eat solid food yet. These groups will get yogurt. If the container busts before they get home, that isn't my problem.
So if you need some Mardi Gras beads, come on by. If you're out of long underwear, I have some extra that I don't need. If you need a vacuum cleaner that only sort of works, or that Singing Butler painting that was popular 10 years ago at Bombay Company, you know where to find me.
And thanks to Starbucks, I have both more packets of Splenda and more temporarily trendy CDs from now-faded artists than I know what to do with.
Or actually, I now know exactly what to do with them: give them to you and your bratty little children.
What's more, if you don't have a place to put all these things, I'm pretty sure I have some old, deep, baking dishes left over from my last yard sale.
You're welcome to them all.
It's my treat.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
October: Still the Best Month
I'm running behind this week, and don't have time to write. So it's a good thing I haven't gotten around to my annual tradition of re-posting my wildly popular (by my standards, at least) blog from two years ago celebrating the joys of October.
This way, I can do it now and not have to write anything new this week.
Procrastination has its advantages.
October is the best month of the year, and I know many of you agree because this is the most widely read post on this site I've ever written by a couple hundred hits.
So enjoy the beautiful weather, and maybe take your computer outside to read all about it here:
http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-october-is-best-month-of-year.html
This way, I can do it now and not have to write anything new this week.
Procrastination has its advantages.
October is the best month of the year, and I know many of you agree because this is the most widely read post on this site I've ever written by a couple hundred hits.
So enjoy the beautiful weather, and maybe take your computer outside to read all about it here:
http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-october-is-best-month-of-year.html
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
A Solution to Our Government Shutdown: Name My Cat Dictator
So the government is shut down, and a better one doesn't seem likely to open in its place anytime soon.
But maybe it should.
While Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are locked in a room pretending to negotiate as their respective staffs try fruitlessly to tell them apart, we, as a nation, should collectively tell them "never mind."
Instead, imagine their surprise when they come out of their little room look around and, once they pull their heads out of their respective backsides, discover they've been replaced.
By my cat.
That's right. In the new system I hereby propose, there will be no more parties who care more about getting elected than about governing, and who refuse to negotiate because they know the other party will get blamed for the shutdown. There will be no extremists who dispute that accepting a validly enacted piece of legislation they don't happen to like is the price of living in a democracy.
Instead of dysfunctional mess in which we currently find ourselves, I propose our nation cede all its governing power over to one source: Trouble, my housecat.
The benefits of this idea barely fit onto this page.
TroubleCat wastes no time deliberating. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it. For example, if she wants foreign aid, she scratches my leg and meows incessantly until I give in and give her some of my chicken.
Vladamir Putin would be no match for this negotiating tactic.
In our current government, beneficial legislation gets derailed because neither party wants the other to get credit for passing it. What little does eventually get passed is so corrupted by special interests who fund our legislator's re-election campaigns that it no longer benefits the population at large.
These problems would end if Trouble were in charge. Give her a piece of legislation that stinks and she will poop on it.
Give her a piece of good legislation and she will possibly still poop on it, but she will at least riffle through it and scratch it up first. And if you focus a laser pointer on its relevant points, she will give it her undivided attention, at least until a bug flies by.
This is progress over what we have now.
The advantages don't end there. Trouble would hold no press conferences and would never appear on cable talk shows to refuse to answer the hosts' questions directly. She would not waste time on dumb proposals that have no chance of passing just to appease her political base. While she couldn't find Iraq on a map, at least that means she wouldn't go to war with it.
Her health care plan consists of lots of naps. And no matter what struggles she might face, she will always land on her feet.
Most importantly, the constant and exhausting stalemates between two political parties who can't work together would cease if we just named Trouble our Cat Dictator for Life.
For all nine lives, for that matter.
Trouble would get things done. For example, she would personally increase our nation's paper bag and laundry basket inspection programs, which would in turn dramatically decrease the number of bag-and-basket-related deaths, assuming she could ever find her way out to sign the bill.
Also, she would have to learn to learn how to hold a pen in her mouth and sign things. But this seems more likely than Republicans and Democrats ever working together.
Of course, I realize that this plan is not without drawbacks.
Some might be alarmed at the idea of Trouble having her finger over our nuclear arsenal. Fortunately, she doesn't have opposable thumbs so this is not a significant concern.
Some might fear she could easily be bought off for a mere can of Fancy Feast. But I can assure anyone concerned that the moment she finishes her treat, she will be back to the same self-centered creature she always was, having no concern or loyalty to anyone but herself.
Others might contend that a cat with a below-average IQ, even for cats, is not the most qualified candidate to have dictatorial control over the free world. But this argument overlooks that fact that she is the only cat who has volunteered, through her master's proxy, to serve.
Detractors might argue that Trouble would probably not realize she was leading the free world, even if she was put in charge.
Some might even go so far as to contend that she doesn't actually care about anyone who lives outside her house, and any positive actions she took for our country would probably be completely accidental.
But this hardly differentiates her from our politicians, and at least she is fluffy and cute.
But maybe it should.
While Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are locked in a room pretending to negotiate as their respective staffs try fruitlessly to tell them apart, we, as a nation, should collectively tell them "never mind."
Instead, imagine their surprise when they come out of their little room look around and, once they pull their heads out of their respective backsides, discover they've been replaced.
By my cat.
That's right. In the new system I hereby propose, there will be no more parties who care more about getting elected than about governing, and who refuse to negotiate because they know the other party will get blamed for the shutdown. There will be no extremists who dispute that accepting a validly enacted piece of legislation they don't happen to like is the price of living in a democracy.
Instead of dysfunctional mess in which we currently find ourselves, I propose our nation cede all its governing power over to one source: Trouble, my housecat.
The benefits of this idea barely fit onto this page.
TroubleCat wastes no time deliberating. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it. For example, if she wants foreign aid, she scratches my leg and meows incessantly until I give in and give her some of my chicken.
Vladamir Putin would be no match for this negotiating tactic.
In our current government, beneficial legislation gets derailed because neither party wants the other to get credit for passing it. What little does eventually get passed is so corrupted by special interests who fund our legislator's re-election campaigns that it no longer benefits the population at large.
These problems would end if Trouble were in charge. Give her a piece of legislation that stinks and she will poop on it.
Give her a piece of good legislation and she will possibly still poop on it, but she will at least riffle through it and scratch it up first. And if you focus a laser pointer on its relevant points, she will give it her undivided attention, at least until a bug flies by.
This is progress over what we have now.
The advantages don't end there. Trouble would hold no press conferences and would never appear on cable talk shows to refuse to answer the hosts' questions directly. She would not waste time on dumb proposals that have no chance of passing just to appease her political base. While she couldn't find Iraq on a map, at least that means she wouldn't go to war with it.
Her health care plan consists of lots of naps. And no matter what struggles she might face, she will always land on her feet.
Most importantly, the constant and exhausting stalemates between two political parties who can't work together would cease if we just named Trouble our Cat Dictator for Life.
For all nine lives, for that matter.
Trouble would get things done. For example, she would personally increase our nation's paper bag and laundry basket inspection programs, which would in turn dramatically decrease the number of bag-and-basket-related deaths, assuming she could ever find her way out to sign the bill.
Also, she would have to learn to learn how to hold a pen in her mouth and sign things. But this seems more likely than Republicans and Democrats ever working together.
Of course, I realize that this plan is not without drawbacks.
Some might be alarmed at the idea of Trouble having her finger over our nuclear arsenal. Fortunately, she doesn't have opposable thumbs so this is not a significant concern.
Some might fear she could easily be bought off for a mere can of Fancy Feast. But I can assure anyone concerned that the moment she finishes her treat, she will be back to the same self-centered creature she always was, having no concern or loyalty to anyone but herself.
Others might contend that a cat with a below-average IQ, even for cats, is not the most qualified candidate to have dictatorial control over the free world. But this argument overlooks that fact that she is the only cat who has volunteered, through her master's proxy, to serve.
Detractors might argue that Trouble would probably not realize she was leading the free world, even if she was put in charge.
Some might even go so far as to contend that she doesn't actually care about anyone who lives outside her house, and any positive actions she took for our country would probably be completely accidental.
But this hardly differentiates her from our politicians, and at least she is fluffy and cute.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
A Day in the Life of a Lawyer
It's late on a Tuesday night, I'm in a different time zone and probably should be sleeping. It's already after 11 and I need to be up at 7 in the morning for court. But with the change in time zone, I'm neither sleepy nor fully prepared. I can barely focus my nervous energy.
God help me.
I have something called an oral argument tomorrow. It's first thing in the morning, before the appellate court one level below the U.S. Supreme Court.
It will either provide me a unique opportunity to demonstrate the mastery of my appellate advocacy, and validate me against all my childhood critics, or it will be a Chinese water torture in which I demonstrate to the court and a room full of observing lawyers that I've wasted my life by choosing a profession the demands of which are hopelessly beyond my abilities.
It's pretty much one or the other.
Oral argument is the most intense adrenaline rush a lawyer can ever endure. All eyes of the court focus on the lawyer, as he or she gets a specified time to make their case before a panel of appellate judges, who can--and do--interrupt at any time with questions. And anything is fair game.
The attorney must be prepared to know any fact within what is often a several-thousand-page record. (And you get bonus points if you can pinpoint the page of the transcript where that fact can be found). As the attorney, you must be prepared to discuss any similar case within your jurisdiction, and to argue how its facts either help your position or, at worst, are distinguishable from it.
You must not only be prepared to discuss how the law relates to your case, but how your case would turn out if the facts were just a little bit different in one critical regard, because judges like to think about the policy implications of their decisions.
And after you finish answering whatever specific question you face, you must seamlessly transition back into your argument until you get interrupted again, which is generally not long. Often the judges will start arguing with each other, asking you to solve their disagreement, and you must choose how to answer the questions without alienating either. The judges will point out potential flaws in the arguments of both sides and tell each of you why they might rule against you, and it's up to you to allay their fears or change their minds.
Trials are stressful too, but often the witnesses have as much to do with the outcome as the lawyer. In an appellate oral argument, it's just two attorneys pushing down on the scales of justice, arguing whether or not the trial court got it right.
It is a high wire act, but there's no better feeling in law than pulling it off.
This particular case is harder than usual. It's full of complex medical terminology that is hard to understand. A different attorney handled it at the trial level, and even wrote the brief whose merits I was pressed into arguing when he left. I would not have approached it the way he did, and I as try to comprehend his complex procedural argument as to why the convicted defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not properly preserved for review, a sobering reality strikes me:
I'm one early morning brain fart away from enabling a guilty man go free through my sheer incompetence.
I try to look at the bright side. Maybe if I screw up, it will just mean that the defendant gets a new trial. In that case, it's not so bad. It just means that I'm one brain fart away from forcing some distant district attorney to have to re-call a long list of witnesses and panel a new jury and probably pay a new set of experts to come testify, and make any potential victim re-live their trauma.
Sometimes, that result is inescapable. If that's what justice demands, then so be it. But the idea that it might happen because I failed to think of the winning response to what should have been an answerable question is enough to drive one to drink.
Or at least it would be, if I didn't have court in just a few hours.
The work is never done in preparing for one of those things. There's always some other hypothetical question the judges might ask, some other fact from the record they might want to know. There's always some snappier way to deliver one of your lines. And you can never practice your presentation too many times.
This is especially challenging for me. Oral argument has always been my best skill as an attorney, but I'm consistently horrible when there's no audience in front of me, so I never really know how prepared I actually am.
Somewhere long after midnight, I recognize that my argument is as good as its ever going to be and settle into my hotel bedroom, setting two alarms and a wake-up call, just in case.
As I practice my delivery in the shower the next morning, I think of other questions about the factual record. I need to look through the trial transcript again, but my stomach is so torn up from the stress that I can't stay out of the bathroom for more than 3 minutes at a time to look at my computer.
After a few minutes too long, I find what I'm looking for (I mean, besides the bathroom), and race to court to check in for my argument a few minutes later than I would like. The clerk gives me a look, and I narrowly decide against explaining that my near-the-deadline arrival time was due entirely to the fire in my bowels.
Thankfully, I have just enough time to go back to the bathroom before court starts. This is already as bad as that colonoscopy I had last year, and I haven't even been examined by the judges yet.
Any lawyer is capable of getting inescapably confused by unexpected phrasing of a question or suddenly forgetting the name of their client at an inopportune time (which happens more often than you'd think). Like a gymnast or figure skater, once you lose your rhythm and routine it's nearly impossible to get it back. No amount of preparation can fully guard against that, but one's ability to think outside the script at least improves with experience.
But weirdly, my butterflies always go away once I face my first question. I won't get the Court's opinion for weeks, but for now, at least, I'm happy with how I did.
I don't have the strength to celebrate when it's finally over. My mind goes numb (even more so than usual, that is) for awhile, but it eventually occurs to me how I could have better answered certain questions in the perfect world.
I know I can't make the world perfect, though. Instead, as I grab some coffee to sustain me for the long drive home, I just hope that I haven't made it worse by anything that I forgot.
What an odd profession I chose. Mechanics see a problem and fix it with their hands. Doctors see a problem and treat it with medicine. Lawyers see an issue and argue about whether it was a problem.
I just really hope I didn't leave anything out of that argument.
God help me.
I have something called an oral argument tomorrow. It's first thing in the morning, before the appellate court one level below the U.S. Supreme Court.
It will either provide me a unique opportunity to demonstrate the mastery of my appellate advocacy, and validate me against all my childhood critics, or it will be a Chinese water torture in which I demonstrate to the court and a room full of observing lawyers that I've wasted my life by choosing a profession the demands of which are hopelessly beyond my abilities.
It's pretty much one or the other.
Oral argument is the most intense adrenaline rush a lawyer can ever endure. All eyes of the court focus on the lawyer, as he or she gets a specified time to make their case before a panel of appellate judges, who can--and do--interrupt at any time with questions. And anything is fair game.
The attorney must be prepared to know any fact within what is often a several-thousand-page record. (And you get bonus points if you can pinpoint the page of the transcript where that fact can be found). As the attorney, you must be prepared to discuss any similar case within your jurisdiction, and to argue how its facts either help your position or, at worst, are distinguishable from it.
You must not only be prepared to discuss how the law relates to your case, but how your case would turn out if the facts were just a little bit different in one critical regard, because judges like to think about the policy implications of their decisions.
And after you finish answering whatever specific question you face, you must seamlessly transition back into your argument until you get interrupted again, which is generally not long. Often the judges will start arguing with each other, asking you to solve their disagreement, and you must choose how to answer the questions without alienating either. The judges will point out potential flaws in the arguments of both sides and tell each of you why they might rule against you, and it's up to you to allay their fears or change their minds.
Trials are stressful too, but often the witnesses have as much to do with the outcome as the lawyer. In an appellate oral argument, it's just two attorneys pushing down on the scales of justice, arguing whether or not the trial court got it right.
It is a high wire act, but there's no better feeling in law than pulling it off.
This particular case is harder than usual. It's full of complex medical terminology that is hard to understand. A different attorney handled it at the trial level, and even wrote the brief whose merits I was pressed into arguing when he left. I would not have approached it the way he did, and I as try to comprehend his complex procedural argument as to why the convicted defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not properly preserved for review, a sobering reality strikes me:
I'm one early morning brain fart away from enabling a guilty man go free through my sheer incompetence.
I try to look at the bright side. Maybe if I screw up, it will just mean that the defendant gets a new trial. In that case, it's not so bad. It just means that I'm one brain fart away from forcing some distant district attorney to have to re-call a long list of witnesses and panel a new jury and probably pay a new set of experts to come testify, and make any potential victim re-live their trauma.
Sometimes, that result is inescapable. If that's what justice demands, then so be it. But the idea that it might happen because I failed to think of the winning response to what should have been an answerable question is enough to drive one to drink.
Or at least it would be, if I didn't have court in just a few hours.
The work is never done in preparing for one of those things. There's always some other hypothetical question the judges might ask, some other fact from the record they might want to know. There's always some snappier way to deliver one of your lines. And you can never practice your presentation too many times.
This is especially challenging for me. Oral argument has always been my best skill as an attorney, but I'm consistently horrible when there's no audience in front of me, so I never really know how prepared I actually am.
Somewhere long after midnight, I recognize that my argument is as good as its ever going to be and settle into my hotel bedroom, setting two alarms and a wake-up call, just in case.
As I practice my delivery in the shower the next morning, I think of other questions about the factual record. I need to look through the trial transcript again, but my stomach is so torn up from the stress that I can't stay out of the bathroom for more than 3 minutes at a time to look at my computer.
After a few minutes too long, I find what I'm looking for (I mean, besides the bathroom), and race to court to check in for my argument a few minutes later than I would like. The clerk gives me a look, and I narrowly decide against explaining that my near-the-deadline arrival time was due entirely to the fire in my bowels.
Thankfully, I have just enough time to go back to the bathroom before court starts. This is already as bad as that colonoscopy I had last year, and I haven't even been examined by the judges yet.
Any lawyer is capable of getting inescapably confused by unexpected phrasing of a question or suddenly forgetting the name of their client at an inopportune time (which happens more often than you'd think). Like a gymnast or figure skater, once you lose your rhythm and routine it's nearly impossible to get it back. No amount of preparation can fully guard against that, but one's ability to think outside the script at least improves with experience.
But weirdly, my butterflies always go away once I face my first question. I won't get the Court's opinion for weeks, but for now, at least, I'm happy with how I did.
I don't have the strength to celebrate when it's finally over. My mind goes numb (even more so than usual, that is) for awhile, but it eventually occurs to me how I could have better answered certain questions in the perfect world.
I know I can't make the world perfect, though. Instead, as I grab some coffee to sustain me for the long drive home, I just hope that I haven't made it worse by anything that I forgot.
What an odd profession I chose. Mechanics see a problem and fix it with their hands. Doctors see a problem and treat it with medicine. Lawyers see an issue and argue about whether it was a problem.
I just really hope I didn't leave anything out of that argument.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Blogging Through Spain: Part 3 of 3
This is the retroactive diary of days 5-9 of my time in Spain, which mostly took place in Barcelona. It was awesome! The trip, that is. You can read the diary and decide the rest for yourself.
You can also check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them the first time.
Day 5:
We move slowly on our last morning in Madrid, as the four days of non-stop activity are finally taking their toll. We're catching a train to Barcelona in a couple of hours, but I could sleep the rest of the day.
We haven't even left yet and I'm already tired, but I remind myself that I'll be meeting up with my sister and her family soon and looking at Gaudi's masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, and that makes it better.
I run to the supermarket two blocks away to grab a few things for lunch. As I check out, the cashier asks me in Spanish whether I have a grocery store rewards card.
Just as I'm starting to feel like I belong here, it's time to go.
As we arrive in Barcelona, I realize I need to figure out where we're going once we disembark. I map out the subway system and we're ready to go. There's just one thing wrong.
I'm having an unusual amount of difficulty reading the signs. They seem sort-of familiar but still indecipherable. After a few puzzling minutes I realize that the signs aren't in Spanish but it's French-influenced cousin Catalon. This is going to be an adventure.
In Madrid, only three people spoke English in the entire city. We had read in the guidebooks that English was more prevalent in Barcelona. This turned out to be true. In Barcelona, 12 people in the entire city spoke English. Of course, five of them were members of my family, but let's not get overly technical.
We get to the apartment and check in. It occurs to me that amidst the activity of the last week, I didn't double-verify what time my sister is supposed to get here. She had originally told me 10, and then 6, but I didn't reconfirm that before she left for Spain 3 weeks ago.
Regardless, we have at least an hour, so we make the 15-minute walk to the local public market, which is called La Boqueria, but would more accurately be described as Heaven. It holds the largest collection of fruit, meats and seafood the world has ever known. The fruit is colorful and cheap, and you could devour it all on the spot if only people weren't bumping into you all the time. (Weird thing about Europe: no one says "excuse me" when they bump into you or block your way, because it happens so often. I never got used to that. I kept saying the Spanish equivalent of excuse me when I bumped into people, and they looked seemed more offended that I apologized than that I ran into them in the first place.)
But there isn't too much time to get lost in the sea of colorful fruit, so we take a quick walk through and come back.
There's still no sign of my sister, so we pass the time with a 2-Euro bottle of wine from the grocery store, where I'm again asked if I have a customer loyalty card. I'm picking up right where I left off!
On my way back to the apartment I'm also asked for directions. Weirdly, the signs are predominately in Catalon, but everyone seems to speak Spanish.
We pass the time looking out from our balcony with our wine and the evening turns into night. By about 8, we assume that my sister and her family must have been on the 10 o'clock flight after all, so we make the 15-minute trek back to the market.
It was closed. So were most of the shops we passed on the way to it. I guess Barcelona doesn't stay open as late as Madrid. The guidebooks didn't mention that either. If I ever meet Mr. Fodor or Mr. Frommer (assuming they're not actually the same person), we're going to have a serious talk.
We walk La Rambla, Barcelona's long tree-lined pedestrian walkway, and head back, where my sister, brother-in law and their 8 year old daughter have just arrived. A celebratory glass of wine and some conversation later, and we all turn in early.
Day 6
"We have to go," my wife says as the alarm sounds at some ungodly time like 7:30. "The guidebooks say if you don't get to Sagrada Familia early, the line gets crazy."
"I don't know, maybe it would be better to get a good night's sleep and then deal with the line?" I suggest.
"We can sleep when we're dead."
Touche.
So Liz and I walk the 8 blocks to Sagrada Familia while my family sleeps in. The adrenaline takes over the fatigue as we walk. If there's one thing in Spain we wanted to see, this is it.
We turn the corner to find it, and expect to behold majesty. Instead, we see scaffolding. Lots of scaffolding. The cathedral is open, but still unfinished, and the construction on the front overwhelms the church, which also looks surprisingly small.
Even worse, we get there by 9:15, but it's already too late. The line wraps around the entire building, and a guide is telling people not to bother because it's a four-hour wait.
Rick Steves and his cohorts have failed us again.
Between the construction on the city's signature landmark, the early closing times and the ubiquitous Catalon, Barcelona was not off to a good start.
But at least the guide didn't issue her wait-time warning in Catalon, or we would have wasted our whole day.
We take the walk to a couple other Gaudi architectural sites, which both surpass our suddenly lowered expectations. We met my family, go back to La Boqueria, wander the streets and take in the Picasso Museum.
Everyone else went to bed while my sister and I stay up late discussing Life, the Universe and Everything, and what life might look like if all our dreams come true.
It's what we do. And by the end of the day, Barcelona seems like a wonderful place to be.
Days 7-8
Friday and Saturday in Barcelona are a blur. There was so much to see and we did it so quickly, that it all runs together.
We went to the Barcelona Cathedral, which was beautiful and reminded my brother-in-law and I both of Notre Dame. I tried to light a candle for my most fervent prayer request, but the wicks were so short that I extinguished four before I finally got one to light. I like to think that the one new flame I eventually lit burned with the energy of my prayer and the prior four combined. We took the elevator up to the roof and had an amazing view of the city.
We had a tasty dinner of fresh squid and spicy potatoes, we wandered, ate some churros and went to the Museum of Chocolate. We told inside jokes and delighted my eight-year-old niece with stories about the craziness of all her other family members. Like the time her granddad put catfish in our swimming pool.
I stuck my arm in the Mediterranean, and I rammed unsuccessfully into the base of two more orange trees, hoping one would fall. I ate a killer paella, sat on shaded tables in beautiful squares, and got lost more than a couple of times.
Finally, in a last gasp effort, we dashed to Sagrada Familia to take one more shot at getting in. Amazingly, late Saturday afternoon was quiet and we got inside after a 25-minute wait. The interior was striking in its simplicity. From an architect known for his outlandish designs, the inside was surprisingly and beautifully plain.
The building doesn't look that tall from the outside, but on the inside, the undecorated brown columns seem to rise to just short of Heaven. The windows are stained and beautiful, but the rest of the cathedral is overwhelming mostly for its for its sheer simplistic magnitude.
A viewing area was fenced off on the backside of the church, which was blessedly scaffold-free. It was amazing in its detail, as seemingly hundreds of scenes were carved into the surface of the cathedral. The door of the cathedral looked like a yawning mouth swallowing unholy tourists that by the dozens, and spitting them out forever changed by the majesty of the inside.
While my wife took pictures, I slipped away to a little prayer cubby facing a stained-glass window. I prayed silently for the same things that I pray for often, but somehow those familiar requests seemed more powerful here. The words echoed in my head, and then seemed to linger in the air, as though this space contained some kind of supernatural microphone. "Whatever might come between now and the next time I'm here," I asked, "guide me through it and show me where to go."
Sagrada Familia had redeemed itself from the scaffolding. There's a presence in the building that feels like the energy of millions of earnest prayers bundled together, even amidst the noise of the gawking tour groups.
I'm glad we came back.
Day 9
If you a flight leaving from the Barcelona airport anytime this decade, you should probably starting heading that way.
We picked up a taxi two and a half hours before our flight.
After a surprisingly long cab ride we got to the airport. I took a right upon entering, as the cab driver had instructed (thankfully, they don't seem to use "apunte" (or whatever that word was) in Barcelona as their vague multi-purpose preposition, as they do in Madrid). But when we looked at the flight screen, no American Airlines flights were listed and all the departing flights were to somewhere else in Europe.
So he were are, an hour and forty-five minutes from the departure of our international flight, in the wrong place, where no one spoke English and the signs weren't even Spanish. Panic began to set in.
There was a long walkway that claimed to lead to another "concourse" (not "terminal"), but that might still not take us to where we needed to be. No signs mentioned anything about American Airlines, so it seemed risky to try it.
Also, we had strategically spent all of our Euro except a few coins, so if we needed to catch a bus to some other terminal, and the fare was more than a couple Euro, we'd be out of luck.
To make matters worse, there were the only two customer service desks in sight had lines that appeared to be at least half an hour long. We wandered around aimlessly, looking for someone to whom I could ask directions, praying I'd be able to understand them.
After a distressing few minutes, I found an agent took pity on me and told me to take the free shuttle on the front corner when I put on my extra-desperate face and used overly formal Spanish.
The Barcelona Airport was apparently two different airports that not only existed completely independently of each other, and didn't even acknowledge the other's existence, and we had been in the wrong one.
After an excruciatingly long shuttle ride across the "same" airport, we got to our 8-person check-in line with over an hour to spare and took at deep breath. Or at least we did until we noticed that our line hadn't moved in the 10 minutes we'd been standing there.
We finally got to the front of the line 45 minutes before our flight, having not yet cleared security. Apparently the check-in delay was because our flight was oversold and they were trying to find volunteers to take another one. He offered us $1200 and a free hotel to stay another night in Barcelona, but that would have meant coming back to this airport tomorrow so no amount of money on earth wasn't worth it.
Instead, we took the same deal to take a connecting flight through Miami that would get us home four hours later.
We gained seven hours traveling back through time zones, so we had a 31-hour day. The 10-hour flight to Miami seemed to take twice as long as the 7.5 hour flight from New York, but we felt ok when we landed.
A few hours into our layover, our sleep-deprived bodies started to crash. I walked to an airport coffee shop to try to find a way to survive the layover.
The menu was in Spanish, and the barista didn't speak English either. My cell phone worked now, but I was still basically in Spain.
It was a fitting end.
We eventually slept our way through the flight home, where a friend picked us up and took us home.
It's weird to be back. I instinctively spoke broken Spanish to strangers for a day or two upon my return, and I didn't feel totally right from the jetlag for about a week. I still miss the free olives that come with every order. I miss the tapas and the two-dollar wine. I miss the beauty of the Moorish architecture and the palm trees, I miss the dinners where the waiter doesn't pressure you out of your table the moment your plate is empty. I miss the fresh, more flavorful food, I miss my sister and her family and I even miss the orange trees whose fruit lay tantalizingly beyond my grasp.
I miss the feeling of to expanding my horizons to the point of almost fitting in to a different culture.
I'll be back here someday. I don't know when. I never dreamed it would take six years to get to Europe after the last time I'd come. I guess you never really know how life would unfold in the future, so all you can do is enjoy the moment.
But I know, barring some unforeseen misfortune, I'll be back again. Part of me was always here, even before I came.
And the next time, I hope you'll come with me. And if you don't, you should make it a point to get here on your own.
You can also check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them the first time.
Day 5:
We move slowly on our last morning in Madrid, as the four days of non-stop activity are finally taking their toll. We're catching a train to Barcelona in a couple of hours, but I could sleep the rest of the day.
We haven't even left yet and I'm already tired, but I remind myself that I'll be meeting up with my sister and her family soon and looking at Gaudi's masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, and that makes it better.
I run to the supermarket two blocks away to grab a few things for lunch. As I check out, the cashier asks me in Spanish whether I have a grocery store rewards card.
Just as I'm starting to feel like I belong here, it's time to go.
As we arrive in Barcelona, I realize I need to figure out where we're going once we disembark. I map out the subway system and we're ready to go. There's just one thing wrong.
I'm having an unusual amount of difficulty reading the signs. They seem sort-of familiar but still indecipherable. After a few puzzling minutes I realize that the signs aren't in Spanish but it's French-influenced cousin Catalon. This is going to be an adventure.
In Madrid, only three people spoke English in the entire city. We had read in the guidebooks that English was more prevalent in Barcelona. This turned out to be true. In Barcelona, 12 people in the entire city spoke English. Of course, five of them were members of my family, but let's not get overly technical.
We get to the apartment and check in. It occurs to me that amidst the activity of the last week, I didn't double-verify what time my sister is supposed to get here. She had originally told me 10, and then 6, but I didn't reconfirm that before she left for Spain 3 weeks ago.
Regardless, we have at least an hour, so we make the 15-minute walk to the local public market, which is called La Boqueria, but would more accurately be described as Heaven. It holds the largest collection of fruit, meats and seafood the world has ever known. The fruit is colorful and cheap, and you could devour it all on the spot if only people weren't bumping into you all the time. (Weird thing about Europe: no one says "excuse me" when they bump into you or block your way, because it happens so often. I never got used to that. I kept saying the Spanish equivalent of excuse me when I bumped into people, and they looked seemed more offended that I apologized than that I ran into them in the first place.)
But there isn't too much time to get lost in the sea of colorful fruit, so we take a quick walk through and come back.
There's still no sign of my sister, so we pass the time with a 2-Euro bottle of wine from the grocery store, where I'm again asked if I have a customer loyalty card. I'm picking up right where I left off!
On my way back to the apartment I'm also asked for directions. Weirdly, the signs are predominately in Catalon, but everyone seems to speak Spanish.
We pass the time looking out from our balcony with our wine and the evening turns into night. By about 8, we assume that my sister and her family must have been on the 10 o'clock flight after all, so we make the 15-minute trek back to the market.
It was closed. So were most of the shops we passed on the way to it. I guess Barcelona doesn't stay open as late as Madrid. The guidebooks didn't mention that either. If I ever meet Mr. Fodor or Mr. Frommer (assuming they're not actually the same person), we're going to have a serious talk.
We walk La Rambla, Barcelona's long tree-lined pedestrian walkway, and head back, where my sister, brother-in law and their 8 year old daughter have just arrived. A celebratory glass of wine and some conversation later, and we all turn in early.
Day 6
"We have to go," my wife says as the alarm sounds at some ungodly time like 7:30. "The guidebooks say if you don't get to Sagrada Familia early, the line gets crazy."
"I don't know, maybe it would be better to get a good night's sleep and then deal with the line?" I suggest.
"We can sleep when we're dead."
Touche.
So Liz and I walk the 8 blocks to Sagrada Familia while my family sleeps in. The adrenaline takes over the fatigue as we walk. If there's one thing in Spain we wanted to see, this is it.
We turn the corner to find it, and expect to behold majesty. Instead, we see scaffolding. Lots of scaffolding. The cathedral is open, but still unfinished, and the construction on the front overwhelms the church, which also looks surprisingly small.
Even worse, we get there by 9:15, but it's already too late. The line wraps around the entire building, and a guide is telling people not to bother because it's a four-hour wait.
Rick Steves and his cohorts have failed us again.
Between the construction on the city's signature landmark, the early closing times and the ubiquitous Catalon, Barcelona was not off to a good start.
But at least the guide didn't issue her wait-time warning in Catalon, or we would have wasted our whole day.
We take the walk to a couple other Gaudi architectural sites, which both surpass our suddenly lowered expectations. We met my family, go back to La Boqueria, wander the streets and take in the Picasso Museum.
Everyone else went to bed while my sister and I stay up late discussing Life, the Universe and Everything, and what life might look like if all our dreams come true.
It's what we do. And by the end of the day, Barcelona seems like a wonderful place to be.
Days 7-8
Friday and Saturday in Barcelona are a blur. There was so much to see and we did it so quickly, that it all runs together.
We went to the Barcelona Cathedral, which was beautiful and reminded my brother-in-law and I both of Notre Dame. I tried to light a candle for my most fervent prayer request, but the wicks were so short that I extinguished four before I finally got one to light. I like to think that the one new flame I eventually lit burned with the energy of my prayer and the prior four combined. We took the elevator up to the roof and had an amazing view of the city.
We had a tasty dinner of fresh squid and spicy potatoes, we wandered, ate some churros and went to the Museum of Chocolate. We told inside jokes and delighted my eight-year-old niece with stories about the craziness of all her other family members. Like the time her granddad put catfish in our swimming pool.
I stuck my arm in the Mediterranean, and I rammed unsuccessfully into the base of two more orange trees, hoping one would fall. I ate a killer paella, sat on shaded tables in beautiful squares, and got lost more than a couple of times.
Finally, in a last gasp effort, we dashed to Sagrada Familia to take one more shot at getting in. Amazingly, late Saturday afternoon was quiet and we got inside after a 25-minute wait. The interior was striking in its simplicity. From an architect known for his outlandish designs, the inside was surprisingly and beautifully plain.
The building doesn't look that tall from the outside, but on the inside, the undecorated brown columns seem to rise to just short of Heaven. The windows are stained and beautiful, but the rest of the cathedral is overwhelming mostly for its for its sheer simplistic magnitude.
A viewing area was fenced off on the backside of the church, which was blessedly scaffold-free. It was amazing in its detail, as seemingly hundreds of scenes were carved into the surface of the cathedral. The door of the cathedral looked like a yawning mouth swallowing unholy tourists that by the dozens, and spitting them out forever changed by the majesty of the inside.
While my wife took pictures, I slipped away to a little prayer cubby facing a stained-glass window. I prayed silently for the same things that I pray for often, but somehow those familiar requests seemed more powerful here. The words echoed in my head, and then seemed to linger in the air, as though this space contained some kind of supernatural microphone. "Whatever might come between now and the next time I'm here," I asked, "guide me through it and show me where to go."
Sagrada Familia had redeemed itself from the scaffolding. There's a presence in the building that feels like the energy of millions of earnest prayers bundled together, even amidst the noise of the gawking tour groups.
I'm glad we came back.
Day 9
If you a flight leaving from the Barcelona airport anytime this decade, you should probably starting heading that way.
We picked up a taxi two and a half hours before our flight.
After a surprisingly long cab ride we got to the airport. I took a right upon entering, as the cab driver had instructed (thankfully, they don't seem to use "apunte" (or whatever that word was) in Barcelona as their vague multi-purpose preposition, as they do in Madrid). But when we looked at the flight screen, no American Airlines flights were listed and all the departing flights were to somewhere else in Europe.
So he were are, an hour and forty-five minutes from the departure of our international flight, in the wrong place, where no one spoke English and the signs weren't even Spanish. Panic began to set in.
There was a long walkway that claimed to lead to another "concourse" (not "terminal"), but that might still not take us to where we needed to be. No signs mentioned anything about American Airlines, so it seemed risky to try it.
Also, we had strategically spent all of our Euro except a few coins, so if we needed to catch a bus to some other terminal, and the fare was more than a couple Euro, we'd be out of luck.
To make matters worse, there were the only two customer service desks in sight had lines that appeared to be at least half an hour long. We wandered around aimlessly, looking for someone to whom I could ask directions, praying I'd be able to understand them.
After a distressing few minutes, I found an agent took pity on me and told me to take the free shuttle on the front corner when I put on my extra-desperate face and used overly formal Spanish.
The Barcelona Airport was apparently two different airports that not only existed completely independently of each other, and didn't even acknowledge the other's existence, and we had been in the wrong one.
After an excruciatingly long shuttle ride across the "same" airport, we got to our 8-person check-in line with over an hour to spare and took at deep breath. Or at least we did until we noticed that our line hadn't moved in the 10 minutes we'd been standing there.
We finally got to the front of the line 45 minutes before our flight, having not yet cleared security. Apparently the check-in delay was because our flight was oversold and they were trying to find volunteers to take another one. He offered us $1200 and a free hotel to stay another night in Barcelona, but that would have meant coming back to this airport tomorrow so no amount of money on earth wasn't worth it.
Instead, we took the same deal to take a connecting flight through Miami that would get us home four hours later.
We gained seven hours traveling back through time zones, so we had a 31-hour day. The 10-hour flight to Miami seemed to take twice as long as the 7.5 hour flight from New York, but we felt ok when we landed.
A few hours into our layover, our sleep-deprived bodies started to crash. I walked to an airport coffee shop to try to find a way to survive the layover.
The menu was in Spanish, and the barista didn't speak English either. My cell phone worked now, but I was still basically in Spain.
It was a fitting end.
We eventually slept our way through the flight home, where a friend picked us up and took us home.
It's weird to be back. I instinctively spoke broken Spanish to strangers for a day or two upon my return, and I didn't feel totally right from the jetlag for about a week. I still miss the free olives that come with every order. I miss the tapas and the two-dollar wine. I miss the beauty of the Moorish architecture and the palm trees, I miss the dinners where the waiter doesn't pressure you out of your table the moment your plate is empty. I miss the fresh, more flavorful food, I miss my sister and her family and I even miss the orange trees whose fruit lay tantalizingly beyond my grasp.
I miss the feeling of to expanding my horizons to the point of almost fitting in to a different culture.
I'll be back here someday. I don't know when. I never dreamed it would take six years to get to Europe after the last time I'd come. I guess you never really know how life would unfold in the future, so all you can do is enjoy the moment.
But I know, barring some unforeseen misfortune, I'll be back again. Part of me was always here, even before I came.
And the next time, I hope you'll come with me. And if you don't, you should make it a point to get here on your own.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Hangin' with Donald Miller
If you enjoy this blog, you can thank Donald Miller.
He's best known for writing Blue Like Jazz, an autobiographical story of how he found God despite his church's attempt to reduce spirituality into a set of arbitrary rules and political ideology. Having lived that story firsthand, I love that book.
But it wasn't the one that changed my life. It was after reading another of Miller's books, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, that I decided it was time to start writing again and do something more meaningful with my life.
The first post I ever wrote on this site took a quote from it:
"The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person's story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don't want anything, we are living boring stories, and if we want a Roomba vacuum cleaner, we are living stupid stories."
I decided then to live a more meaningful story. And last night, with this blog within a whisper of its 15,000th hit, the story included a chapter where I got to meet Donald Miller.
Miller gave a lecture at Belmont University last night, and it turns out we have a mutual friend (who is also a writer), so I got to speak with Don for a just a few minutes when his lecture was done.
Sometimes people complain that they feel let down when they meet their hero. Donald Miller was the nicest famous person I've ever met.
I thanked him for inspiring me to start the blog. He seemed genuinely touched that he'd helped change the trajectory of my life. He signed the book I've re-read so many times by now, and he waited patiently while I awkwardly misdirected our mutual friend Mark how to take a picture with my new cell phone.
Miller writes with such strong opinions, that I was a little surprised that in person he was so pleasantly humble and unbound to his own ideas. Of course, I don't agree with everything he's ever written (and I've read it all), but the time to discuss that wasn't last night.
Maybe next time it will be.
In the lecture he gave, my favorite analogy he gave was about how no one can prove a sunset is prettier than camel dung. But if you experience them both, it makes that reality undeniable.
It's the same way with God. I'll never prove God is real or argue you into believing what I do. But if those of us who claim to experience a loving power bigger than ourselves live lives that point toward something beautiful, maybe, just maybe, someone else will take a few steps closer to that beauty as well, and be positively changed for having seen it.
That's actually part of why this blog is here.
It hasn't brought me fame or fortune or even a cent of cash. But among the 15,000 times someone has clicked on this site since Don inspired me to launch it, I hope at least a few of you found something beautiful, something that rang unprovably but undeniably true, or maybe just something funny that made a crappy day, week, or season in life seem just a little tolerable.
And if you did, you can thank Donald Miller.
Just like I did.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Blogging Through Spain (Part 2 of 3): Holy Toledo!
You've reached the middle part of my retrospective blog diary of my 8 days in Spain. You can read about days one through three, in Madrid, here:
http://www.andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/09/blogging-through-spain-part-1-of-3.html
(I would post a link to part 3 as well, but I haven't written it yet.)
On day 4, we woke up early to catch a train from Madrid to Toledo. But not early enough.
Day 4:
We're taking a day trip to Toledo. It's a 30-minute ride and it's the city where the expression "Holy Toledo" originated. As we leave our apartment, that's about all I know of our destination, except that Toledo is holy.
We had decided to come here because, prior to its present incarnation as the spiritual center of Catholic Spain, the city was previously ruled by the Islamic Moors and also had a huge Jewish presence. Because of the three cultures that have influenced it, it's filled with buildings that have alternatively been mosques, synagogues and cathedrals.
As we sleepily wobble out our apartment at the break of dawn to catch our train, I'm already regretting the trip. I'm enjoying Madrid so much. I'd rather just sleep in and eat more tapas and olives and leave the religious diversity and cultural encounters for some other day, when I'm not so tired.
The situation isn't helped by the fact that we miss our train. Our apartment guide claimed we were a 20-minute walk from the train station. About 25 minutes into our walk, we begin to freak out. We should have been there by now. We gave ourselves 35 minutes, but it still wasn't enough.
We ran the last stretch of the way, but it still took every minute of the 35 just to get inside the door of the station. It took another 15 to figure out where in the multi-level train station we needed to go once we got there.
By then, our train was long gone.
Thankfully, there was another one a hour and a half later. We had hoped we could use the same ticket for the next one, but, as with every other transaction, I would have to ask in Spanish.
The answer was clearly "no," although I couldn't decipher the specific details. I was then directed to another window ("apunte" from the customer service desk) where I could buy new tickets.
After an extra hour's wait, we boarded for Toledo. When we arrived at Toledo's beautiful Moroccan-style train station, we couldn't even see the city, so we decided to take the $2 bus into downtown.
It would be the best decision we made all week.
The large, overfilled bus whizzed uphill through the winding mountain road, coming inches away from colliding with both passing traffic and hanging cliffs, taking turns to ensure that its passengers on each side were equally terrified. But the alternative would have been to walk up the functional equivalent of the stairway to Heaven.
Or the stairway to Holy Toledo.
Toldeo is at the peak of a mountain, overlooking a river and valley on all sides. The city isn't really a city in the normal meaning of the term. Instead, it's an old medieval fortress that thousands of modern people happen to live and work in. There's a river at the base of the mountain that serves as a natural moat.
The "streets" are winding cobblestone walkways that appear to have been unchanged for 600 years. There isn't enough room for cars and people to coincide, so when a car comes by, pedestrians must cling to the fortress walls and pray for their lives to allow room for the car to pass. Thankfully, the city is reputed to be holy because of the numerous houses of worship it contains, so the pedestrians prayers are generally answered.
Aside from the occasional passing car, it looks like we've traveled back in time to before the Renaissance. It's brutally hot and the winding medieval alleyways ("streets" are too strong of a word to describe them) are impossible to navigate or even map, but it's still impossible not to love Toledo. It's hard to imagine something like this still exists.
I stand in awe. I've never seen anything like this.
"Holy Toledo," is all I can think to say.
We are in a living castle, right down to the moat surrounding us on all sides. I keep looking up at the fortress towers, expecting to see a princess, or a dragon, or perhaps a dragon princess. The noise from the occasional second-floor tv destroys the illusion, but somehow increases the surreal nature of the vibe.
We wander to a couple of former synagogues that look like mosques, but are now cathedrals. The Moorish architecture on the inside and outside of the buildings looks like a scene from Casablanca. I had always wanted to see Morocco, but I can't imagine this isn't the same thing, only prettier and with a language barrier more easily navigated.
Holy Toledo.
The Islamic African Moors controlled this area for 700 years. When they were finally driven out of control in the 1400s, their architects stayed over, because the pre-Renaissance Europeans couldn't build things this pretty. As a result, even the cathedrals and synagogues built inside the old fortress in look like Mosques. Toledo has eight or nine of these, all beautiful, and they all look straight out of Arabian Nights.
It's hard to imagine how a fort/town this small every supported so many houses of worship. But that's why the city is considered so holy.
After visiting the two synagogues, we go inside a monastery. It was beautiful like everything else in Toledo, but what I remember most is that it had an orange tree in the courtyard. The courtyard was blocked off to prevent people like me from stealing oranges. This made me mad because it seemed like a religious institution like this should have been on the honor system. And more importantly, the fence kept me from stealing a fresh Spanish orange that I'd been dreaming about for months.
We grabbed lunch in a break between architectural wonders. Predictably, the waiter/owner/manager who ran the little shop we ducked into spoke very little English. We did just fine, at least until the clueless New Yorkers wandered in just behind us.
When they struggled to order, I tried to fill in the gaps from the table next over. The waiter had recommended three specific dishes, but they wanted more details, despite the fact that neither had a clue how to communicate.
Somewhere along the way, they heard the word "tomate," which they recognized to mean tomato.
"Oh, so is that like spaghetti?" one of them yelled to me, sitting at the next table over.
I struggled to find a way to answer their question in a way that both the waiter and these clueless customers would understand. It didn't help that I hadn't even heard what dish they were talking about, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be spaghetti. This was Spain, after all not Italy.
After they finally clumsily and painfully ordered an appetizer ("chicken") using English entirely, I introduced myself.
I offered to help, telling them (in English) that while I wasn't fluent in Spanish, I knew enough to communicate.
"Oh, we do to," they said. And then they began asking each other if either knew the Spanish word for "chicken."
They didn't.
In fact, the two of them knew a grand total of six words between them, and that's only if you double-counted the three words they both seemed to know. That would have been fine, had we not gotten dragged unwillingly into their constant attempts to grab the waiter's attention ask obscure, inane questions.
We ate a fantastic meal and left, interrupted occasionally by our waiter's requests to translate the bizarre requests of the tourists beside us.
No, the restaurant doesn't have "ranch" salad dressing.
Yes, the papas bravas are "kind of" like French fries, but why did you come here if you want to eat French fries?
No, they don't have hamburgers.
"Carne" means meat. "Calamari" means "calamari."
Yes, I can translate the word for "bathroom" but why did you come here without even knowing that?
And why couldn't you have at least asked me these questions beforehand, instead of forcing the waiter to turn to me when he showed up and couldn't answer your questions in English?
Two hours after we left, we happened to wander by the restaurant on our way to catch a taxi out of town. Our "friends" were just leaving the restaurant. I can only imagine what happened in the meantime, but they looked pleasantly clueless, oblivious to the fact that they'd probably just erased 5 years of the restaurant owner's life. It was an 8 hour flight to get here. Couldn't you have opened a phrasebook for half an hour of that?
And I just knew from the way the carried themselves that if they ever met a tourist in America would was equally unprepared, they would turn up their noses.
No wonder so many people hate Americans.
After lunch, we see an old mosque that had been converted into a church, and an old church that had been converted to a museum. It was somehow even more beautiful than everything else we had seen.
There are other sites to see, most of them religious, but after the six of them we've seen, we've reached the point of diminishing returns. It's time to move on.
We catch a taxi across the bridge to the hotel on another mountain across the river. It overlooks the city, so we sit under a tent on the patio and have drinks (and olives) while we absorb the last bit of this crazy place. I still can't believe it actually exists, why they let cars drive on the medieval roads, or why anyone chooses to live in this old fortress. It's magical, but it can't make for an easy life.
But I'm glad they do.
I wasn't excited to come here, but it's the most astounding thing I've ever seen. Three cultures live in one city. Which is a 15th Century fortress. On the top of mountain surrounded by a moat, and blossoming with orange trees that the monastery won't let me steal.
Holy Toledo.
If you ever get a chance, you have to see this place. It was my favorite day of the whole trip, even with our obnoxious entitled friends from New York who drove both us and our waiter crazy.
We take a taxi to the train station, which itself looks like an Arabian Palace, where Liz takes a final round of pictures, and we board the train to head back to Madrid.
After another wonderful round of showers, we head back out into the Madrilleno night, but we're hot and tired and we've already been to the restaurants that look the best, so we head back a little earlier than the night before.
"What did you think of our day?" I ask.
"It was wonderful," Liz says. "What were your thoughts?"
I pause. Only one phrase comes to mind.
"Holy Toledo."
We reluctantly go to bed again around midnight, sad at the idea of leaving our apartment the next day, but intrigued by what awaits in Barcelona...
To be continued..
http://www.andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/09/blogging-through-spain-part-1-of-3.html
(I would post a link to part 3 as well, but I haven't written it yet.)
On day 4, we woke up early to catch a train from Madrid to Toledo. But not early enough.
Day 4:
We're taking a day trip to Toledo. It's a 30-minute ride and it's the city where the expression "Holy Toledo" originated. As we leave our apartment, that's about all I know of our destination, except that Toledo is holy.
We had decided to come here because, prior to its present incarnation as the spiritual center of Catholic Spain, the city was previously ruled by the Islamic Moors and also had a huge Jewish presence. Because of the three cultures that have influenced it, it's filled with buildings that have alternatively been mosques, synagogues and cathedrals.
As we sleepily wobble out our apartment at the break of dawn to catch our train, I'm already regretting the trip. I'm enjoying Madrid so much. I'd rather just sleep in and eat more tapas and olives and leave the religious diversity and cultural encounters for some other day, when I'm not so tired.
The situation isn't helped by the fact that we miss our train. Our apartment guide claimed we were a 20-minute walk from the train station. About 25 minutes into our walk, we begin to freak out. We should have been there by now. We gave ourselves 35 minutes, but it still wasn't enough.
We ran the last stretch of the way, but it still took every minute of the 35 just to get inside the door of the station. It took another 15 to figure out where in the multi-level train station we needed to go once we got there.
By then, our train was long gone.
Thankfully, there was another one a hour and a half later. We had hoped we could use the same ticket for the next one, but, as with every other transaction, I would have to ask in Spanish.
The answer was clearly "no," although I couldn't decipher the specific details. I was then directed to another window ("apunte" from the customer service desk) where I could buy new tickets.
After an extra hour's wait, we boarded for Toledo. When we arrived at Toledo's beautiful Moroccan-style train station, we couldn't even see the city, so we decided to take the $2 bus into downtown.
It would be the best decision we made all week.
The large, overfilled bus whizzed uphill through the winding mountain road, coming inches away from colliding with both passing traffic and hanging cliffs, taking turns to ensure that its passengers on each side were equally terrified. But the alternative would have been to walk up the functional equivalent of the stairway to Heaven.
Or the stairway to Holy Toledo.
Toldeo is at the peak of a mountain, overlooking a river and valley on all sides. The city isn't really a city in the normal meaning of the term. Instead, it's an old medieval fortress that thousands of modern people happen to live and work in. There's a river at the base of the mountain that serves as a natural moat.
The "streets" are winding cobblestone walkways that appear to have been unchanged for 600 years. There isn't enough room for cars and people to coincide, so when a car comes by, pedestrians must cling to the fortress walls and pray for their lives to allow room for the car to pass. Thankfully, the city is reputed to be holy because of the numerous houses of worship it contains, so the pedestrians prayers are generally answered.
Aside from the occasional passing car, it looks like we've traveled back in time to before the Renaissance. It's brutally hot and the winding medieval alleyways ("streets" are too strong of a word to describe them) are impossible to navigate or even map, but it's still impossible not to love Toledo. It's hard to imagine something like this still exists.
I stand in awe. I've never seen anything like this.
"Holy Toledo," is all I can think to say.
We are in a living castle, right down to the moat surrounding us on all sides. I keep looking up at the fortress towers, expecting to see a princess, or a dragon, or perhaps a dragon princess. The noise from the occasional second-floor tv destroys the illusion, but somehow increases the surreal nature of the vibe.
We wander to a couple of former synagogues that look like mosques, but are now cathedrals. The Moorish architecture on the inside and outside of the buildings looks like a scene from Casablanca. I had always wanted to see Morocco, but I can't imagine this isn't the same thing, only prettier and with a language barrier more easily navigated.
Holy Toledo.
The Islamic African Moors controlled this area for 700 years. When they were finally driven out of control in the 1400s, their architects stayed over, because the pre-Renaissance Europeans couldn't build things this pretty. As a result, even the cathedrals and synagogues built inside the old fortress in look like Mosques. Toledo has eight or nine of these, all beautiful, and they all look straight out of Arabian Nights.
It's hard to imagine how a fort/town this small every supported so many houses of worship. But that's why the city is considered so holy.
After visiting the two synagogues, we go inside a monastery. It was beautiful like everything else in Toledo, but what I remember most is that it had an orange tree in the courtyard. The courtyard was blocked off to prevent people like me from stealing oranges. This made me mad because it seemed like a religious institution like this should have been on the honor system. And more importantly, the fence kept me from stealing a fresh Spanish orange that I'd been dreaming about for months.
We grabbed lunch in a break between architectural wonders. Predictably, the waiter/owner/manager who ran the little shop we ducked into spoke very little English. We did just fine, at least until the clueless New Yorkers wandered in just behind us.
When they struggled to order, I tried to fill in the gaps from the table next over. The waiter had recommended three specific dishes, but they wanted more details, despite the fact that neither had a clue how to communicate.
Somewhere along the way, they heard the word "tomate," which they recognized to mean tomato.
"Oh, so is that like spaghetti?" one of them yelled to me, sitting at the next table over.
I struggled to find a way to answer their question in a way that both the waiter and these clueless customers would understand. It didn't help that I hadn't even heard what dish they were talking about, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be spaghetti. This was Spain, after all not Italy.
After they finally clumsily and painfully ordered an appetizer ("chicken") using English entirely, I introduced myself.
I offered to help, telling them (in English) that while I wasn't fluent in Spanish, I knew enough to communicate.
"Oh, we do to," they said. And then they began asking each other if either knew the Spanish word for "chicken."
They didn't.
In fact, the two of them knew a grand total of six words between them, and that's only if you double-counted the three words they both seemed to know. That would have been fine, had we not gotten dragged unwillingly into their constant attempts to grab the waiter's attention ask obscure, inane questions.
We ate a fantastic meal and left, interrupted occasionally by our waiter's requests to translate the bizarre requests of the tourists beside us.
No, the restaurant doesn't have "ranch" salad dressing.
Yes, the papas bravas are "kind of" like French fries, but why did you come here if you want to eat French fries?
No, they don't have hamburgers.
"Carne" means meat. "Calamari" means "calamari."
Yes, I can translate the word for "bathroom" but why did you come here without even knowing that?
And why couldn't you have at least asked me these questions beforehand, instead of forcing the waiter to turn to me when he showed up and couldn't answer your questions in English?
Two hours after we left, we happened to wander by the restaurant on our way to catch a taxi out of town. Our "friends" were just leaving the restaurant. I can only imagine what happened in the meantime, but they looked pleasantly clueless, oblivious to the fact that they'd probably just erased 5 years of the restaurant owner's life. It was an 8 hour flight to get here. Couldn't you have opened a phrasebook for half an hour of that?
And I just knew from the way the carried themselves that if they ever met a tourist in America would was equally unprepared, they would turn up their noses.
No wonder so many people hate Americans.
After lunch, we see an old mosque that had been converted into a church, and an old church that had been converted to a museum. It was somehow even more beautiful than everything else we had seen.
There are other sites to see, most of them religious, but after the six of them we've seen, we've reached the point of diminishing returns. It's time to move on.
We catch a taxi across the bridge to the hotel on another mountain across the river. It overlooks the city, so we sit under a tent on the patio and have drinks (and olives) while we absorb the last bit of this crazy place. I still can't believe it actually exists, why they let cars drive on the medieval roads, or why anyone chooses to live in this old fortress. It's magical, but it can't make for an easy life.
But I'm glad they do.
I wasn't excited to come here, but it's the most astounding thing I've ever seen. Three cultures live in one city. Which is a 15th Century fortress. On the top of mountain surrounded by a moat, and blossoming with orange trees that the monastery won't let me steal.
Holy Toledo.
If you ever get a chance, you have to see this place. It was my favorite day of the whole trip, even with our obnoxious entitled friends from New York who drove both us and our waiter crazy.
We take a taxi to the train station, which itself looks like an Arabian Palace, where Liz takes a final round of pictures, and we board the train to head back to Madrid.
After another wonderful round of showers, we head back out into the Madrilleno night, but we're hot and tired and we've already been to the restaurants that look the best, so we head back a little earlier than the night before.
"What did you think of our day?" I ask.
"It was wonderful," Liz says. "What were your thoughts?"
I pause. Only one phrase comes to mind.
"Holy Toledo."
We reluctantly go to bed again around midnight, sad at the idea of leaving our apartment the next day, but intrigued by what awaits in Barcelona...
To be continued..
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Blogging Through Spain (Part 1 of 3)
The bags are packed, the cats are fed. After a whirlwind of productivity the likes of which the world has never before seen, all my deadlines are met for the next 10 days. So for the first time in six years, Europe is just a flight away. It's time to go to Spain!
Don't worry. You can come too. Just keep reading.
Day 1:
Late last night my friend Jason offered to drive us to the airport. He's probably regretting that by now, but I took him up on his generous offer. So he dutifully arrives early this morning and exudes pleasant energy while my wife, Liz, and I triple-check our house for forgotten items, and drives us to the airport. Starting a trip with positive energy is an underrated bonus.
Thank you, Jason.
We arrive Saturday morning at the Nashville airport two hours in advance, like all the experts advise.
Of course, the airport is completely empty. But had we given ourselves an hour, we'd be still be in line as we speak, 9 days later. But as it was, we arrive at our gate in 15 minutes.
This is going to be a long day.
We stop in at the airport bookstore to kill some time, and have the following exchange with the sales person:
Clerk: So, where are you headed?
Us: Spain
Clerk: Oh! Usually I hear something like "Toledo."
Me: Well, we're taking a day trip to Toledo, Spain.
Liz: I just need to buy a watch since my cell phone won't work while we're there.
Clerk: Why do you care what time it is if you're in Spain?
Touche.
A few hours later we board and take off on our connecting flight to JFK. As the connecting flight circles New York, it hits me: New York is one of my favorite cities on earth, and I've never been this unexcited to be here. The vacation doesn't really feel like it starts until I'm actually on a plane that's landing at my destination. And I have a three hour layover until then.
My throat is feeling scratchy already. Maybe staying out late with my visiting out-of-town friends last night was a bad idea.
Liz and I make a round of phone calls to pass the time and taunt everyone we know with our travel plans. I stare out at the skyline.
That building in the distance towering over the New York skyline must be the Freedom Tower, at Ground Zero. Its 1776 feet are sobering to view, but I just want to be in Spain.
Before long the flight will board...
Day 2:
I move my watch forward six hours, which means its already midnight. The flight will last seven-and-a-half more hours. I really hope I can get some sleep, eventually. But in the meantime, I'm going to read that Skymall magazine to check the going rate on a life-sized statue of Bigfoot and some artificial grass that my pets can pee on.
I read a book, eat some airline food, and take a nap, occasionally stopping to translate for the teenage Spanish kid beside me who speaks as little English as the flight attendants do Spanish. I know we're flying American Airlines and all, but how do they staff an international flight without bilingual flight attendants? That's insane.
No wonder the rest of the world hates us.
A few hours later and finally, Madrid is in view. We walk off the plane with dry mouths, crunchy contacts and that groggy but exhilarating feeling that comes after an east-bound Transatlantic flight. We go into the bathrooms to wash our faces and brush our teeth. Bringing the toothpaste was a good call. The Madrid airport even has a tube of toothpaste already stocked.
It's nice to be here already.
We're going to hit the ground running in Madrid. We have no choice.
Our plane landed at 8 a.m., and we can't check into our apartment until 3 this afternoon. In the meantime, we have to get to the train station to drop off our luggage in a storage locker. I hope my Spanish is good enough to direct our taxi driver there.
"Hola. Necesitamos ir al estacion Atocha," I say to the first cab driver we see, mangling the pronunciation of Madrid's train station. The cab driver asks me a clarifying question, and we're good to go. As I ask a few questions in bad Spanish along the trip, it quickly becomes clear that he speaks no English whatsoever.
This would become a theme.
At the train station, no one speaks English either. I don't know the Spanish word for storage locker, but I can ask for a place to leave our suitcases.
Or rather, I can ask that question in perfect Spanish, but I can't actually understand the complicated directions the customer service agent gives me, which prominently involve the lockers being "apunte" (Or something like that. I never understood the word well enough to even look it up) from the front of the train station. I've taken 5 years of Spanish classes, but I've never heard that word before.
I ask her to repeat herself, but she just keeps telling me to go "apunte." We just wander in the general direction until we find it. Which we eventually do.
We drop off luggage and wander "apunte" toward the big Sunday flea market that all the guide books told us to see. We get there and find it consists of women's clothes and a bunch of cheap, crappy trinkets that no normal person would actually want. I bargain with two or three vendors for a dress my wife likes, but no one wants to give the confused-looking American with broken Spanish a good deal.
My Spanish is getting us by, but we're amazed that we haven't heard a word of English yet. Paris, Venice and Amsterdam weren't like this. There, you never forgot you were in a foreign country, but you always had the sense that the locals were a perfunctory native-tongue greeting away from resorting to English to make your life easier, even if they weren't very happy about it.
Here, the people are glad to repeat themselves more slowly if you ask, and even glad to teach you Spanish words, but that's the only tool they have to offer. You get the feeling from the smiles on their faces that they would gladly fill in the conversational gaps with the proper English word if they knew it, but since they can't, they have to wait patiently for my Spanish to come through. And unless I'm trying to follow directions involving the word "apunte," it generally does.
There's something weirdly awesome about the whole scene. I'm terrified and was unprepared for the scope of this challenge, but I've never soaked in a culture that's this authentically different from the one I know. At any given moment, we're one Spanish-language brain fart from me away from being helpless.
If only there weren't a KFC on the corner, I could blog about this.
We "flee" the market (you see what I did there?), and head to the big public park. It's beautiful and perfectly landscaped and there's a big lake in front of one of those monumental sculptures they only have in Europe.
We get a nice table by the lake and order tapas and horchata, the local morning beverage of choice. I order a waffle with strawberry ice cream. I actually wanted vanilla ice cream, but I felt the need to show the waitress that I knew the Spanish word for "strawberry." I thought about asking that she put it "apunte" to my waffle, but I still haven't figured out what that meant, so I don't get too crazy.
A couple hours later, we were ready for a nap but still had an hour to kill before our check in. So, in the time-honored tradition of homeless people everywhere, we napped in the park, and hear American music playing in the background while a roller blading troop practices. It's the first sustained English we've heard all day.
Eventually, we make it to our apartment and took the world's most fantastic shower, followed by the world's most fantastic naps.
We look for a little market where we can buy the world's most fantastic picnic dinner, to be eaten on our balcony, which is also fantastic. We end up settling for the grocery store 2 blocks away, but somehow get hopelessly lost on the way back. Those wine bottles start to get heavy after about 30 minutes of aimless wandering.
After we wander long enough to get frazzled, an old man finally takes mercy on us, and starts giving us directions without even asking where we're going. I tell him we aren't trying to get to Puerta Del Sol, to which he's trying to direct us. So instead, he gives us directions to where I ask. But I can't really understand what he's trying to tell us, except that we need to go "apunte" from the main street once we reach it.
I realize that I need to demand a refund on my Spanish classes.
But when we get there, we finally figure it out. Not what "apunte" means, of course, but how to get to our apartment.
But a few tapas and a cheap bottle of wine are consumed on the balcony, and day 2 turns into:
Day 3:
I'm still exhausted, but Liz wants to get moving. Our agenda is purposefully limited today, but we were hoping to get to the Reina Sofia (the Modern Art Museum) before the line gets long. We failed.
The line is long and it's already hot, but there's really nothing else on our agenda for the day, so we suffer through. Some people are walking straight in, though, while a long line of people wait in the line in which we find ourselves.
Liz asks that I investigate further, but I feel stupid and intimidated by the idea of asking what's going on, for fear that the conversation will go something like this:
Me: (in broken Spanish) what is this line for?
Other person: For the museum, dummy.
So instead, I walk to the front of the line hoping for a sign I can read. The signs have English subtitles, but the translation is so broken that it's just confusing, and it seems to contradict the Spanish version above it. All I know for sure is that there's a museum, I'm standing in front of it, and I have no idea what I need to do to get in. My wife waits in line in front of the museum, or possibly "apunte" of it, while I stand dumbfounded.
This would also be a theme.
An hour later, and three fruitless trips to entrance doors in hopes of talking to a roaming customer service agent, we finally get to the front of the line and figure out how to buy tickets. In the meantime, a roaming homeless woman asks us for money.
When we ignore her, she doesn't move down the line, as would happen in the US. Instead, she starts yelling and attempts to steal my wife's water bottle. I finally manage to tell her to go away, but we created quite a scene in the meantime. I guess one manages interactions with beggars differently here.
Interesting.
We hit the museum and see Picasso's famous Guernica, but we can't get into the Dali exhibit until two. In the meantime, we have amazingly good tapas at a café across the street and the best sangria I've ever tasted. While we have leisurely and ridiculously cheap lunch, a Spanish guy introduces himself to a pretty blond woman who walks by.
She agrees to an impromptu date, but her Spanish is bad. The Spanish guy is suave and appears to have done this before--he even speaks English. And then for the first time in three days, I hear a conversation in English, albeit a cheesy one where some random dude is attempting a cross-continental pick-up. I guess it's romantic, in a certain way, even though it seems obvious this isn't going anywhere.
We see the museum and head back for siestas. Early mornings in Madrid are cool and beautiful, but the temperatures are near 100 by about 11. By 2 or 3 p.m. your body literally gives out. I understand how siestas came to be. It's a glorious tradition.
After long naps, we wander back out for maybe the best meal of our lives.
As it happens, true to Spanish form, we would eat it at six different restaurants.
The Spanish make an event of their tapas. It's not a meal: it's a lifestyle. You order one tapa at each restaurant, and then move on to the next. At each, you get a free serving of olives, or maybe some other little appetizer. Or maybe you just have a palate-cleansing drink, which is also accompanied by, as everything in Spain is, a free serving of olives. And you continue accordingly until the wee hours of the morning, when you finish the evening off with a serving of churros and hot chocolate.
It's a fantastic way to live.
From 8 until 11, we stroll, eat, drink, stroll, and eat some more. It was the best six-restaurant, three-hour dinner I've ever had, even if I don't know the word for every tasty-looking tapa we encounter. We dine and stroll, and walk through the big public plaza full of street performers and families and happy children, even Monday night at midnight.
Two musicians are singing by the square. Their voices and rhythms are brilliant, but I can't quite decipher their rapid lyrics. As I sit, with my mouth savoring tapas and olives and a pleasant afterglow from a few glass of 2-dollar wine, with my life's troubles a continent away, I suddenly wish my friends were here too.
We will meet up with my sister in two days in Barcelona, and she'll understand why we loved it here as much as she did. My oldest niece had wished she could have come. She would have loved it here too. My friend Andrew would have delighted in the cultural idiosyncrasies. Chris would have raved about the nuance of the red wine. Michelle and Donnie would revel in the food and the fun. Daniel would make inside jokes from that Spanish 1 class in high school where we first became friends. Kelsey would notice something about this scene that I'd completely overlooked, but that would make it seem even more meaningful. Corinne would keep us up past our bedtime to squeeze in a little more fun, but we'd be glad the next day that she had. Cameron would amusingly critique the interpersonal vibe and wardrobes of every group we passed.
It's just so pleasant here. I wish I could share this picture with a larger percentage of my world.
But you guys were all somewhere else. Possibly "apunte." And we had big plans the next day, so we reluctantly cut the night off at midnight, which is early by Madrid standards. We have one more night in Madrid anyway, but tomorrow morning we have a day trip to "Holy" Toledo.
And what the next day held was outside of our wildest imaginations...
(Read all about it in tomorrow's blog)
Don't worry. You can come too. Just keep reading.
Day 1:
Late last night my friend Jason offered to drive us to the airport. He's probably regretting that by now, but I took him up on his generous offer. So he dutifully arrives early this morning and exudes pleasant energy while my wife, Liz, and I triple-check our house for forgotten items, and drives us to the airport. Starting a trip with positive energy is an underrated bonus.
Thank you, Jason.
We arrive Saturday morning at the Nashville airport two hours in advance, like all the experts advise.
Of course, the airport is completely empty. But had we given ourselves an hour, we'd be still be in line as we speak, 9 days later. But as it was, we arrive at our gate in 15 minutes.
This is going to be a long day.
We stop in at the airport bookstore to kill some time, and have the following exchange with the sales person:
Clerk: So, where are you headed?
Us: Spain
Clerk: Oh! Usually I hear something like "Toledo."
Me: Well, we're taking a day trip to Toledo, Spain.
Liz: I just need to buy a watch since my cell phone won't work while we're there.
Clerk: Why do you care what time it is if you're in Spain?
Touche.
A few hours later we board and take off on our connecting flight to JFK. As the connecting flight circles New York, it hits me: New York is one of my favorite cities on earth, and I've never been this unexcited to be here. The vacation doesn't really feel like it starts until I'm actually on a plane that's landing at my destination. And I have a three hour layover until then.
My throat is feeling scratchy already. Maybe staying out late with my visiting out-of-town friends last night was a bad idea.
Liz and I make a round of phone calls to pass the time and taunt everyone we know with our travel plans. I stare out at the skyline.
That building in the distance towering over the New York skyline must be the Freedom Tower, at Ground Zero. Its 1776 feet are sobering to view, but I just want to be in Spain.
Before long the flight will board...
Day 2:
I move my watch forward six hours, which means its already midnight. The flight will last seven-and-a-half more hours. I really hope I can get some sleep, eventually. But in the meantime, I'm going to read that Skymall magazine to check the going rate on a life-sized statue of Bigfoot and some artificial grass that my pets can pee on.
I read a book, eat some airline food, and take a nap, occasionally stopping to translate for the teenage Spanish kid beside me who speaks as little English as the flight attendants do Spanish. I know we're flying American Airlines and all, but how do they staff an international flight without bilingual flight attendants? That's insane.
No wonder the rest of the world hates us.
A few hours later and finally, Madrid is in view. We walk off the plane with dry mouths, crunchy contacts and that groggy but exhilarating feeling that comes after an east-bound Transatlantic flight. We go into the bathrooms to wash our faces and brush our teeth. Bringing the toothpaste was a good call. The Madrid airport even has a tube of toothpaste already stocked.
It's nice to be here already.
We're going to hit the ground running in Madrid. We have no choice.
Our plane landed at 8 a.m., and we can't check into our apartment until 3 this afternoon. In the meantime, we have to get to the train station to drop off our luggage in a storage locker. I hope my Spanish is good enough to direct our taxi driver there.
"Hola. Necesitamos ir al estacion Atocha," I say to the first cab driver we see, mangling the pronunciation of Madrid's train station. The cab driver asks me a clarifying question, and we're good to go. As I ask a few questions in bad Spanish along the trip, it quickly becomes clear that he speaks no English whatsoever.
This would become a theme.
At the train station, no one speaks English either. I don't know the Spanish word for storage locker, but I can ask for a place to leave our suitcases.
Or rather, I can ask that question in perfect Spanish, but I can't actually understand the complicated directions the customer service agent gives me, which prominently involve the lockers being "apunte" (Or something like that. I never understood the word well enough to even look it up) from the front of the train station. I've taken 5 years of Spanish classes, but I've never heard that word before.
I ask her to repeat herself, but she just keeps telling me to go "apunte." We just wander in the general direction until we find it. Which we eventually do.
We drop off luggage and wander "apunte" toward the big Sunday flea market that all the guide books told us to see. We get there and find it consists of women's clothes and a bunch of cheap, crappy trinkets that no normal person would actually want. I bargain with two or three vendors for a dress my wife likes, but no one wants to give the confused-looking American with broken Spanish a good deal.
My Spanish is getting us by, but we're amazed that we haven't heard a word of English yet. Paris, Venice and Amsterdam weren't like this. There, you never forgot you were in a foreign country, but you always had the sense that the locals were a perfunctory native-tongue greeting away from resorting to English to make your life easier, even if they weren't very happy about it.
Here, the people are glad to repeat themselves more slowly if you ask, and even glad to teach you Spanish words, but that's the only tool they have to offer. You get the feeling from the smiles on their faces that they would gladly fill in the conversational gaps with the proper English word if they knew it, but since they can't, they have to wait patiently for my Spanish to come through. And unless I'm trying to follow directions involving the word "apunte," it generally does.
There's something weirdly awesome about the whole scene. I'm terrified and was unprepared for the scope of this challenge, but I've never soaked in a culture that's this authentically different from the one I know. At any given moment, we're one Spanish-language brain fart from me away from being helpless.
If only there weren't a KFC on the corner, I could blog about this.
We "flee" the market (you see what I did there?), and head to the big public park. It's beautiful and perfectly landscaped and there's a big lake in front of one of those monumental sculptures they only have in Europe.
We get a nice table by the lake and order tapas and horchata, the local morning beverage of choice. I order a waffle with strawberry ice cream. I actually wanted vanilla ice cream, but I felt the need to show the waitress that I knew the Spanish word for "strawberry." I thought about asking that she put it "apunte" to my waffle, but I still haven't figured out what that meant, so I don't get too crazy.
A couple hours later, we were ready for a nap but still had an hour to kill before our check in. So, in the time-honored tradition of homeless people everywhere, we napped in the park, and hear American music playing in the background while a roller blading troop practices. It's the first sustained English we've heard all day.
Eventually, we make it to our apartment and took the world's most fantastic shower, followed by the world's most fantastic naps.
We look for a little market where we can buy the world's most fantastic picnic dinner, to be eaten on our balcony, which is also fantastic. We end up settling for the grocery store 2 blocks away, but somehow get hopelessly lost on the way back. Those wine bottles start to get heavy after about 30 minutes of aimless wandering.
After we wander long enough to get frazzled, an old man finally takes mercy on us, and starts giving us directions without even asking where we're going. I tell him we aren't trying to get to Puerta Del Sol, to which he's trying to direct us. So instead, he gives us directions to where I ask. But I can't really understand what he's trying to tell us, except that we need to go "apunte" from the main street once we reach it.
I realize that I need to demand a refund on my Spanish classes.
But when we get there, we finally figure it out. Not what "apunte" means, of course, but how to get to our apartment.
But a few tapas and a cheap bottle of wine are consumed on the balcony, and day 2 turns into:
Day 3:
I'm still exhausted, but Liz wants to get moving. Our agenda is purposefully limited today, but we were hoping to get to the Reina Sofia (the Modern Art Museum) before the line gets long. We failed.
The line is long and it's already hot, but there's really nothing else on our agenda for the day, so we suffer through. Some people are walking straight in, though, while a long line of people wait in the line in which we find ourselves.
Liz asks that I investigate further, but I feel stupid and intimidated by the idea of asking what's going on, for fear that the conversation will go something like this:
Me: (in broken Spanish) what is this line for?
Other person: For the museum, dummy.
So instead, I walk to the front of the line hoping for a sign I can read. The signs have English subtitles, but the translation is so broken that it's just confusing, and it seems to contradict the Spanish version above it. All I know for sure is that there's a museum, I'm standing in front of it, and I have no idea what I need to do to get in. My wife waits in line in front of the museum, or possibly "apunte" of it, while I stand dumbfounded.
This would also be a theme.
An hour later, and three fruitless trips to entrance doors in hopes of talking to a roaming customer service agent, we finally get to the front of the line and figure out how to buy tickets. In the meantime, a roaming homeless woman asks us for money.
When we ignore her, she doesn't move down the line, as would happen in the US. Instead, she starts yelling and attempts to steal my wife's water bottle. I finally manage to tell her to go away, but we created quite a scene in the meantime. I guess one manages interactions with beggars differently here.
Interesting.
We hit the museum and see Picasso's famous Guernica, but we can't get into the Dali exhibit until two. In the meantime, we have amazingly good tapas at a café across the street and the best sangria I've ever tasted. While we have leisurely and ridiculously cheap lunch, a Spanish guy introduces himself to a pretty blond woman who walks by.
She agrees to an impromptu date, but her Spanish is bad. The Spanish guy is suave and appears to have done this before--he even speaks English. And then for the first time in three days, I hear a conversation in English, albeit a cheesy one where some random dude is attempting a cross-continental pick-up. I guess it's romantic, in a certain way, even though it seems obvious this isn't going anywhere.
We see the museum and head back for siestas. Early mornings in Madrid are cool and beautiful, but the temperatures are near 100 by about 11. By 2 or 3 p.m. your body literally gives out. I understand how siestas came to be. It's a glorious tradition.
After long naps, we wander back out for maybe the best meal of our lives.
As it happens, true to Spanish form, we would eat it at six different restaurants.
The Spanish make an event of their tapas. It's not a meal: it's a lifestyle. You order one tapa at each restaurant, and then move on to the next. At each, you get a free serving of olives, or maybe some other little appetizer. Or maybe you just have a palate-cleansing drink, which is also accompanied by, as everything in Spain is, a free serving of olives. And you continue accordingly until the wee hours of the morning, when you finish the evening off with a serving of churros and hot chocolate.
It's a fantastic way to live.
From 8 until 11, we stroll, eat, drink, stroll, and eat some more. It was the best six-restaurant, three-hour dinner I've ever had, even if I don't know the word for every tasty-looking tapa we encounter. We dine and stroll, and walk through the big public plaza full of street performers and families and happy children, even Monday night at midnight.
Two musicians are singing by the square. Their voices and rhythms are brilliant, but I can't quite decipher their rapid lyrics. As I sit, with my mouth savoring tapas and olives and a pleasant afterglow from a few glass of 2-dollar wine, with my life's troubles a continent away, I suddenly wish my friends were here too.
We will meet up with my sister in two days in Barcelona, and she'll understand why we loved it here as much as she did. My oldest niece had wished she could have come. She would have loved it here too. My friend Andrew would have delighted in the cultural idiosyncrasies. Chris would have raved about the nuance of the red wine. Michelle and Donnie would revel in the food and the fun. Daniel would make inside jokes from that Spanish 1 class in high school where we first became friends. Kelsey would notice something about this scene that I'd completely overlooked, but that would make it seem even more meaningful. Corinne would keep us up past our bedtime to squeeze in a little more fun, but we'd be glad the next day that she had. Cameron would amusingly critique the interpersonal vibe and wardrobes of every group we passed.
It's just so pleasant here. I wish I could share this picture with a larger percentage of my world.
But you guys were all somewhere else. Possibly "apunte." And we had big plans the next day, so we reluctantly cut the night off at midnight, which is early by Madrid standards. We have one more night in Madrid anyway, but tomorrow morning we have a day trip to "Holy" Toledo.
And what the next day held was outside of our wildest imaginations...
(Read all about it in tomorrow's blog)
Friday, August 16, 2013
Little White Lies
"I don't actually read your blog," he told me. "But it's really good."
I could have asked why he didnn't read it if he really thought it was good. Or I could have asked how he had an opinion about the quality of my blog if he didn't actually read it. But I didn't feel like going there.
Besides, we both knew he was lying.
The truth, we both knew, was that he read my blog all the time, and that we both thought it sucked.
But I wasn't mad at him for lying to me. He was just trying to be nice.
That's the reason people lie about small, seemingly harmless stuff all the time.
If your significant other asks where you've been, you can't say that you've been out shopping for his or her birthday present, even in the rare case when that's actually true. You can't ever tell someone that they look fat in that dress, even if he's an NFL offensive linemen.
You have to pretend to like your friend's new boyfriend, even if he wears skinny jeans and constantly talks about how all the formerly good rock bands have sold out. You have to pretend to like your friend's girlfriend even when she starts a fight with him about what toppings should go on a salad, and then calls you at 2:00 a.m. to complain about the exchange.
I grew up in Southern Baptist circles hearing that it was always, always, wrong, not to tell the truth.
That, of course, was a lie.
The Bible is packed with people who became heroes by lying. The wise men told King Herod they would report back to him the location where he could find Jesus, that newborn king all the herald angels were harking about. But then they figured out that kings like Herod usually don't just love to come worship challengers to their throne, so they found a detour home.
If the wise men had fallen into that trip, we probably won't include them in our manger scenes (and we certainly wouldn't refer to them as "wise men"). Of course, you'd think baby Jesus could have had the situation covered without needing the wise men resorting to deception, but He moves in mysterious ways.)
In an Old Testament story, Rahab the harlot's is remembered for telling a well-placed lie. Her life was saved because she lied to the locals about not knowing where to find those invading spies she was hiding, who would ultimately conquer the land, spare her life as a reward, and then write flattering words about her in the both the Old Testament and New Testaments. True, they were probably writing the stories in the King James version, but that's still more acclaim than you and I have ever achieved.
Jacob lied to Esau and to his father Isaac. Jacob's uncle lied to him, tricking him into marrying the ugly duckling sister of the woman he'd labored seven years to marry, both of whom happened to be his cousins. But, other than having dueling sets of inbred kids (who sold their brother Joseph and his amazing Technicolor dreamcoat into Egyptian slavery), Jacob still managed to do just fine with his life. He could never put together a team to go on Family Feud, but that creepy Richard Dawson guy was the host at that point anyway, so it wasn't a big loss.
But that is not my central point.
The point is, that in light of these examples, maybe, just maybe, is it ok to fib sometimes?
Not when you're under oath or part of an investigation, mind you. Not to get away with something you shouldn't have been doing in the first place. But maybe when being a little fuzzy with reality prevents some greater evil directed at someone else? Or maybe when it spares someone's feelings from unnecessary pain?
Even those exceptions are tricky, though. If you tell your sensitive nephew that he's a good singer in order to preserve his feelings, he might end getting hurt even worse when he's ridiculed on American Idle as the latest tone-deaf, geeky kid lacking any semblance of self-awareness.
If you befriend the lonely guy at the office and pretend to take an interest in his never-ending stories, he might start coming back twice a day and offering you sneak peaks at his forthcoming comic book series.
Which you would also have to pretend to like.
So what's the answer?
I've thought about it for at least 135 second, and only have one solution: deliberate vagueness.
Open-ended answers prevent you from having to lie to save your friends' feelings, but also save you from directly encouraging whatever bad decision it is that you're trying to avoid having to confront. They also cause the people to whom you speak to think about what the heck you just said, even after you've left. You remain in their thoughts even after you've gone.
Everyone wins.
"What are you talking about," you might ask? "Can you give me an example of what you mean by 'deliberate vagueness?'"
No. I'm not going to tell you anything more. You can interpret my previously given answer any way you like.
And that's exactly the point.
I could have asked why he didnn't read it if he really thought it was good. Or I could have asked how he had an opinion about the quality of my blog if he didn't actually read it. But I didn't feel like going there.
Besides, we both knew he was lying.
The truth, we both knew, was that he read my blog all the time, and that we both thought it sucked.
But I wasn't mad at him for lying to me. He was just trying to be nice.
That's the reason people lie about small, seemingly harmless stuff all the time.
If your significant other asks where you've been, you can't say that you've been out shopping for his or her birthday present, even in the rare case when that's actually true. You can't ever tell someone that they look fat in that dress, even if he's an NFL offensive linemen.
You have to pretend to like your friend's new boyfriend, even if he wears skinny jeans and constantly talks about how all the formerly good rock bands have sold out. You have to pretend to like your friend's girlfriend even when she starts a fight with him about what toppings should go on a salad, and then calls you at 2:00 a.m. to complain about the exchange.
I grew up in Southern Baptist circles hearing that it was always, always, wrong, not to tell the truth.
That, of course, was a lie.
The Bible is packed with people who became heroes by lying. The wise men told King Herod they would report back to him the location where he could find Jesus, that newborn king all the herald angels were harking about. But then they figured out that kings like Herod usually don't just love to come worship challengers to their throne, so they found a detour home.
If the wise men had fallen into that trip, we probably won't include them in our manger scenes (and we certainly wouldn't refer to them as "wise men"). Of course, you'd think baby Jesus could have had the situation covered without needing the wise men resorting to deception, but He moves in mysterious ways.)
In an Old Testament story, Rahab the harlot's is remembered for telling a well-placed lie. Her life was saved because she lied to the locals about not knowing where to find those invading spies she was hiding, who would ultimately conquer the land, spare her life as a reward, and then write flattering words about her in the both the Old Testament and New Testaments. True, they were probably writing the stories in the King James version, but that's still more acclaim than you and I have ever achieved.
Jacob lied to Esau and to his father Isaac. Jacob's uncle lied to him, tricking him into marrying the ugly duckling sister of the woman he'd labored seven years to marry, both of whom happened to be his cousins. But, other than having dueling sets of inbred kids (who sold their brother Joseph and his amazing Technicolor dreamcoat into Egyptian slavery), Jacob still managed to do just fine with his life. He could never put together a team to go on Family Feud, but that creepy Richard Dawson guy was the host at that point anyway, so it wasn't a big loss.
But that is not my central point.
The point is, that in light of these examples, maybe, just maybe, is it ok to fib sometimes?
Not when you're under oath or part of an investigation, mind you. Not to get away with something you shouldn't have been doing in the first place. But maybe when being a little fuzzy with reality prevents some greater evil directed at someone else? Or maybe when it spares someone's feelings from unnecessary pain?
Even those exceptions are tricky, though. If you tell your sensitive nephew that he's a good singer in order to preserve his feelings, he might end getting hurt even worse when he's ridiculed on American Idle as the latest tone-deaf, geeky kid lacking any semblance of self-awareness.
If you befriend the lonely guy at the office and pretend to take an interest in his never-ending stories, he might start coming back twice a day and offering you sneak peaks at his forthcoming comic book series.
Which you would also have to pretend to like.
So what's the answer?
I've thought about it for at least 135 second, and only have one solution: deliberate vagueness.
Open-ended answers prevent you from having to lie to save your friends' feelings, but also save you from directly encouraging whatever bad decision it is that you're trying to avoid having to confront. They also cause the people to whom you speak to think about what the heck you just said, even after you've left. You remain in their thoughts even after you've gone.
Everyone wins.
"What are you talking about," you might ask? "Can you give me an example of what you mean by 'deliberate vagueness?'"
No. I'm not going to tell you anything more. You can interpret my previously given answer any way you like.
And that's exactly the point.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Random Thoughts: My Vacuum Cleaner Sucks
I spent most of my narrative energy this week working on my book idea and fighting a sinus infection and bulging disk in my back. But it's been awhile since I shared another edition of my second-favorite running gimmick for a column, so I figure I can at least give you that.
As always, here they are: Real thoughts. Really random. Let's go!
Is there anything worse than grabbing a cookie that you thought was chocolate chip, taking a bite and discovering those dark spots were actually raisins? Not only are you left with an inferior cookie, you've wasted an indulgence. Ugh.
The other day I drove by a building that said "Mechanical Pump and Electrical Company." In their front yard was an employee manually pouring out a big bucket of water. I guess their equipment isn't exactly up-to-date.
People keep expecting me to have strong opinions about the Martin case. But I make it a policy to ignore completely whatever story CNN is obsessing about at the given moment.
The doctor asked me today whether I had a fever. Wasn't it her job to figure that out for me?
If your vacuum cleaner sucks, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
The other day I caught a shuttle bus at the airport. As I climbed aboard, I heard a 400-pound woman tell the guy next to her, "Oh, I've been taking diuretics for years." I bet she's fun at parties.
Rule of Life #162: the availability of mindlessly entertaining programming on tv at any given moment will always be directly proportional to your need, at that same moment, to get things done. Also, the amount of noise your neighbors are making late at night will be directly proportional to your need to get some sleep.
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.
If your son is a priest, do you have to call him "Father"?
A friend just posted a facebook article about a scientific finding that those who have a friend they could call about anything at 4 a.m. tend to live longer than those who don't. Fair enough. But I can't help but think that people who are asleep at 4 a.m. would probably fare even better.
Would anyone complain if we took a day away from July and gave it to September?
Summer is pointless when you're an adult.
Sign you're getting old number #146: someone asks you how you spent your weekend and you can't decide whether it was more significantly diminished by your achy back or your sinus infection.
I just saw a commercial for an app on the Kindle Fire where parents can set the device to turn itself off after the kid plays on it for a predetermined length of time, so that the parents don't have to manually raise their children. And word is that the next Kindle Fire will have a retractable arm that can spank your kids each time they try to turn it back on.
Why do hotels always tuck the sheets in so tightly into the beds that you can't even raise your feet up underneath them? And how come the hotel provides you with shampoo and conditioner and occasionally mouthwash but never toothpaste?
That's it for this week. I'll back next week with something less random. Please come back then, provided that your Kindle hasn't automatically shut itself off by that point.
As always, here they are: Real thoughts. Really random. Let's go!
Is there anything worse than grabbing a cookie that you thought was chocolate chip, taking a bite and discovering those dark spots were actually raisins? Not only are you left with an inferior cookie, you've wasted an indulgence. Ugh.
The other day I drove by a building that said "Mechanical Pump and Electrical Company." In their front yard was an employee manually pouring out a big bucket of water. I guess their equipment isn't exactly up-to-date.
People keep expecting me to have strong opinions about the Martin case. But I make it a policy to ignore completely whatever story CNN is obsessing about at the given moment.
The doctor asked me today whether I had a fever. Wasn't it her job to figure that out for me?
If your vacuum cleaner sucks, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
The other day I caught a shuttle bus at the airport. As I climbed aboard, I heard a 400-pound woman tell the guy next to her, "Oh, I've been taking diuretics for years." I bet she's fun at parties.
Rule of Life #162: the availability of mindlessly entertaining programming on tv at any given moment will always be directly proportional to your need, at that same moment, to get things done. Also, the amount of noise your neighbors are making late at night will be directly proportional to your need to get some sleep.
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.
If your son is a priest, do you have to call him "Father"?
A friend just posted a facebook article about a scientific finding that those who have a friend they could call about anything at 4 a.m. tend to live longer than those who don't. Fair enough. But I can't help but think that people who are asleep at 4 a.m. would probably fare even better.
Would anyone complain if we took a day away from July and gave it to September?
Summer is pointless when you're an adult.
Sign you're getting old number #146: someone asks you how you spent your weekend and you can't decide whether it was more significantly diminished by your achy back or your sinus infection.
I just saw a commercial for an app on the Kindle Fire where parents can set the device to turn itself off after the kid plays on it for a predetermined length of time, so that the parents don't have to manually raise their children. And word is that the next Kindle Fire will have a retractable arm that can spank your kids each time they try to turn it back on.
Why do hotels always tuck the sheets in so tightly into the beds that you can't even raise your feet up underneath them? And how come the hotel provides you with shampoo and conditioner and occasionally mouthwash but never toothpaste?
That's it for this week. I'll back next week with something less random. Please come back then, provided that your Kindle hasn't automatically shut itself off by that point.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Dealing with Lawyers
I've often said that the worst part of being an attorney is having to deal with other lawyers all day.
If anyone were giving out medals for bad opposing counsel stories, my collection would win me at least a bronze.
The most obnoxious lawyer I've ever encountered was from St. Louis. When I was in private practice there, one of my first depositions there involved a lawsuit with three parties involved. I don't remember what the case was about (and I couldn't tell you if I did), but the first deposition we took in it was something I'll never forget.
The parties sat down and we waded through the opening formalities, albeit with noticeable tension between the other two lawyers. Then about two minutes into the proceedings, one of the opposing counsels, a plump, grey-haired, haggard looking man of about 60, started making faces at the other counsel as she questioned his witness.
Really.
The old man stuck his tongue out. He rolled his eyes and puffed up his cheeks. At first I thought that maybe he was having a seizure, but then he started mouthing the words of opposing counsel's questions in a mocking fashion after she said them.
Judges don't normally come to depositions, so the only people present for this display were us three attorneys, a court reporter, and the crazy attorney's own witness. None of us were quite sure how to respond. Even the defendant looked more than a little confused by what was happening.
As for me, I sat silent. What to do when one opposing counsel starts making silly, childhood faces at another one was not one of the things that ever came up during law school.
Unless maybe I was out that day.
So I just continued to sit there stunned. I was only a couple years out of school, I still owed $60,000 in student loan debt, and I came to the realization that I'd spent a fortune and my life's ambition to be part of a profession that closely resembled clown college.
I became a lawyer to argue for justice and truth. But here, I found myself the middle man in a playground dispute that seemed likely to be won by whoever could make the most effective cartoon face or schoolyard putdown.
This sort of thing never happened in any of the Grisham books.
The counsel being mocked, a 40ish year-old woman, lodged an objection for the recorded transcript. But the petulant old man continued to make faces and indecipherable noises undeterred. He verbalized nothing inappropriate that could be recorded for the transcript, except that at one point he called her "honey." His uncanny ability to be annoying without leaving demonstrable proof of his unprofessionalism showed that this was clearly not the first time he'd tried this trick.
But by his use of the "honey" line, it was suddenly clear to me what was happening, and why.
After no more than 5 minutes, the woman gave up, called off the deposition. Before the recording stopped, I narrated for the record everything that had happened in the prior five minutes and admonished this jerk for wasting our time.
But the transcript didn't reveal anything directly from that obnoxious old man other than some language that was politically incorrect and the unverifiable accusations from me and the other attorney.
The woman later filed a motion for sanctions, but the judge didn't want to deal with it, so he just issued a warning and reset the deposition for some other day.
The scene was completely ridiculous, but it drove home and important point that I've carried with me throughout my legal career: too often in the legal profession there are no real repercussions for being a complete jerk. As a result, attorneys often feel emboldened to act like complete jerks, although generally in a manner at least slightly less childish.
It still aggravates me when opposing counsels break basic rules of human decency, but, thankfully, I've found a way to deal with it over the years.
When I start to get annoyed at some ridiculous tactic my opposing counsel attempts, I stop myself, take deep breaths, pray for God's wisdom, and re-focus on my greater purpose of helping to bring justice to the world.
Then I make a funny cartoon face.
If anyone were giving out medals for bad opposing counsel stories, my collection would win me at least a bronze.
The most obnoxious lawyer I've ever encountered was from St. Louis. When I was in private practice there, one of my first depositions there involved a lawsuit with three parties involved. I don't remember what the case was about (and I couldn't tell you if I did), but the first deposition we took in it was something I'll never forget.
The parties sat down and we waded through the opening formalities, albeit with noticeable tension between the other two lawyers. Then about two minutes into the proceedings, one of the opposing counsels, a plump, grey-haired, haggard looking man of about 60, started making faces at the other counsel as she questioned his witness.
Really.
The old man stuck his tongue out. He rolled his eyes and puffed up his cheeks. At first I thought that maybe he was having a seizure, but then he started mouthing the words of opposing counsel's questions in a mocking fashion after she said them.
Judges don't normally come to depositions, so the only people present for this display were us three attorneys, a court reporter, and the crazy attorney's own witness. None of us were quite sure how to respond. Even the defendant looked more than a little confused by what was happening.
As for me, I sat silent. What to do when one opposing counsel starts making silly, childhood faces at another one was not one of the things that ever came up during law school.
Unless maybe I was out that day.
So I just continued to sit there stunned. I was only a couple years out of school, I still owed $60,000 in student loan debt, and I came to the realization that I'd spent a fortune and my life's ambition to be part of a profession that closely resembled clown college.
I became a lawyer to argue for justice and truth. But here, I found myself the middle man in a playground dispute that seemed likely to be won by whoever could make the most effective cartoon face or schoolyard putdown.
This sort of thing never happened in any of the Grisham books.
The counsel being mocked, a 40ish year-old woman, lodged an objection for the recorded transcript. But the petulant old man continued to make faces and indecipherable noises undeterred. He verbalized nothing inappropriate that could be recorded for the transcript, except that at one point he called her "honey." His uncanny ability to be annoying without leaving demonstrable proof of his unprofessionalism showed that this was clearly not the first time he'd tried this trick.
But by his use of the "honey" line, it was suddenly clear to me what was happening, and why.
After no more than 5 minutes, the woman gave up, called off the deposition. Before the recording stopped, I narrated for the record everything that had happened in the prior five minutes and admonished this jerk for wasting our time.
But the transcript didn't reveal anything directly from that obnoxious old man other than some language that was politically incorrect and the unverifiable accusations from me and the other attorney.
The woman later filed a motion for sanctions, but the judge didn't want to deal with it, so he just issued a warning and reset the deposition for some other day.
The scene was completely ridiculous, but it drove home and important point that I've carried with me throughout my legal career: too often in the legal profession there are no real repercussions for being a complete jerk. As a result, attorneys often feel emboldened to act like complete jerks, although generally in a manner at least slightly less childish.
It still aggravates me when opposing counsels break basic rules of human decency, but, thankfully, I've found a way to deal with it over the years.
When I start to get annoyed at some ridiculous tactic my opposing counsel attempts, I stop myself, take deep breaths, pray for God's wisdom, and re-focus on my greater purpose of helping to bring justice to the world.
Then I make a funny cartoon face.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Parable of Abed and the Shepherd
There once was a man named Abed who lived a happy life in a small village by the desert. Abed had a good job and good friends and a fluffy dog named Cedric and was happy with his life. At least he was happy with his life until he came home one day to discovery that his house was in pieces.
Cedric was fine, but parts of Abed's house were strewn about everywhere. Abed didn't know what happened or why, but he blamed the wind and began gathering the pieces together.
What else could he do?
Most of the first pieces he found had blown into the desert, so Abed starting rebuilding his house there. Enough material was left so that it wasn't long before Abed had food and shelter and the basic necessities to live in the new house he was building. The spot where the parts had blown was still close enough to town to see his friends and go to work everyday, so life kept on as usual.
Except that now, Abed lived in the desert.
For the next year, Abed slowly and painfully rebuilt his house, finding a few new materials every few days.
The only thing that sustained Abed during that year were his friends and Cedric. It turned out that Abed was an adept dog trainer, and every night Abed taught Cedric a new trick. Abed had treated Cedric kindly for all the years since he had found Cedric on his doorstep as a puppy, but it was during that year in the desert when Abed devoted almost all his free attention to Cedric. Cedric had never learned much in the years before, but when Abed gave him his almost undivided attention (when he wasn't rebuilding his house), Cedric learned amazing tricks beyond what anyone had ever thought possible.
Soon, word spread about the tricks Abed had taught Cedric. Abed's old village lined up to watch the show when he and Cedric passed through town, and people invited Abed into their own villages for him to teach their dogs too. It didn't hurt that Abed loved to tell stories about Cedric and anything else and could entertain the people even when Cedric was tired.
Abed still didn't like living in the desert. But because of Cedric, he was a success.
After almost a full year of collecting spare parts he found scattered across the desert, Abed had finally almost rebuilt his house. But a few weeks before it was finished, Cedric disappeared.
Abed looked everywhere: in the house, throughout the desert and even back in the village, but he couldn't find Cedric. Abed yelled for Cedric as loudly as he could for weeks, but Cedric had vanished without a trace.
Abed was crushed. The only thing that has sustained Abed for the last year had disappeared without warning.
Abed took it harder than anyone could understand. Other people asked Abed to train their dogs, but he said no. He knew it wouldn't be the same. And deep down, he didn't really want to be a professional dog trainer. He had something special with Cedric that he could never replicate in another setting.
Abed had not only lost Cedric. He had not only lost his source of comfort. Without Cedric, he had lost his purpose.
In the midst of his sadness, Abed kept working on his house. When he finally finished, he realized that he was all alone in a house in the desert with nothing left to do with his time.
He thought of selling it, or even tearing it down, but he wasn't sure where else to go. The village he had left the year before had changed while he was gone, and it didn't feel like home anymore. He sometimes dreamed of life in the distant villages he saw on the desert horizon, but that would mean starting over yet again.
A few months later, there was a big celebration in his old village. Abed wanted to go, but there was a rare desert storm that day, so Abed just sat on his porch and stared. As he was sitting, he saw a rain-soaked shepherd walking by.
The shepherd looked familiar, but Abed couldn't place where he had seen him before.
"Hello, friend," the shepherd said. "Why do you live in this desert when the village is only a few miles away?"
"My house blew down," Abed said. "And the wind took most of the parts here, so this is where I had to rebuild."
The shepherd paused before responding.
"The wind didn't blow your house down, and the wind didn't blow the parts here," the shepherd answered back. "I am a carpenter as well as a shepherd, and I am the one who built that house of yours in the village." The shepherd paused again, this time for a moment longer. "I am also the one who tore it down," he said.
"You did what?" Abed cried, rising from his chair.
"I tore the house down, but I also helped rebuild it," the shepherd said. "The wind didn't bring the building materials here. I left the parts you needed every day in a place where you could find them. Had you decided to rebuild in the village, I would have left them there. But since you started rebuilding here, I brought them to the place where you were."
"Why would you do that? And why did you make you make me go through all this trouble? Do you have any idea what the last year of my life has been like? I'm not even the same person anymore that I was a year ago!"
"Indeed you are not," the shepherd said. "You are a now a person who knows how to build a house, a person who knows how to survive in a desert, and a person who has seen what he can do through perseverance. Imagine what else is possible!"
"But you've left me here in this desert!," Abed protested. "Why?"
"I brought you here to start picking up the pieces, but you are the one who chose to stay. As I said, I would have brought the remaining parts to you wherever I could find you. But yes, I lead people here sometimes. From the desert, you can see more clearly for miles in all directions.
"And think of Cedric," the shepherd continued. "You would have never achieved so much with him in that village, amidst so many distractions."
"Did you take Cedric too?"
"I didn't take Cedric. But there's something you don't know. I've known Cedric even longer than you have. In fact, he was mine as a puppy before I left him on your doorstep. I let you keep him because you took good care of him and I knew what you could accomplish together. He left because you had taught him all you could.
"I showed him an opportunity. I didn't make him go, but I didn't stop him. What I showed him was exactly what I had planned for him all along. If you let me, I'll do the same for you. Even today, I've walked through the rain to talk to you, because it was the first day you'd stopped working long enough to listen."
"Why would I ever trust you about anything?" Abed asked. "You've taken away every single thing that ever mattered to me."
"You will see Cedric again, somewhere down the line and his journey will make sense to you then," the shepherd said. "But until then, what if I gave you a new dog to train? One that could learn even more tricks than what you taught Cedric."
Abed frowned. He had loved Cedric, but he didn't really want to be a professional dog trainer. He cared for Cedric because Cedric had fallen on his doorstep and they were a perfect fit for each other. With a different dog it wouldn't be the same.
"I see that isn't what you're looking for," the shepherd said. "So what if I found you a new house in one of those distant villages you see on the desert horizon? Or what if I helped you find a new house in your old village, or even helped move your new house back there? What would I have to do for you in order for you to trust me?"
Abed sat quietly. He knew that he was in some ways a better person for all he had been through. He had learned how to build a house. He had achieved more with Cedric that he ever thought possible. He wasn't sure what he really wanted at this point, but he knew that it wasn't a new dog, house, or village, or any other gift the shepherd might magically give him as some kind of Karmic Consolation Prize.
Besides, he was still mad at this stranger who saw fit to cause all these changes without so much as asking.
"It doesn't really matter what I want," Abed said. "My plans don't seem to matter much lately. Why don't you just show me what you, in your infinite wisdom, had in mind?"
The shepherd smiled a wry smile and pointed across the plains. When he did, the gray skies cleared and Abed saw more than he ever had.
Near the horizon were families trying to build houses, but who didn't know how. Closer in, there were dogs running wild, while their owners tried in vain to control them. Just a few yards away were travelers wandering through the desert, sweltering and miserable with thirst.
Abed was moved. He had never noticed any of these groups before.
He realized that he might not want to build another house, but maybe he could teach someone else how to do it. He might never want to train another dog himself, but he could help owners who were about to give up to break through. Abed might not like living in the desert, but he had learned enough while there to tell others the tricks to survive while they passed through it. Maybe he could even plant enough grass seeds to bring the desert and the village closer together.
And if Abed spent his time doing all these things, he wouldn't have much time left over to spend in the desert anyway.
Abed suddenly realized that all this was what he really wanted. His dream was not to build houses or to train dogs or to move to new places, but to share the story of how he done these things. In the process, he would find purpose in all that had happened to him and maybe help anyone else for whom his story might sound a little bit familiar.
Abed turned back to reveal his revelation to the shepherd, and ask for the shepherd's help in making it all come to pass. But the shepherd was gone.
Abed stood puzzled for a moment.
Then he realized that nothing stood in his way.
Cedric was fine, but parts of Abed's house were strewn about everywhere. Abed didn't know what happened or why, but he blamed the wind and began gathering the pieces together.
What else could he do?
Most of the first pieces he found had blown into the desert, so Abed starting rebuilding his house there. Enough material was left so that it wasn't long before Abed had food and shelter and the basic necessities to live in the new house he was building. The spot where the parts had blown was still close enough to town to see his friends and go to work everyday, so life kept on as usual.
Except that now, Abed lived in the desert.
For the next year, Abed slowly and painfully rebuilt his house, finding a few new materials every few days.
The only thing that sustained Abed during that year were his friends and Cedric. It turned out that Abed was an adept dog trainer, and every night Abed taught Cedric a new trick. Abed had treated Cedric kindly for all the years since he had found Cedric on his doorstep as a puppy, but it was during that year in the desert when Abed devoted almost all his free attention to Cedric. Cedric had never learned much in the years before, but when Abed gave him his almost undivided attention (when he wasn't rebuilding his house), Cedric learned amazing tricks beyond what anyone had ever thought possible.
Soon, word spread about the tricks Abed had taught Cedric. Abed's old village lined up to watch the show when he and Cedric passed through town, and people invited Abed into their own villages for him to teach their dogs too. It didn't hurt that Abed loved to tell stories about Cedric and anything else and could entertain the people even when Cedric was tired.
Abed still didn't like living in the desert. But because of Cedric, he was a success.
After almost a full year of collecting spare parts he found scattered across the desert, Abed had finally almost rebuilt his house. But a few weeks before it was finished, Cedric disappeared.
Abed looked everywhere: in the house, throughout the desert and even back in the village, but he couldn't find Cedric. Abed yelled for Cedric as loudly as he could for weeks, but Cedric had vanished without a trace.
Abed was crushed. The only thing that has sustained Abed for the last year had disappeared without warning.
Abed took it harder than anyone could understand. Other people asked Abed to train their dogs, but he said no. He knew it wouldn't be the same. And deep down, he didn't really want to be a professional dog trainer. He had something special with Cedric that he could never replicate in another setting.
Abed had not only lost Cedric. He had not only lost his source of comfort. Without Cedric, he had lost his purpose.
In the midst of his sadness, Abed kept working on his house. When he finally finished, he realized that he was all alone in a house in the desert with nothing left to do with his time.
He thought of selling it, or even tearing it down, but he wasn't sure where else to go. The village he had left the year before had changed while he was gone, and it didn't feel like home anymore. He sometimes dreamed of life in the distant villages he saw on the desert horizon, but that would mean starting over yet again.
A few months later, there was a big celebration in his old village. Abed wanted to go, but there was a rare desert storm that day, so Abed just sat on his porch and stared. As he was sitting, he saw a rain-soaked shepherd walking by.
The shepherd looked familiar, but Abed couldn't place where he had seen him before.
"Hello, friend," the shepherd said. "Why do you live in this desert when the village is only a few miles away?"
"My house blew down," Abed said. "And the wind took most of the parts here, so this is where I had to rebuild."
The shepherd paused before responding.
"The wind didn't blow your house down, and the wind didn't blow the parts here," the shepherd answered back. "I am a carpenter as well as a shepherd, and I am the one who built that house of yours in the village." The shepherd paused again, this time for a moment longer. "I am also the one who tore it down," he said.
"You did what?" Abed cried, rising from his chair.
"I tore the house down, but I also helped rebuild it," the shepherd said. "The wind didn't bring the building materials here. I left the parts you needed every day in a place where you could find them. Had you decided to rebuild in the village, I would have left them there. But since you started rebuilding here, I brought them to the place where you were."
"Why would you do that? And why did you make you make me go through all this trouble? Do you have any idea what the last year of my life has been like? I'm not even the same person anymore that I was a year ago!"
"Indeed you are not," the shepherd said. "You are a now a person who knows how to build a house, a person who knows how to survive in a desert, and a person who has seen what he can do through perseverance. Imagine what else is possible!"
"But you've left me here in this desert!," Abed protested. "Why?"
"I brought you here to start picking up the pieces, but you are the one who chose to stay. As I said, I would have brought the remaining parts to you wherever I could find you. But yes, I lead people here sometimes. From the desert, you can see more clearly for miles in all directions.
"And think of Cedric," the shepherd continued. "You would have never achieved so much with him in that village, amidst so many distractions."
"Did you take Cedric too?"
"I didn't take Cedric. But there's something you don't know. I've known Cedric even longer than you have. In fact, he was mine as a puppy before I left him on your doorstep. I let you keep him because you took good care of him and I knew what you could accomplish together. He left because you had taught him all you could.
"I showed him an opportunity. I didn't make him go, but I didn't stop him. What I showed him was exactly what I had planned for him all along. If you let me, I'll do the same for you. Even today, I've walked through the rain to talk to you, because it was the first day you'd stopped working long enough to listen."
"Why would I ever trust you about anything?" Abed asked. "You've taken away every single thing that ever mattered to me."
"You will see Cedric again, somewhere down the line and his journey will make sense to you then," the shepherd said. "But until then, what if I gave you a new dog to train? One that could learn even more tricks than what you taught Cedric."
Abed frowned. He had loved Cedric, but he didn't really want to be a professional dog trainer. He cared for Cedric because Cedric had fallen on his doorstep and they were a perfect fit for each other. With a different dog it wouldn't be the same.
"I see that isn't what you're looking for," the shepherd said. "So what if I found you a new house in one of those distant villages you see on the desert horizon? Or what if I helped you find a new house in your old village, or even helped move your new house back there? What would I have to do for you in order for you to trust me?"
Abed sat quietly. He knew that he was in some ways a better person for all he had been through. He had learned how to build a house. He had achieved more with Cedric that he ever thought possible. He wasn't sure what he really wanted at this point, but he knew that it wasn't a new dog, house, or village, or any other gift the shepherd might magically give him as some kind of Karmic Consolation Prize.
Besides, he was still mad at this stranger who saw fit to cause all these changes without so much as asking.
"It doesn't really matter what I want," Abed said. "My plans don't seem to matter much lately. Why don't you just show me what you, in your infinite wisdom, had in mind?"
The shepherd smiled a wry smile and pointed across the plains. When he did, the gray skies cleared and Abed saw more than he ever had.
Near the horizon were families trying to build houses, but who didn't know how. Closer in, there were dogs running wild, while their owners tried in vain to control them. Just a few yards away were travelers wandering through the desert, sweltering and miserable with thirst.
Abed was moved. He had never noticed any of these groups before.
He realized that he might not want to build another house, but maybe he could teach someone else how to do it. He might never want to train another dog himself, but he could help owners who were about to give up to break through. Abed might not like living in the desert, but he had learned enough while there to tell others the tricks to survive while they passed through it. Maybe he could even plant enough grass seeds to bring the desert and the village closer together.
And if Abed spent his time doing all these things, he wouldn't have much time left over to spend in the desert anyway.
Abed suddenly realized that all this was what he really wanted. His dream was not to build houses or to train dogs or to move to new places, but to share the story of how he done these things. In the process, he would find purpose in all that had happened to him and maybe help anyone else for whom his story might sound a little bit familiar.
Abed turned back to reveal his revelation to the shepherd, and ask for the shepherd's help in making it all come to pass. But the shepherd was gone.
Abed stood puzzled for a moment.
Then he realized that nothing stood in his way.
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