traveling alone, you run into yourself. and sometimes you look like Medusa.
traveling with someone else, they are an easy outlet for and fountain of problems: you want to go here, they want to go there. you are comfortable with this, them not so much; you feel money should be shared this way, not that way, etc. if the trip is not perfect, it's easy to imagine how much simpler it would have been if you'd gone it alone. but traveling alone is like living in your own place: you've got no one else to blame for the mess.
i think this is what we are seeking sometimes, in travel: an encounter with ourselves. i don't know if this applies to Ultimate Reality, but there's an idea in my country that people need to discover themselves, who they Truly Are. nowadays, instead of going on vision quests, we do things like journal, talk to shrinks, or take vacations--at least, we say we will. on those occasions when we do, a lot of times the real challenge to 'discovering' oneself is not finding oneself, but facing it. how many people living alone fall asleep to the TV because they are uncomfortable with the silence, feeling alone with their own thoughts? how many unfilled journals, birthday gifts most likely, sit on bookshelves dusting? how many slow-life vacations to the Bahamas are passed half-drunk and seeking diversions? why, when we want to discover our true self, do we keep distracting ourselves from it?
maybe it's because the person we are can be hard to face. Martin Heidegger wrote that living authentically meant acknowledging one of the most uncomfortable facts of our existence: that we will die. in fact, he said authenticity meant not only acknowledging our mortality, but living always conscious of it. He called this being-towards-death, or at other times gazing into the Abyss. Giorgio Agamben writes about certain telling facts in society that we dare not look at, that we cover over, for fear of what we'd see there. In Remnants of Auschwitz, this is the way some camp inhabitants, and the everydayness of the camp for those who lived there, call into question our accepted notions of what it is to be human. He calls facing this facing the Medusa, meeting her gaze, though it turn us to stone.
i think this applies personally too: we all have our own Abysses, whether we are unaware of them, or aware of and trying to ignore them (and modern methods of ignorance are legion). maybe this is the dark place you go to, each time you fail in school or at your job. the issue you come back to when a relationship fails. the trouble you have trusting people. the thing you blurt out when you have no time to consider what it is you're going to say. they are there, whether we choose to look at them or not. but i think, if we are serious about heeding Socrates' claim that the unexamined life is not worth living, we have to look down those Abysses, meet the gaze of the Medusas in the mirror.
we probably don't need a special time and place to do this [1]. in fact, those moments when we are raw and vulnerable, those moments of failure or heartbreak, are probably the unschedulably best times to get to know ourselves. at the very least, those are the moments we need to reflect on when we're composed, and no longer willing to ignore the parts that don't feel quite right. there's no need to fly to the Bahamas or take a long walk in the woods to do this: what better place than on your commute home from work, or the happy digestive period after you've eaten your evening meal?
and yet, travel and vacations are times when we think about doing this, about going out there and finding ourselves, oxymoronic though that sounds. and i'm finding, on this trip, that traveling alone is actually a good way to do this, because you not only get plenty of time alone, but you run into yourself. there's often no one else to blame for the situations you get into, whether good or bad. and sometimes, red flags fly up--we see a tendril of the Medusa's hair, feel the pull of an Abyss just out of sight... these are moments when our 'true self' is there, waiting to be found--we just have to face up to it.
so i want to tell you about an experience i had this trip, an evening when i realized i had my own Medusa, something i knew of but didn't normally want to or have to think about, how it came front and center for a moment, and how i struggled to look it in the eye.
here's the outward story: my plan on this trip was to camp along the way, and stay with friends at different points--with grandparents in Texas, Adam and Hallie in Santa Fe, and in Yuma, the longest stopover, on the property of my Dad's friend Ray. this was a way to cut costs: not only would the dental work across the border be cheap, but i could have a piece of ground for free, not paying for a campsite, let alone a hotel. these are important considerations when you're an unemployed former student.
so it was with an easy heart that i pulled into Yuma, though it was close to 10 pm, because i knew where i was staying, felt i had a place, though i had never been there before. my dad had texted directions to his friend's property, one among many in an area of town basically inhabited only by retirees, and so i spent the first fifteen minutes or so weaving through dark neighborhoods on the Harley, probably making a little noise, finally pulling up to the right property and fumbling with the iron gate. it'd been a long day, i was tired and hungry, and i still needed to find food, then unpack and set up the tent--so i wasn't thinking too much of the impression i was making, though i noticed the house next door still seemed inhabited (most of the retirees are 'winter visitors,' meaning they move back to primary homes elsewhere when it starts getting hot), and anyway the Harley has no option but to make as much noise as it makes, which is quite a bit, though i did my best to keep it down.
i guess i need to tell you a funny thing before i go on: i was a little high that night. as i pulled away from a Domino's Pizza down the street, having fetched some pasta for my late supper, i was positively intoxicated, half-dancing as i rode the Harley down the quiet night streets, singing at the top of my lungs to the music on the stereo (though i cut that out as i got close to camp). i wasn't high on drugs, but high on... the feeling of having arrived. that after long days of riding, barely getting to camp before sunset, always wondering where i was going to stay that night, i had a place. i was safe. i think that's what i felt, the giddiness that was making me sing full-volume to The Black Keys on the stereo: I had a safe place for the next while, a home. in retrospect, this was already a warning sign that something deeper was going on, but it felt too good to think much about (like bad things often feel too bad to think about).
the one thing my spot lacked was electricity. so the next day, sitting in Dr. Ortega's office in Algodones, Mexico, i wasn't surprised when i heard my phone dying. i'm not a stickler on keeping my phone alive, anyway, and the whole medical tourism experience had me a little too bemused to think much of it. later that day, back on the US side of the border and sitting in the retiree community's posh new library, i'd recharged my phone battery and heard the chime of a couple messages, but was in the thick of writing or revising a blog, and didn't think much of it for a few hours. i was in the mode: comfortably out of the 110 degree heat, doing some writing, nothing to do today but sit here and read sci-fi or write. i might find some food later on, maybe try a local Mexican place, then head back and sleep. peace.
so it wasn't until about 5 pm that i checked my messages. Dad had called, 1 AM the previous night: The neighbors are pissed. You can't stay. Find a new place, or Ray will get in trouble.
well, that dropped the floor out from my evening in a hurry. i had about two hours of sunlight to pack up, then go find someplace to camp in an unfamiliar area. and though i maybe didn't realize it at the moment, it dropped the floor out from something deeper too. i instantly had this kind of i-knew-it, resigned, sad emotional drop, as i got my things together to go pack up what i'd thought was home in Yuma, not even 24 hours old. i'd expected it, actually--imagined a couple times in my mind, as i was waking up that morning, the neighbors being disturbed by a young biker rolling in loud and late last night, setting up his tent next door while the owner wasn't there. but in my mind, they would contact Ray, Ray would say it was okay, and I would be vindicated, safe for the duration of the stay.
instead, there is apparently a clause in the area home owner's association that states no one can camp at this time of year. i don't doubt it exists, but whether that was the heart of the neighbor's beef--a rule infraction--or something else (like feeling insecure about having an unknown grimy young biker camped next door), i will never know. the whole thing seemed really Japanese, actually, i reflected as i packed up my tent and things, motions now quite familiar to me. there was once when a neighbor in my flimsy-walled apartment in Sendai had felt i was being too loud--but rather than come tell me, he'd called the landlord of the apartment, who'd called my supervisor at work, who'd called my immediate supervisor, who'd called me the next morning to say there'd been a complaint about the noise, and could i please keep it down. lost in all these layers of translation was the heart of the complaint, and the identity of the person who made it. in its place, a lot of people became aware of and were put out by my inappropriate actions, made to make unpleasant and apologetic calls late at night because i hadn't had the sense to be quiet--though no one would actually say that directly. this felt something like that, and on top of being sorry that i'd disturbed Ray's neighbors, i was sorry i'd disturbed Ray and my Dad, who'd apparently all talked that night, leading up to Dad's 1 AM phone call. and no one to directly apologize to, to talk it through.
but my unease went deeper than that. if you know me, you'll know i'm not an angry person typically. or even atypically. i don't get angry. but putting my things back on the Harley in the hot evening sun, no idea where i was going to go, not excited about finding it, burning up in 110 degree heat, all because the neighbors couldn't handle me sleeping fifty feet away, i was a little upset. enough to think repeatedly about giving them the finger as i was packing, or a long menacing i'm-a-wild-biker-continue-being-afraid kind of stare before i left--since (if i know old people) they were surely discreetly peering out the window.
fortunately, i have enough self-control that i did none of these things. well, i might have stared a bit. but it didn't lessen my thoroughly shitty feeling as i rode away, trying to organize my thoughts about where i could sleep that night, and having a really hard time doing it. it was already getting late, i was tired and hungry again, and i needed to ride all over this unknown town looking for a place to hang my hat. so much for a nice free place to stay: i was going to pay (issues of money have long been another sensitive spot with me, but i'm working on it). maybe the savings from getting work done over the border wouldn't even make up for the bill of having to find somewhere to sleep. i knew one cheap place, i thought, the Quechan Indian Nation's RV park outside the border crossing--but they'd already been ornry to me when i requested use of their shower facilities earlier today, and i knew they'd closed an hour ago.
so i drove. there are a ton of RV parks around Yuma town, and i figured one of those would have space. and they mostly did--for RVs. or if it wasn't specified RV-only, even worse, it was 'age-qualified.' 55 and up. young people not wanted. not great for my already homeless-and-rejected mood. my unexpected emotional reaction to a little setback that i didn't want to think about.
so i tried some motels in the seedier part of town, motels being about the last place i want to stay when i'm on vacation: make it cheap, or make it beautiful, but don't ask me to pay 80$ a night for a boring little room with HBO. that, however, was what even the seedy motels wanted me to do.
and with that, i ran out of options: no RV parks, no motels, no hotels, nothing. and i was still hungry. so i crossed the street from the Best Western Coronado to a little Mexican grocery store and, in a kind of daze, wandered around wondering what i wanted to eat, if i was shopping for breakfast too (camping), or just supper, if i should just go to a restaurant, everything hinging on the unanswered question of where i was going to sleep, me too tired and shitty-feeling to know how to answer. in retrospect, it was like there was something blocking my thoughts: maybe something obvious i didn't want to acknowledge.
still, you have to do something. so i bought an old stand-by, bread and pasta sauce, with some citrus fruit whose smell seemed just the opposite of my shitty mood, and went back to sit on the curb in front of my bike like a regular homeless person, dipping my bread in my pasta sauce, eating out of a plastic bag and hoping no one really noticed and made another awkward call. i needed someplace to sleep. what a simple, good, taken-for-granted thing to have a safe place to sleep.
i didn't know what to do. i could try the Quechan RV park, brave their ire for a chance at least to camp. and beyond that, Dad had mentioned camping out in the desert, though he'd feared the Harley would get stuck in the sand, and i knew that'd be bad. it hadn't been running the best lately anyway [2].
so i headed out to the Quechan park. as predicted, the office was locked. i walked back from it, willing, praying something to happen, to help me. i was at wit's end.
in the distance, an old Lincoln towncar was creeping to a halt on the edge of the residential section of the RV park. it just kind of pulled up there and stopped, a man behind the seat, one hundred feet from me. not getting out.
i waved. he waved.
i walked over and found a scraggly-toothed guy in his early 60s, with a funny way about him. he said he worked for the park, that they wouldn't let me camp even if they were open because this was another RVs-only place, didn't know what i could do. although, there was this one spot... a lot of people camped there sometimes. no one would care if i was there, they called it the pet cemetary, it was back there behind all those buildings, kind of where the hills started, yeah it was on Quechan land, but there were lots of folks in there. they just camped there and nobody cared, i could do that too. one guy named Ray'd been there a long time, maybe he'd let me stay at his campsite. or there was this other place down by the canal, the border patrol passed through there a lot, but nobody'd mind for a night. maybe that'd even be safer, because the border patrol'd be going through so much.
was this what i was down to? the pet cemetary on the Quechan reservation, hoping no one would mind if i just rolled up in my shiny Harley and tented on their land? maybe it was. i thanked him and walked back to my bike, wondering if this was the dragon [1], deciding at least to take a look, but everything felt wrong. judging on how they'd treated me this afternoon, i didn't really think the locals would appreciate me camping for free in their backyard. and as i pulled the Harley onto the back road he'd indicated, i saw it was exactly the kind of gravelly road my dad never wants to take his motorcycles on, because he's afraid they'll hit a loose stone and tip. but maybe there was nowhere else... and this guy was probably watching anyway... but...
i couldn't do it. there had to be something better. maybe i'd just give up and pay for a hotel room, find something tomorrow. and off i drove in indecision, passing over the interstate on a whim to take the cracked old two-lane on the far side, rolling through the desert, to see if maybe there wasn't a spot i could camp there.
well, there were people camped there, long-termers by the looks of it, but i still wasn't sure i'd be welcome; this was still Quechan land. and i wasn't really sure if i'd be safe, if i wasn't welcome... so i kept driving. and ended up back in town, frustrated, Harley making weird sounds [2], sun going down, nowhere to sleep. looking at the map, trying to breathe deep. there was a state recreation area down a dirt road about twenty miles into California. that was the closest thing on the map with a tent sign on it: Yuma was clearly only in favor of the above-55 RV-driving crowd. so with the last rays of the sun in my eyes, i got back on the interstate and headed west, still no idea where i was going to sleep, feeling i had no options left. maybe when it got dark i could just put my blankets next to the Harley in some parking lot and tough it out. if it'd been a car, i wouldn't have hesitated to do the wal-mart parking lot, but the last thing i wanted was a ticket for vagrancy, another late night call to my Dad.
i kept heading west. passed through an immigration check. the sun was down now. i finally found the little highway that was supposed to lead to the road that led to the state park. i knew i wouldn't make it now, with daylight at least, but i was headed north into pure desert, so i started looking around for any little place i could pull off that might have ground solid enough for the Harley, wondering if there were other people out here, if there were poisonous things, if i'd get in trouble if i was found. kept slowing but not stopping anywhere, half-uncertain in the fading light whether this or that wash looked packed enough to support an 800-pound 20,000$ bike. finally, crossing some tracks, i saw a couple roads. passing a third, my headlights reflected off a little sign, and out of the corner of my eye i caught the word 'camping.' U-turn.
sure enough, it was a warning that you couldn't camp in one spot more than 14 days. that meant it was okay to camp less than 14 days; all i wanted was a night. so with the sun's oranges starting to purple, i pulled onto this dirt track and started searching for some place safe i could park, secluded from the road, and put up a tent. not knowing who was out here, what was out here, if there was stuff i should know about camping in the desert, flash floods or scorpions. i just knew i was tired and needed someplace to sleep.
so i chose a spot. and the second i got off that bike, it was like a cloud had lifted: i had a place. all the shitty weight of the last hot pavemented two hours searching for somewhere was gone, and in its place the security that i had somewhere, at least to sleep. i didn't know if it was safe, didn't know if it was a good idea, but there was something exhilirating in that too--this was a step beyond camping in a campground somewhere: this was just empty desert, nobody around, nothing here, me choosing a ten-foot stretch of ground out of endless miles to lay my head.
by the time the tent was up, i was working by headlamp, but the weariness was gone. i was excited, i was safe, i was a little nervous to be out there without anyone knowing, but that was part of the adventure (i texted my friend Gabe just in case i was never heard from again, because the snakes or the psychopaths got to me).
and i felt something deeper than security in having a place to stay: i felt that i'd finally stepped beyond my own borders, a bit, in coming out here rather than going back to a hotel i didn't want to stay in. that was exciting. and maybe deeper than that, was the sense that i had finally made a place for myself, that i knew no one could tell me to leave. it was public land--this was not age-restricted, RV-only, home-owner covenanted, expensive, dependant on an unknown someone else's charity. i solidly had a right to be here, and felt that i'd come under my own power. and something felt really good about that, made the second round of bread and pasta sauce, the grapefruit, the days-old fig newtons taste even better. it made the moonrise (full, no less) that much more spectacular, made my bed (on uneven rocky ground, even) that much more comfortable--even as i worried some animal, human or otherwise, would find me with cruel intent.
no one did: i woke up to the first rays of the desert sun the next day, refreshed and smiling, all the shittiness of yesterday's evening gone.
but that's just it: it's not gone.
whatever made me angry packing up, whatever expected this to happen, whatever kept me from thinking straight about where to sleep, took me on a three-hour chase to find something simple--that didn't appear when i got the voicemail or disappear when i set up camp. based on the facts alone, i shouldn't have had that strong, that emotional, a reaction to having to move base--this is a red flag for something that runs deeper. so that's why i said before that traveling alone, you run into yourself. your unfaceable Medusas come out of hiding. with no one to really blame for how messy that search for a place to sleep--a home--got, i knew it was coming from me.
there are two things you can do, when you notice a red flag like this, feeling the pull of an Abyss or half-froze from a glimpse of the Medusa--you can forget it, immediate crisis over, or you can probe it again, in a safe place, try looking for what it was that reared its head in that moment. self-discovery or self-avoidance--whether that self is feeling pleasure (me pulling into Yuma, or setting up camp in the desert the next night) or pain (the long search for a new place), this is the self we talk so much about finding, that we take long trips to discover. no matter that i happened to be travelling at the moment--if you buy that there is a true self to discover, we are always on a journey to it.
so where do you go from the moment you notice something and decide not to ignore it? i guess we all go different places, but importantly we go inward, following what hurts or feels too good. this takes time [3]; fortunately traveling by motorcycle means a lot of uninterrupted think time. so after some time trying to look my own Medusa in the eyes, i realized i've felt kinda homeless since 11th grade. we moved a lot when i was a kid, but from that time on i felt i moved constantly: new houses, new dorms, new colleges. different summer set-ups. and after graduation, i seemed only to embrace this more--leaving the country, traveling; my last three years in Japan i didn't stay anywhere longer than three months, and spent a year or more of that travelling.
this was fun at first--then it started to get old. about the time i was flying back from a two-month trip and meditation retreat in southeast Asia, not 'home' (US) but just 'back' (Japan), to another uncertain living situation no less, it started to get really old. Actually, it had been old for awhile--this was on my mind constantly during that meditation retreat, the desire to be back in the States, be stable somewhere. i ignored that dragon [1]. instead, i spent another three months in Japan, two months in the States, then flew to Uganda to live for an indeterminate amount of time, knowing still that wasn't and would never be the home i wanted.
the desire for home is not an easy dragon to heed: something in me protests that living in the same place for years and years is so... boring. so like everything i rebelled against when i was younger. but this is what my heart requests, over and over, so it's what i'm doing in Boulder. aside from getting a master's degree, which is done now, i am more importantly making a home for myself. i don't have one: none of my family members live places i ever did; there's no place to go back to, not even an area i can name, really. so i chose Boulder, and now i am trying to make that work. and i think it is working--but it's not home yet. i might have the frame of the house up, but not really the walls, the roof, the floors, the furniture. a few months gone, a year, and i think i would have little to come back to, be starting all over--again. so this thing about having a place to stay, a home, it's turned out to be a little sensitive with me. no wonder i freaked out as much as i did when i got that message from my Dad.
and it's not over: an emotional bruise this deep, it's going to turn a few colors before it goes away. so i keep probing, keep wondering if there was a reason i embraced that lifestyle in Japan, in college, why i felt so few ties to my own country and people. why i feel them now (along with other countries and peoples). what this all means for what i want to do with myself from here on out.
and here's a place where this encounter with myself made a true change: i'd been thinking of returning to Japan this fall, to earn some needed money towards paying off my grad school bills, and to live off as i spend the next year writing. but given my reaction to just a little displacement, and my feeling that my Boulder home is only half-finished, i'm thinking leaving again would just make this area more sensitive, be another bruise. so i decided i'm going to have to make the money work some other way, and stay in Boulder. without looking homeless-Medusa-me in the eye, i might have just kept making this worse: the inertia of habit is strong.
so to you, my dear, who has stuck with me this far, 4800 words later, i wanted to say only that the worst part of your trip can be the best. not only do i have a new lovely campsite in the desert, i have a little better understanding of where the home might be that i go back to after all this, and what that means to me. and a feeling that if i'm strong enough to look deeper into my own feelings, my Abysses and Medusas, there's more to see, more of that proverbial self to discover and enjoy.
travelling alone, you run into yourself, the person you really wanted to meet. i don't think we are all 'really alone,' but we are all in some sense on our own journeys--and i think we have to be ready to see ourselves not only in the happy times, the palm-treed drinks on the beach, but in the Medusas and Abysses we run into on the way. i'm not happy that i am so sensitive about home, but i am happy to know it, because now i can start to recognize this fear when it comes up, get to know it, find out where it came from, keep it from confusing my actions, and maybe eventually put it to rest. or maybe i never will--the jury's out on how easy it is to really change (though i think it's possible)--but knowledge in this case, at least according to Socrates and common wisdom in my country, is surely better than ignorance. the first step is not ignoring our little run-ins with ourselves, whether we're travelling to parts unknown, or on our way home from work.
[1] my first meditation teacher had a poster on the wall, calligraphy given to him by his teacher, which read 'don't fear the dragon.' i asked him what it meant, and he said he had a tendency to look for wisdom in books, and his teacher was reminding him that revelations can come at any time, that he shouldn't turn from the dragon in every day life (or in this case, meditation) to search for it in books. good advice, though i don't fault you for continuing to read this!
[2] in fact, two days later, it totally melted down, and spent the day in the getting its primary case rebuilt. good thing that didn't happen on this night.
[3] whether you are thinking, journalling, discussing, meditating, walking, whatever gets you in contemplative, think-it-out mode.
[4] like a society can't go on ignoring some of its own; if we believe in equality and human rights then we need to believe in them for people radically different from ourselves. and until we face those Medusas we are likely to have inexplicable fears and anxieties too.
