Ian Carleton

Yesterday I was sitting in on an interview for a new oncology nurse manager at the hospital where I’ve worked as an RN the last four years. Right off the bat I thought the prospective hire was doing well. He projected sufficient confidence and humility. He seemed likable enough. After about 2 minutes I turned to my coworker and said “Yea, he’s got the job.” He had the appropriate experience, and by the time a candidate has interviewed with higher ups and is brought back to interview with us it means the offer is all but extended.

As we churned through questions about his past experience, career accomplishments, and pedantic “leadership style” questions, all his responses were appropriate and predictable. He would be hired to tow the line as a middle manager, in a successful corporate hospital, in a failing national healthcare system. A successful hospital in a failing national health system... So the job is akin to that of the conductor leading the string quartet on the deck of Titanic going down.

In our present day there isn’t a single lucid American soul that could truthfully describe our national health system as effective, let alone successful. Byzantine, kafkaesque, and inequitable are the first descriptors that come to my mind. Any healthcare provider could tell you about the inordinate amount of time they spend explaining and apologizing for a health system that’s inadequate and failing, and any patient could corroborate it. So that leaves the question: who wants the job?

I framed a question to the interviewee. “The problems that we have here: the turnover of management, turnover of staff, short staffing, inadequate training, burnout, equipment shortage, communication failures, etc — they’re not unique to us. It’s all a symptom of our greater failing national system. Is there anything you do to advocate for a more equitable, more effective health system beyond the walls of the hospital?” As I asked him this (with less skillful words), I became emotional. I could feel it swelling in my chest and head, though I don’t think my coworkers noticed. I knew how important my point was and that the only accurate answer could be: “Not enough.” (That would be my own answer too.) Rather though, the interviewee reiterated how important that question was, talked about the illusory “community” a bit, and I don’t remember much at all specifically about what he said.

Being a good nurse, going the extra mile for patients, forgoing my break to spend more time providing care at the bedside: none of that’s enough. And attending BLM rallies, supporting and donating to progressive political campaigns, writing my congressperson to receive back form responses the equivalent of a shrug: that’s not enough either. Because at the end of the week I collect a paycheck from the offal too.

By the time I was graduating high school I had enough knowledge and insight to see that our health system wasn’t working... and beyond that: our education system, our criminal justice system, our financial system — all different arms of a deformed, undeniably racist, unjust society. But eventually I became a nurse, one occupation largely beyond reprove when tracing the lines between all the systemic injustices of our society. On occasion people with no personal knowledge of my life will learn of me being a nurse (like when I’m wearing scrubs on my way to and from work,) and tell me how it’s a noble profession. Few professions are awarded the same universal regard. And I enjoy that regard too. But I also recognize myself as complicit when I spend that paycheck and weeks pass without me taking any concrete action to improve upon the status quo.

Some things I see and think “huh, that’s odd.” Hence, Oddservations...

-Diners Club is big in Ecuador. Their advertising and sponsorship is all over (malls, stadiums, airport gangways, etc.) I don’t know why. I thought Diners Club was a relic of the past in the US, but it obviously is not that here. I have no more information on this.

-Music on planes for takeoff and landing. Light elevator style muzak plays on the PA for short periods getting on and off the ground. Cat and I agree, it kind of works.

-Pesto in the mayo. You ask for mayo, it comes, it’s a little green, and kinda tastes like pesto. You don’t ask for mayo, and it’s green, and there’s pesto. Pesto actually shows up on menus more often than you’d think too - on swordfish, on pasta, etc. Pesto mayo is good, so is regular mayo though. I have no more information on this.

-Funeral parlors next to hospitals. Cat first noticed this in Latacunga. There was an usual concentration of “funerarias” in one area, additionally a lot of pharmacies, we put 2 and 2 together with the large hospital at the next corner. We noticed this phenomena again on return to Guayaquil. And sure, the pharmacies make sense. The funeral parlors’ concentrations adjacent do not inspire confidence for the healthcare system though.

-Babies drinking bottled water. This is the logo of a popular bottle water company here. We encountered it over and over in the last 6 weeks. Odd. I have no more information on this.

After the Amazon we went back to Quito for a few days to reacclimate to the higher altitude before we went still higher into the Andes to Quilotoa. We stayed in another part of the city, La Carolina, the most modern and commercial part of the city we’d seen. Every building looked to have been built in the last 10-15 years. There was obviously a larger concentration of foreigners there. For perspective, our Airbnb condo was located between Bayer pharmaceutical and Huawei offices. Cat and I agreed that if the neighborhood reminded us of any city we’d been to before, Toronto was the closest.

Views in La Carolina, Quito

Before the trek to Quilotoa we spent one night in Latacunga and stored our bigger bags to cut down on weight before the hike. The next morning we took a bus to Sigchos, ate a $2.75 almuerzos (set lunch), and started walking.

Day 1

The first day wasn’t so bad. An easy, largely level start, the uphills didn’t come till the afternoon, which unfortunately came the same time as the rain, but it never got too heavy. We got into Isinlivi in the early evening and had dinner with a trio of hikers from Paris, Belarus, and Brazil, one of whom were celebrating their birthday.

Day 2

The second day’s climbs might have been a little tougher, but it was more dry, so maybe a little easier on the whole. We left early, moved at our own comfortable pace and made it in about 7 hours I think.

The views all along were out of this world. Clouds and peaks, and rivers, and cliffs, and valleys, and wildlife, and farmland, and dirt roads. Pictures do a better job-

On our longest uphill that day an Andean woman passed us while we were taking a break. She had ordinary flat women’s shoes on and walked very slowly, taking 4 or 5 small steps at a time, pausing for about 5 seconds every 20 to 30 seconds. All the while with her hands were busy working on some string project, knot after knot, maybe it was a bracelet. She kept moving and never appeared to be struggling. Afterward we adopted her “Andean woman” style for ourselves on the long uphills.

That evening we stayed at Cloud Forest Hostal in Chugchilán. Same price as the night before: $15 each for the bed, dinner, and breakfast in the morning. And we’re talking hot hearty meals. The owners were so kind and helpful too. Without fail all the Ecuadorians we encountered along the trek were so kind.

Again we had dinner with the same trekkers we’d had the night before. We started talking some politics. I talked about Bernie, Biden, Yang, etc. The Belorussian girl, Dasha, talked about how poor the situation in her home country had become, and how to be safe she planned to fly back to Moscow and cross the land border into Belarus. She’d been traveling for a few months already, which she thought could make her vulnerable to some arbitrary accusation of being a spy. Being jailed without cause was a real fear of hers that she hoped she could avoid by returning to Belarus via the friendly land border from Russia rather than an international flight.

The Brazilian guy, Daniel, had been working as an investment banker in Paris the last few years. So I asked both him and Lucille, a native Parisian, what they thought of Marine Le Pen? They said they were more fearful of her son. I asked what they thought of Macron? Lucille said she did not have a strong opinion one way or another, but that maybe he was a hypocrite sometimes. At this point I said something along the lines of, “Do you say that because he‘s a banker, and a banker couldn’t possibly be a real advocate of the people?” She knowingly nodded and we both laughed as we looked over at Daniel. (I shortly after apologized to him for the comment.) Daniel quickly picked up the torch though, and as it turned out he knew him personally — he had worked with Macron before! Daniel sang his praises as to how smart Macron was, how hard working and kind, and he attested that through and through Macron was the genuine article of a true liberal. I listened and nodded with Daniel, and very much enjoyed to hear his perspective, but I don’t think his appeal changed the mind of Lucille or myself.

Day 3

This is the day that did us in. We got off to a later start because of how sore and exhausted we both were. We kept it moving on dirt roads, up narrow and broad paths past grazing animals, switchback on overgrown hillsides, through tiny nothing villages with a church, an empty tienda, stray dogs and kids mulling about.

About midday, coming down into a valley before crossing a river, a few sections of our path were washed out due to recent landslides. All that was left was a precipitous edge and some vegetation to cling too. Knowing Cat’s fear of heights, I wanted to push ahead without much delay, before we had the chance to worry much. And ultimately we made it over without any issue. Three portions total were as such. Afterwards I told Cat if there were any more parts as bad or worse than that we should just turn back. Wasn’t worth the risk.

A path that washed away

We kept on, on, on, up, up, up, and about a half hour before reaching the ridge around the lake the rain started coming. We covered up as best we could and made it on to the top. Anticlimactically, the big prize viewpoint was mostly obscured by the clouds, and the rain that had started coming shortly before kept on coming and coming.

Reaching the top

We paused for 10 minutes or so to see if the rain would slow, but no luck. With concern for daylight running out, we shortly left from the viewpoint canopy to finish the last leg of our hike. Again, because of the clouds and fog, and because of the multiple paths, our way forward was a little unclear. We both agreed to stay left, which soon descended us into the bowl around the lake. It was another treacherous path with a lot of slippery rock face and compacted dirt and precipitous drops. With the heights, the rain, and the severe exertion Cat was finding the day thoroughly disagreeable at this point! To think of all the research we’d done online for the hike, and some people had attested *anyone* could do the hike — we could both call that as a gross misrepresentation at this point. I know memory is not infallible, but I didn’t remember the hike to Everest Base Camp being so hard.

Not what we’d expected

We kept moving forward-forward though. To turn back for a different path would have set us back too much time. Daylight was limited. Eventually we came upon a small waterfall that totally perplexed us. The cherry on top of our challenges. We couldn’t even visualize it well because of all the overgrowth.

We again had to consider turning back. We climbed up the banks to see if we could more easily cross higher up — didn’t look promising. Ultimately we decided the only way over it was into it! We climbed down into the water so we could scale the rocks the water was washing over. Mind you it continued raining the whole time too.

9 hours later after starting that morning we stumbled into the first guesthouse that would take us, two bone-soaked, entirely spent gringos. The family was so gracious. Real Andean people—all the women wore the fine bright knits and always kept their felt hats on. We explained our plight to the family’s son Manuel, who had the best English, but still not much. We told him the route we’d taken and he laughed and shook his head. We told him how long it took and he looked at us in awe. “That’s two trips!” he said.

We went back to Latacunga in the morning and rested. The following day we tried some different street foods, walked around the city more, and planned the remainder of our time. I was able to get the Andean delicacy Cuy (roasted guinea pig) for our last meal before leaving the Andes.

3600+ pages. All six books of the My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knausgård. I started the first book in 2015 and finished book six this evening. I read the first four books relatively quickly, but than had to wait for the last two books’ English translations to be published. Book five I finished in about a month or six weeks in 2016, also while traveling. The final book, book six, was published in 2018, and I bought a copy the week of publication, but the reading was slow going, and I lost the book moving apartments at some point. A long time later I got another copy and moved through it at a snails pace. And I just finished it now.

Few books have ever enthralled me like My Struggle, probably none. It is the story of Knausgård’s inner life told alongside the events of his real life. Many passages I read made me think: “Yes! That’s me too! That’s how I felt and I didn’t even know...” The nebulous thoughts and feelings of my own life crystallized in his words. Similarly, other passages I read shifted my perspective, opening a new vista of understanding for me one way or another. But, neither of these qualities are very unique. These are the same gifts of reading that many a reader would describe. Somehow, it was Knausgård‘s qualities of introspection, his self doubt, his broad yearning, and his pinnacle desire of greatness that most resonated for me.

Lastly (and also firstly,) the appeal of the book lied in the fact that this was the Faustian bargain realized. Knausgaard, a writer of moderate success in Scandinavia and not elsewhere, puts the entirety of his lived experience on the line, as well as that of those he’s lived with — his family, and lovers, and friends, and acquaintances, and all. He offers all as subject for scrutiny in his vain ends of success and accomplishment. And he achieved those ends. He today is a global best seller.

I once discussed him with a patient, who was also an episcopal priest. The priest taught math an elite UES private school and filled in for other episcopal priests around the city when they were out of town or sick. He was working through a thick LBJ biography amidst a bone marrow transplant. He was familiar with the “My Struggle” books. He hadn’t read any, and didn’t seem to have any interest. All he expressed to me was the impression that Knausgård was self absorbed. I conceded it was so and wondered what it said about me as the reader.

Here are a few random underlines of mine from book 6.

Pg. 32 “All generations live their lives as if they were the first, gathering experiences, progressing onward through the years, and as insights accumulate, meaning diminishes”

Pg. 101 “Moralizing had never created anything of its own, all it did was reject the created. And the created was the same as life itself. Why reject life?”

Pg. 175 “Loneliness beautifully described raises the soul to great heights. But then the writing is no longer true because there is no beauty in loneliness, not even in yearning is there beauty. But while it may not be true, it is good. It is a comfort, a solace, and perhaps that is where some of literature’s justification lies? But if that’s the case, then we are talking about literature as something else, something unto itself and autonomous, valuable in its own right rather than as a depiction of reality.”

Pg. 181 “for me the novel provides a means of thinking radically different from that of the essay, the article, or the thesis, because reflection in the novel is not hierarchically superior as a pathway of understanding, but coordinate with all the other elements in it.”

Pg. 258 “The number of people we come close to during our lives is small, and we fail to realize how infinitely important each and every one of them is to us until we grow older and can see things from afar. When I was sixteen I thought life was without end, the number of people in it inexhaustible. This was by no means strange, since right from starting school at the age of seven I’d been surrounded by hundreds of children and adults; people were a renewable resource, found in abundance, but what I didn’t know, or rather had absolutely no conception of, was that every step I took was defining me, every person I encountered was leaving their mark on me, and that the life I was living at that particular time, boundlessly arbitrary as it seemed, was in fact my life.”

Pg. 483 “ in the empty dominion of this undifferentiated void”

Pg. 638 “When we closed the door on religion, we closed the door on something inside ourselves as well. Not only did the holy vanish from our lives, all the powerful emotions associated with it vanished too. The idea of the sublime is a faint echo of our experience of the holy, without the mystery.”

Pg. 644 “it’s thriftless extravagance”

Pg. 833 “The time from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of World War II was a period when the fundamental building blocks of our human existence and organizational structures were in flux, not to say disintegrating, and the unprecedented radicality of those fifty years which gave rise to the last two great utopian movements, Nazism and Communism, can only be understood on the basis that the societal order suddenly, because of massive buildup of pressure arising in industrialism’s changes - in time, extremely compressed while in volume expansive, no longer could be taken for granted, it began crack and appeared increasingly arbitrary, governed by rules imposed from without, in a civilization system at odds with its people, from which they, or many of them, felt utterly alienated.”

Pg. 941 “Functional sixties and seventies architecture, resplendent eighties architecture, restrained nineties architecture, almost dystopian with its great expanses of dark stone and glass.”

Pg. 958 “gardening is the very symbol of bourgeois stasis, utterly ridiculous and superficial, an artificial way of ordering the worlds chaos by limiting the world to a lawn and a few bushes and subjugating them completely. The garden is also part of your private life others can see and therefore functions as a kind of display window for those around. In other words, a facade.”

These guys were unreal. The sounds they make...

The Amazon. My Holy Grail of travel plans for the last 5 or so years. Initially we had a grand tour planned to go by boat from Ecuador to Peru, to Colombia, to Brazil, but travel restrictions tightened more and more as the winter rolled on, the “Brazil variant” steamed ahead, the more remote boarder crossings became less feasible. So the international aspect of our Amazon expedition was not meant to be.

Ultimately, after providing another 72hr negative PCR test for the local authorities, we made it into the Amazon basin via the Napo river in eastern Ecuador’s Yasuni national park. There are a number of high end jungle lodges scattered about the Amazon, and I’d looked into them previously, but they were all prohibitively expensive. Then comes a global pandemic and turns out there are good deals to be had. So we stayed at Napo Wildlife Center for about half of what it would have cost pre-covid.

We left from Coca (which sadly is now largely described as an oil town), took a 2hr power boat down the Napo river, then another hour and a half rowboat down a narrower and shallower channel to arrive at the Napo Wildlife lodge on lake Anangu. The lodge is owned and run by the Kichwa Anangu community, one of the country’s ethnic minorities. Many of the tourist operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon are owned by outsiders, so Napo Wildlife is an exception in that all profits stay local for reinvestment in education and healthcare in the Kichwa community.

Our time there was incredible. The specifics of how we filled the 4 days/3 nights hardly convey the experience. We went on jungle walks at the crack of dawn (when the animals are most active), meandered about on canoe, climbed to canopy viewing platforms, sat at the clay licks watching the parrots and macaws up close, etc, etc. But most significantly, in all that we did, the jungle surrounded continually. The heavy air and film of sweat. The rare warm breeze. Our boots clapping in the thick mud. The sounds of the squawking; the buzzing; the clicks; the shrieks; the beeps; the flapping wings; the water glugging; the howls; the leaves rustling; the singing birds; the whining birds; the charging boars etc etc. All the jungle’s bristling life.

Explorers in the canopy

The Napo Wildlife lodge on lake Anangu at sunset

Parrots and Macaws at the clay lick

Highlights were: discovering the lake’s family of giant otters had welcomed a new baby otter among them, seeing hundreds of parrots frenzied over a mineral clay lick all at once, bracing for a sudden stop on discovering a stalking caiman 10ft in front of our canoe, watching the endemic golden tamarind monkey at play in the trees.

All that said, it’s not for everyone either. The bugs are a unavoidable fact. The lodge undoubtedly went to all ends to keep them at bay, and we used DEET 100 repellent ourselves, yet there they were. And the humidity is unreal. I was either within reach of a fan, or sweating... or both. Is what it is.

Leaving Napo Wildlife lodge we went further west along the Napo river to Tena, one of Ecuador’s larger towns in the Amazon. We stayed at a great lodge outside of town and the owner took us white water rafting on the Napo, which was a lot of fun. Also this lodge was using compost toilets, a first for both of us. Compost toilets are essentially doin the business in a deep bucket and throwing wood chips on top. The owner accredited his beautiful landscaping to his effective composting.

Pakay Lodge, Tena

Rafters on the Napo

Street dog, Tena

The Amazon remains a dream. We hope to return one day. In a way it’s intense like NYC rush hour congestion is, with less bravado. It’s a sensual feast. Urgent, tenacious life abounding in every corner, expanding in every direction.

Quito was a mixed bag. On first impression, I loved it. By our second day I told Cat it was one of my favorite cities in the world. By the third day someone had tried to rob us, and leaving on our fourth day a cabbie egregiously ran the meter on us — that’s how the bag was mixed. Set in the Andes, Quito is one of the highest capital cities in the world. It is where the King of Spain held his royal audience in the 1500s. Mountains surround on all sides. In the morning fog clears from the streets and clouds drift in the peaks. Its a phenomenal sight. The dense metro spreads through the valley and thins out going up the foothills. There’s a charmingly integrated mix of architectural styles in the city: the 16th and 17th century colonial architecture it’s most known for, interspersed with utilitarian buildings of the 60s and 70s, scattered Art Deco and Brutalist styles, gauche 90s buildings of impractical amounts of glass and unnecessary curvatures, and impressive graffiti and street art throughout. I don’t like the expression of saying a place has “character” (too often it’s applied by people of more privilege in places of less privilege,) but... it really does have character. It’s a very photogenic city.

View from our hotel in Mariscal

Graffiti on stairs next to Brutalist building

Sitting in cafe on Plaza Grande

We stayed in the commercial and tourist neighborhood Mariscal, which it quickly became clear had suffered considerably because of covid. Many local business seemed to have been shuttered for some time, and the streets were largely empty. What was remaining in the street were too many idle young guys, some hustling to fill tables in their empty restaurants, some selling cigarettes, some selling weed, and enough doing nothing at all to make us feel vaguely uncomfortable even in the daytime. At night time there were prostitutes on the empty corners not far from our hotel too. Across the city was the old town of Quito with some of the best preserved colonial architecture in the word, and where most of the tourist attractions were concentrated. We went to one of the city’s many beautiful churches there our second day and climbed the bell tower for unbelievable views. On the whole our days in Quito were not jam packed because we both felt the altitude and we’re short of breath without much exertion.

Inside Basilica del Voto Nacional

Outside the Basilica

Our last night we went to one of the city’s more fine dining restaurants back in old town and had our phone snatched along the way. We had taken a cab to Plaza de San Francisco to see a church I was interested in which was supposed to have tremendous Baroque and Mudejar designs. The internet said it should be open til 7, which I knew might not be the case, but we went anyway and were not in luck. From there we pulled up directions on google maps and made our way to the restaurant, less than a half mile away. It was about 6pm, dusk. There is a famous statue Virgin de El Panecillo on one of the hills outside of old town, and on our way to the restaurant it appeared as we turned a corner. Cat suggested I take a picture of it, but I didn’t think the lighting or the angle was very good, so she took my phone to get the picture since I have the better camera. While she took the shot she wanted to show me a better way to focus on it. So we’re both looking at the phone when a hand comes over our shoulders and snatches it.

We are stunned. I immediately turn to chase the guy. I’m gaining on him briefly and he turns to swing at me, but misses. There is a group of older people ahead of us, and they weren’t coming for him, but I think they were going to get in his way. He quickly turns in the opposite direction and I lose ground. (We’re at the edge of a bridge so directionally there’s not much to work with.) Cat had been chasing behind me though, off the curb, more towards the middle of the street, and is able to grab his sweatshirt for a quick moment. There is another group of a few young guys at the foot of the bridge and they’re yelling at him and he’s yelling back. We can’t tell if they’re working with him or not. He then lobs the phone high over our heads to one of the younger guys, who miraculously catches it, and we both start running after him. All of the approximately 15 people in the street are yelling, none of which we understand with our adrenaline pumping and rudimentary Spanish capacity. And now, in a stunning turn of events, the new guy holds out the phone and hands it back to Cat! There are two sets of stairs down opposite sides of the bridge and the thief runs down one side. We very briefly express our EXTREME thanks to the guy who gave us the phone back and quickly move down the opposite staircase, continuously looking back over our shoulders, and panting like we’d been furiously scrambling to retrieve a $1000 bill. So the dinner turned into a celebration meal. The following day we left for the Amazon.

Virgin de El Panecillo immediately before phone was snatched

I love the feeling just arriving in a place I’ve never been. And the stranger the better. All the minutiae comes into sharper focus through comparisons. Like VH1’s “Pop-Up Video” from the 90’s, everything in my visual field grows a little thought bubble: “The curbing on the road and the drain grate paired like that- never seen that before.” Or, “We don’t have that car model at home, but its body does look nearly identical to that other one.” The mundane acquires new significance alongside bigger picture questions too. “Adopting the US dollar as the national currency, but continuing to mint fractional domestic coins... what’s the math on that?”

So Ecuador’s been great. 3 days in its biggest city Guayaquil to start. Cat and I’s last two international trips had been to Guatemala and Tanzania, two poorer countries, and the greater infrastructure and wealth here was quickly evident. Guayaquil has a sketchy reputation, but it seems a lot has changed in the recent past. We found it to be a very pedestrian and tourist friendly city. And it can’t be too dangerous downtown as there were nighttime joggers and dog walkers out in front of our hotel. Highlights in Guayaquil were the Las Penas neighborhood and its panoramic views from its Santa Ana hill, the 3ft iguanas in the middle of the city at Parque Semenario, and a kind Guayaquileno man insisting on buying our bus tickets when he saw us confused at the ticket machine.

Las Peñas stairs and view

Plaza de la Administración

Parque Seminario

From Guayaquil we took a bus to beach town Montanita. (An aside, the Guayaquil bus terminal was 5 star, efficient, clean, and modern. Bus terminals don’t get a lot of love like train stations do, but I’ve been to a few large international bus terminals and Guayaquil is premier status.) So, 3 hours and $6 later we’re on the beach in Montanita. Big and wide and long, clear and warm, etc — a great beach. It developed as a surfing destination starting in the 80s, and is now popular with expats and gringos. So a lot of shops and restaurants catering to tourists, a lot of tie dye, people with dreads, a lot of Bob Marley and Che Guevara, a handful of dance clubs for big weekends. The town is a good size, having different options of places to eat, sleep, look around, without being stripped of all charm and being over commercialized... yet. Our Montanita highlight was for sure the two of us taking a surfing lesson and BOTH getting up on the board a little bit. The low point was for sure my food poisoning from suspect ceviche. On our way to Quito next.

In the spirit of this song and the sunshine and dew, my wife and I are going down to Ecuador today. We had originally planned a grand tour to go from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts through South America via boats on the Amazon river. We’d been planning the trip since 2019. The pandemic has rerouted us though, and it looks like we’ll more than likely restrict the journey to Ecuador’s borders.

Ecuador is actually the most biodiverse country in the world by square mile. The Galapagos, the Andes, and the Amazon. The Amazon in particular was really the initial draw though. I’d never been especially drawn to the jungle until I went to the Phong Nha caves in Northern Vietnam. Phong Nha is the biggest cave system in the world, and it’s also in the jungle. When I was there, pushing past the banana leaves in the heavy air, listening to the alien sounds from above and below, I was just astounded by the tremendous LIFE bristling beyond what my eyes could see. So I knew I wanted to go back to the jungle. And, as I’ve know since grade school, the Amazon is the quintessential jungle.

That sound of sucking your teeth. That’s what I’ve known people to call it. Though its more the top of your mouth, the hard palate, sucking at that ridge behind your top teeth where the hollow space of a mouth opens up. I make that sound often. And it expresses “aw shucks” when done in a quaint way. It helps me to sympathize with people when accompanied with a head nod. Helps to express understanding. Done in a more profound way, it expresses so much. That sound of air and spittle moving for a half second with my head falling off to the side, it says: “there’s not enough”. There’s not enough time, there’s not enough justice, there’s not enough love… there’s not enough for us.

I made that sound just now, reading this book where a family is dividing possessions around a table of divorce lawyers. In narration the family are all having private thoughts of regret.

I make that sound at work a lot. I work on a hospital inpatient oncology unit, specifically bone marrow transplant unit. Our patients get admitted and ours is the last house on the block for them, the last number in the phonebook. Extensive knowledge and experience of the stem cell transplant process, access to new clinical trials and research drugs, the finest medical staff - that’s what these patients come for. But sometimes all I can offer is to sit beside them, or to share a moment of prayer. Sometimes, I can only suck at my teeth.

Finished “Seven Storey Mountain” by Thomas Merton. I heard about a guy writing a review/re-cap of sorts after every book he read. That’s what this is.

The one question that stands out and continues to linger in my mind is: So how do we know its Jesus?How can we be sure it isn’t the Buddha, or Zarathustra, or Muhammad, or that Moses was the right prophet to stop with?

That said, I really did enjoy the book. Merton was definitely a seeker and an intellectual. (Things I think about myself, then I read a memoir from a figure like Merton…) I also appreciate his innate aesthetic sensibility/ artistic proclivities, which are pervasive in all his experiences and writing. I’m remembering now how he wrote about playing piano (he noted his own feckless jazz style at one point), but he said very little about music in full. That’s strange to me. I always remember a postulation from one of Hesse’s books that music is the most sensual of the arts. It has certainly always been the most potent for me. I also feel like artists of ANY discipline always have a strong feeling for music too, while I don’t think musicians have a comparable reciprocal feeling for any particular discipline.

Reading about Merton’s belief in the power of prayer, about how the lives of prayer and contemplation carried out by the Cistercians reverberate in people’s lives around the world in a real way, is a powerful idea for me. I think about oft repeated “thoughts and prayers,” the platitude that’s gained more and more vacuity as the words are offered after successive gun tragedies in our country – and its disorienting in a way. It’s disorienting hearing God‘s name, prayer, and all these spiritual ideas invoked for vain purposes, in service of someone or others ego. Being disoriented spiritually, in a world like that (like this one)… well that makes a lot of sense.

I appreciate Merton’s fondness for Blake and Joyce. I very much enjoyed the historical aspects of the book and the local perspective, so much of his life being in New York. He struggles and talks about his draw towards taking his own life at one point. He talks about desiring some notoriety, some small fame, a cult hero in my mind. I’ve had the same desire. To quote:

“This is what I really believed in: reputation, success. I wanted to live in the eyes and the mouths and the minds of men. I was not so crude that I wanted to be known and admired by the whole world: there was a certain naïve satisfaction in the idea of being only appreciated by a particular minority.” P259

Here are more quotes that I thought to underline in my reading:

“…this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it.”

“If what most people take for granted were really true—if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have been a very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until now.”

“Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”

“…this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved.”

“I don't know if I ever got very close to needing a padded cell: but if I ever had gone crazy, I think psychoanalysis would have been the one thing chiefly responsible for it.”

“…the mental prayer I made was not systematic, but the more or less spontaneous meditating and affective prayer that came and went according to my reading, here and there. And most of the time my prayer was not so much prayer as a matter of anticipating ( . . . ) and a certain amount of imagining what it was going to be like, so that often I was not praying at all, but only day dreaming.” P312

Last night, I went to the independent wrestling league H20’s (Hardcore Hustle Organization) HUSTLEPALOOZA night. The main event was a barbwire cage deathmatch. The day before I’d been reading Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain.

I’ve never been a fan of boxing, UFC, wrestling, etc. I could never see past the barbarism. I can’t watch without the thoughts of: Centuries of progress... Largescale abolishment of slavery... Nuclear disarmament... Gay marriage and transgender rights…Providing for the sick and infirmed... Space travel… And this is entertainment? And this is the best thing a group of people can think to get together and do on a Saturday night? This is how people are finding meaning and enjoyment in their lives?

I stood there with a hundred plus other people, in a converted warehouse in south Jersey, at times cheering because it seemed the most supportive thing I could do in the moment, at other times not cheering and trying not to let my internal cringes show. In another setting the acts being performed would be acts of torture, but here it wasn’t even humiliation, and the subjects were heroes. I thought of hyenas watching a dying animal go down, panting, waiting until the point of sufficient weakness to bite into its’ flesh. I also thought: who am I to judge?

The Mississippi Delta is just not a place I was ever gonna wind up. A lot of places you figure a chance might come up to go there. Like: “Maybe I’ll get to Vegas one day, maybe I’ll go see the Grand Canyon too, it’s not so far”. Well that wasn’t gonna happen for me and the Mississippi delta. If I didn’t go there, I wasn’t gettin there.

I went to Clarksdale MS in particular to get to Red’s Lounge, which may be the last old school juke joint still doin weekly shows in the delta. Other spots open periodically it seems, but Red’s might be the last regular one still around. Juke joints were places for black sharecroppers and cotton pickers to have a drink, dance, and hear some music when segregation was more profound in the South, and black people were not allowed in white establishments. These were important foci of the community up into the 1980s by my understanding, but things change. Juke joints were also the places where the Blues grew up and took hold with people like Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Son House, etc.  What I can say about the blues is: if I met someone who told me they DISLIKED like the blues, and we couldn’t talk through it to reconcile that fact, then we probably wouldn’t have much to talk about at all.

Well on my way to Clarksdale I stopped out of my way to go to Oxford TN — home of Ole Miss, home of William Faulkner. I went to William Faulkner’s home. He had outlines for one of his books written on his bedroom walls. A worthwhile stop for the literary interested. I bought an Ole Miss college t shirt in downtown Oxford. First souvenir of the trip. I always loved their logo and how the school just goes by the name Ole Miss. 

Rowan Oak, home of William Faulkner, Oxford, MS

I drove on to Clarksdale. Through the dark and rain. I used to not think twice about this. Now driving at night into a unfamiliar place, and when it’s raining... kinda sucks. (I remember when “sucks” was like a bad word. I wonder if adults still go around telling kids not to say it, or society has green lit that one now.) 

First night in Clarksdale, Red’s had no music. The place had no cars outside, but a strand of Christmas lights were lit up. I parked the car and walked up. Door was open. I look in and there’s a man in the opposite corner watching TV. He didn’t hear me come in. “Hey! No music tonight?” I said. The man half turns from TV. “Na, tomorrow be some.” “Alright, I’ll see ya tomorrow.” Think I met Red. 

Ten years or so ago a few investors (one being Morgan Freeman) opened a place called Ground Zero in Clarksdale to carry the legacy and get the blues onstage every night. I ended up going there and the music was good, no doubt. I later found out they get some of the same performers at Ground Zero and Red’s too. So the difference is effectively one place being where the baton is carried, and one being where the baton was forged. I hadn’t planned to stay two nights in Clarksdale but the myth of Red’s being the last juke loomed to great for me. 

The following morning I saw Clarksdale in the sun. Downtown Clarksdale had obviously not seen much new investment in probably 50 years, and probably seen as much departure of people and money in the same time. All its buildings were mid century and earlier. I’ve been through West Virginia and central Pennsylvania towns where all that’s left is a gas station, everything else empty, hardly a car, hardly a soul — I’d call that a shell of a town, and Clarksdale wasn’t that. Clarksdale I’d call a skeleton. Some amputated appendages, general atrophy, but hangers on too, and a few fresh ideas. I feel like Clarksdale will persist. 

From Clarksdale I took county roads to see the smaller delta towns like Bolivar, Duncan, Greenville, etc. I followed signs along the Delta Blues Trail, marking sites, events, and people significant to the early Blues history. The delta is Flat-Flat Dead-Dead Country-Country. Rows of soy stretched out so far that if you flipped em vertical they’d be taller than the Burj Khalifa. You gotta figure some of those towns ain’t gonna be around for the next generation. You see big agricultural firms signs speckled along the roads. Delta Plastics — saw that one over and over over. I saw Bunge which I’d seen before just outside of the train station in White Plains, NY. I think it’s a Dutch food and agriculture conglomerate. I would pass that sign outside their White Plains building daily and one day I googled it out of curiosity. I thought it was funny to see Bunge elsewhere, the Mississippi Delta of all places.

Empty MS Delta country

I drove straight down to Vicksburg that day and my god that is a war memorial to put all the rest to shame. Hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of placards and monuments marking the regiments, their movements, their leaders, their losses, the dates. A passionate student of the war could visualize the whole campaign at Vicksburg. On July 4th 1863 confederate forces surrendered at Vicksburg, which was their last stronghold on the Mississippi River. This is considered the critical turning point for Union dominance in the war. 

 Vicksburg downtown and memorial at Vicksburg battlefields

My second night in Clarksdale I saw Bill Howl-N-Madd Perry play at Red’s Lounge and it did not disappoint. I surreptitiously got a few pics and video, as Red is particular about no cameras. I talked with Bill for a bit and bummed him my lighter when he stepped outside. He got to tellin me a story about the worst lighter thief he’d ever known, Carolyn Franklin, “Aretha’s baby sister”. 

I stayed with a couchsurfer named Juan just outside of Memphis in Horn Lake, MS. Incredibly warm, gracious guy. His house is like a revolving door for travelers. He told me he’d had more than 500 total over the last few years. When I arrived there were two other guys sitting in his living room. No introductions. Strange vibe. I sorted out pretty quick that one of the guys was pretty obviously high — nodding off between Juan pushing him up straight again. I talked to Juan for a while, gauging the situation. I checked my phone and Juan had texted me: “The guy who’s high sent me a request but I don’t think he can stay here”. This was partly reassuring. When the kid came to a bit, he gets on the phone — yelling about people owing him 20 bucks, he always puts money in his tank, so-and-so being a bitch, that he always splits up his dope, etc, etc. Eventually he’s asking Juan for a ride somewhere. Juan insists on getting him an Uber.

Apparently Juan had known him since he was 15 or so. He’s 23 now. The guy used to mow the lawn. He’d moved away, moved back, and Juan had seen him recently. Nothing strange then. The kid had texted Juan that afternoon asking if he could stay a few nights, and he showed up a mess. It was one of those things: you can’t help someone who isn’t gonna help themselves. Juan was a little shook up by it. I told him I thought he did he right thing.

The next day I went to Graceland, home of the King, the martyr of Memphis, St. Elvis Presley. I am joking. But that is the way he comes across there. And why not too? They had one wall all of framed checks he’d written to the charities/causes he’d given too. I would’ve liked to see a wall of all the prescriptions he’d filled too though! Apparently it’s the most visited private home in America. Parking was $10 and the CHEAPEST ticket they sold was $49! My instincts tell me there’s no way his legacy is gonna carry crowds at that price into the next generation too, but who knows.

Graceland; one of Elvis’ planes; Kid Rock quote

Memphis. Arrived at dusk. Put in GPS for Beale street. Drove through Memphis’ midtown and discovered that Beale street gets cut in half by a dentistry school’s parking lot. U-turned and went farther downtown. Crossed some trolley tracks and parked nearby. Downtown wasn’t “lively” but wasn’t ghost either. I walked over to Beale street. More action there. A bum approached me, started talkin and talkin. Some people just love talkin, they get goin with a vaguely active listener and they’ll talk like they haven’t seen a human in a decade. I cut him off at a point - “Hey, what’s your name?” “J-EE-rry” “GEE-ry?” Yea, J-EE-rry” “...” “oh Jerry!” “Uh huh” The guys name was Jerry. His accent! My god, it was a potent one. Every time I get to talking to a southerner with a strong accent part of me wants to compliment it, but I refrain. Jerry had been around Memphis all his life. He just got out of jail. He had in mind to get into the country and get some farm work. He started walkin with me down Beale street. He had something to say about every place we passed — though often it was little more than the sign above the door said, and sometimes less. He said the downtown shelter charged for the night and he was lookin for some money. I obliged. I told him I was gonna walk off on my own eventually though, and he took it well enough. (I was half afraid he’d start tailing me.)

The Memphis Grizzlies had a game that night and their stadium is right behind Beale Street, so it was a little busier than it might have been for a Tuesday. The grizzlies line band played on Beale street. Street performers were doin flips over rows of people. I enjoyed it all.

Years ago, like close to 10 I think, I saw a video segment (likely the food network) about a burger place in Memphis that deep fries their burgers, and has a reputation for straining the grease each night to use the following day. AND they’ve been doing it for a hundred years. !YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THEYRE FRYIN UP BURGERS IN CENTURY OLD OIL!!?! What’s really remarkable is that I took so long to get to the place. Dyer’s Burgers. They’re as good as you think.

Nashville. Exceeded my expectations in a way. In another way, before I got there I was thinking about buying a pair of cowboy boots down South — after Nashville that idea’s lost some appeal. Arriving in the night, my first stop the next morning was Music Row, to see that strip of bars with one honky tonk after another. Well, I parked a few blocks away so I could approach it on foot, walk it’s length, and experience it in full. First there’s Sony publishing, then RCA studios, a bank, an accountants office, a lawyer, a lawyer, a digital marketing company... turns out music row is the business end of Nashville, not the fun end! Anyway I walked it up and back. Later in the day I saw all the honky tonks. That part of town is just called “The District”.

I stayed a few days in Nashville, got an Airbnb to have my own space a bit. Had the space to be loud when I wanted to. Worked on my songs in my own tangential way. Tried to get on the open mic list at the Bluebird Cafe, but no luck. Saw songwriters in the round two nights at The Listening Room and at Douglas Corner Cafe. The Listening Room had songwriters who’d been published. One had a songwriting credit on a Keith Urban album. Another had a credit on the song “Fight Like a Girl,” which had gotten a lot of radio play. They were all talented, no doubt, but it was a little too saccharine, formulaic, toothless, etc. The Douglas Corner Cafe on the other hand had no cover, 4 women writers in the round, and a lot more ambitious talent by my own estimate. 

So, I’ve seen Nashville a small bit. I don’t think I’m any less fascinated by the place. All these people making a living working parts of the country music machine. That’s the music that sells. That’s the music of choice in our country going by the numbers. Still don’t meet so many interested listeners in downstate NY though. 

Nashville TN, “Athens of the South,” who knew?