I’m sitting at the end of a five & 1/2 minute hallway.
Unknown Highland Ruins
Actually it’s only about a minute long, but the musically obsessed / literati out there will appreciate the reference to a song and a book written respectively by a sister / brother duo. I got a good four hours of sleep last night, then my good friend Insomnia dusted the sand from my eyes, I eventually got bored, showered, and grabbed my laptop and headed outside so I wouldn’t borrow my travel mates. I’m now sitting in the hallway outside our room (room #5 at the Bazpacker’s hostel) taking advantage of the free time to catch up with you, dear reader.
I’m not going to spend to much time on Day 2. I want to get to the next, Day 3, because it was awesome. That should hint to you that I’m at the beginning of Day 4.
When I left you last time, Insomnia and I were hanging out in the common room and the whereabouts of my travel companions were unknown. I wish I could tell you they were on a great adventure: fighting soccer hooligans, trapped in The City Below, walking with ghosts, carousing, fucking, haunting a graveyard, or even pulling the comely inhabitants of Scotland. They were none of these things. At six in the morning when I left the library of Castle Rock Hostel, I passed through the common room and they were there, sober as dowagers, chatting away. They swore they hadn’t moved all night and Axel had only recently left them. I don’t know how I could have slipped past without running into them, but I had. Good thing too, Day 1 wouldn’t have written itself.
So my insomnia worked out for me then, we were all sleepless. It’s not as welcome now, they’re sleeping like babes, and I shall be tired today.
Anyway, we met up. I tried to get another half hour of sleep and failed; Cameron cleaned up and Adam read. We regrouped and headed into the Edinburgh morning. It was beautiful. We’ve been damn lucky with the weather.
Cameron & Adam, CityLink bus station, Edinburgh
We found the bus station with oodles of time. We didn’t find our tickets. More properly our ticket numbers — all you need to ride with Megabus. We hunted for wifi and breakfast. We found wifi at McDonald’s, and they found breakfast there too. I had a pemmican bar. I think I won that round.
With wifi we had our ticket numbers and went back to the bus terminal. The bus ran late but we met and chatted with another American expatriate. His name was Jay, he played American Football for the University of Edinburgh while pursuing his graduate degree in creative writing. Nice guy. He’d personally met a (grammar) hero of mine, Geoffrey Pullum. Jay said Pullum was a brilliant but intimidating and snarky professor. I wasn’t surprised.
Taken from the window
On the bus we slept. I slept a little they slept a lot. I got some beautiful photos of the Highlands out the window.
We alighted in Inverness stumbled groggily to our hostel and then did stuff. OK! OK! I’m tired! I’ll try to be more descriptive than that. We at at the Castle Tavern, which is right next to the Hostel. Adam and I each had the cod and loved it. Cameron had a vegetable panino and hated it. We all drank scotch (my notes are in the room, I’ll have to remember to add them. I’m too lazy to add them. Ask me if you’re interested in my opinions on scotch.)
Cameron & Scotch
After that we went and checked out Inverness Castle. Although the site has been home to castles since 1057 — nearly a thousand-effing-years! — the current castle was built in 1837. It’s home to the Sheriff Court of Inverness and as such is not open to the public. But we walked about outside it. It was good.
I have to be honest, this day is a blur. Sleeplessness is not good for one’s memory. We did have a beautiful walk along the banks and over the bridges of the river Ness.
Shut up and eat your muffin
And the quote of the day was: “Why are you sitting on my chest?” “Shut up! It’s time for your muffin.”
Day 3 will be a much more epic post, I promise. For now, I’m waking up the troops so we can be on our way. I’m doing it with this song (is that cruel?)
This is not a fact I was hoping to discover. Anyhoo, it’s four am, I have to get up in two hours to catch a Mega-Bus, and I figured I’d use the time to blog day 1. Fortunately, not all that much has happened, so this should be short.
My flight was technically KLM, but really Ghetto Delta. It was direct from Portland to Amsterdam, with a four hour layover before a transfer to Edinburgh. Normally I have no trouble sleeping on planes, but my insomnia had come back all last week and didn’t loose its grip just because I was shimmying across time zones.
I should confess to you, that for about a week now I’ve had a drowning, haunting feeling that something will go imminently wrong in my life. I rarely pay attention to such fanciful fears, so I assumed that when I hit the ground in the U.K. I would have a pint and the dreadful feeling would shed like a snake’s skin. I was wrong.
Anyway, I can’t complain about the flight. It was under-booked, so, luxury of luxuries, I had two seats alone together: window and isle. I’d requested “gluten free” meals, which turned out to consist almost entirely of rice (which I didn’t eat, but I came prepared: more on that later). The night was long and I flew through it. I tossed and turned. I tried every imaginable position. I didn’t sleep a wink. I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; pt 1 and later The Kings Speech. I remember them both well, but it’s a flavorless, oatmeal kind of memory.
I have a special kind of insomnia. At least I think it’s special, I haven’t met anyone else who confesses to the same symptom. When I can’t sleep, it’s an itch that keeps me awake. Literally. A small, persistent itching will afflict some random splotch of skin. If I scratch it, it will move to some other random, splotch of skin. Right now it’s the back of my left hand and my left temple. I’m not bothering to scratch either. They’ll move on their own anyway.
When I say the flight was itchy and uncomfortable, I don’t want you to blame the airline. It was a fine flight. I was not a fine passenger.
We landed in daylight, 11:23 am local, Euro time. I stumbled through the airport with my backpack and a small, Powell’s-Books paper bag I kept the few extra things I couldn’t pack. I was bringing some shoes for Tea Elf, so as soon as I unloaded them I’d have no need for the paper bag. Anyway, I found my gate (D52) and did like the only other waiting traveler: I lay down on my bags and closed my eyes. An hour and ten minutes later I awoke in the middle of a throng. There were perhaps a hundred other people who had materialized in the hour I’d slept. The first hour of sleep I’d had since Thursday night’s four hours. It was Saturday afternoon by now.
There was some triviality of a second security moving from Amsterdam to U.K., I was on the plane and, thankfully, I awoke in Scotland with another forty minutes of sleep behind my eyes. I’m breezing by something here and it’s a diservice. This second set of security was an adventure because of my provisions. I brought pemmican.
Although I break my diet on these trips, I don’t go stupid about it. When the only breakfast available is a sugary pastry, I don’t eat. Last time I hunted for food; sometimes to the annoyance of my travel-mates — may they rest in peace. No! I kid! I kid! I didn’t murder them. They’re fine. Mostly…. So this time I brought Grass Fed Pemmican from U.S. Wellness meats. Each (cherry-and-honey-free) bar has nothing but beef, tallow, and salt. 20 grams of lean protein and all the free-range fat a body could want. And before the ignorati out there start to cry about my cholesterol or some bullshit about hardened arteries, My HDL is through the roof, my triglicerides are on the floor (52) and you need to read this article: The Definitive Guide to Cholesterol. And yes, my doctor agrees with me.
But the salient point here: each stick looks like a poorly formed bar of plastic explosives. Also, it’s technically raw beef (dried below 114°F). There are some good articles (here’s one!) that explain why this is “safe” (yeah, irony quotes…). The portland security girl stared at my bag longer than I’ve ever seen a scanner operator stare at anything. Never mind that’s my food you’re irradiating, I was a little nervous. The dutch operators were quick with the scanner, but slow with the hand inspection. They were reading the tiny, cover-your-ass words printed on the package from U.S. Wellness that read “keep frozen” when I spoke up: “Protein bars.” It was only a little lie. That was when they noticed my Vibram Five fingers and my blue hair. They laughed, gave me my bag, and let me through.
Where was I? Right! So I have 17 of these things, at least at trip’s start, minus the two I ate on the plane. Hopefully I can just use them for breakfast. We’ll see.
Ugly Elf note: it’s 5:09 am here. I’ve been writing an hour. See how much I love you?
I landed in Scotland at the appointed hour, bought a tea from Costa, tried to board the bus I needed, bus 100, was rejected for not having a ticket, bought a ticket and was forced to surrender my tea — no beverages allowed on the bus. I considered mutiny but then decided there would be other teas. Je ne regrette rien.
Last time, Sommer, Michael, and I took the Waverly Station exit to get to the Castle Rock Hostel. This time I got off at the West End station and walked up from the other side. I think the walk was about the same, but it was an earlier stop so it might have saved me a little time.
Castle Rock Hostel, now with added Scaffolds.
I was only a little shocked to see the hostel completely covered in scaffolding. [I'll have to remember to insert the picture] Upstairs I found my new room just across the hall from the room we had last time I was here.
I thought I’d reserved a double twin room (two twin beds). Apparently I only had a double bed. That would work out in the end (more on this in a minute), but I blinked awkwardly at Cameron when I saw only one bed and the two of us. I hoped she didn’t think I was being skeezy. I met Adam, Cameron’s friend and the completing member of our party for the Edinburgh to Inverness portion of this trip. He’s awesome. I approve. He out-geeks me, but only by a little. We talked Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Portal, and American McGee’s Alice. I was out of the conversation when he brought up another game, Braid, I need to play.
We went to the Black Bull for dinner. They were out of fish and chips. I cried a little. But I had the chicken Kiev, which I peeled out of its breading and enjoyed its butter-and-garlic middle. I had a beer, but it was unremarkable. I should say I’ve been so grain free as to forgo beer lately. Having a beer, breaded chicken, and chips is a big departure from my usual diet. I’m planning to get fat and ache. So be it. It’s worth saying that the waitress was beautiful. I have a thing for dark hair and blue eyes. I recently met an aerialist in Portland who fits the profile. I have a crush. I’ll get over it.
We came back to the hostel after monkeying around on the scaffolding, and I showered while Cam and Adam went to the common room and did some planning. I joined them. Cam was sitting down next to a man I didn’t look at and assumed was Adam. I jammed them together in order to fit onto the tet-a-tet and only later realized this was not Adam. Bear in mind how little sleep I had. Somehow we ended up with another crew member for the night. A lovely young fellow named Axel (spelling?) who is getting his English degree in Creative writing at Tufts university in Boston. He’s originally from Argentina, but the only word I heard him speak with an accent was “tattoo”. Everything else sounded perfectly american.
The four of us went out and got a little lost, but eventually ended up at the Last Drop mostly accidentally. It, too, is a place I went last time I was here. This time, none of the natives engaged us in conversation. I missed Steven (the Last Drop) and Steve (Black Bull). I hope they’re well.
Cam and Adam huddled, drank orange juice, and discussed something important. Axel and I talked circus and creative writing. I was deliriously tired. I hope I made some sense, but I doubt it.
We came back to the hostel, tried and failed to find the bus station we needed the next morning, tried again and succeeded, and came back to the hostel.
I went to bed. The others were going to hang out for a bit down in the commons. We have to get up at 7:00am to catch our bus. Cameron was supposed to stay in the room with me, and Adam, a late member to our party, had a bed in the dorm. I slept for maybe an hour, tossed for a while, read a hundred pages of Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind, tossed some more and grabbed my laptop at four am to head downstairs. There was never any sign of Cam. She’s likely off on an adventure, I hope she’s safe.
Anyway, it’s 5:46am now. There’s an hour and change until I have to get up, so I’m going to post this thing and head up to the room and pack, maybe have a pemmican bar.
I’ve had bad luck with airport food. What I mean by this, is that the second worst food poisoning I’ve had in my life was at Ngurah Rai International Airport, in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia. Fortunately, it was relatively a short flight from there to Palau where I was doing a dig (still finding myself in college, I toyed with the idea of becoming an Archeologist).
I tell you all this so you will understand that when I say I’m eating at an airport bar, you will understand the reckless, devil-may-cry mood I’m in. The restaurant in question is a Rogue Brewery — a dubious establishment in the best of circumstances.
Sure, there was a time when Rogue was a flagship beer. One of the best Oregon beers… one of the best beers in the world. But as anyone who’s visited the brewery knows, their award winning brewing stopped in 2002, what remained was simply brewing. After a strong decade of accolades, they’ve had nothing to be proud of sense then. They cut the quality of their ingredients to stitch a few extra dollars onto their bottom line. Their head brewer “went another way”. Now they’re the Ass-King of beers, right along with their idiot cousin, McMenamins. At least McBeer has fun places to go, even if their beer and food are embarrassments to the northwest.
Enough of that. I’m travelling again. Like every great adventure it begins with a wait. I’ve been waiting for days, for weeks, for months! — in my own little way. But then, I didn’t really know I was waiting until now.
Now I’m through security, well into my second drink, and I know exactly that I am waiting.
If only the waiting were a guarantee of a great adventure. While the wait is a sure thing, what comes next could be anything. I’ll do my best to keep track of it all here; a little more real time than last July. Last July… the trip began so well and ended so terribly.
Oh, July.
Right! About the trip! Well this just gets stranger and stranger. I’ve kept to the policy I made after the Evil X dumped me. When I realized how much extra money I would have (she cost A LOT to support), I decided then that if anyone abroad invited me to come visit them, I would go. So when Tea Elf invited me to come while she was studying in St. Andrew’s, Scotland, I said yes. I wanted to go back to the U.K. and see more rural areas anyway. The trip quickly turned into Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Wales, but then I realized how much time off of training this was. I axed the Welsh part of the trip, changed my tickets, and now I’m going to see Scotland and Ireland.
The last time, Sommer did a brilliant job of making an itinerary. This time Tea Elf and I are mostly winging it. I took care of finding us places to stay; she took care of major transportation, but we’re going to use Google Maps for public transportation locally, and we don’t really know what we’re doing on any given day.
It’s a fucking adventure.
Man I keep getting off track. I blame drinking almost not at all and now having these two drinks do their impression of a Sea Monster in my belly — ahoy thar.
Anyway. The plan.
I arrive in Edinburgh tomorrow after nearly a day of travelling. It will be a little before four. I’ll take bus 100 to the same stop I took last year, and hike the same hill I did last year, and stay the night in the same hostel I did last year. I knew it was good, so I picked it. I hope Sommer and Michael won’t mind — it’s just for the night. The next day we take a bus to Inverness, the Capital of the Highlands, and far to the north. We’ll stay in inverness for two nights, then take a couple of train rides, including the Harry Potter train route (not the steam train, that’s only available in the summer) and a ferry to get to the Isle of Skye. Two nights there and then we head back to Edinburgh. The plan that night is to dance tango with the locals, then, the next morning, catch a flight to Dublin. In Dublin we’re renting a car and driving down to Cork for two nights. That will be our base as we do a little international road tripping. I hope to get to the western coast and see some more castles. Then stay the night of the 3rd (of April) in Dublin and fly out on the 4th. I have Straps class on the 5th and a normal life awaiting me.
Anyway, me and my blue hair need to make our way to the terminal. Not long until the point of no return.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but you aren’t working hard enough. And by you, I mean me.
This is a post to motivate myself to work harder, at everything, thinly disguised as a didactic an entertaining post about, what else, circus. I could have picked any subject, but this one suits me.
OK. I’ve failed to write this post three times. I’m not sure why. It either comes off angry-ranty, or whingy-bitchy. No good.
Eff it. Let’s start out with a little entertainment.
I don’t watch much TV — that’s only a little bit of a lie — mostly just when I’m cooking or eating. Sometimes when I’m stretching, but usually I listen to audio books then.
PBS put out a six part program what filled me with love. (BTW. This is the carrot side of the post. The stick to follow.) The documentary creators at PBS tried to do a reality show on the Big Apple Circus. It feels like a low-budget documentary with poor production values, but that just makes me love it more.
Like anything I watch, you can find the whole thing online. You can find all six episodes Online at PBS.
While I enjoyed it, and I think you will too, it feels to me like they missed the point. They obsessed on one sad clown. We get it. Clowns are sad. They gave too much time to another clown who’s a jerk. We never get a sense of what the incredible performers went through to become incredible. They tried to make it personal, but lost the personality. The tight-rope walker has one boyfriend in the beginning and we’re given the impression she’s always been with him. At the end she’s moving back to Europe with her boyfriend, a different performer, who she’s also always been with — no sign of bf #1.
It’s a circus in every sense of the word.
They almost do one thing right. [SPOILER ALERT] There’s a group of performers that are exceptional in that they don’t come from circus families. They weren’t raised circus, they chose circus.
And they fail.
Most of the time, to be that good you have to do it from the time you can walk. Even before you can run.
Failure segues to motivation.
Unless you’re an idiot, failure is motivating. Just ask any scientist. Don’t get it? We need to have a long talk. For now, I’ll give you the two second version.
First second: If you expect something to work and it does, you haven’t learned anything. If you expect something to work and it doesn’t, now you’ve learned something.
Learning things is cool.
Second second: If a pretty girl corrects your misused word, it doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. It means you just learned something.
Learning things is cool.
Are you picking up on a pattern?
Conclusion: Learning things makes you a better person. Therefore, handling failure well makes you a better person. Fail fast and correct well. Now you’re cool.
Anyhoo, back on target. PBS Circus.
What do we learn from this show?
Sort-of-average, extra-crazy people can do amazing things. You also learn that the clowns are ass holes. Don’t be a clown. And managers everywhere suck. Don’t be a manager.
Oh, hey! I’m average with a dash of extra-crazy… maybe I can do something amazing!
I just checked.
I cannot.
Also, ouch.
I’m pretty sure you’ve ignored everything I’ve said. You haven’t even watched your 240-some-odd minutes of PBS Circus, have you? You failed. But that’s OK! Failure is cool!
But before we go on, we need the proper ambiance.
I’m'ma set the mood up in dis betch.
This is the theme song to that show you totally didn’t watch. Listen to this, it’ll make sense later and it’s only 1:16s long.
It’s a 1’16″ long! you still haven’t listened to it? Jeebus, you people are redeemable irremediable.
Now we’ve come to the stick portion of our talk.
People often fail because they’re afraid to really push themselves. They make excuses. They claim they’ll get injured if they try X. Or they’ll get sick if they give up eating Y. In both cases they’re usually talking to someone who’s doing X or has given up Y and improved their health.
Yet these people, the non-giver-uppers, think they’re different. They’re special and can’t give-up/do those things. Or they think the opposite that the doer/giver-upper-of-crap-food is special. It’s bullshit. You’re not special. Neither am I.
Every infantrymen learns this lesson well. When I went through basic training, we were a motley mix of ages and backgrounds. The youngest was 17. The oldest was 33. Everybody pushed. Everybody adapted. You can too.
When in doubt, try it out.
I put a personal anecdote here, but it was boring and preachy. I’ve pulled it.
Sailing along. You don’t need to go through the army to learn that you’re not special. You can do that right here! You don’t need a couple months of a Drill Sgt. screaming at you to learn how to push yourself further than you’ve ever gone.
You need to fail.
I’m serious. If you don’t try, you’ll never get there. You have to try, and fail, and think about it reasonably; change your strategy and try again. Changing your strategy is the important part. Don’t just keep on the wrong path to the right goal. As the conjoined efforts of that Annoying Sunday paper classic, Family Circus and the esteemed favorite of psycho’s everywhere, Friedrich Nietzsche can show you here.
What I’m telling you is: don’t be an asshole. Don’t be the asshole who’s “eating healthy” for ten years and getting fatter every one of them. You’re not eating healthy. It’s not your age. Age has nothing to do with it. It’s not your family or your genes. You’re being an asshole again. Do you really want to be the asshole who brought guns to Narnia? Oh wait. That’s a different rant. Anyway. Try something new. You failed. Celebrate your failure and move on.
Now that I’ve made you so sad that even your puppy is crying, I have to show you this thing.
First I have to say that most of us are pretty good at learning from the mistakes of others. Few are good at learning from other’s successes. If you see someone do it, you can do it too.
Don’t believe me? Listen to the experts.
That’s not the thing. That’s Radio Lab. Which is awesome and you should listen to every single one of them several times. Take away point, just keep doing it for 10,000 hours and you’ll be an expert. No Problem! Right?
Right! The thing!
The thing is another documentary. It’s from PBS again, but totally different producers. They have this series called “Global Voices.” Each episode is a documentary on something. That’s about as unifying as it gets. One of them was on a Chinese circus school. I’m SO glad American schools aren’t like this. Sit down or cook dinner and watch this:
If you haven’t watched it yet, this next part won’t make sense. Read it if you want, but read it again after you watch the video.
No one can push you. Not really. You can let people encourage you or force you forward or anything else, but really, you push yourself. Those kids push themselves.
What do we learn from this?
If you’re not injured, frightened, upside down, sweating bullets, and crying snot while feeling worthless and incompetent, you can push harder. You’ve got more in you.
Push.
See the way they stretched out that kids leg? He cried. He begged. He didn’t break. He got more flexible without injury. When you’re training your splits, don’t let pain be your limiter. Push through the pain.
You just have to decide who you are and who you want to be. The difference is the effort required. I know this personally from my time in the infantry. If you don’t want to learn it yourself, just watch that poor bastard hand-balancer push.
You can push.
So here we are, It’s like we never really left the start.
Time heals the wound but then there’s still a scar
to remind us of the way it’s meant to be.
…
Here’s to tomorrow or whatever get’s you by.
I had thought the country stopped using the color code for our terror levels, but apparently I was mistaken. I’m spending the night in Denver and we’re at the orange level. I realize these are trite comparisons, but there is no danger level on my car when I open the door. The likelihood of me dying in a plane crash as a result of weather or mechanical error is minuscule, but far larger than the likelihood of my dying in a terrorist attack.
I made an airport friend today. He has an ex with a daughter who was almost exactly my age, which means I have him firmly categorized as “the same age as my mother’s bf” even though I really don’t know. He’s reading a book of beat poetry, and pointed out a line about McCarthyism and bomb shelters and the cold war and the general feeling of (largely unfounded) fear. Having listened to Sting’s “Russians” recently, this had already been on my mind. So much of our collective energy is spent focused on fearing things over which we have minimal control, and I see little benefit.
This may seem like a strange connection, but it bothers my mother that I talk to strangers. The fact that I am about to go to sleep in a barely populated airport, a few feet away from a man I (realistically) know nothing about would cause her to toss and turn all night. I’ve conveniently avoided mentioning couchsurfing around her, because trusting strangers is such a poor idea. And, realistically, NY has taught me several times over that trusting strangers can end badly. Yet, regardless of airport announcements, I’m going to make the (quite logical) decision that my life really isn’t at an orange level.
I’m totally excited about this. It’s the start of the new year and this blog just got way better. That’s because it’s no longer just my blog, where I alone write out random and detached filaments of memory or fact, it’s now got twice as many authors (for a total of two) to bring you random and detached filaments of memory or trivia.
We’re stepping up our game to bring you a much higher grade of useless frippery.
So welcome Andrew McCollough, PhD Candidate in Psychology (working memory and attention), Juggler, Balloon-animal aficionado, master of knots, literati, poet, master of the argentine tango, amateur horticulturist, jeweler, and friend.
You’ll recognize his posts as from the author Tangoelf while I’ll keep writing as uglyelf.
Hello from Seattle! It’s like Portland but less ironic. Everything is twice as expensive though, so I guess they pay for it.
I’ve written a lot of posts lately and then not posted them. They’ve often tasted bitter and that’s not the way I feel, so I haven’t let you sample them. But here I am, last chance to write before New Years, and the last chance I’ll have to send a note to future gregory from past gregory of 2010.
I’ve never put much measure in the practice of setting New Years Resolutions — I’m uncomfortable with the idea of making a promise I don’t intend to keep — so no resolutions.
What always impresses me about New Years Resolutions is the sheer tenacity of the thing — the ability for one to make a resolution to fix something they refuse to admit is broken. Most common, of course, is to lose-weight / eat-better / do-more-exercise when the resolver will not admit any flaw of constitution or mass in the first place. Thus, doomed to fail.
And that made me think about what would really make a better year. The obvious answer was not having the worst thing about 2010 in 2011. Just don’t make that one mistake again. In other words, instead of making a resolution to eat-better, admit that you’re overweight and accept everything that comes with it.
Then I realized that mistake might not be the most fair word. If I were overweight than looking honestly at myself and accepting that my decisions were the cause of my body shape, would be admitting to a mistake. But what if the worst thing was something completely different?
I still think the best thing for the next year is to spend a little time thinking about my own worst thing of 2010, and hope it doesn’t happen again next year. Sort of say ‘goodbye’ to the bad time and hunt for better times ahead.
In my case the worst of 2010 was losing important friends.
Taken the day of the incident (and probably to blame).
I’m feeling bad—really guilty—for something I did today. I said something that “crossed the line” and was “rude.” So I’m feeling awful. But honestly, I shouldn’t. And It’s taken me way too long to realize why I shouldn’t.
I was in a class earlier, a nearly empty class, and the teacher said she might just cancel the class since no one was showing up. I said it was probably because of the price, and if she lowered it a little a lot more people might show up and she would make more money.”
She got pissed.
I apologized. She had a right to be angry, and she explained it to me. She has an unusual relationship with her students: she’s a friend and a teacher, and it’s really hard for her when one of us, like me, tried to “nickel and dime her to death.” That we needed to understand that “just because we were friends didn’t mean we could try to take advantage of her.” Those were the words she used. She also said that so many friends were “rude” like this, and she couldn’t be friends any more because of it. I didn’t, and still don’t know if she was talking about our friendship.
I’ve had female friends give me the silent treatment and stop being friends with me for less. For Tapas even (the fucking tapas).
Anyway, she said she’d been running her own studio for more than two years and people should know that she knew how to run it and she didn’t want to talk about money with them.
Needless to say, I apologized profusely. She was right. I had been rude. She’d asked me to drop it, so I did. I tried to make small talk. I forced cheeriness. But ten minutes later, half an hour before the class was supposed to end, she dismissed me and ended the class abruptly.
I sat in my car feeling horrible and brutish for ten minutes before I could drive. How could I have been so rude? How could I have shoved my foot so far in my mouth, again?! Why was I unable to see it coming?
And slowly I started to realize why: because All Laws are Local.
Bear with me.
Now I’ve had friends that I’ve bought cars from. I’ve sold cars to friends. I’ve sold and bought furniture. At its base, I’ve had a commodity and I’ve sold it to friends. Or my friend has had a commodity and I’ve bought it from them. Did we talk about money? Hell yes. Did we negotiate prices? You bet your sweet bippy.
And finally I started thinking about my friendship with this and other teachers I’ve had. I realized this was not a special or unusual relationship at all for this sort of thing. Across most of my circus, music, dance, climbing, and body-weight conditioning classes I’ve formed friendships with teachers. In many cases even close friendships that have lasted much longer than my interest in the subject they taught.
Have we talked about the price of classes? Yes. Has it ever been a problem. No. I had to think long and hard about that one, but no. I’ve never had an issue talking about money with any of these teachers & friends. No one has ever taken it as me trying to nickel-and-dime them before.
So based on my previous experiences, hundreds of them, I couldn’t have foreseen her reaction.
But then we come back to it. Was she wrong to think what I had done was rude?
No.
No really, she wasn’t wrong. Why? Because all laws are local. Because the mores of a group or the sensibilities of an individual are always local, and in this case, really local. Most of my friends who are teachers compartmentalize. They deal friendship in one area of their brains, and business in another. They don’t have any trouble separating the two. This teacher couldn’t do that. There was no compartmentalizing. I was a friend, friends have your back, her back is her business, by mentioning a money thing I had stabbed her in the back.
So she wasn’t wrong to think of this thing as rude. But honestly, she was wrong to get mad at me. She was wrong in assuming I would know what would offend her. She was wrong to believe that her mores were more right than mine.
all laws are local
Stay with me on this one. It comes up all the time. When I was in France this summer, I discovered (the hard way) that the French think it’s very rude for you to ask them something in English without first asking in french if they speak any english. A friend who was with me, and was a French-American, said of course it was rude. Didn’t I know anything? Even in America it’s rude to ask somebody for directions in a foreign language. And I had to think about it. Was she right?
By and large, for the specific cases of America and France, she was. We both have a majority population that believes you shouldn’t come to this country unless you speak the language. This is less true for America than for France.
Many of you are probably revolting at my saying it’s largely true; you yourselves having given directions, aid, or at least a comforting smile to strangers speaking spanish or german and not even trying for english with you. I have too. But we’re the exception here, not the rule. Think about how many people have cried for, or voted against ESL support in public schools. Think about the “anti-brown” laws that have plagued the central U.S. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re flattered when someone assumes you speak their foreign language, here on U.S. streets. But you’re the exception. Most people are offended.
So if my own country is offended by this behavior, why didn’t I anticipate the French reaction? Because I’d already traveled too much. From Central America, to the Polynesian islands, to Indonesia, I’d spoken english first and never offended anyone. The reaction I would later experience in Iceland was the typical one, if they didn’t speak my language, they would still, happily, make comforting “poor-lost-tourist” noises while I pointed at the place on the map I was trying to get to, and with a mixture of pantomime and language that was lost on me, tell me how to get where I was going. It’s the more common reaction in the world. But the French, and the Americans have forgotten that all laws are local.
The author Cory Doctorow recently did a much better job of explaining this than I’m doing. In his Locus Article, A Cosmopolitan Literature for the Cosmopolitan Web Doctorow essentially defines being cosmopolitan as being aware that all laws are local.
You should hop over there and read the whole article, but I want you to especially consider these two paragraphs:
Behind every torturer’s mask, behind every terrible crusade, behind every book-burning and war-drum is someone who has forgotten (or never learned) that all laws are local. Forgetting that all laws are local is the ultimate in hubris, and it is the province of yokels and bumpkins who assume that just because they do something in a particular way, all right-thinking people always have and always will. For a mild contemporary example, consider the TV executive who blithely asserts that her industry is safe, because no matter what happens in the future, the majority of us will want to come home, flop down on the sofa, and turn on the goggle-box – despite the fact that TV has existed for less than a century, a flashing eyeblink in the long history of hominids, most of whom have gotten by just fine without anesthetizing themselves with a sitcom at the end of a long day.
Which is not to say that cosmopolitans don’t believe in anything. To be cosmopolitan is to know that all laws are local, and to use that intellectual liberty to decide for yourself what moral code you’ll subscribe to. It is the freedom to invent your own ethics from the ground up, knowing that the larger social code you’re rejecting is no more or less right than your own – at least from the point of view of a Martian peering through a notional telescope at us piddling Earthlings.
Read that second paragraph again. I agree with it one-hundred percent. It was perfectly right for my teacher to invent her own ethics, her own code of what was rude and what was in the friend’s domain. But then she went exactly wrong, and for a moment there, so did I. She shouldn’t have forgotten that all laws are local. That she invented her law, and I may not know the local custom.
It would have been fine for her to tell me that she didn’t want to talk about it, but she shouldn’t have gotten angry with me the very first time I unknowing blundered across her invisible line. Believe me, I won’t talk about it again. And wouldn’t have even if she’d been nice when she explained it. I guess I just hope I haven’t lost yet another friend this year just because they don’t understand that all laws are local, and I’m a freaking alien.
And if you’re one of my many, many friends or erstwhile friends who I’ve offended. I’m sorry. I really didn’t know. And believe me: I still feel guilty anyway. I always will. I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.
This was a busy weekend. The kind of weekend that will take two posts. I have a third post I need to write some other time. Actually I have four posts to write (*crack of lightning* Ah! Ah! Ah! Four! Four posts! I lahv it. I lahv it. — Count von Count).
In fact, I have so much to do I’m making a post about the posts: a meta post. Here’s what up Octobrey:
1) It was a good weekend. Need to make a personal blurb.
2) I’ve known for a long time that stretching increased strength. Even before I started reading that it did so, I knew it because I felt the results. But I didn’t know why. I’ve never seen a good explanation targeted toward non-believers. Anyone who’s stretching properly just gets it. Anyone who doesn’t believe it is stretching wrong. Period. I had an aha moment watching an inflexible person this weekend. I think I can write a compelling argument on why flexibility gives great strength and injury prevention.
3) I need to make another grumpy-old-man post ala the sorry post. This one is on “smart + lazy = dumb” or “The mathematics of why you’re an idiot even though you’re smart.”
4) Day two of Wales isn’t going to write itself, I’m afraid.
And non-post related. I really, really, really need to update the circus page and, at the very least, give it an index.
