Not In Bruges: 2013

I feel like I left this blog rather abruptly, amid the general chaos of moving to a new continent, and wanted to tell you all about my recent return to the homeland as a sort of postscript to my adventures in Euroland.

Having to leave (flee?) Brussels in the middle of September, I made the decision to go directly to Washington DC to live in my cousin Brendon's empty house, rather than going home and seeing my family. I thought that I should get a leg up on the job search and scouting DC, and to be honest I wanted to endure the repatriotization process alone. When coming back to your country of origin, most people experience a sort of reverse-culture shock when reacclimating to the way of life that you left behind. Moving to a new city in a new part of the country really isn't the same as a total repatriotization, but I assumed that it would be a difficult time, and it was.

I hated DC even before I landed, as we flew over northern Maryland and I beheld the miles and miles of identical houses arranged symmetrically around megachurches. After we landed and I stood in the immigration line at Dulles Airport, I cringed a bit at hearing the Southern US accent for the first time in years. Maybe it was odd to be able to even understand other people in public situations, but DC was the first place that I have ever moved to that I wasn't excited to be at in the beginning. Finding a grocery store, choosing a detergent, learning the TV channels and meeting the neighbors had all been exciting in a foreign country, but in the US it was dull and trite.

The first month before I found my job felt like an eternity at the time. Living alone, isolated from my European friends by 6 time zones, and not having a reliable social network in DC (despite having some friends located around the city) made for too much time to think. Isolation begat depression, and with the shortening days of the winter season my mood soured further.

Eventually, after a month, I began work as a webmaster for an NGO in DC. I was good at my job, and able to exercise some skills I hadn’t used in awhile. I joined a gym to help pass the time. Being able to shore up my financial situation after such a long time without working helped to reduce the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that seemed to ricochet around my mind, and the physical exhaustion from exercise seemed to contain the restlessness that I suppose has always plagued me. But in the end I was only able to keep my life from getting worse, it seemed.

So I suppose I was long due for a vacation, having made some inroads in DC but beginning to feel that I was running on fumes. I had many people to see; people whose love and support had helped me through my time in Belgium. So I put on my travelin' suit and packed a suitcase, and finally in the middle of December, three months after I left Belgium, I finally headed out West.

My first stop was in Colorado. I landed in Denver, and was greeted by my cousin Jacob, who drove me to his parents' house in Lafayette, a suburb an hour North. There was snow on the ground, and the mountain air was cold. I stayed with my Aunt Terry, Uncle Tim, and their daughter Moriah, eating dinners prepared from the vegetables carefully cultivated in their garden over the summer months. Moriah and Jacob and I headed out to the nightlife in Boulder on several occasions that week, taking in the student population exhilarated from finishing their final exams. Driving out to Boulder during the daytime I was able to see Gracum, my grandmother, and her sister and her husband, Aunt Sue and Uncle Mike, who still perpetually drive each other crazy. Those three form some kind of perpetual motion machine, for which science should be grateful. Oh, the tales that will come from that kitchen, with the coffee pot always brewing. For entertainment, Mike wanted to see the new James Bond movie “Skyfall,” which Moriah and I accompanied him to. Later in the week, Mike, Jacob and I headed out to the hills of Colorado to exercise our second amendment rights and fire some bullets into Coke cans.

Near the end of my stay in Colorado, Jacob drove me down to Denver to visit my Grandma Thelma. She's 92 and just out of the hospital from a broken hip. She's still as sharp as ever. When I arrived, she was in the communal hall of her assisted living residence, singing Christmas carols with the other residents. It took her just a second to recognize me. "I didn't think I'd see you again," she smiled at me. I nodded, both of us agreeing to enjoy the time we have with each other rather than guess which time will be the last.

The second city on my itinerary was Boise. Upon leaving the gate at the airport I was lovingly greeted by my Mom and Dad, and received the first smartass comment of the trip when my sister Lara commented how much she liked my "little Frenchie suit." Smartassery be damned;. she will understand European style one day, I suppose. I soon got to see my little niece Lidia, with my sister Erin and her husband Nick in tow. She's a good natured child, generally agreeable but willing to lay down the law when she needs to. My kind of kid.

This was the first Christmas that I’ve been to with the family in many years, so I tried to make the most of it. We decorated the tree with family friends Steve and Pettra, and had a nice jam session on the guitars while we were doing so. Christmas dinner was a medium sized affair by Boise standards, with my family (minus Erin and her brood), my Uncle Mark, Aunt Teresa, and cousin Patrick, as well as my mom's sister Kate, her husband Joe, and their kids Andrew, Jordan and John. A good time was had by all, as they say.

The next week was one with little planned, so I went to snowy and mountainous region of Sun Valley with Kate and Joe and their family. I had business to attend to. Sun Valley is my spiritual home, in part because of the small mountain that divides Elkhorn village (where we stay) with the town of Ketchum. The Mountain and I have had many conversations over the years, yet the last time I had spoken with it 4 or 5 years ago the Mountain told me things I didn't necessarily want to hear, and said that it couldn't help me until these things were resolved (I can't tell you exactly what the mountain said because we have an agreement). So I was a little apprehensive about meeting the Mountain again, having made significant progress in my life during the intervening years but still falling short of the goals that had been set out for me. I climbed the Mountain before breakfast on the last day I was in Sun Valley (I’m not an early riser, breakfast in Sun Valley is at noon), in my boots in the snow, testing my new knee. I thought I knew what the Mountain was going to say before I got there, but, like many interactions we have with people, I was prepared for the worst and was somewhat blindsided when the Mountain greeted me warmly upon my arrival. I apologized for returning prematurely, and the Mountain explained to me that I had somewhat misinterpreted what it had said before, and that things were not as dire as I seemed to make them out to be. And I lingered for a bit and allowed my synapses to absorb the new wisdom imparted, and I walked back down smiling and shouting because I had come home and I was loved.

The final days in Boise came to an end as I helped Joe and Andrew make a batch of their soon-to-be-famous stout ale. And by 'helped' I mean that I stood there and drank coffee and talked about beer for 2 hours while they worked. After pouring through the remnants of my meager possessions, still in Erin and Nick's storage locker, I took what I could carry and headed to the airport for my flight to Portland.

Portland was just as I remembered it: rainy and awesome. Heather picked me up from the airport and we headed to Southeast, where I used to live. Actually, Heather lives right across the street from where I used to live, so we got something to eat at a new cafe on the block, and we headed out for New Years Eve. I don't really remember much about that particularly, but the next morning was pretty great as we cooked breakfast and had Irish coffee and tried to reconstruct where all of our money went. That day I headed out to see my Uncle Bert and Aunt Patty in Southwest Portland, where my cousin Lauren also was. Andrew and his girlfriend Mara were there (having driven from Boise), and we all had nachos (a tradition for New Years Day for this family) and played with their dog Bodie.

The next day I went back to Heather's and went with her to pick up her daughter Hazel. I didn't realize how much kids grow at that age, and she is becoming quite the helper. She helps her mom brew beer and chop vegetables, and now has some of her homework entirely in Japanese.

The following day was band day, with the reunion rehearsal for Camaro Island, held in Aaron's new practice space. It was in a former storage warehouse that had been partitioned into rooms roughly 10' by 15'. The sound insulation is usually imperfect at these rehearsal studios, since there's not much that a 100 Watt amp can't cut through, and sure enough the metal band next door was blazing away at full volume. But we went to work, and soon our own jams were reverberating through the walls, as we played old songs, new songs, and songs we just like. I lost track, but I think it was after the 8 minute extended jam on the Stones' burner "Sympathy for the Devil" that the metal band had ceased, due to either having day jobs the next day or unable to compete with the sheer volume of awesome coming through their wall. We cashed a fifth of Maker's Mark and close to a case of beer, and I had some pretty nasty contusions on my hand the next day. It was a good night.

Later in the week, I visited my old coworkers at my old programming job. They were happy to see me, but they were fewer in numbers. The company had been bought out at the exact time that I left, and the new corporate regime was difficult. Some employees had been laid off and others were being overworked. Many worked from home now. It's hard enough to program database software in a little grey cube in an office with grey walls during the Portland winter, but watching your coworkers gradually fall away like petals from a flower makes the whole thing worse. I wish you luck, guys.

That night I went to the Chinese restaurant (where I used to work) with my friend Sarah. I recognized the girl behind the counter (actually, I had trained her) but she did not recognize me. We got our table and the waitress (actually, the owner's wife) came over. "Wait…..You're the cashier?" she asked. Success! "Go to the back, see Wing." She led me through the kitchen to the back of the restaurant to the same little office. Wing came out, bleary eyed, then saw me and smiled.

"You visit?" he asked. I nodded. "Ha. Get soup. Good soup for you!" and motioned to the prize, the employee soup, full of pork and vegetables, and sometimes fish heads and tofu and whatever else they had. I ladled two bowls and took them back to Sarah. We got the Mandarin eggplant (so good, you'll punch a cop) and some chicken fried rice. We ate our meal, and as I was leaving I stopped back in to see Wing. "This your wife?" he asked pointing to Sarah.

"No," I responded. "A friend."

"Your girlfriend?" he asked.

"No."

"No wife? Here, take her," he said, pointing at the girl at the front desk. "We get you a wife."

Wing apparently already thought I was gay, so I gave him a hug and set off with Sarah. ("Next time, call before you come over. I'll make you a special meal," were his parting words.) We smoked cigars in Old Town, then headed back to a club to watch a transgendered karaoke contest with some of Sarah’s friends. These kinds of things happen quite a bit with Sarah.

The last night in Portland I spent at my favorite bar, Baileys. This was the location of about 90% of my planning and preparations for life in Brussels. The bar had new taps, furniture, and a big TV with the beer listings. I met my friend Rob, and John from my band came out too, and we talked for a bit. Eventually, my Uncle Bert, cousin Dan, and his wife Liz showed up, fresh from picking Liz up from the airport. We talked awhile, and headed home.

The next day I flew back nonstop to DC. I got there in the evening after an uneventful flight, wearing my "Frenchie suit," and, not having shaved for 10 days, I suppose I looked the part. I was lugging my two suitcases up the hill to Brendon's house when a man with a cart walked by. "Welcome home, brother!" he laughed at me. I thanked him, a bit confused. "And happy New Year!" he shouted as he walked away. I wished the same to him.

So, maybe I've been too hard on DC. Maybe I've set unrealistic expectations for DC that can't be lived up to. Maybe I've tried subconsciously to sabotage my time here. I don't believe in New Year's resolutions (I will not base my self-improvement on the tyranny of the Gregorian calendar), but I've made a decision to be more positive about my time in DC. Like all of the places I have lived, my time in DC will be very fleeting, and I will need to make the most of the people who are here, because in the end people are all that you have. At least, aside from my Frenchie suit and this laptop, and a guitar or two, you are all that I have in the world.

Maybe in the end Bruges was here the entire time? I used to think of myself as being so self-sufficient and independent, and now that thought is laughable to me as I sit on my cousin Bernadette's couch (where I'm now living). I look back on all of the support that has been given to me over the years and think it's ridiculous that I could have accomplished anything on my own. I think most people have heard the parable about the two sets of footprints in the sand, and when the person asks God why there was only one set of prints during the hard parts of the journey God says "it's because I carried you." And I liken my own journey in life to this, except that there are dozens of footprints in the sand and one big smear mark, and that is what it looks like when the people who love you drag you along as you're doing your best impression at failing at life.

And I thank all of you.

Love,

Paul