For sweetness

I’m going to China early tomorrow morning, and my niece Elaina, only two months into being three, is getting ready for bed. We’ve had an extended Easter weekend with both sides of Elaina’s family, and Elaina has been very happy about it. But now it’s over. I hug her, tell her goodbye for the morning. She starts crying. “I wish you didn’t have to go to China!” she sobs. Her voice is high and growly by turn, adorable even when she’s sad.

I pick her up and ask if she wants me to snuggle her for a few minutes before bed. She says yes, so I carry her upstairs and tuck her in. I tell her I’m going to China for a conference, and then I explain what a conference is. I point out that her dad also goes to conferences, different kinds of conferences. “There’s lots of conferences in the world,” I say.

Somehow this turns into a discussion about all the kinds of things there are in the world, like water. I tell her we’re fortunate to have clean water to drink, because not everyone does. “But maybe we could give them some of ouws,” says Elaina seriously. “Yes,” I agree “Maybe we can. I’m glad you want to give them some.” I wonder, briefly, if she will always want this.

Chloe, age four, comes in and gets into her little bed. The girls sleep in the same room, wouldn’t dream of sleeping elsewhere, but there isn’t room for two full-size beds, so Chloe has her toddler bed still. But tonight Chloe is feeling jealous of Elaina’s bigger bed, and says so. I ask Elaina if Chloe can come cuddle with us for a few minutes, and Elaina says no, she doesn’t want to scoot over.

“But Elaina,” I say “We were just talking about sharing water with people who need it, and here’s Chloe right here.”

Elaina sits up soberly. Her fine, straight hair falls across her forehead. “I was thinking,” she says, pronouncing her th with great care, “maybe we could make a big bed fow Chloe.”

She climbs out of her bed and begins to run her tiny, soft hands over the bottom sheet. She is gentle and methodical. “I’m making a bed fow sweetness and kindness,” she says. She is involved in her own kind of magic, and I watch her awhile. Finally I ask if she wants to make this bed for Chloe with Chloe’s blankets and pillow. She says yes. So Chloe and Elaina trade beds, dragging their respective special blankets. I tuck Elaina in and kiss her on the forehead. “That was very kind,” I tell her “I’m very proud of you.”

I tell the girls that I’ll be sleeping across the hall, that I’ll leave my door open. “What if I have a tick?” Elaina asks. “Then I will help you,” I say “But you don’t have to worry, you don’t have a tick.”

The magic pill

When I was a homeschooled kid, I used to go hang out at my dad’s office about one day a week and do my math in the break room. Or I’d help the nurses file charts, maybe even watch a procedure if the patient was willing. Things like ingrown toenail removal; I trimmed my toenails fastidiously afterwards.

Something my dad used to say was, I wish you could help with more patients. I could dress you up in a lab coat and just have you listen to certain people. You’d prescribe them placebos because all they want is to talk and then be given a pill to make them better. You’d just nod along, and then hand them a scrawl at the end of their visit: RX Stultania QID. Maybe you’d even say something like “This pill will significantly improve your quality of life, but you have to give up smoking and Doritos for it to work.”

IMG_1542I would picture myself, a scrawny ten-year-old with enormous glasses, sitting up straight, drowning in my dad’s white coat, fastidiously taking notes into a chart. I’d have a nametag: K. Botkin, Stultologist. Obviously, none of my patients would speak Latin. What a good listener you are, they’d say. This pill will fix everything, they’d say. But I really have to give up smoking? And eating junk food?

And drinking Cola, I’d say. The pill is counteracted by preservatives. You’ll have to make your own food using real ingredients like spinach and butter and ground beef. The pill will change your life, but it’s a delicate pill, a magic pill. It needs to be massaged internally with yoga stretches and sit-ups. It will extend your life by ten years if you take it according to instructions. It’s cutting edge, so it’s expensive. Don’t buy it unless you’re serious.

They’d nod eagerly. They’d hurry away with their prescription. They’d buy broccoli and uncured bacon, butter and potatoes. They’d resign themselves to nicotine patches and morning yoga. They’d have to: the pill would be too expensive to waste. Sometimes, trying to work their ankles closer to their ears, they’d wonder if it was worth it. But then they’d go home and pan-fry a steak and decide that yes, life was actually pretty good.

They’d return three months later, check in, say they’ve slipped a few times but overall have done pretty well. You’d examine their dosage, add a tablespoon of MCT oil to their regimen, fish oil, a daily dose of bone broth. You’d give them a reward coupon for the original placebo pill: 80% off. You’d pat them on the back and tell them to keep up the good work. Elated, they’d fill their prescription for the second time. A year into it, with a bit of tweaking, they’d be full-fledged paleo-eating yoga devotees. They would be leaner, have fewer gallbladder problems, fewer aches and pains, fewer dizzy spells. Their lungs would be clear, their coughs less intense. Their circulation would have improved.

All this without the potentially disastrous side effects of the weight-loss pills and cleanses peddled by people marketing to those who want a quick fix.

The quickest fix: get a good night’s sleep and an excellent meal. Apart from that, go in for the long haul. Or pay me money to prescribe you a placebo.

Caveat: I’m not a doctor, folks. I’m a Stultologist.

Nelson on a migraine

I make it within five blocks and 20 minutes of the opening event at Coldsmoke Powder Fest in Nelson, British Columbia, which I’m supposed to be covering for Out There Monthly, and I realize I’m getting a migraine. To the point that I can’t see.

Did I mention this particular event I’m supposed to be covering is a series of films?

I wrangle getting in early and dumping my stuff, and start asking the staff if there’s a pharmacy close by. They say yes, a block and a half away. In a blind fog, I stumble out of the building and across the street, concentrating hard on the aura of headlights to avoid getting hit. Good news: I manage to find the pharmacy. Bad news: it closed ten minutes ago.

I’ve left my coat behind on the theory that the cold will constrict the vessels in my brain and cure the migraine. Longer exposure may do me good, so I set out down the street to try to find drugs, preferably legal ones. I have to stare down buildings head-on to read their signs, or maybe sideways depending on the spots in my vision, keeping a good pace so I don’t freeze to death. I lurch along Nelson’s main drag like a drunken tourist who has never seen civilization before. An older fellow appraises me at a stoplight and asks if I’m not cold.

“I’m trying to find a pharmacy,” I blurt out, and then correct myself, “I’m trying to find something to cure migraines.”

The fellow is sympathetic and suggests the local co-op, so I lurch my way to the natural market to find out what natural oils hippies prescribe for my particular ailment. Peppermint, of course. I purchase a vial of peppermint oil and slather my eyebrows, neck, forehead and temples with it. I march back to my destination and drink copious amounts of water, massaging the peppermint oil into my neck.

The first film is a psychedelic night-skiing light show with existential dialogue I can’t process. The colors are pretty, though. The music is so good it’s making my spine feel funny. I decide migraines are kind of like being on ecstasy, only with pain instead of pleasure. Everything just washes over you in feelings, tiny things that you wouldn’t notice otherwise. Actually, if you think about it right, it’s kind of delicious. I lean back in my chair and decide that if I hold my skull just right, my sensitivity is actually veering off into the realm of fun. I can see straight again. And actually my head doesn’t really hurt. I’m just high on peppermint oil now.

Katie: 1, Migraine: 0.

Feminism 101

I’m a liberal feminist.

Ok, I’m more of a straight-up leftist really, because liberals are kind of wussy and they tend to be corporate sellouts if you’re talking actual politics. I don’t like the term liberal unless by liberal you mean generous.

So I’m a left-leaning feminist, with a career and stuff. You know, Matt Walsh’s worst nightmare. Rush Limbaugh’s nemesis. I believe birth control should be covered under health insurance, because… duh. It’s really basic medical coverage that regulates a slew of health problems at a very marginal cost and thus certainly makes sense from a financial perspective. And also because Matt Walsh and Rush Limbaugh don’t get to dictate how many kids any other person should have or when other people get to have sex, which is really about the only reason not to cover it.

But here’s the thing that might blow Matt Walsh’s mind: I believe this, yet I don’t take birth control. I’m personally opposed to taking it. I’m not just a feminist, I’m a health-nut feminist, and health-nut feminists aren’t into putting artificial hormones and chemicals in their bodies if they can avoid it.

Maybe I should also mention: I hate power suits with shoulder pads, I don’t wear combat boots, I’m not a lesbian, and I’ve never taken a queer theory or gender studies class. Also, I was a virgin until I got married. Just as long as we’re discussing stereotypes.

I don’t have tattoos or body piercings or blue hair. I am conventionally pretty, at least from a body-size standpoint. I teach ballet and I practice gymnastics. I wear makeup and I have a closet of dainty dresses. Beautiful high heels make me drool. Intricate carpentry makes me salivate. I love steak and potatoes and bacon and I eat butter by the stick. I think vegans are funny and misguided. I love children. I’d be a stay-at-home mom if I had my own. I know how to shoot a gun. I date men’s men; the kind with muscles and innovative business ideas — and I’m supportive of their business ideas and verbally admire their muscles. I pay taxes. A variety of taxes. I also pay health insurance premiums, though I rarely if ever cash in on them.

None of these things have squat to do with feminism, in case you were wondering.

Feminism is the idea that women should have equal rights as men, and vice versa. That women should have equal access to education, equal pay for equal work, equal health coverage. That women should not be abused for being smaller (or bigger) any more than men should be abused for being smaller (or bigger).

Feminists, including hard-core leftists, have different views on pretty much everything else under the sun. Because feminism isn’t some religion with a unified creed you recite every Sunday, and it certainly doesn’t require that you kneel and hold out your tongue for the Eucharist of birth control, as Matt Walsh appears to think. It’s an idea; “I have a dream” where people are seen for the content of their character rather than the content of their bras.

Next question?

Starting home

I’m staring at the clock on my cell phone on a street populated with nothing but black storefronts and groaning garbage trucks, and I’m starting to panic. I’ve been waiting for 20 minutes for my taxi to the airport. It’s only five minutes late, but I haven’t scheduled much leeway into my pickup, booked the day before with my visa card at a taxi stand. I’m studying the Thai receipt by light of my cell phone, making sure it says 5 am. I’m gazing up and down the street, straining to see headlights. At 5:07 I wheel my suitcase to a 24-hour minimart and beg the clerk to call the number on the receipt to check. He does. “You wait, car coming,” he says. So I strain in the street for ten more minutes, until I’ve worked myself into a frenzy thinking that I’ve been duped by a fake taxi stand or ineptitude, and that I’m going to miss my commuter flight to Bangkok and hence the other three flights back home.

I make another trip to the minimart and this time the clerk hands me the phone. “We come, two minutes,” a woman’s voice tells me. Three minutes later, a van pulls up driven by a man and also containing the woman I’d talked to earlier. “But it was for 5,” I say anxiously, waving my receipt and noting the time of 5:20. “Sorry, sorry,” says the woman “no cars, Ok.” She has a point: traffic is nonexistent.

However, this van takes me to a strange little bamboo stand in the middle of nowhere and stops. The man points to the bamboo stand. I make a shocked noise that translates easily as horror: I’m not about to get out and wait some more. But no, the man was pointing to a car parked behind the stand, and he helps me run my suitcase to this new taxi, which the woman is revving up.

Once we’re on the road, I am comforted to see that she appears to be speeding, although I can’t be sure. I do the math. I can make it either way: I don’t have any checked luggage, and I tell myself I’ll use the priority line to get my boarding pass. My taxi driver gets me there in half the time I was quoted, and I thank her profusely and then hurry away to find Bangkok Airways. The check-in line contains one other customer and three staff people, so I’m served immediately. This is good because it takes them awhile to figure out what to do with my luggage. They have me weigh my little rolling suitcase and tell me it’s too heavy to take on board. This mean they have to figure out how to check it since I’ll be transferring to another itinerary once I hit Bangkok, and I don’t have time to go out, get it, and go back through security. I remove my computer, since I’m not about to let them check that, and put the bag back on the scale. The staff point and gasp: the bag is magically light enough to take on board. I hold up my computer to show them. “Ok, ok,” they say, “you can take bag on plane.” With my thus disassembled bags I make my way to security: no line there either. I have just enough time to have a cup of cocoa at the boarding gate courtesy of Bangkok Air and then I board.

It’s going to be a really long day. 39 hours, to be exact. I hope I can get a few naps in. I’m so amped up, I have a feeling it will be difficult.

The caves of Ao Leuk

If you rent a motorcycle, you can find the less touristy spots in Krabi, such as the network of caves near Ao Leuk marked poorly, if at all. The nicest cave near Ao Leuk is Suanoi Cave, and it is not easy to find. It isn’t the largest, or the most visited, but it is cooler by maybe 20 degrees than the surrounding sunny jungle — the reason being that it holds a 100-meter-deep aquifer, and the breeze blowing across the water makes everything fresh and blissful.

It is both a local swimming hole and a source of local household water — there’s a pump shuttling it away to prove it. Given the amount of trash littering the water’s edge, the presence of ducks, monkeys and wading fishermen, I immediately think better of brushing my teeth with local tap water. Bottled water only from now on.

You can explore this cave without a headlamp thanks to the light pouring in above the aquifer, which is not true of many of the other caves in the region.

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Nearby Phech Cave is good for exploration in the darkness, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The elephant revolution

When I was two years old, I convinced my parents to let me ride a camel at the San Diego zoo. They asked me if I was sure I wouldn’t be scared to ride such a creature all by myself. “I won’t be scared,” I told them “I’ll be brave,” and so every time I looped past, I called to them: “See, look, I’m being brave!”

But I don’t actually remember that. What I remember from that day is that after convincing my parents to let me ride a camel, I saw someone riding an elephant, and I thought: actually, that’s what I really want to do. But it was too late by then.

So 31 years later, I read a flyer for an elephant-riding safari close to Ao Nang, on sale for 500 baht, or about $17. This flier described the relationship between the elephants and the mahouts as mutually respectful, like the elephants were friends and children, trained early and lovingly.

IMG_0705But I can’t help feeling like this is impossible once I get to the camp and see the parade of people being plunked onto the elephants. Giant fat tourists set on iron Elephant spraying touriststhrones strapped on in ways that look decidedly uncomfortable. The mahouts sit on the elephant’s heads and kick at their ears to spur them on, touch them with bullhooks. They tell me to step barefoot onto the thick gray skin with its prickly hair, and I feel slightly like a rapist or a colonizer, like I’m violating a highly sentient being whose permission I have not gotten to use in this manner. I’ve grown up riding animals but this feels different. There is something, some superior intelligence in the way these animals lift their trunks to me, even in the way they have to be spurred forward. We go through water and one sucks up a trunkful and holds it a few inches from my face. I smile at it and think, serves me right if you get me wet, and the animal lowers its trunk, chooses a different tourist target, and sprays away.

As I look around me, I want these elephants to start a revolution. I want them to know their strength and communal wit, to break their chains, go running away into the jungle together and leave the bullhooks and the tourists behind. Some are saved and transported to elephant conservatories, but that still drives demand. Revolution would not drive demand.

Once I’m back in my hotel in Ao Nang, I start researching elephant riding. I’m horrified by what I find, remorseful. And more than ever I want the elephants to rise up in protest, break their shackles and escape into some remote corner of Southeast Asia where nobody could find them. But I don’t think this would work out very well for them. Only humans refusing to ride them would do the trick.

People like me

I meet people who think like me when I travel. Almost too much so, actually. I meet impoverished writers who tell me an effective way of getting free food is to find the unopened stuff in the trash bins in places like Boulder. I meet 30-year-olds living on fold-out couches all over the world, people who say they save money on all kinds of things but they spend on certain special things. For one guy, it’s good Port. For most of them, it’s plane tickets. I meet people who tell me about the feeling of lifting off in an airplane, a feeling that brings them near tears, a feeling of wanting to incinerate themselves in the engines of a jet plane and thus travel forever, never touching the ground.

Because I’m traveling alone, people talk to me and I talk to them. On a bus in Bangkok, a white boy grins at me and begins to pester me with questions: where I’m from, what I’m doing, how long I’m traveling. In a shared taxi in Krabi, a woman tells me in broken English that I’m beautiful. “Me, fat,” she says cheerfully “brown, black!” she points to the skin of her arms and giggles. I try to tell her that where I’m from, everyone wants to be tan, but I’m not sure she understands.

I am thankful for these people I’ve never met before and whom I will probably never see again. I am thankful because they have turned a solitary trip into one full of conversations and shared experiences.

But I am thankful most of all for the family who waits for me back home, for those I have grown up with and the little ones whose eyes are still full of wonder for my snapshots of monkeys and elephants, who snuggle down into my lap in welcome. I can go all the way around the world and come back to the tradition of mashed potatoes and turkey and a sagging table full of memories.

Baring it

IMG_0494If I could, I’d be a nudist here. The humidity, the rain, the red clay and the sand conspire to make everything you wear the worst possible version of itself; all your clothes are filthy in short order and sandpaper-itchy to boot. Washing them does not seem to help, it only gets them wetter and therefore more prone to souring.

My shoes are the worst, so I stop wearing them. I go barefoot for miles, through the jungle, through caves, over beaches, over the sidewalks of the tourist towns, over the rocks of low tide. I carry my flip-flops just in case, but I only put them on for heavy gravel. I even rappel barefoot after climbing up through a cave that overlooks Ralay beach.

At the end of my IMG_0592adventures I am wearing nothing but my bathing suit and a climbing harness, and am covered in splotchy pink mosquito bites and streaks of red clay. My feet are caked in mud. I saunter up the most frou-frou street of Ralay bay (which isn’t saying much) in this ensemble, sit on a stoop and drink from my water bottle.

I look like Gollum with chicken pox, but I feel like a badass.