Hello (again) world.

It’s all about escaping, after a fashion. Where you hike worlds, I write them.

          I am in Portland, now. I have moved out of Chicago, to my great sadness, leaving little behind but much in transit. I’ve landed in another shitty legal market—because there is no other type, at present. Fortunately, my water-treading work from Chicago continues. Even more fortunately, I’m not starting from scratch in Portland. Among other things, I am being graciously put up (and put up with) by one of my uncles, the youngest of my mother’s brothers. The brewer, the biker, the wilderness man. The guy who for fifteen or more consecutive years managed to ski every calendar month. To put it mildly, we have different points of view on the world.
          He enjoys cooking. Not elaborate things—not like the Retarded Gluttony dinners of law school. But good food, easy to make and consume. He grows his own salad—lettuce, tomatoes, and all. Most of our encounters center around dinner, as he’s gone for most of the day and dinner is a several hour affair around here. I don’t know my uncle very well, so it’s an opportunity to begin to know him. I expect, though, that it will tell him more about me than it will me about him. He’s good like that, and hard to read.

Do you know my favorite part of finishing a good story? It’s the afterglow of the thing, where I sit back and review its structure—as if it were a highway or a river with tributaries, or a capillary system that splits and rejoins—and I wonder ‘What was happening over there, just outside of the frame?’

          I haven’t posted in quite some time. I was never very good at updating generally, but I fell off the radar in the midst of trying to capture in prose my fleeting memories of Bhutan and how it is far more a magical kingdom than Disney can ever produce. I have a half-written post on my hard drive and a small notepad with tiny, cryptic notes on it that I haven’t looked at in some time, because I fear that they may no longer make sense to me. That the memories are lost in the morass of my head.  I briefly revived this thing in an effort, last fall, to emulate Laura's diligence with her own blog, but that stopped, too.
          I stopped posting for several reasons. Some conscious, some not. Some I may not even have figured out presently. I’ve never really been sure what to do with blogs, for one thing. It seems a bit vain to write purely about myself, about what I’ve been up to, about what I’m thinking. Stories about me are to be told in person, in the same way that photos of me are… well, honestly, not really to be taken. I’d rather be the man behind the curtain than the one in the limelight (spotlights, incidentally, are hot—and my distaste for heat is one of the more easily known things about me). I still don’t know what to do with a blog, but we’ll see how long this spate of posting goes.
          For another thing, I fell out of the habit of writing. I’ve always been bad at writing during school—I wrote prolifically (well, for me, anyway) on vacations, or when I needed to escape a while in college (see my first statement to my uncle). I wrote easily a hundred thousand words, maybe two hundred thousand, while in DC—there’s a reason I considered that coffee shop mine. Law school arrived, and changed my thought processes. Not only did I not write during the school year, but I didn’t write during the summers because my jobs entailed writing, albeit of a different and less pleasure-driven sort. Instead, I took breaks with video games and photography and dancing. Writing grew to be hard. I’m trying to break out of that now. Again, we’ll see how it goes. This blog may just become a testament to my vignettes as I try to work myself up to something bigger, better, and maybe even publishable.
          Finally, at some point along the way, I made the colossally stupid mistake of tying posting to job-seeking success. I decided—possibly when something successful looked imminent, as there were a few moments of false hope like that—that I would make my next post when I was sufficiently employed, to announce that fact. Most of you know me in person, so you’re probably thoroughly aware of my lack of permanent and sufficiently remunerative employment—I spent a year in Chicago treading water and being immensely, indescribably, incommunicably jealous of my friends who were smarter or worked harder or were in some other way better than me such that they ended up with jobs in law. I temped at a synagogue and crunched cases for a legal newspaper.
          I’m still un(der)employed. But now I’m in Portland being so, with far more possibilities and far fewer friends. I have plenty of people helping me, or trying to, but know no one closer in age to me than my uncle, twenty-five years my senior. God bless the internet for connecting me to my friends from life-stages past—and similar thanks be that my uncle is connected enough to have it in his house. Limitless potential here, in theory. Just have to prune it down to the possible, and then to the actual.

Writing—storytelling, actually—is all about cutting. You choose where a story goes. You choose where the story focuses. With every word, you choose not to write a million other words; you choose not to describe a billion other scenes; you choose not to tell a trillion different stories. To tell a story, you have to destroy the chaos of probability and bring it down to the one you need to tell. The lie you weave in words and phrases to convey the truths you cannot speak plainly.

          Those of you who’ve been to Portland—probably those of you who’ve even heard much about it—are aware of Powell’s Books. I’ve taken to referring to it, since I don’t know when, but not terribly recently, as Book Mecca. To go to Powell’s is to make a pilgrimage. It requires planning and supplies—or, at least, money. It’s impossible for me to go—no, not actually impossible, as I did it once—and walk out of the door without any new books. There were extenuating circumstances. I’ve been several times now in this run at living-in-Portland, and I am thus richer by some number of books.
          I finished one of them today—The Quantum Thief. It was fantastic. A few twists that I did not see coming, which is somewhat rare. But it got me thinking (see the second random conversational outburst at my uncle, above) about writing again. I have many little projects, and several big ones. And, to be honest, they all terrify me about as much as being un(der)employed does. But there are fewer excuses for it. So, to get back into writing, because I have stories that need telling, endless possibilities that I need to pare down into elegant and ineluctable paths to the conclusion at which I hope to arrive, I’m going to try to resuscitate this thing.
          I may write some essays, or at least essay-like meditations—possibilities there include self-control (or, at least, self-possession); silence, secrecy, and invisibility; or more links between law and storytelling. I might post updates about life in Portland, reflections on life in Chicago, and more of the now-ancient memories of Bhutan, but I don’t honestly know how much of that I will trust to the internet. I will, however, post excerpts and drafts of writing both for feedback and to have something to do with it.

Why do we lie to each other? Because the truth is so vast, so inaccessible, so incomprehensible that it cannot be communicated simply. Lies are easier to believe, easier to create, easier to exchange. Honesty’s easy, but may not get you anywhere; fiction’s where genius lies.

The City Breathes People

I used to live in DC. I worked downtown--such as it was--and lived with my parents in New Spring Valley in far-outer NW, a mile and a third or a mile and a half from DC's Red Line, depending on which station you wanted to go to. As I've mentioned, I don't drive. So my sister, in her glorious and copious patience, drove me to the metro most of the time. Yes, every morning (barring my five-week stint of doom-mono, or when she was out of town at trade shows), except when Mom did. Often she'd pick me up, too, at the end of the day. The rest of the time I'd walk: downhill is much nicer in dress shoes than up, particularly when there's precipitation.

Rush hour in DC is far more of a thing than it seems to be in Chicago. At least, that's my impression based solely on buses and subways. I'm almost pleased to say that I've never experienced the road-related rush hours of either city. I hear they're unpleasant. I suppose this is due to several things. First, DC is a far smaller city than Chicago, both in size and in population. Second, there are fewer metro lines (and fewer still that get the lion's share of rush hour traffic) in DC than in Chicago, congesting things further. Third--this one's just suspicion and speculation--the bulk of jobs in DC are governmental, concentrating the time at which people flee their offices.

The result of this is that I've never had to wait for a train to pass by in Chicago (Red Line, Blue Line, Brown Line, Green Line) as a result of it being overly full. In DC, I've had to let four consecutive trains pass (before shouldering my way on to get to my birthday dinner on time). One of the few pictures I have with people in it in DC (people there react to cameras being pointed at them as they might to loaded handguns in a similar posture) is of the Farragut West metro station (Blue & Orange Lines) at 6:00 on a Friday. There wasn't room to move on either platform. The escalators had been stopped so people wouldn't be shoved, lemming-like, onto the platform, causing others to fall (lemming-like) onto the tracks. People had backed up nearly to the gates. Trains went by, and still the tide didn't slow. It almost felt like the station wasn't big enough to hold the accumulated mass of commuters.

I lived a bit up the Red Line in DC. Not far enough up to get a seat in the morning (and getting a seat in the evening was more related to timing than geography), but certainly before the squeeze hit. And several stops later--at Dupont Circle, the stop before my destination--the train doors would open and workers would flood the platform and the streets. Those of us left on the train could breathe again, and try with better success to read our books, and generally carry on with our commutes.

I've already talked about my present adventures in commuting. It's settled down into something slightly more regular, modulated less by moving and more by my evening activities with friends or my boyfriend. But that discussion was mostly about routes and getting from Point A to Point B. This post is a discussion of the trains themselves, and their contents--people, in huge numbers. During the summer of my 2L year, I rode the Red Line daily from Streetervillehell down to Roosevelt, and I was always glad that I lived closer to Grand than to Chicago. The train would arrive at half past eight (or so. Or so) and would promptly disgorge half to two-thirds of its contents onto the platform before soaking up those of us there waiting. Half of my fellow commuters would step out into one station in the Loop or another, and it was just about empty by the time Roosevelt rolled around. The evening's return functioned similarly: empty train filling up in the loop, with a huge exchange at Grand--more getting on than off.

As may be clear, I spend a lot of time riding on trains. It always seems to me like the trains themselves are only a part of the system. Not in the way that buses and other such are a part of the larger public transit system, although it works that way, too, but rather that the trains wouldn't be a complete system without the riders. While on a train, I sometimes get this sense that the system--the train, the riders, the stations, the everything--is all working in sync, everyone getting on or off at their designated points and going about their daily lives from there and keeping the city running by so doing. And all the while the trains breathe people in at one point and exhale them elsewhere.

The title of this post may have been wrong: people are the blood of a city. It's the trains that breathe people.

Roommates

I am an introvert. This seems to shock people who don't know me that well or who have only seen me in small groups, but it's true. I am an introvert, and it's not that I don't like people, or don't need people. It's that most people are fucking work, and dealing with them is usually draining to some degree or another. That, though, is not really what I'm going to be talking about today. Today we talk about roommates.

What, some of you might be thinking, is the connection here? I am a flavor of introvert I tend to refer to as a territorial introvert. I like having two things in my residential space, preferably to coincide with each other. First, a bolt hole into which I can flee when people are too much to deal with; second, a space that is mine. It's hard to say quite what qualifies a space as the latter, although it being under my sole control certainly goes a long way toward that. Anyway, roommates.

I, as most of you likely know, went to boarding school. I had one roommate there, and only for three months--he left on permanent mental health leave (independent of anything I did) just before Thanksgiving, and the fallout from that is a story for another day. I never had a single in college, and one year went through three roommates (one for failure to sleep on his part interfering with my ability to do so, one for the house manager's being uncomfortable with unofficial gender-mixed housing by a non-couple, and one to close out the year in hilarious fashion). After graduation was two years of living with family--but in my own room (mercifully, we agree, for all involved). In law school, I had 647' sq. all to my self (aside from occasional influxes of other people's cats, which I invited and enjoyed), and neither need nor desire for a roommate. Now, though, I'm living in Ravenswood with my esteemed roommate Laura, who sent me an e-mail asking if I knew anyone in need of a roommate starting mid/late-August. I responded by waving at her and saying something like 'me! Me!' So I am back in the land of roommates.

Up until now, I've had a low success rate with keeping roommates as friends. The first one disappeared, never to be heard from again (except when he and his parents came to get his shit three months later, and during the entire moving out process said not one word to me even though I was sitting in a choke point of the room playing Diablo). The second one was a very good guy who ran in entirely different circles. The year of three roommates featured two who are still friends and one whom I will never hear from again (and I lose no sleep over that). The roommate from the year after that has blessedly vanished from my social horizons, leaving behind only stories of how I accidentally created the impression of a complicated and entirely non-extant love triangle in a dorm I did not live in. My last roommate-ship had ups and downs, but we did pretty well together--the key, I think, was that I had the little inner room of our two-room triple that slept anywhere from two (in the beginning) to six (at the end).

All in all, my successful stints of rooming with people have happened in circumstances that included a reasonable and well-defined division of space (a half of the room, a corner of another enclosed by a bed and a desk, or an inner room). The other main feature needed was a degree of consideration--each for the other--on issues that defy such petty boundaries (sound, stench, temperature).

There're plenty of issues that factor into successful rooming beyond mere personality compatibility: temperature preferences, general cleanliness/messiness (two scales, there), sleep schedules, equitable division of chores, musical tastes, etc. Just about all of this (responsibility for common space and cleaning common items/spaces aside) can be rendered moot by multiple rooms.

In my new place in Ravenswood, I have my own room. It is glorious, if rather densely packed with boxes that needed to not be in the living room anymore. Most of those, fortunately, will vanish onto bookshelves now that my friends found that they were in possession of my bookshelf-pegs (thanks, guys!). It's got its own air conditioning unit, a soon-to-be-filled wall of bookcases insulating my room from Laura's, sound-wise, and a closet for me to throw clothes in. Essentially, it's a near guarantee of roommate success (aside from how Laura and I don't suck at communicating--we've instituted a practice of leaving notes for each other when I leave before she's up and when she's going to bed before I'm back).

Soon I will be all unpacked and shit. And it will be lovely. Soon also there will be the His and Hers Housewarmings (the date for the His portion of it TBD), as it's a small place and we know lots of people.

Those are my vague and nearly clinical thoughts on roommates. Next time I'll talk about night time, video games, stories, or some other heretofore unconsidered topic.

On Mornings

I suppose the short story is that I hate them. A line I acquired from my father when I was younger sums it up rather nicely--if God had intended me to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it for noon. This isn't really quite as cut-and-dried as it might seem. Most of my problem with mornings comes from an unfortunate pairing of facts about me. First, I am so much a night person that I could happily be nocturnal, but for the civilized world. Second, I do not do terribly well on a lack of sleep. Going to bed before midnight is not only difficult but disappointing. Therefore getting up before seven is somewhere between a chore and intolerable.

As far as I know, I've always been rather like this. My mother, an aggressive morning person (it seemed like it was not enough, growing up, that she be up at some ungodly pre-sun hour--all of the rest of us had to be up sometime shortly thereafter), has stories about waking me up for school. She would shout, I would protest that I was up--flagrantly lying, flat on my back--and so it would go for several iterations. She eventually settled into three methods of prying me out of bed. Yelling, tickling, cats. The first was the easiest, and probably the least effective. The second was the most effort intensive, but also the most effective. The third was the best for stories: she would lob a cat at me, on the assumption that its landing--all claws extended--would startle me into permanent wakefulness. The problem was that I learned to catch the cat, cradle it as an actual athlete might a football, and then pacify it by petting. And so I would roll over and return to vague sleep. I only have vague memories of this, but I'd kill for evidence of it.

Boarding school came, and college, and somewhere along the way my mother either relented or gave up (probably a bit of both, is my guess), and therefore just let me sleep unless it was absolutely necessary that I be up and awake and functional. It was a lovely compromise. Since graduating into the real world (a trial run after college and the real thing now that law school's spit me out), my mother is no longer my alarm clock. I suspect this is a good thing for everyone. Instead, my cell phone serves--noisily, insistently, inevitably--in her stead. Oh god the beeping.

Now, when I wake up in the mornings--for the first time I'm conscious of doing so, anyway, which may not strictly be the first time (although it often is when alarms are involved)--I am awake. That sort of awake that crystalizes everything you were thinking about just before you went to sleep. The sort of awake that scrolls your to-do list before your eyes as they open in budding horror at how late it is, even though it's painfully early. The sort of awake that causes you to vault out of bed in defiance of gravity and several other laws purely through force of adrenaline and terror. It's rather unpleasant, and I'd much rather ease gently into wakefulness sometime in the early afternoon.

After the energy of waking up is spent--often my the sheer drudgery of getting myself from my bed to the shower, often by way of the computer (those web comics won't read themselves)--I lapse back into a groggy state that seems zombie-like only because my brain and my body aren't in synch. The brain's working fine--often a bit too fast--but the connection's a bit wonky until I've showered, shaved, and generally clawed my way toward humanity. This may be why people think I'm bad at mornings. And it's a fiction I'll maintain for as long as it's useful to do so--largely because, as I said, I dislike mornings.

It being 10AM, I still would rather be asleep.

Next time, I will talk either about roommates or night time.

Adventures in Commuting (in which I restart my blog)

Ladies and gentlemen, please don't panic. This is just a routine test. ...Actually, that's a great big lie. This blog's been dormant for more than a year, and only sporadically updated before then. Now that I'm all graduated and shit, there's much less excuse for a failure at regular posting (although I'm sure that I will persist in doing that, and in making excuses for it). That said, I am back online--I trailed off in a vague depression at 3L unemployment, and had intentions of restarting when I got a job. I never quite got the job that I'd imagined (I've got a this-is-a-pretend-legal-job starting next week and am presently temping with great hilarity at a synagogue in Hyde Park), but I am employed and therefore possessed of positive cash-flow, so I suppose it counts. That I'm working in Hyde Park is important context for this post--I'll talk about the gig here at some future point, I'm sure. Also about events of the last year, maybe. As I see fit. In any event, disclaimer aside, reintroductory verbiage accomplished, on to the post proper.

I am a temp. I work at a synagogue five days a week (three next week, and two thereafter until the High Holy Days and the system change are over, at which point... likely none). The synagogue is in Hyde Park, and I am expected to be here at or around (but no earlier than, as I won't be able to get in, and will invite Secret Service suspicion) 8:30AM.

I lived in Streetervillehell, as it was 6 minutes on foot away from classes. Classes, though, are no more, and I have moved up to Ravenswood where life is cheap and roommates are awesome. Well, to say that I've moved is not quite accurate: I (with the help of four heroic friends) have moved some of my shit, but not nearly all of it, as my old apartment will attest. The rest will come up within the next week, as I'm to be out of the old place by Wednesday.

Now, the reason for posting all of this, at perhaps too great a length, is that I have not had the same commute from Point A (wherever it be) to the synagogue and back twice in the week and a half I've worked here. I do not drive, and am therefore using only public transportation and my own two feet. So.

There are a variety of ways to get around this city, as most of you are doubtless aware. There are buses--lots of them, of varying speed, reliability, and quality. There are trains--my preference if they can get me even remotely near my target. There's the metra, if you're doing a serious commute and want to feel like you're a 1950s businessman.

The first day's commute was an adventure in three parts. I discount walking in all of this--at least in distances under a mile. Home to the Red Line (Grand) to the Green Line (Roosevelt) to the 15. The Red Line is... one of the better kept throughfares of the El, as it's where most of the tourists and a certain set of locals restrict themselves to, and encompasses Streetervillehell, Boystown, both ball parks, and various other places of moderate interest. The Green Line, by contrast, is... not that. It is less used by populations the city actively cares about, and white people seem to be at least marginally afraid of it (as an aside, the Green Line in any city whose public transit I've used with any frequency--with the partial exception of Boston--is usually one of the underused/underfunded/undercared-for lines). And the 15 is a local bus that runs slowly and infrequently along 51st/Hyde Park Boulevard. Total commute time approximately 1hr 10m. Stew drove me home that evening.

Last Tuesday's commute was less of an adventure, as it was a repeat of the first one. Still not enough time to settle in comfortably and read much of Kissing the Witch (a collection of brief, vaguely feminist retellings of fairy-tales. Quite good. Courtesy of Adam), but I did make progress. I found myself invited over to Stew's post-work, which turned into an invite to a dinner party, and thus was driven home thereafter--still no return commute.

Wednesday morning: same. Finished Kissing the Witch. Return commute involved waiting for the 15--for 40 minutes. Total commute time: nearly 2 hours.

Thursday! Same morning. Another stupid-long wait, but this time I took the 15 all the way to the Red Line rather than stop at the Green. Only 1.5 hrs this time.

Friday: skipped the Green on the way down--Red to the 15, which waited 15m to leave from the 47th Red Line station. 1hr inbound. Was advised that the 6 was, in fact, the way to get to and from Hyde Park in a reasonable fashion, so I tried that on the way home. 45 minutes of one leg of transit--heaven (and reading Chocolat).

Monday was the 6 both ways--a nice 12ish minute walk from my old apartment down across the river on Columbus, a similar walk on the other end, and about half an hour of bus in between. Confirmed my love of coffee for surviving mornings.

Tuesday had the 6 going down, but Stew drove me up to my old place. There was then packing and moving a fair amount of my furniture and suchwhat to the new place, followed by late-night IHOP and an air mattress in Hyde Park.

Yesterday I walked to work from Stew's, having woken up to an adorable flailing muppet of a dog named Charlie, as well as french toast. The 6 took me home, by way of my old apartment and a date involving two-plus hours of walking about the city, and involved the 6, the Red Line, and the Brown Line.

This morning was the Brown Line to the 2 (I hit Van Buren between departures of the 6), the latter of which featured a non-sensical stop for the driver to eat a snack of some sort while another passenger and I waited for him to keep things moving. Tonight, Bergy will probably sweep me out of Hyde Park the newly re-christened Mr. Bergy, for hanging out and moving of more of my shit.

Yes, this devolved into a variations-on-a-theme list, but there are two main points here: first, that there are a bunch of ways of getting around in Chicago, even if they're not all efficient or fast or reliable; second, that going halfway (or entirely) across the city for work is silly and, in the right light, rather entertaining. I'll let you know when I have a stable commute. Next time's topic (unless I feel like something else needs be addressed): mornings.

Bhutan Blog II (Paro-->Thimphu)

Another update, in the three-plus weeks it’s been since I put up anything. Actually, not that much has happened in that time, except that there’s been fun and games with a variety of things both work-related and not. I got a call from the State’s Attorney’s Office, either offering me a job or an interview (sounded like the former, for a variety of reasons including mention of pay, but that would be odd without the latter) now that I’d been two weeks at work. I managed to see Neverwhere with Laura on the third try, which was incredible and fantastic. Mr. Croup was what would happen if the eponymous V had been fat and evil; Hunter was badass and moderately sexy; Richard Mayhew was vaguely reminiscent of Neil Patrick Harris; Door played her character a bit too old. This past Tuesday I saw Billy Elliott with Kathy courtesy of Kirkland, which was also fantastic. There was an amusing failure to communicate concerning clothing and formality that resulted in me wearing a suit and being more formal than the ladies coming from their day at the firm. There were games and an increasingly friendly cat (she chilled on my lap for a good ten minutes last night while I was dithering about on the computer). Grades came out. Thursday involved hanging out with various folks after work at vaguely medieval dive bar. Friday contained nerdery, and we actually had a few people show (a nice change of pace); Saturday was rampant cleaning, Borderlands, the drinks portion of Kathy’s birthday party, followed by a game night wherein I successfully flouted GSF4; Sunday held coffee with a boy and starting to read what I now know to be an abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo (I discovered this halfway through, and am rather disappointed); Monday involved a lunch date with Destiny and a panel at Kirkland about the effects of gay marriage on society, whereat I seem to have set myself up as a go-to person for OUTLaw despite not being president. Yesterday I had my class, but more on that in subsequent posts. And now, back to Bhutan.

I should have mentioned in the last blog that we met what became B, C, and D (though it was never quite figured out who was which, as we always counted them as a group): Suzin, Lisa’s friend, and Caroline and [Amanda], their daughters. I can’t really give my first impression of them, as I did not write it down and do not recall it terribly well except as ‘oh. They’re here. Finally. Now we can go to the airport and maybe I’ll sleep on this plane.’

So, last time I left off, the plane had touched down in the airport at Paro. It was delightfully chilly as we got off the plane, and the sun was really damn bright. Someone else has a picture of the first thing I did in Bhutan: stand at the top of the deplaning stairway and take a picture of the airport’s terminal building, which was gorgeous and not at all reminiscent of any terminal I’d ever seen before. We got inside, counted off, went through customs, during which time Bergy nearly had to throw away his cigarettes (but didn’t after he swore he wouldn’t sell them). I went to the shop to by some postcards, and only after I did so did I realize that I’d left my sheet of paper with people’s addresses on it in Chicago. We started to exchange money, but after about a third of the line had done so to their heart’s content, they began to ran out of currency (Ngoltram--or, as we later started calling them, Jigmes or Wangchuks), so they started limiting our exchanges. The exchange was about 45 Wangchuks to the dollar. From there, we collected our luggage and went outside, where we met our guides and buses, and were met with white scarves as a symbol of hospitality. Most people looped them around their necks (they are rather short), although a few tied them around foreheads. We marveled at the luggage movement (from our hands to pile by vans to roof of vans with very little intervening time or--seemingly--movement). We then separated into two groups: those going to Paro to interview Dasho Lungten Dubgyur (the Chief Judge of the Paro District Court) and the rest of the group, who were taking the van directly to Thimphu, where we’d be staying for the next four days. The Legal Process and Constitution groups (less Shanna, who was not feeling well) stayed in Paro, and the rest went on to Thimphu.

A word about our guides. We had two guides and two drivers. Both drivers were named Namgay, though I didn’t learn this until later, and were differentiated from each other by references either to old/young Namgay or to Zala/Mango (Zala is the dzongka name for one of the two types of monkey that live in Bhutan). The guides themselves were named Dechen and Sonam. Dechen’s nickname is Egg, and I don’t think that we ever found out Sonam’s (anyone reading, do correct me if I’m wrong on that one). Each driver stayed in a particular bus, and the guides usually stuck with one, though they seemed to switch every few days, at least for a little while. Sonam was older than the rest (except possibly Zala), and the head of the touring company--Nirvana, which was awesome. He’d also been a candidate for the lower house of parliament for what became the opposition party, but--somehow--he lost. He seems to know pretty much everyone who’s in any way important, shy of the King. Repeatedly, when we expressed interest in doing something, or even just interest in something, he made it happen. Dechen was young--26--and seemed simultaneously both fairly shy and quite curious about us. The latter quality gradually overcame the former, and he seemed particularly interested in me and in Jackie. Next time, I’ll describe our drivers.

So. The rest of them left, and eight of us stayed behind in Paro, with the clothes we’d taken out of our bags to wear to the interview all stuffed into Sabo’s (?) oversized duffel (this can’t be precisely right, but it’s what I recall. I wrote down nothing about this particular detail). We were taken in the small van into Paro, past the first of the really pretty and amazingly badass cantilevered bridges (which were evidently built with the help of German engineers, I seem to remember hearing). When in the town proper, we first encountered murder dogs (all dogs in Bhutan are murder dogs. Sadly, all cats in Bhutan are murder cats. Cute as they all may be, and well behaved and polite as they all were, we were encouraged to not pet them because some portion of the mammalian population are rabid, and it’d be a touchy thing to get back to a hospital that’d have the immunoglobin or whatever is needed to de-rabify one from Bhutan).

We were taken to either someone’s house or a restaurant (I was never quite clear which), though the two are not mutually exclusive, and there we had lunch. In some ways it was one of the more authentically Bhutanese meals we had, insofar as there was butter tea (which Bergy REALLY liked, Sabo and I liked alright, and most of the rest of the people didn’t like that well at all), red rice, and chilis with cheese (evidently the not-quite-for-tourists variety, though I’m not sure we ever really got the honest-to-god Bhutanese variety), which are the principal features of a Bhutanese meal. Additionally, there were a variety of more-or-less Chinese foods, reminiscent of boiled or fried meats or vegetables with sauces. All in all, rather tasty. From there, we took turns going upstairs into one of a few rooms to change.

From there, we drove to the Paro Dzong. A dzong is a large square compound, part fortress, part monastery. They’ve been in continual use since they were built in the 17th century, as a defense against invading Tibetans. Many of them are still monasteries, and most of them also function as seats of regional or local government. Many courthouses are in dzongs—and that’s why we were going to the Paro Dzong, because that’s where the district court for Paro is, and consequently, where we were going to interview Dasho Lungten Dubgyur, the Chief Judge. Before the interview, though, we were shown around the dzong, and Dechen explained a great deal of it to us. There were murals everywhere, generally fantastic, and always related to Buddhism (even the yaks and the elephants). We were shown a Wheel of Samsara (suffering), and had its meaning explained; we saw the first iteration of the Four Friends, and had their meaning explained. Dechen also explained the gist of the prayer flags, and that we’d be seeing them pretty well all over.

After waiting a little bit for Dasho to join us (as well as his sister judge, who sadly didn’t speak much), the interview got started. It was a three hour interview, with two rounds of instant coffee (real coffee being unavailable in Bhutan except for one coffee shop in Thimphu) and tea cookies. Much willpower was necessary to not fall asleep in the middle of the interview--which was actually fascinating. Everyone got to take turns asking their questions, and we more or less ended up getting what we later found to be the party lines on a whole host of issues, but it was a useful first interview nevertheless--in part, I think, because it helped set us up as a mostly harmless group, if overenthusiastic and curious. We told people we wouldn’t publish their comments, so I really can’t give many specifics on the content of the interview, but it covered the range of each of our general topics and particular subtopics (legal process in Bhutan, the Jabmi/lawyer system and distinctions, the Constitution, its history, religion and fundamental rights within the Constitution, the vagaries of the executive and legislative power as spelled out [and not spelled out] by the Constitution, etc.).

After the interview, we watched monks from the monastery dancing in preparation for the upcoming festival (which started in Paro the day after we left the country). We were shown the computer system of the courts, and how everything was centralized, and how the books were kept, and how cases progressed. I took a few more pictures (this should not come as a shock), and we piled back into the little van--I was in the back left, bouncing all the way--and slept much of all of the way (it’s… about an hour’s drive? Hour and a half? Despite having made the trip the most times of the group, I never quite got a handle on it) to Thimphu. We got there, and it was dark, and I, at least, was groggy as shit, and then there was food, and lots of it. We were given our rooms (Morgan and I were in 209), and generally crashed (a note on evenings: I was generally lame and didn’t go out nearly as often as others. You may have to consult their recollections of the trip to gain insight into the shenanigans they got up to). And that was our first half day in Bhutan. At the risk of proceeding at a snail’s pace, I will end here.

“A choice may have to be made, not because language is vague, but because the Constitution embodies the desire of the American people, like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well. These paired desires of ours can clash, and when they do a court is forced to choose between them, between one constitutional good and another one. The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now, and a court has to do more than read fairly when it makes this kind of choice.” --Justice David Souter (ret.), speaking at Harvard’s commencement.

Return of the Blog (also, BHUTAN!)

So, the story of my trip to Bhutan really starts well before the morning we departed from O’Hare. I… have been bad about blogging, since December. Here is a brief (well, condensed) summary of what went on before take-off. Last term was rather damn busy. I was taking 15 credits (for those who don’t know, the law school ABA mandated maximum load is 17), though 4 of those were ITP Bhutan. I also took Copyright (taught by PCD, of torts, Executive Gays Cook for YOU!, and general awesome), Intro Trial Ad (which made Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and many other days generally hellish, but was at least moderately worthwhile), Evidence (with Hughes, of Carleton and strokes), and admin (with Speta of excellent fashion). All in all--timing of ITA aside, it was a pretty good set of classes. Evidence was moderately torturous, as Hughes was not the most effective of professors, but I derived at least some amount of joy from reviewing Speta’s outfits with Deb or Bevis. Finals were interesting. The final paper for ITP went well, and my topic (religion and the Constitution of Bhutan) became rather important--more on that later. I won my jury trial (one of the high school jurors was the judge’s son, I did all the crosses and therefore had to do neither opening nor closing because there were three people in my group), after losing my bench trial because opposing counsel misstated IL law to the judge. The rest were finals--admin was terrifying and it’s questionable whether anyone gave the right analyses to the right questions; evidence was closed-book and partially multiple choice with no great help from the prof in any way (but an awesome flow chart created by the previous owner of my book); copyright was multiple choice in entirety, open book, and moderately amusing.

Not-quite class things from last term: I lost time during the first couple weeks of the term following twitter live-blogs of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the closing arguments of which are in a couple weeks. I also lost time playing what turned out to be a patience game (I’ve since lost by giving up, after three possibly-dates and four months) with a boy who was otherwise quite promising. Barrister’s Ball--to which I went with the lovely Miss Laura--was fabulous, particularly with Morgan winning alpha permanently by winning prom Queen (Sue won as King, and the royal couple were entirely fabulous, even though Morgan makes for a REALLY UGLY woman). Seven courses were cooked for Sue Provenzano, PCD, and two other profs for the Executive Gays auction item--Becca made the dinner work by continually producing clean dishes. PCD hung out until two in the morning, despite having back issues, and drove me and Bergy home from Morgan’s place. There were study groups of varying degrees of effectiveness, and computer related shenanigans (I’ve recently beaten two operating systems into working together, without the aid of anything but google). Derek and I planned far too much of a Shadowrun campaign that went live during finals, because I’m brilliant. I eventually acquired summer employment (two jobs got within half an hour!) at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (a full-time affair, give or take an afternoon and an evening a week, with compensation in the form of four credits to be administered by Audra, starting in two weeks) and research monkeying for Bernardine Dohrn, revamping her Children in Conflict syllabus (for twenty hours a week, which totals 60. I've mentioned insanity, right?). During finals I went out to a swing dancing and tapas meet-up, where I met an interesting (straight) fellow who has decided that more dancing needs to happen. I acquired a cat and a PS2--each for the summer, and each from a separate source. I lost the week after finals to Kingdom Hearts II. Money the Summercat watched and purred.

So, as far as the class for ITP went, it was pretty sweet. There were readings, usually interesting, often thought provoking, and generally topically specific. A few times there were dinners (generally scheduled right after class, with the--hopefully unintentional--side-effect that I could not join because of ITA), or other get-togethers, for movies and such. Guest speakers would come and discuss topics, including the refugee situation, religion, the constitution (Prof. Calabresi was quiet thorough in his treatment of it, despite scheduling difficulties). And there was prep for the trip proper, in several different ways. We were divided among class committees, which were responsible for a variety of things (curriculum, travel, liaison, finance--I was half of the last committee, which Morgan headed), split ourselves up into research groups (constitution—consisting of me, Bergy, Sabo, Shanna, and Christine Leas—legal process, anti-corruption, foreign direct investment/business, and media), which did research and figured out whom to interview, and tried to set up those interviews. In the course of the class, I was tasked with contacting everyone’s favorite Scottish professor, Dr. Richard Whitecross, and setting up a trans-Atlantic teleconference with him (he was awesome). Also, we had to go and acquire a variety of equipment (chargers, converters, sunglasses, drugs--typhoid, anti-diarrhea, general anti-biotic, altitude sickness prevention). And I gathered people’s addresses who wanted post-cards. More on that last when it’s plot-topical.

That all seems a fair, if general and moderately lacking in detail, summary of the past term. Now, to start the story of going to Bhutan as I wrote it down. The story proper starts the night before we left, as I was frantically awaiting the arrival of what would end up being (because it arrived) my suitcase in the mail during this time. Ben and Russell were coming into town for the weekend, more or less on a whim. There was something about coming down to visit a friend who’d said to do so, but that turned out--I think--to not quite be accurate. We hung out a bit, went out to dinner, and I was told that the two Carleton-Roberts had planned to have a game-night. This… it was decided, would be held at my place. Starting at about 9PM. I hadn’t begun packing yet. I was due at 9AM at O’Hare the following morning, packed, passported, and at least moderately awake. People arrived, and games were played (Dominion, predominantly, with expansions), and I chatted with the gentlemen as I packed madly. We were limited to 20kgs of luggage, and I have no scale in my apartment. So… I guessed. Also, I had to frantically type up what I’d written of story (the Neil-Gaiman-dream one, this) in order to have story and paper on which to continue it while in Bhutan--this didn’t really happen, though, as most of my writing efforts went to producing the ensuing journal. The hilarity in my apartment continued, with much good company, until about two, when people filtered out. Russell and Ben ended up staying with (I believe) the Roberts.

I ended up getting three hours of sleep, and was up again to meet Morgan and Bergy (well, Morgan, anyway--there was cab-shenanigans in fetching Bergy, and significant missed connections by cell and doorman) at Panera for breakfast. Our cab brought us to O’Hare with some twenty minutes to spare, and we were nearly the first to arrive. No one failed to show, fortunately, and, after a severe argument between my passport and the scanner, we made our way through security. Bergy and I were both sorta punchy, and through some combination of circumstances I cannot quite recall I challenged him to maintain an Irish accent through the airport. He tried his level best. There was a discovery that Diamox (the altitude sickness drugs, which we were to start on 48 hours before achieving altitude) has a possible side-effect of making all sweet things--particularly coke and diet-coke--taste disgusting (this discovery made possible by Shanna and Christine, and made hilarious by the ensuing experiments conducted in the terminal). Bergy hates flying, so we played Carcassonne (during which time the term ‘castle-jacking’ was defined) as he drank. He got called out by a nearby bar patron on his accent, which seemed to degrade over time. After finishing the game, the experiments, and starting the Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which Bergy brought for my amusement, we got on the plane. I did not sleep much on the plane. Some, but not much. I finished YPU, though, which was quite good.

I was stuck in the middle of my row, between some guy and Christine Leas, and behind Alli Bates. We were surrounded by rather quite loud high schoolers. Our first flight leg took us from O’Hare (ORD) to Tokyo. This flight was many hours. I cannot recall the precise number. There were media issues, for which we were issued apology cards--these turned out to be more lucrative than one might initially imagine. I got pictures in the air of Alaska, which was gorgeous to look upon. (Megaupload link to pictures--there are a gig and a half of ‘em: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XH5W7O67 , http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3U7B1S9M --these are the initial, unedited set, just after the overexposed/underexposed/out of focus/blurry as shit cull. Edited pics will come over the course of the summer, I suspect) We landed in Tokyo, deplaned, and counted off. I was 2, Morgan 4, Bergy 6. Prisoner jokes ensued (‘Who are you?’ | ‘I am number 2’ | ‘Who is number 1?’ | ‘You are number six.’ etc.). At some point in this transition, I lost my apartment keys. Through customs we went, and set out to acquire food. Bergy and I had udon, various folks went to airport sushi, and so on. The triumvirate had a conversation about some nearby jailbait, and how unfortunate it was that a) they were jailbait, b) how thoroughly gay they were, and c) that they were rather cute. There was also Race for the Galaxy on the floor of the terminal. Then we boarded the next flight, zonked and unshaven, but well-ish fed.

The second leg took us from Tokyo to Bangkok (BKK), which was another 7ish hours, although the plane’s map had us routed to Hong Kong. I slept at least part of the way, but various… features… of the seating arrangements prevented effective sleep. I started another book. We landed in Bangkok, and went through customs, which was an affair involving much line-standing and repeated counting off (John Arendshorst seemed to delight in spontaneously starting count-offs by boldly announcing ‘One!’). It was hot outside. Intolerably so. And humid as shit. Bergy was very pleased with things. Our baggage was collected and shoved into vans, and we were driven to the airport hotel.

There. Were. Showers. Oh, joy and rapture, there was hot water. I cannot recall a time when I’ve felt more pleased about life to shave, shower, and brush my teeth. There were shenanigans involving room placements and beds and who was going to sleep through the four-and-change hour layover and who was not. It ended up that Morgan, Bergy, Sabo, and I kept our stuff in one room, and Morgan decided to sleep. The rest of us played games (Bonanza, this time—a bean counting trading strategy game), and eventually—once all three of us had run through hot water—went down to the vast, cavernous, and well air-conditioned lobby for further nerdery. Bergy and I also acquired food at the hotel restaurant—I can’t remember what I had, but Bergy had some rather tasty Tom Kha Gai (sp? Anyone who knows), which he continued raving about for three or four days. We wandered about outside briefly, he and I, while he poisoned his lungs, and chilled out with Matt Tsacoyianis and Caster a while, until people started coming down from their brief naps.

We returned to the airport and, after a brief misunderstanding, were moved from our initial deposit point--Delta--to our actual departure point--Druk Air (Druk, incidentally, is dzongka for dragon), which airline owns and operates a whopping pair of planes, with one flight a day coming from any of four cities. After getting our bags weighed at check-in—they didn’t weigh our carry-ons, the only reason that I, at least, suffered no weight issues on the way back—we retreated back through customs and security and whatnot, we hit the food courts. I had a slice of chocolate/praline cake that was exceptionally delicious and an ill-advised iced chocolate-drink-thing, which was similarly delicious, if hastily consumed to not imbibe melted ice and the… features… thereof. Then we waited for the plane, and boarded our flight on Druk Air from BKK to Paro (PAR) by way of Gaya, India (GAY. Yes, really). This was one of the most pleasant flights I’ve had in a long, long time. The seats were reasonably roomy, the food was amazing for airline food, particularly in that it was actually somewhat tasty in its own right. They served us mango juice (and orange juice, and water, and the standard other assortment of beverages). The egg-croissant-things actually could have been real (this trip's journal will feature lots of talk about food. Because there was lots of food, much of it rather tasty). There also was an assortment of fruit that we probably ought not to have eaten, but most of us did anyway--and thus I can say that I’ve had a dragonfruit, and see no further need to spend $7 at Whole Foods to try it. While it’s very pretty (both externally and internally--pinkish and kinda scaly-looking on the outside, hence its name, and like an albino kiwi on the inside with black seeds, it’s rather bland. Could be the ones we had, but… ::shrug:: This flight marked the first euchre game--of many--on the trip. Our pilot told us that on our left was Everest, so there was gawking and picture-taking--I don’t think that any of mine turned out, however.

I did, however, get a fair number of pictures of the landing in Paro. It’s consistently rated the first or second scariest airport in the world to land in, incidentally. You descend into a canyon that twists and turns and consistently narrows, all the while getting closer to the ground/mountainside. The scenery is remarkably pretty… and gets incredibly close. Bergy wasn’t quite so happy with this state of affairs, but was not the most vocal person about it. She shall remain nameless. Eventually, we landed, and that seems as good a place as any to stop for the moment. The next installment will run us from Paro to Thimphu, but probably not get much farther than that.

"Perhaps in the abstract one can believe that 'a troll is a troll,' but it is clear that all trolls cannot simply be judged alike, particularly when the inquiry must focus on distinct aspects of each." Dam Things from Denmark v. Russ Berrie & Company, Inc. 290 F.3d 548