Back Home

Sometimes, coming back is the hardest part. It has been a very...unique year for me.  I have to come right out and say it: I'm exhausted.  Not that I'm complaining, I mean, good Lord, I've had opportunities open up this year of which I didn't have the audacity to dream before they did.  I graduated from UWF in the spring, went to India over the summer, went to Britain for a couple of weeks after that, came home to find the new family home ready for occupancy; I mean, who'da thunk?  Needless to say, I thank God for these blessings.

The only downside to this year has been the discovery that I am a homebody as much as I am a wanderer; I think it's a 50/50 split.  I love to travel, but in the three weeks I spent at home between India and the UK, I felt like every day was a race to experience as much "homeness" as possible before leaving again.  I wanted to eat my favorite meals, see all of my friends, go to all of my favorite places and do it all now.  Now that I am home to stay for a while, I feel more at peace than I have felt since I began seriously preparing to go to India four months ago in June.  And it's a good thing too, because as tired as my body is, the last thing I want is a restless mind.  And, after the trip to the UK, my funds are sufficiently depleted so as to afford the luxury (weird enough sentence for ya?) of having no choice but to stay in my hometown for a while.

In a way, India messed up my five year plan.  My plans, post-UWF, involved developing my photography work into a more profitable venture and simultaneously finishing a novel over the fall, seeking publishing, and applying to work for a television production company after the new year.  Neat and clean.  But now, I feel tugged in a slightly different direction.  I saw too much and established too many relationships during my service in India to proceed with a completely conventional career.  No matter what I end up doing long-term, I want to support missions overseas, India and otherwise.  I cannot tolerate the idea of a career that will eclipse my ability to help meet needs in India, because in my perhaps-too-emotionally-biased opinion, the needs of my brothers and sisters overseas are far more important than working my way up to a corner office on the top floor.

Life has checkmated me into facing some hard decisions.  My perspective is different than it used to be; perhaps in a good way, perhaps in a less-good way.  Time will tell.  Coming back to the US, I view the priorities of many people as absolutely absurd, and the hysteria on both sides of the upcoming election is, for lack of a better word, laughable.  I have a hard time both listening to and talking with people about certain subjects.

So, that's where I am right now.  Whenever internet service is reestablished at the new place, I will resume my standard routine of displaying photographs and inflicting my written rambles upon the public via the blog; in the meantime, I'm currently ghosting in and out of coffee shops to write and edit.  Pray for me, if you like, as I look inward, look forward and look around for the best path to take.  Real life is tough.

Paleo no more! (Pt. II)

Quick follow-up to last week's catharsis. First, a clarification:

Lest there by any misunderstandings, my feelings about what is healthy and what is unhealthy remain unchanged.  What has changed is my approach to life and my relationships with other people.

I would like to share a quote from C. S. Lewis.  It comes from Mere Christianity, a book which I think everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, should read before trying to express an opinion on Christianity with anything like authority.  I have Mere Christianity on my iPhone as an audiobook, and I listened to it last week while driving to Daphne, Alabama to pick up a BOSU ball that I bought for a record-setting low price on Craigslist.  After spending last year frivolously haranguing people for consuming everything from gluten to seed oils, this passage came like a punch to the face when I heard it over the speaker:

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

As previously stated, I lost track of my original goal, which was to lose weight, and wasted seven months being a pedant and a food nazi.  In my defense, my experience and research allowed me to help several friends lose a dramatic amount of weight in a short amount of time, but I have come to the conclusion that I could have helped many more people if I had been less vindictive and more relaxed in my approach.  I denied indulgences to myself, and in the spirit of misery loving company, I wanted everyone else to do the same thing.

Which brings me to the fun part...

I want to burn through the last bit of body fat that is hiding my abs.  As such, I'm giving the Slow-Carb Diet (SCD) a try.  Followed to the letter, it is billed as a sure-fire method to reach sub-12% bodyfat.  Based on my prior experience and a year of personal study on the subject, the science looks sound.  Nothing else has worked so far in my goal to eliminate stubborn fat, so I have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.  In addition to a specific exercise protocol (in my case, kettlebell swings and a couple of unique core exercises), the SCD eliminates dairy, sugar, starch and fruit from daily intake for six days.  The seventh day, however, is a dedicated cheat day, also known as "reverse Lent."  Anything goes.  The purposes behind devoting 12-24 hours to eating any and all "forbidden foods" are both biological and psychological:

• Physically, "planned overfeeding" spikes the metabolism and actually results in a net fat loss over the following 48 hours.  Doing this once every five to seven days after strictly adhering to the rules of the diet is important to keep the metabolism from falling into a rhythm and downshifting.
• Psychologically, it is healthy to take a day to enjoy all your favorite foods.  The routine of "just a little bit" of fruit/sugar and dairy every day over the course of a week, always left me with the nagging fear that my sugar and starch consumption was growing insidiously each week, and I find that my mind is much more at ease on the new schedule.

My first cheat day was truly a personal coup.  For the past year, I was so caught up in the fantasy of living a "perfectly healthy" lifestyle that I neglected to enjoy some of the foods that make life...well, fun.  The prescribed system of reserving any and all treats (even fruit) for consumption only once a week makes them even more special.  After eating a steady diet of vegetables, lentils and animal protein for six days, the shock and awe of tasting something sweet really blew me away.

Unlike most people, my cheat days do not and will not include wheat products like pizza, pasta or pastries.  Gluten gives me cramps, and I've learned a little too much about the other properties of wheat for me to ever incorporate it back into my lifestyle.  However, I made up for this by having some ice cream quite a bit of ice cream.  I used Sunday as my day to sample some green tea ice cream at a local sushi restaurant after lunch, and at the end of the day, I made myself an enormous sundae.

Do you want to know how long it's been since I made or ate a sundae?

A year.

I used to be "the sundae guy" at my house, dipping up masterpieces every Friday night.  Then I became "the health guy" and stopped.  For my return to form, I made sure my first sundae was a good one: dipping up vanilla ice cream onto a bed of shredded coconut and covering it with chocolate chips, Heath bar crumbles and chocolate sauce.  After not tasting such a concoction for a year, the experience was transcendent.

For yuks and giggles, I logged everything I ate on my cheat day, and if you want to see proof that I still no how to have a good time, you can see the full set here.

If all you want are the visual CliffsNotes, enjoy these "best of" photos:

As either Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde (I can't find a consensus on the source) famously said:

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

I understand that now.  For whatever it's worth, I can do full compliance with a whole foods, paleolithic diet.  But without a "day of rest" here and there, my social life and quality of life in general go down the drain.

Sunday was fun.  But, as prescribed, I turned a one-eighty on Monday morning and went back to my regularly-scheduled diet of meat, eggs, lentils and vegetables.  This "clean" diet, which leaves my blood sugar comfortably level, will continue unbroken until next Sunday, at which time I will partake once more in the fun stuff.  Ben and Jerry's, anyone?

India, Day 1 - Goodbye is always the hardest part.

This is part one of my recap of my forty-day journey through India.  Some entries will be short photo essays, others will be more prosaic, long-form narratives.  This first one is more along the lines of the latter.  Enjoy.

"So, when do you leave for India again?"

"In about four hours."

Every trip is bookended by goodbyes, first to the people you leave at home, and later to the people you meet while traveling.  I hate goodbyes, and this day was to be full of them.  I love traveling, but only in the middle.

The night before I left for India, I didn't sleep well.  Even though my day's schedule began early, I got up several hours earlier than was necessary, because I simply wasn't resting well, and laying in bed rolling back and forth seemed a greater waste of time than getting up and pacing back and forth on my feet.  As there was a marginal possibility that my family would finish construction on our new home in my absence, I rose up and got dressed amidst a landscape of stacked boxes containing all of my worldly goods, which I had packed in anticipation of the possible move.  The environment drove home every aspect of the idea of "leaving home," and for a brief moment I felt like I wasn't coming back.  Once I had my clothes on, I had nothing left to do.  My bag and check box were both packed, double-checked and by the door.  Yes, I packed six weeks' worth of clothing in one backpack, my Monsoon Gearslinger.  I pack light and travel light.  I anticipated the inevitability of my buying gifts or a some new shirts along the way, and a packable duffel bag, reduced to a six-inch disc of fabric when collapsed, dangled from the clip of my backpack.  Sadly, my own efficiency had left me with too much time on my hands; the morning dragged on forever.  I was also experimenting with intermittent fasting at that time, and as such I didn't even have breakfast to kill a half hour.

I did a lot of pacing until I called my dad to say goodbye.  He was out on a business trip to Washington D.C., and I wouldn't see him again until I arrived home.  Afterward, I left at 7:00 to meet my friend, Jeff, for coffee and a book swap.  He had lent me Lucifer's Hammer, and I wanted to return it and loan him my copy of The Four Hour Body before I left town.  We only had about forty-five minutes to chat, a restrictive time for two people with a tendency toward motored-mouthing, but we did the best we could with the time we had.  But upon saying goodbye and exiting the Drowsy Poet, my next stop wasn't the airport; far from it, in fact.  An associate pastor at my church had passed away that week, and I wasn't about to miss his memorial; international flight be damned.

The loss of Pastor Mike Dekle was a blow to our church and the community at large.  Mike wasn't just a gifted administrator, he was a devoted husband and father and a great friend to many people.  He and I weren't very close, but I saw all four of my grandparents succumb to terminal illness, and I was very sensitive to Mike's own battle with cancer, and I wanted to support his wife and son during the service.  In addition to supporting the family, the service allowed me the unforeseen opportunity to see the members of my church one final time before I left town, as well as a number of other old friends from other churches in the area.  The service was a celebration of a well-lived life, and the reception gave me a chance to say a few final goodbyes and pray with friends.

After the service, my mother, sister and I went to one of our favorite restaurants, Siam Thai.  It might sound funny, eating Thai food before going to India, but I honestly love Asian cuisine, whichever region it hails from.  Siam Thai is also a family favorite, and I wanted one last opportunity to splurge on something familiar and well-loved before leaving home.  Several plates of chicken and bamboo shoots later, my mother and I had coffee at a The Bad Ass Coffee Co. while my sister attended her voice lesson.  When the lesson was over, we regrouped and the three of us went to the airport together.

In the airport restroom, like a scene out of Burn Notice, I changed out of my jacket, trousers and tie and put on a lightweight khaki shirt and a pair of Magellan cargo pants, emerging from the lavatory looking, well, like someone bound for India.  India was (and at the time of this writing, is) in the throes of monsoon season, and I had purchased several new athletic shirts and a few pairs of fast-drying pants for trip, all in accordance with a self-imposed rule of "pack no cotton."  I would love to travel the world attired like Indiana Jones or Josh Bernstein (I even have the hat), but practicality often dictates otherwise.

Clothes changed, there was still time to kill before I needed to go through security, and I re-entered the limbo of the early morning.  I sat with my mother and sister in the terminal, and we passed a few minutes in uneasy silence.  There really wasn't much to say.  We're an emotional bunch, and I didn't want to cause any unnecessary strain by speaking too much.  In the context of a year, seven weeks isn't a terribly long time, but it's still a respectable period of time to be apart from loved ones, especially when I would be making so much of the trip alone.  We talked a little bit, here and there, but I was honestly relieved when the time finally came for me to put dignity on hold and pass through security.

The actual goodbye was still hard.  I hate leaving people at the airport; it reinforces the separation before it even begins.

After the last hugs and kisses were exchanged, I shouldered my Gearslinger and went forward.  The exact protocols of TSA screenings change a little bit each year, but I stay one step ahead by keeping all of my change, toiletry carry-ons and phone in plastic bags in my pockets until I'm through the screening area.  It's a practice that saves me the trouble of rummaging around in my backpack while ill-tempered fellow travelers urge me to hurry up.  As much as possible, I like to design my circumstances to stay relaxed.  It works pretty well, so much so in this case that a female flight attendant, seeing my buzzed hair and single, compact bag, asked me if I was military, because she was unused to seeing any other group of young males be so polite while going through security.  Plus one for Southern manners.

Once through security, I boarded the plane.

The plane flew.

The plane landed.

I found myself in Miami International Airport, with a long layover and, again, very little to do.  I wandered through the terminal, marveling at the sameness of every shop.  I made a few phone calls home, speaking once more to my dad before I crossed the threshold into the realm of international phone charges.  My father runs his own business, and with the added pressure of handling a lot of his own contracting in the construction of our new home, he had been unable to see me off at the airport himself, and it was important to me to speak to him one more time.

When dad and I were finished speaking, I hunted down a coffee shop and bought a cup of green tea to chill out with while waiting for my flight.  It was a long trek--the international terminal in Miami rambles on interminably.  On the way back, I passed a heavyset black man on the concourse, and he hailed me in a thick Caribbean accent.  It turned out that he was from Haiti, and was passing through Miami on the way to visit family.  He was having trouble finding his gate in the massive terminal.  It so happened that I had seen where his gate was located on my way up from my first flight, so I walked with him for a while and took him to where he needed to go.  He summed up the airport with a single sentence: "Miami's just too big, man."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

My Haitian friend at his gate, I made the hike back to my own gate (tea still in hand!) and gave Jeff a ring to tie up the loose ends from our abridged conversation of the morning.  Jeff has also served in India; that was actually where we first met and became friends, and that left us with plenty to talk about before I left to go back for an extended period.  Anyone who has been to India will testify that it is a hard country to adjust to, between the cultural differences and the sheer frenzy resulting from a population of 1.2 billion people, and Jeff and I enjoyed a few good jokes as to the challenges facing me upon my return.  As we spoke, the call came over the loudspeaker: it was time for my section to board the plane.

I finished with Jeff, shouldered my bag once again and boarded the plane.  It was late.

Next stop: London.

Doin' the work...in the sky!

Yours truly, doing my thing in a small airplane over Alabama yesterday.  I tagged along with my buddy Sheldon when he went up to shoot some air-to-air video aviation footage for a project he's currently working on. The inflation of my shirt is due to the absence of a door on my side of the airplane.  Yep, you heard me correctly.  We don't mess around.  Big thanks to Sheldon for grabbing a few [awesome] shots of me while we were up in the air.

A letter posted too late.

I took some time this evening and wrote a letter to a very kind, older Italian couple whom I met on a train between Faenza and Bologna two years ago.

I was an American kid who spoke no functional Italian; they were a retired couple in their middle sixties who shared my train compartment. "I work in the trains for twenty years," Renato told me in his scant but earnest English, "now, I rest!" He and his wife, Lena, were on their way to eat lunch at the staff commissary in Bologna where he would always eat when he worked as a train conductor. They invited me to lunch with them, and we had a wonderful couple of hours together eating lasagna and green salad before I went on to Venice and they went back home to Faenza. They saw me to the platform to make sure I boarded the correct train.

I have had their address in my journal for two years. This evening, I was informed by my father of the recent earthquake in Bologna, strong enough to be felt as far as Venice and Verona. I will post my letter tomorrow to see if my "temporary Italian grandparents" are alright.

It's times like these that I really hate my own apathy.  I should have been writing to them since I returned home two years ago.