9 Months in Mongolia...in 4 paragraphs

When I first touched down in Mongolia, the view from the airport was something like staring out into an abyss. I hardly remember seeing the city, and can barely recall the people who met and greeted us out on the concrete sidewalk outside the terminal. There was one thing, however, that stuck in my mind and I have no idea why. I remember a raised road that went above the end of the taxi kiosk on the right-hand side. I remember the stone arch-way it created as a kind of exit for the taxis on their way to the city. I remember feeling at that moment that I was crossing something significant, though I was much too caught up in the chaos of the moment to really think about it. And, of course, once in the micro-bus headed to a tourist ger-camp outside the city, I hardly noticed even crossing over that threshold. But there was something about the arch that stuck in my mind long afterwards...

And so I went on transitioning into Mongolian life as a Peace Corps volunteer. I went through the first 3 months learning the language, adjusting to the culture, and sitting in these classes just praying for the end so I could go read my book. I tried to be "up-for-anything" as much as possible, but that shit is tiring when you're already emotionally fragile and physically exhausted. It was in those moments of desperate frustration that my mind would return to that arch. It began to represent the gateway to Mongolia for me. Like the next time I see that arch, I'll be going the opposite way through it. I'll be going home! It was like an illusory finish line at the end of a marathon. You're only about 2 miles in and already praying for the next 4 to 6 hours to be over already.

But it doesn't end, and soon enough those thoughts of the finish line disappear, replaced by insane kind of meanderings of someone who consciously put himself into this holding pattern. You get thoughts about childhood, and walking through stone piles created by giants. You get thoughts about snow drifting through cracks in windows and how they represent some weird metaphor for...wait, what was that entry about, again?

Now here I sit, about 3/8 of the way through, almost able to see the halfway point off in the distance. And suddenly I find myself running beneath that archway again. It doesn't process immediately. Like a double-take, but much more subtle. There's a nice Mongolian word for it...hamaagui. It means something like "it doesn't matter" or "I don't mind". But the Mongolian word doesn't have a subject. There isn't an actor in mind. It's more like that actual thing, that actual moment, has lost its own meaning. Not that the actor sees less meaning in it. So, on my return back from my short vacation, I passed beneath the arch once again. But I didn't feel that I had returned to this place, I hadn't returned to my Peace Corps life. I wasn't re-starting. I hadn't even left. Maybe it was like seeing a first love again for the first time. The positive and negative emotions had disappeared. There was only a last little string that held me to it. And there just isn't an emotion to describe it in English.

To the Winter

            I decided to write this blog for all of those people who are mad at me for not writing in such a very long time (which could, honestly, just be me). My lack of communication is for no other reason than I have not had the time. Which is more to say that a time for me to write just hasn’t come. To be honest, I have had more than enough time to be able to write something. It just hasn’t come from me.

            Maybe my mind has gone into hibernation with my body. The weather here is a high of about -20 Celsius, which is something like -4 Fahrenheit (today it’s right around a warm -34 F). Each trip to the outhouse is like a little bout of masochism. Each morning waking up like, I assume, a pig would in a butcher’s freezer…if it could open its eyes. It comes as no surprise, then, that my ass has suffered a minor burn from leaning too close to the stove during one of my morning fires. But I can’t really be upset with myself. In the end, all I get is a comedic story to tell about how I burned my ass on a Mongolian stove. Plus I avoided burning polyester and elastic into my ass by having my long underwear riding a little too low…phew.

            And that’s about the biggest news I’ve had since the last time I wrote. There have been plenty of ups and downs, plenty of drama, and a bearable amount of stress. Funny how everyday frustrations can disappear just through recurring every day. Lack of communication skills has not prevented me from meeting very interesting, friendly, and loving people. And it hasn’t prevented me from meeting the opposites either. Mongolia is not such a different world. Culture, seen one way, is a people’s way of dealing with the problems that the world presents. But most of our problems are the same. It’s just the interpretation and response to these problems that makes us appear different. Take the cold as an example. Americans still deal with the problem…just as much as Mongolians. The difference is that Americans have a different response to the cold. They leave an electrically heated home to go out and start the car 10 minutes before they leave so it can warm up so they don’t have to deal with freezing cold steering wheels and leather seats. Then they walk the, maybe, 100 yards to their place of work (which is also heated).

            Mongolians, however, do not have reliable housing situations where electric heating could be considered safe. So, they employ the strategy of making consistent fires, even throughout the night, and layering when they leave the house. A thick pair of Camel hair socks, fur-lined boots, two pairs of long-underwear, jeans, a long-sleeved undershirt, a dress shirt, a jacket, and a traditional del (basically an oversized, fur-lined bathrobe). But no hat, unless they have made it to UB where they can buy one of those traditional Russian hats for around $200 American, or a rip-off in the black market that’s made with dog hair for about $20. Then they walk to work, where, if they are lucky (like I happen to be here), the building is heated.

            Their difficulties have little to do with a lack of personal money. Many Mongolians have cars and could afford to drive to work every morning if they chose to do so (and some do). But it is seen as frivolous here (more so in small towns where globalized culture has less of an impact). After all, most residents of small towns live within a 15-minute walk of their workplace; and, those that don’t live in the countryside as herdsmen. Plus, the non-paved roads make it almost more time-consuming to drive from one side of town to the other. Fact is, it’s hard to compare America to Mongolia. The only things Mongolians can’t typically afford are American import items (here, an iPod that costs $250 in America, costs about $400). Another example. I bought a 1 TB hard drive for $100 in the US, but a 250 GB hard drive costs $150 here. Supply and demand, I suppose. It probably ends up being American ex-pats or tourists who buy these things in Mongolia anyways. It’s a very new experience living in a country that is developing so quickly. Peace Corps volunteers just 5 years ago must have had a very different experience. I often find myself wondering what it was like for them…I highly doubt many kept blogs or even used the internet at all. But here I am, sitting on Facebook, checking up on friends, Facetiming with my family. 3^rd world?? Huh.

Well, I think I’ve had enough for the day. Love to all, Ben

The Trip

It feels like this trip has taken about half of my life, and we're only in South Korea! Right now, I am sitting in the international section of the Seoul airport (apparently pronounced 'soul'), patiently waiting for our Mongolian flight. The flight yesterday took about 12 hours, and I can honestly say I never want to spend another second on an airplane. Oh well, I guess I kind of knew that the travel portion of the trip would be the least fun, and most exhausting. I have met some really great people, and some not so great people, but all-in-all I am so happy to have met them.

My anxiety, of course, decided to flare right away once I arrived in San Francisco, and keeping food down has been a bit of a struggle. Luckily, I was blessed with incredible parents, and my mom and dad talked me through the night in San Fran, and the world doesn't look so bleak as it once did :) Plus, I got to FaceTime with them, the puppies, and Putter Goodwin earlier this morning, which was a great comfort.

Like I told my dad on the phone in the San Fran airport, the first thing I did upon meeting all of the other M-23s (the 23rd group to serve in Mongolia) was search for a father-figure type who might help me along the way, but my dad leaves a helluva pair of shoes to even try to fill. Anyways, I met a guy named Kevin who is right around 40-45, who (like me in my long-hair, classic rock days) loves Led Zeppelin. Not even close to Butchy, and a little more of a crazy uncle type, but his face has been a welcome and comforting sight. I've also been spending a lot of time with a young married couple in their late 20s who have been extremely kind and great travel companions...definitely my best friends of the trip so far.

I am extremely nervous about the whole trip, but in my heart I knew it wouldn't be a cake-walk. I am trying to set short and long-term goals for myself. Yesterday, my goal was to just make it to the hotel in Korea and pass out. My long-term goal, right now, is to make it through PST (which ends around mid-August). By that time, I hope, I will be much happier, and set on staying in Mongolia for a longer period. It will all take some time and a lot of patience. Plus, seeing my man Joe Wheeler in mid-July is something to look forward to!

The beat goes on, I will be back soon,
Ben

PS - Disclaimer - The views expressed in this blog are mine personally and do not reflect the opinions of the US Peace Corps

Finally some inspiration came

            The day crept in through my sleeping bag as a familiar “ding-da-ling” goes off to wake me up. Through my half-moon skylight drift a few lost flakes of snow. Is it really snowing? I think. I suppose it must be. I can’t here any wind, so these can’t be flakes blown in from snowdrifts. My body rolls out of the sleeping bag into a freezing cold, circular room that is too small for me to stand erect. At a small washbasin my teeth are brushed. After which I grab two boiled eggs and break them on the corner of the table. My stomach devours them, and soon enough I am out in a cold white sheet.

            The first day of snow has always had a strange affect on me. Why, I wonder? The earth covering itself in snow is an act of erasing. Like a student who made a mistake with his verb conjugation, the mistake is covered in a sea of white. It makes me think. Every year we observe this. No matter the mistakes, the world covers them up, they dissolve into the white, and spring comes to create new possibilities. Is it in human beings as well? Do we use the nature of the seasons to refresh ourselves?

            My reaction, then, makes perfect sense. My mind reacting to the implication that, in a short time, all will be cleared away. Life will start anew. Unfortunately, emotion can never be so simply explained. Human beings may have the capacity to be rational, but we also embody the irrational. Emotions simply cannot always be explained. The more we experience them, the more we see them, the easier it is to accept them. That doesn’t make them any less illogical. We can understand a child’s tantrum, we can empathize with a lover’s betrayal. Our experiences develop our emotional intelligence.

            The stranger part of emotion is the fact that truth affects it little. Rationalized emotion does not disappear. When we perceive the root of sadness to have been discovered, the sadness does not disappear. Sadness is not a weed. You cannot spray the root and kill the plant. Indeed, treating emotion as an opponent never made the emotion any weaker. I can defeat sadness with great mental effort. I can exercise to forget my troubles. I can watch TV to flood my system with dopamine, or I can just take a pill with lots of dopamine in it. But, in the end, the emotion returns; often stronger than before. Emotion cannot be fought and defeated.

            I ask my body to move over the rough ground to my school. The padded earth engulfs the sounds of my breathing, my footsteps. Only cars are heavy enough to break through to the earth below. Even then, their sound is quickly absorbed by the surrounding snow. I glance up to the sun, hiding behind thinly spread clouds creating a false mountain landscape. I think of how the sun hides the stars from my eyes. Truly, the light from those stars still hits my eyes. The sun just conceals their distinguished existences from me. There’s nothing quite like looking at the sun behind clouds to make one feel like an ant beneath a magnifying glass. Certainly not in the idea of burning, but in the frailty of existence. Like the half-concealment of the sun suggests its entire disappearance.

            Now I sit quietly in the faculty room. A seasonal pine rises to just outside the second story window. Below, out on the concrete playground, two small boys are playing a version of tag with three girls using a foursquare box. One girl stands much taller than the others. She manages her height well. Quite the opposite of a lanky youth, she jumps smoothly past the boy as he lunges after her. The fresh snow doesn’t keep any of them from sprinting and stopping, only to find themselves well out-of-bounds. Rather than learn from the constant slips and falls, the slides become an integral part of the game. I look to the sun and realize it has come from behind the clouds. Was it the life in the children’s game that brought it out, or did it breathe the life into the game?

            As I try to remember which came first, I hear the class bell ring. The school springs to life. Children’s voices rush down the halls. Teachers stop by the faculty room to steel for the next lesson. I sit and watch quietly, not a strange experience for either me or them. I can see the last lesson leak from them as they breathe sluggishly and talk with one another. As soon as they reach the doorway of the next classroom, a spring will return to their step, a spark to their voice. The children will consume it all in the next 40 minutes, and they will return to this room, mustering up for the next 40-minute diffusion. And what separates these men and women from others becomes abundantly clear. Every day they give a piece of themselves for the sake of others. But they don’t hold a grudge for it. They savor it.

            As I walk to my lesson, I remember that I was thinking about the sun and the children playing, and before that, the nature of human emotion. How did my mind jump so freely from subject to subject? Or was it free at all? Was it really just dependent upon the impressions of the world around me? The truly frustrating part is that my mind always jumps to the next subject right when I feel that I am on the verge of a great realization. Maybe that goes back to the nature of emotion. When I try to control my thoughts and feelings, they often escape me. I must learn to let my thoughts go where they will. But if I let them go where they will, can I be sure that they will mean anything?

Hmm, I dunno what this one will be about...

I feel like I have little to share today. Not that nothing new has happened to me here, I really just feel as though I have very little to share. Maybe that is because I am adjusting to life here, so it doesn't seem so relevant for me to share each waking moment. Though I highly doubt that considering some of the thoughts that run through my head here.

Isn't that a strange phrase...thoughts running through our heads? Half the time a thought is truly just a fleeting moment, so it may seem to be running to us. But what seems more strange to me is the odd sensation that time slows down when thoughts are flying by. When I am completely peaceful, when I am laying by my stove, eating my pan-fried mutton and onions (a staple food here), it's not like I am not thinking anything. In fact, if I focus upon the activities going on in my head, I see a million thoughts flying by, most of which are but fragments. Something like onion...skylight...beautiful... Saikhan...purpose?...content...run tomorrow?...English English English...dreams. A million thoughts bring an incredible amount of comfort, whereas one thought drives you crazy.

I suppose I experienced this just yesterday as I ran my first 18k run. In all honesty, I didn't go out expecting to run so far. I have a run that I love here, and it is around 8k. Four kilometers out, four back. But I knew, upon waking, that I needed to run a little further. Not that I had an exceptional amount of physical energy, I simply felt restless, and I knew that a long, even-paced run would set me at ease. And so I set out.

The run isn't incredibly exciting in-and-of itself. Mostly the path runs along a dirt road, following cow and horse trails now and then, as it winds further and further south of my town. Eventually, you come upon three dips, the first of which is a simple up and down (less than 15 feet altitude change). The second takes the longest, but only because it stretches out for about 200 meters. The up and down is maybe 45 feet. Then the third dip comes along. And it doesn't give you a break. Right after you reach the pitch immediately following the second hill, you're descending into this bowl. At this point in my run, regardless of any thought I may be stuck on, my mind immediately turns to the hill before me. That says a lot about the nature of the hill. It demands your attention once you come upon it. It has something to it in the eyes of a runner that things like the Grand Canyon and the Moon have to all people. It refuses to be ignored.

I noticed all of these features of the 3 dips as I ran today. Yet, I had run them many times before, without so much as a single thought in their direction. I could attempt to explain why, but I feel like simply stating the fact is sufficient enough. Like when someone divulges to you that they find themselves intimidating at times. Naturally, you want to ask why they feel that way, but then you consider the fact that any response they could give you would only make them seem vain and conceited; and so, you hold your tongue and simply comfort them.

But I ran on. I continued running up and down smaller hills...ones that I had never seen before. Ones that I had no previous connection with. At this point, a certain truck pulled up alongside me, and the driver waved me down. This wasn't the first time I had seen the truck on this run. Actually, I had waved to the driver twice before this moment, and spoke a few words with him as I was contemplating my dips and hills. But, up until now, those moments had seemed irrelevant. Now, however, the truck became my personal cheerleading section. The driver would go a few kilometers into the distance, wait for me to catch up, then continue on for another few kilometers.

Suddenly, I wasn't running through the Mongolian steppe, I was running my own personal marathon. Each and every rise gave view to a continuing road that my feet would feel every inch of. 14k into the run, my body began to give out. The first 4k were standard, my body had been there before. The next 4k were new only in that the ground upon which I ran was untouched by my soles. The next 6k escaped completely from my mind. At that point, I can only assume my body took the meaning that we weren't stopping at our usual checkpoint. But when 14 rolled around, my stomach gave a lurch, my hip flexors seized, and the world disappeared around me. I retreated into every ache. Suddenly my mind felt surrounded by a strange goo. My eyes could see that the grasses and the road were clear ahead of me, but my body dominated all perception. Each movement of one foot before the other was a struggle with some other body. I felt like a brain put in another's body, like a newborn just learning to walk. The final 4k took their toll, but none so much as the last 1 kilometer, where I was confronted with the steepest hill yet. All I could think of was how I wished I wasn't here, at this moment in time, living in this exact spot with this exact goal in mind. I would trade anything to be anyone, anywhere else. But I pushed myself up, at a pace slower than a walk, but continuing to bounce my feet, pretending I was flying up this hill.

And it hit me at the top. Once I hit my imagined finish line, my pseudo-cheerleader patting me on the back, asking how I felt...this is what happens when I am sad, depressed, lonely or anxious. I have a hill to push myself up, and it is always at the end. It is always there, when you want to give up most. It makes you think only about the challenge it presents and not the reward of reaching the top. But the reward at the top is always the same...freedom from the trench that you have dug yourself. Freedom from your depression and angst. The freedom to watch all your thoughts fly by, just like the first three hills you made it up and down without so much as a second glance.

A two-parter -

Today, I walked Saihan mountain today (though I suppose it’s not the ‘real’ Saihan mountain, just a mountain with the letter written on it). My immediate steps from the door put me into a new world. That may have been due to the fact I was wearing a new a different pair of shoes, but what of it? The spring in my step was simply a noticeable difference.

            And so I walked. I had some idea of a destination in mind (the top of the mountain), yet I only knew that that point must be included. The how and when were yet to be established. Well, on my way to the base, I remembered walking along a cow trail following one side of a narrow valley that ‘Saihan’ mountain and a small hill created. Well, I knew I must walk straight along that flow, right down the center of this river valley.

            After winding along for a ways, I encountered a small family of cows (well they had to be a family, didn’t they? There were maybe three or four adults and two kids. At least, that’s what I think now…funny, when you look at a group of cows you never really think about how they may be related to one another. I mean, maybe a cow farmer actually thinks about the relations of cows…I do not know). Either way, at this point, I decided to begin my hike. Three steps up from the dried streambed in the valley an overwhelming sense of déjà vu struck me. These mountains were in Scotland once. Well maybe not these exact mountains. Scotland was more damp and had much cheaper whiskey…but the eyeful of greens…that and all of the rounded stones that make you feel like an ignorant little ant on this earth. The drunken giant’s Stonehenge, way out here in the steppe of Mongolia. Or maybe the rocks look more like a giant decided to unload himself right then and there (who’s to say he didn’t. You ever seen a giant take a dump?).

            Anyways, it was incredible. I couldn’t help it, the kid in me leapt out and ran up the nearest mound of giant crap I could and proceeded to play ‘hot lava’ all the way to the top. On top of most of the rock piles were owoo, a pile of small rocks collected from all around the mountain with a stick in the center and a prayer flag tied to the top of the stick. Hell, even Mongols love their giant crap too. Suddenly, I was a little boy again. But not the true sense of a little boy. More the sense of a man (if I can be so bold as to call myself that) who has lost some part of his youth and dreams of regaining it in fits and starts. Like the young boy Bon Iver uses in his “Holocene” music video. I was the boy who was finally able to escape into nature, travel around my hills, fields and lakes by day, and live in a quiet cabin lit by candlelight at night. I truly was that boy in that moment. My thoughts were foreign to me, but more than welcome. I was finally myself again. And after that boy mounted every owoo, spread his wings at the top of each and pretended to fly, and descended back down to continue “Lava”, that boy saw a drainage flowing down the mountain and decided to follow it down the mountain. But there was a piece of the ‘man’ that returned with him. No longer was I the little boy, but I was not back to the jaded 23 year old either. And on the long walk back to my home, a sort of contentedness crept over me. Perhaps it could be called happiness, but that wasn’t my mind at the time. It was simply a feeling of ease.

            For as long as I care to remember I have been searching for one thing in life. It has very little to do with physical possessions or physical desires. I want to say it has little to do with mental desires as well, but, somehow, that just doesn’t make any rational sense. What I want is a realization. A realization of a deep connection with some one or some thing.

            Maybe that is why I ended up here in the first place. I felt a need to abandon all I had in order to find something I did not have. That may have been the wrong approach. What I abandoned were simply superficial realities: showers, electric heat, internet, and the like. What I discovered was that I already possessed what I wanted all along. I do have a deep connection with some one. But he isn’t always here. Sometimes I find him lodged in the pages of a book. Sometimes he jumps out of a pile of boulders. Sometimes his smile twitches at the edges of my mouth when I talk with a friend, or a complete stranger.

            This isn’t necessarily a new discovery. I found him long ago, deeply entrenched in the diversion of music. I would nod along to some song I was particularly inclined to, and there he would be and a flood of euphoria would wash over me. What is most frustrating is the unavoidable truth that he cannot be with me always. The hardest times are when he doesn’t appear for weeks, or when his visits are merely fleeting.

            He is the reason I took up meditation, and soon moved on to include yoga. His is the mind I envy, yet possess all the same. Ironically, he shares the same mind with one who obsesses to control his presence – something he finds incredibly annoying. And so, while one battles to control the other, the other simply turns his cheek and marches on solemnly, waiting for the moment that the other releases his hold so he might turn around and embrace him…so they may be one once more. It truly is a dance to maintain a gentle balance. Both will walk with me for the rest of my life. And both will remember this hike as another moment where they embraced.

The story so far

Do you know what it is to call a place home? I won’t pretend like I do. But I’m beginning to figure it out. It has little to do with physical possessions or time spent or family. Or maybe it is a culmination of all of those things and more. But the feeling certainly can’t be identified with either of them individually. I’ve never been good at expressing myself concisely, so bear with me. My home is a place for my mind and that alone. Don’t think that I mean to say that home is in the mind; I wouldn’t say that either.

I remember a time when I was younger and my parents once told me a kind of ghost story about my home. They said this valley had something over people, that once they lived here a year, they’d never leave. In college, my friends would tease me for talking about “my valley”, saying they didn’t want to get brainwashed and join some creepy cult. Well I never stood a chance as a little boy climbing giant aspen trees, taking deep breaths of my pines all around, growing up to the clear streams that haunt every path through the woods. I ask myself every day what it is that I want to be when I grow up. I look at my friends around me. One loves fishing and would give anything to be on the river any time, any day. One loves to play music more than I’ve loved anything or anyone. One would sell his soul to study the Rockies til the end of time. Well I want a piece of all those things, but none so desperately as them. Do I lack something? Why can’t I find one thing to love like they can?

Well maybe I’m better off than they. I may not know what I love to do, but I sure as hell know where I love to do it. Who says you have to find out what you want to do before you can find where you want to live? What if where you live is more important to you than what you do? Well at this point I know where this life will be lived. First I need to groom myself before I return home. It will be like waiting for the embrace of someone I love for two years. I’ve been waiting for such a long time to feel your arms around me again. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen your smile. Such a long time since I’ve felt so inexplicably happy. Such a long time since the world just fell away. To smell her again in two years as a new…man? (maybe boy is the right term) anyways…to smell her again will make this all worth it.