The Holy Land

It was in a used bookstore off Shats Street that I found a spectacular section of old Jerusalem books occupying three or four of their own little shelves. Coated in that lovely worn smell, tucked away in a hidden basement nook, I was introduced to W. H. Bartlett and Karl Baedeker, two 19th century British travelers who compiled guides from their trips to the Holy Land. Their common names are bound to be lost if not quite lost already to the long passages of time.

I never read the travelogues of today, the Lonely Planet reference guides that every backpacker clutches like a Bible across the world's main thoroughfares and monuments. I always find them a nuisance, like cell phones, keeping eyes glued to a screen rather than the foreign views and escapades going on around you, which themselves offer far more insight. However flipping through these pages, looking at outdated maps, it provided some fascinating perspective on the Old City just outside my door, a bridge between different times. There is no mistaking, then or now, that elation one feels rising up over the Judean hills knowing Jerusalem itself is near, and that soon you'll be seeing it for the first time.

"We pursued our way along the wild and stony path - an hour yet remained - one of strange and indescribable excitement. I had stood alone within the awful circle of the Coliseum, when faintly touched by the light of the rising moon, and had watching the lunar rainbow spanning the eternal foam which rises from the base of Niagara; but this nocturnal approach to the ancient capitol of Judea, across her bleak and desolate hills, awoke a more sublimed thrilling emotion. The walls of that city, the scene of events which must ever remain the most touching in their influence upon the human heart, which I had so long and earnestly hoped to see, were, after one disappointment, at length at hand."

I guess when you first walk through Jaffa Gate, like I did, they did, and others so long ago, you get the sense the city holds more feeling than any one man can possibly take in. The centerpiece of three religions, existing both in heaven and on earth, Jerusalem is long an object to the world's desire, but impossible to possess. And all this you feel walking amongst the ruin: at the Western Wall where orthodox Jews in hats and suits chant, clap, and bob back and forth while looking up at their holiest site; in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where people bend over, pray, and dip their precious objects in holy water; at the Dome of the Rock, closed for Eid Al Adha; and at the Israeli Defense Forces outpost at the Eastern gates that feel like sitting targets amidst so much hostility.

A few days before in Tel Aviv, an old Jewish woman who ran a lovely little poster shop sold me a tourism magnet from the 1930s exclaiming, "Visit Palestine!" It raised a few questions about territory, politics, and this whole 3000 year old situation, which she was more than happy to oblige. "It's complicated," she said, "and I just want peace," and those words stuck with me at the bars that night and in the four quarters of Jerusalem and later that week walking amongst blown out buildings in Beirut. We often forget the human element of complex quagmires driven by fear and hate. I wonder how many people on all sides just want the simple things that this woman wants to see for the world just outside her shop door. How do you forge that necessary empathy on both sides of the wall to a level that makes any difference?

Taken as a whole, it was educational, and I felt the heavy weight of a million previous journeys from across the world, all seeking out meaning in short little lives, all directed at this singular place. But while most go seeking the celestial, I sought out something else. Something about what makes us human sits in this troubled spot of earth, and that's another thing worth seeing if you claim you want to see the world.

Just days after I stood outside the Damascus Gate, a man was shot dead in the very spot. How many people have died for religion in Jerusalem, from the Bible to the Crusades to their present day manifestations? How many unmarked graves layer the walls and city streets? How many more will have to go too soon before it is all said and done? You cannot visit Jerusalem without appreciating man's supreme need for higher belief. You also can't help but notice the faults in it.

SPQR

In reading over the full history of Rome, as I did in the weeks leading up to my long awaited excursion there, you are struck by many things, some reminding you it was a world not entirely unlike our own, and others exemplifying how very different it was. It's hard to imagine, for instance, a bustling city of 1m people without any form of refuse collection. It is easier to relate to the heartfelt engravings on tombstones for children, spouses, and parents to which there was no shortage of across the empire. Overall, I think you're hit by the sheer magnitude of time itself, that nearly 2,000 years ago a giant colosseum was built of brick and marble that bred stories even the children of today seem to know by heart. Rome is this collection of stories that have captured the imaginations of human beings of every age since it was first founded on its seven hills before any written account exists.

So I had a reason to go, and I went, and in crossing the Tiber River and surmounting the Capitoline and Palatine, then looking out at the Roman Forum at sunset, I'd be lying if I said I found a complete and lofty bliss. If anything, those peaceful ruins brought a peculiar overwhelming heaviness, as if I could feel the long years of loss and relegation hovering in the air around me. It's not that people died there, Caesar and slaves, emperors and common folk, every dynamic name we've ever heard. It's that such a powerful idea, the zenith of civilization spanning the once known world, rose and fell, was forgotten about and glossed over, plundered, buried, and only recently, reborn. When you find a quiet spot on this (spiritual?) swath of land, putting away the cameras and turning off the audioguides, I think you feel the whole weight of that somewhere in your heart. What does it mean for our own time, our own importance, when something so magnificent can all but disappear, with not even a photo or a painting that depicts what exactly it looked like in its prime?

“Consider the past; such great changes of political supremacies. You may foresee also the things that will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things that take place now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for 40 years is the same as to have contemplated it for 10 thousand years. For what more will you see?”

Up the road a ways, deep into wine country, I found myself in a wedding, that of my closest friend, wrapped up in all the emotions you feel when two people, two of the very best you know, are in love to a degree that touches everyone they meet. That brings emotions you can't quite get your head around and probably never will, a brightness and a similar heaviness in your heart that is difficult to describe. It was there that beautiful mornings on the Piazza led to slow afternoons with beers or spritzers, culminating with a few nights of festivities, my own little bit of blossoming love standing there at my side.

From Rome to Montefalco and back again, it occurs to me that most people in the world will never get that, all these things lumped together: a beautiful wedding in Italy that brings every single human being to tears; driving across the countryside with the windows down and a girl you love grabbing your hand; walking the streets at night and insatiably seeking out details, the plaques on the walls, the buildings built atop buildings built atop buildings, and those four millennia-spanning letters, SPQR, written on manhole covers, simple words in a dead language which have come to define and help usher in the modern world.

Perhaps lastly then, an afterthought, wandering down side streets after a delicious meal late one night once everyone's gone, and accidentally finding the Trevi Fountain, lit up triumphantly, the horses and the gods jumping up out of the water and into the air, the whole scene practically devoid of people, and then tossing a coin in without making a wish because there just aren't any wishes worth making and things need not change one bit from how they are. Calling these people, places, and things my collective reality has been one of the great joys of my life. Living them has been one of the greatest privileges I'll ever know.

Tea to Sea

Tea has been in Sri Lanka almost 150 years, and in a different time, old colonial planters set up shop in the hills, building rustic bungalows and estates to house their operations. Many of these I've had the good fortune of visiting, tucked away in perfect solitude, and there I often think about these men, now dead, and what lead them from their homes to such magnificent isolation when that imperialist fever ran so high.

I love the panoramic views of the high country. I wish I'd gone up there more, braving the windy roads and the traffic, because once there, it's always worth it. The little garden terraces are perfect for reading in, and the surrounding trails great for clearing your mind. The old bungalows smell of aging wood and when the doors and windows are open throughout the estate the cool breeze rushes through from one end to the other. At night, I like the study rooms best, quiet and easy. My memory one night alone with a book, drinking a negroni with a little Sinatra playing in the background, will be one of my favorites to keep tucked away when looking back on this place.

Down those hillsides in any direction, brings you to sea, sprawling sea, encircling this little world and blocking out the rest. Thousand year old kingdoms, decades of civil war, and a tsunami have influenced millions of people across 65,000 square kms, and yet, billions around the world can go their entire lives without ever even knowing a Sri Lanka exists. It is within this tiny bubble that I passed a year of my life, and over the course of that meandering journey I often found myself musing on the purpose of it all, and the benefits, being able to talk at length about truly random things of limited significance. I'm still not sure of the answer.

But the reminder here in Sri Lanka, perhaps more so than ever before, is that within those insulated bubbles lies all there is - life, love, sprawling histories, pride and struggle - for the people who live within the bubbles themselves. Much of that we on the outside are bound to never understand. We are resigned to the background, taking notes on what we see.

If I'm being honest, Sri Lanka will be a place I seldom think of again. At times it has brought me complete bliss, other times enormous frustration, but mostly it's just a place I passed a lot of time that went by faster than I can believe. There is nothing profound in it for me, this blip on a map, nothing that calls out or inspires feeling. And in that, I join the teams of legendary explorers and tourists and outsiders who passed by these coasts, and stayed awhile, thinking what a peculiar little island it was, all before heading off someplace else.

Colombo Fashion Week

“I think we’re all just lost and don’t know what to do,” one girl told me at lunch in between rehearsals. I’d taken the glorious opportunity, sitting with a model, to journalistically interrogate her on the ins and outs of her profession. What always stood out to me while attending these shows was the deadness in the eyes of those who were walking, and I’ve always wanted to know more about what sat behind that void.

So she said things like that, and when I think about it more, I’m not sure what one expects in a world driven by simple aesthetics. You are judged again and again by strangers on how you look, with no need to ever contemplate what goes through your head. This conditions someone to nothingness, condemns them to feeling lost, and as a result you get beautiful people on runways far less secure than the average person on the street - which in turn makes the girl on the street that much more beautiful. That would probably be the first and most profound takeaway, now having walked the runway myself. 

In the end, the most surprising thing about the process is this: it’s in fact, exactly what you’d expect with very few deviations. There is that standard very gay organizer who, quite mercurial, screams and curses at models when they mess something up. Everyone is obsessed with photographing themselves, examining how they look, practicing their walk, and perfecting an image. People really do tell you to lose weight or slim down – this was brought up to me multiple times when an arbitrary pant selection didn’t fit. A designer does tell you to come to his room for last minute fittings, and then asks if you got laid last night in a way that suggests it happens between models all the time. You do spend hours in makeup. The transitions really are chaotic and people do yell. The clothes are mostly just plain awful. Really, I had nothing in common with this world and these people. And all of it, with the right mindset – I am sorry to admit – is actually quite a bit of fun. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some kind of allure to all the superficial prestige that comes with these mega-productions, when you stand up and take center stage, and people then compliment you after.

So between when I was asked on a Friday night after a number of beers, to when I agreed after some cajoling, to when I wound up on a ramp the following Thursday in front of 200 people wondering how the fuck that all happened, thus began, and probably ended, my career as a male model, reaching its zenith at Colombo Fashion Week in 2016.

Keep Austin Weird

It is, and always has been, one of my favorite places in the world, with so much of something you can't put your finger on that you just can't quite find anywhere else, something you feel when entering the country BBQ restaurants and live music venues and localized businesses and when walking in front of the state capitol and when entering a new bar that didn't used to exist but is now the most popular place in town. You feel it when university kids blend with lawyers and technology entreprenuers who then mix with Whole Foods aficionados and coffee shop hipsters and cowboys. You feel it when passing the rich estates out by Lake Travis where you used to ride your bike, and around the Hyde Park condos you used to call home. You feel it in the buzz, most accurately defined by the age old city mantra: keep Austin weird.

So my old life met my new life, in the best of ways, during a few days back in Texas when December turned into January. As these things go, if you tune in just right, you step back and can clearly see all the good things that once happened alongside all the good things that happened once you were gone. These things are both true together, one not cheapening the other, and you find a balance with it, not longing for something different or nostalgia for what once was, but recognition that there is a peace and a rightness when one situation no longer exists and a new one now does.

Because I ultimatley believe life happens in phases, and I have always found my rhythm when I let myself float, without struggle or fear or a need for direction, but a trust in what life has in store when you ask the right questions. Like this, my life has gone, stage by stage, year on year, this time my right hand held by a left hand cloaked in lovely knit mittens, while my own left hand turned a wheel, driving in delightful silence down Lamar, up Congress, on 6th, 5th, and 4th streets, passing the intersection of Rainey and Driskill, up 620 by Lakeway, slowly along the drag via Guadalupe, all before taking Interstate 35, like so many times before, up away from it all in another big triumphant goodbye. These are the old routines probably best kept old routines while a new city booms in the background.

Whenever there is a setback and things seem unclear, whenever I get unsettled amidst uncertainty, I take comfort in the historical unwavering path of growth and progress which tells us: there are many wonderful things that can happen; many of them will happen; most of them are invisible to us now, but yes indeed, there is a way for them to happen.