Washingtonian

The namesake of the street I live, George Washington Riggs (Riggs Place), was a 19^th century businessman born just to the west in Georgetown. Over the course of his life he financed the Mexican-American War, had nine children, was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, and that is pretty much it. No one in Washington apart from its amateur historians would remember his name, but the street itself is one of the loveliest I’ve seen, quiet and green, with old row houses and tall trees lining the cobblestone sidewalks. I’ve sat out there on my porch and watched summer morph into fall, winter, and spring, and have thought that you can forget about all the short lived things. Being remembered for a beautiful street that generations of families call home is a wonderful thing. 

Riggs the man joins so many others that came together to breathe life into this 218 year old enterprise that is the nation’s capital. I think of them often when I put my feet to the pavement and walk and walk and walk. Theirs are names like Andrew Mellon, who dying of cancer, bequeathed his art collection to the citizens of the United States, in what is now the National Gallery of Art. One of my favorite buildings in DC, it is a place to go to exit yourself and get swept up in aisles of beautiful things. There is James Smithson, the British scientist and illegitimate child of the aristocracy, who upon his death, donated his entire estate “to found in Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” How many millions of young children to date have walked through the Museum of Natural History eyes wide in wonder, all thanks to his great gift to the world. Then there is Peter L’Enfant, the brilliant urban planner sabotaged only by his own ego and pride, who now lies on a peaceful hill in Arlington National Cemetery overlooking the city he designed. He eventually got his own metro station, but died in poverty, a sad end to a man with so much to give. And how to forget George Washington, the city’s initial benefactor, who pushed for the location of the nation’s capital along the waters of the Potomac. Nothing about history is inevitable, nor was this. On numerous occasion the project was nearly abandoned, dismantled, and taken somewhere else. 

Where would I be without all these people? In a city of less splendor, if even a city at all. Cities are the combined force of a million small factors, forged by the choices and compromises of long forgotten people that echo across its buildings, parks, statues, and streets. So it is with the District of Columbia.

All this is the past, but the Washington of 2018 is my city. It feels deliberate, on my terms, for the first time in my life a place I’ve chosen to live because I want to live there, as opposed to letting forces outside yourself decide the twists and turns of your life. One takeaway from the last ten years, most of which have been spent flipping life on its axis, is that we should seek out and live where we want to live, because it is this hodgepodge of people and places that shapes our reality and defines so much of what we become. I look to the future and what I’ll become with optimism and humility, because I've been so very humbled, and yet still know the future is bright, because I feel that as I walk the streets of this city and breath in its air.

Washington to me is infinite meaning, something only visible once you’ve lost what you so deeply believed in, then embraced everything else there was to gain. Mellon, Smithson, and L’Enfant were my brave companions. I walked with them on so many early mornings and rainy nights, when the world felt heavy and when it felt light. It is thanks to them and so many others that I’ve stepped back and, perhaps surprisingly, found a work in progress that is home.

Greek muses

At some point back during university – I think I was 20 or 21 at the time – I wandered down to a tattoo parlor on the drag in Austin and got two Greek phrases stenciled into my arms. I had been immersed in a Greek mythology course for the previous few months, and had a copy of Plato’s Republic lying around, which for some time had hooked me on the Delphic maxims so central to the ancient Greek mindset: “know thyself” and “nothing in excess.” They came out great, simple crisp black lettering, and I’ve always been happy they were there even as the space they occupy in my head has morphed with the times.

The Temple of Apollo, located on a hillside outside Delphi, served as an oracle since around the 8^th century BC, and for centuries accepted gifts from all across the Hellenic world. The phrases, which according to Plato, were carved into the temple walls, are distinctively Greek, emphasizing a world of moderation, reflection, truth and reason. I've always been fascinated with these tenets as they apply to an oracle. It’s as if saying, “before you can receive this guidance, before you can know the answers to your life, you have a few basic things to work through first.” That’s a feeling I’ve embraced countless times over the years, and sitting in front of an ancient oracle like however many have before, it felt especially relevant in the context of this European summer ushering in so much change.

It’s still a holy place, Apollo’s Sanctuary, at least it was for me. Always wanting to avoid crowds and loud voices, I climbed up a trail above Delphi and sat on a cliff looking down on the theatre, the treasury, the temple and the gymnasium. Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way was my expert guide, coupled with a few of the old citizen philosophers well ahead of their time. There is a reason the classics are still around. 2400 years on they can put everything from the Parthenon to Donald Trump in perspective, and certainly make us ponder the ebbs and flows of humanity.

The Greeks were firsts in human civilization, and when I think about it, I see them embodying much of my idea of true men. The same people who celebrated physical prowess and military victories also reveled in good poetry and long winding conversation that hoped to establish truth. They admired beauty, created art. They were, in my mind, in that wonderful state of balance, where Apollo's reason and restraint leveled out Dionysus' fits of mindless release. This while the rest of the world was so dark, clouded in magic and mysticism and fear. For a brief moment in ancient times, this little city was a bright spark that ignited all that humankind would become. As Hamilton puts it:

“Civilization, a much abused word, stands for a high matter quite apart from telephones and electric lights. It is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the things of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling. Where imponderables are the things of first importance, there is the height of civilization, and if, at the same time, the power to act exists unimpaired, human life has reached a level seldom attained and only seldom surpassed.”

On the way to the airport, my taxi driver – his name was, I'm not kidding, Socrates – talked with me about Greek philosophy, the economic crisis, and a new generation ignorant to its heritage. I carried with me a little trinket of Apollo holding his lyre and a small marbled head of the tragedian Sophocles. I imagine, somewhere, some future time where I'll place them both on my shelf by a stack of books and look up at them while I read. They are reminders of a different time. And as I wander through the world staring out at the many excesses of our day, it is something I can't help feeling wonderful romanticized nostalgia for.

Arabian Sands

I didn't get out much in Abu Dhabi. I didn't make many friends or do many of the things you are supposed to do, yet I was there a year, and looked back on it favorably during the last morning sunrise, watching that golden desert sun light up the tall flashy buildings on Reem Island, the sprinklers flood the grass of a soccer pitch adjacent to my hotel. It often perplexed me, often made me feel stagnant and like I was running in place, but now I find myself en route to Washington DC one marathon richer, knowing the Arabic alphabet and an assortment of words, better traveled and better read and better loved, and being able to afford one of the best degrees money can buy. That too is Abu Dhabi, one of the great enablers of my life.

I find many parallels in perspective in Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands, which chronicled his travels across the UAE's empty quarter in the late 1940s. He did falconry with the country's founding father, endured an almost incessant hunger and thirst, and found himself multiple times in the middle of tribal feuds. He was also remarkably prescient when it comes to what the region would become once infused with oil wealth and cars. The fast food joints, the child obesity, and the general excess are things I feel would break his heart if he were alive today. His account is a tribute to a dying way of life, now dead, a Bedouin heritage the many Emirati children of today will never know or understand.  

For him it was a grand open space to be, and I too found great comfort in the desert and its great expanse, rolling dunes as far as you can see. A recent trip alone out into the empty quarter - via the comforts of a car as opposed to Thesiger's camels - was one of the better days spent in the UAE. On the way back in the middle of the night I many times stopped on highways and looked up at the stars, just listening to the quiet in my head and engineering my goodbye.

It's possible I'll look back from Meridian Hill Park or the National Mall and say I should have stayed longer. But I expect I'll look back on these conflicting times and see an urgency to create something new and sturdier, to create more, to realize the possibilities I know are there. In the background, my mind drifts back to hot summer runs along the corniche, the strange pubs that drew all kinds of shady patrons, the hazy sunsets clouded out by sand and dust, the calls to prayer in the earliest morning hours. It also drifts back to the many temporary people that call Abu Dhabi home, the countless who struggle there to an incomprehensible degree, but also those whose lives have been enabled from their own brief sojourn in the gulf, like mine. 

Little belated reviews

Every year when filing my taxes, I am forced to establish what they call "physical presence" by proving all my travel overseas. It is one of the more pleasurable aspects of the tax filing process, if indeed there is such a thing. Looking back through e-ticket confirmations, I'm reminded of a progression of events, the full depth of a year, that is easy enough to forget. Now in February it already feels a very long time ago.

In going through this process recently, I was reminded of a lovely little island in Malaysia, for instance, which led to snowy views of Pikes Peak. An absurd bachelor party in Toronto came to mind as well, alongside familiar walks on New York City streets. I remembered wandering a few campuses in Washington D.C., before settling in for lively happy hours. And I can still feel the weight of gut wrenching decisions, tearful calls, and painful nights awake alone with jet leg, dictating what would or what wouldn't come next when all the buzz came to an end.

My best friend got married in Italy just a few months later, and I am reminded of watching love swarm in a garden on a perfect day in June. We drank wine, smoked cigars, and listened to kind words, relishing moments that could only ever end too soon. It is a great honor to be invited to witness the most intimate and sentimental moments of life, and I was honored to be there, as the groom put on his suit and tied his shoes, as he drank a last beer in the piazza prior to his vows, as he said those vows that sent an entire garden to tears, and the many moments of quiet in between.

The sunsets, there were more than a few, a few last ones by the sea in Colombo, a glorious one over the hills around Petra, and all those many days after work where it lights up the desert sky above Abu Dhabi. And the beers, there were many of those too, craft beer in West Jerusalem, hoppy beer at a strange factory in Austria, Lion Beer by the water in Sri Lanka, or Shiner Beer in Austin that perfectly complements some spicy Tex Mex.

I remember Donald Trump getting elected President one morning under the covers later on in the year, and felt sad, at people's willingness to be aroused by fear and by hate. I don't know why people choose these things, in their own lives, or in their elections, but I am reminded by all the ancient ruins of this last year, that empires rise and fall. Indeed, wandering the Forum in Rome on a quiet morning, or stumbling across some marble columns in the middle of Beirut, force these thoughts upon you. I wonder if 100 years from now people will look back at this moment, and see some significance in it all.

I welcomed 2016 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Austin with a bedazzling kiss and an intoxicating night. I wandered my old city and drove across my old state, before bidding it farewell again. A year later I waved 2016 goodbye in the middle of the Alps, looking up at snowy mountain peaks lit by fireworks, staying warm but enjoying the cold, held by a familiar hand.

While there is plenty to be uncertain about, things that often spoil my mood or leave me wide awake in the night, I cannot help but feel gratitude in these tallies, for the simplest of things: to see the world in its many shades, to love, and to be free.

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.