Author: admin

I believe that I have always been compassionate towards the inanimate. I always remember feeling heartbroken over neglected, lost, or abandoned items–perhaps most so as a young child. During my childhood, I loved naming everything, and felt called to make pets out of rocks quite often (I remember in particular one large rock on my school’s playground that I named Jeffrey who I would like to visit and check in on during recess). I have another memory of a soccer practice when I was around nine or so, during which I was feeling particularly attached to one of our practice balls, naming it “Steven”. One of the reasons this memory has stayed with me is I remember another girl at practice calling me “weird” for doing so, and then my friend Coral promptly shouting at that girl, “Don’t you say that, she’s my friend!” (forever imprinting on me the deep knowledge that Coral is a loyal friend–they are indeed still one of my best friends to this day). 

I can understand that other girl’s instinct to call me “weird”. Something that is quite normal as a young child is play-acting with toys, giving them personalities and names, and thus giving them life. This call towards loving and giving life to the inanimate is, I think, something inherent in many children that can get weathered away through the necessity of building certain callouses as one ages. In our modern world, it is certainly expected that at some point we learn to differentiate that which lives and that which doesn’t, and to place a vastly larger sense of importance on one versus the other. At around nine years old, I was already expected to start maturing past the impulse to give life and names to that which is not alive. Society expects it of us. That soccer teammate certainly was expected to stop loving that which could not love her back, and those expectations that were placed on her were then extended to me.

In many ways, as I got older, I did learn to stop being so over-the-top and flamboyant with my love for the inanimate. The societal expectations to do so were a powerful moving force; societal expectations (and thus peer expectations) are arguably the most powerful force for an adolescent. One does not want to do too much to stand out, or be called “weird” by one’s peers as a teenager, even if there are loyal friends in the wings to stick up for you. And so I learned to quiet those impulses, and only show them around those whom I was most intimate with. That lapse in overt love for the world seemed to me to just be a component of growing up and being an adult–and like all teenagers, I was ravenous to be seen as an adult.

To no small extent, this societal agreement of valuing life over the non-living does not stop at the inanimate. Bacteria, plants, and fungi–although very alive–are often considered “things” to most people, and not living beings. Even many animals are considered as “things”, especially if they’re used in food production, we deem them to be gross or unsettling in some way, or maybe even if they’re causing a slight inconvenience. 

However, I do not think that this is how the world always was. There was not always the expectation that “maturing” meant deadening yourself to the world. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this separation of self vs world is a product of the current, wide-spread capitalistic mentality. It could perhaps also be seen as a product of a society based largely on the values of a punitive monotheistic religion; or, conversely, as an unfortunate byproduct of the scientific revolution, and of living in a society primarily operating on the principles of scientific thought. 

Many indigenous cultures from all over the world have historically been based on the foundation of animism (and many indigenous cultures still extant today do as well, to a large extent). Animism is the belief and understanding that the world is alive, and that everything has a spirit. The rocks, trees, rivers, flowers, storms, fields, bugs, animals, clouds, everything–each has their own spirit, perhaps their own name, and their own importance in the world. To believe in animism is to live in a world where spirits abound, and one’s own spirit is simply a single thread that is woven into the tapestry of life. The world and everything in it is understood to have importance–and most keenly of all, humans are not above it all, but meshed with it.

There are other parts of the world where certain of these spirits were given elevated status, and deemed to be gods. This occurrence, in some places, gave rise to polytheism (or paganism). Instead of the storms comprising a single instrument to the orchestral melody of life, they became the conductors. Storm gods are often the head of pantheons, or at least one of the primary forces. Some other powerful forces that were given precedent again and again in these types of religions and societies were the sun god, the earth goddess, the sky god, and the moon goddess. These gods and goddesses often were representatives of larger-than-life forces that peoples could tell were instrumental for life, were central to humanity’s place in the universe, and well beyond any sort of attempt at control. Undoubtedly, they were worthy of worship and attention. In these types of religions there are still often animistic undertones, and still very much an understanding that humans are a part of the whims of the natural world, and not rulers over it. 

In other places of the world there then arose a hierarchy of gods to such an extent that one god came to rule over all others. Eventually, all of the other gods became extinct–or entirely non-existent. There is evidence that I find compelling that Yahweh, the early name of God in the Old Testament (or Torah) is an early storm god that was worshipped by a polytheistic people ancestral to the Hebrews. Throughout time, Yahweh was elevated again and again up the pantheon until, eventually, it felt the most pertinent and true to these ancient Hebrews that Yahweh was the one and only God (which is perhaps why he insists so much upon this in the Old Testament). Thus Abrahamic Monotheism was born (of which, of course, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all members). It is in the writings from these traditions where the ideals of human supremacy over other earthly things is clearly laid out.

However, there is still room within monotheistic traditions for the inherent belief in the value of all things to seep its way through. An example of this is monism. Monism is the belief that all things are divine–that everything radiates from the divine source (God), and everything is a part of said source. All things are unified and one in this divinity. Sikhism and Bahá’ísm are two examples of monotheistic religions that base their faith in God and in the world through a monistic view. 

I would also argue that mystics of any religion are drawn towards monism. I even saw this in Zen Buddhism (which I would argue is a rather mystical Buddhist practice). I feel this is even a tenet of mysticism–that through directly experiencing the divine in a mystical experience, one comes to inherently know and experience it in all things. Once a mystic comes to know the vastness of God, or the Universe, or the Ultimate Truth, or the Great Unknown (or whatever name for such ineffability fits best), it is almost impossible to untangle any singular thing from such divinity. At least, this is definitely true in the philosophy of the mystics; embodying that belief is often much more difficult, and requires constant practice. 

Now animism, which I do think is the more intrinsic impulse found in children to name and give spirit, life, and love to the inanimate (or plants, bugs, animals, etc), is different from monism. In animism, everything has its own spirit; in monism, everything is of the same spirit. However, in both, there is this tug to recognize the sanctity of the world we inhabit. There is a recognition that everything has value, everything is worthwhile, everything has absolute potential to be loved.

Despite the vague effort I put in as a teen to quell my more animistic tendencies, it was not an impulse that was lost in me. I still deeply feel a calling to love the things around me, to recognize their spirits and to know their names. In fact, I believe that such animistic tendencies are something that most people cannot squash down entirely or effectively (unconsciously or not). I feel like this manifests most keenly in “things” that people care for or spend time with for a long time. Most modern American adults will have some sort of emotional response to needing to sell or junk a car that they’ve spent countless hours in and spent countless dollars on tending to; most people have a hard time moving from a home that they spent years cultivating; people become attached to favorite tees, hoodies, shoes, childhood stuffies, armchairs, toolboxes…the list can go on. This is nothing to say of the living (non-human) beings that people grow attached to through their care of them, such as gardens, houseplants, trees, or pets. I believe there is a yearning, deeply inherent in humans, to love and care for the world.

Why do people fight this impulse to love the world, to love that which may not be able to say or show “I love you” back? I think that this can be largely traced to two sources: First, a very real psychological and physical need to not constantly be grieving. To love inherently means that, at some point, there will be mourning. Today, the world is so large and interconnected, and we have access to the pain of so many more beings now than ever before in human history. It can perhaps be psychologically and holistically easier to deal with the death of a single beloved tree than to deal with the reality of widespread deforestation and destruction of ecosystems. It can be easier to fully tend to the heartbreak over the destruction of a beloved swimming hole spot due to a mudslide than it is to deal with large-scale catastrophic events due to climate change. It can be easier to mourn and honor the death of the animal you just had to kill to feed your family than to process the brutal reality of factory farming.

Second, capitalistic forces so dominant in our world today desperately want us to see everything in the world as an “it”, and thus something that is easily disposable or exploitable. One does not have to worry about their impact or place in the world if everything that we interact with are only “things”. One does not have to dwell on the source of their clothes, their electronics, their furniture, or their food, if all of these are just “things” that can be easily replaced by more “things”. Capitalism is dependent on this mindset. There must always be a need for more, and for that to be the case, there must be a great diminishing of worth with what you already have (or who you already are). 

The first reason I just laid out–that diminishing the importance of the world around you is at times necessary for one’s mental and physical well-being in today’s world–can be applied like a medicine. I would argue that the second reason–the corruption of the human psyche and spirit by capitalistic machinations–is always a poison (often quite literally). There is no denying (by any rational person) that humanity’s current rapacious attitude towards our world is not only killing the beings–both animate and inanimate–in virtually every ecosystem in the world, but is also killing ourselves. This is, of course, because the two cannot be disentangled. Despite what some people, doctrines, or pundits might say, people cannot exist separately from the world we inhabit.

As the Buddhists (or ecologists) would say, everything is interconnected. 

I am so fortunate that I lived as a Zen monastic at the point in my life when I did. I moved to Green Gulch Farm Zen Center when I was 22 years old. I was very much so a young adult, primed and eager to receive insight and wisdom to aid me as I transitioned into a more mature life. I was thirsty for and enthralled with Zen life immediately. Despite identifying adamantly as an atheist when I first became a monk, there were many facets of the Zen doctrine and lifestyle that immediately appealed to the deepest corners of my being. One of the most notable of these is that Zen is a religion that (at least in the form we practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center temples) comes from Japan. As such, there are a plethora of Japanese influences on the practices and doctrines of living as a Zen monk. The Japanese culturally and traditionally have placed high value on treating everything with respect. There is a ritualism to the traditional Japanese way of life that melded well with Zen philosophy (one is shaped by the other, after all) and monastic life. This element of Zen life is one that I deeply celebrated and honored.

There was a ritual of care around everything in the monastery and in the garden at Green Gulch (and subsequently at Tassajara and City Center, the other two temples I lived in later). There was an expected way to hold a bowl and a utensil, to hold a tea cup, to wash the dishes, to chop the vegetables, to arrange one’s shoes as you removed them to enter a building, to fluff your cushion in the zendo, to clean and put away one’s gardening or farming tools, and to light and place incense. Everything was handled with care and respect. 

All of these rituals and expectations are a component of Zen monastic life for a few reasons. First, needing to pay attention to how you do everything, even the most mundane of activities, invites an awareness and mindfulness throughout your day (and thus throughout your life). You end up engaging more with your moments, because there are these near constant expectations for how you should be conducting yourself that must be upheld. Second, attending to the moments in your life, and all of the components of it therein, inspires a greater presence with those things. Your mind can really tend to what it is that you are interacting with in the moment. You can fully drop-in and experience what the weight of the bowl feels like in your hands, what the texture of your food is as your chewing, what the squish of the pillow feels like as you fluff it, or what the sound of the carrot is as your carefully chop it. This sort of awareness also inevitably leads to you treating each of these items with more respect. You end up finding real joy in keeping everything clean, tended to, and loved. 

It was at Green Gulch that I began to learn the language of plants. To attend to those which cannot speak, one needs to treat them with care, concentration, curiosity, and patience. It is a great lesson that I learned while tending to all of the many flowers, fruit trees, and shrubs in Green Gulch’s garden. I would need to ask them: Little plant, how do I know you’re thirsty, hungry, sick? How do I know how to help you? Knowledge gleaned from the millennia of gardeners of the past can help, as can attuning to the soil and the plant themselves. It requires slowing down and listening with more than your ears–you must also listen to your own intuition and unconscious, and the richness of information stored therein (the wisdom of the unconscious can be heard and acknowledged by the conscious mind if it is given space to do so–for me it took great practice, but is something now that I have complete faith in). The Green Gulch garden was one of the greatest teachers I ever had.

Carefully tending to plants is not so dissimilar from tending to traumatized and hurt sentient beings, really. Often in such states of duress, even sentient beings can have a hard time communicating what they need (which can, unfortunately, even include yourself). I first learned this lesson most keenly while volunteering at a cat shelter in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I was living unemployed and uninspired by life right before my move to Green Gulch. As anyone who has regularly interacted with cats knows, they are rather particular in how they receive love and care, rightly so. They are excellent teachers in consent and careful attention. There was one cat in particular who was a true teacher in these lessons. Her name was Isabelle, and she was a large orange tabby who had had a particularly traumatizing life. She did NOT tolerate contact that was not 100% on her terms. As a volunteer, part of my role was to socialize the cats, to make them more appealing to adopters and ready to live in a home with humans once more. Isabelle needed a lot of socializing, although she seemingly had the opposite of interest in doing so. If there was any attempt at affection (sometimes even just verbally), she would hiss and scratch at you. I eventually found that if I left her door open, and just went and quietly sat on the bench in the room, she would come and climb into my lap. I could not pet her once she was there of course, but she would settle right in and start purring. She craved the connection and contact, and yet was so afraid for her safety, that she had to have it be entirely on her terms. I’ve also met people like this, and when such a being chooses to let you love them (even passively, even just for a little bit), it feels like a wondrous reward.

It was also while at Green Gulch that I first came to read Joseph Campbell, who through his expertise in myths across time and cultures is able to synthesize and share some beautiful, profound truths seemingly core to the human experience. He is someone who became a mystic through academia, and the truths he offers from his studies have a way of resonating to people of both the academic and the mystical persuasion alike. 

It is while reading Campbell that I encountered the essence of what this post is about: the importance of treating everything as a “thou” instead of an “it”. This particular lesson comes from his interview/book “The Power of Myth”. In this interview with Bill Moyer (that was ultimately also turned into a book), he succinctly points out that indigenous peoples often interacted with the world in a way that treated everything with respect. The world, and the beings they interacted with (both animate and inanimate) were addressed by these people not only as an equal (as a “you”), but as a “thou”–something elevated, spiritual, holy, divine. To designate the world that surrounds us instead to an “it” not only relinquishes that entity of their inherent divinity, but denigrates them to a status lower than yourself. Here is some of this idea in his own words:

The Indians addressed life as a “thou,” I mean, trees and stones, everything else. You can address anything as a “thou”, and you can feel the change in your psychology as you do it. The ego that sees a “thou” is not the same ego that sees an “it”. Your whole psychology changes when you address things as an”it”. And when you go to war with a people, the problem of the newspapers is to turn those people into its, so that they’re not “thous“.

That last sentiment rings just as true today as it did then. How often are not only the non-human designated as “its”, but people are as well. To do so not only robs them of their humanity, but of their inherent divinity. Deeming anything–but perhaps most keenly, people–as an “it”, removes them of their spirit, loves, fears, memories, hopes, quirks, connections, flaws, perfections, and imperfections. Not only does it rob the denigrated victim of divinity, but I’d argue it robs the perpetrator of their own divinity as well. Something vital is lost in oneself when one removes the divinity of someone–anyone–else. 

While at Tassajara I read a couple of biographies of St. Francis, the Catholic saint I’ve always resonated the most with. While living as a monk I encountered some of his poetry in an anthology of mystical poets, and this inspired me to learn more about his story and life. St. Francis was undoubtedly a mystic. He experienced God very directly, and this experience opened him up to the inherent divinity in all things (rather monistic of him, really). He fell in love with the whole world because he saw God, and His divine love, in everything. It’s what inspired him to commit himself to “Lady Poverty” as his wife, live a very humble life wearing rags, tend to the lepers that no one else would tend to, and recite sermons to the birds. He indeed saw everything in the world as the holiest “Thou”, as he saw everything in the world, fully and truly, as God (you know–the holiest “Thou”). 

Here is a short poem from St. Francis that I believe encapsulates this spirit. It is from the aforementioned anthology, one of my favorites: Love Poems from God, edited by Daniel Ladinsky.

In All Things

It was easy to love God in all that
was beautiful.

The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me
to embrace God in all
things.

My life, too, has been made more rich by allowing myself with childlike wonder and simplicity to love the world, to see and embrace the divine in all things. It adds worth to a life to treat that which surrounds you with worth. To do so enables a satiety on what can be “enough”. It allows connection to your environment, your surroundings, your moments. It opens your heart to the world, and allows more beauty in. It softens your heart and makes you kinder. Perhaps this is why the “deeper knowledge”, as St. Francis put it, is “to embrace God in all things”–because in doing so, one connects more easily to one’s life, to one’s heart, to one’s purpose. It inspires action to care for your community, your environment, your home, your belongings, and all beings as something precious and worthwhile. It desterilizes your relationship with the world, and makes it richer and fuller, more vibrant and luminous.

Every morning in the garden at Green Gulch we read a poem by the late, great, wonderful poet Mary Oliver (a personal favorite of mine) before we started our day of work. Mary Oliver, like St. Francis, lived her life as though she were in love with the world, and everything in it. Reading one of her poems was a wonderful foundation for us to start our day on–setting an internal precedent to tend to our garden that we had the privilege of tending to with wonder and devotion. She has many, many, wonderful poems in which she expresses her love for her life and the world (especially the natural world) in deep and earnest prose. While writing this post, one of her poems popped into my mind that seemed especially pertinent. This is from “New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2”

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,
are not living. I say,
you live your life your way and leave me alone.

I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they
are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, Hurry!
and they have said: thank you, we are hurrying.

About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no
argument. They die, after all.

But water is a question, so many living things in it,
but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming

generosity, how can they write you out?

As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside
the harbor. I am holding in my hand
small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist.
Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.

So go ahead, and indulge in your childlike desire to love. The mystics all give you permission to do so. If anyone says otherwise, just tell them to “live your life your way and leave me alone”. Or, perhaps in defense of all you love, you can tell them “she’s my friend!” as Coral did for me all those years ago. The world is calling for compassion and love. If we all actually tend to it, every part of it (even your cereal bowl, the line of ants across the sidewalk, that lone dandelion growing through the pavement, your hole-y socks), we might begin to actually return to our humanity and heal the world that is calling out for us to love it.

I had a dream last night that was lovely. I had been recruited by some friends (not friends from real life, unfortunately–but rather a group of comedians that I have been watching online a lot lately, that in my dream were my friends) to live with them on a communal farm homestead.

In the dream there was a large, cozy farm house where everyone had their own room. There was an impressive kitchen and chore charts to keep track of how everyone who lived and farmed there could contribute to their communal living space. There was also a matriarch–the owner of the land who had collected all of these young people together to live on her farm, in her home–to build this vision of community together. She was a round, rosie, cozy woman, with a kind voice and a tough, earthy body that comes from a lifetime of tending the ground. 

In the dream I immediately knew that I wanted to join this community, and looking around, noticed a niche that was not filled that I could take on with joy. I pitched my idea to the matriarch–that in exchange for a room in this farmhouse and space in this community, I could help take care of the farmers and the home. I could cook meals for them, clean the house, tend to the kitchen garden–and when extra hands were needed, I could pitch in and help in the fields.

She immediately took my idea seriously, and included other members of the community in on the conversation, in a genial, inclusive way. The idea was workshopped by herself, myself, and the others in the room until my space in the community felt beneficial to all. Not once did I feel fear of rejection. I knew as soon as she started discussing with me the details of my stay that I was accepted.

I woke up from the dream immediately feeling wistful of that place I had just been. Being on that farm, in that community, was soothing in me a deep longing for a connection to the land and to other people that I have been feeling quite keenly lately. The dream was undoubtedly inspired by the media I have been consuming lately, which only after having this dream did I realize has all been largely centering on this idea of living in community, in connection with the land. 

As I mentioned before, I’ve been watching this group of comedians online a lot. I’ve got a roster of such groups that I like to watch. I find it incredibly soothing to watch a group of funny people–who are all clearly friends who love and respect each other–spend time together, playing games and making each other laugh. I am not alone in this, as such groups are highly popular all over the internet, and I think their popularity was only springboarded during the pandemic, when people were especially thirsty for connection. It is entirely parasocial and scratches some itch–although entirely superficially–of belonging to a group. All this while distracting you from the horrors of the world through whimsy and cleverness. Some of my favorites come from Dropout, Smosh, and Polygon (although less so this one recently). The Smosh crew is who lived with me on the farm in the dream.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Stardew Valley–a game I knew that I would love that was gifted to me last Christmas by my sister-in-law. For those unfamiliar, Stardew Valley is a slow, cozy game where you inherit a farm from your grandfather in a small, rural village. The game entirely consists of creating and running your farm, forming relationships with the village folk, doing community service projects (often rather whimsical ones), fishing, and if you’re feeling adventurous, doing some mining (where you can even fight off monsters, what a thrill). The entire game sells the idea of living a small, quiet, rural life quite effectively.

Finally, I happen to be reading two books, both of which depict an ideal relationship between humanity and the land, albeit in completely different ways. A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers, is a short, charming fiction book set in an idyllic moon far away–but clearly inspired by our home here. This story follows a gender-queer monk as they navigate their need for purpose in an utopian world. This world is one built after a sudden awakening of robots shook people from their reliance on technology and their rapacious speed towards progress and production. The robots were not violent upon their awakening, but instead politely curious–choosing to forgo living in human society to experience the natural world. In the wake of this event, the people themselves heightened nature to a sacred place–dictating that half of the world be left completely wild, and those spaces where humanity still abides be lived in concert with nature. The protagonist is a tea monk–or someone who travels from rural town to rural town with a tea cart which they set up with the sole intention of being a sanctuary for people. It is a lush, vibrant, kind world that the reader (I believe any reader, not just myself) yearns for while reading.

The other book that I’m reading now is called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This is a non-fiction book that portrays how life has been and can be a balance between humanity and the natural world. Kimmerer herself is a member of the Potawatomi tribe (a tribe native to Wisconsin, which adds to the potency of this book for me personally), a botanist, professor, and environmentalist. In the book she beautifully, sweetly, and honestly connects her indigenous, somatic, personal knowledge of plants with her more Western-trained, scholarly, academic knowledge of them to really drive home the ancient and still necessary relationship between humankind and our natural world. The book is filled with heartwarming anecdotes from her own life of how she formed her own relationship to plants and the natural world, such as picking strawberries as a child, boiling maple syrup with her own children as an adult, and of course, the sacred act of harvesting and braiding sweetgrass. I am listening to it as an audio book in which Kimmerer herself is the narrator, and you can hear the care she has for what she writes about so earnestly in her voice.

I believe that the matriarch from my dream was inspired by a combination of Kimmerer and a woman, an icon, and an idol that I know from my real life, Wendy Johnson. I met Wendy while living my few years in community on farmland at Green Gulch Farm, where I formed my own deep connection to the land and to the plants there. Wendy was one of the original members of the community that helped build up the farms and gardens when San Francisco Zen Center first bought the land for Green Gulch Farm in the 80s. She is a woman who captivates anyone within minutes of meeting her–she speaks much as Kimmerer does, as someone who has spent a lifetime in relation with the world. While speaking she would lace together incredibly potent images of the connectedness with all things, drop into Shakespeare quotes with ease in such a way where it took a minute to realize that is what she had just done, and sprinkle in enough of the serious and dark to know that her wisdom is born from not only of love, but also suffering. Everyone adored Wendy, and Wendy adored everything. She saw the importance, instantly, of whatever–or whoever–was in front of her.

It is at Green Gulch, under the tutelage of Wendy and other caring monks, that I first learned what it meant to be in relationship with plants. My job as a gardener entailed caring for many perennial trees, shrubs, and flowers–as well as of course shepherding annuals through their seasons. I only tended the garden for just shy of 2.5 years, and in that time I already could tell the impact of what true, concentrated care could have on the well-being of plants. How one prunes fruit trees or roses impacts their growth for years to come. How one tends to the health of the soil is how one tends to the health of all future plants grown there. How one deals with potential pests–whether that be coddling moth larva that chew through the apples and roses, or raccoons that would always ravage the apples and pears before they were ripe enough for anyone else to get a chance at them–indicated how happy everything else was in that space, including the beneficial animals and plants. To care for the garden was to operate with close observation, careful trial and error, shared knowledge from gardener to gardener, the heartfelt cultivation of rich compost, and patience. 

I was especially fond of the many roses we had in the garden. I believe that in truly tending to a rose, you can see its personality. Each rose variety is different, and has different needs, different wants, different circumstances for thriving. Some roses require actual blood and bone (meal) to thrive. Some cannot abide being near others, while others crave it. Some only blossom through a thorough and steady pruning, while others require a more delicate and precise cut. 

I came to sanctify the thorns of the roses. It took only a few months before I stopped gardening with gloves, because I loved always feeling the dirt with my hands. It took only a few more months for me to stop wearing gloves while pruning the roses. It felt like a fair exchange–that while I worked removing some of their limbs (as necessary as that removal might have been for their health), they took some of my blood in exchange through their many scratches along my hands and arms. 

I came to love that garden like I would a person, with all of her facets and complexity, all of her desires and fears, all of the ways in which she needed attention, and some other areas in which she was best left alone to her own wisdom of selfcare. It taught me that the world was alive, and to care for it was not only a necessity for a fulfilling life, but a great honor. This feeling of love has carried forth to every other garden I have cared for since, whether they be small garden boxes at home or school gardens. The importance of love and relationship to the land was something I hoped to instill, even just in spirit, with the hundreds of students I had the honor of teaching in gardens. It feels increasingly urgent and necessary to me that children learn to love their world, and to form relationship to it. 

I woke up this morning knowing that my dream was not only inspired by the media I had recently been consuming, but from my own inherent longing to feel connected to community and land again. This is something I have been dwelling on since our big recent trip back to the United States. I believe that listening to Braiding Sweetgrass for a little bit before we left planted the seed of this idea, and it was only given more ground as we returned to the U.S. As I listen to Kimmerer tell her stories filled with indigenous wisdom about the land, it strikes me how she is talking clearly about America–or, Turtle Island. Her mythology, her knowledge, her relationship, is with the trees, berries, grasses, and animals of my home. 

Indeed, something I’ve been thinking a lot about since moving to Germany is just how splendid the landscape, the natural world, of the United States truly is. It is a vast landscape filled with every sort of environment. Gratitude is owed to the naturalists of the late 19th/early 20th centuries who moved to preserve the natural beauty of the United States so that we could still know and encounter it today. Of course, I am of the camp that believes that if the indigenous folks were left to be stewards of that land (instead of, you know, being miserably, violently, morbidly displaced by White colonizers,) there would be vastly more natural beauty left to behold. Even considering that, there is no denying the potency that still remains in the land across America. The great Rocky Mountains, the lush forests of the Pacific Northwest, the colorful, rugged deserts of the South West, the Redwood trees and rocky cliffs of the California coast, the sweeping loneliness of the American plains, even the vivacious Southern swamps and bayous–there is a lot of splendor that America offers. 

My DNA is largely composed of Irish, Scottish, and German ancestry. I had always wanted to travel to these places in Europe to see if I could feel connected to the land in any sort of deep way, stemming from my blood. I have now had the privilege of visiting Ireland and living in Germany (and a trip to Scotland is upcoming in November). Indeed, I believe I am even living in the part of Germany where most of my German ancestors would have harkened from (they were, I believe, Prussian, and thus from Northeast Germany, where I now am–Dad you can correct me on this). I will say that traveling to Ireland felt more like a soul connection than I’ve yet to find in Germany. I keep hoping I will find it here. Perhaps it is just that Ireland is largely still very cozy, whereas East Germany has been very modernized (at least the parts I’ve largely been in, definitely so Greifswald). 

I do not believe I have any American indigenous ancestry–I think I once heard that on my dad’s side there may have been one indigenous ancestor–but I do not know a lot about this, and they would just be a drop of red in an ocean of white. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly more of a soul connection that I feel with just about any part of America than I do out here. This is, perhaps, largely unsurprising. As despite my ancestry not being native to America, my body is. That is where I was born and shaped. That is the land that fed me, body, mind, and soul. That is the land where I learned to love nature, and the expanse of the world. I am entirely sculpted by scrambles along steep, rugged high alpine rocks or along dry, red, smooth and scratchy rocks stretching underneath an interminable desert sky. My oceans are the Atlantic, where I would spend my childhoods on the quaint and busy beaches of Cape Cod, and the Pacific, where I would spend nights gazing out over the crashing waves as an adult. The greatest love of my life was significantly shaped by hours and hours of driving together through those vast lonely plains traversing from Wisconsin to Colorado and back, watching storms dominate the sky across the endless fields of corn and soy beans–imagining them filled instead with buffalo. 

Of course, the United States is especially home because of the people there. The beautiful tapestry of people that make up the United States. The complex community of wave after wave of immigrants, all having to undergo their own hardships in pursuit of a better life. A life that is promised to all, but accessible to few. American cities are glorious in that you can travel block to block and experience many different cultures, communities, families, and traditions, all within a short walk. You can find dim sum, tacos, health food smoothies, injera, tikka masala, french pastries–all within one afternoon of ambling around. You can hear music from all over the world, see people of all sorts falling in love, children of any various ancestral backgrounds playing together in a park. 

It is where my family and friends are, for the most part. The United States is my home. It is the land and the community that I belong to, composed of the tapestry of all of the lands and communities I have belonged to. As I wrote in my post from early July (Am I Proud to Be an American?)–I am proud to be from America. I am not proud of America.

For all that exists there, all that makes it diverse, interesting, and naturally beautiful, there seems to be a dark force working to unmake all of that in the names of greed and fear. So many protected lands are being opened up to exploitation by the oil, gas, and lumber industries under our current administration. The natural world to this administration is nothing more than something that can be sterilized and turned into a commodity–or perhaps a luxury golf course. Almost every diverse natural biome in the U.S. has been under threat for decades, and whatever progress that has been made to protect what’s left seems to be constantly being undermined by the wealthy few, for whom enough is never enough.

As for the diversity of people–that is perhaps even more acutely under attack. People of color live in fear in an increasing number of cities because there is a government police force moving with absolute authority, fully masked, unbadged, and unwarranted–rounding up anyone who looks different from them with impunity–or anyone that stands in their way of doing so. Citizens are not safe. Skilled, highly-desired, legal immigrants are not safe. People who are just here trying to make their lives better, as was promised to them on the Statue of Liberty, are not safe. The poor, huddled, tired masses, yearning to be free are increasingly living under threats of unlawful and immoral kidnapping, deportation, and imprisonment.

The very concept of “legal” vs “illegal” immigration is, historically, one that is entirely based on racist prejudice. On our recent trip to the U.S. we spent a few hours at a natural history and cultural museum on campus at the University of Oregon. There we learned all about the history of Chinese migrants in the U.S., and the hardships they endured. It was as a racist response to Chinese immigrants that the first acts determining which immigrants were “illegal” were passed, greatly restricting the rights of Chinese people in America. Before these acts (all in the late 1800s), there had been no such designation as an “illegal immigrant” in the United States. Since then, the U.S. government has shifted several times to designate different groups large-scale as “illegal”, based on the racist and/or xenophobic opinion of the day: The Irish, The Japanese, people from Muslim countries, people from Latin America, etc. Learning the history of the United States, you end up learning more and more about how much racism is an integral part of the laws and government. It is wild to live somewhere that has never not spouted the ideals of “freedom and liberty for all” while simultaneously actively working to undercut the rights and safety for many people.

Michael and I very much wish to return to the U.S. once his contract is fulfilled here. Again, our recent trip back only highlighted for us how much the U.S. really is our home. We’re constantly back and forth between thoughts of returning to Colorado or returning to Madison, two places that for us are undeniably home. However, we are also trying to start a family. It is not just our futures and our sense of home that we must consider. 

We know that one can live as an American citizen, and through information and compassion, come to know the reality of our history, and thus seek to do better than those of the past (or, today). We would teach our kids the importance of knowing all elements of history, even the difficult ones, so that they learn what not to do as we all work in an effort to build a kinder world. We will teach them about the land–the plants, the animals, the rocks, the dirt, the flowers, the bugs–so that they will know it is all something they exist in relationship with, not something they live over. We will teach them about the importance of being curious about anything or anyone that is seemingly different from themselves, how to interact with that difference in kindness, and how to be respectful of everybody and everything. There is a desire to build a future that will make our home better, and closer to the ideals that it has promised for centuries–but never quite lived up to.

However, there are practical matters that we can’t help but consider, along with the idealistic ones. It is highly, highly likely that Michael and I will have white, blue-eyed, blond-haired children. As such they, like us, will be born into a place of privilege, either in the U.S., or here in Germany. Thus, if we return to the U.S., it is highly unlikely that our family will be directly impacted by ICE cruelty, or that we would suffer an infringement on any of our rights. However, it does seem likely that they could live in a world where their classmates’ or friends’ families are torn apart by ICE. Or that they could experience a school shooting, as nothing has been done at all to curtail those horrific incidents. Or that they could go to school and be subject to a curriculum that teaches them nothing at all about people or cultures other than the homogenous white narrative, and does not encourage critical thinking of that narrative. It could be that they never experience the joy of the outdoors in quite the same way that we did while growing up, due to extreme weather phenomena resulting from climate change. 

It is also stark to think about the comfort of our lives as a family in the U.S. versus the abundance of support we’d receive as a family here in Germany. Here we have free healthcare, free child care, extensive family leave, six weeks of paid vacation, and a truly affordable college education (it’s like 200 Euro a semester, probably less). Not to mention that it’s actually affordable to live here–a 3 bedroom house (fancy standards in these parts) would cost us less than 250,000 Euro. Food is still entirely reasonably priced. Furthermore, Germany takes green energy more seriously, and so there is more of an ethos around environmental care. There is, of course, also no school or mass shootings.

Compare this to what we know waits us back in the U.S.: expensive and unreliable healthcare, expensive child care, virtually no family leave, maybe a few weeks of vacation, astronomical college tuitions, insanely expensive housing, and expensive food. Comparing these practical matters, it seems like the most logical choice for us would be to stay in Germany. Our lives, monetarily speaking, would undoubtedly be much more comfortable here. And yet—it is not our home. It is not our land, it is not our community. It is hard for us to imagine raising our family so far from our hearts. 

We are both experienced enough with moving and traveling around to know that this is undoubtedly homesickness. However, there are definitely places where upon moving there I never experienced homesickness because it so undoubtedly and immediately felt like home. Green Gulch was such a place for me, as was Madison. This was not a feeling I immediately felt with Greifswald–or even at large, Germany or Europe. I do not wish to sound ungrateful. There are many things for which I am grateful for living here. It is undoubtedly a unique experience, getting to live in a foreign country, to necessarily need to learn another language and become adjusted to different customs and a different way of life. It is already a perspective I cherish–because being an immigrant (even a wanted one that can blend in, physically at least, to the community I moved to) is a difficult experience. 

For those who know me well, or who have read other blog posts in which I’ve talked about this, moving here was not an easy choice for me. I was very, very resistant to it. A primary reason for this is that I know that I am someone who thrives when I have a deep connection to where I’m living. When I live in relationship to the community and land. I had that in Madison. I was teaching children to garden. I was helping to raise a lovely little boy as his nanny. I was close to the community of the city’s land stewards. Furthermore, Madison really is suffused with natural beauty. The naturalist culture thrived there and preserved a lot of land to be enjoyed for generations to come. I felt close to my purpose there. I am at a time in my life where I crave setting down roots, establishing a home, caring for land that is mine to care for for decades. Living on land and in a community that my children can cultivate, and that in turn cultivates them. 

I think if I were to ultimately have one life goal–it would be aging into someone like Robin Wall Kimmerer or Wendy Johnson. To be a woman whose spirit has been weathered to gentleness and whose body has been kept sturdy by how closely I lived to the ground. I want to be someone who inspires those of the next generation to live in relationship to their land, and to each other. Someone who can acknowledge the deep suffering and cruelty of the world, and yet who knows the remedy. Someone who, in fact, can offer that remedy by taking some kids berry picking or providing a spot of solace in the soundbath of trees quaking in the wind. Someone who builds refuge with their bare hands, who then can offer it to those in need with an open, genuine heart. I hope to be the matriarch from my dream that can so readily offer community to those with genuine interest in joining.

That is the goal. The reality now is that I am in Greifswald, Germany, living four stories up in a soviet-built concrete block apartment building. I am separated by most people around me by a language barrier. I don’t live much in relation to the land. But I can spend my time reading, writing, and creating. I can take as much time and space as I need to take care of myself, and our life here. This is what is. 

Given that, I now am tasked with asking myself questions around my circumstances and my desires. How do I cultivate my heart image, my (literal) dream of living in graceful responsibility towards others and the land? Can the ever-present companion of anxiety allow me to venture forth and seek that here? Is this time meant for cultivating something else that will ultimately serve that goal, that dream, down the line? Of course, the ever-present Zen question: By focusing on what is not, am I ignoring what is? 

Perhaps the answer to all of these questions lies, as most things do, in one of my favorite Zen axioms: Not knowing is most intimate.

Perhaps to hold true to the beacon of my heart-dream along with the present intimacy of not knowing is all there is to do right now. 

Today is another chilly summer day in the German state of Mecklenberg-Vorpommern. I am sitting on the 4th floor (although the Germans would call it the 3rd floor) of our building, in the apartment we moved into in July. The high today is 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.2 degrees Celcius), a departure from the pleasant streak of weather that we’ve had in August thus far, where the high has been nestled firmly in the low 70s.

I’ve had to close the “tilt-and-turn” windows and doors (which are ubiquitous across Germany) today because there is too much of an icy chill from the wind, and even with sweats on during this mid-August day, the chill was too much to be comfortable. I felt okay in closing them because they had been open all morning, and thus I did not disrupt the requisite lüften time: a ventilation technique popular across Germany for centuries in which the windows are open daily–ideally across the home or room from one another to encourage a cross-breeze–so that the air remains fresh in the home. If it is cold, it is allowed to practice lüften for only 5 minutes or so at a time–but practicing lüften is still expected to be done every day.

This apartment, like the vast majority of apartments in Eastern Germany is of the Plattenbau style: cookie-cutter apartments all constructed with pre-fabricated concrete blocks. The expanse of Plattenbau apartments that surround the city center of Greifswald is something that clearly marks Greifswald as a town that had, for 41 years, been a part of a communist, Soviet, country. During the time that Greifswald was a part of the GDR (German Democratic Republic), the population boomed due to a nuclear power plant located in the nearby beach town of Lubmin, which has since gone defunct. The majority of the medieval buildings of the town during that time were neglected or torn down, and these apartment buildings were erected en masse instead.

Since the re-unification of Germany, there has been an effort to restore some of Greifswald’s historic charm. Whatever historic buildings remained have been renovated to their previous glory. Plattenbau apartments across the town have been painted and landscaped, to give them some charm and personality. Often the apartments are accented by bright colors–our own apartment building has some orange and yellow. In the old town–most notably the cultural heart of Greifswald, the Marktplatz–the renovations were done so well that it is hard to believe that that is not how the buildings have stood–proud and grand–for centuries, without any Soviet disruption. 

I knew very little about German history before moving here, and still do not know much–but I have taken an increasing interest in it. In particular, I have an interest in this land. Greifswald is a city within the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpmommern. Within that state we live in what is considered “Western Pommerania”, or “Vorpommern” to the locals. As is the case with most of Europe, the history here is ancient, complex, and rife with the changing of leaders and allegiances. 

The founding of Greifswald goes back to the foundation of the Eldena Abbey in 1199 by some Danish monks. The land at the time was actually under Danish control. The monks were allowed to use a nearby salt pond to harvest salt to trade as their main income. There is one myth around the naming of Greifswald in which these early Danish monks were shown where to build their abbey by a griffin in a forest. In German, “Greifswald”  translates to “Griffin’s Forest”, and is pronounced “Gr-igh-f-s-vald”, although I feel like many people–myself included–drop the “f” and pronounce it “Gr-igh-s-vald” (this may be incorrect and I just sound like a flat-mouthed American goober when I do so). There are still ruins for the Eldena Abbey extant today. 

As a fun aside–I have not yet checked out the Eldena ruins, but Michael had previously when he had traveled out here from Madison for a work trip years ago. One of our favorite anecdotes is from when Michael was looking up the ruins on Google in order to navigate to them, and he happened to notice that somebody gave the ruins a one-star review. Curious, he opened it up and it was–almost undoubtedly–left by an American tourist who said touring the ruins was a one-star experience because, “There was nothing to do but walk around and look at [sic]. There wasn’t even a shop or anything.” So beware, if you come to visit the ruins, all there is to do is look at them. Do not expect the chance to buy something while doing so (although I do know that there is a nice ice cream shop–which I have visited–right next to them).

Pretty soon into the development of the abbey the land traded hands from the Danish Rugian Prince to the Dukes of Pomerania (who had for a while been a vassal state of Poland, but had then recently become independent). The Dukes of Pomerania were called the “griffins”, and their emblem was a griffin–which does make me wonder if that is also partly where Greifswald got its name from (although I haven’t seen this officially noted anywhere yet). Although the Pomeranian Dukes controlled this region for hundreds of years, the dukes themselves did not remain independent throughout that time. In fact, it seems they were only independent for about 30 years. In 1164 they became vassals of the Duchy of Saxony. 

Meanwhile, solidifying across most of the rest of Germany was the Holy Roman Empire. Founded over 300 years after the collapse of the Roman Empire proper, the HRE was formed in the year 800 when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor. The HRE was initially comprised of modern-day Germany, northern Italy, and Burgundy (modern-day eastern France). It lasted for one thousand years, until the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. At its largest, it also contained “Germany, Czechia, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Luxembourg, most of north-central Italy and southern Belgium, and large parts of modern-day east France and west Poland” (Wikipedia). Ultimately, its power was concentrated in modern-day Germany, and it is referred to in German history as the “First Reich”.

The HRE’s claim to being a “Holy Roman” Empire comes from it being founded with the blessing of the papacy, and with that blessing being continuously bestowed upon the Emperors of the HRE throughout its reign. As Voltaire has quipped about the HRE: “This body which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire” (Wikipedia).

In 1181 the Dukes of Pomerania became vassals of the Holy Roman Empire for five years, were then wrested from the HRE by the Danes for 40 years, and ultimately rejoined the HRE for the rest of the empire’s reign. However, to keep this spicy, and thoroughly European, although the Dukes of Pomerania (and thus this region) were under the vassalage of the HRE, they were also ruled by the Swedes starting in 1637, when the last living Griffin duke was killed in the Thirty Years’ War. The Swedish rulers were allowed to operate as Imperial Princes over their newly gained Swedish Pomerania under the HRE up until 1815 (with Pomerania remaining Swedish for 9 years after the dissolution of the HRE, it seems).

That means that for almost two hundred years, this region was both a part of the Swedish Kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire simultaneously. In 1815, Western Pomerania came under the rule of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1871 the region became a part of Germany once more.

Greifswald’s official name is in fact the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald. During the late 13th century, the town joined the Hanseatic League (or The Hansa). This was a network of northern European towns that either existed on or close to the Baltic and North Seas. The league acted as a trade and defense agreement amongst the towns. It started in northern Germany and expanded, ultimately containing towns across all of the Baltic coast, from what is modern day Estonia to The Netherlands. It never really had a true governing body, but was a collection of city-states that dominated trade in the Baltic and North Seas throughout the Medieval Ages.

The Hanseatic League is where the modern-day soccer club of the region, Fusbol Club Hansa Rostock (FCH) gets its name. As a quick fun fact–we learned from a friend here that the soccer club fanbases in Germany become known for their political leanings. There are clubs with left-leaning fans and right-leaning fans. FCH is very right-leaning. 

In 1456 the University of Greifwald was founded, making it the 26th oldest university in the world, and the 4th oldest University in Germany (behind Heidelberg, 1385; Leipzig, 1409; and nearby Rostock, 1419). The university is still an integral facet of the city today. 

Greifswald made it through World War II without much damage, even though it housed a large German garrison and a Prisoner-of-War camp (I am not sure where this was). The camp operated as a labor camp for French, Soviet, Serbian, and Belgian POWs. During the end of the war, Greifwald surrendered to the Red Army without a fight. Following the Berlin Declaration and Potsdam Agreement in the aftermath of WWII, this region fell under Soviet occupation in 1945. The GDR (German Democratic Republic) was founded as an independent nation in 1949–although it was given its “independence” by the Soviet Union, it was still considered a part of the Soviet Eastern Bloc.

In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, Greifwald once more became a part of Germany. There are lots of cultural curiosities that I feel like are probably unique to Eastern German towns that abound in Greifswald (I am welcome to corrections on this front). First and foremost, it is undoubtedly culturally German. It has all of the aspects of a modern, comfortable, German life, including ubiquitous bike lanes, a bakery in every grocery store, towel warmers installed in every bathroom, every single window and balcony door being the aforementioned tilt-and-turn, and kleingarten plots sprinkled throughout the city.

In alignment with Germany everywhere, everybody takes most of the late summer off, as I have discovered while trying to tend to several things these past few weeks to no response (in general, the customer service in Germany is not good. It’s good if you’re there in person, but if you need to email them or submit an online form, forget about it. You may never hear back).

 I recognized that I needed to get a cleaning and check-up with a dentist in early August. After one humiliating phone call in which I tried to speak German with the receptionist (to which she responded with absolute silence and then very fast German once I apologized for my poor German), I was determined to find a dental office and dentist that spoke English–or at the very least that my Millenial-ass could book online to avoid the terror of another awkward phone call. After learning of a couple of offices that were reportedly English-speaking friendly, I kept trying through their online booking (itself a very rare thing here) and email to get in touch with the office staff to see if I could book an appointment. After hearing nothing back for a couple of weeks I finally called, was sent straight to voicemail, and was eventually able to piece together that the entire office (of both dentist offices I was trying to get in touch with) were all on vacation until mid-August. 

Our deposit return for our first apartment was delayed because the accounting staff for our landlord was all on vacation. Our rolladen (another ubiquitous, excellent German appliance–motorized, inter-locking blinds that rend a room entirely dark with the push of a button) has been broken for a few weeks and it can’t be repaired because the rental office for our building was on vacation, and now I think the maintenance workers are on vacation because I haven’t heard anything from them, which the rental office said I would (or it could just be that poor customer service culture again, who knows). 

Despite all of these cultural components that are decidedly German, there are also some elements that are unusual, especially to us Americans.

This can perhaps be seen most clearly in our soviet apartment building. The apartments here are expected to be long-term dwellings, even though the vast majority are rented. I think it is partly due to this that rent is so cheap here. The few houses that there are in Greifswald, most of them are duplexes. Because each apartment is intended to be a long-term residence, the residents are often expected to customize them to their liking, to make them feel truly like their own home. This not only means that tenants are free to paint the walls, but they can change the flooring, the landscaping, the cabinets, the appliances–whatever they like. 

The flooring in our apartment is odd in that there is linoleum flooring everywhere (made to look like hardwood), that is installed rather poorly (presumably DIY from the last tenants) over carpet. When we first discovered this we assumed this was just a poorly done job–but when Michael brought it up to a German she told him that that is a common practice around here, because you have the aesthetics of the linoleum-wood floor, but the carpet dampens the sound for your downstairs neighbors.

We also discovered that there are several expectations for tenants that we had never experienced before. Most kitchens come appliance-less. This is because it is common practice for people to buy their own appliances, and then to bring them with them if they move. Being able to snag a “fitted kitchen” that comes with the appliances (like we were, thank goodness), is rare–but I think increasingly becoming less so. We were also surprised to discover that we were expected to supply our own overhead lights for the rooms. Our apartment came fitted with a light for the kitchen, bathroom, and entry hallways–but nothing for the living room or either of the bedrooms. 

There are some positive aspects in our daily life that presumably come from Greifswald’s tenure as a communist city. One notable thing is that there does seem to still be a sense of leisure around the concept of paying for things (except for taxes, of course). Michael has been participating weekly in a sailing club. When he first talked about joining, and what the fees were, people were rather insouciant around the whole thing. There is a general consensus, it seems, that before one pays for membership to a place, it is appropriate for one to experience what they have to offer for a while before they need to make the decision around paying for fees. So although Michael has been a part of the sailing club for a couple of months, only last night did they ask him if he’s thought about paying to be a member (no pressure though).

We were also introduced to this lovely climbing gym that has some real communist vibes. Similar to the sailing club, there has been no pressure for us to pay for any of our times we have gone to climb. We were told that the membership fee is 90 Euro every three months (which is cheap–its about what we were paying monthly for our gym in Madison), but that nobody checks for membership status. It’s entirely honor-based, and again, there was an expectation that we’d climb at the gym for a while before we even needed to consider paying. Plus, they let us bring in Daisy Mae, and she gets to nap and get pats while we climb, which is a definite bonus.

I am grateful for this opportunity to live in this other country, learn about its rich history, and experience its cultural oddities. Although I was tentative to move here at first (to put it lightly), it has proven, so far, to be an enriching chapter in my life. I have so much time to make art, write, and read. I finished last month a charming book called A Little History of the World, which was written in the early 1900s by an Austrian ex-pat who lived in Great Britain (it was very interesting reading about world history where the US is only seldom mentioned. Although it was still largely focused on European history, it was still an interesting perspective–and it is here where I first began to learn more about German history, of which there was much more of an emphasis, due to the author’s biases).

My German is slowly getting better (at least the vocabulary is–German grammar and sentence structure is really hard). I am a person who thrives once I’m rooted, and I’m looking forward to becoming increasingly established here over the next year. Hopefully by then I will have made it through all of the awkward initial bookings for the various doctors, I’ll have a decent handle on the language, we will have finally figured out all of the taxes we need to pay (a new one springs up seemingly every month–like the media tax we just learned about that every person pays for to support independent media, or the dog tax for Daisy Mae), and all of our rooms will have overhead lights.

This information in this post almost entirely came from cross-referencing several Wikipedia articles. Thanks Wikipedia!

Reading now: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi , The Hero of Ages by my boi Brandon Sanderson, and We Are Three by Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Listening now:  My ever expanding Greifswald Summer playlist

There are consistent patterns that can be found again and again amongst those who walk a spiritual path. 

I am most knowledgeable about the patterns found in Buddhist practice, but I believe that these patterns can be ascribed to many walks of life (not just the spiritual ones). Human brains love to create patterns (it’s perhaps the thing that human brains are best at). It thus seems inevitable that throughout the centuries, while the Buddhist monks and nuns sat and meditated, with nothing to observe but the mind, they proffered many lists, diagrams, and maps of the brain and how it impacts one’s life. The ancient Buddhists were, to me, undoubtedly early psychologists. As I’ve touched on in previous posts, as someone who has dabbled in both Buddhism and therapy, it is a rather common occurrence that I encounter a “new” psychological model that is actually echoing quite keenly the insights of the early Buddhists.

However, their study of the brain was not clinical, nor was it in any way secular. The purpose of their study was entirely situated in faith. The Buddhists were not deists (at least, not most of them). They did not have faith in a God. They had faith in themselves and in the teachings of the Buddha that dictated that every person is capable of their own release from suffering. For a quick lesson in foundational Buddhism for anyone who is unfamiliar: The first teaching of the Buddha after his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree was the Four Noble Truths. These are the foundation for Buddhist faith. Every other insight and practice stems from these Four Truths. They also established the tradition of Buddhists clearly lineating their teachings into numbered lists.

The Four Noble Truths are:

1. There is suffering. Every living being will experience suffering in their lifetime. It is inescapable.
2. There is a cause of the suffering. That cause is the delusion of separation, from which stems the other two poisons in the world–greed and hatred.
3. The cessation of suffering is possible. It is important to note that “suffering” is different from “pain”. Pain will always remain an inescapable part of life. The suffering comes from the mind–it is up to you how to process your pain so that you do not suffer.
4. The cessation of suffering is accomplished by following the Eightfold Path (another numbered list within THE initial numbered list. As you can see, this is from the getgo a staple of Buddhism).

The Eightfold Path is a guide towards living an ethical life. It is, in true Buddhist nature, entirely subjective and interpretable. In order to escape suffering by walking this path, it is a requirement for one to look inwards and become self-aware and mindful. This is not a simple set of rules one must follow. It requires attention, adaptability, and grace. The Eightfold Path is as follows:

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Meditation

I was taught that to live “right” according to the Eightfold Path is to live upright. It is to live in accordance with ethics, especially those taught by the Buddha based in ultimate Compassion and Wisdom.

These first teachings of the Buddha set the stage for what would become a largely peaceful religion throughout history (with some notable exceptions, there always are). I am trained as a Zen practitioner, which is a form of Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhists refer to this early Buddhism, and these first teachings of the Buddha, as the “First Turning of the Wheel”. The Wheel is a common symbol used in Buddhism. It is most often seen, in fact, as a representation of the Eightfold Path. The “wheel” is representative of the Buddha’s teachings, called the Dharma. The practitioners of the First Turning (of which there are still many in the world) are called “Theravadans”. 

The focus of the Theravadans’ practice is to reach enlightenment via the path that the Buddha laid out after his own awakening. An enlightened person, one who has reached such a level of understanding that they are released from their karma–and thus suffering–is called an “Arhat”. Enlightenment means achieving the ultimate understanding of reality–through this one can escape the cycle of birth and rebirth (and thus suffering) into nirvana (or to be “blown out”–as a match or a candle is). 

As a quick side-note: Just as Christianity has its roots in Judaism because Christ was raised as a Jew in Palestine, Buddhism has its roots in Hinduism because The Buddha was raised as a Vedic practitioner in India. The idea of reincarnation thus does exist in Buddhism, but it doesn’t always have the same literal meaning as it does in Hinduism (the Tibetans are a notable exception to this). I was taught while at Zen center that reincarnation was more of a transfer of energy, and less of a soul hopping bodies. This is much more copacetic with my metaphysical understanding (based in science) of how death and life works.

The Mahayana Buddhists are practitioners of the “Second Turning of the Wheel”, brought to us by Nagarjuna, another Indian monk who lived about 500 years after the death of the Buddha. Mahayana Buddhism is identified by two primary facets:
1. As opposed to the Theravadans, who practice to achieve self-enlightenment and become Arhats, the Mahayanans practice for the enlightenment of all beings, and in doing so become Bodhisattvas; and
2. There is deep study and faith in the teachings of Nagarjuna–that of Emptiness.

Emptiness is a tricky concept and one that requires, in my experience and opinion, a lot of practice and study to understand. I will do my best to give a Cliff Notes version–so do not expect comprehensiveness. 

Just as much of Buddhism is an ancient form of psychology, it is also an early form of quantum physics. Emptiness is the understanding that nothing inherently exists. This is of course, confusing on the mundane, macrocosmic, everyday level. Of course things exist. There are tables, cars, cups, dogs, trees, etc. We can look around and see them. Yet, if we look deeper, we see that they actually do not exist. Well before Niels Bohr proffered his model of the atom, the Buddhists had some sort of understanding that nothing is as simple as it appears. If we look closely enough, at the micro level, we can see that actually–that tree does not exist. It is mostly just a collection of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen molecules. Indeed, even if we look close enough at the molecules and atoms that make up the tree, we see that they are actually mostly just empty space.  Therefore, the tree is mostly nothing.

Or, perhaps, we could look at how that tree is not composed of matter, but of relationships–something far less tangible. It is not a tree, but the result in this moment of many things relating to each other. The water it absorbs into its roots becomes its sap. That water came from the clouds, which came from the sea, which used to run through a power plant, which used to run through a bathroom sink, which used to be in a glacier. The carbon dioxide it pulls from the air becomes its fuel. That carbon was buried under the ground for millions of years before it was pulled up and burned in a coal power plant. Thus it becomes that the carbon that once comprised the body of a Stegosaurus is now in the maple syrup produced by that tree, which in turn becomes a part of your body once you eat it on pancakes. There is no point in which the tree begins and the rest of the world ends. Everything in the universe is conspiring to come together in this one fraction of space-time to create that tree–or that mug, or that dog, or you. (This, of course, is an ancient understanding of ecology). 

We perhaps won’t even touch on the very concept of “tree” and how it is contrived throughout the centuries, as all language is, to mean what it means to us today. If you look up the etymology for the word “tree” (as I just did), it is quite confusing. It has layers upon layers of meaning from all over the world that fold upon each other to give us today the concept of the word “tree”. Realizing something apart from our name for it is very difficult to do. There was one day while I was at Tassajara, washing my clothes, and I looked at a tree and realized in a flash that it was not a tree. It existed outside of the word “tree”. It only lasted a minute. Just as the human brain loves patterns, it also loves to name things. I actually am quite fond of our innate tendency to give potency to names. There are lots of powerful stories and mythologies about how true magic is knowing the actual name of a thing– tapping into the power of the name beyond the name.

The reality that there is a tree, and at the same time, that there definitely is not a tree can be explained by Nagarjuna’s teaching of the Two Truths. This is one of the most beautiful of the Buddhist paradoxes (of which Zen specializes). The first of the two truths is the Subjective Truth (the light), and that is the understanding that there is a universe and things in that universe that we can experience, know, and name. Ethics lies in the realm of the Subjective Truth. 

The second truth is the Ultimate Truth (the dark), and that is beyond human comprehension in its grandeur and vastness. For example, I will never know all of the colors, as I am limited by the number of cones and rods in my eyes. I will never know what the vacuum of space feels like, nor what it could be to live without language. I am limited by all that comes together in my human life that has shaped my mind to think in the way that it does. Yet these things exist, whether or not I can experience and name them (or even know of them).

One of the reasons it’s so important to read about different perspectives, or travel and meet people who have different perspectives, is that it literally broadens your understanding of what is possible. It helps you step outside of the confines of your life as you know it so that you may expand. It helps to bridge the Two Truths, as does deep spiritual practice. 

Studying the Two Truths is lovely because it allows oneself to accept the reality that two things that seem opposite are actually not opposite at all, but the same. The reality that something both does and doesn’t exist allows for far more possibilities in any given moment. It gets right to the heart of the delusion of separation. We suffer because we do not realize we are all the same. We are all the universe coalescing in a single moment to create everything as it is–before it all returns to the infinite once more. Therefore there is no need to be greedy or hateful. To love yourself is to love everything, and to love everything is to love yourself.

It is my belief that what Buddhists call the Ultimate Truth–this vast reality beyond our knowing in which nothing really exists, cannot be named, and is beyond sensing–is what many mystics throughout the ages have experienced as God. When I read the mystical poets of Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, or Judaism relating their experience of God, I see them making an amenable, heartfelt, beautiful attempt to name the unknowable. In these mystical accounts of their meeting with God, I feel their descriptions greatly match the accounts of Mahayana Buddhists achieving enlightenment. For this is a great teaching in the Second Turning–if one can truly know emptiness, to experience it rather than just intellectually understand it, then one becomes enlightened. It is through studying emptiness that I transformed from a hesitant Atheist practicing Buddhism into a mystic myself. This was my backdoor into God.

Now, here’s the rub–it is very common for those who study emptiness to become nihilists. This is a phenomenon that is, of course, catalogued and codified by the Buddhists. It is a common enough step on the spiritual path that is described in several places, including the Ten Oxherding Pictures and Dongshan’s Five Ranks. At some point in one’s spiritual journey, after realizing the emptiness of all things, one begins to ask oneself: ok, then what is the point? If none of this actually exists, then why live an ethical life?

This question may resonate with some readers who are not themselves Mahayana monks. It is a question that is asked throughout time, in different modes, through different lenses, with different backgrounds, beliefs, and upbringings: “To be or not to be?” Questioning the point of it all in the face of emptiness can only be compounded when considering the pains of the world. 

During my second year of living at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, I myself fell into a well of depression and nihilism. In the midst of studying the emptiness teachings I was hit by a piece of news about climate change. Upsetting news around the climate crisis has been a near constant companion of us all for the last couple of decades. It’s always distressing–and yet, sometimes, a piece hits harder than the others. Perhaps one just reaches a point of saturation with bad news where we just can’t take any more in and there needs to be overflow. This particular bit of news was about how the permafrost in the arctic is thawing. The permafrost has many ecological benefits in the arctic region. One incidental way it has been helping us out is by providing frozen caps over large bubbles of methane trapped right under the surface. As the permafrost melts, the methane is released. This is a large amount of methane (which is a potent greenhouse gas). The hotter it gets, the more methane is released, making it hotter still.

It is one of many positive feedback loops that will continue to make our planet increasingly inhospitable the warmer it gets. It is something that feels, frankly, hopeless. Facing this alongside the existential reality of the emptiness of all things, I frequently found myself numbly walking through my days (those who had never lived as a monk may be surprised by how many monks–people who have supposedly dedicated their lives to mindfulness–numbly go through their days), asking myself again and again–what was the point of it all? If me trying my best, living my best ethical life, wasn’t going to stop that permafrost from melting, wasn’t going to stop the widespread, cataclysmic change in climate, wasn’t going to stop the subsequent suffering of beings–what was the point of doing it at all?

It is around this time that I began to study the precepts. The precepts are vows to live one’s life as a Bodhisattva. This is a big deal in the life of a monk. I was only a lay monk, and was only going to be taking the precepts as a lay person. The precepts I took are the same precepts that a priest takes, but with a different intention. They were vows I was going to take for my own spiritual purposes. The precepts became my bouys–bits of shining light I could swim to and refuges for me to hang onto–while I weathered the dark waves of that nihilistic storm. 

It is around this time that I also began to study Joseph Campbell, and found great meaning in the idea of The Hero’s Journey. I’d say that the Hero’s Journey also became, for me, a near religious force. I was–and am–very struck by the idea that throughout time and cultures, there is a pattern (humans love their patterns) of a person undergoing a transformation from the mundane to the heroic that can be found again and again, across mythologies. As Campbell lays out The Hero’s Journey, with its twelve discernible steps, it is noticeably similar to one of the many lists that the Buddhists make. It is a path towards understanding, towards something better, towards release. 

I plan on doing a whole other post on the precepts (and the Hero’s Journey), so I won’t go into their details too much right now. I’ll just say that it became clear to me that taking the precepts was a very important step in my own hero’s journey. They are promises to live an ethical life, and to do so with the intent of saving all beings. I needed this guidance. I needed a clear ethical framework that I could come back to, again and again. I needed my buoys, steadfast and shining, in the tumultuous stormy sea of life. As is the Zen Buddhist way, the precepts are interpretable, vague, and seemingly impossible. Yet it is in their impossibility that they become inspirational. I found great courage in the fact that for hundreds of years people have been taking the precepts, dedicating their life to the saving of all beings, and doing it not because it is achievable, but because it must be done. It is the right thing to do. 

The Buddha’s teachings are so transformative and important because they are wisdom and compassion paired. It would be one thing if the only truths he offered were that there was suffering and a cause of suffering. That is wisdom, certainly, and an important thing for everybody to accept at a base level. But he then continued on to give hope and direction in the face of that suffering. He offered compassion. Importantly, the root of that compassion is ethics. To live an ethical life, full of introspection and awareness–that is how one not only alleviates the suffering within their own life, but can alleviate the suffering of others as well.

The essence of the emptiness teachings is encapsulated by the Prajna Paramita. The Prajna Paramita is a recounting by Avalokitesvara–the Bodhisattva of Compassion–of the nature of all things to Shariputra, a disciple of the Buddha’s. It is called the Heart Sutra. A lot of new practitioners (myself included) are confused by this name. It is not one that necessarily inspires a lot of heart. Certainly not when compared to, perhaps, The Loving Kindness Meditation. However, it is not named The Heart Sutra due to any sort of loving feeling it inspires (at least, not necessarily). It is named the Heart Sutra because it gets to the heart of the matter. It is the core of the Mahayana teachings–it explains, in some great detail, the emptiness of all things. In the manner of the Buddha, this wisdom on the emptiness of all things is delivered by the being of ultimate compassion, Avalokitesvara. It is in this way that we know that this wisdom cannot be separated from compassion. 

The Heart Sutra is as follows:

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajña paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering. “Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this. Shariputra, all dharmas are marked by emptiness; they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease. Therefore, given emptiness, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of sight … no realm of mind consciousness. There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance…neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death; no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path; no knowledge and no attainment. With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajña paramita, and thus the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana. All buddhas of past, present, and future rely on prajña paramita and thereby attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. Therefore, know the prajña paramita as the great miraculous mantra, the great bright mantra, the supreme mantra, the incomparable mantra, which removes all suffering and is true, not false. Therefore we proclaim the prajña paramita mantra, the mantra that says: “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.”

If all perceptions, sensations, and experiences are only the result of an ineffably wondrous and grand universe coming together as it does, then there is permission to let go. To let go of the ego, let go of desire, let go of hate, let go of greed. There is only space, and that space is filled with compassion.

And yet–in all of this we must also remember that there is not only space, but real people and real consequences for our actions. We need to uphold the reality of the Two Truths. We are a part of the universe coming together as it does in every moment. A balance, a middle way, needs to be practiced here. It is a duty of our human life to strive towards the perfection of the Ultimate Truth while walking–as best we can–perfectly in the imperfection of the tangible reality. One cannot abide forever on the mountaintop, coasting off of the grand knowledge of emptiness. One needs to go down to help others out of the mud–and maybe splash around in it a little bit too, while we’re down there. 

To abide in the reality that all is empty without compassion is a dangerous and unhelpful way to be. It encourages spiritual bypassing, which is utilizing wisdom without compassion. It is not meeting and overcoming suffering through compassion, understanding, and love, but instead stepping around and over the suffering (or, bypassing it, if you will). I’ve known many, many people who are very practiced spiritual bypassers. I am sure I have done it myself. It is an easy trap to fall into as a spiritual practitioner–to believe that because you have had some small enlightenment yourself, you no longer need to do any dirty work. But, of course, there is no lotus without the dirty water. 

I’m offering and musing on all of this today because it is helpful to hold on to the idea that there is a grand purpose to one’s life, and that there is something important that is worth striving for. To rest in the emptiness (especially the nihilism of emptiness) is to shun a great gift and shirk great potential. What the world needs now is people who think about the Great Matter, and give it meaning through their actions and beliefs.

Yes, it all feels impossible right now. There is so much suffering. The climate crisis only grows more dire. The epitome of greed is causing catastrophic devastation across families, communities, nations, and the world; There are several widespread man-made famines, as well as a genocide, being perpetrated by men who do not strive for the mountaintop in any sense. There are many people in power right now who do not dwell on the intrinsic necessity for compassion, nor the very actual reality of interconnectedness. This is manifest greed and hatred resulting from very tangible delusion. It is causing catastrophic harm to people and the environment.

In order to meet this great suffering and to find meaning for one’s life amidst it all, it is important to spend time thinking about ethics. How do you live your life for the sake of others? Hopefully, thinking about this will inspire action, conviction, and consideration for how one can live a life of purpose. I only hope that there is more of that in this world. There is a great needs more buoys of light as our world churns about in its own grand, dark storm. People choosing to live an ethical life–not because it will work, but because it is necessary–is something that the world is thirsty for. I need to remind myself of this, as I do of many things, often. 

If you live your life for the sake of goodness, it is worthwhile. Keep going. 

Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha (Gone, gone, gone to the other shore, awakening, amen).

Reading now: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi , The Well of Ascension by my boi Brandon Sanderson, and We Are Three by Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Listening now:  I’ve been enjoying this song. It feels pertinent to today’s post: Mantras by Ellen Winter.

After only a couple of weeks of living in Germany, I had the opportunity to go and travel around Western Europe with some of my best friends.

For those of you reading this who somehow don’t know this about me, I have a group of friends I’ve had my whole life. Hannah I met when I was 2 at an early childhood daycare. Maria, Coral, Terra, and JJ I met in preschool, when I was 4. We all attended the Carbondale Community School (CCS) for nine years together, all the way from kindergarten to 8th grade. Hannah, JJ, Maria, and I all attended CRMS together for high school (we still remained close with Coral and Terra during those years, despite them attending a different school). 

In college we all began to spread apart and find our own identities. There were times when some of us drifted away from the group, or there would be a rift between certain members of the group–but, eventually, we always found our way back to each other. There is an indelible bond between the six of us. We’ve seen each other through over 30 years of life together. We know all of the history, all of the embarrassing stories, all of the growth, all of the mistakes–and we have kept choosing to love each other through it all. In many ways, they feel more like siblings to me than friends.

Traveling around Europe together seems like something we would have dreamed of doing as children, although I admittedly don’t have any specific memories around such dreams. But who doesn’t dream of one day frolicking around Europe with their best friends?

The timing was perfect. Maria was living in France, working as an acrobat for Paris Disney. I had just moved to Germany. JJ already had plans to travel over to Europe to see other friends. With half of the group already over here, there was enough momentum towards actually making a trip like this a reality. 

We knew we wanted to visit Paris, primarily to see Maria perform in her role as a wall-jumping Mome Rath in the show “Alice and the Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland” (now running thrice daily at Paris Disney, if anyone gets the chance to go see). We also knew we had interest in seeing more of Europe than just Paris. We decided to start our trip in Amsterdam, then move our way down The Netherlands, check out Brussels, then finish our trip in Paris.

Coral, Hannah, and JJ booked their flights to Europe. Terra was, quite unfortunately, unable to make the trip. She had some things she needed to prioritize this early summer, including dealing with DOGE threatening the livelihood of both her and her husband (they both work as environmental engineers for the Army Corps of Engineers. Their job of dismantling American-made land mines–of which there are startling many just laying around–was deemed “inessential”. They had a higher-up tell them essentially that environmental engineering was in and of itself inessential for the Army Corps of Engineers, and that the organization had to focus on the “war effort”. What?!?! Fortunately neither took the deal DOGE offered them to resign, and so far both still have their jobs. Let’s hope that remains the case, uggh).

The Netherlands (Amsterdam and Delft)

Due to some scheduling confusion, I ended up making my trip out to Amsterdam a day earlier than the rest. I was able to take advantage of the wonderful European train system to make my way down to Berlin from Greifswald (we took many a train on this trip). I caught a flight from Berlin to Amsterdam that took about 40 minutes, and navigated my way to my capsule hotel for the night in South Amsterdam. My tiny room in the capsule hotel was actually quite nice and cozy. It had a perilously high bunk (I’m not sure why, there wasn’t anything happening under the bunk that I could see, just a wall), and its own little bathroom, which even included a little shower. There turned out to not be a lot happening–culture-wise–in South Amsterdam. I was near a university, and there were a lot of open spaces to enjoy nature.

I ended up taking a long walk through open spaces, along canals, and under giant sycamores that lined the streets to have a nice–though quite expensive–veggie burger for dinner. I then made my way back, enjoying checking out the nice homes along the canals, and had an early night in at the hotel, feeling very cozy in my towering bunk and tiny room. Despite each leg of the trip not lasting that long while traveling from Greifswald to Amsterdam, it all added up to a long day of travel. I knew it was nothing compared to what my friends were currently enduring on their way to Europe, however. I wanted to be fresh and ready to support them as they arrived the following day.

Coral, Hannah, and JJ arrived early in the morning that next day, after traveling for over 20 hours. They all had trouble sleeping on the flight, and so were very, very exhausted and jet lagged. I actually didn’t see JJ that first morning because she left first thing to visit another friend of hers that was living in another Dutch town outside of Amsterdam. As it tends to go, our AirBnB didn’t allow check-in until mid-afternoon. The AirBnB was a nice place in a small town just to the north of Amsterdam called Koog Aan de Zaan.

Coral, Hannah, and I met up that first morning and decided to head straight to central Amsterdam to spend our day touring while we waited for the AirBnB. We found locker storage near the central train station, and set off to go wandering. As soon as we were out of the doors of the train station, we were amazed at how beautiful Amsterdam was. South Amsterdam, where I had spent the night before, felt much like anywhere else in contemporary Europe. Central Amsterdam was distinctly its own thing, right away. Of course, there are all of the canals everywhere that Amsterdam is famous for–and then rising from the canals are these old, beautiful buildings, looking much as I imagine they have for hundreds of years. We actually learned that all of central Amsterdam is a UNESCO heritage site, and so the owners of the buildings are not allowed to tear them down or change their facades. We encountered several buildings–like hotels–that had gutted the interior to form the space they needed for their business, while maintaining the exterior. 

Hannah and Coral were true troopers that day, as we spent our whole day walking while they were exhausted. We had interest to scope it out and see where some of the attractions were. We discovered that the famous Red Light District during the day was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the city–except for a discernibly higher density of sex and weed shops (although shops of both kinds could be found everywhere in the city). We stopped only a couple of times to have small bites and coffee/drinks. Hannah and Coral found that as long as they were moving, they felt better–so we mostly walked.

Eventually, it was late enough that we made our way to Koog Aan de Zaan. A wonderful feature of the public transport throughout both The Netherlands and Belgium was that all buses and trains were tap to pay. As long as you had a card on your phone, you could easily board any public transit without worrying about tickets. However, as we discovered on that first day–make sure you always tap out as well. There were a couple of rides where I thought that I didn’t need to tap out and I ended up being charged for the maximum ride time (I ended up paying 40 EUR for what should have been about 7 EUR worth of rides). We still arrived too early at the AirBnb and loitered awkwardly on a nearby street until check-in time.

Our AirBnB was nice, but absolutely was designed without much thought for longterm stays. The host had warnings on the site about the showers, and how they tend to flood, but we didn’t really fully realize the extent to which that happened–which was every time someone showered. However, we were able to settle in. Fortunately there was a grocery store nearby and I went shopping to make everyone dinner. I knew well the feeling of extreme jet lag and how the last thing you wanted when you were that tired was to make decisions. I figured the best thing to do was just to cook a nice cozy meal at home, so that Coral and Hannah could go and crash as soon as they needed. 

The next day we set out to explore Zaanse Schans, a historic neighborhood in north Amsterdam that was actually quite close to where we were staying. We were able to navigate our way there via public transport again, this time taking a very little bus (more like a large van). We stopped to have a very pleasant lunch at Wolfsend before crossing over the bridge and checking out the windmills.

Someone on the bus let us know that this is the last year that Zaans Schans would be free and open to visitors. I’m glad we caught it in its last free year! It was fun checking out the old windmills (originally used as sawmills), clog shops, cheese artisans, and chocolatiers. It was a very pleasant way to spend a morning.

We then had interest to go and check out a completely different vibe and part of town. It was suggested by my brother to go check out the street art district, NDSM-Werf. When he had traveled to Amsterdam in his college days, checking out green engineering projects around Europe, there was an infamous event that took place in NDSM at the NDSM-Loods. The NDSM-Loods is a large maker and artisan space that was renovated from an old ship-building warehouse. Inside there were stacked shipping containers that were used as offices/workshops for artists, and sometimes were turned into giant art displays themselves. When Will went to check this out, he happened to go during a juggalo convention. As he tells it, the primary door (a very large garage-type door) began closing for some reason, causing the juggalos to panic and begin to riot. My brother was trapped amongst the rioting juggalos until he eventually found a side door and was able to scoot his way to safety. It was a dream come true seeing the setting for that story in person (also, it was just cool in its own right).

We had some beers and delicious truffle fries next door (I learned there that Heineken comes from Amsterdam) before we navigated back to the AirBnB to reunite with JJ. We had some more grocery-store fare for dinner and stayed up late chatting and reminiscing with the expanded crew.

The following day Maria was able to join us. Her schedule allows her to take three days off in between her performing days, and so she was with us for the rest of our time in Amsterdam. After scooping up Maria from the central train station, we made our way into the city. We had an appointment to tour the Van Gogh museum. First, we stopped for a quick lunch where Maria tried the Dutch cuisine of bitterballen. We didn’t know what they were–turns out they’re breaded balls of beef gravy, essentially.

I was very excited to go to the museum. I love Van Gogh’s art, and I am very aware that it has influenced my own style greatly. The first time I remember feeling incredibly moved by a painting was seeing Van Gogh’s The Ravine at an impressionist exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. It was the view from his room in the asylum, that he painted over another of his works during his stay there. There’s something incredibly potent about seeing Van Gogh’s art in person, because it has such distinct brush strokes. I feel that I can almost see him painting each stroke, and am constantly struck by the reality that he actually created what I see in front of me. It was fascinating to learn more about his journey as an artist, and to see it as it developed at each stage. 

After the museum we found some delicious gelato and then made our way to a park. We enjoyed the sun (and didn’t enjoy the aggressive way that the local birds sought food from people). JJ headed back early to get work done, and JJ, Coral, Maria, and I went to a food hall for some dinner. It was a fantastic food hall and had so many tempting choices. Hannah and I opted for sushi burritos, and I tried a “Pornstar Martini”, which I saw offered almost everywhere. It was all very pleasant. From there, Hannah headed back to the AirBnB while Maria, Coral, and I ventured out to find some stroopwafels. A fresh stroopwafel is incredible–perhaps the most delectable part of it, though, is the aroma. They offer such a scrumptious, warm-honey, baked good smell. 

The following day we had an easy-going morning. We eventually made our way into the city around noon. We found an incredibly charming spot for brunch called De Laatste Kruimel–it was a tiny building with two levels for dining, and connecting the two levels (and the third level up to the bathroom) were tiny, steep stairs. On each level there were beautiful pastries, sandwiches, coffee and teas.

Following our cute brunch we went on a charming canal tour cruise. We had spotted several of the cruise businesses on the canals in our days before, and we had decided that Friendship would be the choice for us. Not only was it, obviously, poetically accurate for our current trip in Amsterdam–but they seemed to be some of the more relaxed, spacious, and comfortable of the boats we saw out on the water. 

We had opted for one of their “booze cruise” packages, and while we were treated to a very interesting tour of Amsterdam as seen from the waters, we were also treated to bottomless rosé. I kept getting awarded bonus shots of this super sweet alcohol as well because the tour guides would offer trivia questions (if answered correctly, one was awarded with the shot), and my Hermione-ass couldn’t help but try to get all of them right. I’m tempted to write out all of the fun facts and interesting history we learned while on the cruise, but then I think that would end up being a lot of text. So, instead, I’ll just urge anyone visiting Amsterdam to take a cruise yourself and learn it that way!

For dinner that night we had dinner at Oriole, a “Michelin Bib” (which I continuously remember as “Michelin Bag”) restaurant that Coral had found. As one might expect, it was a fantastic meal. Oysters are one of the only animals I eat (I’ll only eat mollusks, for various reasons), and so I had some oysters for an appetizer, followed by some beets cooked so well that they were tender like filet, and an incredible coffee mousse-type dessert. It was delightful.

Our last day in Amsterdam started out with meeting up with JJ’s friend, Max. We made a point to have our last breakfast in Amsterdam be poffertjes (mini puffed pancakes). They were so yummy, and the texture really was the best part. They were chewy and perfect.

We then went to check out the Embassy of the Free Mind, a library of collected esoterica and mystical writings. I wish we could have spent longer there–it really is meant to be the type of place where you sit and do extended study for hours (or days). As a museum, it needed some help–there were a lot of descriptions of esoteric organizations and events that implied knowledge on behalf of the patron. For example, there was a lot about “Rosicrucianism”, but no explanation at any point on what that means. Regardless, I like the idea of spending some time there to get ideas for novels or stories. 

At this point we started to move south in The Netherlands. We had plans to check out Rotterdam for the later half of that day. Our next AirBnB was in the little town of Delft, located halfway between Rotterdam and The Hague. Maria and Max joined us on the trip to Rotterdam, where we met up with a couple of Maria’s friends who just so happened to be traveling up to Amsterdam on their own European trip. We had a lovely lunch right there next to Rotterdam’s central train station. After lunch, Maria and Max each went their own ways. Hannah, Coral, JJ, and I decided that we were actually too tired to try to explore Rotterdam. We just wanted to get to our AirBnB. 

We took a bus to Delft, and upon arriving, we were immediately charmed by the town. It had a similar feeling to Greifswald, in that it was a pleasant, mid-sized European city with some medieval charm. We navigated the cobblestone streets and canals until we found our way to our AirBnB–which was quite cozy and nice. We had decided that we were just going to spend the night in Delft. We all had interest in checking out the Hague, but left the decision to visit there until the next day. 

We found a highly-rated, tiny Ramen shop, and had a great dinner of noodles there. We then made our way to central Delft and an outdoor patio bar. There are many such places around Europe, with a bar or cafe setting out a huge array of tables outside where patrons can sit and relax. I have never been pressured by any waitstaff in Europe to release my table. Almost always one needs to ask directly for the check–otherwise, the waitstaff will let you sit as long as you like. This is true even after the check is paid.

At the bar we indulged in some of our favorite European beverages. Hannah was exulting in her new favorite beverage–the Aperol Spritz (which is ubiquitously offered everywhere I’ve been in Europe). Coral, with their vast knowledge of beverages accumulated over years of working in breweries and distilleries–introduced us to a favorite beverage of theirs, the kriek. Krieks are Belgian beers fermented with cherries. It tastes just like a cherry soda, and is quite delicious. 

The next day we woke up exhausted. We had reached a point where we needed rest. We debated in the morning for some time because we all genuinely had interest in checking out The Hague but also enjoyed the idea of spending more time in Delft. Ultimately, our exhaustion made the decision for us, and we spent the day in Delft. I actually had a bit of an emotional breakdown (read: I was a hot mess), and so the decision ended up being the best one. We spent the day in many of the charming coffee shops and little boutiques settled into the streets of Delft before we caught our train to Brussels. 

Brussels

Although still undoubtedly exhausted, we also definitely got a second wind when we arrived in Brussels. I was the most excited for this leg of the trip because I knew the least about Brussels. In many ways, I’m still rather ignorant about it. Although we had a very fun couple of days in the city, they were not the most informative in terms of its history or civics.

Unlike our two previous AirBnBs (which were located largely outside of the city centers in Koog Aan de Zaan and Delft), our AirBnB in Brussels was smack dab in the middle of the action, which was actually really great. We were staying right next to the palace, amidst a sea of bars, restaurants, and museums. Anything we wanted to do was only a few minutes walk away.

That night we got some yummy Turkish street food (in Germany it is called Döner) and meandered our way to the palace square. Unbeknownst to us there just happened to be a large, free jazz festival that weekend in the palace square. We had beverages in the square, enjoying them on the patio situated right in the midst of it all, surrounded by palaces. We then called it a night, excited to spend the night in our unique AirBnB.

The AirBnB itself was situated inside the walls of a church, although it was tucked into it from the side. It was three stories, and to get in we first had to ascend some steep, narrow stairs. Upstairs there was a comfortable kitchen, living room, and bathroom. Climb some more narrow stairs and you get to the level with two of the bedrooms. Climb one more ladder, and you got to the last bed, tucked away at the top in a loft. It was beautiful and felt modern, yet cozy, tucked into the church as it was.

The following day was Hannah’s birthday. It was a very, very rainy day. We wanted some Belgian waffles for breakfast–as you know, we were in Belgium after all. We actually learned that what Americans consider “Belgian” waffles are actually called something else in Belgium, and aren’t really considered Belgian waffles. Most Belgians actually get their waffles from food trucks, and I believe are eaten as a hand-held food. We never tried true Belgian waffles. Instead we were treated to a nice breakfast of savory “Belgian” waffles, most of us opting for an Eggs Benedikt on a waffle, with Bloody Marys. 

We did some shopping, buying Belgian chocolates and other goods for our loved ones. To spend the rest of our day, we decided on a couple of “museums” that seemed like unique experiences. 

The first one we visited was the Museum of Infinite Realities. We didn’t really know what we were getting into with this one, which was a huge part of the appeal. The best we could tell beforehand, it was some sort of interactive and immersive personality test. This turned out to be pretty much what it was, and it was quite a good time. You get escorted through several different stages, and by the end you’re promised that your spirit animal will be revealed to you (it can only be one of six: lion, bear, tiger, eagle, wolf, or fox). The first stage was a Millionaire-style multiple choice quiz–about yourself. We circled around a big device with buttons and were asked questions like, “What do you do after a big party?” or “How spiritual are you?” The results of the less intimate questions were revealed to the whole group (we were with about 20 other people). 

There were several rooms where we interacted with the “animals” in different ways, to see which one we resonated with more. My favorite room was where we chose, with no prior information, either “Everything” or “Nothing”. Just earlier that day I believe I was espousing to my friends the Zen teaching that “nothing” is “everything”–so we all naturally chose “Nothing” (it was the less popular of the two). We were treated to a totally psychedelic light show, appropriately accompanied by an Alan Watts narration.

In the end, JJ and Hannah were assigned foxes (the rarest of the types, we learned), Coral was a wolf and I was an eagle. I was surprised because I definitely thought I was going to get a lion. The eagle was pretty chill though–it seemed to be a pretty spiritual one.

The next “museum” was the Museum of Illusions. Just like the last “museum”, this was more of an interactive experience than a museum. It was a collection of visual illusions. There were some you just looked at, but most of them were interactive. We had our most fun with the stages they set up for people to take photos that are optical illusions. We were fortunate enough to have the place essentially to ourselves, and so we spent a lot of time laughing and taking silly pictures, like something we had done as teens. It was very fun.

We went afterwards for drinks at the rooftop bar above Belgium Beer World (which is I believe another interactive museum). We took some more fun photos in a photobooth here, and looked out over a rainy Brussels. We were determined to go dancing for Hannah’s birthday, and so after a dinner of some Thai food, we went back to the AirBnB to recoup. We were, yet again, exhausted. We had a day of a lot of fun. It had been a while since I have had to rally to go dancing at 10 at night. But rally we did. It was helpful that the bar where we wanted to go dancing was only a 1 minute walk from the AirBnB. We were intrigued by it because it said it was both an Irish Pub and a disco. 

We spent the rest of our night having fun at said establishment. We got there just as karaoke started–and although none of us performed, we had fun singing along with the performers. Most everyone was singing American songs that we were familiar with. In fact, most of the people in The Netherlands and Brussels we encountered were perfectly fluent in English. This is good, because none of us spoke either Dutch or Belgian. Dutch was very close to German, and I could navigate through some of it (not that my German was that excellent)–but as I said then, where as with German it feels like there’s too many consonants in the words, with Dutch it feels like there’s too many vowels. In Belgium it actually seemed like most people and signs defaulted to French.

After karaoke we indeed danced, and it was very fun. This was the only night of the whole trip where we had to deal with creepy guys, and even while clubbing they were mostly few and far between. It was something we noticed throughout our trip: In America–usually, especially, as a group–we would attract unwanted attention from men. However, for the most part we felt respected and unafraid while we were traveling. Generally, it seems that European men are less prone to being outward creeps, so that was nice.

The next morning was a Sunday and I was awoken by the sound of the church bells above us summoning the people to service (it seems I was the only one awoken by the bells, but perhaps my body is especially primed for it after living as a monk and being awoken by bells daily). For our last morning in Brussels we had a weird breakfast at The Drug Opera (of course, we were intrigued with that name–I recommend actually clicking on the link for it and checking out their website. It’s also quite something.) It was a beautiful building that housed, what it turns out, to be more or less a Cheesecake Factory. It was a huge menu offering subpar food, but we were into the weirdness of the whole thing nonetheless.

JJ stayed behind to do a bit of work while Coral, Hannah, and I went to visit Mannekin Pis, a famous fountain that has the statue of a boy peeing. It turned out to be rather small. In fact, even though I was navigating us to it, I missed it, it was so nondescript. After this last bit of tourism, we caught our train to Paris.

Paris

We met back up with Maria at the train station for Disney Paris. Here we needed to stop and download the app for public transit in Paris. This app turned out to be frustrating, as was a lot of our public transit in Paris. During our time there we had several instances where everything should have been working, but wasn’t. 

From there we made our way to the little village of Lagny, which is where we stayed during this leg of the trip. It was a charming little village, complete with a small market square with a plethora of little shops–a boulangerie, patisserie, grocer, cafe. That night we got sushi takeout and ate by the river. There was an unhoused gentleman who came to ask us for a Euro and he was not at all deterred by the fact that we didn’t speak French–for you see, he could also speak English, and Russian. After regaling us with the virtues of Russia, he left us to our dinner. We all reflected on how in Europe, even the unhoused people spoke three languages.

We went to bed early because we had a BIG day ahead of us the next day. It was Disney day, baby. We had access to both parks with our tickets (Maria was able to procure guest tickets for most of us–we all had to split the cost of only one ticket). However, we needed to get into the park with Maria, which meant we either needed to go in early, when she started her work day, or at noon, when she had her lunch break. We opted for noon. We needed the rest. 

We started our Disney day at Walt Disney Studio Park, which is home to Maria’s show (“Alice and the Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland”). We had a quick lunch with Maria with sandwiches and salads she procured from the staff canteen. We had a little bit of time before her first show, so all together we chose to ride Aladdin’s Magic Carpet. I was not a fan. I get motion sick easily and was nearly done in by this first (rather tame) ride. Fortunately, I remembered I had some Dramamine in my purse, and that helped me get through the rest of the day. 

Maria left us to prepare for her show, and we were able to squeeze in one ride on The Avengers rollercoaster. I entered the day feeling pretty sure that I wasn’t going to go on too many rides, given my proclivity towards motion sickness and my aversion to that stomach-flailing feeling of a sudden drop that is so often elicited in roller coasters. That said, I gave The Avengers ride a whirl, and I’m glad I did. It was very fun. 

Maria’s show was spectacular (yes, for us it certainly was her show). Maria is a trampwall artist, which means she jumps off of a wall from a decent height onto a trampoline, doing acrobat stunts all throughout the up and down. It was so fun to see our friend fulfilling her lifelong dream to be a professional acrobat. She’s one of the few people I know who had an ambition at a young age to do a thing, and then set out in life to go on ahead and do it. She performs to hundreds of people three times a day. It was a fun show–not only were there the acrobats, but there was singing, dancing, drumming, and BMX. 

In between her shows (we saw it twice, of course), the other friends took a ride on the Tower of Terror. I passed on that one. After the last show, Maria joined us, done with her day of work. We switched parks. The other park is just like Disneyland in California, complete with Smalltown USA and Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Over in that park we rode Indiana Jones, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, a carousel, and ultimately “Hyperspace Mountain” (which was my favorite one of the night). It was a whirlwind of a day, and thoroughly exhausting. It was incredibly stimulating, but a lot of fun! I ended up going on all of the rides but the Tower of Terror, which I’m grateful for.

The following day we made the trek to Montmartre, a neighborhood in Paris famous for its indelible fingerprint in art history. It also happened to be the setting for two of my favorite movies growing up: Moulin Rouge and Amelie. As kids we were all obsessed with Moulin Rouge and knew the “Elephant Love Medley” by heart. Another childhood friend, Adrienne, joined us for that day. She was in Paris working on a film project. It was fascinating listening to her life working on these lovely indie films as a screenwriter, as well as getting updates on her music and standup comedy successes. 

The six of us found several points of interest in Montmartre. The modern day Moulin Rouge did not have the same splendor as the one in Baz Lehrman’s early 20th century Montmartre. I believe the original one burned down in a fire a while ago, and so the one now is only a replica–and boy did it feel like it. When we first saw it we thought it was just a themed gift shop for the real thing. Never meet your heroes.

Some more compelling points of interest were “The Love Wall”, where “I love you” was written in (I believe) every language. We hiked our way to the top of the hill to visit the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre), which was indeed spectacular. There is a very memorable scene in Amelie that happens around the Basilica, and it was fun for me to visit the setting of that beloved scene that I had watched many times growing up. 

We then made our way via metro down to the river, where we had some drinks and played some petanque, a game that is quite similar to bocce ball. Adrienne left us after a few games of petanque, and we found our way to a cozy little restaurant with an excellent menu for dinner. 

On our ride back to Lagny, we were on the most packed train any of us had every experienced. JJ and I were able to stay together, but we got separated from other friends in the squished fervor. The train was, no exaggeration, wall to wall, door to door, crammed with people. There was no room to move limbs. I couldn’t get my phone out of my pocket to look at it. All we could do was stand crushed up against strangers for quite a while, before enough people leaked out of it to give some space.

For our last day in Paris, our only real plan was to visit the Catacombs, something that Coral very much wanted to do. It was a fascinating experience, and an interesting context in which to learn about Parisian history and, honestly, infrastructure. The Catacombs were massive, and it turns out that a lot of Paris is sitting on just straight-up chasms. There’s a whole department in Paris that takes care of just the immense amount of chasms under the city (the result of early mining), to make sure they’re structurally sound and won’t collapse. They’re also deep under the city–well below the metro.

As you might imagine, being in the Catacombs was incredibly eerie. It was sobering to be surrounded by the bones of thousands of people. The walls were made up of skulls and femurs. The rest of the bones were tucked back behind. Again, there’s an extensive interesting history around why the Catacombs exist that I won’t go into here. I am glad we went, it was certainly a unique way to tour Paris.

After we arose from the Catacombs, we found a yummy crepe street vendor. We ordered some Crepes and enjoyed them in a nearby park, underneath a large statue of a naked woman. We initially had wanted to go do another river cruise after this (and from this cruise glimpse the Eiffel Tower), but it was again ruled that we were too tired. Instead, we made our way back to Lagny.

That morning, before we had left for Paris proper (Lagny is about an hour outside of Paris by train), we had gone shopping in the little town square. We visited the farmers market for fresh cheese and veggies, and we also picked up some unreal bread and pastries from the patisserie. For our last meal together we convened at Maria’s place and enjoyed a home cooked meal together (prepared by Maria’s partner, Zach).

The next day we separated ways–Coral and Hannah woke up early to make their way to the airport. I woke up less early to make my way to the train station. JJ stayed behind one more day before continuing on her galavanting around Europe. I navigated my way to the train station so I could catch my ICE (intercontinental express) back to Germany. It was a lovely trip for me–very comfortable and easy (until the end, when I missed my train to Greifswald in Berlin. I was able to navigate close enough to Greifswald via train for Michael to be able to pick me up before all the train services to Greifswald ended for the night).

It was a special trip, and one that I feel strengthened our friendship and our bond. It was truly a dream come true, and I am so grateful for the experience. May it be that all people get to travel for 12 days with their friends, enjoying life, building memories, and strengthening love.

Reading now: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi , The Well of Ascension by my boi Brandon Sanderson, and We Are Three by Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Listening now:  I’ve found a great Celtic Music playlist on Spotify that I’ve been listening to a lot while I write.

We moved to Germany two-and-a-half months ago. Sometimes we still can’t believe it. We actually live here. We are immigrants. 

There were a few places that I had never been before being with Michael that, since we coupled up, have either become like-home or literally home to me. I had never been to the midwest; I then moved to Madison, WI. I had never really spent time in the south; I now have a plethora of southern in-laws and frequently travel to Jacksonville, FL. I had never been to Europe; now I am living in northern Germany. 

This blog post will be a more typical “this is what’s happening in our life” post, telling of our journey here and what life was like in our first month. In many ways, Germany does not feel so dissimilar from America. It is a wealthy, industrialized, Western nation. It is also, definitely (of course,) discernibly its own thing.

We left our beloved apartment in Madison at the end of April. We had been working steadily for months to clear it out. We tried to get rid of most everything. All of our furniture for the apartment was initially bought second-hand from Facebook Marketplace, and back to Marketplace it went. I had fallen in love with my local “Buy Nothing” group on Facebook–anything that I felt like could get more use–but I couldn’t in good conscience sell–was posted there. Through the “Buy Nothing” group I was able to find homes for half quarts of furniture paint, broken appliances, old art supplies, and old shoes. For old clothes we mostly utilized the “Take Back Bag”, a service that sustainably reuses or resells old clothes so they don’t end up in the landfill (a service that, unfortunately, Goodwill does not consistently provide).

We had a lovely farewell party in our beloved nearby Hoyt Park where we were able to give away last minute things, like opened pantry and cleaning items (anything unopened was, of course, donated to food pantries). We enjoyed a sunny evening in the park with so many of our dear family members and friends, and were able to carry on the festivities back at the empty apartment once the sun went down. We were very fortunate to have Michael’s extended family nearby, and they offered to store everything that we couldn’t part with–our beloved records and books, board game collection, memorabilia, art, and Michael’s homemade bed frame.

Our last few weeks were a fervor of moving, selling, cleaning, and saying goodbye to a town we genuinely loved. We had pizza on the floor of our empty apartment from our favorite pizza place in Madison, Luigi’s–a fitting capstone to the apartment, as our first meal in that space was also pizza on the floor. When we finally left the apartment, we walked around to each room and thanked it for all it had given us. We were sobbing. We loved that apartment. It was our first apartment on our own as a couple–it was where we lived when we became engaged, and then married. It hosted many wonderful Halloween parties, dinners, and board game nights. It was Daisy Mae’s first real home. 

We spent our last night in Wisconsin at Michael’s aunt and uncle’s house before we made the drive the next day down to O’Hare. We were meeting Michael’s dad, Mark, at the airport. He was flying up from Florida so as to meet us and take our truck. It was nice having a quick dinner with him before we left. We were unfortunately, understandably, very stressed during the dinner; however, it was still nice to have one more chance to spend time with a loved one before our big journey. Mark dropped us off at the airport, and we had to, once again, say goodbye to a cherished part of our life–our beloved truck. 

We made sure to get a direct flight so that we were sure we were never separated from Daisy Mae during the long journey across continents. We had asked a few people we knew who had traveled to Europe with their dogs what they suggested, and across the board it was recommended we fly Lufthansa. Lufthansa airplanes have cargo compartments specifically for live animals that are both temperature and pressure controlled. We had bought Daisy Mae a huge travel crate a couple of months prior which she had become comfortable in. There was some stress around the crate, because she needed the largest one possible. Of course, the measurements for her crate were in inches–but Lufthansa is a European airline, and thus works in centimeters. Her crate was slightly larger than their max size allowance for crates, and after a morning that we had spent calling various customer service departments to see if it would work out, we were left with a definitive “it’s up to the people who check you in at the airport”.

Luckily, the people checking us in did not whip out a tape measure to verify her crate met their exact specifications. We were encouraged by how thoroughly and earnestly the check-in people took care of us and Daisy Mae (and our immense amount of luggage). They had asked for food and water for her, and wanted us to let them know when to feed and water her. We dropped her off, as comfortable as we could make her, before we headed into the airport for our flight.

Our flight to Munich was pleasant enough. When we landed we were eager to get through customs to reclaim Daisy, but were held up when they checked Michael’s passport. It turned out that, for some unknown reason, his visa was issued to begin on June 1st, instead of May 1st, when it was supposed to begin. No one had caught this before this point. My visa, which is contingent on his (he’s got essentially a “skilled laborer” visa and I have a spousal visa to be here with him) was good to go on May 1st. The customs agent informed us that I was all set to work in Germany, but Michael could not legally work here until June 1st (a problem because I did not have a job nor any plan to get one–and we were thus both reliant on Michael’s income). 

Our primary support and resource for our move to Germany was Michael’s former boss and academic advisor (his doktorvater, or “doctor father,” in German), Benedikt. Michael got on the phone with Ben right away who was able to delay Michael’s resignation at UW until he started making money from his new job at IPP. This was a huge relief. It gave us breathing room to figure out Michael’s visa situation (which, it turned out, was super easy to resolve once we were here).

We finally made our way through customs to find Daisy Mae sitting, unsupervised, in her crate. She was overall alright–but she was certainly anxious and uncomfortable. The food and water that we had provided for her to be given during the journey was clearly untouched (I’m still mad at myself that I didn’t, at some point during the flight, ask an attendant to check on her). She had peed all over her bed. She needed to be zip-tied into her crate during the flight, and as she was unsupervised, we had no one to ask to undo her zip ties and get her out. Michael ran around the airport until he found someone who could loan us scissors to get her out. Once she was out, she was clearly so happy to be with us. We gave her water and took her potty, and she quickly settled down once she was reunited with us. 

We needed to make our way to Benedikt’s house in the town of Grafing, just outside of Munich. This is where we were going to spend our first night in Germany and pick up the little Fiat Panda we had bought from him to use as our car over here (I told you, Ben was our godsend for this move). We knew that we would not be able to fit ourselves, our 100 pound dog, her ginormous crate, and our 6 pieces of stuffed luggage in a little Fiat Panda, so we also rented a car. It was clear right away that we would not be able to fit everything in the SUV I had rented either, and a very helpful person at the car rental agency really helped us out at the last minute, and upgraded us to a large van. 

We made our way to Grafing, and soon found a delightful little noodle stand outside of the town’s local brewery. Manning the stand was a very sweet Ukrainian refugee who was excited to talk to us (he had pretty good English, as do many Europeans). He had fled from Ukraine towards the beginning of the war with Russia, and was settled in Grafing with his family. He made us delicious noodles from scratch right from his little cart, and it was a very comforting welcome to Germany. 

We realized that I needed to return the rental car in Greifswald 24 only hours after we initially rented it in Munich, or be charged for an extra day. I had previously requested an extension, but that had perhaps been shifted when the rental got changed to the bigger vehicle. Munich is in very southern Germany and Greifswald is in very northern Germany (fortunately, they’re both also on the Eastern side). The drive on the Autobahn takes about 10-12 hours, depending on how many stops one takes. That meant I had to wake up at 3 am and head out on the Autobahn in the van with Daisy Mae. Michael needed to stay behind to handle the transfer of registration for the Panda, and so he joined us later in the day.

The rental car was very German. It had so many controls and alarms to ensure that you were always following the rules. It would chirp at me if I was drifting lanes, and it kept track of the speed limit and would beep incessantly at me if I went over it. Germans are very earnest about the speed limit. You do not go over the posted speed limit, unlike in America where most people treat it as a suggestion and regularly go 5-10 mph over. Speeds are tightly controlled everywhere, but the Autobahn is where people can let loose. In case you’re unaware, for most of the Autobahn (Germany’s interstate system), there is no speed limit. It is important to note that it is not always unlimited speed–sometimes it dropped into some sort of speed limit, especially if it was close to a town or city. For the most part, however, people would tear down the Autobahn fearlessly. 

Some curiosities about German driving: the traffic lights are not placed in front of the cars at intersections (as they are in America–or, most places I’ve been). So instead of simply looking ahead of you to see the status of the light, you need to crane your head to the side to look next to you at the intersection. The light turns yellow not only in the change from green to red, but also from red to green. We hypothesize this is because there are so many more manual cars here, and it gives the drivers time to switch into gear. There are also no free public bathrooms available along the Autobahn, or indeed, most places. This, I found, is common across the continent. You need to make sure you always have a euro on you so that you can go to the bathroom at gas stations, malls, or even sometimes restaurants. You can occasionally find a “pissoir”, which is essentially just a hole that you can pee into. They are often very dirty and improperly supplied with TP and soap. The only convenient dining you can find along the Autobahn are McDonald’s and Burger King–although both have many more vegan/vegetarian options than they do in America. I hadn’t had McDonald’s in over a decade, and McNuggets in probably 2 decades. However, I admit, I’ve been delighting in the opportunities to indulge in Beyond McNuggets here and there on road trips now. 

Daisy and I made the trip to Greifswald just fine. I needed to meet the manager of our temporary apartment with more cash, to pay our fees for keeping Daisy Mae there with us and parking the Panda. I had a stressful afternoon of trying (and failing) to get cash in Euros from ATMs around Greifswald; meeting the building manager to get the keys for our apartment; moving everything from the car into the new apartment on my own; and then returning the car rental. However, it all got done and I was immediately relieved. We had finally arrived at our new home.

We had needed to get a temporary apartment to start our life here through the website Wunderflats. We had tried to find more permanent housing from the US, but the Germans are very sensitive and skeptical to scams. I did not hear back from anyone about housing, and so we resorted to Wunderflats. It was expensive, but it at least got us here, and provided everything we had immediately needed to live in the unit, including bedding, towels, and cookware. Most people who move to Greifswald to start work at IPP can live in IPP’s guest house while they find more permanent housing; however, we did not have that option because they do not allow dogs.

There was an initial snafu with the Wunderflats apartment that was my doing, and luckily I was able to catch it before the move. When I was renting the apartment on the site, somehow I rented it for May and June of 2026 instead of 2025. I caught this when we were less than a month out from moving into the unit and the landlord had not yet asked us for the rent or deposit (something they aren’t usually wont to do). The landlord and I were able to figure out the scheduling mishap and he said that he did have an available unit that we could use that was “in the same building, but larger” (important note here–it was not in the same building) and thus would cost a little extra. We were, of course, rather desperate, and so agreed. I spent another stressful morning wiring him the money, hoping beyond hope it was all legitimate. He said he couldn’t alter the rental agreement because that was crafted by Wunderflats and our new deal was more of a handshake deal. He also said that we won’t need to know the address to the new apartment because it was the same as the unit I had initially rented (again, note–that was not actually the case). 

Arriving in our temporary housing, I was very relieved that it was not a scam. We got our keys no problem, and the housing managers that worked for the landlord were two very pleasant German women around our age. One of them was named Nell, but it was never clear which one that was, as they both would respond to texts that I’d send to “Nell”.

We knew that the apartment was a one-room apartment (a studio), but we hadn’t really realized how small it was. It was tiny–the size of a small hotel room. We had a nice bathroom, a very small kitchenette (with the requisite mini fridge and induction stove that are common across most German–and I believe European–kitchens). The whole unit was only about 60 square feet (and somehow supposedly larger than our initial unit?!). We had a couch we pulled out into a bed every night, and a TV, which was fun for a while, as TVs are not something we usually own. A lovely element of this first apartment was that it was ground floor (floor 0, in Germany) and so we could open up our doors and let Daisy out very easily. She grew to love lying in the grass right outside of the apartment, sniffing the air and basking in the sunshine, much to the delight of us and most passerby. 

As mentioned before, once we were here, it was actually quite easy for Michael to amend his visa. There is definitely a deference towards doctors (people with PhDs) here. It was suggested to us quite often that when we apply for housing we should make it clear that Michael is a doctor and that he is here to work for the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP for short). When he was sorting out his visa at the immigration office here in Greifswald and explained the situation to them, it was cleared up almost immediately (them even saying things along the lines of, “Oh, you’re a doctor? Well then this should be no problem to resolve this”).

We needed to take care of a lot of details suddenly and urgently once we got here. A pressing issue that complicated our life manifold was the fact that we were, as you may have surmised, not living in the address our landlord had told us we were living in–we were living one building over. This proved to be very unfortunate for us in many different ways. It took us a couple of days to really realize we were living one building over from the address we believed we lived at. The arrangements we tried to take care of early into our time ended up being hassles because almost nothing could be delivered to us.

Quickly, here are some curiosities about the German postal system: they do not use unit numbers (or states) in their mailing addresses. The delivery people get directed to the correct building via the posted address, but then rely on the names posted at that address to actually deliver the mail. The idea of including the unit of the apartment in your address (if there even is one) is met with derision and confusion, as if doing so would suggest that the postal workers are incapable of reading the names listed on the mailboxes. It also seems that DHL and the Deutsch Post are essentially one and the same. I don’t know the details around this, but it does seem that they’re interchangeable, except that only DHL handles packages. Speaking of packages, deliveries are a whole ordeal. They often insist on handing them to you in person. You can, on your DHL account, specify that you’d like them left in a certain spot or at one of the myriad “Paket Stations” around–but in my experience those requests are almost always denied for some reason.

Yet, the Germans love their physical mail. Almost anything that can be mailed instead of done digitally, is done so. Do you need a verification PIN to activate your insurance account? Great, that will be mailed to you. Do you need to pay for a service on our website? It couldn’t be easier, just print out this form and mail it in, and then we will eventually charge you and activate your service! Any forms you turn in for the many, many, registrations needed–it’d be best to be done either in person or via mail. I think this is tied to their nigh paranoia about scams. 

This reverence for physical mail became a hassle for a number of reasons. First, some of our necessities for living in Germany–like our insurance cards, German debit cards, and German SIM cards–we could only get via the mail. Unfortunately, we took care of signing up for these necessities in our first few days in Germany, and so these were all sent to the wrong address. We could not call anywhere to amend this because 1) We did not have a phone plan anymore (our American phone plan we let lapse thinking we would have our new German SIM cards promptly–luckily we eventually were pointed to some other temporary SIM cards we could use while we waited, because it took weeks to sort out); and 2) If we were able to borrow someone’s phone to call the respective agencies, the phone trees were all in German and thus non-navigable by us.

However, far and away the most stressful struggle we had around the postal system involved boxes of our stuff that we had shipped from America before we left. We had shipped five heavy boxes full of things that we knew we wanted here, but that we didn’t want to lug with us on the planes due to their general bulkiness–things like winter jackets, boots, shoes, books, etc. Each box was heavy and cost about $200 to ship–meaning, of course, it cost us about $1000 to ship all of these things. Of course, we sent them to the address we had on hand at the time, which was not correct.

The boxes took a while to get through customs, and in that time we had realized our error and were trying to figure out how we could make sure these heavy, expensive boxes got to us. We tried posting notices at the incorrect address to direct the delivery to us; we tried going through the DHL app to have the packages delivered to a “trusted neighbor” (me, at the building next door), but that was denied for some undisclosed reason; and we tried calling DHL, even asking a German colleague of Michael’s to help us navigate the phone tree, to only be told by the customer service rep that it would all work out just fine (as an aside–so far German customer service is so much worse than it is in America. It’s honestly unreal to us at times). 

DHL attempted to deliver 4 out of the 5 packages at the incorrect address, despite our efforts. They were deemed “undeliverable” and sent straight back to Wisconsin. No second attempt was made where we might intercept them, nor were they kept at any office where we might pick them up. They travelled across the world, were for a few minutes only 100 feet away from us, and then immediately sent back across the world.

Finally, the last package (it took longer than the rest to make it through customs) made it to us–the delivery person actually heeded the posted notes and I was able to intercept him. The contents of the four packages that went all the way back to Wisconsin (to Michael’s uncle) are making their way back to us through the help of friends. Our friend Dieter has been picking up the boxes from Michael’s uncle’s house, then delivers them to Benedikt, who brings them to us as excess luggage on one of his many flights between Madison and Germany. We are very grateful to all who are helping us with this disaster, and try not to think about the staggering carbon footprint all of these things now have.

Eventually, we were able to sort out most things. We got our insurance and SIM cards. We successfully registered as Greifswald residents (something everyone is required to do–even Daisy Mae–and must be done in person. You actually need to register every time you move, even within Greifswald). We’re fumbling our way through most interactions with people who don’t speak English with our poor (yet growing) German vocabulary. Fortunately, most Germans–especially our age or younger–speak English very well (when you ask them, “Sprechen sie Englisch?” they almost always respond with, “Of course!”)

We’ve been able to enjoy walking through Greifswald’s charming old town and the Marktplatz. We’ve been trying cafes, Bäckereien (bakeries), and restaurants. As noted in previous posts, we love hanging out at the Hafen (harbor) on sunny evenings (the sun doesn’t set till around 10 pm). We have explored the nearby beach communities of Wieck and Lubmin. I’m slowly learning how to drive a manual transmission so I can use our Panda. Michael is learning how to sail and is training for a marathon. He is loving his work at IPP and I’m loving spending my days creating as I wish.

A week after we moved, I actually had my own whirlwind adventure around Europe with a group of my oldest and best friends. I think that I will save that for its own post, along with our life in our second month. 

We have so far felt grateful as often as we have been frustrated (or, probably, more so). We’ve definitely both been homesick for Madison, but recognize our lives are nice here. Greifswald is a very pleasant place to live. 

Reading now: A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich , The Well of Ascension by my boi Brandon Sanderson, and We Are Three by Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Listening now:  My Greifswald Summer playlist. It’s pretty good, I think.

Am I proud to be an American?

With American Independence Day passing last week, this has been a topic on my mind. After some thought, this is the conclusion I have come to: 

I am proud to be from America. I am not proud of America.

As a child, I was proud of both. As with most children, my understanding of the world was simple, and shaped through my parents. I knew I was meant to love my country. I was taught we were the nation of the free, where any person could be who they wanted to be. I was taught that we were, as a nation, courageous, righteous, strong, and prosperous. America offered the staggering potential of the “American Dream”. We were a people who fought off tyrants to establish a land where anyone had that potential. We did so in our own revolution, and then again as an important member of the allied states in WWII.

Growing up, I enjoyed the Fourth of July and its hot dogs and rock music and fireworks. I was never particularly taken by the patriotic-American aesthetic, but I did enjoy the festivity and the sense of community that patriotism invokes. Humans, as an animal, enjoy being a part of something. People enjoy being proud of who they are–and what I was, was, undeniably, American.

As it should go, as I got older I became more educated. A good education not only informs but wisens. A good teacher, good school, and good curriculum provides facts for its students, and then teaches them how to think about those facts. It encourages questions– not only on what, where, when, and who–but also why and how?

I was privileged enough to receive an education like this. I went to a school that had social justice, community, responsibility, and lifelong learning as cornerstone tenets. I attended a small, public, charter school from Kindergarten through 8th grade called the Carbondale Community School (CCS). I love my school, and am so grateful for the opportunities of growth I had there–-such as a rich emphasis on the arts and outdoorsmanship, socratic learning, and fostering community. I had heard the word “community” so much while growing up that I more or less began drowning it out as I got older. However, the impact of being immersed in a learning environment that focuses so heavily on instilling in its students a community-forward, empathetic curiosity and lean in life left an indelible imprint on myself and those I grew up with in that school (many of whom are still my close friends).

We were offered curriculum on American aberrations, such as the slave trade and the Native American holocaust. We were often offered emotionally tricky curriculum–I remember reading accounts of the brutality of slavery in school and it being the first real introduction for me in how horrible human beings can be to one another. The capacity for humans to do evil to one another is a fact of life, and I firmly stand behind the idea that children–once they’re developmentally stable enough for it–should be exposed to difficult topics in a stable and safe environment. This not only encourages empathy and compassion, but instills in them a sense of righteousness and social justice as a response to the horrors of the world. As much as I had exposure to such realities through my schooling, there was a lot of the world that I was sheltered from that, as an adult, I wish I had been more exposed to as a child.

I had, in many ways, an absolutely idyllic childhood. I grew up in a small town in the mountains of Colorado. It was beautiful. I always remember the Carbondale of my childhood mainly consisting of four populations: old, white, hippies; true ranchers and cowboys (who would wrangle their cattle up and down the mountainsides, causing traffic jams when they would drive their cattle along the few highways in the area); middle-class white families in which the parents primarily worked either as an artisan or for a non-profit; and a tight-knit Latino community largely consisting of first-generation immigrants from Central America. Each had their own culture, and each culture wove together to create a vibrant little community, full of art, music, environmental consciousness, incense, local grass-fed beef, rodeos, excellent homemade tortillas, authentic Mexican restaurants, and, of course, an appreciation by all for the natural beauty that surrounded us.

My high school was in many ways very similar to my grade school. It offered a deeper, more mature curriculum that still emphasized an importance on the arts, outdoorsmanship, responsibility, lifelong learning, and socratic intrigue. This was a private school, and one I was more than privileged to attend with the help of academic scholarships and parental loans. It was suggested by my teachers at CCS that I attend CRMS (the Colorado Rocky Mountain School) instead of the local public high school, because they felt that I would thrive there. I was always an incredibly earnest student, and I was again fortunate enough to have many adults in my life that fostered and encouraged that in me, no matter the cost (literally).

At CRMS I took courses on World Geography taught by a teacher that was more interested in engaging us about world politics and philosophy than he was maps. I was sponsored to attend a socratic seminar at the Aspen Ideas Institute, where we delved into philosophical thought. I took courses on memoirs, glass blowing, graphic novels, world history, photography, calculus, geology, rock climbing, ceramics, and  Eastern Philosophy (a course that absolutely determined the course of my life). I was rewarded by my teachers again and again for thinking critically, my earnest studiousness, and my desire to learn not only the what, but the why. We took weeklong trips into the deep wilderness of the desert and mountains twice a year, where several times we needed to engage in actual wilderness survival due to unexpected, dangerous natural phenomena (such as lightning storms atop mountains or not finding water for days in the desert). 

Am I proud to be a Carbondalian, raised by hippies and artisans and ranchers? Absolutely. Am I proud to be an alum of the Carbondale Community School, where I was taught to constantly strive for better for myself and the world? Undeniably. Am I proud to be an Oyster (the actual, literal, mascot of CRMS is the Rocky Mountain Oysters, this is not a joke), where I gained skills in research, survival, and artisanship? No doubt. Am I proud to be a Coloradan, and thus skilled in skiing and climbing? Of course.

Am I also aware that all of the opportunities and privileges offered to me in my life are largely due to my childhood home being in America? That the freedom of thought expressed and encouraged by my educators growing up was guaranteed to all of us by the freedom of speech? That as a young girl I was encouraged to do many things–go to school, play sports, engage in dangerous outdoor activities–that in many places in the world is just simply not available to most young girls? Yes.

Did the wonders of my upbringing also happen against the backdrop of The War on Terrorism, a recession triggered by a few greedy people, school shootings, the increasing pressure of climate change (again fostered by a few greedy people), and systemic racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny? Yes.

As progressive as my schools were, I realized (and keep realizing) as I got older, there were some major gaps in my education. A lot of this was due, largely, to my environment. It is hard to teach about the extant systems that ensure the second-class citizenship of many marginal communities in America when you do not exist among them. I could see the horror of Islamophobia and the domestic terrorists that would shoot up Mosques and Sikh temples (in their ignorance not even realizing the difference) in the news–but I do not think I knew any Muslim people. I could study the horrors of the hundreds of years of history of slavery in America and be rightly appalled, but I had never been to the South and did not feel how that history still lives there. I was, for the most part, even unaware of the police killing of black youths such as Tamir Rice–but even if I had, I don’t know how much I really would have understood the full-scale implications of such murders, as I didn’t really know that many black people. I knew that we shouldn’t have been at war in Iraq because that was what the adults around me would say–but couldn’t really comprehend the reality of the sheer amount of destruction and death wrought by the US in that land and against those people–and the history that led to the US being its own harbinger of war in that region. 

Most of my revelations about the cruel, dark, history of the US I came to as an adult. 

In college I learned why Teddy Roosevelt built the Panama Canal–it was not just a gift for the people of the Central American nation (as it had previously, to me, been alluded to be), but a piece in his campaign to establish an American empire. The fact that there was a large American Empire was something I had never even realized. To then further realize that there still is an American Empire is yet another matter. I grew up knowing that America was proudly founded as an antithesis to the inhumanity of colonial rule. It is then wild to realize the twisted reality that the American “territories”, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the American Samoa (to name a few) are themselves essentially colonies of an American Empire, all being “American” without representation (you know, the very notion that got our founding fathers so pissed they caused a revolution over it). 

It wasn’t until college that I had learned that the Philippines had, at one point, “belonged” to America, at the cost of 100,000s of lives. The massacre in the Philippines when we “won” it from the Spanish was all so that, of course, it was easier for the US to colonize and usurp Hawaii from the native people there, who largely did not have interest in being Americans (many still don’t–I can tell you from my short time living there, there is still an active resistance). 

It is wild to realize how many elements of America, even with my education that encouraged deeper thought and analysis, I took for granted, and never looked at twice. It’s disconcerting to realize that just as you learn how propaganda was–and is–used by nations throughout history, it had been used on me, and everyone I know, to accept the excellence of America. We were taught that America is excellent because of Capitalism–that it is the best economic system, and any other economic system is actually, maybe, evil? 

Of course, we were never supposed to pay heed to all of the attempts at socialism that happened in South America that were directly undone by CIA intervention–that the US systematically, again and again, removed popular, elected leaders and replaced them with US-backed despotic tyrants that promised to appease American interests. Americans are not supposed to look at why the Middle East is constantly in turmoil. That, of course, also has nothing to do with American espionage and government agencies very consciously supporting violent regimes or insurgent groups that promised to appeal to American interests. We were to only feel that we are the saviors of these poor brown people who cannot fend for themselves, that they needed a white man to step in to give them freedom (as we hold a gun to their backs, stymying any attempt at grassroots, independent efforts at democracy or autonomy). We could look at how poorly Sharia Law dictators in power in Islamic countries treat their minorities (don’t worry about how they came into power)–just don’t look at how America treats its own minorities. 

It was wild to wake up to the reality that, subliminally, I had been taught that to be white in America is the norm, and anything else is recognized as “other” (how many people do you know who truly identify as “European American”, in the way that people do “African American” or “Asian American”–or even “Native American”? It’s telling how bizarre that is to even consider). To be straight is normal, to be middle-class is normal, to be Christian is normal. Anything else is, of course, allowed in the land of the “free”, but it must be identified as other, and the extent to which it is allowed needs to be constantly questioned.

It became more and more evident that America was not, in fact, a land where everyone was free, as I had believed in my youth. There are ways in which we are close to that ideal state of freedom, but then have freedoms either threatened or taken away. Women in many states now do not have control over their own bodies. Trans people in most places do not have control over their own bodies. There are a walloping 2 million people incarcerated in America (580 out of every 100,000 Americans are incarcerated, more than any other developed nation). Although gay and lesbian couples are allowed to marry now, they weren’t for most of my childhood. Today, people are being kidnapped by masked men and thrown into unmarked vans simply for being Latino in America.

I had touched on my awakening to my white privilege in a previous post, and won’t dive into it too deeply again here. I will only readdress the realization I had then, that in the hiphop and rap music I would listen to, the artists would be literally shouting about the condition of minorities in America and their continuous struggle to exist under systemic oppression–and I would not absorb it at all. Or, even, for that matter, how I would listen to Green Day’s “American Idiot” album on repeat and then think nothing of the messaging behind the lyrics (the emotion of emo punk was what was primarily engaging to thirteen-year-old me).

I think I had thought that we fixed it? You know, we fixed racism in America. Martin Luther King Jr. came along and made it all better (again, don’t think about how he died, or who killed him, or why). Yesterday I finished The New Jim Crow–a little late to the party, I know, but later is better than never–and man, I just wish that every American were to read it as a matter of understanding American history. Reading it just deepens my sadness and frustration that there is a loud group of people shaping education and politics in America now that don’t want black history or stories told–or really any American history taught that challenges the eminence of white Christian America and its supposed “excellence”. Again, as someone who had been actively taught critical thinking skills and had been, to some extent, exposed to challenging American history, I still was frighteningly ignorant. To have any and all of that actually stripped from the curriculum of most young people in America–it is daunting to think about what that will do to their minds. 

It is a little difficult to touch on contemporary American politics and the history that is currently being made. As everyone knows, it’s a lot. It’s so disappointing, frustrating, and overwhelming. To say that I am most certainly, unequivocally, not proud of the American government right now is an understatement. It is an embarrassment, globally. I think any MAGA-folk would be hard-pressed to find people elsewhere in the world who think America is that great right now. So far, in our travels around Europe, we have only met one man who thought that Trump was the better outcome in the election than Harris (he was a very sweet Italian waiter who told us that “All Italians love Trump because he will end the war in Ukraine”…I wonder how they feel about that now). 

A few nights ago we were hanging out at the idyllic Hafen here in Greifswald. The Hafen (hafen is German for “harbor”) is one of the staples of life here. It rests on the River Ryck, which connects the town to the Baltic Sea a few miles away. The Hafen consists of charming food boats (like a food truck, but you know, floating on the water) and shacks where they sell beer and cocktails. You sit where you please and enjoy your snacks and beer, looking out over the boats, the river, and the little city with its two cathedrals that dominate the skyline. The group we were with was comprised of Michael’s work colleagues, and I was struck by how everyone was a different nationality within the group (excepting Michael and me from each other, of course). There was a person each from Ireland, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, and Thailand. That night we ended up slipping into conversation about American politics (it is entirely possible I brought it up, because I spend a great amount of time thinking about it).  It seems that American politics is a topic that not only everyone here is interested in, but also that they are well informed on. 

I think that, in general, Europeans are much better than Americans at being aware of the news in other parts of the world…but also there is no denying that our reality TV star of a President knows how to create an all-absorbing drama. The question we got asked that night at the Hafen is the one most commonly asked to us by Europeans who want to talk to us about American politics: “Why is America so crazy right now?” The Europeans often express that to them, from the outside, the chaos in America seems insane. Clearly, there are also a lot of European countries themselves flirting with fascism again. The UK has made it illegal to be Pro-Palestine in any way. Italy has a far-right Prime Minister. Germany has the AFD party, itself basically an ugly resurgence of Nazism that had been worming around hidden for years. But nowhere is as INSANE as the US right now. 

People here will ask about the national guard confrontations in California and about ICE; they ask about the deportations and the construction of the concentration camp in Florida; they ask about the billionaires and how instead of their being opposition to their gross accumulation of wealth at the cost of the rest of the country, there is actually government support for this atrocity. Nowhere in their questions is there any hint that they think Trump is doing anything but the opposite of “making America great again”. He’s an international fascination, for sure. But I think most people feel concern for us, and not awe or envy. I have had a couple of Europeans express that they do not even wish to travel to the US right now–it’s too scary a concept for them. These were white, educated, men. I can only imagine the discomfort of anyone with any sort of identity labeled as a “minority” feeling. 

Germany is a socialist country. To many Americans, “socialism” is a dirty, scary word. They’ve been taught that it necessarily means fascism. There have been times, in history, absolutely, when fascism was wrought on a nation under the guise of “socialism” (Nazi Germany being a notable example). However, it seems to me that an economic system is largely like a religion–you can practice it in healthy ways as long as you don’t become a dogmatic fundamentalist about it. Anything taken to the extreme becomes unhealthy, toxic, and scary. I would say that in America today there is a dogmatic fundamentalism around capitalism that has been leaning towards fascism for decades (since Reagan, most acutely), and is only becoming more so under MAGA America.

Living in socialist Germany is rather pleasant. There is, absolutely, less of an emphasis on individual gain. It just seems that most people are genuinely disinterested in accumulating wealth. There is a lot more contentment with having simply enough. Once can still participate in capitalism, of course–I think you’d be hard-pressed in the world to find anywhere that doesn’t engage in some level of capitalism, especially if it is a developed nation. There are shopping centers, supermarkets, ads on YouTube videos, billboards, McDonalds, and Amazon. There just is less of an emphasis on all of it. There is less pressure to spend money–and the money you do have, goes farther (at least out here–I do think German cities are more expensive). 

The Germans have a disdain for credit. They have their own credit system here that is, as far as I can tell, actually based on how little debt you’ve had. They don’t have interest in debt you’ve taken on and then paid off. They’d rather you didn’t try to live above your means. Why would you? Hospital visits are free. Public transit is easy (as is walking and biking). Groceries are more affordable. Childcare is free. Higher education is basically free. Everyone is supported well by the taxes they all pay into (what an idea).

I think there is a legitimate reason to be afraid of the idea of socialism in America. It is less likely to work there than here. This is evident already–just look at how the taxes that Americans pay now don’t go too far to actually improve their lives. America has crumbling roads, dilapidated schools with underpaid teachers, many people suffering from treatable illnesses without healthcare, homeless families, etc. In order for socialism to work in America, there would need to be a drastic reduction in the dogmatic fundamentalism of individualism.

Americans are raised to prioritize themselves and their families over everything else. This is the backbone of the American Dream–you can be and do anything, it’s just up to you–and, if you do make it, you better make sure no one else comes to take what’s yours. This is why so much of American taxes go towards enabling the wealthy and funding wars instead of caring for its people. Wars not only line the pockets of weapons manufacturors, but also protect selfish American interests. The wealthy do not want to share what they have so they pay off politicians so that they don’t pay any taxes. Meanwhile, investing in schools, childcare, elderly care, veteran care, healthcare–that all would mean caring for people that are not you or your own. It doesn’t support the idea of rugged individualism, to have everyone helping to take care of everyone.

When our German acquaintance the other night asked us that increasingly common question of “why is America so crazy right now?”, Michael and I were able to give a few answers. The emphasis on individualism is one of the reasons. Another clear reason is the blatant corruption in politics enabled by Citizens United–having corporations legally allowed to bribe politicians is insane, clearly unethical, and it is undoubtedly the main reason why politicians so often prioritize corporate interests (including those of the NRA, Lockheed Martin, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Monsanto, privatized prisons, etc, etc) over the interests of America’s people and environment. A third reason is the dichotomy between the news that those who are liberal have access to versus the news that those on the right have access to. It is not uncommon in recent difficult conversations with conservative loved ones that it becomes clear that they think we are misinformed due to our news outlets, and vice versa. It makes genuine dialog near impossible because we are working on the premise of opposing realities. As far as I know, none of these factors are eminent forces in Germany. 

America does offer something rich: potential. That is its siren’s call. The stories of people who started out with little, then cracked the code and made it big. This is what not only calls immigrants to America, but keeps American citizens complicit within this system that clearly does not serve them. The promise of potential is what is inspiring about the story of America’s founding, and is what continues to inspire, genuinely, Americans today. I do think, though, that what we as a people are aiming for with our hopes and aspirations needs to shift. If, as a society, we aspired towards the pursuit of happiness for all, versus me, we would actually go farther as a nation and a people. It is not a sustainable dream for everyone to become billionaires. That is in and of itself a faulty aspiration, and an amoral one. It is wishing to become the dragon, and not the knight. 

There is a lot that I love about America. I love that it is a messy tapestry of cultures formed from the peoples from all over the world that sought it for its promise of potential. I love the astounding natural beauty–the mountains, oceans, prairies, deserts, forests, swamps. I love the heart of the people evident in the myriad protests springing up, and in the way that many people are opting to care for their immigrant neighbors over their own safety. I love the land that forged the people I love most in the world–my family, my friends, myself. 

I love that it has this insane, innate, potential for greatness, if we can wrest it back from the draconic hands of the current oligarchy running it into the ground from all three branches of government. If we actually, truly (perhaps for the first time in history), choose to fully run our government under the premise of equality and liberty for all, then there truly would be a greatness to America. I ardently hope that we can earnestly become a land of the free, where no one lives feeling less than because they are not white, Christian, straight, cisgendered, and wealthy. Where everyone is supported to live just enough so that they and their communities may flourish. Where there is a genuine interest in repairing harm to those who have been historically disenfranchised, simply because it is the right thing to do. Where the interest in the community that was so embedded into me in my youth is felt and practiced by all. Where everyone cares about a healthy environment, deep and nourishing (even if difficult) education for all, healthy food and access to medicine for all, a place where people are truly free to love and be who they want, and a life where we actually treat others how we wish to be treated.

If Americans were to live for the benefit of all beings, so that all may be happy and live in safety, then there would be every reason to be proud. Until then, I will remain critical and active against the current regime. Not because I am not proud to be American, but because I want to be.

Reading now: A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich and The Well of Ascension by my boi Brandon Sanderson

Listening now:  Jesse Welles. He writes captivating folk music that perfectly captures current issues, like a contemporary Bob Dylan.