2013...as it relates to 2014

Dear Blogsphere: 

Miss H has flown home for her brief winter break. I just saw her off at the sparkly, well-lit Incheon Airport. I now have eight lonely days to devour pungent seafood, scratch myself, burp, shower every 72 hours and just generally act like a mangy orangutan an unwed male twentysomething.

This was originally supposed to be a post about what I did during my recent Facebook hiatus, but then I thought I'd go one better and tell you what-all I did during 2013. (It's becoming a tradition.)

So here, as noted in my little black spiral-bound notebook, is what I did during the two-month break from the Book o' Faces:
 

• read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• started reading The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (which are the reasons I didn't read more during the break)
• wrote, printed, administered and graded midterm exams
• wrote, printed, administered and graded final exams
• bet on the winning horse and scored ₩1,200 at Seoul Racecourse Park (about $1.10)
• watched the sunset from Gwangjin Bridge (pictured below)
• toured Seolleung and Jeongneung
• found and ordered Coleman waterproof matches (for my pipe) on Gmarket
• joined a gym
• rode a two-person bike with Miss H for the first time (at Ttukseom Resort)
• watched Red Dawn (2012), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Wrath of the Titans (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), Catching Fire (2013), The Edge (2010), and In the Fog (2012) 
• had the fraying cuffs of my two coats repaired (our tailor's a magician)
• assembled a bug-out bag (in case the NoKos invade)
• discovered a bitchin' new bar in Cheonho (Heaven's Key)
• tried to catch the O-Train and failed
• edited Novel #2
• got nearly 40,000 words into my NaNoWriMo project
• took my computer to Gangnam to be repaired
• failed at NaNoWriMo
• brewed my first partial mash beer with the boys (a British red ale)
• drank expensive cocktails on the 41st floor of the Sindorim Sheraton Hotel with Miss H
• explored Gapyeong and Namiseom
• tried a new shrimp-rice dish at the corner diner
• dumped the red ale down the toilet (suspected bacterial infection)
• bought a new backpack for Australia (₩58,000)
• went to the Seoul Lantern Festival
• took several glorious naps
• bought my own set of beer-making supplies
• had corned beef hash at Butterfingers in Gangnam
• went to Incheon for our customary Thanksgiving dinner at Fog City Diner and bought sourdough bread from the proprietor
• had my first halfway-decent conversation with a Korean cabbie
• brewed (and drank) a nice chocolate porter with the fellas
• finally mailed those souvenirs from China to my parents
• rode down to Busan on the KTX for a Christmas party; met up with everyone on Geoje Island; had tapas and wine, watched a football match at an Irish pub, and wound up at a noraebang
• watched the sunset from the top of the Lotte Department Store in Nampo-dong, Busan
• caught the night train to Seoul
• booked my Hokkaido junket
• reconnected with an old friend (my illustrator)
• came down with rhinitis
• went on the Itaewon Foodie Crawl (French, Spanish, Russian and Italian)
• picked new names for the fictitious cities, countries and continents in my sci-fi series
• brewed a nice ginger IPA with my beer-buddies
• did 18 hours of extra classes during finals week
• took Novel #3 to 81,000 words and Novel #4 to 38,000 words

And here, included as a...supplement? Addendum? Appendix? Well, whatever. Here's the rest of what I accomplished in 2013:

• read Hiroshima by John Hersey, Skybreaker and Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel, Distant Thunders and Rising Tides by Taylor Anderson, Dubliners by James Joyce, The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb (part of a book-exchange program with Miss H), and five or six other titles I don't recall...far short of my goal of 30
• tried and failed to keep a book diary (obviously)
• finished my contract at Avalon English in Bucheon
• moved to Seoul, the world's most populous city (proper)
• got a job at Sejong University (and successfully completed my first year there)
• got straight A's on all my teaching evaluations, too
• started the semester with tonsillitis, though
• attended a family reunion in Iowa in July
• swam in a man-made lake
• went to see Jesse James's childhood home
• finally got to eat (and drink!) at the Yardhouse in Victoria Gardens
• fired a Smith & Wesson Model 10 
• traveled through western Japan on the Shinkansen in August (Tokyo → Kyoto → Kumamoto)
• rode the JR Beetle from Hakata to Busan
• ate horse meat
• got into home brewing with my coworkers
• toured Beijing and the Great Wall of China for the Chuseok holiday
• ate fried scorpion (that was on the bucket list!) as well as roast duck and bullfrog soup
• picked up a pile of PC games on Steam
• wrote humor pieces for Rabble Rouse the World
• bought a Stanwell beechwood pipe and Captain Black tobacco
• purchased a bottle of 10-year-old Ardbeg single malt Scotch with spare change
• started Novel #4
• submitted a dozen or so short sci-fi stories to e-magazines like Space Squid, 3LBE and Daily Science Fiction (publication still eludes me, however)
• grew a beard (bucket list!)
• received an e-reader (a Nook) from my significant other as a gift; haven't touched it

And that's about all I can think of for now.

Here's the part where I'm supposed to tell you what I've got planned for next year. Alright, here you go: another two semesters at Sejong University, the Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido in February, a summer trip to Alaska and some other destination as-yet-unchosen, e-publishing Novel #2, shopping Novel #1 to publishers, finishing Novels #3, #4 and possibly #5, smoking the dickens out of my pipe, moving out of this hellhole villa, brewing the tastiest beers this side of the East China Sea, planning my wedding, and growing this beard down to my sternum.

Postman out.

from me to all the world

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

--- W.H. Auden

...and a Happy New Year. 

beardly updates

As many of you may know, I'm trying to grow a beard. I grew a paltry, thin one last spring when the cherry blossoms were blooming (why should they have all the fun?) but shaved it off shortly thereafter. I sculpted the remains into a Van Dyke, which has sustained me ever since.

But with the approach of No-Shave November this year, I decided I wanted more. A month without shaving would be the perfect chance. That scraggly thing I'd had on my face in spring wouldn't suffice to knock "grow a beard" off my bucket list. I'm aiming for a real beard this time around. Something that would make a mountain man proud, or at least refrain from calling me "pilgrim."

But first, a confession: I have been a bit unfair. I quit shaving halfway through October, and it's halfway through December now, so my nascent beard is obviously a bit longer than it should be. My facial hair grows really slowly, you see. Dang genetics. None of the Post men can grow beards. I suppose my Germanic/Viking ancestors were like cats: they got to the warm, sunny New World and started shedding. The big, bushy, manly beards must've been the first things to go. Accordingly, I had to hedge my bets a little. So I started earlier than everybody else.

This is what I've got now:

These were taken, incidentally, under the Gwangjin Bridge, on the eastern shore of the Han River, during a lovely December day. That's my new Stanwell pipe clenched between my teeth.

I'm going to let nature run its course through Yuletide, January, and the ensuing February. After I get back from Hokkaido on February 9, I'll do another post and show you all what my new-and-improved beard looks like. I've come to terms with the fact that it'll never equal the thick, woolly thing Robert Redford had stuck on his face all through the film Jeremiah Johnson, but I think I've found a suitable middle ground: Jürgen Prochnow from Das Boot.

Minus the weary, haunted look of utter despair. 

I frickin' love that movie, not just for the drama, the splendid acting and the gritty realism, but for the epic beards that the crew sprout over the course of the film. Submarines and submariners have always fascinated me: the camaraderie they necessarily had to have, the insensate dangers they faced on a daily basis, the physical hardships of life in a metal tube, and their downright slovenliness (sanctioned under the circumstances). There was an enthralling article called "Sweat and Rum" in the BBC News Magazine a couple of days ago. It centered around the crew of the HMS Ocelot and other British submarines of the 1960s. "The Queen's Pirates" they were called. Feckin' awesome.

Anyway, Prochnow—who is one of my favorite actors on the basis of Das Boot alone—and I have a lot in common in the facial hair department. His beard runs along his jawline and flows down to his neck, steering clear of his cheeks. Mine does the exact same thing. So that manly chinwig you see in the picture above? That's what I'm going for. Sans blood and sinking submarines, of course.

See you in February... 

a good day to be alive

Today was one of those days.

For starters, it was 34 frickin' degrees: right up my alley. The pale blue sky was filled with puffy clouds that scooted along with the icy wind, and the year's first lasting snow clung wetly to the pavement and frozen ground. I got up, ate a ham sandwich with steak sauce, saw my wife-to-be off to work, hit the gym, came home, showered, and ate a hearty lunch of baked beans, an apple and another bite or two of ham. Then I bundled up and walked to Sejong University. Three subway stops—about eight or nine blocks, I'd say. Up the hill that marks Gwangnaru's western border, where they're building this humongous bridge/tunnel thingy and the road's all torn up; through the winding, sinuous, tilted neighborhood of Achasan, with its wedding halls and stumpy office buildings and goshiwon and villas and mom-'n'-pop chicken shops, nestled in the foothills of the mountain of the same name; and into the brighter, more trendy neighborhood of Gunja, with its coffee shops and bakeries and upscale chicken joints and high-class brunch spots and the glass-fronted tower of the CGV Cinema looming over all. It was a good stretch of the legs, particularly with the ice on the sidewalk and the wind on my bare forehead. Glorious. I had "Levels" by Avicii and "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons playing on a continuous loop on my iPod. I squinted in the bright winter sunlight, bundled up to my ears in a much-beloved, ridiculous-looking black-and-grey scarf.

Work breezed by. During my break I sat in the coffee shop in the student union and sipped chamomile tea. I was my usual goofy self for the students. Their reactions were all the more interesting since I have Chinese, Japanese and North Korean students in my extra classes. I stuck my stuff back in my cubicle at 5:30, bundled up again, and walked from Children's Grand Park to Gunja Station as the last of the purple light was dying from the sky, and the clouds were fading to a deep magenta. The wind was stronger than ever and the slush had turned to jagged ice. Avicii and Imagine Dragons kept me company once again as I rode the subway two stops home.

I felt like I'd had a productive day—smack dab in the middle of a productive week. On Monday I'd sent a Christmas package to my parents, as well as Christmas and birthday cards to my grandparents. On Tuesday, Brant, Joseph and I climbed into a thirteen-story building right across from the Gunja CGV, to a chicken-and-hof on the 12th floor. We had some of the best spicy chicken we'd ever tasted and two bottles of Cass lager apiece. Then we went to my place and bottled the gingery IPA that we'd cooked up a week ago. Eight tantalizing glass bottles of various sizes are now sitting on my kitchen shelf, carbonating themselves.

After Brant and Joseph had departed, I booked my entire trip to Hokkaido. A flight to Narita, a capsule hotel near Tokyo Station, another Japan Rail Pass, and three nights at the Sapporo Clark Hotel. I'm doing the Yuki Matsuri, folks—the Snow Festival. It's a world-famous snow-sculpting extravaganza held in Sapporo every February. I've always wanted to see it (that, and the ice festival they hold in Harbin, China). Then I'm taking various trains all the way down through the three Home Islands of Japan. My final destination is Hakata, there to catch the old JR Beetle to Busan, just like I did last August. There's another blowout in Busan the second weekend in February, and I wouldn't miss it for the world.

There's just something euphoric about having a trip booked. The knowledge that you'll be out on the road again soon just gets into your blood. I felt like skipping as I marched to Gunja Station, even though the winds of Thor, as Led Zeppelin sang, were blowin' cold. I was on Cloud 9, and still am. After I finish this post I'm going to type up some more of Novel #4 and then meet the wife-to-be for dinner at our favorite Korean barbecue joint...right next to our villa.

All is right with the world.

Of course, soon the madness will begin. My students' term papers are due on Thursday and Friday, and I'll have to grade 'em and quick, for the final exams start the following Monday and run until Wednesday. I'll have to come in on Thursday and Friday of next week to get everything done, I reckon, but after that...freedom. Two months of it. Part of it will be an odyssey of self-improvement (more about that later) and part of it will be Hokkaido.

Friggin' Hokkaido. In winter. Do you know how long I've waited for this?

I should really stop complaining and appreciate the life I've got. 

Paul Theroux kicks through again

Wow, that post about territoriality sure was pretentious, wasn't it? Well, there's a reason I christened this blog "sententious" from the get-go. I know what I am and I know most people won't have the patience for me—least of all me, when I've grow up and matured a bit.
 
That's partly why I like traveling, you know. It's a growing experience. A revolution. The world gets thrown on its ear, and without even knowing it you've ridden an elevator up through the clouds and can finally see all 'round. Your own little world looks smaller than it was, and everyone else's problems are thrown into sharp relief, and life seems just a little bit better.

But enough of me talking like I know anything. I just got kicked in the head again. And you-know-who was behind it all.

That's right, Paul Theroux has kicked through again.

I was talking to one of my coworkers a few months back. He also happens to be a fan of Theroux, and naturally we discussed his most famous work, The Great Railway Bazaar. Then the talk turned to the book Theroux wrote as a follow-up to that beast of a book: Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. My colleague had read it; I hadn't. I came in to work this morning to find the book on my desk, deposited there by my saintly benefactor. Unable to resist temptation, I opened it up and thumbed through the first few pages.

The first thing that greeted my eyes was this:

Most writing about travel takes the form of jumping to conclusions, and so most travel books are superfluous, the thinnest, most transparent monologuing. Little better than a license to bore, travel writing is the lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing, much of it distorted with Munchausen syndrome. 

Well, that was a hell of a thing to crack a book and read. I should have known if I touched anything by Theroux that the old bugger would strike at the heart of the matter and unload a pithy magazine of weaponized wisdom at me. The words were simultaneously enlightening and humiliating. There was no denying that I'd indulged in every one of those cardinal sins in my own travel writing. I realized just how pretentious I've been. Even my mere intention to become a travel writer was the lowest form of conceit. And let's not get started on the prose itself: it dips toward the "mendacious, pointless posturing" end of the spectrum.

After about two minutes of genuine, unfiltered chagrin, I made myself a promise: no more. I'm not going to jump to conclusions. I'm not going to maunder, I'm not going to complain, I'm not going to criticize unduly. Heck, you'll say. You're only 27, kid. This is the time to be a stupid young dreamer with a lot of high-flown ideals based on stuff you've heard and seen and not experienced.

Well, yes. But for that same reason (that I'm 27 years old) I'm starting to get the idea that there's more to life than high-flown ideals and attainable perfection and lasting legacies. Case in point: I had an odd feeling the other day. I had the feeling that my life wasn't infinite, and that I wasn't invincible, and that the mark I'd planned to make on the world might not be as grandiose as I'd envisioned. I started to get an idea of just how fleeting and transient a single human existence (mine especially) really is, and the thought was humbling. I felt like I'd had a moment of real wisdom for the first time in my short life. I've known for a while now that all that posturing that I and others had done in high school hadn't been worth a squat, and hanging out with friends in their lower twenties has long been insufferable. But this was the first time I'd come close to feeling...well, old. It wasn't just the inchoate, vague fear of being old that all young people experience. The thing itself.

Crazy.

Anyway, I'm serious about this. As serious as I've ever been about anything. As serious as anybody who pretends to be wise can be. As serious as any former twenty-something who smoked and drank and partied and passed out in unmentionable places can portray himself to be. No more sanctimonious conclusions. No more unjust, inflammatory complaints. Let's just see what happens to my writing when I try to go for pure, unadulterated description. A little experiment, we'll call it.

I'll have lots to write about, trust me. I solved my dilemma: the final results of the V.D.Q. are in.

Remember the V.D.Q.? The Vacation Destination Quandary? It bedeviled me for the longest time. I couldn't figure out where I was going to go during my two months of vacation. I scratched Malaysia, as the only things you can do there, it seems, are eat delicious food and sprawl out on a beach. Not my cup of tea, not during the height of winter. I scratched Mongolia, too, as the only thing you can do there in the winter is freeze your man-marbles off. With much reluctance, I also scratched Australia, since the $1400 round-trip airline ticket was just too much. I waited too long, dang my hide.

So...Hokkaido it is. I'm making the reservations as I type this. And I had an epiphany in the shower this evening. Instead of taking the old Trans-Siberian Express back through Russia when I'm done in Korea, the way every expatriate under the sun, why don't I take the bull by the horns and go back via Central Asia? Go by train through Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England, Scotland and Ireland? That's, what—26 countries? The Great Railway Bazaar in reverse, almost.

That would make me feel a lot more like a world traveler. 

Busan blowout

The Wonder Girls, one of Korea's most popular K-Pop groups (temporarily disbanded thanks to Sunye's marriage). 

Time for another Christmas party in Geoje (near enough to Busan for me to capitalize on the alliterative opportunity)!

Miss H and I are catching the 8:10 KTX from Seoul Station this morning. Once in Busan, we'll ride the subway out to Hadan, grab the old Geoje bus, cross the bridge, get another bus to Okpo, and then finally wind up where we need to be: J&J's apartment, full of mulled beverages and warm spirits. Free accommodations, too. J&J always pull out the stops for everybody and they treat us right.

That gingery IPA the fellas and I brewed last weekend will be ready to bottle when I return. I've faithfully taken hydrometer readings every day and the specific gravity has settled right around 1.016-1.017. A bit high perhaps (most beers settle between 1.005 and 1.015, I'm told), but palatable. It tastes gingery and hoppy, too, so I'm content. 

There are a few things I want to talk to you about when I get back. First off, I think I've finally solved my V.D.Q.—in a way that might surprise you. I've essentially decided to go nowhere at all this winter. There are money issues involved, yes, but other factors as well. Let's talk 'em over.

As for reading, I'm still working my way through Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (at an iceberg's pace), and The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson (I may have to go ahead and read the other three volumes of The Gonzo Papers, though they be decades out of date). I will likely start in on Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, which I mentioned previously, when I return from South Gyeongsang Province.

That's if I finish the million or so make-up quizzes I must give some of my students, finish writing and printing my final exams, and (simply put) survive the rest of this semester. I also have to send a package off home with all the goodies from Korea and China. And a Christmas card for my grandparents. Yes, I'm doing Christmas cards this year. Seems like the thing to do. No excuse not to with them being just 400 won at my campus store (and in English).

And to leave you with a piece of good news...Insadong is still there. They haven't demolished it yet. Here's hoping they don't. 

territoriality: a discussion

It's high time I did some more sententious vaunting. This here's one of my rare opinion posts. Let's begin with a definition:

territoriality

ter·ri·to·ri·al·i·ty [ter-i-tawr-ee-al-i-tee, -tohr-]

noun

1. territorial quality, condition, or status.

2. the behavior of an animal in defining and defending its territory.

3. attachment to or protection of a territory or domain.

And let's follow that up with a basic truth: the concept of territoriality applies to human interaction as well. We build fences around our houses, put up NO TRESPASSING signs, and feel more at home in our native towns, counties, states, provinces, and (naturally) territories than anywhere else.

It's that specific aspect of territoriality I want to discuss, actually.

Traveling and living in foreign countries is a growing experience. It's a baptism by fire, a crash course in open-mindedness, cultural exposure, language barriers, communication disasters, culinary misadventures and homesickness. You feel it the moment you step off the plane. Everything's new, and it's scary. People are talking in tongues you can't understand. The signs are unreadable. Often the people themselves look completely alien to you, and it's a lead-pipe cinch that they'll think and act in different ways. This makes travelers apprehensive and twitchy and throws us all off our chumps. Eventually, with successive jaunts and expeditions, we get used to the otherness and can relax and enjoy our trips with relative ease.

But one fear never goes away.

In addition to the surface nervousness that traveling engenders within us, there is also something more primordial: a creeping, furtive sort of nervousness, an ever-present low-key fear. It's not just the unfamiliarity of our surroundings. It's the simple fact that we're off our home range. We're on someone else's turf, so to speak. We're in a foreign land, with different laws, mindsets, philosophies, mores, and etiquette. We're in someone else's backyard, and they know it like the back of their hand, and we don't. We, the interlopers, won't be torn limb from limb if discovered by the natives, as happens to wild animals who stray too far from their territory. But the inchoate threat of such still lingers in the reptilian parts of the human brain, and we feel that fear whenever a foreign shore heaves into sight on the  distant horizon.

Even after living in South Korea for something like three nonconsecutive years, I still get the willies on occasion. If I could speak the language better, I wouldn't have 'em so often. But even if I was a whiz at Hangul, that primordial fear would still be there. I'm in Asia, where the rules of the game are elementally different from what I know. The sun still rises and sets, and the tides go in and out, but those are the only similarities. The Koreans have their own ideas about commerce, social relations, gratitude, etiquette, politeness, interpersonal nuance, humor, entertainment, morality, fine dining, hard work and whatnot. Furthermore, the Korean civilization is thousands of years old, far outstripping my own country's paltry history. The enormity of those ages weighs upon my shoulders like a millstone at times.

I feel the opposite effect whenever I return home to the States. I exhale literally and metaphorically. Everything makes sense again, imperfect as it may be. The signs are legible. People's slang terms are comforting. That sense of oneness with my surroundings comes flooding back to me. I feel ready to turn and do battle with whatever extraterritorial threats hounded me home. Your turn, you bastards. You're on my block now.

And you know what? I think that's a good thing.

Culture shock, homesickness, and otherness are shoots which spring from the same seed: territoriality. The feelings of attachment or protectiveness we harbor for the land of our birth. It exerts a powerful, formative influence upon us, and rightly so. The stark reality of it is impossible to deny, deeply biological as it is. Americans have their territory, Koreans have theirs. I'm intruding, plain and simple. Never mind that the immigration office stamps my passport and lets me live and work here for a year at a time. I'm an alien freak. I have the children's stares to prove it.

Of course, there are other, darker shoots of that same territorial seed. Things like bigotry, prejudice, and racism are also tendrils of territoriality. But there are positive effects as well: patriotism and nationalism, for example.

Many will disagree with me on this. Some of you may be shaking your heads right now. In your minds, the argument is coalescing: "Some of the most horrendous atrocities have been committed in the names of patriotism and nationalism!"

They have, no doubt. But I still say that devotion to, fondness for and belief in one's country and culture are healthy things for an upstanding, free-minded individual to have. I think that notion of otherness isn't a stumbling block, but rather a step stool. It's a platform with a telescope, a hill to climb, steep and rocky perhaps but a great place to pause and peruse the sunlit uplands beyond.

I believe (especially as an American) that we're sort of shamed into forsaking our nationalities when we're out on the road. We're encouraged to forget who we are and where we came from, and be totally open-minded as we view other countries, cultures and customs. Viewing anything through the lens of the culture we were born into is frowned upon. Bigotry, it's called. Prejudice. Willful ignorance.

I disagree.

I think you have to judge the entire world from the perspective of your own tiny slice of it, because you'd have to be a robot to do otherwise. Only a mindless automaton is capable of ignoring its own heritage and upbringing and judge something with perfect objectivity. As G.K. Chesterton warned, "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out." Stay judgmental. Be biased. Cultivate prejudice. You need a basis, a foundation upon which to judge what you see, and your background is well-suited to it. As long as you're a righteous human being (and I already know that you are), then you won't fall into the bottomless pits of prejudice or racism or ethnocentrism. You'll be fine. Rock on. You need that cultural context of yours to form sound opinions of what you see and hear abroad.

D'you see what I'm saying, here?

I'm starting to think I'm the last person on the planet who feels that way. The paradigm is shifting. The world shrinks, technology advances, airplanes and boats and cars and trains move faster and with less energy, and the information superhighway reaches ever deeper into our lives. As the lines between cultures and continents begin to blur, the zeitgeist has changed. In talks with many of my more liberal friends, they have expressed nothing but disdain for the concepts of patriotism and nationalism. They shake their heads and say things like, "Murrica! F*** yeah!" in satirical tones. Some of the more extreme among them have expressed outright approval for a sort of "world culture," in which national boundaries are swept aside, the myriad cultures of the globes are integrated and amalgamated, and a sort of homogeneous global culture ensues, freeing humanity forever from the damnable vices of bigotry and racism.

Phooey to that, I say.

I don't know about you, but the whole notion of a "world culture," gives me the heebie-jeebies. You should take pride in your homeland. You should have some prejudice in its favor. You should be leery of the way other people do things. You should believe your country's the best in the world simply because you were born in it, as George Bernard Shaw once so scathingly wrote.

"Why?" I hear you ask. "Aren't you being an arrogant, ethnocentric pig? Won't people hate you for thinking that way? Aren't you being close-minded? Shouldn't you travel with an open mind?"

To which my answers are: No, yes, no, and yes.

Being territorial—feeling uncomfortable in another country and safe and secure in your own, cleaving to an intrinsic, instinctive, subconscious kind of nationalism—isn't arrogance. It's only natural to believe that your country's the best. You did grow up in it, after all. But it's not just natural—it's evolutionary. This is your territory. It's your home, and it's a part of you, from the tip of your hairs to the marrow of your bones. You were fed on it, suckled by it,  knocked about by it in your youth. You've breathed it, swam in it, tasted it and slept in it your whole life. It knows you and you know it, and you have each other's backs. You should love it to death. Stepping out of your territory is frightening, strange and potentially life-threatening. That makes the challenge—and rewards—all the greater.

People will hate you for feeling that way. They'll call you a racist pig, a jingoistic idiot, an ignorant, short-sighted, narrow-minded fool. Don't listen to 'em. You know in your heart that you're not a racist. You know people are people, no matter where they're from. You know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and you don't attribute either of those things to a human individual just 'cause they're from a particular place. And as long as you know it, no one can touch you or make you feel like you're a bad person.

You're not being close-minded. You're open to new experiences. In fact, that is the whole point of traveling: to get out of your comfort zone. To leave your territory, those familiar shores and welcoming skyline, and venture into the unknown. There's the rub. Be territorial. Love your homeland, be wary or even leery of other people's, but don't let that stop you from going. Go there and find out how it really is. Then you can decide whether or not your preconceptions were accurate. What you're doing, if you're doing it right, is giving other people's cultures and societies the respect they deserve without fawning over them, worshiping them, or paying them lip service for political correctness's sake. By the Great Green Arkleseizure, folks, you're allowed to have an opinion. Just make sure it's founded on your own experience and a thorough knowledge of circumstance, not sweeping generalizations or assumptions. Just look at Paul Theroux. That's precisely how he writes his travel books. He's judgmental as hell. He'll lampoon anybody, be they an individual or a government, foreign or American. The point is to go and see, and then judge harshly...based on what you know is right.

That, my dears, is how you travel with an open mind. You have a context to work with: your culture. Hold that culture close to yourself, cherish it, be proud of it, but keep your heart and mind open. Let the ambient weirdness trickle in. You'll learn some startling things. Some of them will be as stupid or wrong or yucky as you always suspected. Many of them, however, won't be as bad as you thought—and more than a few will be the exact opposite. You'll see sights you never dreamed existed, taste the milk of human kindness, add more capital to the bank of experience than you ever thought possible. But don't forget where you started. Don't lord it over anybody, don't put anyone else down, but for Pete's sake, don't be afraid to flaunt it. You are who you are. Be proud. Don't skulk about. Tell people. Everyone's just as curious about you as you are about them, or ought to be. They're all nationalists at heart, too. They may dislike you just because of the color of your passport. But you can forgive them for that, 'cause deep down you're judging the hell out of their clothes, their dirty fingernails and their country's cockeyed ways, and you can laugh inside at the crazy two-way nature of the universe. 

But how would this priceless sensation, this ability to learn about others, to understand how things are done on the far side of the world, down in the dust or up in the snow, on top of the mountains and in the deepest valleys and over the silvery lakes—how would it be possible if we had one world culture? Where would your identity come from? What would you take pride in? How would you build that base, that context, from which to travel and peer into other people's lives? How could you judge their shortcomings—and their wonders? What use would travel be if everyone else thought and slept and breathed and loved the same way that you do? 

It wouldn't, and that's the truth. It wouldn't be any use at all.  

I don't want a world that's all the same. I don't want a world where I never feel ill at ease or out of place. I want a world full of mystery and weirdness and otherness to explore. And I want a patch of dirt that I can come back to and feel at home in, unconditionally—but with a host of foreign friends and experiences rattling around in my head, heart and soul. I think it's grand that we're all different from each other, and that we have a little fear and perhaps aversion to one another (and our respective nations). Just because we travel and learn about the world doesn't mean we should lose faith in who we are and where we came from, or our belief in our own greatness. I think that sort of national pride fosters healthy competition, self-confidence, cultural self-esteem, and most importantly, our curiosity about each other. It makes the sun brighter, the water clearer, the air fresher and our friendships warmer. 

But maybe that's just me.

Patriotic enough for ya?