Exceptions to Affluence: The Underclass

Posted on August 12, 2012 by John Walters

Though in general I have been impressed with the way the United States has changed since I last lived here in the 1970s, my thoughts turn again and again to the homeless I see everywhere on the streets of the city.  They sit on benches beside the boardwalks near the beaches with their belongings in wheelchairs or shopping carts; they sleep in little nooks and crannies of pavement shrouded from streetlights by bushes; they use the internet and the restrooms in the public libraries; they beg at traffic lights and in front of supermarkets and 7-11s.  Their attitudes to their plight vary widely.  One of my favorites was a man with a big broad grin who stood at a street corner with a sign that said, “Bet you can’t hit me with a quarter.”  Some nod and smile and say good day; others are sultry and morose and downright malevolent-looking.  Some are fogged-over and nigh incoherent with drugs and/or alcohol, while others are bright and chipper and jovial in spite of their misfortune.

But no matter who these people are and how they act, the fact remains:  in American society they are the underclass, those for whom for one reason or another the American dream has turned into a nightmare.  I speak of the homeless but they of course are not the only underprivileged, deprived people in the US.  There are of course the rural poor, and the poor in ethnic and racial ghettos in the big cities.  But the homeless here, of mixed races and gender, are who I see, and so it is they that have caught my attention.  And I wonder what has happened.  How is it that these people have fallen through the cracks of the most affluent society on earth?  How is it that all around there are veritable palaces of the rich, and at the same time filth-encrusted poor sleep in the nearby gutters?  I can’t reconcile the two visions in my mind.  It reminds me of India, where I would find such stark contrasts as huge slums put together with materials scavenged from rubbish heaps, open sewers running through the middle of the dirt paths, and behind the slums the heavily-guarded towers of the rich.  It reminds me that there is no ideal society on this Earth today, and if we think differently we are only in the midst of delusion.

I have been homeless.  I have wandered the United States, Europe, and even parts of the Middle East and Central Asia without a place to stay, without money in my pocket, dependent upon the largess of strangers, taking whatever odd jobs I could find, sometimes begging, seeking out abandoned buildings or fields or alleyways or gravel patches near railroad tracks or whatever safe patch of ground at night I could find to lay down and rest.  It’s not easy.  Even when you are doing it, as I was, in the spirit of adventure, to have unique experiences that I might afterwards write about, still it was often lonely and discouraging and frightening.  Think how much more it must be so for someone who has no such vision of literary ambition to give them hope, for someone who has fallen through the cracks and sees no way out.

This is what I see of America:  there is great affluence, there is great opportunity, but there is also great despair, great hopelessness, great evil.

And there is not only physical poverty but spiritual poverty.  Only a short time ago a nutcase burst into a movie theater and started shooting those in the seats who had come to watch the film.  Random acts of mass violence are far too common here.  Why do these things happen?  What paucity of honor and integrity could bring on such a deed?  The mind recoils from even attempting to enter such a horrible black pit of spiritual dearth.

No, America is not perfect.  It is not even close.  There is indeed great evil here.  But there is great good as well.  Good and evil exist side-by-side in stark contrast.  What America has that many other nations do not is the ability to choose.  There are opportunities here for those willing to seek them out.  I do not know what brought the homeless people I see to such a state, and I certainly do not feel superior to them, or condemn them, or imply that their sins have caused them to arrive at such an impasse or that the rich are in any way morally superior.  The situation is exceedingly complex and such problems cannot be solved in such simplistic ways.  I have no answers.  I arrived here myself with very little, though, and I find it easy to empathize with those who have even less.  Just a bit of bad luck, a wrong turn or some bad choices here and there, and I could end up on the street too.  Many of those there now do not wish to be.  Some don’t give a damn, but most of them do.  They were all sons and daughters of their parents; most of them had families as they grew up; they went through childhood and adolescence just as we did.  We all have the same standard equipment of bodies, minds, and spirits.

This morning while contemplating writing this I wondered why I had to be so intense, so serious about things.  I recalled other writers who have written about returning to the States after years abroad, and how they were so lighthearted and jovial and flippant about it.  Why is my approach so different?  Because those writers of whom I speak returned in a state of affluence, whereas I am returning in a state of want.  I feel I have more in common with the homeless in the street than the rich living in the hills in mansions overlooking the ocean.  I feel it would be much easier for me to slip and fall to the lowest level than somehow attain the highest.  It’s a form of paranoia, I know, and I have to fight it every day, to stay positive, to stay encouraged, to keep my focus on the upward struggle.

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Book Review: The Fifties by David Halberstam

Posted on August 5, 2012 by John Walters

This is a terrific book by a terrific writer.  When I came across it in a used bookstore in Pacific Beach, San Diego, I was first put off by its size.  In its hardcover edition it’s a real doorstopper of a book.  I left it on the shelf, came back to it another day, and finally figured, “Why not?”  I’m glad I did.

David Halberstam was a journalist who died in a car accident in 2007 at the age of 73.  He won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism for his coverage of the Vietnam War, and his book “The Best and the Brightest” is considered by many one of the best books on the politicians, military men, and events of the Vietnam War.  It was the first book of Halberstam’s that I tackled, and I have to admit that at first it was slow going.  Halberstam doesn’t just tell you what happened; he shows you why it happened by going into the background not only of the event itself but the important players in it – sometimes all the way back to the childhoods and even ancestors of the people involved.  His style takes some getting used to, but when you do realize what he is up to, it is irresistible and addicting.  The next book of his I read was “War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals”, which is about America’s foreign policy makers after the Vietnam War, and how America became involved in such places as the Persian Gulf, Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans.  It was a fascinating read.

“The Fifties” reads like a novel – or perhaps like a series of long short stories.  It goes into many of the events that shaped the decade in all sorts of fields.  It was particularly fascinating for me because I have read much about historical events of the sixties and seventies, the era in which I grew up, and not so much about the fifties, the decade in which I was born.  He writes of the politics of the era, of course, of Truman, and Eisenhower, and of other powerful political figures such as Thomas Dewey and Adlai Stevenson.  He writes of the McCarthy communist witch hunts; of the Korean War and General MacArthur’s pomposity and subsequent demotion and humiliation; of Oppenheimer and the development of the hydrogen bomb; of racial inequalities in the South and the birth of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. as its leader; of the business success of General Motors and Holiday Inn and McDonald’s and of the people behind them; of the scientific research and sociological turmoil leading up to the development of the birth control pill; of the shaping of American cinema by outstanding figures such as Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe; of the influence of Elvis Presley on modern rock music; of the rise of the beat generation as embodied by such iconoclasts as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs; of the shaping of American popular literature by Mickey Spillane, the novel “Peyton Place”, and cheap paperbacks; of the rise of television as a force in American society and advertising, epitomized by “I Love Lucy”, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”, and “The $64,000 Question”.  The list could go on and on, and each story is as fascinating as the last.  The juxtaposition of so many such diverse but enthralling stories gives an amazing mosaic of a crucial formative decade in American history.

I cannot praise this book enough.  I greatly enjoy reading good modern history books, but even amongst my favorites this books shines as not only absorbing and entertaining, but illuminating as well.  I looked forward to reading this book every day as much as I would a fast-paced novel.  I couldn’t put it down, and despite its length I enjoyed it so much that I was disappointed when it was over.

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The Myth of the Perfect Person

Posted on July 29, 2012 by John Walters

I notice it in every medium, every aspect of society:  advertising touts it, of course, on TV, on the internet, on posters and placards, in brochures and pamphlets and magazines; films and books present it in the subtleties of the hero/adversary/secondary characters interactions; when you apply for a job or try to rent a house or take out a loan you are expected to be it; formal education constantly pounds it into you.  What is it?  The perfect person, the perfect citizen.  When you walk out your door and encounter any formal aspect of society there is something expected of you, something that you are being molded, consciously or unconsciously, to become.

What is this perfect person?  How do I become it? countless millions ask.  Ah, but there’s the rub.  If you seek for a simple solution, a 1 2 3 step to success you can’t find it.  There are only hints, like on a treasure map.  First you go here and do this.  If all goes well you next go there and do that.  If something goes wrong you must backtrack and start the level again, but face penalties.  On and on it goes, complicated as a maze.  Some people, such as politicians and preachers and celebrities, claim to have found the answer and try to guide others into a mold they have devised from their own imagination.  Inevitably it ends in disillusionment.  There are always hidden secrets, bugs under the rug, maggots in the pantry.  No perfect citizen exists, and if someone says that they are the example which must be followed, they are most likely more tarnished than most.

What to do then?  We seek answers.  We want to do right, be right.  Our role models collapse one by one; we cannot trust them.

A similar situation exists with the young.  They want to be cool, be hip, be whatever the current slang says you should be.  So they dress a certain way, walk a certain way, talk a certain way, hang out at the right places with the right people.  Does it do the trick?  Temporarily, perhaps.  But what happens when youth passes, when all the illusions fade away, when health and strength and looks begin to fail?

To find the answer I invite you to join me in the Pacific Beach branch of the San Diego Public Library.  Thence I have gone day after day recently, as we have not had internet yet at our new house.  Urgent business, including job hunting, has dictated that I check my mail and do a lot of other work online.  So I have walked a mile there and a mile back each day to plug in my machine and get my work done.

I have found that there I am never alone.  Thither go the homeless of the area with their laptops and cell phones and   I-Pads.  Those who don’t have computers use the complementary ones.  I don’t know what they do there for hour after hour, but they are intent at the task:  they mumble to themselves, gesture at the screen, type like pros, occasionally give each other advice.  It would seem little different than a batch of white-collar workers on the job at their cubicles, if it were not for the fact that they are dressed in filthy clothes, they look like they haven’t bathed in a long time, and they smell really rank.  They use the computers and the free internet and also the bathrooms; when I go to take a piss the commode is almost always busy with someone sitting and dropping a load.

These are our fellow citizens.  How they came to such a predicament I wouldn’t venture to guess.  I would imagine that there are as many reasons as there are people.  But there are many, many homeless here in the USA.  You see them almost everywhere, especially in a place like Pacific Beach where there are a lot of travelers going to and fro.  But the homeless too have entered the age of technology.  They know how to use computers; they send e-mail.  I don’t know what else they do as they sit at the library, but they are as connected as we all are.  I like that.  I like the fact that they can plug in and communicate on the Web, just as we can.

But the point is that there are no perfect people, no perfect citizens.  It is all a farce.  People are idiosyncratic.  Molds and cookie-cutters don’t work with people.  You have to take each one where they are at.  That’s why I have been so pleased that the librarians have treated the homeless who come to use the facilities with kindness, with courtesy, as they would any other library patrons.  They do insist everyone wear shirts and shoes, though, which seems a reasonable enough request.

So whatever society is trying to make of us, I think it should back off.  Nobody is perfect or ever will be.  We are all just folks.  The sooner we realize this the sooner we can just get on with living.

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Book Review: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Posted on July 21, 2012 by John Walters

This is one of those books that sat for years on my shelf before I read it.  I don’t know why.  No special reason.  Sometimes there’s just a right time to do things, and I guess this was the time.  One of my sons discovered it before I did.  He was quite smitten by it; after he read it he read three of the sequels.

It is the story of Andrew Wiggins, who gives himself the name of Ender, a prodigy who is recruited by the IF, or International Fleet, a military organization preparing for a third war with the buggers, aliens who have already invaded Earth twice.  The IF is searching for a commander who can lead a fleet against the bugger worlds, so they take a group of children, geniuses all, into space to train them for combat in a series of simulations, or games.  Ender, with his quick intellect and intuitive grasp of the games’ complexities, proves to be the one the IF is looking for.  He and the other children are subjected to isolation, physical hardships, rigorous training, and unrelenting discipline, that they might be prepared for the overwhelming task of saving the world.

It is told in a simple, spare style, with very little embellishing description or literary affectation.  Just the story, no frills.  The style suits the subject matter well.  After all, it is about children.  Don’t be deceived, however.  Though it is about children, it is not written for children.  This is possibly one reason it has had such difficulty being translated to the screen.  Though the project has been in the works for years it has never gotten far, because Hollywood simply cannot come to grips with the fact that though the heroes are not teens or young adults but kids, the film would not be aimed at children.  As I understand, the powers that be in Tinsel Town wanted to change Ender’s age, which if you comprehend the story at all would be the epitome of ludicrousness.

It’s a good story, a science fiction story which after the first few chapters is fast-paced and exciting, describing the training of Ender and the others, the dangers he encounters, the difficulties he confronts as he unlocks the intricacies of the games, the emotional turmoil he grapples with as he is pushed into taking on responsibilities that would crush other people.  But for most of its length it is a simple story nonetheless.  Its profound complexity is only revealed in the last few pages, and then the reader is left hanging.  Obviously the author already had a sequel in mind.  It is self-contained enough, however, to leave the reader satisfied, should he choose not to continue with the Ender series.

I for one, though, will read at least on into book two, its sequel, “Speaker for the Dead”.  After all, “Ender’s Game” and “Speaker for the Dead” made award history by winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel in consecutive years.  And “Ender’s Game” does finish with a cliffhanger.  One wonders what will happen next.

So, I recommend “Ender’s Game”.  It’s entertaining and fun and thoughtful and (in the end at least) profound.  You can enjoy it whether you have any intention of continuing on into the rest of the series, but if you have a predilection for chain-reading, that is, lighting one book off the still-smoldering remains of the last, there are several sequels to keep you going.

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Homeless

Posted on July 14, 2012 by John Walters

There are many homeless people here in San Diego.  I suppose I should make that statement more universal and say that there are many homeless people all around the world, but we need to zoom in on this particular situation.  In certain areas like Pacific Beach they are quite ostentatious about it, strolling around with their baby buggies or wheelchairs full of belongings, relaxing on the benches overlooking the sea, particularly the ones close to public restrooms.  Some are pathetic, like the one I sat behind on a city bus until the stench overpowered me; I thought that he had just given up bathing, but it turned out he had voided his bowels and bladder right there on the bus seat.  Some are intellectual, like the one I came across on the Pacific Beach esplanade with his Mac Book propped on top of his luggage.  Some are sociable, like those who gather on the patches of grass near the esplanade smoking cigarettes and chatting.  My homelessness lately, however, has been of a different sort.

I have been staying in cheap hotels while searching for a house.  The hotels have been comfortable enough, but hotels are not home, and I have been alone much of the time as I struggle with prospective employers, realtors, and my own inner doubts and uncertainties.  The first hotel by the beach had paper-thin walls, an uneven floor, and old fixtures and furniture, but at least it was in the midst of a lot of action.  I could take walks and watch the people and deliver resumes here and there.  At present I am staying at a hotel on the Naval base in Coronado which is primarily for military personnel.  I moved here for the obvious reason:  it is much cheaper than a hotel anywhere else in the city.  But it has the disadvantage that I can’t get on and off base by myself, for security reasons.  I should qualify that:  there’s no problem getting off, but I can’t get back on again without being accompanied by my son, who is in the Navy.  It was a necessary step, as our house hunting has taken much longer than we thought it would have.

Things have changed much in the housing racket in the US since I last had to rent a house.  Back in the seventies, when I was renting houses and apartments either alone or with friends, it was a very simple procedure.  You would look for vacancies in the newspaper want ads, call the owner, see the place, and then if you liked what you saw you discussed the details with the owner, signed a lease, paid your rent and deposit, and moved in.  So it is even now in Greece, where I used to live.  Now, however, in the USA in this modern age of the Internet, things have got much more complicated.  One would think all this technology would have simplified things, but such is not the case.  Credit checks are needed.  But not just credit checks, no.  They want to know everything about you, your financial history, your employment history, all your personal details, whether or not you have a criminal record, and so on.  And all this is investigated at your expense; that was a shocker for me.  For any house we applied for we had to put down a fee of $25 to $35 per adult so that they could run a search for all these details.  So since we were listing two adults as co-signers of the lease, that was $50 to $70 for each house we applied for.  It adds up fast, especially in a place like San Diego in the summer, where many people are looking for housing.  Some realtors are completely unscrupulous about it and accept applications from as many people as walk into the office; others are more ethical and only accept one application per house at a time.  But whatever the particular method, it is a hardship on the would-be renter, especially one in such a difficult financial situation as myself.

This rental system is meant to deal with those already in the overall US financial/employment system.  There is no provision for dealing with an outsider like me.  I am an anomaly.  I don’t fit in.  Realtors didn’t know what to make of me.  I have been living abroad in Asia and Europe for thirty-five years.  A credit search for me comes up blank.  In fact, my son’s excellent credit covers us both, and I see no reason for them to take my money and run a search for me at all.  Okay, I suppose they want to be sure I wasn’t a deranged criminal or some-such, but…

The problem was, we needed a place expediently, but these credit checks would take from one to two days or more.  And of course the realtors had to take the weekends off.  And a national holiday came up and they had to take that off too.  In the meantime I would cool my heels at the hotel, the bills piling up, the money dwindling.  It reminded me of when I had my passport stolen in Iran, back in the seventies when the Shah was still in power and there were many western budget travelers, how I had to wait through endless delays in getting a new passport and then a new visa, at the same time staying in a cheap hippy hotel and begging on the streets for enough money for food.  The situation was extreme enough as it was, but it was compounded by the fact that a national holiday was coming up and all government offices would be closed for a week.  We are always, it seems, potential victims of bureaucratic entanglements.

In addition, the other two sons who were due to join us already had their non-refundable tickets and the day was fast approaching when they would arrive.  For all of us to stay in a hotel together was not unthinkable, but it would be a very difficult situation both financially and logistically.  So we searched, my son and I, and searched and searched.  And encountered more delays, more setbacks.  Some places were already rented by the time we called.  Others were unsuitable due to location or size.  We found one beautiful place we could afford and applied but were turned down.  We found another we liked in an ideal location but the realtor has been giving us the run-around for over a week, even up to the time of this writing.  We found another which was a little small and a little out-of-the-way and did not have all the appliances we were hoping for; we applied for this as a sort of back-up plan, in case nothing else came through, and we passed the test for this one and were offered the place.  So if nothing else opens up we will move into this one in a few days.  At least it is something to fall back on.

The terrible days were the days in the void when we kept getting turned down, kept getting frustrated.  When I decided to come to the United States to open a home for my sons I left behind a house, and a car, and furniture, and a job, and an Internet connection, and a familiarity with a place I had known for many years, and acquaintances and contacts, and I could go on and on.  I left all of this to take a great leap into the unknown.  I had to trust that things would work out, that I would find a place to land, a house, furniture, a job, new friends and contacts – in short, a new home.  It was frightening during these house hunting days to feel myself still falling, still with nothing to grasp, nothing secure, and to realize that I was responsible not only for myself but for others who would soon be following on a pre-arranged schedule.  I have taken care of myself in the past; I wandered the road for years with nothing more than a duffle bag.  But those days are gone.  If I failed it was not just a matter of finding myself on the street with my bags.  I had to make this work for the sake of others, for the sake of those I had begun it for in the first place.  I had to persevere.

So, here I am – persevering.  We still don’t have the house, but at least we have the promise of one.  We’ve narrowed the field down to two, but whether one or the other works out, it is coming right down to the wire:  we will only be able to procure the house on the very day my sons arrive.  We will finish all the paperwork and obtain the keys in the afternoon, and they arrive in the evening.  The place will be completely devoid of furniture.  I hope we at least have time to stock it up with a bit of food.  But at least we will have a home.  We will build from there.

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The Things I Lack

Posted on July 8, 2012 by John Walters

The longer I stay in the United States the more I realize how much things have changed since I lived here thirty-five years ago, and the more I realize too how unprepared I was to make the leap from Greece to the USA.  I was used to the more relaxed pace of life in Greece.  Greeks like things the way they have always been; they change slowly and only under great duress.  The modernity in young people is in the trappings, not in the essence.  Young people will wear the latest fashions, use computers and cell phones, listen to the latest songs and watch the latest films.  But deep down they are very traditional and most, in a pinch, will defer to their parents, grandparents, and other relatives.  That’s the trouble with the political system too, and their inability to deal with the current economic crisis:  they are reactionary about it all.  They would just as soon have it all go away so they could get on with life as it has always been, and so they keep trying to put Band-aids on the cancer, instead of going all out, uprooting and ripping out the stinking, decrepit, rotten, corrupt mess that their political and economic system has been for many years, a system that is so far behind the times that it can never hope to heal the country, and planting something new and young and thriving.

I too had got enmeshed in that feeling that things could rock along as they had been, that nothing basic ever had to change, that if we ignored all the problems eventually they would work themselves out.  It’s a mindset that, once in, it is very hard to pull out of.  You lose all your resolve, all your initiative, all your courage, all your zeal.  It’s a sort of death, though a pleasant sort of death in a limbo of unconcern.  If we wait long enough everything will get back to normal.  In the meantime, our only recourse is to complain.  That’s what the protesters in the major cities in Greece are up to:  they are reacting to the crisis in anger, but without any solution in mind – indeed, without any clear idea that their protest will do any good whatsoever.  It is more of a temper tantrum than anything else.  They want to make their frustrations known.  But anger management classes alone won’t solve the problems, nor will pretending they don’t exist.  Clear, intelligent, original thinking is the key.  The intelligence is there, to be sure; however, in the face of overwhelmingly powerful tradition, it is the originality that is lacking.

The economic crisis hit us, personally, as a family, hard.  Our salaries dwindled and benefits disappeared as taxes increased.  The government began sending out extra arbitrary tax bills for hundred of Euros.  It was not only us, though.  People all around, our neighbors and friends, were laid off right and left.  Businesses closed.  It got to be that as I rode a bus from the outskirts of Thessaloniki to downtown it was unusual to see any city block in which at least one or more businesses had not been forced to close and put the space up for rent.  It was a disaster of major proportions.

Yet still I tarried.  I had expected to retire in Greece, to spend the rest of my days there, to enjoy the incomparable summers with the clear clean bathwater-warm waters of the seas, the slower pace of life, and so on.  And retire there I might have, had I been concerned only with myself and my own needs.  We might have muddled by somehow.

But my sons were growing up, and I saw them trapped in this lassitude – not indifference, to be sure, but inability to see a way out of the problem.  The young people are the hardest hit in Greece.  There are no jobs for them, apart from positions in the businesses of family and friends, and even these businesses face bankruptcy and ruin.  For my sons, there was nowhere to turn.  There was nowhere to go.  If they remained there they might grow up stunted, unable to realize their potential, unable to fulfill their destiny.

So I decided to rise up from my own lassitude, my own torpor, my own indifference, and move on to the United States and create a new home for them, to transplant them to a new world, a new life, a new situation in which hopefully they would be able to thrive.

To do that, though, I had to abandon my old life, my job, my home, everything we had built up for so long, leave it all behind and start fresh, with nothing.  And for that I was unprepared.  I didn’t realize how difficult it would be.  I thought I could do it with ease, almost nonchalantly.  I had traveled through many countries in the past; I had adjusted to many different cultures; I had learned languages, customs, and so on.

But truth be told, I was not ready for this.  It was a shock to me.  But it is not the US itself that is the problem.  To the contrary, I have been, for the most part, pleasantly surprised about the way the US has changed since I used to live here.  I have a better feeling about the country in general than I had back in the confusing era of the mid-70s.

No, the problem has been me.  It has been hard for me to adjust to the change.  “Revolution is a young man’s game,” says Dennis Hopper to Kiefer Sutherland in “Flashback”, one of my favorite movies.  I’m almost sixty, and here I am starting from scratch again.  I don’t want to scrape and struggle like I used to – I want to kick back and write my stories and memoirs and let the rest of the world go by.

I was talking about this via Internet video feed with my oldest son yesterday, and the subject came up of how totally unprepared I was to look for a new job.  What it always boils down to is determination, of course.  I wouldn’t say I was dragging my feet – I realize the necessity and I have been making the effort, but some vital ingredients have been missing, the lack of which put me at a distinct disadvantage.

First of all, I have no address.  I have an e-mail address, of course, and in this day and age for many purposes it will suffice.  But even the companies and businesses which do most of their hiring online ask for your home address, and all I have been able to do is provide them with the address of the hotel at which I stay.  I suppose it’s a step up from living on the street, but not by much.  A few nights ago I was taking a walk on the Pacific Beach boardwalk and I spotted a young man with his computer propped up on his suitcase, typing away furiously.  I walked up and asked him if he’d come there to work on the great American novel, but no, it turned out he was transient and was just texting friends.  He claimed he was homeless, but he had family back east, and he had a state-of-the-art computer that was much better than mine, and he  had expensive-looking luggage.  I recalled my own hitchhiking days when I traveled with nothing but my duffle bag slung over my shoulder.  I never thought of myself as homeless back then, but in the midst of a great adventure.  Be that as it may, prospective employers may not look kindly on the lack of an address.

Another thing I have lacked is a telephone.  Employers always want you to have a phone number.  I have been giving the phone number of the hotel, but it’s a rather old, cut-rate hotel and there are not even phones in the rooms.  Prospective employers would either have to wait until I was called, or leave a message at the desk.

And the third thing I haven’t had is suitable clothes.  For years I dressed more nicely, more formally, than I do now.  Even when we lived in Bangladesh we would go down to a clothing bazaar in Old Town in Dhaka and find nice clothes for bargain prices.  Those clothes were supposed to have been donations to be given away free to the poor, but they always found their way onto the black market.  When I started out as an English teacher in Greece I used to dress in slacks, dress shirts, and leather shoes, but several years ago I decided I wanted to lessen the teacher/student gap and I began to dress more as the students dressed, in jeans and sweatshirts.  The owners of the schools had no objections, so that’s what I did.  Gradually the shirts and slacks drifted out of my wardrobe, until now all I have left are several pairs of jeans, a number of sweatshirts, and polo shirts for the summer.  I am woefully unprepared for any sort of serious job interview.  My son had a good laugh, in fact, when I explained what clothes I had brought with me.  He suggested several retailers at which I might find suitable replacements.

I share this story of my inexperience and unpreparedness not to grope for sympathy but to emphasize the enormity of the change I let myself in for.  I suppose I could have prepared better, had I the time, and that would have cushioned the shock.  As it is, though, I made the leap and now I am dealing with the consequences.  Some adjustments are easier to make than others.  At least I speak the language here, and I can’t tell you what a relief that is.  I haven’t lived in a country where English is the primary language for thirty-five years.  Think of it.  I had all but forgotten the luxury of not having a constant struggle with communication, with understanding and being understood.  It’s a great relief to be able to relax in that area.

In some things adjustment will come quickly, others will take time.  I am still in a rather advanced stage of culture shock.  But my confidence grows, day by day, that my sons and I will be able to make a home in this new land.

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The Terror of the Uncertain Moment

Posted on July 1, 2012 by John Walters

During the day, in the summer, the boardwalk at Pacific Beach in San Diego is full of cyclists, skateboarders, joggers, homeless tramps, and pedestrians.  The beach is full of sunbathers, Frisbee and football throwers, and more joggers.  The water itself, with its constant churning, foaming waves, is full of surfers in wet suits.

But at night everything changes.  The waves are empty of surfers, and the beach is almost deserted as well.  On the boardwalk there is the occasional jogger or cyclist, and there is still a smattering of the homeless, but for the most part people have gone on to the restaurants and bars and nightclubs.

Last night after I finished writing I had to get out for air, so I strolled along the boardwalk slowly as I stretched and flexed my muscles.  After walking several blocks I left the concrete and crossed the wide stretch of sand to the shore, stopping just short of the damp border the waves made as they crashed and then rolled up the beach.

I watched the water, marveling at the immensity of it, at the fact that from its shallow origins at my feet it would deepen and spread out until it encompassed the whole wide Pacific with all its shores, all its various islands and continents:  the South Sea Islands, Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, and so on.  I thought of the writers I had admired when I was young and their relationships with the vast Pacific:  Kerouac sitting at the water’s edge, scribbling poems; Jack London, beset with mechanical troubles and sickness and storm, sailing across the vast sea in the Snark.

As I stood there I was overcome with a sense of loneliness and uncertainty and terror – fear of the unknown, of the insecurity of my situation.  You see, I had left everything of my past life in Greece behind to start a new life here.  There I had had a job, a home, a car, furniture, and so on – in other words, a settled, comfortable situation.  So it had been for many years.  Here I had nothing – no home, no car, no job.  I was starting from scratch, and it frightened me.

Then I thought of times in my past when I had been moving from place to place and had found myself in similar situations, and the resemblance was eerie.  True, about thirty-five years had passed since I had wandered by myself on the road, uncertain of what I would be doing or where I would be day by day.  But the fact that so much time had passed only drove home to me so much more forcefully that such emotions have no time limit, no age restrictions, no physical boundaries.  One does not grow out of such things as one ages.  If you make such a profound change in your life as I have just done, these emotions, which I thought I had left so far behind, will surface again.

First of all, I thought of a time when I was traveling in India, searching for a group of people I hoped to meet up with.  I had been hitchhiking for months, usually flat broke, through deep snow in European winter, through barren deserts and volatile tribal lands in the Middle East, through the hospitable but poverty-stricken land of India.  I had just reached Goa, my destination, but I decided I needed to stop and rest and meditate for a time, so I left my bag and even my shoes with a friendly villager and I hiked down to the beach with only the clothes I was wearing.  I found an empty grass hut and slept there, and found a closed-down restaurant whose owners agreed to feed me a rice meal every day.  I remained there three days, walking back and forth along the beach, thinking about my past and my future – suspended, in fact, between my past and my future in a sort of no-man’s-land or limbo.  I would stay just above the line of the waves, just as I was standing there at the beach last night, and I felt exactly the same last night as I had on that beach in India so long ago, and I was struck by the similarity with the force of revelation.

The other time in my life that occurred to me last night actually happened a little earlier than the Goa trip, when I was still wandering along the coast of California, hitchhiking aimlessly.  A hippy who had picked me up offered me the use of his place, a cute A-frame cabin right on the coast at Cape Mendocino overlooking the Pacific.  It was the most western point in California; afterwards there was only the Pacific:  dark blue, vast, and awesome.  I would smoke the hippy’s home-grown pot sitting cross-legged on the grassy hillside and think about my life, and I would be struck by the terror of my loneliness and the uncertainty of the life I had chosen in which I did not know what I would be doing or how I would survive day by day.

It all came back to me so clearly as I stood on the shore in the darkness at Pacific Beach, the waves crashing before me, behind me the garish lights of the bars and restaurants.  Whether you are twenty-five or almost sixty there are some emotions that are so elemental they do not change.  The physical body may weaken and tire and lose strength and stamina, but if you make certain decisions and put yourself in certain situations age matters not at all.  Some things never change.

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Awakening in the New World

Posted on June 24, 2012 by John Walters

The United States I left thirty-five years ago is not the same country to which I have returned.  It has changed in profound ways.  To me it is a new country, a foreign country to which I have to acclimatize myself as if for the first time.

I arrived late at night at San Diego airport.  A friend of one of my sons was supposed to pick me up.  I imagined that once through security I would change some euros into dollars, buy a phone card, and then call.  However, when I arrived it was so late that most of the airport shops were shut down, as was the money-changing booth.  I had not a dollar on me.  The information booth was empty, as was the police booth.  I wandered around hoping to stumble upon my son’s friend, although neither of us knew what the other looked like.  He had passed hell week and was training as a Navy SEAL, so I supposed he would appear fit and vigorous, but that was not much to go on.  I supposed he would be searching for me as well, but in an airport most of the people there are searching for someone else, so that wasn’t much help either.  The only well-lit place I found was the USO office, and so since my son and his friend were in the Navy I took a chance that they would let me use their phone and wandered in.  Not only did the woman behind the desk place the call for me, she thanked me for my son’s service.

This, in fact, happened to me this morning as well, when I entered a bank asking for information.  The manager, upon hearing that my son was a SEAL, said, “Thank you for his service.”  It could be that San Diego, with its large military presence, is more attuned to its personnel, but it struck me that there is an attitude of respect that was not present thirty-five years ago.  Back then the Vietnam War had just ended and both military and civilians wanted to forget about it, get it out of their minds, go on to something else.

While cruising through the dark streets with my son’s friend I expostulated upon some of the differences between Greece and the States – specifically, because I was searching for something to eat, about the closing hours of shops.  In Greece, by law, almost all shops must close by nine at night.  You will find no supermarkets or other retail stores open past that hour.  In contrast, in the US you can find something open almost any hour of the day or night if you look around a bit.  It’s curious, really, because Greeks are such night creatures, especially in summer, but it has to do with antiquated customs related to religion which have carried on into the commercial sector.  In the US commerce comes first and religion does not enter the same picture at all; religion is on another page, another channel.

In the morning I explored this new land.  It looked different, smelled different.  It disoriented me, but at the same time I felt safe and at peace.  Pacific Beach in San Diego is a very popular tourist attraction and night spot.  It is full of restaurants, cafes, hotels, tattoo parlors, and shops full of hip trinkets and garments.  At that time of the morning, though, as places were just opening up, it was largely deserted.  I passed people here and there and…

I noticed that Americans are polite and upfront in a way that Europeans, and especially Greeks, generally are not.  Greeks are polite, yes, but they are also very reserved.  They will pass you on the streets without looking at you; they will push you aside without acknowledging the indiscretion.  I pass Americans on the street and they often nod and say hello.  When crossing in front of each other they say excuse me.  I’m just not used to such things.

And they obey traffic regulations.  This, to me, is a continual shock.  I am used to the every-driver-for-himself attitude of the Greeks, the speeding, the running of stop signs, the going the wrong way up one way streets, and so on, not to mention the jaywalking every which way and the casual blocking of the streets by sauntering pedestrians.

This is not to say that Americans are some sort of special saintly people; I have seen my share of weirdoes as well:  people mumbling to themselves, people sauntering down the street cursing this and cursing that.  When I turned on CNN – ah, that’s another long-desired luxury, news in English – the newscasters were discussing the first amendment rights of people to curse in public.  This was brought on by some city passing an ordinance fining people for each expletive blurted out in suchlike manner.  The consensus was that the ordinance would not withstand the definitiveness of past Supreme Court decisions.  Ah, freedom.  We’ve come a long way from the time when Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” was condemned and banned as obscene.  Now it is generally extolled as a work of literature, and folks can spout whatever they will not only on the printed page but on public streets.  Yes, times have indeed changed.

Another thing I have found refreshing is the cultural diversity.  Greece is very much Greek, and any other race exists in a very marginal capacity.  The US is a mixed blend.  Here in San Diego there is a strong Mexican influence, but it is easy to find people from many other backgrounds as well.  For example, in the bank I spoke with an immigrant from India, from Mumbai, and as I have lived there as well we were able to discuss our past experiences in that city.

It will take time for me to adjust.  I am still in the throes of jet-lag and culture shock.  But so far I have liked what I have seen.  Every nation has both good and bad attributes, the positive and the negative, that which is worthy of praise as well as the dirty ugly secrets.  The US is no exception.  But it is a vast multi-faceted collage worthy of further exploration.

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How to Pack a Life in a Bag of Less Than Twenty Kilos

Posted on June 17, 2012 by John Walters

I am traveling from Thessaloniki to Frankfurt, Germany and from thence to San Diego, California, via Seattle.  For my flight I am allowed one check-in bag of less than twenty kilos, one carry-on bag of less than eight kilos, and my laptop in a separate bag.  I am leaving Greece to move to a new country; two sons will follow me in a month but my wife will remain here.  We have a house full of stuff – the type of stuff you accumulate in the course of life when you figure you won’t be picking up and moving again.  Furniture, appliances, household items:  I care for none of these things.  I have never been much into clothes and I don’t own too many.

But there are other things.  Countless documents have to be sorted through, and many photocopies have to be made.  There are albums full of photographs, the old-style paper photographs that go way back to the mid-eighties when our first son was born in Bangladesh.  I scan each of these meticulously.  It takes me many hours, but at least these all only take up a bit of space on a memory stick; the amount of space they take in the luggage is insignificant.  I have to go through suitcases and briefcases and drawers and cupboards full of odds and ends to be sure I leave nothing important behind.  When you are moving halfway around the world you cannot just hop back for the afternoon and look around for that one essential item that you overlooked.  All of this must be thought out in advance.  I plan it all in detail.  I will go through the cases, drawers, cupboards, and so on methodically in my free time so I won’t have to do it in the last hours in a final rush.  To a certain extent this works, and it is my salvation.  I tell you, you think you are not a hoarder, you think you are not too attached to things, but it is amazing how much bric-a-brac, how many odds and ends which just as easily could have been thrown away can gather in the corners, tossed aside with the thought that they might prove useful in the future.

And books.  What can I say about the books?  I created a small but beautiful library over the years, and the books are arranged on shelves in the basement, a joy to behold and to peruse.  I have to leave them all behind.  Some of the best hardcovers I gift to the local English-language library, which is attached to a private college.  I have been using this library over the years and know that it is deficient in many areas, especially fiction, so I am glad to donate some of my riches in hopes that future readers will be able to find what I could not.  But I have some rare books, some beloved books.  I want to bring them but I can’t.  I set them aside hoping that my sons who are following me will find space, or that I will be able to pick them up on future trips.  In the end all I can take with me are a couple of books I am currently reading.  In addition, I gather a set of the magazines and anthologies in which my stories have appeared, and a set of my published books.  I will try to fit these into my luggage if nothing else.

As far as clothes, I wash my fall jacket and have my heavy winter coat dry-cleaned.  On the day before the flight I do last loads of laundry and in the meantime wear torn-up rags which I won’t be taking.

In addition to my personal effects, I decide to take a few household items of which we have extra, such as a summer blanket, a few sheets and pillow cases, and a few towels, so I don’t have to start completely from scratch.

So, okay.  The photos and documents I have pre-copied, but still I leave the main packing itself for the last day.  In preparation for it I open the big suitcase in the upstairs hall and start tossing things inside, stacking them haphazardly as I think of them.  The pile starts to grow but I don’t really realize how high at first.  I continue to add to it, imagining that afterwards all I will have to do is make slight adjustments to make it settle comfortably inside like the pieces of a puzzle.

The final evening arrives.  I drag the big suitcase into the bedroom, along with the carry-on bag and the laptop case.  I have purchased a scale so I can check the weight of the luggage when it is full.  On the bed I pile all the items in the suitcase, as well as the blanket, sheets, towels, and so on.  Then I start emptying my clothes drawers and putting the clothes on the bed too.  One more load of laundry is drying outside but most of it I will be wearing on the flight.  Now – to business.  Ah, I have forgotten my shoes.  I have two more pairs other than that which I will wear on the flight.  I wrap them in plastic bags and put them in the suitcase, then I start to load in blanket, coats, clothes, books, and so on.  I am only halfway finished when I realize that already the suitcase cannot close.  Decisions have to be made.  Items have to be forsaken.  The first to go is the summer blanket.  Then the sheets and pillow covers.  Then all my pajamas – I only use pajamas in the winter and summer is upon us, so I figure there is time to replace them if needed.  I might be able to close the bag now, but I weigh it and it is far too heavy.  I reluctantly take out the expensive heavy winter coat.  Then my leather winter shoes.  Still not enough.  Real despair sets in as I come to the conclusion that I will have to leave my books, magazines, and anthologies behind, the only proof of my published work that I have.  I give them to one of my sons and ask him to try to fit them into his luggage when he comes, and he assures me that he will do so.

The carry-on is full of documents, books, toiletries, and fragile and valuable items.  It is double its weight allowance.  I remove a few more books but take a chance that the powers that be will probably not weigh it.  The laptop case fits only the laptop and its wires and mouse, plus a small paperback I plan to read on the trip.

So many essentials I have to leave behind.  Later I remove the fall jacket from the suitcase and put the winter coat back in, and I carry the jacket in my arms.  I also stuff my house/beach slippers into a side pocket of the carry-on.

That’s all.  That’s it.  The possessions I have accumulated in the many years of my life reduced to a suitcase, a carry-on bag, and a laptop.  Everything else discarded, set aside, forsaken, abandoned.  It reminds me of when I set out on the road in the mid-70s, how I sold or gave away everything:  a great collection of books, some rare and out of print; a television; clothes and odds and ends.  Okay, I was single so I didn’t have so much.   But I gave up everything that wouldn’t fit into my duffle bag, which I had to carry comfortably over my shoulder.  I ended up with a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, toiletries, a notebook for writing, and one book for reading.  And with that I ventured off into the unknown.

It’s so easy in life to accumulate possessions, and so hard to get rid of them.  That’s one reason many people don’t make changes that would be good for them – they are crushed under the weight of that which they own.  But it seems so strange to me, sitting there in that room with my things around me, realizing that these few items are only the tip of the iceberg, that there is also a house and a car and appliances and furniture and books and all sorts of other things I am leaving behind, and I wonder how you pack a life into an airline’s luggage allowance.

The answer?  You don’t, of course.  Life does not consist of these things.  Sometimes, in fact, they just get in the way.  Sometimes they are an impediment, not an enhancement.  Sometimes the best thing for the psychic and spiritual system is a good purge, to rid oneself of that which gets in the way of what constitutes real value.

So off I venture once again into the unknown.  Even the few bits of luggage I have, when in transit, are a pain in the ass.  They are heavy and awkward and when I have to take a piss at an airport I have to drag it all into the men’s room with me.  At least I try to hold my bladder until I can check in the big suitcase.  But I didn’t write this particular piece in order to give you travel tips…

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Murphy’s Law

Posted on June 10, 2012 by John Walters

It’s an old adage, commonly referred to as Murphy’s Law:  anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Here I sit in Frankfurt, Germany – between worlds.  Behind me is the old world of Greece, a world I have lived in for over sixteen years, a world in which I have created homes, raised children, worked a job, formed habits.  It was a good world for many years, and yet when it became dysfunctional a change was required.  Often when circumstances necessitate a change it is unexpected, and so it was in this case.  I fully expected to live out my years in Greece, retire there.  But then the floor collapsed and the entire system fell through.  No nation of people should have to go through what Greeks are going through right now.  Be that as it may, I had to rouse myself from semi-somnambulism, the feeling that I had arrived and had to go no further, and start again from scratch.

The destination?  The USA.  I haven’t lived there for thirty-five years.  I have lived in India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, Italy, and Greece, but not in the country in which I was born and raised.  It is like another world to me.  I have lived longer outside it than in.  Now, after all these years, I approach it as I would an alien planet.  What is it like to live there now?  I know what it was like in the 1970s, but now?  I have made brief visits but I have not immersed myself in the culture, the economy, the politics, the ambiance, for a long time.  I approach the situation with excitement, with anticipation, but with trepidation as well.

So one would think that the anticipation of having to cope with a new environment would be enough, and the technical preparations would be clear sailing, right?

Wrong.

In the days before departure so many things went wrong I wondered if there was some malevolent force opposing my journey.

First of all, with a long detailed list of things to do all over the city of Thessaloniki, our car broke down.  It wasn’t a small thing either.  The engine had to be taken apart and the gaskets replaced.  It took two days, two days during which if I wanted to go into town I had to take the bus.  The problem was, our house is in a village outside the city and busses are infrequent.  In addition, you have to go to a hub on the east side from which other busses go further into town.  Any bit of business takes hours of transport time, during which you change from bus to bus, at each transition waiting an interminable amount of time.

We got the car back, then my computer broke down.  I had to have the computer because I was finalizing all my travel plans online.  Not just a minor problem, either.  The software had become corrupted and the whole system had to be reformatted.  I lost data, programs, and worst of all, time.  Time that I could not afford to lose.

So, finally, computer repaired and car functioning properly, in the last two days before departure I valiantly set out to do a weeks’ worth of business in two days.  Only to discover that the offices in which I had to do the business had changed their systems of operation, and the way I had been doing it for years was no longer the way it was currently done.  No effort had been made to inform the unwary public, and even as I went from office to office it took me a long time to realize what was up, as many of the municipal workers, caught up in the throes of their own financial problems, did not take the trouble to explain why things were not functioning as they used to.  Government aid programs had been closed down.  Money which I used to apply for and obtain every year and which we counted on as part of our income was no longer available.  And so I went from office to office beating my head against proverbial walls, finally to realize that it had all been in vain.

My final bit of frustration happened here in Frankfurt.  I was exhausted on the flight, having had only two hours of sleep the night before.  Finally I arrived at Frankfurt Airport, got off the plane, wandered through the long, long terminal corridors with my heavy carry-on luggage to baggage claim.  I had booked a nearby inexpensive hotel that had a shuttle service, and the shuttle (as well as the cheap room rate) was one of the reasons I booked this hotel and not another.  I waited for the shuttle and arrived at the hotel only to discover that by mistake I had been booked in their downtown hotel, not the one near the airport, and that there was no shuttle to that hotel.  I returned to the airport to find other transport options only to learn that I had to pay an exorbitant price for a taxi which I couldn’t afford.  I called the hotel near the airport again, explained the situation, and asked if they could switch the reservation to their location (all the while kicking myself for not asking when I was still there).  At least this story has a happy ending.  I eventually managed to stay at the right hotel, where I am at this moment happily ensconced.

The point of all this?  Things go wrong, even to the best-laid plans.  Count on it.  Plan for it.  But sometimes even when you plan meticulously, as I did, things will still pop up to disrupt your careful calculations, create havoc with your detailed to-do lists, cause you to question whether you are off the track and have made the wrong decision after all.  But if you know you are doing the right thing, remain resolute.  Things will work out in the end.  Persist.  Endure.  The time will come when you will break through the obstacles to the victory.

And I have to admit that Murphy’s Law is not really true, at least not to the extreme.  Many, many more things could have gone wrong, but didn’t.

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