On The Going Of Home Again

Pensively he stares and wonders, feeling all alone /
Re-living his missteps and blunders; all the misplaced bones...

This past weekend I had the joyous opportunity to return the the land of plenty from which all of my post-college hang-ups sprung: DC! Of course I had been down to visit our nation's capital a few times since abandoning ship three years ago, but never had I showed up with a great wave of many of my old friends from back in the day. Thanks to a mid-Atlantic based bachelor party, I Bolt Bus'd my way through the highway that is New Jersey and strapped on my old school party shoes for a night out with a dozen of my closest friends/fellow idiots to see if we were able to pick up where we left off so very long ago.

Spoiler alert, we can. Follow-up spoiler alert, it takes a serious toll on the body.

Yes, apparently the collective will of a score of newly-turned-30-year-olds is greater than the sum of its parts, and we were each made stronger by the desire to outdo those around us. The evening started with a biergarten style dinner that escalated quickly out of control thanks in part to liter-beers and pretzel-sandwiches. What was to be a fast, no-nonsense pit-stop before the evening began devolved into a screaming sausage-fest, meant both literally because of the bratwurst entrees and figuratively for the high-volume-dude attendance rate. Undeterred however, each of us pushed forward in a sort of reversion-to-our-20-something-selves that played out in a series of separate vignettes across the night.

Highlights included drinks being spilled, heads being butted, ruffians being arrested, crashing an Asobi Seksu show without paying a cover, jamming out front with a homeless dude who had a guitar, and ultimately a severe case of heartburn from the Bulleit Bourbon / weisswurst combination. Seemed like a good idea at the time.


Anywho, the weekend clipped forward with the usual level of inside jokes and stupid human tricks one would expect from juveniles such as ourselves, and as I pushed through each day I thought to myself, "I could totally move back to DC! This still seems like a great place!" When I shared this sentiment with some of the other guys I received about 7 variations on the "you're not serious, are you?" theme. Ultimately I ran through their arguments, recalling also the 6 months or so I just spent traveling the world essentially by myself and each lonely night that I sat wishing I was back in Gotham to hang out with my friends and family, and decided my delusions of grandeur, my creatively retold histories of DC, were just that...delusions.

So much separation from the ups and downs of normal life in the District allowed me to forget all the badness and just remember the happy shiny. Just like as I move forward from my trip abroad, I'm sure that all the bad pieces about it, like the crushing loneliness or getting attacked by a rat in the john, will soften into a soupy milieu of joyous escapism. For now though I can at least learn my lesson and keep re-establishing life in NYC unabated. 

All things told I had an awesome weekend, and it was super sweet to get back down for another night of old-school chillin in my old hood...but it certainly was hard to separate the glories of the past from the potential for fun in the future. My DC time was great, but even if I do go back it wouldn't be the same. To paraphrase Heraclitus, "you can never step into the same river twice, for they have gentrified that area of town and built a Whole Foods over it."

Lessons Unlearned

"How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! 

The world forgetting, by the world forgot."

~ Alexander Pope ~

Vacation mode is a hard mantle to shake. After a week or so the jet lag falls away and the circadian rhythms return to pre-travel standards. After a fortnight, every single sentence ceases to begin with "woah, that's so expensive here, in Sri Lanka things were cheaper," or "woah, that's so cheap here, in Geneva things were more expensive." And finally, after a month or so, the waking dream of foreign travel is replaced with the stark reality that real life has once again banged down your door and has placed its feet on your bed and eaten all your Cheerios. Damn you, stark reality.

Granted it took me a while to get to this point but I'm finally emerging from my extended feeling of "vacation mode" that resulted from my half-year of life on the road. Slowly but surely I reintegrate into the fabric of New York society, whose forlorn loom lay dormant lo these past five months whilst it was denied my thread. I'm loving the easy access to my friends and family, extensive public transportation, and myriad restaurant options, each more exotic than the last. But just a few days ago while perusing the East Village dining scene, I saw undone some of the great personal progress I had made while traveling abroad! Even though I didn't love the idea of it, being on my own for such an extended period allowed me to try new things and forced me to excel at stuff like traveling by myself, drinking by myself and dining by myself.

But now that I'm back where I can understand all the conversations around me, and thanks to a healthy dose of personal conceit assume they are all about me, I no longer feel comfortable marching into a popular restaurant and uttering the soul crushing phrase "table for one." I saw all of this unfold as I was killing a couple hours in the E-Vil last weekend, waiting to meet up with some pre-game companions. Having been kicked out of my friend's apartment moments earlier, I had to find a way to spend two hours and get myself fed. The perfect opportunity to enjoy a leisurely sit-down meal, I thought to myself.

After a brief stroll around the avenues, I traversed the restaurant-laden bazaar that is St. Marks Place dead set on stopping into Yaffa Cafe. As I approached I noticed the excessive crowding of the interior and figured, "gee, it's awfully packed in there, I wouldn't be able to get a table for one right away so I'll keep going." This of course was a lie to cover up the fact that I was scared to dine along amongst such clamor. I reformulated my plan of attack and figure I would check out Hop Devil down the street...but as I approached I noticed the excessive emptiness of its vast interior. "Gee, it's awfully empty in there. I'd stick out like a sore thumb if I was sitting by myself." I felt unable to deal with the inevitable, "are you waiting for someone or do you just want to order and feel alone in the world? also, would you like to hear our specials?" So on I walked.

The cold was biting and my shame mounting, so I figured the best place for a single 30-year-old man with no self-respect to dine in this area was my favorite overpriced taco joint, San Loco. As some of you may know, I love San Loco with the kind of fervor normally felt by creepy shut-ins for 1000 piece puzzles, and I have made many a late night stop there for a solitary Guaco Loco at 4 am. But even two Tecates and a rice and beans soft taco brought me little solace - this wasn't a celebratory wee hours drunky snack. This was a man's dinner, and that man was too scared to eat by himself again.

What the hell had become of adventurous Eric? Like many a vacation beard before it, is so effortlessly my confidence trimmed off once returned home? Was I simply burnt out on keeping on my brave face while abroad that I just needed to hide out in a divey taqueria until I found my pride again?

Then all at once it hit me - I'm simply never going to be happy about dining alone. I can wish it were different or pretend that I'm awesome at being out on my own and not caring about what other people think, or that I'm cool with grabbing a book and reading at a restaurant to wile away an evening instead of standing around at some overcrowded bar as my friends and I discuss how awesome we are for being at an overcrowded bar. Nope, the fact is that my least favorite thing about being abroad and on my own was that whole on my own part. And frankly now that I'm back I see no reason whatsoever to be ok with it now that there are actually people around who want to hang out with me.

I suppose the lessons I learned abroad haven't actually been forgotten now that I'm back home; really I just needed to realize that what I learned was that I couldn't be taught in the first place.

Look Ma, No Home!

Testing the limits of "make yourself at home"

One of the hallmark travel habits of 20-somethings is the ever popular couch crash. While relatively green to the concept of having money, post-college journeymen and women reluct at parting with their hard earned dollars for anything that isn't bacon-wrapped or cargo-pocketed. Granted, as we get older and our bank accounts get a little more cushy, the itch to act like a growed up and get a hotel room when we visit our out of town friends starts scratching its way into our psyches, but we continue to fight for our right to couch surf. I'm proud to report that even at the ripe old age of 30 I've been able to tamp down the ominous threat of "maturity" and continue to sleep on the sofa whenever I head out of town. In fact, I'm even taking it to the next level now that I've landed back in the states without a home or a job - I'm a career couch crasher.

Yessir, my transformation from responsible adult to useless layabout is nearly complete. In my furthering efforts to continue the good fight and find a human rightsy job back here on the homefront, I've become that dude for whom you make excuses for when you bring home a late night booty call. I'm the permanent fixture in your living room that continually takes your snack food when you're not at home. The six-packs I provide as in-kind payment keep me on your sunny side, but I'm always one coffee spill away from ruining our friendship. And guess what - I'm not going anywhere.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. I actually am in the process of re-integrating into the normal routine of NYC living, it's just that the process is slow-moving. To help me out along the way, all of my friends have been super supportive and amazingly willing to let me use up their vital resources while figuring out what  my next steps will be.So believe you me, I want to get off of your couch as much as you want me off of it, it's just that the glacial pace of the job market right now is keeping me firmly planted in the middle cushion with me feet splayed lazily across your snack table. I suggest we just treat this like I'm a friend visiting you from out of town...indefinitely.

Go West, Young Man!

Delta's wildly unpopular "if one of us sits near a baby we all do" policy in effect

"Good bye, proud world! I'm going home."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Friends, countrymen, lend me your couches! Your restless wanderer is returned to you, and he's as homeless and jobless as the day he left. Now, I know what you're thinking - why haven't they wrapped up How I Met Your Mother yet. I mean, how many chances is this guy really gonna get? Rest assured, we're all equally concerned about the situation and I promise now that I'm back in the states I'll start up an aggressive letter writing campaign to the powers that be at CBS. Oh right, you may also be wondering where I've been and why the hell I'm back in the US of A.

A bit of necessary exposition on my recent absence and sudden reappearance in an entirely different hemisphere of the world. First, please accept my sincerest apologies for the sudden blackout and just know that I missed you all lo these past three weeks. I was actually clipping along at a really hot pace in Geneva, and Dear Lonely Planet even hit the amazingly rewarding 10,000 page views mark just a couple weeks ago. When last you heard, I was eating cheap pita and hummus in Tel Aviv and reeking havoc with my continuously successful "halvah for my men and arrack for my camels" campaign when I received some troubling news about a brewing family emergency back home. This is not the proper forum to go into great detail, but to accent the severity of the situation I was on a plane to Geneva a mere 8 hours after receiving said news, and back in the states just 12 hours after that. Things are settling here on the home front but I will be NYC based for the foreseeable future.

Given the sudden shift in schedule, I had to cram a massive amount of self reflection and looking back into just a few short hours as I tossed everything into my suitcase and raced to the airport. After a few restless hours of fitful sleep in the rank dorm room my brother was trying to pass off as a viable shelter, I grabbed an overpriced taxi to the Tel Aviv airport and settled down in the main rotunda to wait for my flight.

Overwhelmed by a sudden sense of deja vu, I took stock of my surroundings and realized I had in fact been there before...even in the same seating area perhaps. Just about three years prior to this hastened Israeli exit, I took full advantage of Jewish philanthropy's boy-we-hope-you-marry-another-Jewish-person campaign popularly known as Birthright to visit the homeland and get free schnitzel. I sipped my fresh squeezed orange juice and the vitamin C jarred loose some long forgotten memories of my trip, and suddenly it was clear to me that I sat in this very food court 1,095 days earlier on my way back home. Then, as now, my great adventure was drawing to an abrupt close, and I was left only with the pulpy innards of 8 oranges and my thoughts.

Personally I love it when things come full circle like this, so I gave a little nod to the universe so as to thank it for its ham-handed attempts at existential subtlety. I kicked up my feet and tried to unpack everything that had happened in the past three years since the last time I sat in this chair, drank this OJ, and window shopped at this duty-free store. Unsure of where to begin, I defaulted to counting the countries I had seen since last I fled Israeli's shore.  Eight, by the way.

I reminisced about the weddings I had been to and strained to retrieve the bachelor parties I had drank away. I recapped quickly all the friends I had visited, and recalled slowly all the women I had kissed. I chastised all the decisions that led me to work at a law firm, and barreled angrily through the bumps in the road that drove me to Sri Lanka, Geneva and now Israel.

I sat for hours in the Tel Aviv airport, exactly where I sat for hours just three years before. And for a few more hours I remained, kept company by three years of memories and an orange juice.

As the pre-flight procedures started up and my cup ran dry, I rose from my post and took my leave of Israel. I knew that I was returning home but almost nothing else was certain...I wasn't even sure then if I would be back to Europe. Thanks to a frisky Malaysian security guard, I had no phone, and thanks to my insatiable need to find fulfillment from my life I had no job or apartment waiting for me upon arrival. Here and I thought burning down my life to leave for Sri Lanka was intimidating. Turns out that coming back home proved to be even scarier.