A Chorus of Hope

It was my first election in California, and I have to say it is a different experience watching the results appear in the afternoon instead of the evening. But it was also the day of our weekly community meeting, and we set up a television in our lobby and watched it with the sound turned off as we did the business of The Buffalo Center. My director’s report was simple: “I love you all, I am proud of you all, and I am honored to be your director.” It was a portent of things to come.

Though we all wanted the meeting to be over so that we could watch the returns, somehow we managed to meet for an hour and half. When you get sixty-some intelligent and earnest people in a room and give them the freedom to express themselves, they are going to do just that, whether it is about academic policy, who cleans the kitchen, or the process they are engaging in at the moment. At one point, during a very serious discussion, the CNN hologram appeared, and those who saw it could not help but laugh. CNN’s attempt to be cool provided a much-needed balance to our heavy discussion topic, and eventually we all laughed at the silliness of it all, even those involved in the weighty discussion.

Finally, we were free of ourselves, and we turned the television up and gathered around it like a fire on a cold night. During the meeting several people had mentioned the need to be considerate of others during the evening, that not everyone shared the same political perspectives, and that some people might be disappointed at the end of the evening. But every single person who gathered around the television, including those in the other building who watched The Daily Show instead of CNN, was hoping for real change. So we were all for Obama, but we were not partisan. We wanted hope. After the cynicism masquerading as patriotism, after the fear-mongering masquerading as national security, after raw seizing of power masquerading as democracy, we wanted hope. We got it.

After each state that rolled in as blue, a might cheer went up in the Buffalo Center. States that came in as red were not booed but met with resignation. I did feel compelled to point out that my area director was from blood-red Kansas, and he responded that he had lived in New York for many years. The room was filled with anxiety and anticipation. Would they find a way to steal this one? Were the polls dramatically, tragically wrong? Had we been hoodwinked again by the promises of democracy offered by craven power brokers? 

My friend Fyodor was in No Cal working and did not have access to media, so I kept texting him the results. At 207 for hope and the west coast still not called, I began calculating electoral votes: California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii. The numbers were there. I looked around the room. Other people knew it too, but we could not say it. Speaking our hopes aloud might be blasphemous; it might be premature at best or arrogant at worst. Could it be? Would our long, national nightmare finally be over? Were we about to “live out the meaning of our creed” as Dr. King said nearly twenty-five years ago?

As 8:00 PDT approached, I wandering over to the other building to watch The Daily Show with those buffaloes. As Colbert raved about the importance of electing our first Hawaiian president, we waited with bated breath for the announcement. Finally, Jon Stewart broke into Colbert’s dissertation to announce that Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States. We broke into cheers, but it was The Daily Show, so many people cried out that we should turn to CNN to be sure. I thought it was an interesting moment for irony and truth. These post-postmodern students wanted a reliable narrator for once in their lives. I tried to reassure them that it was true, but they would not believe me. 

I walked back to our other building, and in the darkening night, I could see my friends, my students, my fellow buffaloes all standing and cheering. Upon entering the room, I was greeted with hugs that took my breath away. Tears and laughter, shock and disbelief, exhaustion and excitement all filled the room. We sat down and watched Senator McCain give his concession speech, and the buffaloes applauded him several times, and for good reason. But when President-Elect Obama walked onto the stage in that great city of Chicago, we all lost it, and I am losing it now as I write this. To see that family appear in front of the United States as the first family is something I will never forget as long as I live. We all began crying and clapping and screaming our joy to the screen. It was truly a sacred moment.

We cheered and cried our way through the victory speech, and I have to say that I shuddered through it as well. I kept waiting for the shot to ring out and steal our hope away. Grant Park looked so open, so unable to be secured from cowards and liars that fear mingled with my hope and joy. But soon enough I was lost in the words of a great orator and a great statesman, and all I felt was joy and gratitude that America transcended its cynicism and hatred and elected a man of the world who can bring us back to respect in the world. At the end of the speech, the Buffaloes, who are environmentalists, activists, feminists, and party to all causes progressive, broke into “America the Beautiful.” I began weeping uncontrollably and could not sing. Then I looked over to the corner, and I saw my advisee Margaret, weeping into her hands and shaking. As the other buffaloes sang about amber waves of grain, Margaret and I held each other and wept, believing and not believing what had just happened and feeling for the first time (maybe ever for Margaret) that the future was one of hope.

Of the many sacred moments I have been able to experience in my life, this is a highlight on the sacred journey. These moments are rare, as anything sacred is, and it will pass, especially as we get to the tiresome and sometimes dirty business of running a nation. But on a Tuesday night in Southern California, people from across generations, genders, and social status, wept and screamed and cried and sang together in a chorus of hope.

Finally

I have been waiting almost thirty years to hear someone correct Ronald Reagan’s original, cynical question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Finally, we have it right. From Barack Obama’s speech:

The question in this election is not “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” We know the answer to that. The real question is, “Will this country be better off four years from now?”

It is the difference between a solipsistic view of the good and a social one. It is the only difference that matters.

Night of the Living Dead

Frank is a good guy who came by my office a couple of weeks ago just to chat. He is one of those people with whom you know you have a connection, but in the ebb and flow of life and work, you never seem to make it happen. Recently, Frank wrote me and said we should go hear Cubensis, a Grateful Dead cover band, in Huntington Beach. It was last Tuesday night, and he wanted to leave at 8:30. That’s an hour to the bar, two hours or more there, and an hour back. We both had to work the next morning, and I was hesitant to say yes, but I did in the end because sometimes you just have to do something fun the way you do your work—plow ahead no matter how you feel. So I agreed, and after a long day, Frank showed up at my place at 8:30, and we headed toward the beach in his convertible. Two middle-aged men going to a Grateful Dead cover band concert in a convertible in southern California. The clichés hung over us like the smog in the valley.

But we were no cliché. We had a tremendous talk about life, work, and women on the way west, and by the time we found the Marina Bar and Grill, we were in fine spirits. The bar itself was worth the drive. There were certainly clichés there: old hippies with gray ponytails and tie-died shirts, young hippies with exposed bellies and tattoos, two college professors looking for trouble on a weeknight in California. We did not find any trouble, but we found Craig, the lead guitarist for Cubensis. He was affable and fun, but he had to see to a friend who was carried out of the bar by the bouncer (too many drugs of too many varieties). We spoke about the band playing at the Buffalo Center and speaking to Frank’s class, which is on The Grateful Dead. He left us with a quick turn when he heard his bandmates begin playing.

At the first chord the dance floor was full of clichés, but it was hard to be critical because everyone was having such a good time. Smiling, happy, people sang every word to every song and let their bodies channel the music. And the music was good. I know of maybe one or two Dead songs, but the ones I heard covered were terrific. At one point the band sang C.C. Rider, and I said to Frank that I didn’t know that was a Dead song. “It isn’t,” he said, but if they ever covered it, this band will do it.” Interesting. Everyone was in a great mood, and so was I, and I only had a couple of Fat Tires.

At the break Craig came back to close the deal with us, and we shook hands. Frank saw a woman he had danced with from a previous concert, and called her over. It took him a minute to remind her of who he was, but she eventually repeated some things back to him that convinced him that she in fact had remembered him. They laughed and shared stories of the evening. Then she turned to me and said, “And I remember you too.” I smiled and looked at Frank before I turned back to her and said “You do?” “Oh, yes,” she said, “you were at the House of Blues, and we had a terrific time. It was awesome.” “Yes, it was,” I said smiling. 

Frank and I winked at each other and decided it was time to head back. We had another good talk during the drive back, and I was in bed by 1:30. Not a bad night for a cliché like myself, with just a touch of grey. Rock on.

A Moment of History and Hope

I grew up in the South. I never even met anyone who was not white and Protestant until I went to college. I never expected to be able to do what I did today in my lifetime. It was a profound moment, perhaps a sacred one as well, and I share it with you now.

Official California mail-in ballot

Before

 

After

 

 

Song of My Friends

I am still basking in the glow of my weekend in Nashville, and I marvel at this group of people I was privileged to hang out with. They are all former students from Parochial College in Alabama, and despite the limitations of that little college, they took from it what they could and made their lives full and fun. Besides their maturity and good will, what strikes me most is that they are still engaging the issues we talked about in classes those years ago. It is almost as if we had a long class last weekend, only we added a wedding and bowling. We actually picked up specific conversations that had begun in particular classes from Parochial College and continued them. At one point, Jon asked me if I remembered George. I said I didn’t. He said “Yeah, he sat on the east side of the classroom about four seats back, and when you said x he said y.” “Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised that Jon had remembered this. But he did and could recite entire conversations from the classes. Jon is especially funny because he was a business major, but he never went to his business classes. He ended up hanging out in my classes and participating in the discussions. If he had credit for attending my classes, he would have a graduate degree by now.

But I know why Jonathan came to my classes: his friends were there, including the intelligent and compassionate Mechelle, who would later become his wife and at whose house we could crash over the weekend. I can still see Mechelle’s face looking up earnestly as we were discussing some thorny theological or ethical issue. She has an acute sense of justice that is tempered with empathy, and it makes her a beautiful person who lives in the difficult area between those two virtues. She has my deepest respect, and we had yet another good but difficult talk last weekend about living with loss and finding belief in a world without mercy but also with hope. Joy Harjo: “Help us not to give up and this land of nightmares that is also a land of miracles.”

Brian was there to play the music. A brilliant musician, he is also now a father and takes great pride in his role. He is absolutely convinced that Asher is the best looking child on the planet, and he may be right. He readily acknowledges that Asher’s good fortune comes from his mother, not him, and he beams as he introduces me to him. I actually spent a lot of time with Brian as we waited in the shade while the photos were taken. Then when it was time to go to the reception, Brian said the restaurant was east. We walked across Centennial Park to come out on West End and no restaurant. I whipped out the iPhone and discovered that we had, in suits and ties, walked across the width of Centennial Park on a hot October day in the wrong direction. But the opportunity gave us even more time to talk, and it was good. We spoke of life and choices, of beauty and meaning, of guitars and cities. I felt like I was walking with an old friend, and I guess I was because I learned that he is thirty-two. Jesus, you’re old Brian.

Valerie, the bride, is a smart ass. She takes great pleasure in this and is frankly quite good at it. I decided not to mention this in the vows because everyone knows it and loves her for it, so it would be redundant. When I moved from the Philosophy and Religion Department at Parochial College to chair the English Department, I became Valerie’s advisor because she was an English major. She was immediately suspicious, and her first words to me were “Can you explain why you’re now my advisor?” She had a number of classes with me, and I never convinced her that I am a real English teacher. Maybe I”m not. But if you get to know her, you know that she kids the people she loves, so I guess she loves me a lot. Seriously, she is one of the best readers I know and has a giant heart to go along with her native intelligence. And she’s married to Nate who helps her be nicer. Just don’t ever say “Flower box” to her.

Lane, who has a girl’s name, is my brother, my comrade, my good friend. He can drink you under the table or debate Puritan theology with you, and he can do both at the same time if you want. He can talk equally convincingly about the differences between ninjas and pirates or the emergent church in the age of the Internet. We have known each other since the first stories were ever told around a fire, and we will see each other in the next world as well. I’ll probably have to buy him a beer there.

St. Mary of Boston. I’ve written about her before. A force of nature, brilliant, beautiful, and bold, St. Mary is also a little obsessive. Jonathan downloaded iBowl on her iPhone, and she spent the entire afternoon of the wedding day ignoring estate law and playing this bowling game. She convinced herself that she could actually spin the ball, and we all watched her put imaginary english on the throw as she held her iPhone with two hands. Reports were made on every strike and spare, and we were all told repeatedly of her brilliance at bowling. But the best part of the evening was when Mechelle downloaded the game on her iPhone (it was also an Apple weekend) and immediately racked up a score of 262. Mary and I thought this was a fluke, beginners luck, a bug in the program. We had been hoodwinked, bamboozled. We hadn’t landed on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock had landed on us. It was just plain wrong. Meanwhile, I couldn’t break 160 on this stupid game, so I suggested that we go to an actual bowling lane. We did. The wedding party in Nashville on a Saturday evening. It was on. St. Mary found that actual bowling was quite a different thing from holding a button on an iPhone, and she got served pretty good. That only made her want to iBowl more, though, and all the way back to Coolville, I received emails from St. Mary with her newer, higher scores. The last one was prefaced, “Not to be a jerk, but . . .” Uh huh.

So this is the song of my friends, my former students with emphasis on the former. I came back to Coolville refreshed in a way that I had not felt in some time, and grateful that I have these people in my life. I myself am good fortune, but it helps to have good people in your life who love and respect you. So my friends (Insert John McCain gesture here, blink rapidly, smirk accordingly), I miss you already, but thank you for a great weekend. Because “to be with those I like is enough,” and I like you all so much. I am happy to call you friends.

“To Be with Those I Like is Enough”

An unseasonably warm afternoon in Nashville, Tennessee. We are lounging around Mechelle and Jonathan’s living room. St. Mary is studying estate law, Lane is reading on the web instead of his Jonathan Edwards biography, Jonathan is almost asleep in his tuxedo, Mechelle is humming with the music and reading a novel surrounded by three dachshunds. This morning we all got dressed up and went to Centennial Park near Vanderbilt University to celebrate the marriage of Nate and Valerie. It was simple and easy and fun. I had the honor of being the officiant at the ceremony because I have been ordained in the Church of Dudeism. So by the power vested in me by The Dude, I performed the following ceremony. Congratulations Valerie and Nate.

Valerie and Nate

Family and friends, welcome to the wedding of Nate and Valerie. They are happy that you are here to share this special moment with them, and they have decided to keep the ceremony itself quite simple and brief. The celebration of their marriage, however, will continue throughout the day, and they invite you to join them in these less formal ceremonies as well. And now to the formal ceremony of marriage.

[Nate places ring on Valerie’s finger]

Nate, do you take Valerie to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you promise to love, comfort, honor and keep her, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. And forsaking all others, be faithful to her so long as you both shall live?”

[Valerie places ring on Nate’s finger]

Valerie, do you take Nate to be your lawfully wedded husband? Do you promise to love, comfort, honor and keep him, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. And forsaking all others, be faithful to him so long as you both shall live?”

When viewed from outer space, the earth appears fragile and lonely, a blue orb hanging in the immense darkness that threatens to engulf it. This is our home, and our lives here are also fragile and lonely as we navigate our way through the uncertainty and fear that accompany us on our journey here. We find our way through the mazes of childhood and adolescence, adulthood and old age, stopping along the way to reflect, to learn, to cry, to laugh, to suffer and to love. It is a hard journey to be sure, but it is uniquely ours as human beings on this planet, and we travel through this land of nightmares that is also a land of miracles. To be alive and on this planet is miracle enough, but when we find a fellow traveler, someone who has traveled the same paths, experienced the same losses and joys, and shares our story, we have found something more than a miracle—we have found the sacred. All our journeys are better with a companion, and when we find someone who is willing to undertake the journey with us, the world is full of possibility and meaning, and we are at our best as men, as women, as human beings on our fragile and beautiful home. Today we celebrate this very moment with Valerie and Nate and witness and affirm that they have found the sacred in each other. And we invoke that old traveler Walt Whitman who wrote:

Fellow traveler! I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precise than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law; 
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? 

Valerie and Nate, by the power vested in me by the state of Tennessee, I now pronounce you husband and wife.

 

Lane, Mary, Mechelle, and Jonathan

Malaise

malaise |məˈlāz; -ˈlez|noun

a general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify : a society afflicted by a deep cultural malaise | a general air of malaise.ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from French, from Old French mal ‘bad’ (from Latin malus) + aise ‘ease.’

A general feeling: nothing specific to point to, although there are always candidates, and we usually point to them because it is easier than dealing with a general feeling. We like to identify causes because they help us to provide explanations, and explanations are stories that help us get through the malaise. “Oh,” we say to ourselves, “I’m feeling this way because of x that happened last week or y that didn’t happen.” When this happens on a cultural level, myths are made. Stories evolve to explain causes that “are difficult to identify,” and we like them so much we use them even if at some level we do not believe. It is sometimes more important and easier to be the victim of circumstance than to have “a general feeling of discomfort.”

Work is work, by which I mean not play, as it sometimes is. We have had some serious issues to deal with at the Buffalo Center, and we have risen to the occasion every time, but at some point you want to have a break, to be free of care rather than careful, to be afoot and lighthearted. There are moments that make things bearable. Friday I had cleared my schedule and planned to plow through the one hundred plus emails that had accumulated during the week, hoping to get my box back down to zero, which is my usual practice. Some of these messages required a few moments thought and few more moments writing; others, like the one I wrote earlier tonight, require careful crafting and can take up to a half hour. But I was not to get through any messages on Friday, and that was a good thing.

First of all Frank stopped by. He has been at the Buffalo Center for a long time, and we keep meaning to connect because we seem to have a lot in common. We spoke for about an hour about administration, students, gender, and The Grateful Dead. It was one of those nice and easy conversations that flow naturally like a stream and leave you refreshed and lighter. We decided to see a Dead cover band at the beach sometime soon, not because I am a Dead fan (I’m not) but because it is not work, and it is rare for two men to be able to simply hang out and have a good time. Following upon Frank is Yukio, a former director of the Buffalo Center who never gets out, but he turns up in my office just to talk. I had to cancel a lunch with him last week, and I think he is a bit worried about me. We talk easily as is his way, and I introduce him to some new buffaloes. They have heard his name and are pleased to meet him. We have a lot of myths here at the Center, and it is good to see one of the gods come down to visit. I turn back to my computer then I remember Sappho, a Buffalo Center senior, needed a car today to run errands, and I had offered her Penelope. I called her and told her I was on campus if she needed Penelope. “Are you in your office?” she asked. I said yes, and she was there in a matter of seconds. We all live and work together, so my office, like the others, is in the residence hall, so it was only a matter of her coming downstairs to see me. It turns out she did not need Penelope, but she wanted to talk. We, too, had one of those amazing conversations where you feel not only lighter and happier but also that you have learned something. Sappho spent last semester in Argentina, and she is now working on a paper on the cultural significance of the tango. It is a brilliant concept, using this dance as a site for the negotiation of all kinds of gender and political issues, and Sappho is exactly the right person to do it because she always brings everything back to the reality of experience. She is brilliant, and we talk of home and other good things. She, too, is a wanderer who is restless. Now I have spent over two hours at my desk and not answered a single email, but I have had three really good conversations. I turn back to my computer and Lisa comes in smiling. Lisa is my co-teacher for my class this fall, a second-year buffalo who is smarter than she should be at her age and just too cool for words. We have been teaching together for about four weeks, but we have never really sat down and talked. We finally did and agreed, among other things, to go to Canada if Obama does not win this election. We are not going to move to Canada; we are just going to drive to the border and take a photo of us holding a sign that reads “We protest.” Then we will come back to the Buffalo Center and be sad, you betcha.

Today I went down to the coffee shop to work, and Sappho came in shortly thereafter. She was frustrated working on a paper, and I was frustrated trying to get through my emails. Sappho sat next to me, and we frowned. Scout called and needed help with a web site, and it was great to hear her goofy voice. At one point I was chatting with a friend in Europe, emailing Monique, and talking on the phone with Scout. It was almost technology overload, but it was fun to be connected. Sappho broke through and started making slips of paper that had her main points for her paper. She laid them out on the table at the coffee shop and showed me. “What does it mean?” I asked. “I don’t know, but I feel like I have accomplished something,” she said happily. So we were both happy and smiling and decided it was time to leave. I came home and actually answered a number of emails, finally.

Just as I am about to go out to dinner to the best place in town, Casa Guatemala, Marsha calls. She is my advisee and is working on her “contract,” the narrative and course listing that will be her education at the Buffalo Center. “I think I’ve finished it,” she says happily. “Wonderful,” I say, genuinely pleased for her because this is a hard thing. Imagine not having an undergraduate curriculum and having to make your own then run it by a committee of faculty and students, and you have to do all of this by the first semester of your sophomore year. This is a big deal. She tells me she will bring it in tomorrow. I smile and hang up. As I open the door to Penelope, I call Marsha back. “We should go to Casa Guatemala to celebrate, don’t you think?” I say. She agrees completely, and when I go by to pick her up, I see Angie and Carson along with Carson’s roommate, a graduate of Prestigious University. As we get back in the car the iPhone rings, and it’s burningsteady. She leaves me a message castigating me for not returning her call for seven months. It has not been seven months, but it has been a while. So I call her back, and she sounds wonderful because she is wonderful. And she says “Why aren’t you writing?” I tell her about malaise as I sit down at the table with four other buffalos, and we laugh like buffalos, and one of us smells like a buffalo. So here you are burningsteady. Thanks for making me laugh. Thanks for making me write. That general feeling of discomfort is still there, but things are a little brighter now because I got to tell this story. And it helps that my belly is full of enchiladas.

Onward Without the Least Idea

After returning from Europe, I reluctantly made my way back to Coolville, knowing that my sacred journey was over and dreading the prospect of reintegration. I had spent five weeks in Europe and covered England, Scotland, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and Istanbul. I had traveled with family and traveled alone. I had immersed myself in European and Islamic cultures and gotten used to hotel rooms, trains, and restaurants. That feeling I always get on the road–that I can do this forever–had returned, and my body’s and life rhythm had adjusted accordingly. Now I would be back at work in the modest hamlet of Coolville. Joseph Campbell notes that the “return crossing,” when a sojourner has to come back to the everyday world, is the most difficult part of the journey, more difficult even than facing his own death. He was right. Greater than the fear of dying on a journey is the fear of dying while not on a journey, one of those slow deaths that creeps up on you while you are working too hard or being bored. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Thoreau remarked. I have had enough quiet desperation in my life. Give me the desperation of a traveler in need of adventure or refuge anytime.

Soon enough I was swept back into the everyday life, but I tried to bring my sacred journey with me as much as I could. People are strangely incurious about other people’s lives. Sure, I was asked about my trip, but I deliberately did not give many details, and no one asked for more. I actually think that is fine because there is no way to represent this trip in the everyday world anyway without diminishing it. Suffice it to say it was exhilarating, beautiful, magical, terrifying, lonely, joyful, disorienting, and sacred. These things I carried with me as I returned to work. I felt stretched between two worlds, and while I saw the benefits of my life in Coolville, I also would have gone back on the road in a heartbeat if I had the means, and maybe even if I hadn’t. But there is work to do here, sacred work that only I can do at this moment and in this place. Frankly, it is the buffaloes themselves that keep me here. We need each other.

For the last three weeks I have worked a number of twelve-hour days and every weekend except one. It appears I have a weekend free in October and another in November. My work load is impossible, and I see no way to complete the tasks ahead of me. Furthermore, Sancho is a new mother and is probably not returning to the Buffalo Center. And to add to it all, we have a self-study due in December, the fortieth anniversary of the Buffalo Center this year, and I go up for promotion to full professor. But I refuse to be desperate, quietly or otherwise. I have a life, and I lived it last year and this summer. I have a new associate director, Willow, who now takes care of the community, so I do not have to worry, as I did last year, about hanging out there, though I hope I still do some. I have a life, and I plan to live it.

So I am working hard but looking to live. Who knows what shape my life with take this year? Who knows what tragedies and joys will come, and what feelings will accompany them. I know only that I want to say yes to life in whatever form it appears. I want the pain and the joy, the heartache and the bliss, I want to live. Walt sings me a song tonight, one he has sung to me many times before. But tonight I hear it most clearly, and I offer it to those who want to live and to you Camerado.

 

As I lay with Head in your Lap, Camerado 

AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume—what I said to you in the open air I resume:
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;)
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had all accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me;
And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;
…Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.

Istanbul

Fascinating, electric, vast. Still sketchy Internet. Return to the States on Sunday. Life is good.

Budapest

Beautiful, exciting, restful. No Internet.