Life is a Trip (14 page)

I
was uncharacteristically and deeply unhappy.
Maybe it was the bitter cold, or the overwork, stress, insomnia, and exhaustion. I had surfed the Inte
r
net and rented a little cottage half a block from the beach in San Diego. My fantasy was waking up to pale golden light streaming in through the windows, saluting the sun, languorously stretching on an exercise mat unfurled on the po
l
ished pine floor. After a light, healthy breakfast in an outdoor café, there would be a walk along the ocean, watching surfers and commu
n
ing with the waves. In the afternoon, a rented paddle boat would glide gently through the water. As the sun retired for the day, it would linger for a moment in the backyard where I sipped margaritas, watching the pink and gold afterglow that illuminated the heavens.

Reality intruded. It was winter and San Diego was groaning under the lashing of storms, cold, ill winds, and torrential rains. The little dream cottage was a nightmare of dog dander, dust, dirt, half-eaten blobs of food in the fridge, illegal and hazardous wiring, lack of ins
u
lation, and a tiny heater the size of two fists. If we plugged in a hai
r
dryer, the fuse blew. As I sat in darkness, Paul crawled through the only closet—past the dust and hangers draped with the homeowner’s suits, wetsuits, T-shirts, shorts, and pants; past his salted-away har
d
core magazines with photos of engorged parts and lip-licking ladies; past the single, plastic shoe rack that was allotted to us for our clothes—and groped around to reconnect the loose wires that hung off the wall.

To make matters worse, there was nowhere to drive. The streets were blocked off because of flooding, and cars were half-submerged in water laced with huge, dirty palm fronds. We sat inside, huddled around the minuscule heater, trying to crank up the physical and psychic energy to disengage from our contract, find a
n
other place to rent, and, if all else failed, drag our weary carcasses onto a plane headed for somewhere warm . . . like sub-Saharan Africa.

When the streets finally cleared, all we could think of was sho
p
ping for fleece, fluffy, warm bathrobes, and industrial sprays to mask dog smell. We were devoid of energy, imagination, and life force.

We couldn’t believe this had happened to us. Normally, you could drop us in the middle of the desert and we’d realize the fascination of sand. Once, at a resort, when we were awakened in the middle of the night because flames were leaping toward our cabin and we had to leave behind all our belongings and run to safety, we turned disaster into discovery as we spent hours interviewing the other surv
i
vors. But there we were in spectacular coastal California, bummed out, burned out, shivering and, for the first time in our travel lives, bored. The dismal little cottage had a huge TV, and we torpidly watched actors, athletes, and advertisers prance, parade, run, walk, slither, leap, sell, fall in love, and jockey for power on the screen.

One day the skies cleared, the sun emerged, and we were sitting in a restaurant, sinking our forks into breakfast burritos the size of our thighs. I was perusing a throwaway paper that I had picked up at a rack near the entry door, when I saw a small notice about Hmong New Year in a nearby public park in Kearney Mesa. I began to feel a sti
r
ring, a frisson of interest and curiosity.

I had known about the Hmong (pronounced “Mong”) mountain people for decades. In the sixties, the U.S. recruited ethnic Hmong soldiers to fight on our side in the Vietnam War and help us conduct a protracted secret war in Laos. This r
e
sulted, of course, in thousands of deaths and casualties and, when the war was over, there were terrible reprisals in Laos against the Hmong. Many fled to refugee camps in Thailand and the U.S. promised to resettle them, but the process has been difficult, controversial, wrought with duplicity, and painfully slow. Today, there are almost a quarter of a million Hmong in the U.S.

I asked a few people I knew in San Diego if they wanted to go with us to the exotic New Year celebration. They declined, adding that the Hmong aren’t friendly and it was probably a small, immigrant event that wouldn’t be of much interest.

We went anyway. The section of the park reserved for the festivities was ablaze with the dazzling traditional clothing of the hundreds of Hmong who came from all over the country for the celebration. Paul and I were the only non-Hmong there. I didn’t know what to e
x
plore first: booths with native food and drink; stands laden with intr
i
cate embroidery, accessories, and clothes for sale; a lion dance; or a potluck with huge casseroles of food prepared and offered for free by Hmong women.

I was juggling a platter of pickled and spicy vegetables, green papaya salad, sausage, chicken, and a sweet drink with tapioca when something caught my eye: a row of teenage or twenty-something Hmong men gently throwing tennis balls to a row of young women of about the same age. I watched until my food started to get cold, and then I wandered over to a wooden table to eat. As I was savoring the li
t
tle-known Southeast Asian delicacies, I looked up and saw another row of boys tossing tennis balls to a line of girls opposite them.

“Excuse me,” I said to a middle-aged couple at my table. “Can you tell me what that game is?”

“It’s how our young people meet each other,” the man said.

“They come from Wisconsin, Sacramento, everywhere to maybe find a Hmong husband or wife,” the woman added, grinning.

Other Hmong joined in the conversation.

“While they throw the ball back and forth, they talk,” said a stunning woman decked out in a long black dress trimmed with red e
m
broidery. “Maybe a girl asks how old a boy is or they exchange names. If they find out the other person is from the same family, it’s not a suitable partner.”

“Is there ever love at first throw?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” said my beautiful interlocutor, laughing. “And if a boy likes a girl, he will begin to sing to tell her about her wonderful qual
i
ties.”

“He literally sings?” I asked.

The woman nodded. “Singing to express love is very important in our culture.”

I walked over to the lines of potential mates, trying to guess where the tennis balls might lead to a match ending in love, musing that if I were single I would much prefer casually tossing words and tennis balls to hooking up with someone in a bar or fidgeting at a singles’ event. I would have happily stood there watching for hours, but my attention was drawn by a crowd gathered in front of a booth that sold CDs and DVDs. The man who ran the booth slipped a documentary film into a DVD player.

On a small screen, a young Hmong girl in the mountains of Laos was singing and sobbing. Opposite her, an older man looked on with compassion. The girl’s voice was hypnotic and the sounds seemed to come from her soul.

I inquired of a man standing next to me, “Could you tell me, please, what the girl is saying?”

The man turned his face to me, and I could see that he was crying too. Tears pooled in his big, brown eyes and then trickled down his chin onto his neatly-pressed white shirt. He seemed to have no emba
r
rassment about weeping in front of a stranger.

“She is an orphan and she is telling the story of how she has suffered. She is alone in the world. Her family is dead and she has no one. That man says he wants to help her. He is too old to marry her, but she can come and stay at his house for as long as she wants.”

“But why is she singing?” I asked.

“In our culture, we sing our sorrows,” he answered. He wiped his tears with his hand and added, “I am crying because her story is my story too. I am also an o
r
phan. I had nobody to help me. I suffered the way she is suffering. I endured what she had to endure.”

“I am so sorry,” I muttered. “Thank you for telling me. Thank you for teaching me.”

The man handed me his card. “If you go to visit the Hmong people in Laos, I can accompany you and show you around. I will introduce you to our people. I am so happy you came here to share our New Year with us.”

It was a sentiment that was repeated. All day, Hmong people kept thanking me for coming and for being interested in their culture.

Of course I was interested! In one day, I had gotten to learn about people who sing their sorrows and joys, take pride in their national dress, and find love in a simple, sweet ball game. I had sampled Southeast Asian cuisine I knew nothing about, heard the Hmong language, experienced the power of a man weeping in public, listened to music I didn’t know, bought an embroidered and tasseled indi
g
enous hat. And I didn’t have to crank up enormous energy, buy a plane tic
k
et, plan an itinerary, or spend much money. All I had to do was drive for twenty minutes to soak up a bit of faraway Laos in San Diego.

For days, I had been mired in depression, disengagement, and listlessness. How extraordinary that one state of being had so rapidly morphed into another. I marveled at how other cultures drew me out of myself, into a world that was larger and infinitely more interesting than the malaise inside of me. I was filled with a
d
miration for the Hmong, who had overcome such adversity. I was grateful that, once again, I was excited by learning, by contact with people whose life experien
c
es and culture were so different from my own.

When Paul and I returned to the creepy cottage that evening, we rediscovered our mojo. We simply refused to be unhappy. We moved to a charming place where we could sleep soundly, put our clothes in drawers, turn on a wall heater, and walk along the Strand in Pacific Beach, and Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach; a place where we could a
p
preciate the seemingly effortless grace of surfers, sip margaritas, smile at the sun and feel grateful for every droplet of our lives.

Travel is a balm for my soul, but I don’t always need to go far to experience it. When we returned home, I tuned into the different ethnicities and customs all around me. Paul and I went to an Aztec cer
e
mony at El Museo Cultural De Santa Fe, where gloriously-attired dancers honored Cuahtemoc, whom they call the first defender of the Americas, and celebrated what they described as the first direction for Nuestro Señor del Sacremontes. The drumming was loud and exciting, and the dancers, many with rattles around their ankles, leapt, twirled, and stepped with i
n
tention and devotion. During a break in the dan
c
ing, we stood silently in front of an altar contemplating the tall white candles and the offerings of flowers, musical i
n
struments, photos, and food.

On Chinese New Year, we dined at a local restaurant where there were four dancing lions—including a huge black one. We stuffed money into red envelopes and plunged them into a lion’s mouth to ensure prosperity and good fortune. And we ate Middle Eastern food while we watched the sinuous stomach muscles of be
l
ly dancers.

Finding these events was easy. All I had to do was look at bulletin boards, magazines, newspapers, and websites. With minimal expense of effort, I was r
e
warded with new connections, instant learning, e
x
pansion of my horizons, and a richer, more textured and deliciously varied life.

Travel is a Zen activity that can lift me out of my inner life into engagement with the world around me. There is so much happening—new people, ideas, food, customs, language, sounds, smells—that it literally yanks me from inward to ou
t
ward focus. No longer trekking through the muck of the past or anticipating an u
n
certain future, I am plunked right into the present, where healing, happiness, and renewal take place.