Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | by nathan

Why I’m Voting Obama, Part 3

I grew up in a small town in western Oklahoma that is now home to one of the biggest wind farms on the southern Great Plains. I have seen the town I called home during childhood transformed by the presence of wind energy, its economy and citizens revitalized and renewed by the prospect of being the ones to provide a new, renewable, locally-produced electricity to their fellow Oklahomans and Americans.

Barack Obama wants to ensure that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of his first term, and 25 percent by 2025, all while reducing our electricity demand by 15 percent by 2020. He wants to get a million new plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015, and he wants those cars to be built in America. Creating a new energy infrastructure that frees us from our dependence on foreign oil has the additional benefit of creating millions of new jobs. Read Barack’s full energy plan at his website.

At the same time, Barack Obama has a solid plan to strengthen our transportation infrastructure, creating an additional 1 million jobs rebuilding our collpasing roads and bridges. Additionally, he will invest in Amtrak and promote the construction of both local and effective public transportation systems as well as nationwide high-speed passenger and freight rail. More on Barack’s transportation plan is available here.

When I think about these changes, I keep thinking back to all the times in the past when the challenges we’ve faced in the past have forced us as Americans to accept the challenge of upgrading our infrastructure. In the 1950s we built the interstate highway system as more and more cars hit the roads and interstate freight volume grew beyond what our rail system could handle. In the 1990s as the Internet exploded into more and more homes, we laid millions of miles of fiber optic cable to promote broadband access across the country. Now, our dependence on foreign oil and the terrifying climate crisis forces us to re-examine our infrastructure again. We can create so much more of our electricity with clean, renewable resources. We can invest in mass transit and clean transportation technologies and infrastructure that will lessen our dependence on foreign oil and reduce the amount of the world’s oil - currently 25% - that we consume. Doing all of this will create millions of new, green tech jobs, and those millions of jobs would have the potential to revive our economy in a major way and make us world leaders in climate change. Barack Obama has a plan, and it’s a solid one.

As someone who grew up in what could be the "Wind Energy Capital of the World," I know that the possibility is there; all we need is the will to do it and a leader with the courage and vision to make it happen.

John McCain believes the market will make these changes happen; for basically the last 40 years, 30 of which we’ve spent under Republican rule in this country, the markets, the big oil companies, the automakers, have had the chance and the need to do all of this. Barack Obama believes it will take an act of the people, that together we can summon the political will to make this a reality. Here, watch this:

Also, if you are not registered to vote, or are not planning to vote, get your ass the hell out of this country. Rock the Vote has a great page listing voter registration deadlines and providing information on registering for every state. Oklahoma’s voter registration deadline is this Friday. If you cannot be bothered to register, call me and not only will I come to your house, pick you up, take you to register, and provide you with campaign literature for any candidate you’d like, I will also take you to dinner. I don’t care you who plan to vote for; JUST REGISTER TO VOTE.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | by nathan

Why I’m Voting For Obama (Part 2)

So, unless you’re one of the innumerable idiotic college freshman who just read The Fountainhead for the first time and suddenly feel the need to tell every single person you meet about this new "Objectivism" you’ve just discovered and how you now plan to give your life for no man, and to ask no man to give his life for you, I think the last week makes it pretty hard to believe that completely unregulated capitalism is any more of a raging success than communism was. Like anyone who didn’t study philosophy just for the tail, I tend to think the best answer lies in the middle, in moderation. Should we be bailing out Wall Street? My populist sensibility tells me no; my common sense tells me that maybe creating another Depression just to make a point isn’t the best idea either.

The thing is, I think that all the major crises facing us now are facets of the same problem: the economy’s gone to shit because for almost 30 of the last 40 years, people have been ruling this country who believe that if you’re poor, if you’re struggling, it’s because you’re an idiot, or irresponsible, or unwilling to work hard. Also, incredibly, these same people believe that businesses should be able to pay their workers whatever they feel like paying them without regard to whether or not said pay amounts to what we in the compassion-based community refer to as "a living wage;" that is, enough money to have the neccesities of life and not to have to choose between, say, food and medicine or shoes for their children.

I’m voting for Barack Obama because he believes that the people who are the backbone of this country, the root of its greatness, are the hardworking people in the lower and middle classes. These are the people who show up for work every single day, often at shitty-ass, soul-sucking jobs, or even more remarkably, at jobs they love but that will never make them wealthy. People who were born rich and privileged (say, George W. Bush and John McCain) do not understand these people, because they’ve never really had to work hard for anything they’ve ever gotten. Barack Obama does understand them. And he has a plan that will put them first:

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 | by nathan

Why I’m Voting Obama (Part 1)

A couple people have asked me for an accounting of why I’m voting for Obama in this election cycle. I don’t want this to turn into a political blog; I really don’t, but I do believe that a lot is at stake in this election, a whole lot, and I’m by no means a pundit, but I can’t resist. Unless things get nasty in my comments (please don’t be nasty in my comments) I think I’m going to try to do one of these a week until the election. If you hate this sort of thing as much as I USUALLY do, please feel free to look at the pretty pictures.

My dad was born in 1935, six and a half years before the start of World War II, right in the middle of the Great Depression. He grew up in rural western Arkansas, just over the Oklahoma state line, as FDR’s New Deal was getting food and jobs to people just like his family all across America. He and his family saw people and communities righted and redeemed by the New Deal.

My dad, more than any other person, is responsible for the formation of my political beliefs as they now stand and have stood for a long time, because my dad taught me to believe that hard work will get you almost anywhere you want to go in life. He taught me that none of us stand alone, and that America’s greatness exists primarily in its people’s willingness to work together, to accomplish things together, to help each other out, to be great, together.

Lofty ideals to be sure, but my dad is almost 3 quarters of a century old now, and he still holds fast to them with passion and hope. Like me he simply does not understand why some people cannot countenance paying taxes so that children can be assured healthcare. Like me, he doesn’t understand why anyone needs a Hummer, or how Karl Rove or Pat Robertson can sleep at night knowing they’ve frightened millions of very poor, very religious and faithful people into voting against their own economic interests. Like me he doesn’t believe that government is automatically bad or good, that it’s just what it promises to be: We The People.

My parents are liberals, and they raised me with a certain set of values to which I adhere tightly, because to me they seem right. Barack Obama’s campaign and message embodies to me, more than any I’ve ever seen, what my parents taught me to believe in: that America, while not perfect, is capable of being its best when its people decide to work together to help one another out, rather than to let fear divide us. We’re at our best when we sacrifice for the good of all of us rather than let greed and fear turn us against one another.

I sound like one of those Barack-Obama-is-the-Messiah apologists now, so I’ll just say that I’ve read all his position papers and that I by no means think the man - or the campaign - is perfect, and if you’re one of those on-the-fence voters saying, "But what do we really know about him?", I’d say you’re being inexcusably lazy considering that this is the Internet age and there’s a wealth of information out there. If reading position papers or issues statements just isn’t something you’re capable of, then you don’t get to make this claim.

But when it comes down to it, I can honestly say that I’m voting for Barack Obama largely because he seems to share this vision of America that my parents raised me with: as a place where hard work and determination will get you where you want to go, and where we don’t let big business and corporate interests compromise that guarantee, and where we all sacrifice some, and work together to try to reach consensus and make our society a better one for all of us. That’s what I was raised to believe, and I see those beliefs reflected in Barack and Michelle Obama, in Joe and Jill Biden, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Andrew and Apple Rice, Jim Roth, and many, many others, and that’s why I’m a Democrat.

Sunday, August 10, 2008 | by nathan

Growth

While we were in Colorado I enlisted the services of my good buddies J & L to tend my garden for me. We set the water on a timer, and once a garden’s off and rolling it doesn’t need much besides that, but I did have one major concern, and so I told Jaye that his job, while I was gone, was to make sure my cucumbers got picked before they ripened.

Cucumbers, as you know them, are eaten long before they get ripe. One of the first things my dad told me this year, when I told him I was growing cukes, was to make absolutely sure that none of them got ripe. They’ll turn yellow, he said, and as soon as they produce mature seeds inside a fruit, the plant shuts down, its work of reproduction finished, and then the crop is over. "If you want to keep producing cucumbers, make sure you pick every single one."

Jaye’s payment for tending my cucumber crop was that he could take anything out of my garden that he wanted. So he & his wife are, like us here, awash in cucumbers and ripe cherry tomatoes and cantaloupes. It’s all gotten entirely out of hand.

Anyway, yesterday I went out to my garden and there were two cucumbers out there, not ripe, that looked at first like small watermelons, they were so big. For a point of comparison in the photo up top, I wear a men’s size 8 shoe. I’m thinking of entering these in the county fair.

My buddies Jon and Tish just moved to Nashville and will be starting a garden. Read Jon’s blog entry about it; he captures better than I can why gardening is so deeply rewarding. Next year I want to expand our plot.

The garden has been a highlight of this year, and it continually shocks me that I’ve turned out not only to enjoy it so much, but to be good at it. It’s helped me to slow down and given me time to think, which is something I’ve needed to do a lot of this year. I just turned 28, which feels like a benchmark, in a way, because I can tell that a lot of things are changing for me. I’m so different from the boy I once was, and it turns out I like the man I’m becoming, and the life I’m living.

It’s good to have a chance to take a step back and give things a good, hard look, and this summer has been all about that for me. In addition to turning 28, this weekend I gathered with my high school classmates for our ten-year reunion. It amazed me to look within and see exactly how much I’ve changed in the last decade, and it amazed me even more to find that parts of my personality with which I’m so accustomed to walking are no longer with me. I was able to go to my high school reunion without a single feeling like I had something to prove, and that shocked me, because I always used to feel that way. Instead, this weekend I’ve felt free to engage, and to care, and to laugh at myself and to cut loose and have a good time. I paid a friend $5 to request "Come On Ride The Train," and when I dragged a dozen people on to the dance floor, the DJ announced that we were the coolest people in the room. I just really, really felt like dancing to that song, because, terrible as it is, I have some hilarious high school memories around it.

I feel, in a way, that I’ve been walking around for awhile with this mirror in my hand, with the need to take a clear look at myself. I am no longer that boy I was, and as such I have found myself able to freely forgive his mistakes and foibles. Some of this is painful; I realized earlier this summer that I’ve been in the process of mourning a friendship for a long time without realizing that’s what I was doing. While I find myself freer and more at peace as I let go of this situation, it also hurts like hell, and for now, all I can do is let it hurt and try to keep my hands off the steering wheel. But the beauty I’ve found in this whole debacle is that I can do what I got to do last night, after the reunion. A few of us crossed the street to the Skirvin Hilton Hotel, ordered a few drinks at the Red Piano Bar, and I laid out the whole situation with my dear, dear friend Laurie, who listened intently to my martini-fueled gush. Talking about it helped, and I feel better.

And that’s what I’ve understood of late, these last few amazing months of my life: I am blessed and thankful beyond my wildest dreams. Ten years ago I graduated high school and became a believer, and the journey I’ve been on since then has delivered me here, and there’s no place I’d rather be. Part of why this weekend was so amazing was because, while the texture of my friendships has changed over the last decade, I am incredibly fortunate to have had many of the same friends for the last dozen years or more. And while I miss and mourn the friendships that have ended, either with a bang or a whimper, I know that am loved and cared for. I am secure and confident in a way I didn’t think that 18-year-old boy ever would be.

I’m right where I’m meant to be, and exactly where I thought I’d never end up. It’s crazy to me that I’m living in Oklahoma and keeping a garden and leading this great, imperfect life. Brian and I occasionally talk about our next steps. Someday I’d like to leave the city, because - and here’s another self-revelation that shocks the crap out of me - I’m more of a country boy at heart. I like open spaces and the slow pace of non-urban life, and while I’m relatively certain we’ll never live more than an hour away from a metropolitan area, every time I’m in the country it’s always hard to come back. Also, out there I can have even more garden.

I know this has been a long entry; so thanks. The point of all of it is that I’m grateful, and happy, and still trying to find where I fit in, but also feeling that those answers do exist and are perhaps even on the horizon. In the meantime, I’m totally going to crank the Quad City DJs and dance.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 | by nathan

There are these skies

I couldn’t provide adequate caption for this photo, so instead I’m going to reprint some words of Rich Mullins’ below:

"There are those skies - skies stretched so tight you just know they’re about to pop - skies in whose seamless blue reaches you hear the snap of sails full of wind, sails moving ships like these skies move you, like these skies move oceans, worlds, time… skies stretched tight like balloons at birthday parties, full of breath, light like helium, so light you have to tie them down.

There are skies like that. Skies so light they look like they could easily be lifted away, so light they seem almost to lift you, to suck you out of the grip of gravity.

But it is the sun they lift, these skies - skies into whose perfectly arched and balanced heads any sun would rise and find room therein to shine. These skies stay poised, enormously gentle, like giants across whom children and crawl and play - giants who are strong enough to feel the touch of these little ones and not move one muscle to risk unbalancing or frightening them.

There are skies like that. You have to look up to see them. You cannot find them beneath you or within you. They are "out" there… they are "up" there.

There are these skies.

Skies stretched so tight you just know you’re about to pop standing beneath them. Your lungs may burst from breathing their sizable air - air from their cool heights so tall they scrape the footings of heaven - skies so pure and strong that God built His New Jerusalem on their back. And they reach up toward that Holy City like Romeo scaling the forbidden wall beneath Juliet - skies that go endlessly, nearly forever with the beauty of her face, the quiet, unshaken gaze of her eyes, skies alive with all the virility and tenderness of young love - skies as ancient as time, as innocent as babies held in the Hands of Eternity.

And I was trying to think of how I could encourage you - of what I could say to spur you on, just trying to come up with something. And then I was overcome.

And you might say, "but it’s just a sky" - but you could say that only if you’d never seen it. And you might say, "Oh, the sky is just a metaphor and he’s really overcome by something spiritual, like, say, the love of God." But if the sky is only a metaphor, it is God’s metaphor, and if you’d look up - if you’d just look up…well, I haven’t the words, but…

There are those skies - skies stretched so tight you just know they’re about to pop…"

Monday, June 16, 2008 | by nathan

A Lot Can Fail To Change In A Decade

This summer, the second weekend in August, is my ten-year high school reunion. I’m pretty sure I’m not quite ready; I haven’t become the successful best-selling author I’d planned to be by 25 - not to mention 28, which I will be soon - and as a result, my plan to walk away from high school the day after graduation, leave Oklahoma forever and never look back, then return triumphantly ten years later with a bestseller and a movie deal seems to be stalled, slightly.

I was never one of those people who was too good for high school, who thought himself too cool to be there or to care. I enjoyed going to football games and pep rallies, to a degree. I had friends in every group - the library nerds, the popular kids, the drama weirdos, the Jesus freaks - and like to think that people more or less liked me. Like anyone I look back at my tastes in fashion and music in those days and cringe, but I also have a lot of good memories. I cruised around listening to mix tapes, fought with teachers who resented me for correcting them, and was threatened on no fewer than three occasions to be denied a diploma. I skipped class on occasion, and took school trips. They tell me I was in Key Club, but I seem to have blocked out those memories. I can only imagine what they contain.

But I was an adolescent, a member of Generation Y, a group of people born in the late 70’s and early 80’s whose teenage dramas were writ large and were the stuff of lame-ass popular culture, who have largely spent this decade drinking away the feelings they had to endure in teenagedom. I went to high school during the tenure of My So-Called Life after all, and as a result participated in more than my share of lame-ass dramas that, to this day, seem reluctant to completely play themselves out. As much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, the simple fact is that, a decade or more later, feelings remain hurt, pride remains wounded, and I’m a little irritated with myself that I didn’t go ahead and win American Idol when I had the time, just to, you know, show … them … or something.

But even as I write this, even as I mull over my decision as to whether or not to attend the reunion - see, I know I’ll end up going - I realize something very, very important: I really, really have nothing to prove. This just hit me, just now as I was typing. I’m happy, I’m healthy, and I have a great guy and a great life that I love. I’m flush with neither wealth nor writing success, but I am not those things anyway; I learned that a long time ago. And as for the people that I haven’t seen in over a decade, the people I, for some reason, have yet to forgive or let go of, well, okay. I’m going to leave those people be, and look forward instead to reintroducing myself to the people I liked and with whom I’ve lost touch. I’m eager to find out who’s got a family, who’s moved, who’s stayed, who’s gay, who’s gotten fat, who’s happy, and who, like me, are doing pretty great but still not finished becoming.

So, if you’re part of the Westmoore Class of 1998, I hope I’ll see you there, no matter what happened way back when or in the intervening years. I say we put on some Smash Mouth and dance the drama away.

Friday, May 16, 2008 | by nathan

OKAY! We GET It!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008 | by nathan

The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg

I finished reading Marcus J. Borg’s The Heart of Christianity awhile ago. I’d read the first three or so chapters in 2004, and then I started grad school, and in a rare bit of procrastination, I never picked the book back up.

I read Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time for a college class in 1999. The class was titled "The Search for Jesus" and dealt with what is known in religious-academic circles as the "historical Jesus" quest. Most of the scholarship in this field is a bit silly - I won’t get into the reasons, but the "Jesus Seminar" in particular leaves me feeling pretty irritable, despite the fact that my pastor is a member of it - but in the midst of all the ridiculousness I found Borg’s book to be fascinating and compassionate.

Marcus J. Borg is a man who wrestles with what he calls a "traditional paradigm" of Christianity versus an "emerging paradigm." The traditional is what you’d expect, and his problem with it is nothing in the faith itself but rather its tendency to ignore or write off the people who, for whatever reason, find themselves unable to sign on to it. This book is an exploration of this struggle.

I experienced this schism myself when I came out. Through a long, personal quest I’ve realized, among other things, that I am not an evangelical Christian. I understand and appreciate evangelical belief in a way that many who’ve come out of it do not, but I cannot be a part of the evangelical community.

This book is for people whose story and struggle are like mine. Unlike other books which describe a different perspective on Christianity, however, it is compassionate, kind, and not dismissive of traditional or evangelical Christianity, and it does not covertly embrace a necessarily secular-humanist agenda. It encourages an active faith, one that engages God and the Bible, one that requires prayer and community and social action, one that fundamentally changes the believer. Where Borg occasionally lapses into liberal-political rhetoric he can be forgiven; his faith, after all, has implications for his political beliefs and he makes no apologies for this, nor does he imply that anyone else should, whether or not they reach the same conclusions that he does.

This is going to take a place of honor on my shelf along with the work of Brennan Manning, C.S. Lewis, Anne Lamott, et al.

Monday, February 18, 2008 | by nathan

Faculties

My father spent 30 years on the faculty of the Chemistry department of a small state university in western Oklahoma. This photo is of some of the remaining members of that faculty. My dad’s the guy on the first row, in the sweater I bought him in Ireland, holding his old, weathered Bible in his lap.

Last week one of these men lost his wife. She’d battled cancer for almost a decade and finally succumbed last Tuesday. This completely knocked the wind out of me, because when I was growing up we spent a lot of time with these people. Our families had a ton in common: both fathers were on the chemistry faculty, both mothers were pharmacists, and their son and I were in the same grade. I spent more time than I can count at their house, eating hot dogs wrapped not in neat little buns but in pieces of wheat bread, which, for some reason, I still remember vividly.

We all went camping together in Colorado almost every summer. This sweet, silly woman we lost last week would make bread from scratch and bake it in her Coleman camp oven, which sat atop a propane camp stove. Her husband and son would ride their motorcycles up to the ghost towns, and at night we’d listen to Monty Python and Weird Al albums. I once wrote a novel using their house as the setting.

This weekend we paid her tribute, all of these men and their families. This group of teachers are a bit legendary at this university, because each of them was an amazing lecturer, a man deeply invested in his students. I looked up to them as a child and have come to know them as an adult, and though I’m reeling from this loss, I want you to know that in this photo are a group of people who’ve changed the lives of a ton of students in the way that only teachers can really do. Last year we lost one of these men very suddenly, and three years ago another one of them. It’s precious and terrifying.

My heart’s been heavy with missing this woman, and her son, whom I saw on Saturday for the first time in over ten years and whom, despite the circumstances, it was good to see. There was a slide show presentation that included photos of all of us from those camping trips, now two decades ago. I feel like the older I get the less I know how to process all of these things, and the less I know what to say to people at things like this; I felt like such an asshole for telling my old friend that it was good to see him, but it really, really was good, and also bad, and also mind-numbingly terrible to see him because it took this awful thing for that to happen. I felt like an asshole for asking for his e-mail, and for snapping this picture.

What I wanted to tell my old friend was that last year, I ran into both of his parents at a birthday party for one of these men, who just so happens to attend my church now that he and his wife have moved to the city. My dad came up from Arkansas and we went, together, and when I saw her standing there I rushed up, hugged her, and we spent the whole party talking. She was so proud of him - he’s earning his Ph.D. in Chemistry, just like I knew he would when we were FIVE YEARS OLD - and talked excitedly about how well he’s doing. I wanted to say that I couldn’t possibly understand what he was feeling, but that I felt I’d been punched in the gut. I wanted to tell him that, but literally all I could do was shrug my shoulders and say, "My God, your mom, she …"

He nodded and looked me in the eye, and I hope he knew that she was great, and that I had nothing, absolutely nothing, because really, what is there to say, except, "It’s Good To See You?"

Monday, February 18, 2008 | by nathan

The Ants and St. Francis

I became a St. Francis enthusiast first because of Rich Mullins. I liked him so much that I asked the Catholic student minister at Wake Forest, who was a Franciscan, to have lunch with me to explain more about what St. Francis was about. I’m absolutely positive he thought I had lost my mind. But I would not be deterred. I devoured the Little Flowers and talked endlessly to my non-Catholic Catholic buddy Jack about him.

When I got to Italy the first thing I wanted to do was to visit Assisi. I wanted to go on a pilgrimage. I’d never been on a one of those before, but I figured it was mostly going to a place, seeing things and praying a lot. I had probably $50 and a rail pass with which to take this entire trip.

The Let’s Go! Guide recommended a few nice hostels; I chose the cheapest one. Francis, I figured, had devoted his life to a vow of poverty - how could I pilgrimage in a plush hostel room? I got out my rail pass, looked at train routes, packed my yellow duffel bag with two changes of clothes, my Bible, and my journal, and boarded the train in Venice. First stop: Florence.

Bologna is along the route between Venice and Florence. Just outside Bologna, the train came to a dead halt. This is not an unusual occurrence in European rail travel, so I kept reading whatever book I was reading and writing in my journal.

The train lurched forward again three and a half hours later; about an hour into our delay, a thin Italian man straight out of a Rowan Atkinson portrayal came into my compartment and started chain smoking. Lovely. We arrived in Florence after my train to my next connection - Terontola-Cortona - had already departed. The next train wouldn’t leave for two hours. Every fiber in my being screamed in protest as I seated myself at the McDonald’s in the Florence train station.

It was late, late afternoon by the time the train to Terontola-Cortona finally arrived, and even later before it departed. I was trying to be saintly, patient, but inside I was boiling with panic; being late is one of the things that freaks me out the most. Being late in a foreign country whose language I have not yet mastered is worse.

The train station at Terontola-Cortona is not a nice one. There was no board announcing arrivals and departures. Like an inner-city bus stop, you pretty much just had to know which train to get on and at what time before you arrived there. Knowing that the connection I’d meant to catch had left already, I seated myself on my yellow duffel bag and thought for awhile.

I could wait patiently for a train here, or I could walk into town and get a room. I wasn’t sure a train would even come, so I prayed. "Please help me know what to do."

Some Italians walked by behind me. I heard them talking about Assisi; my Italian was just good enough that I heard one of them tell the other that the last train for Assisi would come shortly, arriving at my destination around 9 p.m. I had my answer; keep going. I waited; the sun went down.

The train rolled up, and by the looks of the sparse crowd on the platform, it was the last one of the night. I got on, worrying less because look! God had provided me a train! Neat. We left the station, my mood higher than it had ever been.

We rolled up to Assisi precisely at 9 p.m. - my first on-time arrival all day. Excitedly, I grabbed my little yellow duffel and exited the train. My mind boggled at what I saw next.

Assisi, it turns out, IS ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN. And the Assisi train station? AT THE BOTTOM OF THAT MOUNTAIN. Just as I was worrying what I was going to do - climb a mountain in complete darkness? Find a place to stay at the bottom of the mountain and hike up the next morning? Get back on the train to Venice, go pack my things, and hop the first flight back to America? I heard two people speaking American English. Normally I avoided other Yanks like the plague, but this was a welcome sign, a signal, the next right step.

They were loading luggage into the trunk of a taxi.

"Do you mind if I split this cab with you?" I asked.

They were a New England couple who couldn’t be bothered with a poor college kid, but they begrudgingly said yes. I thanked them profusely, threw my yellow duffel into the boot, and off we went.

That stupid cab ride - for which I paid half - cost me at least a tenth of my budget for the weekend, which wasn’t much, but still. The cab dropped us off at the old couple’s posh hotel near the city centre. I thanked them for letting me share the ride, and pulled out my guide. Where was my hostel?

On a map of the town, an arrow pointed out the northeast corner of the town gate. I glanced at this, put the guide away, then began walking. I’m good with maps and directions, and I figured if I went in that direction, I’d see what I was looking for. But when I got the town gate, I saw nothing resembling a cheapy hostel. I pulled out the guide again.

Somehow, in all my planning, it had escaped my notice until RIGHT THAT MINUTE that my hostel was 1 km out of town, on the side of the mountain. The road led through the gate and into the darkness. It was approaching 10 p.m.; I’d be lucky to get a room at the place I’d booked, and I for sure wasn’t getting anywhere else in town to let me stay, not this late. A kilometer isn’t that far; I set off into the darkness, walking.

Down the mountain, in the Umbrian valley, the lights of little towns twinkled. I could see a million stars above me, but there was no moon. I kept walking, hoping to God I wasn’t wrong, and that I wouldn’t need to pull out my guide again, because there was no way I could read in this light. The wind kicked up my shoulder-length, hippie-kid hair. A horse whinnied just off the road. In the darkness I could make out a few cows; nothing to fear. "Nothing but the murderers," I chuckled to myself. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward, praying with every step.

Later, when I would read the E.L. Doctorow quote that writing a novel is like driving a car at night - "you can only see as far in front of you as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way" - I would think of this walk, this night in Assisi, and how that’s pretty much what life is like too.

I walked as quickly as I dared, and after awhile there was a light in front of me; I’d reached my hostel. I quickly found the main building and walked in.

In broken Italian I explained to the desk clerk that my train had been delayed, that I’d just made it to town, that I’d WALKED - he took all this in with an air of bored bemusement, then informed me that they’d assumed I was a no-show and given my room away. "Still," he said in English, like my Italian was so laughably bad that he’d do me a favor and speak my guttural native tongue, "I have a caravan. You can have that."

The price was lower than what my room would’ve been, and after that expensive cab ride I was keen to save a few lire. I paid him for two nights, took the key, and walked along a path he showed me on a map.

My caravan was a tiny little trailer that had been manufactured in the 50’s or 60’s. It was tiny and austere, but, I figured, perfect for me. It had light and a bed; what else did a pilgrim need? I opened the door.

The first thing I saw - the VERY FIRST THING I SAW - was a huge, hairy spider waiting for me inches inside the door. I’m horribly arachnophobic; I can’t even get close enough to a spider to squash it. But after the day I’d had, I was too emotionally worn-out to be afraid. I simply looked at the spider, and he at me, as if he’d been expecting me.

"Well," I said to him, out loud, "one of us is going to have to die here tonight before the other gets any sleep." And I skooshed him. I threw my yellow duffel bag on the bed and went to sleep.

I had the kind of sleep where you wake up in the morning feeling like you’ve only just gone to bed 20 minutes before. I was tired and out of it. The hostel offered a free breakfast of bread, jam, and warm milk. I availed myself of this and walked into town, my spirits lifting as I looked out over the valley, realizing that Assisi, its place on the mountain, its heavenly views, are like fertilizer for sainthood, a breeding ground for righteous men. How could one not feel close to God in a place that high-up and beautiful?

I spent the day at the basilica, which had been destroyed by an earthquake 3 years previously, the beautiful frescoes by Giotto almost completely erased. I spent hours praying there before finding a 2,000 lire ($1) lunch of pizza sauce on dry bread and sparkling water. I sat on the steps of the Temple of Minerva and wrote a letter to my friend Summer. I prayed outside the Basilica di Santa Chiara, which was still closed due to its rebuilding after the quake.

I was on a pilgrimage but not feeling particularly spiritual or uplifted. Mostly I was tired, and hot, and worried about money. I stubbornly sat in a park and read the entire book of Acts, the spiritual equivalent of stamping my foot and crying out to God for some kind of revelation, dammit, because here I was having all this trouble and the least He could do is give me some freaking inner peace. "Like it’s so much skin off Your nose."

Nothing. Still, the town and the day were beautiful and I walked back to my caravan as the sun was setting over the valley. I picked up some food on the way out of town, figuring I’d have a light dinner, read until bedtime, then get up in the morning and get the hell out of this town. I’d made sure to check the train schedules and to plan to get down the mountain in time for the very first departure, lest I not make it back to Venice at all.

I walked down to the communal bathroom and washed my face and hands, then headed back up to the trailer. I opened the door and experienced the greatest shock of all: the walls were crawling.

Ants. Millions and millions - okay, hundreds and hundreds - of large black ants were living inside my caravan. Maybe I’d made a mistake killing that spider. Maybe I’d earned this. They were all over the floor, the walls - but nowhere near the bed. I looked over at my yellow duffel bag, wondering if I could grab it, get back to town, and grab a last train out. That was no option - I’d end up in some other town and have to get a room, and I was almost out of money.

After staring forlornly at my bag, sitting on the ant-free bed for awhile, I decided I’d make a leap. I jumped to the bed, clutched my bag to my chest, and watched the ants moving around, living where I was living. On the ceiling, on the walls, but nowhere near me. I was in a safe zone, on my bed, and as the night fell the ants went to sleep, disappearing into the cracks in the walls and under the door. They were gone at last, and after hours of racking my brain as to what I’d do, I fell asleep there in the safe zone.

First thing in the morning I was up like a shot - before the ants could stir - and out the door. I hit the breakfast, where I wrapped ten pieces of bread up in a napkin to take with me on the train, and hiked back to town. I caught the first cab I could find - that was the very last of my money - and hopped the trains back to Venice.

Years later, I can still see those ants, that living wall, and still not be completely sure what I learned on my one and only pilgrimage, except perhaps that I’m a tad braver than I once thought.