Crap becoming less crappy

Books on writing piss me off. I’ve said it before that “…there are many people that take advantage of aspiring writers. Aspiring writers are vulnerable and, unlike actual writers, they have money to spend on books, online courses, and websites.” I would like to add this little nugget…

Reading books on writing takes away from time that you could actually be writing, which is how a writer becomes better – writing begets writing. A brick layer doesn’t get better reading books.

The difficult thing is finding the motivation to continually write. And by motivation I mean an audience or a deadline. I was lucky to have both early on when I contributed my “Travelin’ Light” column to the Key West City paper. Without this opportunity, which started at $0/column and eventually got up to a grand total of $15/column, I’m not sure if I would still be writing today.

A column or a blog are both great ways to get not sucky at writing.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a thread I commented on a few months ago about what qualities I value in a personal travel blog. Here they are:

People are always way more interesting than place.

Today is always more interesting than 500 years ago.

Objectiveness is overrated.

Making an ass out of yourself in a foreign country while doing your darnedest to be culturally sensitive is priceless.

The more you write the better you get. And the better you get the more likely the one time a literary agent stumbles across your blog he’ll decide to email you, “This is a great idea. Ever think about writing a book?”

And then you realize all of those crappy posts about sitting on airplanes, trains, and standing in line in immigration were worth it.

Keep blogging! Crap becomes less crappy over time. In this way, crap is kinda like wine.

My brother, and soon-to-be Mrs. Malaria Boy

My brother, Kyle, is getting married in March. He seems real happy. If you don’t believe me check out his wedding’s website (at which they’ve yet to link to WAIW? - the nerve).

I’m happy for him, but in the interest of keeping him even-keeled, I thought I would bring him back down to earth with two columns I wrote that feature him. I’ll post one now and one later on in the week.

(Jenn, I think you know what you are getting by now, but please read carefully. Don’t let the PhD fool you.)

Have Malaria, Will Travel
By Kelsey Timmerman

We are on drugs and invincible…so we think.

“Dude, know what’s cool?” My brother Kyle is sitting in a metal school chair thumbing through our Honduras guidebook. I am swinging in a hammock. Between our bungalow and the vast unmapped jungle flows the Rio Mocoron.

“What?”

“It’s likely that we’re being bit by malaria carrying mosquitoes as we speak.”

Kyle and I both stare down at our arms and torsos half expecting to see a super hero-like glow radiating. We think that we are faster than a speeding infected mosquito! Our immune systems more powerful than locomotives! That we are able to leap wide, mosquito-spawning rivers in a single bound!

But we can’t.

“Dude. You know what’s not cool - Chagas’ disease.” Kyle paraphrases from the guidebook, “The triatomine bug bites you while you’re sleeping and then defecates in the wound. 10-40 years later you come down with chronic symptoms including heart problems, enlarged esophagus, and, enlarged bowels. There is no prevention. The disease, if full blown, takes an average of nine years off your life.”

“Whoa. Let me see.” Kyle hands me the book and I look at the list of exotic diseases trying to find a worse one yet. “Dengue fever, aka bone break fever - it’s from a mosquito. First you get a fever, three to five days later you break out in a rash and your body is wracked with unbearable pain, hence the lovely nickname. No pill for this one either. Cross your fingers.”

After days filled with jungle hikes and soccer games by the river with the local children, our legs and feet are dotted with various insect bites and blemished with open, seeping wounds. We worry about the diseases we cannot take measures to prevent, but we don’t worry about malaria.

Kyle will return to Purdue University in Indiana and while he is studying for his preliminary exams for his doctorate in Exercise Physiology, Ma and Pa parasite who settled down in one of Kyle’s red blood cells, despite his strict regimen of anti-malarial pills, will be getting busy making their little parasitic families. As their family grows and they become great-great…grandparents, the cell will become overcrowded and explode, forcing their family to separate and find new homes. Light fevers, fatigue, and headaches will come and go and Kyle will write them off to his long hours of stressful studying, completely unaware of the malaria Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, and general merrymaking. Exams over, he will hop on a plane to France where he is to attend a conference in, of all things, Immunology in Monaco. After three failed spinal taps, a fever of 106, shivers, aches, vomiting, and three days in a hospital in Nice where doctors, having eliminated a number of horrible deadly diseases, inform him, “Good News, you’ve got malaria,” Kyle will finally make it the conference on its last day with the help of his caring advisor Mike Flynn.

Kyle, a true man of the world, will be the first person to contract malaria in Honduras, ignore the signs in Indiana, and be hospitalized with it in France.

Back in the days when two men traveling in Honduras were known as explorers, not tourists, the remedy for malaria was gin mixed with sugar, carbonated water, and quinine. Today, we pop our little white pills and run off to play in the jungle.

It’s amazing how much confidence a pill can give a fella.

Each year, nearly a million people across the world die from malaria. In some hard-hit areas of Africa, nearly two people die from malaria every minute. The disease is treatable and largely preventable, but many do not have access to the proper medicines. Kyle is lucky.

Heading out on a trip somewhere tropical? Visit the CDC’s website (cdc.gov) to learn about areas where malaria is a concern. Malaria varies by region and different prophylactic medications are recommended depending on where you are going. Some are taken daily and some weekly. Once you have the info, visit your doctor to get some drugs.

But remember that Kyle took drugs and look what happened to him. He’s walking around campus talking to anyone who will listen, “What, you’ve never had a tropical disease before? Oh, I have. It was no big deal. My brother dragged me out to the Honduran jungle. A mosquito carrying a very rare type of malaria was heading right for him. I pushed him out of the way and took the bite. Some would say I am a hero. I think I’m just a regular guy…”

Whether he is trying to place guilt or brag, I’m not sure, but Kyle is quick to remind me of the score:

Exotic Tropical Disease Scoreboard: Kyle- 1 Kelsey- 0

Great Moments in Travel

I’m thankful for a lot of things; among them are Great Moments in Travel. I wrote a column about a few a couple years ago.

Read Away…

Great Moments in Travel
By Kelsey Timmerman

Baja, Mexico-

Moonlight Sonata is a creepy song, especially when it’s played by a vampire.

His white hands pick out the tune across the dusty keys. The notes drift out of the old baby grand and, weighted with misery, fall to the dirty concrete floor. Each one slowly crawls up the paint-chipped walls. Soon the room is filled with a multitude of lurking notes, which slowly fade, only to be replaced once more by the ghostly white hands on the ivory keys.

Senor Nicholas, owner/haunter of the piano museum in the ghost town of El Triunfo, south of La Paz, is wearing a yellow shirt that is disturbingly see-through. His neck and his face are powdered white, his lips are painted red; his hair looks freshly perm-ed and newly dyed orangish-red. I can’t decide if he looks more like an old woman after a particularly unsuccessful trip to the beautician or an androgynous vampire after a particularly unsuccessful trip to the beautician.

Sr. Nicholas may not be physically able to smile because of the amount of makeup he is wearing, but he sure can play the piano. He plays one song after another and when he finally comes to a dramatic run of the keyboard, every one in the room applauds at its finish.

He insists that each one of us signs his guestbook.

No matter how hard we try, we are unable to coax him into the sunlight.

Kathmandu, Nepal-

Buddha likes Coca Cola? Who knew?

The young lamas fill a brass cup before the straight-faced gold Buddha on the ornately decorated shrine. All of this world is suffering, but Lord Buddha needs his Coke. They light two sticks of incense, back away from the shrine, bow, and leave.

I am sitting across from the shrine on the floor, a steaming cup of putrid, buttery, salt tea before me, wishing that I could get a splash of Coke to wash down my heaping bowl of noodles.

At the head of the room, Khenpo Sange, who is your exact mental picture of a monk - chubby, menacing grimace, glowing smile, shaved head, and bright robes - holds court. A steady stream of worshippers coming to pay their respects enter the room, do a double take at in my direction, bow three times, and discuss matters with Khenpo. Conversation takes place in Tibetan, Nepalese, Taiwanese, and, occasionally, even a little English directed at me.

Hours pass in this manner, marked by a cheap, rip-off of a traditional Swiss cuckoo clock, which pathetically chimes out “Happy Birthday” on the hour.

Upon entering the deserted desert town of El Triunfo, I could have never guessed that down one of its few side streets and through a weathered old door in a dilapidated building, was a piano museum where a very odd pianist waits days, weeks, and likely, months for an audience to entertain. Likewise, on a plane somewhere above the Himalaya Mountains, watching the movie starring Chris Rock’s voice as a white blood cell with an attitude, “Osmosis Jones,” I could have never dreamed that I was about to enter a world with Coke drinking Buddha, saffron clad monks, and cuckoo clocks.

What is more out of place: The androgynous vampire’s sonata in the Mexican desert, the Coke awaiting Buddha’s belly, the cuckoo clock interrupting a monk’s prayers with “Happy Birthday,” or me?

Sometimes the stars align properly and the travel gods bless us with a Great Moment in Travel, a moment or two where we think, “Wow, I can’t believe I am here!” It’s important that when such an experience is playing out that we soak it all in. Breathe it. Taste it. Smell it. Feel it.

Before we set out on any new adventures to places where we have never been, we create mental images of where and how our time will be spent. We try to picture the mountain trail we hope to hike, the ruins we intend to visit, the cobbled streets, the markets, and the friends we will make. These preconceived notions are fueled by images we see in brochures, on the internet, and on TV. We have expectations. We have plans. We think about the unexpected and we get nervous. The trip we plan is often worlds apart from the trip we take.

Trips start at A and end at B, just as we had planned, but it’s the unique characters and unexpected experiences in between that we will remember for a lifetime.

I can still hear Senor Nicholas’s haunting notes. I can see and smell the burning incense with its sweet musky wisps of smoke surrounding the golden Buddha. With time, and with each telling, the notes from the baby grand become clearer and the incense sweeter. Unforgettable experiences. Unexpected. Great Moments in Travel.

Happy Halloween from Castle Dracula

In 2003 I spent the night alone in Castle Dracula and it has kind of become a blogging tradition that each Halloween I share the experience. You can READ THE STORY YOURSELF or…I’LL READ IT TO YOU. (Warning: I perform my own music and sound effects!)

Geoff Hassing also did a cartoon to accompany the story:

Doesn’t this guy just piss you off?

If you are the Chinese government he does. They aren’t to happy with George W. Bush who met him in public at a recent ceremony and said, “I admire the Dalai Lama a lot. I support religious freedom.”

It’s good to see a public official do something that’s not in the best interest of trade and money now and then. Go Bush!

How can you not just love the Dalai Lama? He’s always wearing that holy smile that has a bit of mischief behind it like he might have slipped a whoopee cushion onto some dignitaries chair.

Speaking of monks…below the cut you’ll find a story I wrote way back in 2004 about one that is Bulletproof.

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Billionaire limit-pusher can’t be found

Steve Fossett is missing.

And it’s not the first time.

When I was in Australia in 2001 I went sailing with a fella who saved Fossett’s butt on one of his misadventures. Below the cut, you’ll find a story from the Travelin’ Light archives about Fossett’s savior Laurie Piper.

Let’s hope that Fossett has another Laurie Piper in his future.

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A great weekend to be a writer

Writers’ conferences are depressing and they are uplifting.

The truth is always thrown in your face: how the slush piles are leaning towers of crappy writing; how slim the chances of you being published actually are. But for me this conference was mostly uplifting for a couple of reasons.

1) Every conference I’ve attended I leave feeling blessed to write nonfiction. There are a lot of places for me to publish my work and buildup the ever important “platform.” But the poor fiction writers carrying around their 858-page space/time travel romance fantasy novel they describe as “like Harry Potter, but with more sex and no wizards, and…you know…in space,” you’d have to be heartless not to feel their pain. There are very few magazines that publish fiction and they have to write their entire book before someone will look at it to buy. All I have to do is write a sample chapter and a book proposal.

2) They like my idea! An agent sat next to me at lunch as I was telling a little about my WAIW? quest. He was excited about the idea and gave me his card. While asking another agent questions about how the author-agent relationship develops (since this appears to be my next step) she got excited about my idea and gave me her card. That’s two agents who I wasn’t even trying to win over asking me to send them my proposal. Exciting stuff indeed.

Believe it or not this wasn’t even the highlight of my weekend.

Yesterday a childhood friend got married and I got to see a lot of my other childhood friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. Two of them, separately stopped me at the wedding reception and asked why I hadn’t had anything in the hometown paper in awhile. They enjoy my Travelin’ Light column and miss reading them.

Writing is all about the big payoff and it doesn’t always come from agents or publishers. It comes from regular people after a day in the field, or trucking, or building a barn, or whatever, taking a few minutes to read your story and enjoying it.

Thanks Jeff and Travis.

Today’s writing Zen:

When you are looking for an agent they are nowhere to be found. When you’re not, there they are.

Agents show more interest in your project when other agents have shown interest in your project.

The writing that pays the best is what you contribute for free.

Home

Hong Kong to Chicago – 14 hours

Layover in Chicago – 12 hours

# of times I dozed yesterday as I fought off sleep until evening – 21, including 4 times during my haircut. (Yep, I got one.)

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I’ll be posting some homecoming posts either later today or tomorrow. Until then, an essay I wrote about Home awaits you below the cut. I wrote it 3 years ago – it has some typos and flow issues, but seeing how we’re so close, I’ll let you read it anyhow.

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An Overdue Shoutout

Three months in Asia and it’s about time I give a shout out to a very important someone…

To My Constitution: You Rock!

She (yep, My Constitution is female) handled long plane flights, Bengali food, Khmer cuisine, and Chinese spice without even the slightest “irregularity.”

Let’s hope this post isn’t premature. I still have a 14-hour plane flight tomorrow and I ate shrimp tonight.

Below the cut I’ve posted a column I wrote about when she wasn’t so regular.

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When being an American Sucks

People always want to talk politics and when they talk about the policies of the American government they use the pronoun “You.”

Today I made the mistake of getting in a political conversation with a Canadian and a Brit. I normally avoid stuff like this. But there were a few beers involved.

Of course they were mitching and boaning about the USA’s foreign policy. I chimed in with a couple of points.

If you are a country and there is bad stuff happening to you where do you turn to? That’s right, the USA. If the USA tries to help you, people will question its underlying motives. If they don’t, you’ll be pissed and so will everyone else who thinks you are getting a raw deal. The USA is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. (Note: None of this applies to Iraq. There is not enough alcohol on Earth to get me talking about Iraq with anyone.)

That’s it. That was my point.

The Canadian told me that this line of thinking from me scared him. That he wouldn’t expect to here such things from a young liberal.

To back up my point, I mentioned Bangladesh. The people of Bangladesh have very bad feelings towards American policy, although not towards Americans (they treated me great). They think that in Washington someone is sitting around and thinking about how the USA can exploit Bangladesh. Personally, I would be surprised if anyone in Washington sits around and thinks about Bangladesh much.

Their comeback for this is that Bangladesh has natural gas that the USA is interested in. I don’t know anything about this so I bring up another example, Kosovo.

The Canadian and Brit are 35 years my senior, which I have to respect. They’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of things. I’m sure they have some valid points. But they don’t have much of an answer for Kosovo.

I wrote a column on Kosovo a few years back and it pretty much sums up my stance on the USA’s no-win situation when it comes to foreign policy. It’s about as political as you’ll ever see me get…unless I’ve a got a beer or three in me.

You can read it below the cut.

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