Saint Augustine - The Joy of Created History

I’m finally back in Florida, but instead of driving all the way south I decided to stay a couple of days in Saint Augustine. I visited this town a couple of years ago, so I was not expecting to be impressed, but I was. The place is even better, or maybe I’m carrying with me a new standard that makes me appreciate it that way. The weather was the one you would expect in paradise. Those narrow streets with charming shops make you feel like in a doll house. And the dolls were walking around too.

Now, I don’t fall for the historical claims of the city. Yes, it’s the oldest continuously populated settlement in the US from the time it was founded, but that doesn’t imply that you are going to find anything that old. I mean, the place was burned to the ground by pirates… twice. So when they point out things like “the oldest school in the country” what they really mean is the place where the oldest school has been rebuilt over and over again. 

But that’s ok. This town had no the intention to be a touristic attraction when it was created, and none of the buildings would have survived anyway. The last time I came, they were holding one single storehouse with the original material, and the place was clearly collapsing. This time I saw construction workers putting it together again and replacing 80% of the wood. After all, history is our present fantasy of the past.

In “Castillo de San Marcos”, a really impressive fortress, they have actors in Spaniard uniforms making tours and demos on how the artillery was used. They try to mimic Spanish, but you can’t understand a single world even if that is your first language. It’s a cute caricature, but tourists from Spain roll their eyes in indignation.

The scripts are written for kids, and they try to portrait pirates as something very Disney and funny, no as the scum they really were. Every time I visit a city surrounded by walls I try to imagine the nightmare of having to go to bed without knowing if, in the middle of the night, a group of bandits will come along, stole your goods, kill your children, rape your wife and burn your house. Certainly, lawyers are a drag, but I prefer that over the law of steel that even now rules some countries. I just think that by ignoring the misery of the past we lost the opportunity to stimulate gratitude for the present.

If you have a chance to visit this fortress, you will never regret it. The second level has walls at the high of the hip, so it’s a matter of time for an idiot to fall and make the city spoil the architecture with plastic panels or something like that. So go now that it’s pristine.

Ok, but the fact that history is used to put up a show doesn’t diminish my experience, the same way that knowing the real name of the actors doesn’t ruin a movie. The place glows at night, especially now with all the Christmas lights and the horses making rides in shiny carriages. The alleys are so lovely that people in trolleys practically high-five those sitting at the bars along the street. The beauty in the architecture of the surrounding neighborhoods makes it worthy to walk every block from one corner to another.   

There is no place for “clubbing” and that’s a good thing because the atmosphere is more for dining, walking and having drinks with live music. I found a couple of lovely red-neck places where I spent the nights. People always look at me strangely when I get in, first when they notice my accent and second when I order vodka instead of beer. But I always end up shaking hands and sharing interesting conversations. I prefer to target old people because I always learn something and also because I don’t have to compete with annoying smartphones. The last night I had a conversation with a seventy years old woman that lives a block away from the bar. She seems to be in the ideal retirement: a couple of hours from the house of her daughter, living in a nice safe neighborhood and making new friends every day. The muscles on her face show a resting smile.

The hostel I used was ok, but I got a rash for bedbugs. This hostel thing has its charm, but after a while, you can grow tired of the drawbacks. It’s lovely to wake up surrounded by twenty-year-old European girls in pink t-shirts, but you may also get a group of snoring bikers.

The good thing is that our minds work like history: over time I’ll start to forget the struggle, and I’ll gradually romanticize the beautiful details. In the end, we finish up with memories of little historical accuracy but huge entertainment value.

Savannah

Last Tuesday I arrived in Savannah, Georgia. You never hear about this place, but I was curious to check it out. One of the road trip books I reviewed was recommending it as the most beautiful city in the US. The editor was quoting a European source, and once I drove in, I understood immediately why. Savannah is old, but not artificially so as other tourist destinations. The neighborhoods are authentically in disarray since the 18^th century. But the level of chaos is just enough to make the view romantic. People have real lives in those two store Victorian homes with balconies covered by vines. 

The hotel I picked looked like an abandoned house. I got closer, looking for the “no trespassing” sign and opened a thin wood door leaf. On the other side, there was an office in the place of the original living room. A shy guy with shifting personality told me to come back at business hours (twenty minutes later). I wanted to see that house from inside, so I came back, and he showed me upstairs. Inside it looks like another house, perfectly well maintained and with this characteristic smell of old wood that transports you in time. All the secretive doors and cabinets were there. There was a cover fireplace, big closets embedded into the walls and a door to a creepy dark attic. I loved it. I was the only one asking for a room that night, so the whole place was mine.

The rooms are separated by glass windows, and just darkness can be seen on the other side. The rooms are secured with big metallic keys, so heavy that they can be used as weapons. You need to close two windows before going to the restroom, one of them facing an old white bathtub. To complement all this, a dark fluffy cat was walking through the cornices and glazing inside now and then.

I stood there two nights, but unfortunately, I didn’t see any old lady holding a candle or something like that. All the creepiness belonged to this world.

The downtown itself is full of small impractical parks, some of them with the remains of political figures underground. It was very usual to fertilize public parks with the flesh of local celebrities. Again, the disarray is just enough to make the place attractive. The trees where people were hanged are still there to tell the story, but those killed by law were left to rot for several days and then tossed away. That was the fate of an Irish immigrant woman. Her sentence was postponed eight months to allow her to deliver a baby. She was with child when she assassinated her master by drowning.

I also visited the Bonaventure cemetery, and it’s lovely. Crypts dated at the mid 18^th century completely abandoned, eroded and gray, with terrifying virgins rolling their eyes to the heavens, covered by a thick layer of smog; a paradise for photographers.

But Savannah is more than an American Transylvania. The River Side offers a mile of bars, restaurants and candy shops in front of a rocky street that nevertheless is open to regular traffic, but you have to be careful in this speed reducer road. The brick buildings follow the standard of old looking alleys and intentionally unattended painting.

I loved the place. I'll definitely come back, maybe after passing away. Ghosts must have fun in here pulling people's blankets at night.

Small towns

On this trip, I have to stop in several small towns when it gets dark. Some of those places are so isolated and boring that I don’t even mention them. Like Mount Airy, North Carolina. That was the town where Andy Griffith was born, so there is a road with his name and even a museum of memorabilia. But nothing else ever happened there. For me, it was too much rurality. 

Before that, I ended in Charlottesville, Virginia, after tossing a coin at the end of Skyline Drive. That place has a perfect balance between rural landscapes and city facilities. The University of Virginia is there and I always love what colleges do to the city plan. Open spaces, plenty of walking friendly miles and just enough commerce.

I also visited Monticello, the iconic house of Thomas Jefferson that appears in the nickel coin. The place is certainly a peaceful spot on Earth, and Jefferson made the best of it by architecting and designing his own home. You can tell he may have done better with a second chance but is admirable taking into account this was just a hobby. He inherited this land and bought much more acres directly from the crown of England, including the place where the Natural Bridge is located.

It’s also remarkable how many slaves lived in Monticello. Only two were granted freedom, and that was because they were sons of Jefferson himself. That may sound standard for the times, but this comes from the man who printed the phrase “all man are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. 

History, where it actually exists, is certainly enlightening.

Even three miles from Monticello, the Court Square is so beautiful, simple and peaceful that just sitting down on a bench is a relaxing experience. I’ve never seen the light falling as it does in Virginia. There are places that have a peaceful atmosphere that invites thoughts, and this small town has it. The little boulevard on Main Street will give you that dining and walk experience, not as hectic as a city but not as dull as a town. Jefferson knew it better, and that is why he’s still resting on his back at this place.  

Atlanta

I spent a couple of nights in an empty hostel in downtown Atlanta. It’s a strange city with two mayor highways cutting it by the middle. The distribution of businesses is odd too. You may have to walk ten blocks of administrative buildings and vacant lots to find a single convenient store. But the driving is not a nightmare as in other cities. I actually parked for free in front of my room. Locals complain about how unfriendly the city is for walkers. But it’s possible to walk. Even with the homeless infestation, it’s not as bad as it is in the West. The problem is that the walking is not that appealing unless you go to the suburbs or the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial.

The most fascinating thing of the city turned out to be a couple of acquaintances I made in the hostel. One was a brilliant TV producer, book writer and human rights advocate that were alternating residences between Washington DC and Atlanta. After a brief introduction in the hostel's living room, we got engaged in an interesting conversation about socio-politics that extended up to one in the morning. We stopped because a lady upstairs complained about the noise. This guy has an almost encyclopedic knowledge on every topic he touches, and quickly I resolved to make questions instead of arguments since I was getting beaten. The fact of having to do actual research for journalistic work gave him the proficiency of a History professor.  I checked one of his books and he has reasons to suspect the FBI is not very happy with his inquiries.

The other character was actually the manager of the hostel, a Jewish-American that claimed to have had a Nazi armband stained with the very blood of Adolf Hitler. The whole story was fascinating, and he claims to have been burglarized by neo-Nazis searching for the item. He actually changed his name as per his own account. I have no way to know if that’s real or fiction, but how many times you have a guy across the table telling such stories without drinks?

Those two characters and the attractive mature redhead upstairs where the only humans in the building; a Victorian wood house one hundred fifty years old that cracked at every step. You have no idea what conversations are taking place in the air if your only source of information is the Internet.

So, close this page and go to your local bar. Find a veteran, a journalist, a Holocaust survivor descendant, a priest reject...  You may buy or not their stories, that’s not the point. It’s not a quest for information, it's a search for human contact.

Dignitas

As I mentioned in my last blog, my personal life became more interesting than the landscapes I was driving trough. But respecting the people involved implies not been able to tell the whole story. I’m not longer just looking at the window and meditating, I’m taking action. That was the whole purpose of “DoingIsKing”: shake the analytical phase and force some pragmatic adventures.

My thesis at the beginning of the trip was like this: If I think too much, I’ll be overwhelmed by the options and discouraged by existential conclusions. If I just act, I’ll create habits and get into a comfort zone and stop growing. I was trapped in the “thinking” phase for so long that I needed an ‘action shot’.

After four months traveling, parking in completely unknown neighborhoods, drinking beer with road workers, dating woman with phosphorescent hair, dancing in gay bars, sleeping in the same room with people hiding from the mafia, talking politics with BBC producers, furnishing with Netherlands carpenters, chatting about photography with Japanese students and babysitting with old friends grown older; I realized that “action” also has its burn out.

After Washington DC in Maryland, and Arlington in Virginia, I needed some space and silence to invite meditation again. So I took a long route at the top of the Appalachians. The Skyline Drive is so generous in views that you don’t have to be worried to miss one particular spot. I drove two days with perfectly clear skies and stop at creeks, meadows and valleys. The silence is so perfect that when you get out, the only thing you hear is the cracking sound of the car while getting cold. Then I went to the Luray Cavers. There the silent is so deep that you just hear yourself. It’s always an intimidating experience to hear your heartbeats, mostly because you don’t know the final number they are decrementing. In those cavers, there is a series of hammers electronically activated that hit certain stalactites in such a way that whole tunes can be played. The tour guide was careless enough to let me alone in that chamber and kept walking with the rest of the group. I sat down, press the button to initiate the sequence and closed my eyes. That was the sound of cones of calcium carbonate formed over millions of years talking to the calcium of my vestibular system just some decades old. I’m this minuscule instant of conscience through whish Nature enjoys herself.

Nature always humiliate me, makes me feel like I’m not gaining my place. Dignity is the only word that comes to the rescue. Pity is the enemy.   

Nothing in Nature inspires me compassion. It’s all a constant source of admiration. This craving thirst for glory calls our bones with the weight of the giant rock it once belonged.

Following my route south, I stopped at the Natural Bridge, an arc more than five hundred millions years old carved with water trough granite formations. I won't start listing numbers in feet and tons. The point is that we belong, atom per atom, to the realm of majestic things. Only our mind can contradict that physic fact. A brain that talks too much, ignoring the natural impulses of the heart, degrades a man into a couch and a speech into a bark.

Finally, I arrived to Atlanta, Georgia, where the body of Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife have been kept in a crypt just one blog away from where he was born. Over and over again we keep placing big stones on the burial place of big men as if by doing so we release them from their misleading coil and make them wear one that weights as much as their actions.     

We use our mind to respond to the question “how to get there”, no “why not to bother”. The smarter we are, the smaller we get when choosing the wrong questions.

The Scatological Paradox

I’ve gone through some very interesting experiences lately. This has been the most transforming sequence of perceptions and actions that I have been through since I came to the USA. This blog forces me to digest every town before moving to the next; a healthy process that I recommend to everyone.

But the problem with blogs is that they're public in nature, so I can’t expose every single detail here. One Costa Rican writer, Max Jimenez, used to say that we could be better writers if we just get over the fear of being known. But that’s not the only obstacle. Any number of people will also tie their personal life with mine (even inadvertently) and I can’t go on to make it public without their consent. I have strong reasons to believe I’ll never get that authorization.

So, let’s use the power of analogy and generalization.

I went to Washington. The capital always makes me think of sex. Not just for that monument but for the image of Arlington. Sex and death are great analogies: they are both natural hence people try to keep their references to them brief in normal conversation. We are scared of both but inevitably attracted to their symbols. We don’t like to be harassed or frightened, yet we pay to go to places where we are targets for both.

I call this the scatological paradox: Something that we reject and move towards at the same time. Our attraction to food and our repulsion of its byproducts represents many of the dilemmas we confront in life. How to be in love and not get dispirited by all the mundane details of sharing space? How to want a baby and not the diapers? How to tell the truth and not been alone?

It’s not just the disgusting things that we hide. We hide extremely positive things: unjustified optimism, ambitious goals, free hugs, kiss greetings and inopportune love. We city people are so diligent on been proper that we miss on the opportunity to live. None of the monuments I have visited was erected on behalf of a man with such an attitude. None of them were wary or lacked opposition. None of those creators made sarcastic remarks against their enemies; instead, they directly raised a sword and ran toward them.

I don’t think that loneliness is a price too high to pay. The company of cowards is sterile anyway.

The pursuit of affection is similar to the stock market: do you like to win very little very often or do you prefer to lose most of the time and one day hit it big? Common wisdom says that the first strategy is better. Mathematics favors the second choice if you have the guts to embrace it.

Some of us have no option but to develop bravery since the smell of routine and safety turns our stomachs. There can’t be such a thing as a shy dreamer.

Can you read the deeply personal history between lines? If not, I have become a good literary codifier. If you can, then you are personally involved.

Race of Dreamers

I went north and stopped in Princeton. A cousin of mine is studying engineering there. He was granted a scholarship and is now living in one of the most privileged university environments in the world. This campus is extraordinary. I can’t think of a better place to drive your mind into abstract subjects. There is nothing to distract you, and every square foot is a good place to sit and read. The architecture is delightful; sober and peaceful.  

I love the arrogant attitude of young people as they walk up and down. They want to change the world, and that’s the state of mind every human should hold in their twenties. They are reading the numbers, looking the facts and measuring the elements. The problems of the world seem pretty obvious at this stage, and they are going to fix it. Later on, they are going to experience a phase of humiliating reality. This humbling period, that comes on in your late twenties and early thirties, has the unintended effect of killing dreams. Losers celebrate that and use that lapse to confirm their bias. They will try to defend the thesis that “reality” is about routine, hard work and taxes. They'll love that confirmation since they are only capable of surviving in an aseptic world, where nothing is magic.  

Surpassing that phase is vital. After years of beatings and failures, you can decide to learn the rules but keep your dreams. The pieces on the chessboard don’t work the way books tell us, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work at all. The real rules are natural and beautiful and, as every natural and beautiful thing on Earth, they have nothing to do with justice.

Our dreams, then, get reborn, not as an innocent hope but as an aggressive project.

That evening in Princeton I walked into a sub shop. The owner in his smock was serving fruit juices behind the counter. The place was called “Tico” which is a nickname for Costa Rican used in Central America. So I started to speak Spanish with the man at the cash register – and it turns out that he was my boss when I was working as a Black Jack dealer to pay for my college. Now he is the owner of this business.

We talked for a long time about the big opportunities that this country has to offer. I told him one of my oldest observations: that this place has a permanent affluence of immigrants that are filtered for their bravery. Good or bad, people that come here have the guts to leave everything behind and start from scratch, even while learning a new language. That is a permanent infusion of dreamers. No other country has that advantage.  

I don’t mind seeing people with limitations. What I can’t stand is people who settle for something.

We don't have the option of quitting our dreams; that's like quitting being humans. A man without dreams does not amount to more than a dog. The fact of walking upright is just misleading.

The next day I went to Manhattan. I have been there several times before, but I needed another dose.

This is a city that I’d like to hug and kiss. I LOVE it! The vibrant rain of colors from those gigantic ads in Times Square, the crowd crossing the streets, the women in long coats with furry necks, the men in black suits, the teens skating in Bryant Park and the loud howl of ambulances: all was there. I’d never guessed that a hurricane had just crossed Manhattan. 

I went to Walt Street from the Empire State using the subway and, even with some routes floated, this city has no intention to stop. They are building a beautiful skyscraper in the place of the old World Trade Center. That night I saw the red lights on the cranes at the top of that construction flashing above the clouds.

That’s why I love New York. My soul gets reloaded just by walking 42nd street. This place reminds me that this is not just the land of the free, but also, and above all, the home of the brave. With so many cultures, races and religions, the only real identity is this: those who choose to keep dreaming.