Now I’m in Charlotte north Carolina airport. Not having fun right now. My first return flight was late so I missed my connecting flight and no they did not give me a hotel room or a reimbursement or even an apology. I think that makes these situations worse when people keep telling you that you’re entitled to refunds or a hotel room, but the airline makes it clear you get nothing. They act like they’re doing you a favor getting you on a flight to the place you paid to get to.
So now I’ve got a full 12 hours hanging out in another airport and almost everything’s closed.
On this trip to Salt Lake City I was starting to think that nothing could bring me down. When I finally got to my airbnb and got in and then walked out to find a restaurant I found myself filled with overwhelming joy. I’d been so bored and frustrated sitting in Chicago all day but I think the entry I made about police brutality was real good for me so I guess it was a good use of my time.
So I had a vacation filled with joy. At first I couldn’t find a restaurant. They had all lied on Google Maps and said they closed at midnight but actually they closed at 11. But then I found a restaurant called Nacho Daddy. A freaking nacho based restaurant. Genius. I should have tried the asian chicken nachos but I went–
–OH gosh this is boring. Boring journal entry so far.
Maybe I just speed it up? Next morning I went to a craft fair and farmer’s market in Pioneer Park across the street from my airbnb. Then I went on a trolley tour of the city, then I wandered around City Creek Mall which is a shopping center with a beautiful stream running through the whole center of it. Then the highlight of my trip I went to a haunted house saturday night. Fear Factory. Best haunted house I ever been to. It was in an old converted factory and they integrated so many aspects of that factory into the experience. One part actually legit scared me, which was I think the only time a haunted house has ever done that to me. It was a catwalk section that seemed four maybe six stories up and you’re just walking over this metal grate with nothing underneath except some corpses dangling down there. It’s just this rickety old catwalk way the fuck up there and all of a sudden some zombie jumps out and starts jumping up and down like she’s trying to bring the whole thing crashing down.
I upgraded for 4 dollars to get a glow-stick necklace that signified that I consent to the actors touching me. It wasn’t scary touch, it was mostly affectionate touch, which didn’t work so well to add to the experience but it didn’t detract from it.
But I found it odd that only maybe one in twenty people had upgraded. That seemed so weird to me. I didn’t even question the idea. Of course I upgrade for the full experience. But the vast majority of people do not.
It’s one of those things that makes me feel like I live in a whole other world from most people. I interact with other humans very differently from most I think.
When I first got to Salt Lake City, the first thing I saw after walking out of my airbnb was someone smoking crack just outside and my first instinct was to stop and talk to him “hey dude, is that crack? Can I get a selfie with you smoking crack?”
I didn’t do that. I was too shy. But it’s weird that I don’t have those normal fear or disgust reactions that normal people do regarding other humans.
So anyway on my way back from the haunted house I stopped at a little music festival and danced for a few minutes then had some dinner at a –Taste of Louisiana I think it was called–then I somehow after all that, I still made it to the Planetarium for a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon laser show. Did something like 26 thousand steps that day.
So Sunday I sort of took it easy cuz I’m old. I went to Zest Kitchen which was a phenomenal vegan restaurant for lunch. Then I went to some Neil Degrasse Tyson shit at the Planetarium about dark matter and the universe.
Then in the evening I went on a stargazing tour to Antelope Island. That was probably the worst tour I’ve ever been on. I kind of feel bad for the guys. Just two guys with a telescope and no idea what they were doing. No chairs or refreshments, just two hours of waiting for them to fix the telescope finally to give up and go back.
But it’s weird, I wasn’t in a bad mood about it. It’s just another life experience. I started to feel like this joy I feel is somehow like a guarantee or something… like it was just feeling real unnatural to me that I would just be so damn happy for so many days in a row and even a terrible tour doesn’t get me down.
Not having depression anymore is weird.
It’s like it was scary, like being just happy all the time feels so weird, like it’s not supposed to be this way, like I’m cheating at life or something and it’s all gonna come crashing down when I least expect it.
But I know logically that’s not true. We are meant to feel joy and wonder every single day. That is the natural state of things, not this stress filled rat race that we all know doesn’t actually matter but we can’t break out of it because it’s our entire society now.
The vast majority of Americans and humans in general I think have completely lost touch with what it means to actually be human. We learned it from our parents and TV.
So on the way back from the stargazing tour, the guide mentioned to his partner that he was gonna go to a different gas station because it was “less sketchy” and then later mentioned that I shouldn’t walk through Pioneer Park after dark because of the homeless people that hang out there.
I just can’t wrap my brain around feeling this way.
I just don’t get how someone–I mean this guy was a career skier and tour guide. He’d led countless river rafting trips and I can only assume he regularly does double black diamond runs, but he’s scared to walk through a park at night and interact with people who aren’t as fortunate as him.
I just don’t understand.
When I interact with homeless people, I don’t feel these feelings. It’s obvious to me that all you need to do is treat them with respect and genuinely see them as equals in the eyes of God. That’s all you need to do to stay safe in those situations is see them and treat them as equals. unfortunately most of us are so addicted to feeling better than others that we can’t do it.
And people will no doubt call me naive, that I’m putting myself in danger, but at the end of the day the proof is in the “pudding”–the reality of the situation. The reality is that I’m still doing fantastic and everyone else is living in fear of something that has literally never happened to anyone they have ever met.
I guess for me, how I determine what to be afraid of is based on the stories I’ve heard from my friends and I can’t think of a single friend or family member ever in my entire life ever telling a story of being harmed by a homeless person. Like, I honestly can’t think of a single one. Can you?
On contrast, I hear a new story of pain and suffering related to automobiles nearly every day. I know more people than I can count who have destroyed their financial future in automobiles. I have two relatives who died in cars. I have two friends who survived automobile murder attempts. I met a guy who’d been in 37 car accidents, all of them as a passenger. I’ve known others who were so deeply traumatized by cars that they know they will never be able to drive.
Just story after story after story I’ve heard of automobile related suffering.
Not one homeless person related suffering story. Like, I literally have never met a single person who has ever told me a story of randomly getting mugged or assaulted on the street.
But for some reason everyone is terrified of it. We are all fearless in cars no matter how much automobile related death and suffering surrounds us, but then we are terrified of other human beings just because they happen to be struggling at life.
I just don’t get the way people calibrate their fear instincts.
Some people would say I should consider myself lucky, and I do. This gives me a huge advantage in life–I mean not specifically being able to interact with homeless people–I just mean my general attitude of seeing everyone as being on the same team regardless of who they are or what they’re doing.
I finished a book called People Skills by Robert Bolton while on this trip. It was yet another fantastic self help book that reinforces my belief that I’m better off in this perspective.
We are all a team here. Even if you’re pointing a gun in my face and screaming hate, you’re still on the same team as me. We’re still human.
Anyway, I went into a Mormon book and art store. They had a sixty thousand dollar painting of Jesus that was actually really nice.
And I was thinking about how my attitudes about religion has changed in the last few years. Like before recently I couldn’t really appreciate the beauty and history of a religion. I do have some pretty traumatizing experiences with religion including a woman murdered in the name of Jesus on the front lawn of my childhood home by the youngest member of the family that introduced me to Christianity as a child.
But now I see religion kind of similarly to alcohol: it’s an addiction and it’s deeply harmful, but there are also deeply important spiritual aspects and despite the harm, they have a rich culture and history that I can actually appreciate even if I don’t participate.
Anyway, they had a self help section there and I found a couple books that I added to my Audible wish list. One I really wanted was a book written for Mormon wives about how to be supportive toward a husband who maybe doesn’t quite meet all your or God’s expectations. I like those kinds of books that give advice for people completely different from myself But it wasn’t available on Audible and I don’t like reading actual books.
So the next few days I listened to a book I found there called The Anatomy of Peace by Arbinger Institute. Another fantastic book that I finished today. It was told kind of like a story of these families going to this weird counseling place and they all have really unhealthy attitudes toward life and their family, but attitudes that are like, the norm in our society.
I live in such a different world from everyone else. Everyone has an enemy and often your enemy is your own family. I can’t even imagine what that life might be like except practically everyone lives like that and doesn’t’ understand what it’s like to not live like that. They see their kids as something to be controlled and fixed instead of seeing them as human beings.
This book did a great job of illustrating how we usually see other people as objects that we can either get something from or who stands in our way.
“We are all of one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.”
Anyway, then Monday I started the official part of my trip and went up to Park City to a big fancy pants hotel. Wish it was ski season because that mountain was beautiful. Maybe a little too luxurious for my taste. I mean, I like luxuries like air conditioning and fine chocolate but like to keep it within reason.
But I can’t complain. I love my job. Boy oh boy do they treat us well.
After the big company meeting I went skeet shooting, ATV driving and archery–uh shooting? bowing? — then rode a scary gondola to a big fancy dinner halfway up the mountain.
It was all such an amazing and wonderful vacation–until the trip home.
Now I’m still in this airport. It’s just after midnight and I have to wait all the way until 7AM before my replacement flight boards. I’m not flying quite so high anymore. But I guess I’m not as pissed off about this 12 hour delay as I was when I started writing.