L.C. Barlow's Blog, page 2

Why Can't People Live Beyond Suffering?

Supposedly, they can, though this is reserved for those who have “found enlightenment.”

Suffering is different from pain in that pain will always exist, but suffering is a result of resisting pain. Once pain is accepted - or, rather, the situation is accepted - suffering ends. Once one has learned to resist nothing, one has reached enlightenment.

An example in metaphor of this is provided in Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, in which a man walks up to a butcher and tells/asks him, “I want your best cut of meat. What do you recommend?” The butcher replies, “Every cut of meat here is the best cut of meat.” Realizing this about not just best cuts of meat at a butcher, but rather about every moment of life, is enlightenment. What the metaphor implies is that, no matter the pain of a situation, it is the only version of that situation you will ever experience, and, thus, it is not capable of being resisted except, perhaps, in fantasy - where the human mind likes to reside. Suffering, then, is only in fantasy, where reality is compared and contrasted, compared and contrasted against “better” versions of that reality in one’s head. Except that those alternate realities do not exist.

Finding enlightenment, one should note, is not finding happiness. As Tolle and others argue, life is not here to make one happy. Life is here to bring one awake, to consciousness, outside of the fantasies in one’s mind. Pain exists, unhappiness exists, but suffering does not have to. Of course, it even takes Buddhist monks years upon years to reach this state via more than just a logical understanding.

Perish Is Now Available on NetGalley and BookSirens

Great news!

For all you book reviewers out there (as well as anyone who enjoyed Pivot), a free copy of the second book of the Jack Harper Trilogy - Perish - is available for download in exchange for an honest review.

Note: Perish will be released on October 13, 2020, and the book is actually up for pre-order on Amazon, and I am so excited!

All important links are below:

NetGalley Link: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...

BookSirens Link: https://booksirens.com/book/MTUTOAA/T...

Amazon Pre-Order Link: https://www.amazon.com/Perish-Jack-Ha...

Bookshop Pre-Order Link: https://bookshop.org/books/perish-978...

My Current Favorite Food

Currently, my favorite food is actually a selection of cheeses that I was able to try at Rise No. 1 in Dallas, TX, but which quickly became a staple of my meals at home due to the pandemic. I remember thinking to myself when I first tried the cheese board (or chariot de fromages) at Rise many years ago, “How delicious could this possibly be?” Turns out, incredibly. I suddenly understood what people meant when they said they were “transported” by a food. It goes beyond sustenance. I highly recommend trying the cheeses I list below.




1. Boschetto al Tartufo Bianchetto. This cheese is made from sheep’s milk and contains bits of truffle throughout. It is sweet and earthy, and the deliciousness of the cheese is magnified if you shave the cheese with a cheese curler. The cheese curler also makes it delicate and soft. I cannot emphasize enough just how delicious this cheese is. It is always the one I eat first when I create a cheese board or travel to Rise No. 1.

2. Peppercorn wrapped Chevre. Though I have not been able to find the particular cheese on igourmet’s website, or anywhere else online, I’m aware that it exists because it is at Rise No.1 in Dallas. You can see it on the left side in the picture above. I suspect it is made by Montchevre, but I’m unsure. It is made from goat milk and is incredibly soft (you could dip a spoon in it, instead of using a knife) and can be crumbly. What I love about the peppercorn wrapped chevre is that it packs a punch. Not only is it soft and creamy, but the peppercorn makes it deliciously spicy.

3. Purple Haze. Cypress Grove’s Purple Haze competes with the Boschetto al Tartufo Bianchetto for my favorite cheese of all time. It is truly addicting. Lavender buds are mixed with wild-harvested fennel pollen. What this means is that it tastes like lavender and fennel mixed; the flavors are not overpowering, but just enough to make you crave more. Like the chevre, it is made from goat milk, and it is soft enough to eat with a spoon, rather than a knife. It, too, can be crumbly.

4. Perlagrigia with Truffles. This cheese I did not discover through Rise No. 1 in Dallas, but rather through igourmet online. (Because I enjoyed the Boschetto al Tartufo so much, I wanted to try several different truffle cheeses.) In contrast to the Boschetto, the Perlagrigia has a much milder flavor and reminds me of Christmas due to the cinnamon ash on its rind. I highly recommend it. It is made from cow’s milk and requires a knife to cut.

5. Tintern. This is the only POW! cheese that I am listing here. Its flavor packs a punch, such that I don’t tend to eat a ton of it all at once and usually have enough left over through two cycles of buying cheeses. What I enjoy about it is that it has a ton of chives and shallots mixed throughout it, and it actually kind of almost tastes cheddary. It is made from cow’s milk. A little bit goes a long way.

6. Saint Andre. It is a super soft, triple cream cheese made from cow’s milk. (Think something similar to brie, but without the nutty flavor.) It’s almost like eating butter or straight cream. It helps balance out cheeses like the Tintern above or the Boschetto. I highly recommend it as part of the chariot de fromages.

There are a few other cheeses that I would love to list, but I don’t remember their names, and Rise No. 1 has been off limits due to the pandemic. I likely won’t be visiting for a while; however, once I do find out what the cheeses are called, I will definitely edit my list above to add them.

I also want to say that on every cheese board, I make sure a good chunk of soft quince paste is present, as I tend to eat a little with almost every bite of cheese and crackers. I also put caramelized pecans on the side.

In terms of crackers I tend to either use water crackers by Carr’s at home. At Rise No. 1, they seem to use little crunchy and flavorless crostinis, which I actually prefer.

I hope I have inspired you to try some of the cheeses above!

What I've Been Up To During the Pandemic

I'm a person that normally goes out several times a week (and would do so even more, if I had more energy after teaching and writing). In particular, I love the Bishop Arts District in the south area of Dallas, with its Emporium Pie Shop, Eno's Pizza, Serve Cafe, and Wild Detectives Bookstore, among many other places.

However, as COVID-19 has swept across the U.S., I have been staying inside and, much to my surprise, knocked a ton of things off of my to-do list at home. These are things I normally would have postponed indefinitely.

So far, I have 1.) painted the pantry, 2.) organized my room, 3.) put baskets on the guest bedroom wall for my mother to store yarn in, 4.) emptied one of my storage units, so I don’t have to pay for it anymore, 5.) painted my mother’s room, 6.) painted my room, and 7.) added new bedding to my room.

It is amazing what a little paint will do!

Today, having finished these major items, I was able to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Pics below!

1.) Before and after pics of the pantry:





2.) Pics of the baskets used for yarn on the guest bedroom wall:





3.) Before and after pics of emptying my storage unit:





4.) Before and after pics of painting my mother’s room:



















5.) Before and after pics of painting my bedroom:

















It took about a month and a half to accomplish all of this. So, so pleased with the final result. Resting today and enjoying the fruits of my labor!

Imitation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and John Milton’s Paradise Lost

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One semester during my MFA, there were two scenes I was working on in my second novel Perish, and I was having difficulty focusing on ensuring description that was well done in those scenes. Thus, I decided to devote one of my monthly packets that I sent to my mentor on ensuring I had better wording and imagery. To do this, I imitated a section of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with the subject matter/story being that of Perish. The imitations forced me to seek words that I might otherwise not have looked for to describe these scenes. The imitations are below. I still get a kick out of them, every time I read them, so I thought I’d share.

If you are ever having trouble getting your mind to focus on a particular scene to describe it well, I suggest using an imitation exercise. It can be really helpful.



“The Raven” Imitation:



Much I gaped at this blanched Apple that violated sight so simply,

Through its blankness much meaning – much relevancy bore;

For Patrick and Derrick could not help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing fruit drenched in Lucient’s chemical chore

Plum or Melon upon Derrick’s hand drenched in Lucient’s chemical chore

With pure White from skin to core.



But the Apple, sitting idly on the blush hand, spoke only

Of one word, as if my soul in that one word it did destroy

Nothing funny did it send forth – not a chuckle did I utter –

Till I scarcely more than muttered, “I have seen such white before –

On the morrow it won’t leave me, as my Nightmares stayed before.”

With pure White from skin to core.



Startled at the laughter broken by my reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” thought I, “what it utters is of Cyrus’s cult lore

Escaped from some maniacal master whom unmerciful Disaster

Experimented fast and experimented faster with a box just like before –

Till the color of all Hope that miserable victims must adore

Turned White, skin to core.”



But the Apple still funneling all my energy into scowling,

Straight I grabbed the blank fruit out from Derrick, Patrick, and dead mentor;

Then upon my chair sinking, I clasped my cuspate knife unblinking

Weapon into weapon, thinking what this ominous flesh of yore –

What this ugly, sickly, ghastly, blank, and ominous flesh of yore –

Meant in Whiteness, skin to core.



This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing,

To the addicts whose worried eyes now burned into my sight, ignored;

This and more I sat divining, with my mouth fearlessly prying,

On the Apple’s flesh dividing so that my teeth cut into more,

On the tasteless fruit colliding so that my teeth cut into more,

Infinitum’s White, from skin to core.



Then, methought, the air grew tenser, poisoned from an unseen censer

Swung up from demon whose foot-falls thundered from beneath Earth’s stalwart floor.

“Fuck,” I thought, “Cyrus has lent thee – by some new damned leader sent me

Death – death and hell from thy memories of before;

Spit, oh spit this un-fruit and run from these memories of before!”

Quoth the Apple, “Whitest War”



Paradise Lost Imitation:



Thus Patrick parking in the closest slot

With hair red throughout all strands, and eyes

That emerald twinkled; his richly clothes inordinately

Crisp across his frame, pointed hard and long:

Lay stout singular a house, all glass as ice

As whom the fairytales name of witchy sugar,

Clear, and Postmodern, that resembled of Frank Lloyd Wright,

Philip Johnson or Alden B. Dow, whose living room

My mesmerized eye beheld, and the bedrooms,

Kitchen, within which people of all New York

Moved freest that listened to th’ bass beat:

Patrick happily stumbled on the gravel walk

The pilot of our small drug-induced team,

Deeming the house, oft, as partyers tell,

With resting anchor in his tired mind,

“Island” within our fingertips under our reality, while dream

Invested the night, and, as wished, morning delayed:

So stretched out huge in length the architecture lay

Situated on the dark grass, and never before

Had cracked or crumbled, but that the shine

And high cleanliness of all-ruling wealth

Left it in perfection to hipsters’ carefree designs,

That with little prepared souls we might

Heave ourselves within, while we sought

Alcohol of gods, and enlivened might see

How all the outside served but to bring forth

Infinite beauty, wildness and art inside

As floor to ceiling, seducing everyone

Without caution, nature and art equaled.

Forthwith up Patrick stepped from off the gravel

His immense height; on each shoulder the air

Driving backward away care’s twisting spirals, and rolled

In billows, leaving him ‘midst the front red door.

Then with crooked smile he twisted the knob

Inward, moved through the dusky air

That felt uplifting ease, till I too entered

He beckoned, if it were laudanum that ever moved,

With surety, as the jester to joyful chaos,

And I approached in turn.

While Sorting Through a Deceased Person’s Possessions, What Is the Most Disturbing Thing You Found?

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The fifth and last of my Quora answers that I’ll share for the time being was one of the most difficult to write. Though the situation happened a while ago, and my emotions concerning it have certainly evolved over the years, it nevertheless still makes me pensive occasionally. The answer received a little over 37,000 views and many wonderful, supportive comments. Not only this, but several people had actually had a VERY similar experience to mine, and I realized that it is not all that uncommon for people to lie about who they are for an extensive period of time.

Question: While Sorting Through a Deceased Person’s Possessions, What Is the Most Disturbing Thing You Found?

Answer:

I had a friend – we will call him James – who I knew throughout high school and college. James went to Texas A&M at the same time I did, as well as another friend, who I will call Tim. All throughout my senior year, Tim and I would go to James’ apartment on the weekends, and all three of us would hang out. I credit these weekends as saving me from the horrible pressure of my perfectionism during college, and I told James so later on in a birthday card.

I graduated Texas A&M in 2009. James graduated in winter of 2009 but refused to walk the stage for graduation. Finally, Tim graduated in 2010, and I went to his graduation.

I returned home after college to the Dallas area, as did Tim. James moved to Mesquite, which is not far from Dallas. Just like during college, James, Tim, and I would hang out on weekends, sometimes at James’ apartment.

About two years later, I couldn’t get into contact with James one weekend. He simply wasn’t answering his phone. Tim and I became concerned, and Tim ultimately stopped by James’ apartment and said the lights were on, but he couldn’t see anything inside really because the blinds were shut. No one was answering the door. Eventually, the next day, Tim called the apartment complex. The apartment complex actually gave Tim James’ mom’s number. As it turned out, to our shock, James had passed away (later to be determined due to diabetic ketoacidosis). He had been dead in his apartment at least four days before his body was found.

James’ mother had sent me a message on Facebook, which had been sorted in the “other” pile, so I hadn’t seen it. She provided her phone number, and I immediately called her, and we talked. She let us know when the funeral would be, and I said I would let all of James’ other friends know.

One thing I added was, “If you haven’t contacted the City of Mesquite to let them know that James has passed away, you should probably do so.” James’ mother said, “James told me he was working for Mesquite High School, but I can’t find any evidence of payment.” This confused me because James had never mentioned working at a school. I said, “Well, James doesn’t work at a school. He worked for the City of Mesquite.” James’ mother said, “Hi lies, Lindsey. That’s what he does. He lies. I don’t even know if his diploma is real.”

This greatly confused me, and I thought to myself that I was speaking to a woman who just lost her son. So, I didn’t challenge her or prod her with questions. When we hung up, I kept thinking about what she said as I prepared for the funeral and called everyone. I almost let it go, but I thought to myself that this misunderstanding would be easy to clear up. So, eventually – several days later – I contacted the City of Mesquite just to get them to call James’ mother. The woman on the other end of the line said that she could not give out any personal information on any employee, and I told her that was fine, that she simply needed to call James’ mother. The woman looked up James’ name and said, “A person by that name has never worked here.” I thanked her and hung up.

So, then, I began going through everything I remembered in concern with James, and I kept thinking about what James’ mother had said in terms of his diploma not being real. I did some digging, and, as it turns out, any former student of Texas A&M is able to access an alumni area on the Texas A&M website that states all individuals that attended A&M and what degree he or she received, as well as the graduation year.

I logged in and checked my own name first. Everything was as it should be. Then, I checked James’ name. Beside his name were three initials: NDR. I would come to find out this means no degree received.

My mind, by this point, was reeling. I thought back to how James had said he didn’t want to walk across the stage for graduation and quickly realized that he had said this because he wasn’t actually graduating. He was pretending to graduate, and he had chosen Winter of 2009 – really a perfect date for pretend, as it was after my graduation date and before our mutual friend’s graduation. In addition, he must have ordered a diploma from a website that created fake ones and had it sent to his mother’s house.

I did a bit more digging and discovered something called the National Student Clearinghouse, which provides degree verification. For $10, you can verify a person’s degree from select colleges, as well as see what classes that student took each semester. Texas A&M is one of those select colleges. I paid $10 and read the report. James had only attended A&M for one or two semesters. That means the entire time we were hanging out my senior year, the textbooks he had out beside his couch were fake. His stories about his classes were fake. All of it was.

I began, at this point, to have many dreams that James hadn’t actually passed away, most likely because I didn’t know what to believe, anymore, in concern with him. I obviously didn’t really know him. I was very angry during this period of time, and I felt just a little guilty for being so angry. After all, he had been a friend, as well.

The question, of course, was, how was James able to pay for an apartment in Mesquite, when he didn’t have an actual job? So, part of the answer I think is in the fact that his grandparents paid for his college courses – even when James wasn’t actually taking college courses. As far as they believed, he had always been attending Texas A&M. So, he could have told them how much he needed each semester and just been pocketing the money. In addition, as a graduation present, his grandparents had given him a large monetary gift – not enough for living without a job for a long period of time, but enough for a little bit of living without a job.

It made me wonder, though, what James’ plan had been this whole time. He hadn’t set up a future for himself. He hadn’t gotten a job. Then, when he started verging on diabetes, he didn’t regularly check up with his doctor. On really dark nights, I wondered if he had committed suicide purposely, rather than accidentally, by refusing to address his medical issue.

In addition, as I thought back on other things James had said, I took note of how he was always, always making jokes and inserting the truth into jokes. Our mutual friend had asked him in a chat what classes he was taking his senior year, and James has said, “Nothing.” Our friend had written, “Nothing?” James had said, “Nothing!” Tim took it as a joke, just as I would have.

Another time, James had said that he was dating a girl named Jessica and that she had a sister named Kimberly (names are changed to protect identities). At the time, I had remarked, “Wait. Kimberly and Jessica are the same names as two sisters we know. I wonder if parents commonly pair those names together.” When we got together the next weekend, James was no longer dating “Jessica.”

As it turned out, James had been feeding details of my job to his mom, as he said he worked at the Mesquite school district (I am a professor at Cedar Valley College). So, for instance, when I had a conference, he would tell his mom he had a conference. Simultaneously, James had been feeding me details about his mom’s job, when he claimed he had been working for the City of Mesquite, as she worked for her city’s library and always had stories about IT things that had to be dealt with.

James’ mom visited him one week, and during that week, the entire week, he left at 7 AM and returned in the early evening. She told me, “Since he didn’t have a job, I don’t know what he was doing that whole time.”

James’ claim that he was helping map the human genome during college was, of course, a lie as well.

I remember one time James and I were hanging out, and he said something crazy, and I said, “Is that true?” He scrunched his face up and said, “No.” I laughed and said, “You could tell me anything, and I would believe it.” He sighed and said, “You have no idea.”

Sometimes, when I think about this, it gives me chills.

So, the most disturbing thing I found when sorting through a deceased person’s past life is the absence of everything I thought was real and true, as well as the lies of a person I thought was a close friend. Thinking about it used to drive me crazy (there are a couple of things I have intentionally left out of the story), so I had to stop thinking about it.

Originally, anger was what I mostly felt in relation to being betrayed by James. As I have gotten older, though, and tried to look at what he did more objectively, I feel sad for him. He did not have a solid handle on life, and he was not headed in a good direction. By a certain point, it was all going to come crashing down. Whether he was intentionally manipulating everyone around himself to feel superior, or he simply didn’t want to seem like a failure, they are both sad.

What Is the Most Clever Thing You Have Seen Someone Do in an Emergency?

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A fourth answer of mine that has garnered tens of thousands of views (43,500) on Quora had to do with some quick thinking on my mother’s part in concern with a stray cat we were slowly getting accustomed to living with us. You can read about what happened with Ms. Fiona below. 🙂

Question: What Is the Most Clever Thing You Have Seen Someone Do in an Emergency?

Answer:

Many years ago, we were feeding a stray cat who had obviously been mistreated. She didn’t exactly trust us, but I would nevertheless put food outside for her, open the garage for her when the outside got cold, and put a heating pad outside for her during the day in the winter. (She wasn’t brave enough yet to come inside).

One evening, I heard a cat scream like it was in a cat fight. I rushed outside in our backyard because, even if my own cats are not involved, whenever I hear a cat fight, I go to break them up. Well, I saw no cats in the backyard, but the hissing and spitting was continuing. So, I went into the garage and pressed the button on the door to lift it so I could see what was beyond the fence.

To my left, the stray cat (who we named Fiona) was standing – just standing perpendicular to the ground, against the fence at the top. It was quite an optical illusion. As I came closer, it became clear that when she had been standing on the fence, she had either tried to jump, or she just slipped, and her back right leg got caught between the slats of the fence. The poor thing was hissing and moaning, and obviously in a lot of pain.

I rushed inside and found some grilling gloves (I had not yet purchased animal handling gloves, and these were the best I could do) that were suede and went past my elbows. I went back outside and tried to lift Fiona up. She bit my hand, so hard that it was not only painful, but it felt like her teeth were breaking through the suede. On top of this, I was too short to adequately lift her. I had to set her back down.

By then, my mom had happened upon what was occurring, and she came up with a brilliant idea. She grabbed a crow bar from the garage and went back inside the fence. She tapped on one of the slats beside Fiona’s foot, until it loosened, and she was free.

Fortunately, Fiona was fine. Her foot was not broken.

I am so thankful for my mother’s quick thinking.

And, just to make it clear, Fiona since then has been taken to the vet, given her FLV and rabies shots, and is now a pampered housecat. She literally stays inside more now than she ever goes out. She gets wet food and treats, she loves to play with the toy bird, and she has her own favorite blankie that I make sure is washed. She is a completely different cat (seven years of slowly building trust has made a huge difference). Whoever had her before really screwed her up. I have no doubt they regularly hurt her or tortured her. Fortunately, she is safe and here now.

Have You Ever Had the Eerie Sensation that Someone Was Following You, Only to Be Proven Right? What Happened?

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Trailing slightly behind the question on Quora about whether, as a tourist, I had ever seen a disturbing sight in a foreign country, a third answer of mine with a high number of views (46,700 to be exact) dealt with whether I had ever felt like I was being followed by someone, which I have been. Answering this question made me think of the #metoo movement, though, fortunately, I was able to avert danger in this instance. Every time I think of what happened, I get goosebumps.

Something that I did not add on this particular Quora answer was that I had another incident one time while driving on the highway, during the early evening, heading to Athens, TX. A car was at my right, keeping pace with me. I was about 22 at the time. I looked over, and there was a middle-aged man. Our eyes locked, and he nodded his head to the right, motioning for me to exit with him. I immediately broke eye contact and, later, wrote down his license plate, just in case. Fortunately, as well, nothing came of this.

Here is the Quora question and my answer:

Question: Have You Ever Had the Eerie Sensation that Someone Was Following You, Only to Be Proven Right? What Happened?

Answer:

When I was 19 years old, I was quite thin and, frankly, looked more like I was 16 according to family, friends, and strangers. I start with this because I believe this could have been part of why I was targeted, as described below.

I was home for the summer from Texas A&M, and one friend from high school was getting together with several of his other high school friends; he invited me to join them at a pizza place.

I drove to the restaurant and parked in a spot fairly far from the actual entrance. There was a man in a large, white pickup truck who was parked one space over from me and was getting out of his vehicle at the same time I was, basically. He looked to be about forty years old, perhaps older, and he had shaggy dark hair and a mustache.

Our glances met, and I smiled and said, “Hi” just as I would with any other person.

His response was to sort of stare at me, dip his head down, and move in my direction as he walked. His “Hi” was long and drawn out, and it immediately set off warning bells in my head. Now that I think back on it, it is amazing what one simple exchange can tell you about a person.

When I got to the pizza place, I immediately told my friend Jonathan about it. I’m not sure if he actually believed me or not, but when it was time to leave two hours later, he made sure to walk me to my car, just in case.

The forty year old man was indeed there. The driver side door of his truck was open, and the engine was running. He was leaning against the seat, but his feet were on the pavement. As soon as he saw me, he started walking toward me. And when he saw Jonathan, he stopped dead in his tracks. I could literally see the thoughts running through his head. He turned around, walked back to the truck, got in, and drove away.

He had been waiting for me. His engine was running. To this day, I am so thankful I told Jonathan about the man, and I am so thankful Jonathan walked me to my car. If that were to happen to me now, I would write down the license plate and report it to the police.

As a Tourist, Did You Ever See a Disturbing Sight in a Foreign Country?

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Just like with my prior blog post, for this post I would like to share another Quora answer of mine that received quite a few views (48,300 to be exact). This was my first time posting on a travel-oriented section of Quora, and I have to admit that the responses to my post tended to be a little more exacting than most of my others. I’m not sure why. It’s possible that many people interested in travel are also interested in history, and so they tend to want precision. In any case, I wanted to go ahead and post my answer below.

Question: As a Tourist, Did You Ever See a Disturbing Site in a Foreign Country?

My Answer:

When I was 26, I decided to take part in a program called InterExchange. I applied to be a conversational English teacher in a host family’s home in exchange for a free room and meals. Ultimately, I stayed in Talheim, Germany, which is between Stuttgart and Frankfurt with a really wonderful host family. While in Germany, I was able to travel to Stuttgart to see the Porsche museum, Gotha to see the family’s grandparents in east Germany, and I was even able to travel to Berlin for four days or so on my own and explore the city to the fullest (including east Berlin).

While staying with my host family in Talheim, I went on a walk one day around the little city. I took pictures of the various things on my walk, including a cigarette vending machine and a car with what I thought was a pretty cool looking bumper sticker.

When I got back to the house, I uploaded the photos to my laptop, and I was showing them to Christine – the mother of the host family. I pointed out the picture of the car with the bumper sticker. She kind of pursed her lips and informed me that the bumper sticker symbol was actually that of a kind of pro-Nazi-ish group and was actually pretty controversial. I had no idea, and it was surprising and unsettling that something that had seemed so normal or even cool had turned out to be something so abominable. I had no idea that I had been so close to people like that.

Later on, Christine would tell me that there were still many people in Germany – mostly the much older generation – who still believe that Hitler was a good person and don’t believe he was responsible for all of the horrible atrocities he committed. She said that most of these people are so old that it is impossible to change their minds. This was surprising to me. I remember my father telling me that Patton forced the Germans to bury the bodies of many Jews who had died in the Holocaust so that no one could deny that what had happened had happened. If this is true, it seems as though General Patton knew very well the way the human mind works.

–

Before I went to Talheim to stay with the family, I actually stayed in Prague for about five or so days on my own. While there, I took many tours, including that of the Alphons Mucha exhibit and probably three or four tours of the city in general. I also met some really wonderful people while on the trip.

One of the tours that I went on was that of five different Jewish synagogues in Prague. One of the synagogues, the Pinkas Synagogue, had the names of all the Bohemian and Moravian Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. The names were written in red and black, and they stretched on and on and on through the rooms and halls. Just when you thought you had seen them all, there were more and more and more, and I was actually brought to tears, feeling like I was drowning in them. I found an image online and am pasting it here.



I think this was the first time that I had been confronted with a physical representation of the massive loss of human life. I am aware that over six million Jews were killed in concentration camps, but to be confronted with rooms that list the names of all these individuals is… there are no words. It felt limitless.

I also want to add that in another one of the synagogues, there was a collection of art created by Jewish children who were in Holocaust camps. One particular piece of art was actually a long strip of paper curled like a film roll with images of Mickey Mouse (or a mouse of some sort) on each of the “frames.” Prior to Prague, I had just taken a graduate level English theory course where I had read Maus I and II and written a research paper on them. I wondered if Art Spiegelman – the creator – had seen the makeshift film roll of Mickey Mouse created by a child. I tried looking up public contact information for him to e-mail him and ask, but I was never able to find a way to contact him.

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The last thing worth mentioning is my trip to the Netherlands the year before I went to Germany. On this particular trip, I visited about nine different countries in Europe in just three weeks. It was a whirlwind. One of the cities I visited and toured was Amsterdam, which I found to be incredibly picturesque with windmills, beautiful cottages, and the gorgeous, sparkling water. We biked along the roads, and it was wonderful.

When the evening came, I and several other girls in our group walked to the Red Light District to take in the scene. I didn’t feel unsafe there, but there was definitely what I would call a sort of mafia-like element to it, with men standing at the fronts of many of the doorways. In the windows, there were some of the most beautiful women in some of the most stunning lingerie that I had ever seen. They lounged in the shop windows, waiting for someone to pay for sex with them. In certain windows, there were women that catered to certain fetishes.

I wouldn’t say that the images were disturbing, exactly. What I will say is that I often think back to those women, and I wonder if they were forced (passively or actively) to be in those windows, in that line of work, or whether they were exercising their ultimate rights to be sex workers. I have no idea. I just can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t completely voluntary, but there’s no way for me to ever know.

Have You Ever Had a Bad Gut Feeling about Someone, and It Was Right?

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I’ve currently been navigating and posting on Quora, where I have – to my surprise – had 1.2 million content views of my posts. The thing I like about the site is that you can often get snapshots of the most important moments of people’s lives via questions (or writing prompts, as I like to think of them) that users themselves ask. Sharing on Quora and reading other people’s shares/answers has a communal feeling for me that things like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter don’t quite achieve. I suppose it’s because it has more depth, and you get to know people in ways you wouldn’t normally. Not only this, but the questions themselves give us permission to write the most important aspects of our lives that we may not so readily think of. Without the questions, far less interesting material would be produced.

One of my Quora answers received over 700,000 views (and was translated into Spanish), and I wanted to go ahead and post it below:

Question: Have You Ever Had a Bad Gut Feeling about Someone, and It Was Right?

My answer:

Yes.

When I was 22, I was out with my boyfriend (though, by that point we were on the brink of breaking up), and we were at Barnes&Noble. While there, I got the strongest feeling that I really shouldn’t have left my home and that I needed to return as soon as possible and talk to my father. While at Barnes&Noble, I came across a lined journal, the cover of which was yellow and red with the outline of many small black crows flying across it. I purchased the journal, thinking to myself that I needed (desperately needed) to sit down with my father and record the stories he always shared. It felt like if I didn’t do it that very night, I wouldn’t be able to do it at all. Simultaneously, the cover reminded me of a recent Stephen King book I had read called The Dark Half.

We got home, and, though it was not late, my mom had gone to bed early, and my father was getting ready for bed by taking a shower. I still felt this inexplicable urge to speak to him, so I actually stole his water glass from his bedroom so that he would have to come into the kitchen, where I was, to get another. I waited. The water in the pipes eventually shut off, and I assumed he would be there at any moment to fetch more water. Instead, my mother came in, and she asked if I had taken my father’s water glass. I told her, “Yes. I took it because I want to talk to him.” She chuckled, picked up his glass, and brought it back to the bedroom.

I assumed she relayed my message and waited, but I eventually realized she didn’t, as he never came to the kitchen. So, instead, I continued to read my book, and I stayed up because I knew my father often had difficulty sleeping and that many times he would go into the living room in the middle of the night.

I stayed up until 3 AM, waiting for him. Finally, I went to bed.

As soon as I went to bed, my father got up, and I heard him moving around in the living room. I lay there, wondering if I should go to talk to him, but it was so late, and so, finally, I thought to myself I would speak to him the next day.

I was awoken at 5 AM by what I thought were my parents arguing. I bolted up in bed, and then I heard what was almost a scream. My mom rushed down the hall and into my room. “I think your father’s having a stroke,” she said. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the living room, where my father was laying on the floor. He had tumbled over the coffee table in front of the couch, and his arm was bleeding. The lamp by the couch was overturned. He had almost no coordination.

I went to him and pressed my hand to his arm. I asked if he was okay. He nodded. As my mom called 911, he patted my knee and said something like, “Nebraska forty-nine.” I knew what he was trying to tell me – what he always told me: That everything was going to be alright.

Right then, I feared not only that he would die, but that if he lived, he would never regain his ability to speak, as I knew that was a possibility of strokes, from what I had learned in college.

My father did survive, and he did regain his ability to speak. Later on, I told him all the lengths I had gone to to try and talk to him that night because I had a bad feeling. My father said that he actually hadn’t been feeling well that whole day, or really the prior several days, (in fact, this was why he had sent my mom to get the water glass – because he did not feel well enough to go and get it) and he suggested that that might have been what I sensed.

I think it was more than that, though. I often consider the journal I bought that night before leaving Barnes&Noble, the urgency I had to write his stories down, how it reminded me of The Dark Half by Stephen King. If anyone has read King’s novel, you know that the main character has a brain at war with itself and that near the end of the book, he requires brain surgery, during which doctors find an eye staring up at them from within the brain itself. When this happens, thousands of black birds thrust themselves at the hospital’s windows, killing themselves. Birds like on that of the journal.