Chicago Typewriter

I’ve been noticing my psoriasis marks more and more lately, and I don’t know if they’ve gotten more apparent recently, or if I’m just able to see them since the spring sun is out and they’re exposed in short sleeves, or maybe I’m just sort of more self-conscious of them.  

The psoriasis doesn’t bother me, not really; it’s manageable and on the spectrum of “difficult stuff to deal with” they’re really, really low down on the list. A broken air fryer would be more distressing, you know?

I think the reason I think about the psoriasis is that its another aspect of ageing, of the differences in my face compared to the way it looked before. I’m noticing it, and that’s probably a natural response to being middle-aged, to growing a pandemic beard that is now a permanent part of my look, to having two kids that I’ve paid more attention to for years than to my personal grooming (my wife is reading this and is furiously messaging me, “you still have to groom yourself”).  

I look at myself in the mirror and don’t remember how I got here; I don’t remember much of the “me” part of the last few years, or of the last decade or two. I remember childbirths, and weddings, and job changes, and moving countries. I remember how my IKEA desk looked in Chicago, and can describe its differences to my current IKEA desk here in Barcelona, even though they are the exact same color and model. I can remember what our living room looked like, to the smallest detail, when the Cubs won the 2016 world series. But I don’t remember what *I* looked like. And that’s what’s sometimes jars me when I look in the mirror: “Oh, that’s me, now. Huh.”

This isn’t a lament against getting older, because, as the cliché says, its beats the alternative. I like how I look now; I like being 45 years old. It’s nice to be at this stage in life, because about 95% of the things that used to bother us in our younger days doesn’t bother us at all at this point. I like being here, as I am, and I’m thankful for it. I’m luckier than I ever expected to be at this stage, when I imagined my 40s at age 21.

It’s a minor thing, just noticing that my head shape, my number of chins, has changed slightly with the layers of material that years of burritos and ham sandwiches have added. It’s a minor thing, just noticing that I look like the weathered uncle of the person in my head named “Mark Nabong.”

***

One aspect of moving to a brand new city after years in the same place is that you have to reestablish who you are to people you meet; this can be weird, as it takes a long time to unveil all the bits about yourself you want to share with people, and to get at all the bits about other people that you’d like to learn. How do I bring up that I like ragtime music? That I have a top ten list of favourite buildings? That I love Long John Silvers chicken planks, or even what Long John Silver is?  

How do I find out all those things about other people? Do I even need to?

Making friends as an adult is famously difficult; for many people who are also parents (us included) you end up becoming friends with the parents of your kids’ friends. That’s great, and a normal thing. But its strange knowing almost nothing about someone one day and then, two weeks later, you’re having conversations every day at pickup, at volleyball practice, at dance rehearsal. And you’re getting to know each other AFTER a decision has been made, via your children’s friendships, that you’re going to be connected together for a while. It’s like an arranged marriage, but it’s our kids arranging playdates for us.

And these folks, these new friends and acquaintances, they’ll never know what I looked like before, what I acted like before. They’ll see the face I wear now, and that face will be how they know me. And vice versa. My daughter has a friend from swim class, and that kid’s father is completely bald. He wears it well, but he told me he started shaving it two years ago, and he had bright read hair before. I’ve never seen it, can’t even imagine it, and I’ll never really know what face he sees when he imagines himself. But it’s there, whatever he imagines, and it’s as remote to me as the face of a beardless Mark is to him. And that’s sort of weird.

But, it’s also not weird at all.

I spent years wearing a suit everyday to work. Every Monday to Friday, I wore a suit, tie, dress shoes, fedora (I know, I know). And I’d go home, I’d have dinner with my wife, change into a flannel shirt, jeans, yellow baseball cap (I know, I know), head out to a stand up comedy club or bar and do open mics or feature sets all night. And not a single person from my day job ever saw me in a yellow ball cap, and not a singe person at those comedy shows ever saw me in a suit.  

Not a single person from my day job ever heard me be funny in the way I was at the comedy shows, and not a single person from the comedy shows ever saw me be serious in the way I was at work.  

***

The moon doesn’t have its own illumination, the moonlight we see on earth is directly reflected sunlight. Well, not all of it. There is a tiny, tiny amount of sunlight that is reflected off the earth first, then hits the moon, then comes back to us. It’s called “earthshine” or the “DaVinci glow”, and you can only really see it where the moon is not directly reflecting sunlight. You can see it in the new moon, or in the area outside the crescent in the quarter moons. That bit of moon face you see in the new moon? Or in the “dark” parts of the half moon? That’s earthshine.  

***

I suppose it does’t really matter that my image of my face in the mirror is not quite the one I remember. My family, my loved ones, the strangers on the train, they all see my current face. It is the current face they see that helps them, or hurts them, or ignores them, or neglects them. It is the slightly balding face, with bifocals and psoriasis, that they see when I put a coin in their cup, and it is this older face that is buried in my phone when I pretend not to see their outstretched hand.  

My children do not remember a face before this one, and it is this one that they love.

The years pass, and my face, the outside face, reflects it. And I can only know what that face looks like indirectly, in the faces of the people I love and the people I hate and all the people in between.  

I am a moon, and my face has never been illuminated by my own light, it can only be seen in yours.

****

Image source: SpaceWeather.com, via Facebook

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There is an a species of immortal jellyfish out there in the far-flung depths of the ocean (Turritopsis dohrnii).  I don’t mean it’s immortal in an allegorical sense, like “your fifth studio album was amazing, MC Jellyfish, it’ll make you immortal in the world of hiphop” or “Jellyfish, your pitching performance in game five of the World Series will immortalise you in Cleveland Guardians history.”  No, I’m far too sober to make allegories right now.  I mean it literally: the damn jellyfish is immortal.  If nothing eats it (their predators are turtles and Cantonese restaurants) then it can just… go on living… forever.  It’s really rare, but it’s still an amazing critter to learn about.

***

When the new year turned a few hours ago, we were in our apartment here in Barcelona.  This is the first time in about 42 years that I’ve spent the new year in a country other than the US, which is absolutely not an interesting fact.  What is slightly more interesting is that, given my age of 43 years, I am likely more than halfway through my natural life.  I mean, I hope not, I hope I stick around for a long long time as a burden to society and to see my enemies buried before me, but the actuarial tables say otherwise. What is *really* interesting, at least to me, is that I’m totally cool with being middle aged.

I always thought I would dread my middle years; every sitcom and Dave Barry book I ever read said that I would experience crisis upon crisis, and holy moly were they wrong.  I go through emotional crises all the time, mind you, but the thing is that I’ve been having them since I was like 13, so middle ages have been nothing new.  In fact, I have a LOT fewer crises now, and the sudden drop in crises lately is surprising.  

I used to live in an apartment building where the two people next door (brother/sister?  married couple?  pair of parrots? I have no idea) would yell at each other almost every day about the TV shows they were watching.  One weekend they were quiet for about three days straight, I got really really concerned and went and knocked on the door.  Turns out they bought headphones for each of them and now they watch different shows in silence.  Anyway.  That’s what this feels like to me, having a vastly reduced amount of angst: its like the neighbours in my head are quiet.

My wife and I talked about it, and there are probably a number of causes for this internal relative calm: 

1) an increased sense of peace about who I am stemming from personal growth and a loving family life, 

2) drugs, 

3) age-related memory loss of any angst or self-esteem issues, 4) legal drugs, 

5) a recent ADHD diagnosis which just makes EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW HOLY CRAP THATS WHY I AM THE WAY I AM, 

6) the cafe next door makes that sandwich I like.

***

The way the immortal jellyfish works is that, during their life, they alternate between two phases, a polyp and a medusa phase.  The polyp phase is where they stay rooted to the ocean floor, like a coral or an anemone.  The medusa phase is what most jellyfish you think are are in, they float around in the water column eating smaller sea creatures or, on Level 1-2, Mario and Luigi.  

In fact, jellyfish and corals are all Cnidarians, a phylum of goopy animals where none of them have spines or faces or credit scores or anything.  They’re all basically waterlogged grocery bags that are either filled with rocks (corals) or spicy needles (jellyfish).  Most Cnidarians start off swimming around in the water column when their parents squirt them and their thousand of siblings into the ocean, but then each species kind of picks a lane, Polyp or Medusa, and then they’re like that for the rest of their lives. They either pick a spot and buy some real estate for cash (no credit score for a mortgage, remember) or they roam the earth like David Carradine and the Incredible Hulk.  

That’s where the immortal jellyfish comes in: they spend some type in the polyp stage, then, when the environmental cues change in certain ways, they cut their roots and drift in the ocean for a while.  When they find a good spot, they anchor again.  Ad nauseam, Ad infinitum, until they’re eaten or the world ends.  

***

Back in Chicago, we bought a two bedroom condo near the kids school, and, for all intents and purposes, probably looked like we were settling down for a long while.  The truth, though, is that we’d been hoping to live out of the country for a bit, and when we saw a chance to move to Barcelona with our current jobs, we grabbed it.  Our plan is to move back to Chicago after a few years out here, polyp/medusa/polyp.

We’ve become, in our mortal and warm-blooded way, a reflection of the immortal jellyfish.  And, when I stop and think about it, this isn’t just our family: I think this applies to most folks, at least sometimes.  All of us on this side of heaven are continuously pulling up stakes and moving when the environment requires it.  Job change, marriage, divorce, war, flood, school admissions, political crackdowns, all these environmental perturbations knock us out of our comfort zone and make our secure footholds seem less secure that we previously thought.  The polyp sometimes looks around and says to herself, “I better medusa the hell out of this situation.”  And the medusa looks around sometimes and says, “this place seems like a good spot to rest and stretch my legs for a little while.”

Maybe that’s why it feels ok being middle aged; I’m more comfortable with either where I’m at or who I am.  For those of us confronting the realisation that we’re on the other side of the inflection point of a lifetime, it is easier to handle the medusa phase, to be jostled by politics and expenses and work and unemployment, if one is emotionally in polyp phase, if one can be more at peace with the imperfect, mortal, human beings that we are.  Like the Cnidarians, we’re just water-logged bags of bones and anxiety, and I find myself to be more at peace the more comfortable I am with that fact.

***

In the first paragraph, I told a lie. I said that the immortal jellyfish are rare, that they are found in the deep depths of the ocean. That’s not true: they’re everywhere.  They’ve spread all over the world, via the circulation of the ocean and as stowaways in ship ballast tanks.  Everyone of us, emotionally and physically, is swinging between polyp and medusa phase, for all our lives, and either we notice that we are doing it, or the jellyfish just hide in our own mental ballast tanks.  

 I hope you and yours have a wonderful 2022.  I hope that you find deep roots when you can grow and be safe and warm.  If, instead, you need to change where or who you are, then I hope that your road is bright and the wind is at your back.  And I hope, whatever stage of life you are in, that you know that the ocean is a weirder and more wonderful place with you in it.

***

Works cited:

I am an unreliable narrator.  You’re lucky I remembered to include this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii#Distribution_and_invasion

Photo Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turritopsis_dohrnii.jpg

There are four basic approaches to the needs of others:

1) selfishness / narcissism: this places yourself above all, full stop. 

2) martyrdom: placing others over yourself in all ways, usually neglecting ones own well being. 

3) egalitarian selflessness: placing the needs of others in line with your own, including people of different “groups”, whether religious, ethnic, political, or national. 

4) in-group selflessness: placing the needs of others in line with your own, provided they are in-group. For out-group folks, there are two sub-categories how people of viewpoint 4) look at them:

4a) out-group individuals should have their needs considered only after the needs of the the in group folks are met

4b) out-group individuals are fully expendable for the sake of in-group individuals. 

***

I suspect that most of us fall into the category of 4a, depending on how our groups are defined. 

I also suspect that the big divide in the USA (and possibly other places) is WHO is considered in-group. Are Muslim citizens in-group?  Are undocumented residents in-group?  Are refugees in the Mediterranean in-group?  Are religious minorities in Iraq and Syria in-group?  Are prisoners in federal penitentiaries in-group?

This was originally posted on Facebook on Nov. 20, 2015 (LINK).

***

So, I’ve been talking a lot about refugees lately. Maybe an explanation is in order. Story time!

I’ve been very lucky. VERY lucky. I was born into a loving family, to a mother and father that moved over an ocean to give me a shot at the best life I could somehow carve out for myself. They left the Philippines at a time when a dictator and his wife were in power, hoarding money and shoes and years in purgatory.
I was raised in the U.S., which, for all her faults, is a dream country to many, many people. I was traveling overseas a few years ago and met a pedicab driver who asked where I was from; when I said, “America,” he said “That is my dream. That is my dream. That is the dream of all of us,” he said, waving his arm at his fellow pedicab drivers.

Just so you know, my family members back in the Philippines are doing well, and through hard work and talent they’ve built wonderful lives for their families there. I, for one, do not have the skill that my cousins back in the Philippines have, but I live in the U.S., and here, an eternal B-minus student with a penchant for bullshit can do alright. And I do.

There was a communist insurgency in the Philippines, then and now, and the specter of murderers and thugs calling themselves Abu Sayyaf and MILF still haunts men and women in the southern part of the nation, Muslim and Christian alike. I did not have anything to do with either the communists or Abu Sayyaf. I was one when we left for the United States. More on this later.

I will always be proud of my Filipino heritage, and the values and culture and history and religion that go hand in glove with it. Make no mistake, though: the U.S. has given me everything I have. Here I found a career, an education, a safe home, the Texan who freed my soul, and the Most Beautiful Daughter In The World. I owe it all to my parents, who emigrated from home and taught me bravery and sacrifice and basketball; they had their struggles to get us here, but I think that is not my story to tell.

Here, I can read any book I choose and argue freely on Facebook and put whatever bumper sticker I want on my car. American men and women I’ve never met fought and died so I could vote and be free; they roared and charged and fell, holding helmets and rifles and newsprint.

I was given a ladder I did not earn, and that ladder lead me up to where I am, to an apartment with hot running water and Chinese take-out within walking distance and a life without drones and mortars and men with bombs.

Here, you really only see most balaclavas on bitterly cold days.

I did nothing to deserve this. My parents worked and sacrificed to get me here; I am tremendously lucky, as I said. I could have been born in a war zone. My parents could have been killed by a car bomb or snipers or morality police. I spent my seventh year on earth in primary school, racing to get the good play rug in Ms. Wendell’s second grade classroom; I could have spent it in a camp after my school was burned to the ground.

Whenever I meet an immigrant here, no matter their origin, their religion, nor how they got here, I admit: I see little bit of me, as a young boy. I see a bit of my father, my mother, looking for work and affordable clothes and some picture books for their boys.

Sometimes these other immigrants worship God differently than I do, or not at all. Sometimes they were professionals Back Home, sometimes they were laborers. Sometimes they want to leave memories of the Old County behind forever, and sometimes they would pay anything to have soup the way Mother made it one last time. They remind me of me. They are me; they are me if only the Cosmic dice had rolled differently. If those dice had rolled differently, the Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and communist insurgencies could have halted immigration from the Philippines to U.S., or at least made it harder. Those are the dice that have been rolled from some would-be Americans, for some immigrants who made it to our soil.

These other immigrants, they came here on that ladder I used. Sometimes that ladder looked like an unguarded part of the Rio Grande and sometimes it looked like the front door of a consular office and sometimes it looked like a wedding veil. I took that ladder, too, ma’am; my parents carried me. I was on that ladder, too, sir; it is not always an easy climb.

Sometimes that ladder is in a refugee camp, through 18 months of interviews and vetting and background checks and more interviews.

I admit, I have been on something of a soapbox lately about refugees, at least on social media. I’m sorry if I have come off as shrill, and to anyone who does not want to accept more refugees here, I disagree, but I want to make sure you know I respect you. Most of you who oppose the refugees are concerned for your own families, your own little ones, and I cannot fault you for that. Some of you have lived in places with bombs and blasts and monsters with human faces, and you don’t want that here, on American soil, and I cannot fault you for that.

By way of explanation, this is not an political exercise for me; I like the U.S. president, but I will vote for any and all of his political rivals if it would mean that more refugees would be let into the U.S.

When I see the doors closing on refugees, I see my ladder being pulled up. When I see the gate close on any of these families, I see the gate closing on me. Please, let down that ladder, I am down there. Please, please, someone let down that ladder, my father and my mother are down there, holding me. Please let down that ladder, I am down there, holding my daughter and my wife and we are scared and we have nowhere to go. I am trapped down here with murderers and killers, and they will either kill me or turn my son into one of them.

I am an American citizen, and I have freedom and privilege that other, better men earned for me; I do not deserve it by my own acts. Please let the ladder down, I am also in a refugee camp with my children and my grandchildren and we did nothing to deserve this, either.