Winging It - Day 1 - An Audible

3/7/15

El Tajin, Veracruz, Mexico

When I travel, the hardest thing I ever have to do is call an audible.  Not the long drives, not the Munich runs, not the hikes, no, calling an audible is harder than all of that.  I’m not talking about changing where I go for lunch or when circumstances cause me to readjust my schedule.  I’m talking about substantially and intentionally changing my agenda for the day.  In the two years since I was last in Mexico, much has changed, and I have traveled around the world, probably over 100,000 miles by air, train, boat, and car.  However, in all that time, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve called an audible.  The most significant one was the “Copenhagen Option” during my Eurotrip.  Since I’m #WingingIt this trip, it seemed fitting.

I woke up on the plane with a splitting headache, no doubt the brutal combination of sinus pressure and cabin pressure.  I felt like my head was going to explode.  I got up to get something to eat.  They said they had water and sandwiches.  I saw some fun size Milky Ways sitting out.  “I’ll just take a candy bar,” I said, reaching for one.  The flight attendant literally slapped my hand away, saying it was just for them.  Okay, then.  I settled for water.  The pain subsided enough for me to fall asleep, and, when I woke up, we were making our descent, and they were handing out landing cards.  Immigration was perfunctory, and Enrique was waiting for me on the other side of Customs.  Even after two years, we recognized each other immediately and greeted each like old friends.

In those two years, so much has changed in my life, but much is the same, and I will expand on that when I get to my hotel tonight.  Suffice it to say, the way I travel has changed a bit.  I am more experienced, and some things have become more or less important.  When I was in Mexico City two years ago, I didn’t care about seeing Congress.  This trip, it’s a must see.  Last time, Plaques were practically a necessary part of a WHS.  Now, they are just a bonus.  Mexico WHS are one step below US and Canadian ones, but the plaque is not necessary.

There were three things I wanted to see this trip: El Tajin, the Monarch Butterfly Reserve, and the Olympic Stadium.  The plan was to go to see the Monarchs first thing this morning, and I wanted to try and squeeze in El Tajin afterwards.  Enrique said that was impossible.  I would not have time to go to El Tajin tomorrow, since the soccer match at the Olympic Stadium was at noon, impossibly breaking up the day.  I called an audible.  We would go to El Tajin today.  Tomorrow, I would walk around the Stadium, and then we’d make a mad rush for the Monarchs.  It could work.

I lit up a Romeo, one of the cigars I had purchased on arrival, and we were on our way, stopping for gas, coffee, and snacks.  It was a process to get the snacks, including a burrito, and the cigar was out by the time I had paid for everything.  There was nothing Official about that meal.  I slept as we drove, and I realized that Enrique had no idea where he was going.  He was just using the Navigation on his phone.  I could have rented a car and done that myself for a third of the price.

Anyway, we eventually got to El Tajin.  Other than the souvenirs and this entry, there were only two things that mattered: the plaque and the nomination photo.  I had downloaded a picture of the plaque and showed it at reception.  “Ah, la placa.”  They knew exactly where it was displayed, and it was displayed very prominently.

We also had no trouble finding the spot of the nomination photo, a distinctive large rock on the ground being unmistakable.  We took some pictures and walked around, the simple wonder of the ancient site being all I needed as I smoked my Montecristo (another pickup from Duty-Free).  After I had seen as much of the site as I wanted to see, I headed to a bench that afforded a view of the nomination photo.  I asked Enrique to get my computer bag.  I felt a little awkward about it, as I like doing things for myself, something I no doubt inherited from my father.  Oh, along those lines, I had a very interesting debate on Facebook with my cousin and one of her friends as we drove.  When Enrique came back with my computer bag, I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that we can get lunch and make our way back to the city.

Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico

Mont Tremblant, Vienna, the Drake Passage, and Belmopan.  No, this night, this view of the Mexican capital cannot live up to them.  My reader should know what this means by now.  I am smoking my 2008 Christmas Pipe and comparing it to the previous places I have smoked it.  This does not compare.  In fact, nothing will ever live up to the Corinthian.  Now, that I have two months of distance, I can separate the good memories from the bad and easily place it in the top five of my trips of al time.  As the sun sets over the Federal District, I find myself perched up on the window sill, quite contentedly writing this entry, and I am happy.

In fact, I would say that, at this very moment, I am purely happy, no stress, no regrets, no doubts.  I don’t know how many minutes that will last before I find something to dampen my happiness, but, at this very moment, I am happy, purely happy.  Two years ago, I think I was also purely happy.  Two years ago, when I was last here, I was in the process so of remaking myself into the person I wanted to be.  The externalities were not there, but that didn’t matter.  As long as I worked everything out from the inside, the rest would follow I told myself.  I was right.  It did.  I made new friends, succeeded at work and school, was exactly the man I wanted to be for a year.

Then I found her, the perfect woman.  It was what I had been waiting for.  She liked me.  She thought I was funny.  It seemed the most natural thing in the world to ask her out.  I finally plucked up my courage.  “I’m gay” was the response.  Four months later, she quickly become one of my best friends, and I possibly fell even more in love with her.  When I threw out my Objectivist values to date my ex, she was the one rock that tethered me to whatever remnants of those values remained.

It was another rock, the girl I love more than I do anyone outside of my family that helped me remember my Objectivist values when I needed them most about six weeks ago.  Three times now she has brought me back from the brink.  The first time, she made my life worth living again, though she doesn’t know it, and I will not tell her 160 characters at a time.  That needs to be done in person.  The second time, she called my ex “dumb and annoying.”  She was right.  It was exactly what I needed to see and exactly whom I needed to tell it to me.  It was four hours after the breakup, and, by the end of our conversation, I was over my ex.

I’m still not fully over her, but, once I find someone else, I will be.  The third time, I found someone else, someone whom I did not respect and could never love.  She was crazy about me, but I knew that I could never feel for her a fraction of what I felt for the girl who was texting me dozens of times a day.  I avoided doing something I would regret and broke it off with the new girl, knowing that I would one day find someone worth loving.  I will not justify those last two words.  Anyone who understands my values understands that I believe love, like anything else, is to be earned, not given.  In the past two years since I’ve last been in Mexico, I have come to realize the truth of it.

What else has changed in the past two years?  Well, this Travelogue for one.  I have started to publish it, which means that I self-filter and self-edit as I write, instead of meticulously recording every detail of every event and every thought that enters my mind.  I have established new protocols and dismissed some old ones.  The Official Us.  That’s the big one.  How about in my life.  The staff at work has almost entirely been replaced.  Excluding management, of the 15 or so workers there, only 3 were there the last time I was in Mexico.  The staff at the cigar store has undergone some changes.  I believe only one full-time worker now was working there full-time when I last went to Mexico.  The old manager, my best friend there, left.  I still visit him in Brooklyn from time to time, just like I used to.  He’s really the only person I’ll cross water to visit.  He’s been my friend for over eight years now, and I hope to enjoy his friendship for another eight years or more.

Hmm, who else was in my life then that is still in my life now.  The three coworkers, along with my family, obviously.  My best friend who is a brother to me in all but blood and name.  The girl I have been talking about, though we were barely friends back then, just the occasional Facebook interaction.  Now, she’s like a sister to me.  Then, she was just a crush and a happy memory.  How about the new people in my life.  I mentioned a few of them in the previous entry.  New coworkers, obviously.  I now consider my brother’s fiancée to be my sister in all but blood and name.  I was not too fond of her back then.  My new best friend.  I certainly did not know him when I was last in Mexico, nor the other girl whom I consider to be like a sister, as well.  I guess Pablo was in my life then as well as now.

I’m still living in my same apartment, with the same TV, the same entertainment system, the same Blu-ray discs on the floor, the same clothes in my closet, the same toys on my shelves, even the same damn towel and bathrobe.  New suit, new water bottle, new suitcase, new phone, same laptop though.  Same penchant for tobacco and alcohol and Diet Coke and Chinese food and pizza and bagels and cookies and everything else I enjoy consuming.  I am once more back on my Objectivist path, so, I guess, not much has changed.

Alright, enough of this.  Time for the adventures of the day.  Wait, I already did that, not much left to report.  After I closed, we got lunch, regional mole for me, along with a beer.  I, of course, used chopsticks.  Enrique gave me a surprised look, but I realized that it was not the chopsticks that surprised him, rather the ravenous manner in which I ate my food, being so starving.  He didn’t give the chopsticks a second glance.  I got all the souvenirs I needed, and we headed back.  I lit up an Ashton ESG, a huge cigar, a big mistake, since I wanted to fall asleep.

As soon as I finished it, I fell asleep and woke up a few blocks from Congress.  We took our pictures and headed to the Casa del Habano.  It was not the same one we visited last time.  It was on the second floor of a mall, and it was closed.  Damn it!  Well, I could get something at Duty-Free tomorrow night.  I could not find the down escalator.  Not wanting to waste time looking for it, I ran down the up escalator.  Two cute girls gave me an amused look, and one said with a smile, “Que practico!”  ("How practical!”)  My Spanish is pretty decent, and I’m decent enough flirter once the ice has been broken.  However, I was not quite sure I could pull off flirting in Spanish.

We went to the hotel, picking out a restaurant on the way, which is possibly the most iconic restaurant in Mexico.  It is only a few blocks from my hotel.  Que suerte!  I checked in, went up to my room, relaxed a bit, messaged back and forth with my new and old friends, and put the shower cap over the smoke detector.  I had requested a smoking room.  They did not oblige.  The fee for smoking is nominal, about 18% of what it usually is in the US, so I’m willing to risk it.  I wanted a nice view of the city while I wrote my entry, so I rubbed out my tobacco and hopped up on the window ledge, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can head out to dinner.  It was bright as day when I started writing this entry.  Now, it’s as black as night.  It’s remarkable how quickly it gets dark in the lower lattitudes.

Pure happiness.  Yes, that is what I am feeling right now, what I am continuing to feel even three hours later.  Ever since I left NYU in 2008, I had only told one person that I love them.  Sure, I have written in my Travelogue about the people I love, and they have read how I feel about them, but that doesn’t count.  I had only said or written “I love you” to one person.  That one person was my ex.  I suppose there is some kind of code of conduct for what you and cannot say about a person after the relationship is over.  The first time we said it, just four months ago, she told me not to include it in my Travelogue.  “I wouldn’t,” I had told her.  Do I still have to honor her wishes now that she chose to walk away, now that she chose not only to leave the relationship but to leave my life entirely?  If I had said, “I promise I’ll never say anything about it,” there would be no question.  My word is my bond.  However, that was not the phrasing I used.  I merely said that it’s not the kind of thing I would do, and it presupposed me having feelings for her, feelings that no longer exist.

Alright, here goes.  She was always very uncomfortable saying those words.  I will respect her privacy to some extent and not explain why she was uncomfortable saying.  Suffice it to say that she was.  The truth was, I’m uncomfortable saying it, too.  I don’t say it to my family, not to my best friend, not to anyone.  When I was writing about the four women in my life last semester, they were the four women outside my family I love the most in the world.  I would not have hesitated a second to say it to any one of them every time I saw them or spoke with them, so long as it wouldn’t make them feel uncomfortable.

I’ve lost count of the times I almost blurted it out to my philosophy classmate during or after our long post-class discussions, discussions that would last sometimes the entire length of a Churchill.  I have no doubt that she knew how I felt about her.  She is smart and intuitive and rational enough, and she knew me well enough to be able to figure it out.  During one of our conversations, she said that she was uncomfortable when people, even friends said it to her.  I signed her graduation card “With much philia,” philia being one of the four Greek words for love, the one that best described how I felt towards her.  I knew that despite whatever, “Let’s hang out” promises she made, day of the final was the last time I would ever see her.  Or, if I see her, it would only be extremely rarely.  I could not tell her how I felt, but when I kissed her goodbye on the top of her head, I’m sure she knew what I left unspoken.  The kiss on the top of the head is kind of my trademark move for people I truly and utterly adore.  Actually, I’m not going to go into that.  If I see her in person, I’ll tell her how I feel.

That leaves the last of the four girls, the one I met most recently, and the one with whom I am now closest.  We have previously messaged each other that we adore each other, one step below the L word.  Hmm, I wonder if this more properly belongs in WIJG.  I might have to edit it out, but it speaks to why I’m feeling pure happiness right now, and, if I don’t include it, I’ll need to edit out this entire section.  I’ve gotten ahead of myself, and I need to establish the proper context.

After I closed, I headed out to the restaurant, a short walk from my

hotel.  I ordered a Dos Equis, the beer from the famous commercials featuring “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” who says, “I don’t always drink beer, but, when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.”  Let’s just say that every time I have ever had a Dos Equis in my life, the only reason I got it was because of those commercials.  I had trouble understanding the menu, not because my Spanish was bad, but because a lot of dishes were unfamiliar to me, including escamol, which is literally ant larvae and pupae, yes, a local Aztec delicacy.  I ordered that, along with three appetizers, the prices being cheap enough.  When my beer came, I knew what I had to do.  It would require four texts.  It would be the perfect joke, and I knew the one person in the world who would appreciate it the most.  The first text would be the famous quote, “I don’t always drink beer, but, when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.”  The second text would be a Bitmoji picture of me drinking a beer.  The third text would be, “Oops, wrong picture…”  The fourth text, the one to bring it all together, would be a picture of me recreating the Bitmoji picture with the Dos Equis.  The joke hit the mark perfectly.

In last night’s WIJG entry, I wrote about how I often view texting (and, by extension, Facebook) as just a game.  When I think of something funny or see something interesting, who would appreciate it the most?  Who would respond to it the best?  If it’s something that has wide appeal, I’ll post it on Facebook, then the game becomes how many Likes I can get from my Facebook post.  Sometimes I hit the mark.  Sometimes I miss.  Like any game, you win some, and you lose some.

The response let me know how well I hit the mark.  “Hahahahaha, I just love you”  Yes, the girl whom I so dearly love, as much as I could love a sister, just said that she loved me.  I did not hesitate with my response.  I did not hesitate to write the three words that I had not sent to anyone in over seven years, that I had only said to one person in those seven years.  “Aww, I love you, too :)”

The meal was delicious, and I couldn’t even finish it.  The dessert was even better, natillas and Mexican coffee.  I needed a cigar, badly, and I had an Avo with my name on it.  I once more felt pure happiness as I walked home, though now I’m just tired.  I still want to do my primacy versus recency WIJG entry.  In short it will describe how I will always place higher value on primacy than recency, that I value my history with someone far more than my current relationship. 

I stopped to pick up some desserts, not that I needed them, and they’ll probably make it back to New York, at a pharmacy and an Oxxo (Mexican 7-11), along with some coffee.  I was shocked how cheap it all was, about a third to half of what I expected to pay.  I have a very good danger sense, and I know when I am someplace safe and when I need to keep my guard up.  Walking back to my hotel, I felt extremely safe, as safe I would in Midtown Manhattan, despite the scare stories I got from the ladies at the office.

I headed back up to my room, lit up my Avo, and sat down in the chair, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish, write my WIJG entry, and get some sleep.  Clocks are springing forward an hour in New York, but, here in Mexico they are staying the same, which is convenient.  It also means that my watch, which is now on New York, will neither be on Mexican nor New York time when I wake up tomorrow, ironic.

Winging It - Day 0 - Pleasant Mornings

3/6/15

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York

Where will this flight be taking me?  Mexico City?  Carolina?  Philly?  Louisiana?  Somewhere else?  Well, my readers will have to wait until the end of this entry for the answer to that question.  I’m not even sure that this entry is necessary.  My flight is after midnight, which is still technically part of Day 0, unless I fall asleep before we take off.  Nothing of note happened during Day 0.  However, protocol dictates that I write this entry, even if I don't publish or promote it.

The past few weeks, my weekday mornings have begun in a most pleasant manner.  I wrote in previous entries about the girl whom I’ve come to love like a sister.  Well, quite a few mornings I have been woken up by a text from her, just a funny link that she wanted to share with me or something.  Otherwise, I’d send her a similar message, and we’d text back and forth about it.  I’ve had a bad cold the past two weeks, having trouble waking up.  When I got a text from her, I was instantly wide awake, the other mornings, my sleepy thought process has basically been, “Wake up so you can text her.”  I would usually then fall back asleep until her reply woke me up.

It was a fun game to play.  The sucky part about it, however, was that I could never do that with my ex.  I ask my reader not to take the wrong impression here.  I am not comparing these two very different girls, the two very different types of relationships.  I am saying that the casual friendship I have here, what I used to have with my ex before we started dating, what disappeared forever the moment I first kissed her never to return, is the better part.  I accepted what we had as normal because I was convinced that I loved her, ignoring all the red flags that our relationship killed our friendship.  I took a chance, and rolled the dice.  It’s a choice I would have made very time.  I just wish it had worked out differently.

What is sucky is that now that I know what it’s like to have a friend you love text you 50 times in a day, I realized what I was missing out with my ex, why our relationship was doomed for failure the moment it began, why I should I have ran the moment it started to fall apart.  Ironically, the night that I realized I should have run I was supposed to be going to Mexico.  I am flying to Mexico tonight.  Alright, enough about my failed love life.  They just changed our gate, so I need to pause to relocate.

Day 0, briefly.  I slept fitfully, and, when I finally did wake up, it was 8:39 AM, and I needed to shave and shower.  While I could send 1000 text messages without shaving and showering, sitting next to the cute girl in my philosophy class required both.  There was no time to both text and shave and shower.  I chose the latter.  The texts could wait until I got to work, and so they did.  There are three people in my life I text every day, three people whom I love very dearly.  When I last went to Mexico, two years ago on this very flight, on a Friday in May of 2013, there were zero, or maybe one.  If it was one, it is my best friend, one of the three people I still text every day.

I have another close friend, and we communicate on Facebook almost every day.  In fact, we hang out more than I do with anyone else.  My best friend has a girlfriend who takes up most of his time.  It's tempting to say that I'm pissed at him for not making time to see me, but the truth is I'm more pissed at my ex for not wanting to spend the kind of time with me his girlfriend does with him.   I know that I would make the same choice he is making, and it’s a choice I’d make every time.  An interesting adventure with him, with which I really had no part was that he was going to Canada and needed to get his passport from Scarsdale.  My mom brought it in.  Rather than having her bring me the passport, and me give it to him, and I had them coordinate directly.  It worked perfectly.

I got my pre-departure lunch at Hop Won, and lit up a Cohiba en route to class.  I left the cigar in my usual spot outside and went upstairs.  I sat near the cute girl, and we made eyes at each other throughout the class.  I guess I need to talk to her.  Every time she looked at me, I felt I like was back in 10^th Grade Spanish class.  I really need to talk to her.  Otherwise it goes from flirty to creepy real fast.  After class, my cigar was gone, so I lit up a Winston Churchill, leaving it in the cigar shop.

After 5 PM, no real work got done, and me and my male coworkers chatted about a variety of issues.  I was supposed to meet Raymond at the cigar store at 6 PM, and we would go to my place to watch a movie before I took the bus to the airport.  That didn’t happen as planned.  I left with one of my coworkers to get pizza before I went to the cigar store, but we sat down to eat, so that took some time.

When I got to the cigar store, they told me they had thrown out my cigar.  It was a joke.  They had just hid it.  I relit it, and Raymond and I walked to my place.  We watched two episodes of Star Trek while I packed, and I missed the bus.  I took a taxi to the airport.  When I got there, I was way too early. I checked in, but they couldn’t print my boarding pass.  I wrote a WIJG entry, got my boarding pass, went through security, and went to my gate, where I proceeded to write this entry.  They announced the gate change, so I moved, where I finished this entry.  Boarding is almost done, so I will need to close.

A Long Expected Journey - Day 3 - Who Is John Galt?

2/16/15

Carlsbad, New Mexico (Carlsbad Caverns National Park)

“Who is John Galt?”  It is the first line of Atlas Shrugged, but it a quote that is familiar even to people who have never read the book.  It is posed as a rhetorical question meaning, “Don’t ask questions that no one can answer.”  While it is all well and good to apply that mentality to what Kant calls the impossible metaphysical questions of god, freedom, and the immortal soul, but to apply it to every day life is to refuse to think.  It should be obvious to my readers of the past three entries that that is not a mentality I endorse.  It is in New Mexico, not far from where I now sit, that Dagny tried to answer once and for all, “Who is John Galt?  In the end, she finds John Galt, and she learns exactly who he is.

Quite simply, John Galt is the man who believes in the three laws of thought I have mentioned and lives his life accordingly.  John Galt is the man who lives his life free of contradictions.  When he discovers an apparent contradiction, he checks his premises and his logic, and he figures it out, rather than allowing himself to maintain the contradiction.  John Galt is the man who refuses to allow for the excluded middle.  He is the man who avoids wishy washy answers and half truths.  He demands yes or no answers to questions that require them and provides them in turn.  He is the man who evaluates his options and then rationally makes a decision, and he stands by his decisions.

Who is John Galt?  John Galt is John Galt.  He is who he is.  By the time Dagny meets him, he has achieved Rand’s perfect vision of an Objectivist hero, but he was not born that way.  Before he came to the point where he accepted himself for exactly who we was, he must have found his flaws and changed them.  He did not try to hide his flaws, instead doing all in his pwer to eliminate all of his flaws.  By the time Dagny meets him, he accepts himself for exactly who he is.  Since other people did not accept him for who he was he left.  He refused to support the people who did not want him, and he took with him the people who thought similarly, initiating a “strike of the mind.”  That is the man whom we meet in Colorado.

Who is John Galt?  John Galt is the man who lives his life the way he wants to, not the way anyone else wants him to, and he does not hide his true self from anyone.  That is the ideal to which I strive.  Other people may measure their worth by the acts of charity or value they provide to society.  That is fine, as long as they do not attempt to impose their morals on others.  I choose to measure myself by how good I am to myself, but what I can achieve without using force or fraud against others, about what I do for me.  Is that selfish?  You bet it is.  Maybe my next trip I will focus on the “virtue of selfishness.”

I actually have a little bit of time to recall the events at the caves before I head to my next stop.  I took too long getting out of the hotel, and the breakfast was disappointing.  I was half an hour behind schedule by the time I got to the entrance sign.  There would be a lot to do once I got to the VC, and I knew that I could not get my enjoyment value until I was able to stop thinking about what needed to be done for fulfillment value.  On the drive to the cave, I played my favorite album of all time: Let Go by Avril Lavigne.  Even after 13 years I am not tired of it.  Once I got to the VC, I looked for the plaque.

There it was! hidden behind a lecturn.  Seriously?!?  That’s the respect they are showing to their plaque?  Canada and Mexico could really teach them a lesson.  I went to the gift shop and got some souvenirs, but it didn’t feel Official.  I wouldn’t really be able to focus on anything else until I got my stamps.  I went to the bookstore, but they didn’t have the Official stamper.  The clerk there looked like he’d be more in place in Portland than Carlsbad.  I showed him what the Official stamper looked like.  They didn’t have it.  Alright then.  I used the one they had and took out my passport.  I happened to have the sticker in my folder, and I proceeded to stamp the passport...

.

..upside down.  “There’s nothing Official about that.”  It took me about five to ten minutes to do all of my stamping, and the clerk looked on as I did so.  I found out the dope about the caves.  Actually, I really need to wrap this up if I want to make my next stop.  The said the total walking to see everything would take almost three hours.  I did it in less than two hours.  As I headed to the natural entrance, a ranger stopped me to give me the orientation.  There would not be a Uer for an hour, until we got to the bottom of the cave.

Well, the entrance to the cave was pretty secluded, so I waited until there was no one in view.  “That’s Official,” I announced.  I was completely wowed by the cave, it putting Mammoth Caves to shame.  Sure, it was not as big, but the parts open to the public were more magnificent.  I stopped for Official pictures when lighting permitted and wallpaper pictures when not.  Two hours later, I was at the end.  There was a place to buy t-shirts and an elevator to the top, an elevator that ascended 755 feet in not much more than a minute.  I then went to the restaurant to get my Official meal in the park, and headed back to the car to resituate.  I got my computer bag, lit up my Cohiba, and headed to the picnic area, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can get one last picture with the plaque and head to the next stop.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Well, here I am, back where I started.  I will be flying home in five hours, which means I have time for a smoke and a meal in Albuquerque.  After I closed, I had a four and a half hour drive to the next site, which I wanted to do in one shot.  That meant I needed a full stomach, a full tank of gas, and an empty bladder.  I had just eaten dinner, so I went to one of the trails on the drive out to make it Official.  I stopped for gas on the way out.  Continuing my Avril Lavigne kick, I moved onto Under My Skin and lit up an Ashton.  I had an arrival time of 5 PM on my GPS, which was when the VC closed, but I had faith in my ability to make up time on the road.  I made up almost the entire thirty minutes I was behind schedule, also smoking a, what the hell did I smoke, oh, right, I got it backwards.  I had an E.P. Carillo first, and then an Ashton.  After I finished Avril’s 2013 album, I listened to Vanessa Carlton’s 2002 album and some of my favorite Taylor songs.

I got to the VC and got my stamp.  The park was called Salinas Pueblos Missions NM, but the pueblos were nowhere nearby.  That was how I had messed up my timing.  The clerk told me I could get to one of the sites by close if I hurried.  It was about 4:55 PM as I pulled in to the site.  As I got to the VC, I saw a car pulling out.  The VC was closed, and there was nowhere in sight.  That meant that I would have no trouble making it Official, but I was seriously worried about getting locked in if they closed the gate on me.  I took a quick walk around with an AVO and went into the car, putting on Les Miz.  I wanted to go to cigar store first, since the restaurants in Old Town would be open later.  I used my GPS to find a cigar store, but no one picked up the phone.

Once I got cell service back, I find one that closer to city center and open until 7 PM.  When I pulled into the parking lot, the lights were on, but there was no one inside.  I parked and walked up to the door.  To my surprise it was open.  The worker walked up out of the lounge, and I went into the humidor.  The prices were good, but the cigars were not in good condition.  I got four Padrons and two Flor del Antilles.  I went into the lounge, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will close so that I can head out to dinner and big The Return Journey.

Albuquerque, New Mexico (Old Town)

I hardly thought that it would be possible for this trip to be any more enchanting, but sitting here in the heart of Old Town is the perfect ending to a perfect trip.  I typically save the reflective entry for the airport, but, because of what I’m about to write, it should seem obvious that it is more fitting to write it here.  The Southwest is one of my favorite places in the country, the historic sites, the beautiful dessert landscapes, etc., but, while I have visited the Southwest many times, I believe that this is the first time I have truly experienced the Southwest.  No matter how wonderful this trip has been, it saddens me that I was not able to do my epic 11-day trip that I had planned when the government shutdown.  If this 3-day trip has been one of the best of my life, I do not doubt that that 11-day version would have made the top ten, maybe even the top five.

What are the top five?  In no particular order, the National Park trip I took with my parents a lifetime ago, my Eurotrip in 2013, Antarctica, Israel, Alaska.  Rounding out the top ten might be Greece, the WWI trip, the CA-4 trip, the stranded trip in California during Sandy, and, well can I lump all the 2- and 3-day stamp runs into the tenth place spot?  I love doing those.  I am on my own for 2 or 3 days, developing some of my best philosophy, collecting stamped brochures, and experiencing Our America.  It allows me to clear my mind or focus on only the things I want to focus on.

I do not think it would be immodest to say that I have developed some very good philosophy on this trip.  It seems such an obvious thing once you accept Aristotle’s Three Laws of thoughts.  If you love someone, you love them absolutely.  Assuming you are John Galt, assuming you live your life free of contradictions, assuming you are willing to exclude the middle, assuming you believe someone is who they are, you must accept that statement.

Assuming all of that it, if you desire someone romantically, it would be illogical not to be happy to be “just friends” with him or her.  If you find someone a desirable romantic partner, then you must also find him or her a desirable friend.  If you are friends with someone of the gender towards which you are oriented, it would be illogical not to consider him or her romantically, even if you reject the idea because of facts and circumstances.  If you want someone to be happy, that means you want him or her to be happy no matter what, so long as they do not change who they are, stop being the person you love.

As much as Taylor Swift wants to complain about the “Teardrops on her Guitar” or insist “You Belong With Me” she has to be happy for Drew if he is happy with who he has found.  In the first song, well she pretends to be happy for Drew.  In the second song, she doesn't bother to even pretend.  Why?  I will charitably allow that is because the girlfriend has brought him down, as the song implies, but she’d still be singing it even if the friend in the second song found the perfect girlfriend for himself, as Drew did in the first song.  She can be jealous and cry on her guitar all she wants, but that is a case of emotions overtaking rationality.

Dagny Taggart would never cry over any man.  Continuing my point, if you want to be John Galt, you can never hide who you are.  Every attribute of yourself, you either accept or want to change.  The middle is excluded.  Reader, how many people do you know who hide their true selves, who pretend to be people they’re not while making no attempt to change themselves, the “phonies” as Holden Caulfield would call them.  I think that John Galt and Holden Caulfield would get along quite well.  Hmm, idea for a short story.

Anyway, I’m cold sitting here, and I should probably explain why I’m sitting out in the cold, but I’ll wrap up the reflections first.  There are 401 units in the National Park Service.  The ones I visited today brought me to 221.  That leaves 180 units.  Saying I can visit 6 in a weekend trip, that leaves 30 of these trips that I can take.  Granted, some require more time, but those will be done as separate trips.  If I do four of these per year, that will allow me to take these trips for another 7 years, by which point another 20-30 units will be added, which would have to be visited on a more sporadic basis.  Anyway, I probably have a decade’s worth of these trips, and that makes me very happy.  Within a decade, I fully expect to be married with kids, which means that I can start taking my family to revisit the sites I have already seen once I get my wooden plaque, and that, too, makes me very happy.  Other than my distraught on Saturday, I have been extremely happy this entire trip, and I almost don’t want to go home.  It’ll be even colder there than it is out here.

Okay, why am I sitting out in the cold?  My computer was almost dead when I left the cigar store, and I realized with a bit of dismay that there would be no place for me to smoke and charge my laptop at the same time.  That meant basically either walking around with a cigar or doing about four hours of writing at the airport with no cigar.  Neither was a good way to end the trip.  I picked out a restaurant in Old Town, Southwestern fare, and put it into my GPS.  I was surprised how empty Old Town was.  Plenty of parking, no one walking around, the shops and restaurants practically empty.  I was immediately struck by how enchanting it was, even in the dark.

I knew that I would want to write an entry here.  Maybe one of the trees would have an outlet.  I then saw a gazebo, and guess what they had?  Outlets.  Perfect.  I bought a blanket at one of the gift shops, and the other one would be open until 9 PM.  I walked to the restaurant, and they had outdoor seating.  Even though no one else was sitting there, they said I couldn’t smoke outside.  Well, that was disappointing.  That reminds me of a humorous exchange I had with one of the girls from the ship at the airport in Ushuaia as were waiting to board the plane.  I had pulled out my bag of cigar labels.  “What’s that?”  “All the cigars that I smoked on my trip.”  “What do you do with it?”  “Put it in a box with the bags from my other trips.”  “And when that box gets full?”  “Put it in my parents’ attic and start a new box.”  They did not approve of that, implying that I was a hoarder.  I didn’t care.  I am who I am, and I had no desire to change that particular aspect of me, nor did I see it as a flaw.

Anyway, I finished the cigar and went inside.  I got their appetizer sampler plate, which was delicious, along with a local beer, which was not so good.  I couldn’t finish the plate.  I then went to the gift shop.  After I was done there, I lit up my Flor del Antilles, put the souvenirs in the trunk, got my coat, computer bag, and the blanket and headed to the gazebo.  The blanket was big enough to both sit on and wrap around my legs at the same time.  I plugged in my laptop and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close.  I suppose that I will need to formally close out this entry at ABQ, but this is the triumphant entry.  It’s been a great trip, and I’m a little sad to be going home.  The good news, though, is I’ll be coming back in the spring to do the World Heritage Sites in the northern half of the state.

Albuquerque International Sunport, New Mexico (ABQ)

I guess I could technically say, “After I closed in Old Town, I headed to the airport and got to my gate with no further ado, where I proceed to write this entry, which I will now close, along with this trip.  Next stop: blah blah blah.”  That would be boring, though.  It’s true.  That’s exactly what happened.  I cleaned out the car and packed my bags.  I stopped for gas and wiped down the ash and tobacco leaf.  The airport was practically empty.  Security took only a few minutes.  I headed to my gate, actually the gate across from mine, since in it was quieter.  I took out my phone and opened Facebook.  My heart skipped a beat.

Reader, remember those nine people I mentioned the other night, the nine people whose happiness and pain I can feel as if it were my own?  The one on that list whom I most adore, I think of her almost exactly the way I think about my cousin.  The “facts and circumstances” with my cousin being, well, the fact that she’s my cousin, and my aunt would make for a hell of a mother-in-law.  I am closer, however, with my friend than I am with my cousin.

She was travelling to DC this weekend.  This morning she messaged me that she was concerned about getting home tonight.  Sure enough, her flight got delayed by two hours, but she posted a picture of herself on the airplane.  When I opened up Facebook, her mother had posted that she was stuck in DC.  No, that wasn’t right.  The flight was just delayed by two hours.  Nope, the flight was in fact cancelled.  I was saddened.  I then checked Google News.  The airports, along with all federal office buildings, in DC were closed.  The city was practically shut down.

When would the airports reopen?  When would she be able to get on a flight?  So many questions raced through my mind.  Reader, you might be tempted to tell me that that’s not my problem, and you’d be right, but that’s not the point.  No, the point is, someone I loved was going through something rough, and I was sad, not because it had any effect on my daily life, but simply because she was sad.  What would John Galt have to say about that?  His answer would be quite simple.  She provides me with value in my life, the friendship we share something that I treasure.  When I see a picture of her smiling, or she texts me excitedly about something that makes her happy, that makes me happy.  Should the inverse also be true?  If she is sad, should I not also be sad?  It would be illogical for me not to.

Granted, there is nothing I can do about it, so I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close.  It’s been an amazing trip, but the time has come to close it.  Next stop: I have no fucking idea.  I haven’t planned any of my March trips.  They’re all up in there, but possibilities are Mexico City, the Carolinas, Philadelphia, and Louisiana.  I’ll probably try to do three out of the four.

A Long Expected Journey - Day 2 - Identity

2/15/15

Carlsbad, New Mexico

Well, this is it, the big one.  My readers who are familiar with Aristotle’s Three Laws of Thought will now which one is missing, and it’s the most important one: The Law of Identity.  “A is A, and A is not not A.”  “A thing is what it is and not what is not.”  “I am who I am, not anyone else.”  It should be clear that I will be focusing on that last statement in my philosophy section, in keeping with the more casual approach I have been taking to exploring these laws and giving them practical applications.  The philosophy will come later.  Today was a very important day for my new suit and water bottle.  It was their first (and second) National Park, and I think they enjoyed it very much.  Today, I did something that I will never do again in my life.  I checked off two new US National Parks in the same day, and it was epic and Official.  I am freezing out here.  Actually, I think the logical thing to do would be to finish this entry in my car.  That is exactly what I am going to do.

I am not quite sure how to compare recovering from my New Year’s in Quebec or realizing on the ship that I loved Vanessa like a sister to the night in Ephesus before I headed to see the ruins of Artemis’s Temple or tonight, after my two National Parks, about to head to a World Heritage Site in the morning.  What do they all have in common?  The 2012 Christmas Pipe of course.  Sitting here in my car is hardly the same as, wait, my coat’s in the trunk, I can put it on and then return to the bench outside.  Guess I need to pause again.

This bowl is going to be done even before I finish recalling the events of the day, isn’t it?  It seems like a lifetime ago that I left my hotel in El Paso, stopping for gas, coffee, and 7-11 on the way to the first stop, Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  I put on “Speak Now,” which is an all-around solid album, not a bad song into the entire album, but, excluding maybe the title track, no great songs, either.  During my Eurotrip, I learned that the best way to make sure the highlights of the day were recorded was to frequent smaller entries throughout the day.  That was not an option today, not on this schedule.  I got my stamp and pin at the VC before I headed to the hiking area.  I had the whole area to myself, so I knew that I would have no trouble making it Official.  I lit up my Montecristo [correction, H. Upmann] and prepared for a 2.3 mile loop.  Okay, this wind is ridiculous.  The bowl is done, and I haven’t even made my first site Official yet.  It took less than 15 minutes to smoke that bowl.  Indoors, it would have been close to an hour.  Guess I’m going to have to pause once more to go back to my room now.

That was pure fulfillment value, no enjoyment value.  I should have just risked the fine and smoked in my room.  With no further ado, the events of today.  Smoking my H. Upmann and blaring Speak Now from my pocket, I got on the trail.  2.3 miles should have taken me 46 minutes, but with the elevation and stopping for pictures, it would be much longer, and I knew the wind would kill the cigar long before that.  I said to my suit and water bottle something like, “Guys, this is your first National Park.  It’s a big day for you guys.”  I did not expect a response, nor did I receive one.  A suit is a suit, and a water bottle is a water bottle.  It is not part of the nature of a suit or a water bottle to be able to respond to a statement like that.  In yesterday’s entry, I wrote how there are three people I text every day.  Today, knowing that I would be off the grid for most of the day and on too tight of a schedule to have a proper conversation when I was on the grid, I only texted one of them, and I only texted him in the following manner: a picture of each Official Uer I used, along with a number, just as I did yesterday.

When I texted him a picture of a landscape with the next number, the meaning was obvious.  I could Officially check off Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  I continued on the trail until I came to a natural stopping point and did not think I had the energy or time to go any further.  With the rest of my cigar, I turned around and headed back to the car.  The views during the hike were breathtaking, the elevation even more so.  When I got back to the car, I grabbed an Ashton VSG, took care of some other business that I couldn’t do on the trail, smoking the VSG and continuing to blare Speak Now as I did so.  When I was done, I saw the first person I had seen since I left the VC, and I was quite tired of Speak Now by that point.  I switched to RED, probably her best album since the 2006 one, the one I listened to for 100 hours in Europe and then for all the rest of my trips for the next few months.

As I was driving, I saw a sign that made my heart stop: ENTERING CENTRAL TIME ZONE.  No, no, no, no.  How did I forget about that?!?  My tight schedule had me arriving at the first VC in the second NP an hour before it closed, the same for the second VC.  That was thinking it was on Mountain Time.  On Central Time it would become a true Kotzebue Run.  I did not leave myself any time for food, either.  Would I have to cut out my second stop?  No, that would not do.  There would be no reason for me to ever visit Fort Davis NHS if I visited all the surrounding units.  This was a disaster.  Well, I made up lots of time on the road, having more than enough time to pick up some chicken nuggets at a Wendy’s and get to the fort almost half an hour ahead of schedule.  As I was driving, I had a very scary moment.  My GPS was a little unclear about what to do at a T in the road, a T that I did not even realize existed until I was about 15 feet from crashing into something.  I slammed on the breaks, managing to safely make the turn after a moment of confusion and panic.

I got to the Fort, and my phone had lit up with notifications.  I was far more interested in being back on the grid than I was with this old fort.  I got my stamp and pin and took some pictures while I smoked the rest of the La Duena that I had lit up on the road, but I spent most of the time on social media.  Checking my updates and posting statuses caused me to go a little over budget on time, but I was still half an hour ahead of schedule (technically half an hour behind, due to the time zone).  On the plus side, it meant that I would get to the hotel an hour earlier, an hour that I wound up losing to Dutch time once I arrived, but I’ll get to that later.  I plugged in the first VC into the GPS, and it showed a driving time of 30 minutes less than I had calculated, which would completely negate the time zone difference.

It was a boring drive until I was about 10 miles from the entrance, and my car started making a very strange sound every time I braked.  I know nothing about cars, so I would not have been able to fix anything other than a flat tire, and I didn’t like my chances of fixing even that, though I theoretically know how to do it, in principle at least.  I am dead tired after my exhausting day, 15 hours of nonstop driving and hiking.  I might even take a little nap before I do the philosophy part, but I need to wrap the adventures first.

I got to the National Park sign, and I checked all the tires.  They looked fine.  Oh, did I mention I was almost out of gas?  Well, apparently there was gas inside the park, along with food.  I was starving.  My readers know how hunger makes me tired and cranky and even depressed sometimes.  Today, I learned that it also makes me unable to make a decision.  Tiredness or drunkenness might prevent me from making a rational decision, but hunger prevents me from making any decision at all.  I stopped at the first VC and got my stamp and a pin.  I learned that it might actually be doable to get a third VC in, but it might have meant almost an extra hour of driving just for the stamp, and there was no guarantee I would make it in time.  I found myself hoping that I would get stuck behind a slow car so that my decision was made for me.  It was a crap shoot.  If the VC was opened 5-10 minutes past close, I might have made it.

I didn’t go for it, instead going straight into the main VC’s parking lot.  Reader, recall that strange noise?  It didn’t go away.  I looked under the car, nothing there that might be making that noise.  Then I saw it, some plastic thingy hanging down from the front bumper.  I had somehow managed to dislodge it while doing no other visible damage to the car, probably from when I went onto the side of the road to take a picture at a sign.  I pushed it back into place, enough to stop the noise, but it still looked kind of funny.  Why is this a problem?  Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona have something called Border Patrol Interior Checkpoints, places where CBP stop all cars and ask them a few questions.  They are looking for drugs and illegal immigrants.  Reader, if you were a CBP Officer and saw a car with the plastic underneath the bumper dislodge, might you not think that there were drugs hidden in there?  Might you not want to search the car?  I had nothing to hide, but it would be a long and nerve-wrecking process.  I did my best to make it look normal.

I then went into the VC, getting pins, a keychain, and a t-shirt.  I asked about the hiking options.  He gave me a bunch of different options, but I was too hungry to decide.  One option had the best views, but it would be too crowded to make it Official.  Another, by the north entrance, didn’t have great views, but it would be empty.  The third one, the furthest away, would have good views and not be too crowded.  I couldn’t decide.  I just kept looking at the map and asking more questions.  The longer I tarried, the less of an option the third one would become.  The gas station had frozen burritos to heat up.  I was too hungry to even decide which one I wanted, so I got two, along with a Coke Zero.

With my first bite, my strength returned, and I decided instantly without even thinking about it, without even consciously realizing I had made my decision until I saw that I was on the road to the third one.  The park is called Big Bend National Park, named after the big bend in the Rio Grande River, which forms the border with Mexico.  The third one was the one that afforded the best views of the Rio Grande, and it was closest to Mexico.  How could I not do that?  That is what this park is.  There were two places I wanted to stop, the Rio Grande River Overlook, and the Boquillas Canyon trail.

When I got to the overlook, there was little trail, and it was empty.  I would be able to make it Official overlooking the Rio Grande River.  I lit up my Montecristo and started hiking up the trail to the overlook.  That was when I saw another car pulling up.  If I wanted to make it Official, I would need to make all due course to get to the top before they were within view.  Well, once I got to the top, it was possibly to keep walking down a bit, so I had no problem making it Official, and the views there were great.

Once I finished the cigar, I would be able to check the National Park off of my list, so I decided to go the Boquillas Canyon trail to do a little more hiking with the rest of the cigar.  Just one problem.  There is the Boquillas Canyon trail, the Boquillas Canyon overlook, and the Boquillas Crossing.  The last one takes you into Mexico.  I did not have my passport, and I did not see any way of bringing a lit Cuban cigar back into the United States.  “I don’t want to accidentally wind up in Mexico,” I kept telling myself.  Cognizant of this possibility, I carefully made my way to Boquillas Canyon, but I found myself at the overlook, not the trail.  I took some pictures and continued to the trail.

I did as much hiking as I had cigar left.  When it was time to turn around, I asked my new suit and water bottle if they had a good day, saying that it was a very big day for them.  I told them that there weren’t that many National Parks left to see but that I would be taking them to see the rest.  Again, since a suit is a suit, and a water bottle is a water, I did not get a response.  That was it.  I put my hotel into the GPS, changed the music to 1989, and prepared to make my way to the hotel with all due haste.  It was looking like a 9 PM arrival, 9:30 PM if I stopped for dinner.  I probably should have stopped for dinner instead of driving nonstop for almost 4 hours.  I am now hungry again, having eaten nothing but crap all day.

I soon noticed a familiar green vehicle behind me.  I was going a little under 60.  The speed limit in the park was 45.  Was it CBP or a Park Ranger?  If it was CBP, they couldn’t care less how fast I was going.  If I was a Park Ranger, they might give me a ticket.  I slowed down to about 50.  The vehicle started tailgating me.  Seriously?  It passed me, and I saw that it was a Park Ranger.  They probably just wanted to get back to headquarters or go home, it being 5 PM on a Sunday.  The vehicle then sped up to 60, so I kept pace with it, only for it to slow down to about 30 and put its siren on.  Wait, was it going to pull me over for keeping pace with it?  I realized that he was warning me he would do exactly that.  I slowed down to 50 and never saw him again.

Okay, I really need to wrap up if I want to get a nap and still wake up before midnight.  I picked up another Coke Zero, an ice cream bar, and some snacks at the gas station.  I then headed to my hotel without stopping, other than at the Interior Border Checkpoint, which I passed with no hassle once the dog sniffed my car, getting to the hotel by 9 PM, smoking a Tatuaje and an Aroma de Cuba en route.  When I got to the hotel, I got caught up my social media even before I got out of the car.  Then my brother called me to discuss some details about his bachelor party.  That whole process took me to 9:30 PM.  Getting situated and filling my pipe brought me to 10 PM.  All the hubabaloo with switching spots while I smoked my Christmas Pipe meant that it was 10:30 PM by the time I got back up to my room, where I proceeded to write this entry.  Instead of being an hour ahead of schedule, the hour of Dutch Time put me write back on my original schedule.  I will now pause for a few minutes to rest my eyes before I continue with the philosophy section.

As soon as my head hit the pillow, I heard a voice (I won’t say whose) ask me why I couldn’t just finish this in the morning.  “Because I am who I am.”  That is the crux of tonight’s entry.  A thing is what it is and is not what it is not.  My pipe is a pipe, and it will never be a suit.  No matter what, there is no way that I could wear that pipe as a suit.  It just wouldn’t work.  While I can use the pipe in other purposes, it is nothing other than a pipe.  I could put water in the bowl and drink from it, but that does not mean it is a water bottle.  Likewise, a water bottle is not a pipe, even if I could figure out how to smoke tobacco from my water bottle.

A pipe is not a water bottle.  To claim that my pipe is a water bottle is a contradiction.  To claim that my pipe is anything other than a pipe is a contradiction.  There are no contradictions.  Point to any object in this hotel room, and I can say that is either my pipe, or it is not.  There is no excluded middle.  What is it that prevents contradictions and the excluded middle?  The Identity Law.

When people hear the word identity, they think of who they are, how they define themselves.  Good.  “I am who I am.”  That is a statement that will make sense to people who have never read a page of Aristotle.  A person’s identity is comprised of all their attributes, their strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and flaws.  “I am who I am.”  That means not only that I am the person who is comprised of those attributes, but also all the paths that led to this point.  If you are happy with the person you are, you cannot regret the bad things in life that brought you to that point.  If you are not happy with the person you are, change it, and do not dwell on the past.  There is no excluded middle.

The pipe will never be a suit.  It cannot turn itself from briar into wool, but humans can change themselves.  If there is a flaw you have that bothers you, change it.  Otherwise, you must accept yourself for exactly who you are and make no attempt to hide it.  That does not mean that you should go shouting every attribute of yourself from the rooftops.  That does not mean you have an obligation to reveal every detail about yourself to someone you’ve just met.

Reader, imagine I go on a first date.  I sit down at the table and say, “I’m Steven.  I smoke 3-5 cigars a day, I don’t care about strangers’ feelings, and I think abortion and gay marriage is wrong from a moral standpoint (though I support it absolutely as a legal right).”  That would be a supremely stupid idea.  Unless the woman sitting across from me happened to be Dagny Taggart wrought flesh, she would probably walk away, or, if she stayed, it would only be out of curiosity.  If I were asked for my position on gay marriage, I would not hide it.  I would not say what I thought my date wanted to hear.  I am who I am, and I would make no attempt to hide it.  Anyone who does so is a fraud.

To be dishonest is to commit an abdication of self.  You do not want need to be totally honest with someone.  If she asked my ATM PIN, I would not lie, but I would not give it to her either.  Now, reader, imagine that she was wearing a hideous pair of glasses.  There is no need for me to say, “I hate your glasses.”  If she asked what I thought of the glasses, my first response would be something noncommittal like, “They’re certainly unique.”  If she asked for a straight answer, whether or not I liked them, no excluded middle, I would have no choice but to honestly tell her that I hated the glasses.  To do otherwise is an abdication of self.  Once you starting lying to someone because you think it’s what they want hear, you have taken when step towards the destruction of self.  However, if you lie about yourself because you don’t think they would accept an attribute of yourself that you accept, you are committing a complete abdication of self.  If you accept yourself for who you are, there is no need to ever deny it.  You don’t have to volunteer it, but you should not hide it either.

Continuing down this path, I have long ago accepted myself as I am, but, other than my few close friends and family, I have had trouble finding people who accept me as I am.  When I found a girl who accepted me for exactly who I was, was it any doubt that I fell in love with her?  I did not love her for her virtues, and that was my mistake.  The fact that I loved someone merely because they accepted me for exactly who I was was as deep as an abdication of self as tricking someone into loving me by being someone I’m not.  Once she no longer accepted me for who I was, I stopped loving her.  I thought that I would love anyone who accepted me for who I was.  Three weeks later, I found someone who accepted me for exactly who I was.  Why have I not seen her since then?  One simple reason.  I did not respect her, and I could not have respected myself if I continued to date her.  I am who I am.  Despite the advice of my brother and the guys at the cigar store, I would have forever regretted going through with it.

Instead, I found my Objectivist values again.  That is who I am, the consummate Objectivist.  The flaws I see in myself are the ways that I do not live up to the ideal of John Galt, not the ways I embody his what might be perceived as “cold-heartedness.”  Those nine people I mentioned in last night’s entry, if some genie came up to me and said that I had to choose between saving one of their lives versus a billion strangers, I would not hesitate so much as a second to save the life of the person I loved versus 15% of the world’s population.  Each one of those nine people provide me more value than a billion strangers ever could.  That is probably an unpopular opinion.

Reader, think of the person, other than yourself, you love most in the world.  (I will not say which member of my family gets that title.)  Would you trade his or her life if it meant the cure for cancer?  If it meant you could save a billion lives?  For many people it would be a tough question to answer.  For me, there is no hesitation, not for the nine people I have mentioned.  I am who I am.  That does not mean I should say that to every stranger I meet.  I do not view that apparent lack of compassion for strangers as a flaw.  I view as a virtue the love I feel for the people who have earned my love, the people who provide value to my life.

That said, I am not without flaws.  I do not need to broadcast all of my flaws in a public blog, but those flaws are things I want to change about myself.  The things I view as my virtues I do not want to change.  Someone else might categorize my flaws and virtues differently, but that doesn’t matter.  They are not me, and I am not them.  They are who they are, and I am who I am, and that is why I planned this trip exactly the way I did, not the way anyone else told me to.  On that note, I will close.  Tomorrow I will be heading to the World Heritage Site where I will tie these past three entries together.