November 24, 2007

Jason and I are sitting in a booth at Casita del Campo, the local quasi gay neighborhood Mexican restaurant. Jason, my cousin’s 13 year old grandson, was hungry after the movie so I was delighted at the prospect of going to Casita and having Margaritas while we went over his homework.

It was math. And it wasn’t algebra. And I didn’t know quite how to relate. In college I wasn’t bad at math, I got an A- in Calculus at Berkeley, but I never felt I could put it all together despite getting good grades. I looked through his book. 35 years later I still felt a disconnect.

Despite getting soused on margaritas, with Jason’s help I was able to figure out how to divide fractions. However, when it came to how many feet were in a mile I turned to Jay, the maitre ‘d, who promptly responded 1760. This didn’t seem right and upon questioning he clarified that this was actually yards. The food arrived before we were able to move on to the next exercise.

But it was the following conversation that really struck and motivated me to blog tonight.

Reaching into my inner core I was able to get out the question:

“Should kids be controlled by their guardians?”

“Mostly,” he said. That was a positive and open answer so I searched for clarification and asked what me meant.

“Their guardians may not always be right and kids should be able to think for themselves.”

Whether it was the margaritas or the validity of his statement, it rang so true that I had to write it down on the place mats and also ask Jay what he thought.

Jay agreed but also threw out that guardians knew better.

Having been with a few parents I knew better then to think that guardians know better. But they still had the right to know better. I asked Jason about this and appropriately enough said he didn’t feel they always knew better.

Well, there it is. Teenage-hood in a nutshell. Guardians have the right but are not necessarily so. Teenagers have the right to think for themselves.

Guardians have veto power.

How the hell do you reconcile this?

November 6, 2007

EGYPT – THE GAY TOUR

On Board The Tiyi, Up River -- The Nile

After a whirlwind of activities including a 21 hour marathon, today there is time to reflect on the five thousand years of human history we’ve witnessed the last two days.

It’s hard to get a handle on how to process it all. It’s not that I wasn’t prepared. For the last two weeks I pulled out and read all the dozen or so National Geographics I’ve saved on Egypt. I knew there was three thousand years of ancient history and another two thousand since Christ. I knew the country was an archeologist’s Disneyland and that most of it was probably still undiscovered.

But then to come face to face with it was something else.

As Omar Sharif’s voice said at the Sound and Light Show at the Pyramids; the Sphinx has faced the dawn each day for over five thousand years and to gaze upon it feels like looking at time itself.

Furthermore, walking into the tombs of some of the pharaohs who constructed these incredible monuments in order to pass from one reality into another felt like I was confronting not just time but also who we human beings are on this planet.

No one knows how many ruins and civilizations are still to be discovered, but the ones in Egypt, I believe, go back further than any discovered so far. Their size, complexity, and sheer amount of cultural history behind them appears to dwarf any single ancient civilization known so far.

How did they build these things? How did they develop their art and architecture, writing system, mummification process, belief systems? There is so much of it.

No wonder it’s hard to process.





November 9, 2007

Abu Simbel -- Up the Nile, Egypt

The boys paid a visit to Ramses II and his wife Nefertari today. It was a short hop, 45 minutes by plane from Aswan, and the monument is the only reason to go to Abu Simbel.

It is worth flying around the world to see.
I can’t decide if the monuments are a testament to military power, love, engineering, or vanity. It’s probably all of them.

Ramses II, for whom the condoms are named after, had over a hundred children and loved his favorite wife so much that he built a temple alongside his for her. He also loved her so much that when she died early he married two of the daughters he had by her.

That’s something to wonder about.

He also built this incredibly imposing edifice as symbol of his power on a bend in the Nile so the conquered Nubians can see just how tough a guy he is. The walls inside contain many scenes, beautifully preserved in some of their original colors, of many of his military conquests.

Our guide Rhonda said it was as much boasting as reality.

I wonder how he felt when modern day Nassar, by ordering construction of the Aswan Dam, was prepared to let his legacy flood. It was the efforts of the international community in 1960 that meticulously broke it down and reassembled it on higher ground.

That was almost as an incredible feat as the original construction but in 1960 they least had things like electricity and cranes and the wheel.


November 10, 2007

Our tour guide David, is a Canadian from Montreal with a mother in Florida. This is his fifth tour to Egypt and at 22 men, his biggest group so far. This is also my first organized tour. Putting 22 strangers together, all queer adult males, for nine days in a strange place and in close quarters, somewhat dependent on each other, gave me pause to think when I first booked the this trip.

But after only a few days, and because of David, I began to notice how well we all got along. I asked David what he thought. He thought we got along very well.

“No one is getting on the bus and saying things like, ick, I have to sit next to that person,” he added.

Traveling with these men did give a unique perspective on everything, a gay one of course. There were few stock observations or comments with this group. I can see why straight people enjoy gay cruises so much. Queer eye for the Pharoahs, so to speak.

One of the defining characteristics of the trip was our guide Rhonda frequently calling us together in crowded places with the words: “This way Pharoahs.” It sounded too much like, well, you know.


November 11, 2007

One my way home today, looking at a 12 hour flight to New York and another six to California.

Yesterday we explored Islamic Cairo: the mosque at the Citadel and some of the old quarter. This turned out to be one of the interesting surprises of the trip. It gave me an introduction to the schisms within Muslims today, that between the Shi-ia and Sunnis. Even though I didn’t visit it, the literal and physical head of this schism, the head of Al-Hussein is buried in a mosque in Cairo. 500 years after his death, in 1153 AD, his head was buried in the Cairo mosque Sayyidna. He was the husband of Mohammed’s daughter and his followers are Shi-ia. Those who did not believe in this line of succession are Sunni’s.

Like everything else in the Middle East, it goes back that far and the schism continues today. How did this little history escape Bush’s attention?

A Note to My Fellow Travelers:

I want to express the pleasant and unexpected pleasure I derived from traveling with this group. It added immensely to the enjoyment of the trip. Not only do I feel that we got along very well but we seemed to have developed a special camaraderie. I didn’t feel any self-consciousness. One could turn to the person next to them and joke or chat like we were old friends.

Thank you for enhancing my Egyptian experience. I will always be grateful and hope to see you in the future.