Enough Words

Enough with the words for now. They’re not getting me anywhere, despite what they claim. (Jan. 2013)

Drugs not Meditation

I read Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry a couple of months ago. It persuaded me to take psychedelic drugs instead of meditate. I’m pretty confident that was not Kornfield’s intention in writing the book. So let me explain.

Here is the basic premise of the book:

Meditative practices (Kornfield is a Buddhist, but the book includes examples from several religions) can produce ecstatic and blissful states, grand unity experiences, ego extinction, samadhi, death and rebirth passages and other kinds of mystical experiences that are one of the goals of many spiritual pursuits. But these states are hard to maintain. The seeker may think his life has been eternally transformed. But then the meditation retreat is over and the seeker returns home from the mountains into the daily life of traffic, work, families and distractions. Not only does the bliss itself grow more remote, but even the realizations and intentions to live a transformed life start to dissipate. Even Asian masters who leave their monasteries to run workshops and teach classes in the west often become prey to sex, money, power and the endless distractions and worries of daily life.

Kornfield reminds us that the ecstasy was only a stage in much longer (and endless?) process of awakening. The next step is to learn to live in the moment, accept the life that you have and appreciate the small things. Learn to a life of community, daily rituals, charity, compassion, sharing, caring for the environment and hanging out with dharma friends. This is the most important wisdom that comes from meditative practices, more important than the ecstasies.

Here is why meditation is like taking psychedelic drugs:

1) The ecstatic experience is temporary, and hard to integrate into daily life. That has always been a big complaint about substance-induced psychedelic experiences.

2) Both can have positive effects on health. Proponents of mediation emphasize its utility in stress reduction, improving brain performance, treating addiction, improving sex and as an adjunct to therapy. The same claims are made for psychedelic substances. Shamanic traditions call the substance medicines, and claim an ability to cure an even wider variety of physical and mental problems. Even clinical studies in the West have had positive results in using psychedelics to treat anxiety, addiction, PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, cluster headaches and for general psychotherapy (See MAPS, and Heffter Institute).

3) There is a small possibility of negative health effects. Neither technique has any proven physical ill-effects. But a  bad drug trip can severely disrupt emotional well-being, especially in people who are already mentally unstable. And excessive psychedelic use can contribute to long term mental deterioration. But some meditators also experience overwhelming upsurges of negative emotions, not to mention long-term frustration and self-criticism when meditation is difficult and not having the effects that are expected. The negative feelings surrounding mediation are usually not so overwhelming as a bad drug trip—but this perhaps has more to do with the fact that many drug trips are taken without adequate preparation, whereas meditators generally have a large amount of self-discipline and awareness of what they are doing. Indeed, some bad nights (accompanied by appropriate purging) can be an essential part of an ayahuasca treatment.

As to long-term chronic effects, moderation seems again to be key. Kornfield mentions several masters who developed serious illnesses. Twenty to thirty years of sitting on your ass without much exercise is not a route to good health. (But, as with frequent psychedelic use, it is also not necessarily a route to bad health).

4) Both claim to provide access to the divine (indeed, the increasingly popular word “entheogen” to describe psychedelic substances means ‘generating the divine within’). They point to states of enlightenment or self-realization. But neither method takes you there directly or leaves you with what Jeb McKenna calls “abiding non-dual awareness.” To reach that state, you have to do some different kind of work. But both can delude you into thinking you have attained or are approaching that state already.

This kind of delusion can be actively encouraged by the proponents of each technique. Drug culture, however, is so fragmented and laden with caveats that I think it is less of a problem. The institutional force and sophisticated tones of contemporary Buddhism and the other meditative establishments are much more misleading. Here is the source of my biggest skepticism of Kornfield.

In another essay that I read a long time ago, Kornfield described the ecstatic experiences as a ‘booby prize.’ The true prize, real enlightenment, was in the next stage of being able to live in this world with enlightened clarity. This is a fairly standard Buddhist and Advaita claim. But the kind of ‘wisdom’ described in After the Ecstasy does not seem to have anything to do with this. Indeed, contemporary American Buddhism as a whole is fairly notorious for having dropped enlightenment as a goal. Kornfield talks of the continued process of ‘awakening,’ ‘realization’, and wisdom, but not enlightenment. He describes the kinds of insights that can come to many people as they become older, not just people who have been meditating for 30 years. As far as I can tell, it does nothing to apply the experiences of ecstasy and mystical experiences into daily life. Instead, it just teaches us to accommodate to the social and material obligations of this world. It is stuff that he could well have learned while earning his psychology PhD. It is a wisdom that is already everywhere even without meditation or ecstasy. (For a more extended critique of ‘consensus Buddhism’ see David Chapman’s blog)

As the tantrika in Daniel Odier’s Tantric Quest says, if the yogi can not leave his cave and be comfortable spending time in town, then the yogi has not yet really awakened. This seems to be the case with most of of Kornfield’s examples. But then Kornfield reframes their falls from bliss and awakening as true wisdom.

I don’t know if abiding enlightenment or non-dual awareness is really a possibility. I won’t know until I somehow manage to awaken to the fact that I am already there (to use the lingo of the genre). Meditation, drugs and ecstatic experiences are, at best, only tools with limited functions in that awakening.

But if I am searching for ecstatic, mind-blowing, self-therapeutic or difficult introspective experiences, I’ll choose drugs over meditation. As far as I can tell, the only reason to undergo years of meditation, muscle cramps, ‘witnessing’ that endless inane chatter in my head, and trying to persuade myself that all those hours were well-spent, is because I have some kind of bizarre work ethic. And even then, there’s no guarantee I’ll get my ecstatic experience. Although the drug experience is definitely easier in terms of time and long-term effort, this does not mean it comes without costs. A powerful experience needs good preparation and follow-up (which could include meditative practices). And it will still be mentally and physically draining.

The illegitimate and semi-legitimate status of psychedelics and entheogens combines with the power of these substances to hit you unawares to produce a much more open interpretive context. If I want to my experiences to be sanctioned and to learn how to interpret them as some kind of progress towards wisdom and better integration into society, I’ll join a meditation group. If I want challenges, confusion, adventure, endless possibility, shifting reference frames, or to just stare into the abyss with awe, I’ll stick with the drugs.

Pig Ghosts and Lottery Numbers

We slept in Luna’s farmshed last night—a little wood and metal platform by the rice fields. Luna was very nervous about the ghosts. She slept on the farm all the time as a girl with no problem. But as she has grown older and more urbanized, the empty, nighttime spaces are increasingly a home for her accumulated anxieties, conflicts and other hauntings. A shamaness once told her she has to spend the night on her farm alone to figure out what the ghosts want so that she can resolve some of her physical illnesses. She hasn’t had the nerve yet.

I was hoping to meet one of the ghosts, but no luck. That could just be my problem. Luna insists that when one of the dogs dashed off to chase something, she heard a squealing pig. She stared into the night for several minutes looking for the pig, and even smelled her dogs’ mouths for blood. I told her that I had not heard a pig. “Maybe a ghost,” she said nonchalantly.

Luna did dream a lottery number—her first in a several months. I bought the ticket (it never works if she buys it herself). I won about $36.

Will the Introspection Ever End?

Since posting my reasons for quitting a couple of days ago, I’ve been thinking about what parts are bullshit and which parts are true. (For impatient readers, all that really matters in this post can be found in the last three sentences. The rest is navel-gazing.) Many of those reasons were imagined, polished and adjusted in the process of explaining myself to other people. Along the way, I surely noticed and selected phrases that got a positive response and had good entertainment value. And I surely selected phrases that helped me feel more comfortable with my decision (and avoided topics that rubbed the raw flesh of my doubt). The more I adjusted and reiterated my explanations, the more I’ve persuaded myself that they are true. Whatever my original reasons were, I have new reasons now.

Put in their most productive light, the public explanations helped me put words to feelings of which I’d only been vaguely aware. For example, many people asked why I wanted to leave such a cushy situation where I am free to teach what I want. This encouraged me to think more carefully about what I did and did not find worthwhile in the Drugs and Big History classes, and why it just seemed like beating my head against the wall to do more of the same. I am very well trained in the shaping of evidence into plausible arguments in the service of persuading others and myself. That was my job.

On the other hand, my insistence that “I’ve had a good career, it’s time to move on” is more of a soundbite than an insight. This phrase that gained a life of its own through positive audience response. It is true that I am much less cynical and bitter than before, and that I think this has freed me up for change. But what I did not mention is that I am actually still a bit jealous of the greater success some of my colleagues have earned. This is less true than before as I’ve become increasingly detached. But these kinds of feelings are still hard to avoid. They are saturated into the fabric of the institution, and are deeply at the core of what makes the institution miserable. To put it differently, however much I could perform some of the actions that led to success, I still didn’t feel like I fit.

I really don’t know the balance between my just wanting to escape this poisonous emotional cycle of academia (which can be so easily framed as ‘running away’) and my repeated assertions that I have gone as far as I can with academia (‘I appreciate what I’ve learned but am ready to move on’). The former seems to come from a deeper, less acknowledged place. The latter seems more like a rationalization. But perhaps this is just my fear and cynicism talking? Why should I believe my self-critical feelings more than my positive feelings?

The Indian stages of life stuff is something that I’ve repeated to myself frequently over the past few months, as much to persuade myself as to explain anything to others. I find it inspiring, much like those “You can’t do something great until you take a risk” clichés. I didn’t talk about taking risks in my explanations precisely because it sounds like such a platitude. The Indian stages sound less like Nike commercials. But, to be sure, it is the equivalent of Nike commercials for introspective, middle-aged people like me.

In explaining myself, I very consciously toned down some of the spiritual, Tantra and Jungian stuff I’ve been reading and doing the past few years. I aluded to it through phrases such as ‘learned new things’, ‘reached the limits of academic thought’, ‘lopsidedly intellectual’ (which is something I read in a Jungian book 5 years ago) and references to ineffable drug experiences and Indian life stages. But even this toned down version still runs the risk of seeming flaky to an academic audience. But why should I care, why am I afraid? Well, because I am still enough of an academic that a lot of this still seems a bit flaky to me, and I am quite embarrassed and uncertain about it. I tell myself that my academic training will help me cut through the New Age bullshit and get to the core. And much of my public explanation is about how academic attitudes can limit our understanding and engagement with life. I hope it’s true.

My audiences also conspired in helped me to avoid certain topics. For example, only one person asked me why I can’t look at my job as a service, and opportunity to contribute to knowledge, help students, and to give back some of what I have learned in the first half of my life? Most people seemed to share the assumption that a life of self-absorbed self-discovery is a good life. I’m not so sure.

Only a couple of people asked about my family and daughter. To a large extent, this reflected our inexperience and incompetence in discussing (beyond banalities) anything outside the narrow academic world where we interact. But my daughter is definitely my strongest attachment, the person that makes every choice difficult, especially choices that will take me away from her and reduce the resources I can provide for her. On the other hand, my girlfriend is one of the greatest inspirations, a constant reminder of how it is possible to be a fantastic person without school and without fear. My mother and ex-wife are there too, someplace deep in my soul and in my self-criticisms and self-confidence in ways that I still don’t quite understand. It’s a complicated mess, and I am glad nobody pushed this question too far.

I was also a bit vague about what I plan to do for the next year or so. Plenty of people asked—surely curious (as am I) about how one can survive outside of the ivory walls. I made glancing audience-appropriate references to massage classes, spiritual and tantric practice, Luna’s businesses, my fascination for the complexities of the Thai sex industry, working with ayahuasca healing or just focusing on my non-intellectual side before I made a decision. Some people wanted reassurance that I might return to intellectual activities, and I acknowledged the possibility. But for the most part it was easy enough to deflect the question and stick to talking about the reasons for leaving. There is nothing that humanists and social scientists like more than to hear an insightful critique laced with with vague references to a better possible world. And historians are particularly loathe to go beyond vague references and actually predict the future.

All told, my explanations have a jaunty tone that rings a bit false. Even if my explanations are true as far as they go, they are also continued evasion of those personal shadows I don’t want to confront—a tendency to avoid confrontation, self-isolation, fear of power and responsibility, distaste for practical concerns, etc. But maybe this is just my mom and ex-wife speaking? . . .

Enough. Really, all I should just say to myself and to others is, “It is finally time to stop fucking worrying about it. You’ll never know anything unless you get on with it.”

Why I Resigned: The Permutations

I’ve spent a lot of the past month telling students and colleagues why I have resigned my job as a history professor. My first explanations were a kind of nervous, disconnected stuttering. But it gradually grew into a polished presentation, with detachable modules that could be slectd and rearranged depending on the audience. In the process, my decision grew life of its own, following a logic of performance as much as explanation. It is becoming something else, yet again, as I translate into the written word. So, here is the latest permutation:

I’ve had a good career. I’ve written one book that is pretty good, and one that is really good. I’ve published several articles, including one that has been very significant in reshaping my field, another that has been very well-cited (although much less important in my opinion)—and a couple of others that I think are innovative and significant but haven’t gained much attention. I played an important role in helping define the shifting intellectual orientation of my department, helping to make it stand out from its peers. I can be happy with what I have accomplished. It’s time to move on.

The ideas that once felt so expansive now feel limiting. I haven’t had a really new idea for 10 years. To be sure, I have plenty of ideas for books and articles that can flesh out more permutations of those ideas and push them to their bitter end. And the kind of history I do is just beginning to catch on. I could still present myself cutting edge, and professional kudos and respect would only increase in the next ten years as this kind of history becomes more routine and widely accepted. But I know in my heart that I’ve already peaked. From here, it is the slide into careerism, repetition, boredom, and old fogeydom. I don’t really like teaching. Despite a few good moments, I am a mediocre teacher. I look at what my senior colleagues have done to take their careers to the next step—run centers, consolidate fields, become administrators, create teaching materials, write op-eds and get on television—and it doesn’t interest me. I can see some possible new directions, especially in computational history and collaboration with hard sciences. I have a couple of colleagues going in this direction, and I greatly respect their shift. But it doesn’t quite compel me. The curiosity and excitement that led me into academia are now pulling me into other ways of being—more experiential and sensual.

I’ve been thinking about this for five years, ever since I finished my second book. At that time I was headachy, sleepless, irritable and generally miserable. I figured that I had to learn how to enjoy my job. It looks so good on paper—why do so many of us find it so difficult to put that potential into practice? I got divorced instead (a wise decision). But I also put a lot of effort into making my job better: 35-40 hour work weeks during the semester (even less during leaves); only teaching classes I enjoy; saying no to things I don’t want to do (especially hiring and tenure committees); avoiding academic politics.

In terms reducing irritability, cynicism, sleeplessness, headaches, backaches etc. the new regime was effective. But I also found that:

1) The extra time allowed me to develop other interests.

2) I was rapidly losing interest in academic questions. I now find it nearly impossible to read a history or social science book or journal article. They’re all so predictable. Fresh approaches are increasingly rare for me.

3) I’ve become lopsidedly intellectual. Time to develop my emotional, sensual and intuitive sides.

4) The job demands more attention and conviction than I have been able to give it at only 35-40 hours a week and greatly diminished interest. It is nearly impossible to keep up with my readings & networking enough to be able to serve grad students, update classes or do my editorial work well.

5) I still enjoy helping graduate students and talking about ideas with them–in fact it is where I have focused much of my work time. But they are such potent conduits of that dark, heavy cloud of anxiety, insecurity, fear and doubt that pervades upper academia. They haven’t yet learned how to absorb or defend themselves against that cloud, and they channel and project it in an especially concentrated manner. I’ve had days when I’ve left work with my body literally drooping from all the anxiety I have absorbed from graduate students. And my favorite students—the ones who came with so many dreams and curiosities and are inept at careerism—are so often the ones most beaten down by this cloud. What am I doing working for an institution that so effectively squelches curiosity, wastes youth and encourages petty careerism, insecurities, jealousies and cynicism?

At the same time, the more I have externalized my insecurities as a poisonous institutional cloud, the less I am bitter and bitter and cynical about my job. Some anger remains, but nothing like five years ago. This, more than anything, has helped me to resign. On days when I have gone to some horrible meeting, talked academic politics and withered under burning grad student agonies, I go home and think “What a stupid idea to leave the job. It’s got so many perks, so much security. What a foolish idea to leave.” Bitterness and fear is a form of attachment. But on days when classes went well, when I see that people appreciate my work and find it useful, when I remember some of the great things that I’ve learned over the past 20+ years–those are the days when it makes total sense to move on. My heart is open. The past and future no longer trap me.

Also, over the past five years, when I’ve told people about my experiences in Thailand, they often answer, “That’s so cool, you should write an article about it.” But that is precisely what I don’t want to do. Is that really the end and value that makes all experiences worth having, to write an academic analysis of it? In so many ways, that just kills experiences and ideas. Yes, academic analysis has opened lots of doors to me, and has fundamentally shaped the way I see the world (and my difficulties in understanding how other people see the world). But now I am increasingly aware of the doors it leaves closed.

Of course, this would not be possible if my father hadn’t died last year. Selling his house in California has given me the resources to escape the bondage to mortgage, alimony and tuition that holds so many of my colleagues. But my father’s death also inspired this in ways beyond the material cushion. After buying an coop apartment, I realized that I have no good idea what to do with the rest of the money. I would probably just let it sit in the bank and wait. For what. Even with reduced material constraints, I realized, fear of change still lingered. Who would I be, if not a CU Professor? What could I tell people?

Then after I was actually promoted to full professor last summer, I laughed out loud. “I don’t want to inhabit this title. This is not me. I’m no professor. ” A professor is what my dad wanted to be. It is what my mom and ex-wife wanted to marry, the kind of children they wanted to have. When I grew up, my parents appeared to be totally liberal and open: “Whatever you want to do is fine with us.” But the one constant theme was “School is good. Go to school. More school is better. School creates opportunities. School is good.” So I never left. I followed their path all the way through. But throughout high school and college, my best friends were always people who hated school and sometimes dropped out. I have a girlfriend who never went to school. It’s time to see the signs, to finally live my own life.

The two classes I’ve enjoyed teaching most over the past years have been Big & Deep History; and Drugs in World History. I’ve enjoyed them precisely because they both point so firmly past the limits of an academic approach to the world. In big and deep history we read works that place human history in the context of the history of the universe, natural processes, evolution and neurophysiology (i.e., books that make many of my colleagues a bit uncomfortable and inclined to burrow back into their disciplinary boundaries). They relentlessly draw attention to the complexity of the human brain; the continuities of human, animal and chemical life; the fact that even the actions of conscious beings follow the same statistical patterns as non-conscious objects; and the triviality of human life in the face of time, space and complexity. Academic research made every of these books possible. And every one of this books takes us to the brink of the ineffable, lets us peek into the depths, and then steps back in fear and analysis to kill the vision. They respond to the vision with premature systematization, subjection to concepts and human abstractions, academic debates, and platitudes reaffirming the value of our conventional understanding of daily life. I love the directions those books have pointed. But I hate the theories, platitudes and egoic appeals they use to pull us back.

My drug class has consistently pointed to our repeated failures in understanding, representing, containing and regulating the drug experience (in other words, the experience of our minds and bodies). The drug experience has consistently all attempt to constrain it, whether through academic concepts, medicine, politics or police. Academic analysis can give us some insights. It can show the social and political and scientific construction of drug experiences. It can show the enormous diversity of drug experiences, and a few of the factors that may shape those variations. And, in the hands of a few authors (especially those who admit to being drug users themselves) academic analysis can even show us where the analytical approach hits its limits, and suggest the enormous mystery and possibility that lies beyond. As with Big and Deep History, I am thankful that academic analysis has taken me to the door. I am ready to take another step.

I’ve been doing enough meditation, tantric exercises and psychedelics the past few years to see that it is true what the mystics and psychonauts say: concepts, abstractions and words are one of the main barriers to having those mystic/ineffable experiences in their fullness. Words and analysis are very useful at certain stages to point you in the right (or wrong) direction. But they can only take you so far. You can only take the next step by letting go of those concepts, forsaking the need to intellectually fix an experience, by surrendering control.

The idealized Indian stages of life makes more sense to me that the life path into which I have been living. I have been socialized to expect that most of my life from mid-20s to late 60s will be concerend with ‘career’ and social responsibilities and achievements. After that, I will just fade away and ‘enjoy myself’ when I retire (if I haven’t faded away already).

The Indian stages, however, finish up the stage of money, career and household in the late 40s. A person should then go off into the forest and learn to communicate with the gods. It makes much more sense to make a bit shift in late 40s—with plenty of experience behind you and stil enough energy to go into the unknown. I look at nearly all of my relatives except one—they spent their last years alone, lonely and bitter, unable to make any sense out of retirement. I can see that happening to me so easily. It will certainly happen if I follow the career path to the bitter end. I should follow those other paths now, not just wait. If I fail, my past achievements still won’t have gone away any more than if I wait another 20 years to retire.

In Amman, on the way to . . .

I’m in the airport of Amman, Jordan, waiting for my connecting flight to Bangkok. My classes are finished, office cleaned out, and house-sitter moving into my apartment next week. It is the end of my life as a professor.

The Amman airport is a rinky-dink affair–a throwback to the Third World 70s more than the predictable cosmopolitanism of most airports today. Lots of interesting people around. But my mind is elsewhere.

I bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok. I could depict this monodirectionality as a fearless, sever-the-ties, make-or-break, reckless leap into a new life. Fact is, I’m just indecisiveness about what to do in the next few months. My Thai visa is only good for three months. I’ll probably be back in NY at the end of March for my daughter’s birthday.

For the past month, I’ve avoided thinking about what will happen after I arrive in Bangkok on December 27. I’ve just focused on correcting papers, redistributing the stuff in my office, cleaning my house, wrapping up the paperwork for my departure, arranging my physical movements around the pinched nerve in my back, dealing with a horrible sore throat. I’ve spent a lot of time explaining why I’ve resigned to friends and colleagues why. I’ve worked it up into a pretty good performance. I’m not sure how much of it is true or bullshit anymore.

I’ve been much vaguer about what I intend to do next. Some comments about leaving it open for a while. I mention massage classes and Luna’s small businesses in Thaland. With some people I might even mention my interest in tantric training, my fascination with the challenges that Luna is having in dealing with the sex-work in her bar, or my thoughts about what some people are doing with ayahuasca and psychedelic healing. I say I’ve got enough funds to last me 2-3 years, which is enough to have a good cushion but not enough to get lazy. Many people want me to say that I may still to come back to intellectual life, or even back to the university after my leave is over. I nod and agree that is a possibility.

For a long time I thought that giving away my books would bring me face-to-face with the reality of my choice to resign, bring up some kind of emotion. But no, nothing. No fear, no pleasure of generosity, no excitement, no regret. Just worry about the practicalities of who will get what and how I can get rid of all of them. But I do think that I gave my office the best cleaining it’s had in decades. All the way down to the early 70s–both the remnants of previous occupants and some childhood stuff of mine that I’d forgotten I’d put there. A good cleaning is really a destructive act. All those years of carefully accumulated sediment washed away just like that.

I avoided telling my mom for a long time, although I know she’s supected. She was predictably furious. “Why do you want to throw your life away? Why don’t you care about education? What about your daughter? I don’t know you any more!” But then I reminded her how much I admired her when she took a year off to go to Czechoslovakia and how happy and open she was that year. And she agreed, but said, “The problem was that I didn’t make anything out of that experience. I just convinced myself of my limits and went back to my old life. I’m afraid that you’ll do the same thing.”

My ex-wife went full-drama when I told her. She cried and insisted that I don’t care about my daughter. But I can pack the bags for that guilt trip much better than she can (indeed, my love of being with is the biggest reason why adventurous long-term planning is so difficult for me right now) and she couldn’t take me very far down that road. Then she talked about how hard it would be for her. But that quickly turned into a discussion of the technicalities of our divorce agreement, issues that are well-hashed and pretty much resolved. I assured her that alimony and child support would not stop. Then she told me that she still loves me so much, that she still wants me back, that she doesn’t understand why I can’t enjoy having a good family together . . . . . It still chokes me up as I write this.

Kham

In 1989, I travelled with my wife through Kham, the eastern part of Tibet in Sichuan Province. Bus trips took multiple days. The buses usually left before dawn, drove up and down enormous valleys and passes on single lane roads, arriving at the next town in early afternoon. Passengers would stay in a hotel and wander the town until the next dawn.

We were turned back at the border to Tibet Autonomous region, and decided to go up to Amdo in  Qinghai province instead. This required a three-day bus ride back to the town of Kangding, and then another three days to the town nearest the border of Qinghai.

At the last town before Kangding, we looked at the map and saw a road that cut north and joined the road to Amdo. This would have cut our travel time down by at least a day. We learned that no buses travelled this road. People discouraged us from hitchhiking, telling us that the Tibetans out in the mountains were wild and would hijack and kill us.

We chickened out and went back to Kangding.

On the road across the border to Qinghai, we still had to hitchhike and several young Tibetan men showed us their long knives. I also learned that the Chinese word for vegetables sounds a lot like the word for firewood in the local accent. When I asked if people grew vegetables in the next town, I was told, “No, only yak shit.” Our hotel room did have a closet full of dried yak shit. We were supposed to shovel it into the cast iron stove and burn it to keep warm.

Tibetans cooked in yak oil, burned yak butter candles, lived in yak skin tents, wore yak skin clothes, decorated their homes with yak bones, and even smelled like yak grease (because they rarely showered). Yak meat is a dark brownish-red, with bright yellow marbled fat. In towns, we would see men and women with long dreadlocked hair, long knives, dark weatherbeaten skin, and wild pirate clothes coming down from the mountains with piles of reeking yak meat on their backs. It was often topped with a yak head, split open on top to reveal the brain. They were always friendly and smiling. But I probably had this image in my head when we chickened out.