What is truth? In college, I learned how everyone’s truth is different. A poem would be presented to the class, and we would go around the room and ask people what they thought the poem meant. Everyone had a different answer. And none of these answers were right or wrong, they were simply true to whoever was perceiving the poem. None of us could ever know what the poet meant when they wrote it, and if the poet was writing in spirit they wouldn’t know either.
The poem simply reveals itself to us and then we interpret it through our own lens. And that’s life. Our experience, reality, the universe… it reveals itself to us and then we interpret it through our unique lens. And nobody’s interpretation of this is better or worse than any other, and no interpretation is right or wrong. If it’s truly how we interpret the experience, that’s how it is. Might not be the same for me, but that’s fine. If we all saw things the same way, life would be pretty boring.
Differentiation is interesting. It makes conversation interesting if…
*Read the rest of the post at Quantum Comedy through the link below
“Somehin ain’t right here, partner” I said… to myself. I’ve been talking in a Southern accent lately because it’s funny and I grew a mustache. Or maybe it’s the mustache that’s the funny part. There’s another possibility, which is that none of it is funny and I’m simply hurting for a way to pass the time. Whatever the case may be regarding the accent and the facial features, I felt something funny in my body.
It was one of those things I had a hard time explaining to people. Was I in pain? No, not really. Just tired, maybe? No, not quite. More… depleted? Is feeling like expired jam in a can of SPAM a medical condition? Hardly grounds for a doctor’s visit. “I suppose I’ll just carry on,” I thought.
Each day became a little harder and I was feeling more jammed in the SPAM than before. I took a day off and came back feeling better. I spent half the day cleaning monkey doo doo off a collection of colorful towels while dreaming about the future, and everything seemed quite fine.
I had a nice lie down after my shift at the volunteer center, sandwiched in the Ecuadorian Amazon just a stones throw from the Andes, when some trouble started brewin’. “Better get to the hole in the ground, daddy’s about to blow cover.” The accent was back, but I was far from amused. My bumcheeks hit the jungle-yuck toilet about the same time the water works company let loose on the valve inside; flowing season was upon me before I even had time to remind myself that former Colorado Rockies legend Larry Walker hit .379 in 1999.
I didn’t have time to swat away the flies because the Projectile Vomiting Company decided now would be a good time to test their power. I had no choice but to pull the old Shit n’ switch technique and I’ll be damned and forgotten if I didn’t pull it off with flying colors; colors of all I had consumed that day, but I’ll spare you those details. I wouldn’t be so lucky as time went on.
First, I was at about an 80% vomiting to 20% bum dumping ratio at approximately 15-minute intervals, but we were just getting started here folks. Lord Sucksalot cut those intervals down to five minutes with a 50/50 split and your boy didn’t stand a fancy chance at much more than a narrow view down Cooked Canyon. The puke bucket, an old industrial butter container with a dirt bottom and home to three black spiders, was not next to the bed but on top of it.
About four hours in, the Poop Valve Control Center stopped notifying the town of any impending scenarios and simply went home for the day. I no longer knew my doom was coming and my pants paid the price. Some water never tasted so good, but I felt it go straight through me. 2x soil of pants back-to-back combo bonus +500 XP. “It’s not that much, surely I’ll make it up for the next one.” The accent is gone at this point. The mustache will not help me. We’re six hours in and my thighs are not dry.
At about the six-and-a-half-hour mark things started to turn sour QUICK. I made the fatal mistake of drinking three gulps of water, going for the classic Triple Drinker Swig Mission, which is a hell of a payoff on a weekend like this. Soon the thighs were laughing at my now soggy calves and ankles, bed sheets fully soaked in defecated creations. I decided I needed to make a swift exit and stood up, which only cued the release of every ounce of water from the Triple Drinker Swig Mission down my legs, past my pants and into a pool on the floor. The volunteer next to me sat calmly on his bed reading a novel, oblivious to the entire situation.
At this point I barely have the strength to stand, but I have to make it to the shower because I am completely covered in my own sewage system. Stumbling through the jungle I somehow managed to turn the shower water on, but I had expended my last drops of energy. I slowly folded to the shower floor and lay on the ground, freezing cold while the hot water rained down upon me. It’s in the fetal position where I realize this will not pass. I need help.
It took every fiber of fight in me just to get up. I took a deep breath, shut off the water and asked who was in the shower next to me. If I let them leave, I didn’t know if I could make it back to the volunteer house. “Who’s next to me?” I ask.
“Peytie,” she responds.
“Can you get help, I gotta go to the hospital.”
Just talking had become exhausting, and I was on a slippery slope to Nogoodsville. I somehow managed to get my clean pants on, but I’d spoil those soon enough. I don’t know exactly who was all there, but a lot of volunteers came to help. I was still conscious but pretty much a cross between a limp noodle and a zombie. Apparently, you could see all the veins in my face, so that’s pretty cool. I was told it was actually quite scary, which is fair.
We weren’t supposed to go into town this weekend because it was during the Presidential election, days after one of the candidates had been assassinated. So, timing wise it wasn’t a great time for me to be rushed to the hospital, but the city seemed alright. I mean I only peered out the window for five seconds, but they were still selling arepas, so… everything seemed fine. Everything was totally, totally fine.
The owner of the volunteer center asked me if I was scared while driving me to the hospital. I said I wasn’t, and just hoped I didn’t have colon cancer. I’m high risk for the illness so the thought obviously entered my mind. 40 minutes later we arrived at the emergency room, and I tried to sit in the waiting chair, but only lasted a couple of minutes before I had to lay on the floor.
Another twenty minutes passed before they called my name. We filled out some information and eventually I found my way to a hospital bed, where I got to spend the night going through four IV bags and watching some guy die across from me while his family gathered around. I had nothing to do but sit there and listen to the beeps of his heart meter. Was this how I envisioned things going? No, not at all. But it was happening. This was all really happening.
They tried to get a poo sample out of me, handing me a small cup. I gave it my best effort but explained to them in the best Spanish I could muster that there was nothing in my body. “Hay nada en mi cuerpo. Necesito comida.” They told me they couldn’t give me food and I wasn’t allowed to bring any in either. So, when the owner of the volunteer center came back to check on me, we devised a plan for him to sneak in some cookies so I could poop them out into this cup.
He put them under his sweatshirt and stealthily snuck them to me. I carefully opened them and slipped one underneath my mask and into my mouth. Then another. I ate two whole cookies. Whoa. This is wild. And by golly son of a swordfish, it worked. An hour later I waddled to the bathroom and took dead aim. Score. Poo in cup. Why is there blood in my IV? Ah man, that guy’s really dying. Back to the bed.
The night carried on and I felt a little less pathetic with every IV bag that went through my veins. The bloodwork came back clean, which was a relief. It turns out I had gotten supremely dehydrated and my body was half way to shutting it down. I had been drinking quite a bit of water but hadn’t had any electrolytes or sugar to balance it out. It was hard to fathom how any of it happened, but I was just happy to be alive. They released me from the hospital in the morning and I walked out without having paid a single dollar. Good thing I wasn’t home.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
A group of wild Howler Monkeys had been wreaking havoc around camp lately, waiting for any chance to steal some food. They’d sit atop the trees and scout for someone carrying a bucket towards a cage, pouncing on any moments of lost concentration.
Their favorite spot was at the small birds’ cage, a collection of seven parrots and such. It’s near another cage, home to Kevin the kinkajou, whose food was also a popular target. Kevin has never been nice to anyone, but we tried to protect his food nonetheless.
Beyond the two cages is a great jungle opening, which is one of the most gorgeous scenes I’ve ever laid eyes upon; lush with tall trees, gigantic green leaves, and a tunnel in the sky for the sun’s light to travel in. It’s part of the Howler’s home and a place we had been hoping they would stay.
After weeks of the monkeys moving to even closer cages to steal food, it was decided we would try and feed them away. So, a feeder was set up in the great jungle opening with the intention of filling their bellies with veggies and then gradually moving the feeder further from camp. After a few days, the feeder had fallen down and it became mine and Stefan’s job to install a new one. We made an open-face wooden box of sorts with a wire mesh bottom and tied rope around the four corners, leveraging it over a log between two trees about twenty feet high.
As our little project was taking place we noticed some company. Rather, Stefan did. “Oh shit,” he said, pointing directly behind me. One of the howler monkey was less than three feet away from me, and we became deadlocked in a jungle stare. Overwhelmed by the beauty of his red-orange coat and careful gaze, I felt no fear. I could have spent the rest of the day marveling at a rare close encounter with such an animal, but I tried to shoo him away with some water. He moved back a couple feet but was generally undeterred. More moments of staring passed before I looked back at Stefan and said, “let’s just get this thing up.”
We continued installing the feeder while repeatedly looking over our shoulders. The Howlers moved to more familiar elevations, climbing into the trees some 50 feet above us. I felt better when the monkey was right next to me. We were almost done with the feeder when suddenly I heard a crack. I looked above and suddenly saw two Howler Monkeys flying through the sky.
The branch they were perched upon had snapped and these two wild monkeys were free falling through the air some fifty feet from tree to ground, coming right towards us. “What the fuck?” was the only thought I could conjure as the two primates landed from their disaster dissent just six feet to my right. I reckoned they might be dead, but instead the monkeys looked at me as if to say “whoops” and simply walked away.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
My dreams are caught in a dance with the rain. Last night I lived a thousand lives in the vines of my subconscious mind. Every time I woke I heard the barrage of water droplets descending on the roof like it was their intention to make it cave. I was afraid to go back to sleep because the initial nightmare felt like weeks… and only an hour had passed.
The devil’s dance luckily subsided, and something a touch more cordial took over, albeit with a sense of bottled up ferocity. The details of my dreams were too numerous to grasp, and their volume and intensity left me feeling weathered like the stones of the rolling river.
Apparently there’s a flower here which will enhance your dreams if placed upon a pillow. Had I used it last night I might have got stuck in a whirlpool of my hidden fears.
Most mornings here begin clear, but the rain still scurried from the clouds to the ground. My mind felt like it was beaten through the sockets in my eyes, and the first couple hours were spent toiling in a delirious daze. I cut up fruit for the birds but I couldn’t tell you any more about the morning. It took until about four in the afternoon just to feel like my feet had landed on the ground.
Every day we have a meeting about the animals at five. Today’s debriefing made me laugh because nobody knew exactly how many birds were supposed to be in the cage. The sheet says 13, but we only counted 12. The previous group working with birds forgot to count the last few days, so if one had escaped we had no idea when it would have happened. Someone said one died but that was a couple months ago. The question remained: how many birds are supposed to be in the cage?
A couple hours later we were given an answer on the correct number of birds. It was 12. The whole conversation seemed to lighten the mood a touch, which was dark like the day. One of the howler monkeys passed away in the night, which was tough.
Yesterday I asked one of the long-term volunteers what the hardest part of being out here was and she said loss. “There’s a lot of loss out here. I think that’s the hardest part about life in general,” she continued. I didn’t disagree.
We also talked about the best day of our lives, which she had an immediate answer for. I kind of stumbled around the question with uncertainty, but she knew exactly. It was the day she released a group of wooly monkeys back into the wild. I suppose she was released on that day, too. The light in her eyes makes the hard work here easier.
When you’re picking up animal shit in the rain all day it’s easy to wonder why you signed up for this, but those thoughts get washed away when you feel the passion of the project through the glow of the people involved. Every day I learn more about the connections that have been built between the people and animals, which makes things easier and harder at the same time. It’s easier to put all you have into the work but harder when loss inevitably falls. The loss of the howler monkey in the morning hit especially hard because the connection with the volunteers was especially strong.
I’ve started to develop my own connection with one of the animals, a parrot named Julia. There’s a large cage of seven birds, and Julia lives in solitary right next to them. She’s unable to fly and the other birds won’t accept her into the big cage. We’re supposed to leave the door open while we clean in the hope she’ll wander around and the others won’t be so mean to her.
Yesterday (the first day I worked with her) she stayed in her cage the whole time. Today, she ventured into the big cage. Another parrot tried to bite her wing, so I shooed him away with the branch of a fern. Julia started to climb up the side of the cage and made way towards the back. The other parrots left her alone. I felt proud in the purest sense as I sang the song “Julia” out loud, one of my favorites from the band Mt Joy.
It’s hard to explain why I felt so connected to Julia from the start; somehow I saw something familiar in her eyes. I think we’ve all had it happen with another person. You meet someone and you feel like you’ve known them your entire life. I never expected it to happen with a bird, but the unexpected has broken apart the shell of what I thought I understood.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
A tree fell to start the day. That’s the easiest way to die out here. You could die a lot of ways out here but apparently that’s the most common. You can die a lot ways anywhere, really. I doubt it’s any safer in the city given all the cars and people. I doubt you would ever die from a falling person, though. A lot of people fall to their death but I’ve never heard of anyone losing their life because of a falling person.
Actually, that’s not true. I met a woman in Colombia just a few weeks ago who told me a story about a lady who died because her husband landed on top of her. They were doing drugs and she jumped off a balcony and the husband followed. I suppose it’s a hell of a love story if you want to frame it that way.
I cant say I’ve ever known of someone dying from a falling car. I wonder which is less likely, falling person or falling car… A car is quite designed not to fall, but I think people are dumb enough to make anything fall if you give them the chance. I know I’d have a better chance pushing over a person than a car, that’s for sure. Unless it was a HotWheel, I could push one of those over with a toothpick or a gentle breeze.
Dying from a falling HotWheel seems the least likely of them all. It would also bring a certain degree of shame upon the family name, even more so than dying from a falling coconut or mango.
Anyways, I’m volunteering in the jungle for two months at an animal rehabilitation center and this was how the first day unfolded.
Day 1: The chickens begin their piercing song around 4:30 in the morning. It’s awfully early for someone who doesn’t have to go to work. Maybe the chicken would tell you that life is work for them, but I’d have a hard time believing it. They seem to spend a lot of time wandering and making a fuss about the nothing in front of them.
Anyways, when the chickens get up so do you. I crawled out of bed in a stew or excitement, curiosity, and confusion around six. I had the wildest and most intricate dreams, which often cause me to rise in a state of WhereTheHellAmIness. Usually I’m home but this time I happened to be in the jungle, which stretched my state of confusion beyond it’s normal length of time.
When I stepped out of the home made dormitory and walked about 25 steps up to the kitchen, one of the coordinators came up the other way in a mad dash. “A tree fell on the capuchin cage. A big one.” Others were scrambling like scattered ants separated by fresh drops of rain. Those who have been here for a fair length of time collected at the cage and began tending to the situation.
Some duties were switched around like the pieces of a puzzle with multiple solutions. Stefan (a German man who I arrived with) and I were supposed to be introduced to the Wooly Monkey run by Alan, but Kennedy (a woman who happens to live just outside Austin) ended up guiding us through the work day. I think it worked out better that way. Kennedy was saying how she wanted to do an introduction and it’s always nice when someone is excited to do something.
Our first task was to wander into the rainforest and cut down leaves for the monkeys with our machetes. When you don’t know what kind of leaves Wooly Monkeys eat, this can become a laborious first job. First you have to decipher if it’s the right kind of leaf. Next, you must find a clear route to swing your machete through. Then, you collect the branch and throw it over your shoulder like a shower towel. Rinse and repeat.
Bugs will crawl across your skin, thorns and leaves will cut and stab you, water will fly in your eyes, and you’ll feel all kinds of sticky and icky substances scattered throughout; but you’re there to do a job, so it does no good to think about any of that.
Once I started to recognize the patterns amongst the leaves things began to get easier. Pattern recognition is a hell of a skill to have in this world. If you can recognize a pattern and apply the knowledge, you’re going to be alright. They won’t state it so directly in school, and I’m not sure why.
If someone would have simply explained the value of pattern recognition I would have been a lot more invested in math class. It always bothered me when adults told us to do what we were told but never explained why. It still bothers me. The children deserve a little more respect.
When we got back to the bodega with our leaves we learned that one of the capuchin monkeys had escaped and it was best to avoid the area until further notice. You could hear the little bugger and his monkey scream, like a wild child at the pool. Onward we went with the day.
Our next task was to feed the kinkajous, nocturnal animals that kind of look like a large ferret, maybe? I don’t know, it’s hard to get a look. We cut up a bunch of fruit and veggies and made our way to their cage, which is where things got interesting.
As we were inside the cage picking up poo and old leaves, Kennedy suddenly yells “Jason, close the door!” I turned around to see three wild howler monkeys descending upon the bowl of fruit meant for Kevin, the kinkajou. Kennedy, Stefan, and I were now trapped in the cage as these three howlers feasted on the fruit we prepared just a couple feet outside. “Does anyone have their phone?” Asked Kennedy. I did not.
Stefan did. He send a message to the group that we were trapped in the cage. It didn’t send. I looked at the phone and then… aha! Message sent. Someone was on the way to chase them off. Sven arrived a minute later and got the monkeys to move out of the way, though they wouldn’t exactly leave. We got out of the cage and went on with our work. “I promise every day isn’t like this,” they told us.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
What an unexpected and wonderful journey it has been. I never thought I would do this to be honest. It wasn’t something I envisioned and planned for years, it wasn’t a grand dream of mine, it just kind of… happened. And that’s the ethos of Colombia; things just happen here. It’s at the crux of the lessons I’ve learned; not to worry so much about what’s coming, but simply let things happen. Whether it’s a feeling, an activity, an emotion or a journey, we must give it room to breathe.
There’s plenty of war in the world, we don’t need to fight what we can simply let be. I don’t know how much control we really have. I like to believe in free will because it feels like the more interesting way to live, but who knows. We could be like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five who is told there’s really no such thing as time, only laid out events in a line.
Whatever the nature of our reality might be, I know it doesn’t serve me well to try and force anything. It’s a separate idea from working hard or pushing through something challenging, because both of those things hold great value. There’s a difference between something feeling difficult and something feeling wrong. I don’t know how to guide it into words because it’s not something I was taught, only something I’ve come to understand. I know what the difference is but right now it’s hard to articulate.
As much as I’ve learned about life and myself, the best part of this journey has certainly been the people I’ve met. My heart has been captured in ways I never expected. The people who choose to come to Colombia aren’t like the people who remain attached to their homes. There’s a vibrancy amongst the bold that permeates the soul and turns blood to gold.
My dad asked me how many times I’ve fallen in love so far and I told him it was too many to count. It’s hard not to fall in love with anyone who seeks something beyond the paved path. I’ve met some amazing new friends and been opened up to a new standard for what a potential partner could look like.
I wondered if I was justified in being frustrated by the women in Austin because I felt like I kept finding the same thing over and over, and going on this trip has shown me that it was okay to feel that way. There’s always something beyond our own backyard and sometimes we just have to go out and find it. It doesn’t mean I can’t find what I’m looking for in Austin. I think now I just have a better understanding of what exactly it is I’m after and how to look for it. I take comfort in knowing what’s out there and I don’t need to settle for anything less.
I’ve learned that I might be a bit crazy, but there’s always someone crazier. No matter what you do in life there’s always someone taking it to a further extreme. I’ve encountered some wild stories along the way, many of which I’ve shared here. I met a man last night who went diving off the coast of Colombia to an island between the mainland and the Galapagos only to be stranded by the boat. He survived, but many of the others did not. He came back to interview the families and those who captained the boat in order to write a book about it. He’s investigating why the boat left and I’m curious to find out when he publishes.
I’ve learned that I can’t escape my problems even if I change my environment. I still battle the same anxiety I always have; I still have days where I don’t want to get up in the morning and I still feel stuck sometimes. There’s no magic cure, only gradual improvement. Sometimes the gates burst open but it’s always a continual process to find peace and prosperity.
I’ve learned that sometimes I should be social even if I don’t want to. As an introvert it’s easy to hide away, but it’s important to push the boundaries of what I’m comfortable with in social environments. This trip was a lot of socializing. I didn’t have the luxury of retreating sometimes.
On occasion there really was nowhere for me to go be on my own. It forced me to be with my discomfort instead of run from it, and often times it worked out for the better. I realized that when I’m feeling overwhelmed, being alone isn’t always the answer. It’s okay to be anxious or overwhelmed around other people because a lot of us feel that way a lot of the time.
I’ve learned that I’m stronger than I thought I was and I’ve come a long way. I never thought of doing something like this in the past because I was battling chronic illness and it worried me too much to be away from home for too long in case things started to go south. But I’ve put in a lot of work over the years and made a lot of sacrifices to become as healthy as possible. I used to have to take four pills of medication every day. Now I take one a week. It’s easy to beat ourselves up over what we haven’t done but it’s important to look back and see how far we’ve come.
I still have a major test ahead of me as I’m off to live in the Amazon for two months, but as long as I give it my best and see it through I know can hold my head high. I’m not afraid of getting sick. I’ve been as sick as it gets before so I know I can handle it. The only thing I’m afraid of now is not living life to the fullest. There’s just too much to see out there.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
Motorbikes in Salento: Well, there’s no chance you could do this in America. First, we tried to rent mountain bikes, but there weren’t any left. Next, we thought about renting ATVs, but they were too expensive. So, we settled on motorbikes, which are basically just less obnoxious and less powerful motorcycles. I’ve never even been on a motorcycle, let alone driven one. In Colombia, this is not a problem.
The guy at the ATV rental walked us around the corner and whistled at a group of drunk Colombians, who greeted us with slurred enthusiasm. One of them asked how many motor bikes we were looking to rent and we said four. He had two available in a small garage and another two on the street. “Alright, we’re really doing this,” I thought.
He told us the price, said he’d take care of any mechanical damage but any physical damage was on us. We figured that was fair and paid him some of the money up front. No forms were signed. There was not even a mentioning of a form or a suggestion of a waiver. No questions about experience were broached. I didn’t even know how to work the thing.
The Colombian man started the bike for me and left. I looked at Ben and said “what am I doing here?” and he said “that’s the gas and that’s the break.” And so it went. I tested the thing out down the hill and struggled to find my balance. The Colombian man told me we are supposed to go the other way, but I wasn’t worried about where we were going yet. I needed to get a quick test drive in.
When I turned around at the bottom of the hill, I hit the gas too hard and drove the damn thing over the sidewalk and into the wall. The Colombian man came over and said “despacio, despacio” while showing me the gas on the handle. Slower it was. The three people I was with had all driven motorbikes before, and the most experienced one (a tour guide from Medellin) suggested I ride with someone else and learn how to drive on the way. The Colombian man insisted I’d be fine. Off we went.
I hit the gas slowly and found my balance up the hill, and suddenly I felt quite fine about the whole situation. We rode our way through town and then found the main way out, a winding mountain road with majestic views. We hit the gas and started flying around corners as I quickly learned how to use my body weight with the bike. All of a sudden I was having the time of my life. Then one of the bikes ran out of fuel. We had to call the guy to come help us out and he got there 20 or so minutes later. He gave us his bike and figured out the other one.
Then we made our way up a dirt road, unpaved and often on a steep grade. Some of it was windy, some of it was rocky, some of it was just rough for one reason or another. Somehow I made it up relatively unscathed. The new friend we were with said it was absolutely mental that I was driving these roads during my first time on a motorbike. I didn’t disagree.
I think I was fortunate in a few important aspects. I’ve driven for work for years, I have good balance, and I’m a quick learner. If I didn’t have all of those things going for me I may have met a less desirable outcome on that motorbike. Alas, I made it through with a big old Texas grin on my face. There’s a high level of satisfaction that runs through your soul when you achieve something you weren’t sure you could do.
A lot of us get complacent in our lives and forget to step out of our comfort bubbles. It doesn’t mean we have to do something crazy. You don’t have to drive a motorbike up the Colombian back roads or bicycle from Alaska to Argentina or hitchhike on a sailboat across the Atlantic in order to grow, but we should all remember how important it is to face something new that we are afraid of and just do it anyways.
Just because it’s scary doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Often, it’s the opposite. The thing we fear most is what holds the gold. Too many of us spend our lives kicking rocks.
I’ve met some people on this trip who have made my strides seem minuscule in comparison. I met a man in Medellin who really is riding his bicycle from Alaska to Argentina. He’s already made it most of the way. He looks a bit like a Viking warrior crossed with Jesus, naturally tall and broad with hair down to his lower back. He’s got a great sense of humor and a hell of a story.
He once had to go 500 miles with just one pedal on his bike. Another time he had to ride 1,000 miles in 8 days to meet his mom in Mexico. He once got a police escort in a Mexican city to a school where he spoke and suddenly was descended on by the students. He signed all sorts of things as if he was a celebrity, because to those kids he was.
I think he was deserving of that love more than most celebrities are. Not that anyone is undeserving of love, but some celebrities are real pieces of work. This guy is a genuine person doing something not only for himself but for charity. Something truly challenging and definitely out of the zone of comfort.
I met a French woman a couple days ago, tanned skin and stark black hair with a smile full of life and goofy glasses, who sailed across the Atlantic. When we asked her how, she said she hitch hiked. Confused, I asked for an explanation. She said she just went to the harbor, which she said in the cutest of French accents, and asked if anyone was going across the ocean.
Eventually, she found two guys sailing to Mexico and hopped on board for a multi-week journey across the entire Atlantic Ocean. She said she never slept more than three hours at a time since someone had to always be working the boat.
She also told us about how she never experienced such darkness. The nearest boat was 40 miles away on a cloudy night and no lights were on. “I felt like I was in space,” she said.
None of this seemed like a big deal to her and she struck me as someone who doesn’t spend any time second guessing herself. From the way she speaks to the way she looks to the way she is, she’s beautiful in the most unique way.
I’ve come across some truly inspirational people on this journey who have an unrivaled vibrancy for life. They’re more afraid of wasting a day than they are of any impending danger. Something I’ve learned is that you can never escape danger and you can never escape death. We’re always in danger of losing something as long as we have it.
We can sit at home and never leave, feeling like we’re safe, but we still have to battle our minds. Depression is dangerous. Bad habits are dangerous. Constantly feeling safe is dangerous. Living is dangerous, so we might as well live a life of conviction.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
I wonder what happens
in the sprawling white house
pushed into the mountain
does it evolve
like the seasons and the trees?
Even if it appears the same
the memories must change
emotions burned into the walls
carpets holding broken dreams
when the windows get washed
do they still remember the stains?
How do the cows perceive
this portion of paradise?
They seem to have bigger ears here.
There sure is a lot of landscape
to listen to
the putter of the stream
dirt dancing in the rain
settles to a coffee colored mud
slowly tumbles down the grade.
Butterflies wander
in a drunken pattern
while hummingbirds hover
suspended on invisible branches
circling vultures
look like they could touch the sun
as the clouds begin weeping
because they must move on.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
Nestled amongst the Colombian mountains lies a little town stuck in time. The temperature doesn’t change and the landscape remains a intoxicating at every fresh glance. Plantain and coffee trees line the holiday green mountainside as the eucalyptus and palms tower high, watching over paradise. A sense of urgency is absent here because most have already found their final destination. There’s nothing on the other side, only what lies directly ahead. The land provides more than enough to squash any greedy desires: plantains hang like fingers on the hand of nature’s crane, mango trees erupt with a bustle, avocados explode to papaya sizes as coffee trees comb across the gentle land. Skippy chickens dig in the dirt with their little biddies scampering behind. Fat rabbits the size of a corgi dog sprawl across the bottom of their enclaves. A young cow named Tomas comes over to say hi, still excited by the novelty of life. His mother is a hefty heifer, looking strong enough to feed the whole town. My day dreams roll in like the clouds, and I consider what a life here could look like. In one of the most beautiful places in the world, it remains in the top six percent of cheapest places to live. You can get a 15 bedroom house on some land for half the price of a two bedroom condo in San Francisco. I wouldn’t know what to do with 15 bedrooms other than invite all my friends, but I know it beats a homeless man dropping dookies on the porch. If you want to treat yourself to breakfast here it will cost you three dollars. Not to mention they have some of the best coffee in the world. It tastes like a flower made love to a sunset in your mouth. Don’t even get me started on the pineapple, pulsing with flavor. The mangos keep you craving and last week I had the best strawberry of my life. I wanted to cry because it sent my taste buds on a journey to the Gods. If you get lucky a horse will guide you through the countryside. Sitting on a saddle I found my way out of town and down the mountain, galloping through the grass and walking across the river. The steady stream sings a song of constant harmony. The journey continued through the lush leaves and fierce greenery as the four-legged warrior conquered his climb. Atop the mountain you’ll witness the ultimate combo of enchanting scenery sprawling across the sky. Here, the jungle meets the countryside, saddled by the happy mountains. I haven’t seen anything like it and the image now holds a home in my mind.
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
Party bus in Medellin: I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect to have this much fun on a party bus. In the process of learning how to let go, it’s becoming easier to enjoy myself in environments which wouldn’t typically suit me. Would I rather have an intimate dinner and share conversation and laughs? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still enjoy myself in a party environment. Over the last week I’ve really had to come face to face with the fact that I’m too often trying to be somewhere that I’m not. Thinking about the next thing was preventing me from being with this, whatever this is. I wrote about a song lyric that hit me hard in one of my recent posts, and this reminds me of another one: “He was always a thousand miles away while still standing in front of your face.” It’s another striking set of words to ring through my ears, because I too often find myself as that guy. I can be somewhere physically, but my essence has left. I’m too busy thinking about something a thousand miles away to be immersed in what stands in front of me. Then I wonder why sometimes people don’t remember me until I realize I haven’t said anything for 45 minutes because I just went to Neptune and back in my bustling brain. So, instead of thinking about some place I’d rather be, I allowed myself to just be right there on that party bus and it turned out to be one of my favorite moments. About 25 or 30 of us hopped on this hog of a vehicle which departed at 12:30 in the morning, a rare time for an excursion to begin. Colombia is full of atypical excursions, and that’s one of the many things I love about it. The strobe lights were a bit disorienting at first and I wondered how long it would be before somebody threw up but we somehow seemed to dodge that bullet entirely. The bus trucked its way up to one of the many beautiful viewpoints in Medellin and we got out to take in the scene. Vendors were waiting with waters, Coca colas, and cigarettes. If there’s an opportunity to sell you something in Colombia, people will find it. The bus then carried on, as a short Colombian woman came around with a tub of alcohol and squirted it into our mouths. You could try and say no but your best bet would have been to hide if you wanted to dodge the incoming spout of Aguardiente, Colombia’s favorite cheap choice of booze. Things got a little freaky (in the fun way) on the bus, as one would expect. Some germs were certainly exchanged before the second stop at a local night club. I danced my titties off as the night rolled on and by the end of it I no longer had titties to speak of. They were stolen by a small Korean man who popped out of a bottle of vodka. He ran off yelling “fuck a yoooouuuu white boy!” Everyone laughed and danced and then broke out into song and performed the entire Hamilton play in Spanish. What a crazy night. Okay, fine. Nothing in the last paragraph actually happened but it was still a hell of a night. The party bus got back to the hostel at 4 in the morning and most of us were too jazzed to go to bed. It’s not uncommon to see a Colombian on a Saturday or Sunday and have them tell you they stayed up until 8 in the morning. We went to a party in the jungle a couple weeks ago and it specifically said it ended at 8 o clock in the morning. Viva Colombia!
Colors of Colombia: Colombia has so much personality you can’t help but create more for yourself. It’s a surprisingly progressive place and nobody seems to care about anyone being gay or trans or whatever they want to be. It’s a place where you can be your wildest and truest self. It still has its drawbacks and flaws. It’s a religious country but morals seem to be an option rather than a rule. A man at the café told me “they’ll steal the color out your eyes here.” He’s not wrong. You have to be on alert because if you make yourself a target you’re going to get robbed. We met a pair of girls who bought new phones just in case they got robbed because they heard so many stories of people getting theirs swiped. It’s a bit of a bold strategy but I get it. I bought a money belt that I conceal my phone in when I go out and try not to use it in certain areas. There are certain precautions you can take like only bringing cash when walking around town and sticking with a group. It can be a bit exhausting and it’s certainly not my favorite part about Colombia but it helps me appreciate the safety we often take for granted in the States. A couple of dudes at the hostel told us a story about some guys in Guatemala who were quite perturbed by them in the street and shot a gun into the sidewalk and it ricocheted and hit one of the dudes in the shoulder. I don’t know what they did to rub the Guatemalans the wrong way but I’m sure it could have been handled better than shooting the sidewalk. There’s a cathedral in Colombia that was originally designed by a Belgian architect and half of it is painted a certain way and then it was handed over to the Colombians to finish and they were just like “nah” so the other half is painted solid rather than the pattern of the Belgian half. And that’s the ethos of Colombia. It’s the ultimate “fuck it, I’m out” country. A guy in the food court today dropped a couple of plates that shattered everywhere and instead of helping clean up or saying sorry he literally just ran away. I like hanging out at food courts or malls here because you see a lot of everyday people and families. Often times I’m the only white person there so people are curious where I’m from and why I’m there. In the tourist areas they’ll ask you “where you from?” because they want to act like your friend and then sell you something, often times drugs. In the more everyday Colombian places they ask where you’re from because they’re genuinely curious. People aren’t very different wherever you go. Most of us are just trying to get by.
The Shirtless Dentist: We met this dude from Miami who was a little older than the typical backpacker and kept talking about his divorce, neither of which are relevant details to this story but I’m mentioning them anyway. He had tattoos and looked like he did meth even though I don’t think he does meth. That’s just what he looked like. He looked like a guy who does meth. One time one of my ex girlfriends accidentally did meth and I met a guy the other day who also accidentally did meth. Whoopsie! Anyways, this guy may or may not have done meth before but he did have to get a filling for one of his teeth. Because of the meth, perhaps? Hmm I may be leaning in a different direction now with this meth thing. So there’s this guy from Miami who most certainly did meth and he needed a filling for his tooth. He walked around in Santa Marta (which isn’t exactly the most affluent Colombian city, to put it lightly) and found a dentist, which is a guy just sitting behind a door with no shirt on. Miami guy walks in and the “dentist” is very rough and tumble but says he can do the job. Miami guy says “fuck it” because it’s Colombia and that’s what you do here. He decides to also take his shirt off while the dentist smacks him in the arm here and there and gives Miami McMeth a tooth filling. The dentist was very happy about the whole situation and they took a picture together with their shirts off. Viva Colombia.
The inside out shirt: So I have this shirt that no matter what I do, it always ends up inside out. I swear it was inside out this morning and I flipped it back to the proper way while folding it only to realize it was still inside out. I wore it all day yesterday and came home at night, looked in the mirror and realized my shirt was inside out. The same thing happened last time I wore the shirt. That time, I specifically remember noticing it was inside out and switching it, only to come home and realize it was still inside out. It only happens with this specific shirt and I don’t know what kind of sorcery has been summoned upon it, but if someone really did curse my shirt to forever be inside out then I would love to meet them because honestly that’s hilarious.
Antibabypillen: I learned from some German friends that a Plan B pill in Germany is called an antibabypillen, which is one of the best things I’ve ever been told by anyone ever. Much better than I love you. Viva Germany?
Jason Brendel
Jason Brendel is an author, poet, and comedian living in Austin, Texas. Navigate the buttons below to follow him on social media, make a donation, or purchase his collection of laugh-out-loud poetry on Amazon.
The Guy 