Pa Pi Mal in Haiti

Posted on June 7, 2010

When you ask a Haitian how they’re doing they inevitably reply, “pa pi mal” which means not that bad in the local creole…not that bad because, you see, it can always be worse in Haiti. There’s always someone who is worse off then they are, an idea which is both hopeful and disgusting when a little boy with a dirty rag for a shirt and no pants tells you this as he slurps on a rotten shard of mango that has been sitting in a pool of piss for a couple of days. Pa pi mal, not that bad, it’s still pretty damn bad though.

The plane flight from Miami to Port au Prince takes a little less than two hours. From above, the Caribbean is beautiful, all aqua marine and turquoise with dark spots of reef and slivers of white sand. At about a thousand feet above Port au Prince, however, I get my first look at the city. Disjointed piles of rubble are everywhere, blue and grey tarps cover crumbling and non-existent roofs, makeshift tents shelter shattered lives. They go on forever, the tent cities, covering every piece of open space in the city. There are no soccer fields, no country clubs or golf courses, no plazas or parks, even the medians of the old French-colonial boulevards are crowded with make shift lean-twos, squeezed between the trucks and buses belching diesel fumes. With nowhere else to go, people crowd the streets; from 500 feet above you can see them in tight knots stacked on top of each other, huddled in the small spots of shade. I hear one of the volunteers on the chartered 737 behind me gasp, “What have I gotten myself into.” The consequences of our good intentions start to sink in.

Giving Back…Destination Global Good

Posted on April 25, 2010

What can I do? What difference can one person possibly make in a world so full of problems?

I’ve asked myself these questions a lot lately. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling overwhelmed and a little bit hopeless and apathetic about my ability to change the world, but that’s beginning to change. Thanks to some inspiring people around me, I’ve realized that changing the world isn’t really the point, changing how I interact with the world is.

Maybe it was my sister, who chose to spend her summer vacation away from nursing school working in one of the most destitute slums in India, teaching basic first aid to residents who have no access to hospitals. Her students would, in turn, teach others, establishing a network of care givers spread throughout the slum. Or maybe it was my girlfriend, who gave up a high paying job to follow her heart and her passion of helping people. She believes we really can make a difference in the world by helping one person, or one family at a time. Maybe it’s because I feel like I’m at a turning point in my life, a time to stop talking about doing something good and actually do it.

I’m lucky. I know it, and if you’ve spent any time reading about what I get to do for a living, you know it too. During the last six years I’ve crisscrossed the globe in pursuit of adventure and personal challenge, seeking out a life less ordinary and stories to tell my grandchildren. I’ve been blessed along the way with an incredible amount of serendipity, kindness, friendship, support and love, but the funny thing is, while chasing all those stories to tell my unborn grandkids, I had forgotten one of the most important lessons that my own grandpa ever told me.

The measure of any person is not what they take from the world, but what they are willing to give back.

It’s time for me to start giving back.

Starting in May, my girlfriend and I will embark on a journey to find out just what kind of difference two people can make in this big-bad-beautiful, world. We’ve started a blog, Destination Global Good (http://destinationglobalgood.com), to share our stories and experiences along the way. I’d like to invite whoever is reading this to join us as we discover what it means to volunteer and give back in the 21st century.

Anyone can write a check, we’re actually really good at that as a country. We donate unprecedented amounts through text messages, the internet, and myriad other ways to show that we care. I think that’s wonderful, but that is not what we’re interested in. What we’re interested in is putting our feet on the ground, getting our hands dirty and letting the experience affect us. We don’t expect or want it to be easy. We want to feel it, to touch it, and try to understand it. We want to feel like what we’re doing matters, if only to one person, and we want to tell you about it. For no other reason than maybe, just maybe, it will inspire you in the same way we’ve been inspired by the individuals around us who refuse to be intimidated by the immensity of the world’s problems and who choose to do something, however small, about it.

Last Words

Posted on January 27, 2010

The old man smiled, one last time. Battered by disease, soft wrinkled skin drooped lazily over his brittle skeleton and each breath he took exacted a heavy price. He knew he didn’t have many of them left. His hair was gone, and the muscles of what was once an elite athlete could barely support the weight of his head. But his eyes were clear and bright, shining intensely, staunchly refusing to miss a second of this, his final passage and greatest adventure.

The thing that struck me most about his eyes, the thing that I will never forget, was the absolute lack of fear within them. There was curiosity, forgiveness, acceptance, and the slightest bit of nervous anticipation, but no fear. My own eyes were cloudy and wet. I was afraid. My head was spinning as I tried to find the right words. I choked on the simplest expressions of love and gratitude, of admiration and respect, in the end all that came out was a blubbering version of “I love you,” yet somehow that was enough.

I leaned in to give him a final hug and his chalky hands tensed around mine. A strength that could not have been his own held me close as he whispered in my ear. His voice was rough with emotion and scratchy from the effort of speech.

His last words, like his life, have become a mantra of mine. They remind me of what matters, and how precious a gift life is. The words themselves were simple, and even through the pain of disease I could hear his smile and sense his satisfaction within them. “Kitt,” he said, “there is only one thing in life that you can be sure of.” His breath was warm against my ear, and it brought with it a sudden calm. The confused sobs of helplessness and tight black sorrow that held my heart released their grip. Clasping my face gently in his hands he looked into my eyes and I could feel all his energy, all the vitality that he had ever possessed flow through me as he spoke. “The simple truth is, you live, and then you die, so you damn well better live.”

So here’s to living; every day, every moment, because in the end, all we ever have is how we choose to live.

North

Posted on May 15, 2009

North. There’s always been something special about that particular direction in my life. It is the last direction, a final destination. North is the fiercest, the most independent…but also the most peaceful, the easiest to understand. South has always meant escape, a place I go to disappear. Jack Kerouac knew it, outlaws know it, and so do I. To head south is to dive into chaos, to melt into the confusion and steam of the tropics and become anonymous. East. Full of mystery and civilization, the east offers the allure of riches and cultures unknown. It is the direction of money, of trade and business, where life moves in circles instead of lines, and to die means only to be reborn. West. Freedom, anything is possible, cinematic happy endings and new beginnings, opportunity, go west young man; go into the future, ride into the sunset.

 But North, North defines challenge, a direction to follow when I want to turn my back on society, the bearing I take when solitude is my goal, when what I want is to pit myself against nature, to feel her strength and test my will against that strength. It is a wild and uncomfortable direction, dominated by unforgiving wilderness and uncompromised beauty. North is raw. North is romantic. The many questions of life drift away. Things like shelter, food, water, warmth and companionship are all that matter. Life is simple when it’s difficult, that is the true allure of the north…simplicity through fortitude. It is not a place to be conquered or claimed, it can only be witnessed and survived.

So go further, follow the compass into the great white north, into the Arctic Circle and onto the ice of a frozen ocean, birthplace of the wind.     

Ancient and animistic, full of contradiction, the far north is a place where night’s darkness reigns for months at a time only to be replaced by the light of a midnight sun. Where the aurora borealis dances above the ice in vivid displays of red, yellow and green arcs. A white world lit by an atmospheric rainbow. Where stars come home and the spinning earth stands still. The top of the world, the arctic is both beautiful and deadly. Survival is the only victory. At first glance it is a barren wasteland, cold and cruel, wicked in its intensity and bland in its homogenous landscape. Above and below the ice and snow, however, an Eden of life blooms.

I’m not a superstitious person, but something about the arctic makes me believe in magic. It seems close to something that I can’t understand, the last stop before a bridge that I can’t see to a place I can’t go. Sacred in its power, the north is poetic and violent, humbling and invigorating and full of many other adjectives that can only be felt in order to understand. Perhaps it is in the magnetism of the place, a magnetic charge on which all direction is based. Without North, one can argue, there would be no south, east or west.  

In the end, that is what has always attracted me to the direction north…its mystery. No other direction can take you closer to nature’s secrets, make you feel so small, or beguile you so easily with its immensity. For North is not, nor has it ever been, ruled by mankind…and there is something enchanting about that. 

Gypsy Tailwinds take me Home…

Posted on December 24, 2008

Ahhhh, the gypsy life. A filthy, gorgeous, addicting, enlightening, and above all else interesting lifestyle that has seen me stay in luxury villas, five star hotels, dingy hostels, tents, hammocks strung between palm trees, and friend’s couches as I bounce around the country and the world. I can’t really say what I’ve been looking for, besides experiences…the kind of thick and gooey experiences that stick with you long after the moment is gone, leaving wisdom and perspective laced with laughter in their wake.    

This fall I packed my bags in mid august, loaded up the station wagon, and embarked on my annual pilgrimage of vagrancy. It’s sort of become a tradition of mine…abandoning any sort of physical address for months at a time and ricocheting from place to place in the name of freedom, work (if I can call it that), and the open road and skies of life. It’s been five years since I first loaded up a car in late August and hit the road…that first trip eventually led my brother and I to Panama and set in motion the crazy carousel I still find myself riding. It’s now December 21st and I’ve just unpacked my bags flush from a whirlwind fall that saw me in Mexico, New York City, Cape Cod, Barbados, Aspen, Northern Wisconsin, Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, and the coast of California, from San Francisco to San Diego.

It’s been a pretty amazing four months. I watched the sun rise and set over the Caribbean, hung on for dear life aboard a Hobie Cat off the coast of Cape Cod, danced my face off in New York City, caught gold medal trout in Aspen’s Roaring Fork river, watched the leaves change colors in Wisconsin, surfed the north shore of Oahu and fell in love in Kauai, felt more aloha in Yakutat, Alaska then I ever thought possible and saw giant waves ridden in 40 degree water. Between all of this was the magic of California in the fall, full of golden afternoon light, Santa Ana winds, and good friends on the beach. 

I set off on that first adventure five years ago in search of the stories that define a lifetime. Stories that get passed down to your children and grandchildren of a life lived less ordinary. What I found amongst those adventures on the road was friendship, and that uniquely beautiful experience of the world getting smaller. I also fell hopelessly in love with being a gypsy. Five years later and damn if that same world hasn’t continued to shrink as one trip led to another and each new friend to five and then five more.  In the years since first hitting the gypsy trail I have gleaned one particular nugget of information that I thought I’d pass along this holiday season. Without my friends, this nomadic lifestyle that I treasure would not be possible.

Without addresses like 215 Esplanade in San Clemente, 711 Ramming Way in Santa Barbara, 390 Broadway and 511 E 80th in New York City, 2009 Vallejo St. in San Francisco, Loring St in San Diego, the happy A-frame by the river on Whipsaw Drive in the Board Ranch, the Tamarama Beach pad in Sydney, the High Street Mansion in Melbourne, 219 N Mill Road in Oconomowoc, 2060 Moccasin Ct in Boise, and the countless other addresses that have opened their doors and arms when this itinerant vagabond comes knocking my gypsy dream would have died long ago. More than numbers on the door or couches to crash on, sheds to store my possesions, and living rooms to unpack and repack my bags, what makes these places so special are the quality of people who live at them. People whose welcome is always a warm one, whose houses and apartments are filled with that same warm energy, and whose hospitality always makes me feel like family.

Maybe it’s my mom picking up the mail from a p.o box that’s been ignored for months and cashing a much needed check while I’m out of the country, or maybe it’s a cold beer after a surf session with the boys at Ramming Way, a ping pong tournament at Esplanade on a rainy day, an invitation to dinner at a great hole in the wall Italian restaurant in the East Village, a ride out to the hot springs, or an invitation to the best Halloween party in San Francisco. More than anything it’s the little things, a home cooked meal, some shared conversation, the laughter of old friends and new ones, these are the things that make a place feel like home and I feel unbelievably lucky to have so many places and people like that in my life.

Traveling, no matter how glamorous it seems, can be a lonely endeavor at times, and if chasing the gypsy dream has taught me anything it’s that there is a fine line between a wandering gypsy scribe in all its romantic glory and just a dirty, broke, homeless, vagrant. Sometimes they’re one in same, the only thing separating the two is an open door and a familiar face, smiling with open arms.

In friendship and love, I am a rich man. Everything else in my life is in a constant state of flux as I dance between the chaos, serendipity and disaster of my existence. At times my dance is a graceful one, gliding smoothly and effortlessly through each transition, departure, and arrival. At other times it’s a clumsy romp, jerking sporadically and randomly across the cosmic dance floor with no real destination whatsoever, flailing wildly as if each step contains a spasm of emotion. I will promise you one thing though, if I am dancing at all, I’m smiling…and that’s something to hold onto.

After all, a good dance party doesn’t require the best dancers or even amazing music, it’s all about who you’re dancing with and whether or not you’re smiling…so keep smiling and thanks to all of you for putting up with me.

A Letter to senator Obama

Posted on November 3, 2008

Dear Mr. Obama,

I voted for you. Even registered early at the county courthouse, just like you told me to, blackening in that little multiple-choice bubble next to your name with determination and a pinch of pride. There was also some anxiety, similar to the feeling I get right before I jump off something high, a waterfall perhaps…as if there was a certain amount of abandonment involved, a “close my eyes and hope for the best” type of moment. You see Mr. Obama, in that little cubicle I gave you more than my vote. I gave you my faith, and there is precious little of that left in me with regards to politics and politicians. I’d been guarding the dregs of it doggedly for the last eight years, but it’s all yours now Mr. Obama. I put my trust in you and, to be honest, I want something back in return.

I want you to be the symbol of hope and optimism for the 21st century that you speak about so eloquently. But talking about anything doesn’t change it, even if that thing is change itself. So take action, take risks, take the initiative, and do these things now because we have already wasted too much time. People will love you and people will hate you, yet you must encourage them all to understand each other. You must make people believe in the sacredness of being human and inspire them to rise above party lines, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, racism, and all the other purveyors and profiteers of hate. I want you to be more than a democrat or republican, but rather an individual who can see beyond the petty arguments and political maneuvering of an antiquated two party system in a divided world. I want you to be the foundation for the rest of this century, to give the world an example of a 21st century leader and set a paradigm for generations to come.

America’s greatest weapon has never been a missile, plane, or tank. Rather, it is the basic, primal optimism at the root of every American Dream that has defined us as a nation. The belief that, in this land of the free and home of the brave, anything is possible, and that success is available to anyone. That freedom isn’t just a buzzword for war, but a fundamental right to choose our own destiny, as individuals, as a nation, a world, and a planet. As the leader of the free world Mr. Obama, you must demonstrate that freedom without tolerance is bankrupt and totally meaningless. Acceptance, unity, enrichment, education, peace, these should be the buzzwords of the 21st century.

I believe you will win this election, and the country you will stand at the head of is a demoralized one, dangerously close to losing that sacred American optimism. It will take all of your strength, talent, skill, and stamina as a leader to guide us into the 21st century. You will inherit a financial system in ruins, a stagnant economy, an environment on the verge of collapse, and a world population growing rapidly towards critical mass. There is more violence and hate in the world today than there has ever been, and the majority of both of those are directed at and created by the United States. To change all of this you will step into a decaying political structure so full of red tape and stuffed with bureaucrats, lobbyists, and special interest groups that change comes in inches when we need miles of the stuff.

Yes, that’s asking a lot…but you’re going to be the president of the United States of America for god’s sake (I don’t mean that literally, in fact it appalls me that I even feel the need to write that…) and it’s about damn time that particular position meant something again. Make us believe in our leader and leadership, and we, the American People, will do the rest.

I wouldn’t wish your position on anyone, but I believe in you Mr. Obama. I didn’t vote for you because of your policies, your political affiliations, your television advertisements or celebrity supporters. I voted for you because you incite emotion inside of me. Use it, use the emotional wave that you are on to bring people together and show the world and ourselves that the 21st century can be about more than war, hate, lies, and the general failure of government and financial institutions to protect and serve the very people who have made them so powerful.

I find hope and optimism in the belief that you are more than just a democrat or a republican, you are an individual who can rise above the bullshit that has plagued Washington for so long. You must become that individual. Please, please don’t listen to those who tell you to do things the way they always have been done. Do not let yourself fall victim to the quagmire of red tape and bureaucracy that await you in Washington. Redefine, rebuild, restructure, reinvent, but don’t redo, the days of repetition must end.

Onward,

Kitt Doucette

Fall at the Shack

Posted on October 9, 2008

It’s the end of September. The weather is conflicted, a bit subdued, and utterly romantic. Outside the leaves are involved in their final encore of life, performing most beautifully right before they die with the promise of rebirth in the spring.

Pensive like the weather and the leaves, I’m sitting inside listening to rain falling on a roof, but this one is special, this roof I mean. This cabin is part of my soul.

The cabin is old, built in the early 1900’s by my great-great grandfather’s hands it has changed little in the last 100 years. A potbelly wood stove is the only form of heat, ancient bunk beds built by the same lumberjack who built the cabin stand next to army issue WWII bunks. There’s no running water and a few bare bulbs offer the only electricity. Old tools hang from the walls, and it takes all my imagination just to figure out what they were used for. Among them is a giant saw with two handles and a long rod with a sinister looking claw hanging from the middle. There’s also an old fishing boat hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen, don’t ask me how it got there. The driveway is two worn down tire tracks that fill up with mud during rains. A Horseshoe pit straddles a fire ring, the woodshed is across from the out door john. The chinking between the logs is fairly new, my dad did it when he was my age, back in the early 70’s.

History is everywhere. Names and dates are scrawled on and carved into any exposed piece of wood inside. My great-grandfather’s name is there, dated 1922 when he was a young man. Right next to his, my grandfather’s name is carved meticulously with the date 1946, the year he returned from China-Burma-India where he had been flying missions over the Himalayas. I can almost hear the sadness in his eyes as he carved that, amazed that he was here at all, having watched over 90% of his original squadron disappear forever in the mountains and jungles of Burma. It makes sense to me that this was the first place he would come to try and find the boy he was before the war. Closing my eyes, I listen to the whispers of the past. What I hear mostly is laughter in this comfortably worn cabin, my grandfather’s signature cackle that has filled the shack so many times. When he won another poker hand, or saw another grandchild catch their first fish. His blue eyes would sparkle and the cackle would turn into a chuckle and then a personal giggle as he let himself drift in memories of his own past.  He is gone now, my papa, passed away gracefully at 82 years old, his life full and complete. But he has not left this cabin. I don’t think he ever will. So he is with us now, as we deal out the cards and smoke cigars, laughing about the four generations of Doucette’s who have come of age in this magical place in the woods by a lake. Still a long ways from civilization and so close to the heart.

Walking across the rough-hewn floor to the doorway I see my own name, written by my mom when I was one year old and I can follow it every year since for the last 27 years. My earliest memories exist between these walls, it is the center of my whirlwind universe, a place that the spinning, sweating, stumbling speed of the modern world and my life has mercifully passed by. Every year I come here full of questions, and every year these four walls give me answers. Perfumed by burning wood, cigar smoke, gun oil, and wet dogs, the womb of this ancient cabin always nurses me back to spiritual health. It seems so clear what matters and what doesn’t when you strip away all the excesses of life.

Standing Still in New York City

Posted on September 10, 2008

I turned off my ipod, put my sunglasses in my pocket, and indulged in one of the purest, cheapest thrills available in New York City…I stood absolutely still. Standing there in the middle of rush hour I opened my eyes and ears, letting the energy of the city run through me. I can’t really say why I did it, an obscure character in an old Tom Robbins book being my only real motivation along with the desire to understand a place that felt so foreign to me.

The pavement vibrated as thousands of footsteps thudded in unison. A million different lives, each with their own story, spun around me like a psychedelic carousel. It began as a blur of faces and footsteps. I had to let my eyes adjust slowly, as if moving my head along with a fan to separate the blades, and focus on individuals. Mine was the perspective of the homeless, street vendors and musicians, a stationary spot in a city controlled, obsessed, by movement in every direction.

At first I got bumped into, brushed aside with looks of anger, impatience, and incoherence. I stood my ground, apologizing to the back of people’s heads. Then the crowd began to part, flowing around me like a rock in a river as I ceased to exist in the world of movement…I wished I could see what it looked like from above. A tiny spec among the concrete canyons…maybe it would look like I was the one that was moving. Now, that would be something. I was overcome by the urge to lift my head skyward and spin in dizzying circles until I lost my balance and toppled into the crowd, leaving the inevitable crash and physical contact with a single person to fate and fate alone. You never know, we could change each other’s lives…it’s happened before.

The City beeped and skidded, honked and whirred, but beneath the noise of the machines there was something different, the buzz of humanity. Human sounds began as a whisper and grew until they seemed to fill the air. I heard laughter…squeaking squeals of teenage girls and baritone hoots thick with Jersey accents. I heard the cries of two lovers parting for an hour or a lifetime, and I heard the word “fuck” more than any other in what must have been two-dozen different languages. I saw a man hand a ring to a woman, they were both crying but it was difficult to tell if they were tears of joy or sorrow amidst the confusion that surrounded them.

The world marched by me in so many different layers; Planes flew above my head, international flights bound for every corner of the globe, police helicopters circled, taxis, Mercedes, delivery trucks, and limos honked their way through gridlock, the subway rumbled below me, thrusting the warm putrid air up through the vents beneath my feet with a subterranean growl. And all around me there was life. Old and young faces, of every color, of every nation, whirled dervishly around me. How strange it was to stand in the crossfire of so many different pairs of eyes. Some were amused by my raffish quest for a stationary perspective, some were annoyed…most simply didn’t give a shit.

Andean music drifted up through the subway tunnels. The intricate mix of drums and ever-present flute gave the city a spiritual, even mystic, quality as the sounds of an ancient civilization mixed with those of a modern one. Questions about the future filled my head and I once again thought of the Tom Robbins Character; a man who stood on the sidewalk and, ever so slowly, turned in a circle. If you didn’t stop and watch him he looked like he was standing still. What was his message again?

In the center of the street, in the center of the city, in the center of the modern world there were visions of both hope and despair, often right next to one another. Right about the time I was getting ready to join the moving world again I saw a group of young children holding hands making their way slowly through the human traffic on the sidewalk. A crippled homeless man who had been somewhere between sleeping and dead propped him-self up and began to watch the interweaving lives in front of him, much as I was. He was truly destitute, a rash bubbled up his neck onto his face, his beard was gnarled and splotchy and his skin was lined with a hundred hard luck stories of loss and desperation.

Everyone on the street swerved wildly to avoid any sort of contact with him. But the children, or rather two children, oblivious to life’s cruel realities and holding hands in a gesture of oneness stopped inexplicably and both of them used their free hands to reach into each others pockets and pull out an object. I couldn’t tell whether it was small change, a piece of candy or something else entirely but they offered it to the man with such innocent affection that he took it reverently into his hand and I saw him smile widely, his white teeth sparkling in stark contrast to the rest of his outward appearance.

What I saw was a collision of hope and despair so visceral that any despair I held in my own heart about humanity’s similarities to a virus disappeared. All that remained was the memory and the hope of those two children in the center of the street.

© Copyright KITT DOUCETTE . blog • Powered by Wordpress • Using Detour Wordpress Theme created by Brian Gardner.