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Uncomfortably Comfortable
I settle into my new apartment (and terrace) in Mexico City while Jonathan's voice memos chronicle the final stretch of his hitchhiking journey across the United States. We end up landing on many of the same questions from very different places: comfort, fear, travel, and what it means to really live. Plus: altitude flatulence, joy, and an announcement about the podcast.
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Onefjef is produced, edited & hosted by Jef Taylor.
Transcript
One six six nine two four one five eight eight two.
Speaker:What you gonna do?
Speaker:One six six nine two four one five eight eight two.
Speaker:Now that's an earworm.
Speaker:This is USA Dispatch number three, with a little bit of CDMX sprinkled in there.
Speaker:Hola, mis cabrones.
Speaker:¿Qué tal?
Speaker:¿Qué pedo?
Speaker:How are you?
Speaker:I hope you're thriving as always.
Speaker:Maybe I'll get T-shirts made that say, "I hope you're thriving." Would you buy that?
Speaker:Let me know, onefjefpod@gmail.com.
Speaker:I'm back in Mexico City at long last in my new apartment here.
Speaker:The terrace, it's truly a game changer.
Speaker:The apartment is smaller and there's no oven.
Speaker:There's a microwave oven, but there's no, you know, real oven.
Speaker:But the oven at my last place didn't work anyway, so what,
Speaker:what difference does it make?
Speaker:It doesn't make any difference.
Speaker:I am still recovering from the elevation, readjusting to it that is.
Speaker:It's not as bad as it was the first time, I think, because you never really…
Speaker:If-- I was only gone for like two and a half weeks, so it never really
Speaker:readjusts back to, you know what I mean.
Speaker:Ugh, am I gonna start to say, "You know what I mean?" all the time just
Speaker:so I, 'cause I don't wanna explain it?
Speaker:'Cause I'm too lazy to explain to you, my listeners?
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:Anyway, you do know what I mean.
Speaker:But I did forget about the farting, and it's something nobody really talks
Speaker:about in any of the, not that I've seen anyway, in the, you know, the Mexico
Speaker:City, moving to Mexico City TikToks and Instagram Reels and so forth and so on.
Speaker:Nobody talks about the farting.
Speaker:But there is a good deal of farting in the first few days for most people once you
Speaker:move to a higher elevation from sea level.
Speaker:What I'm trying to tell you is that I was farting a lot yesterday
Speaker:and this morning and on the plane.
Speaker:I think people fart more on planes because of this as well.
Speaker:Just something to keep in mind if you're thinking about visiting Mexico
Speaker:City or moving here, you will fart a lot for the first few days, and
Speaker:you may have a pounding headache.
Speaker:You've been warned.
Speaker:You've been warned.
Speaker:Jonathan did make it to Vancouver.
Speaker:Uh, I think he's just started to hitchhike again now to somewhere
Speaker:else, to the capital of British Columbia or something with his sister.
Speaker:But I have a bunch of his, uh, uh, voice memos that I'm gonna play in this episode.
Speaker:And thank you to my new Patreon subscriber.
Speaker:You know who you are.
Speaker:And if you yourself have not yet subscribed to the
Speaker:Patreon page, please do so.
Speaker:Five dollars a month or twenty-five dollars a month
Speaker:or a million dollars a month.
Speaker:Patreon.com/onefjef.
Speaker:You'll get access to extra content, early access to new
Speaker:episodes, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:You've heard me talk about it.
Speaker:Patreon.com/onefjef.
Speaker:Thank you so much to my continuing subscribers.
Speaker:I really appreciate it.
Speaker:And to all my new listeners, of which there are quite a few, welcome.
Speaker:Welcome to the onefjef party.
Speaker:Welcome to the onefjef Fiesta.
Speaker:Welcome to the onefjef Nation.
Speaker:Sovereign nation.
Speaker:We have our own currency.
Speaker:That currency is on patreon.com/onefjef.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:And I haven't said this in a while, so I'm gonna do it for this episode.
Speaker:Thank you for listening.
Speaker:Thank you for being here.
Speaker:Here's Jonathan somewhere in the United States.
Speaker:I wanna talk about what I learned from all this.
Speaker:It is that life
Speaker:happens outside of your comfort zone and not within
Speaker:Life doesn't happen bet- in your routines, in your everyday life.
Speaker:It happens the further you go outside of your comfort zone, the more you will
Speaker:remember it, the more it will mean to you.
Speaker:This journey probably brought me the furthest outside of my
Speaker:comfort zone I've ever been.
Speaker:I traveled a place which probably it's not hard to oversee while
Speaker:listening to me, I guess.
Speaker:I'm not the most drawn to, um, you- the USA structurally.
Speaker:I don't talk about the people.
Speaker:They've been amazing, but structurally, at least for me, it's not attractive at all.
Speaker:You could pay me a million dollars, $10 million, I wouldn't move here.
Speaker:But what this place did, due to probably being so fucked up as well, it brought me
Speaker:very far just outside of my comfort zone.
Speaker:It got me places I could have
Speaker:never imagined and have not even done.
Speaker:I still have a 15, 16-hour ride ahead of me.
Speaker:Will try to finish it up, and I will probably cry when I
Speaker:cross the border to Canada.
Speaker:But what this also tau- taught me, unlike a lot of things I did before in
Speaker:my life, it sounds stupid, it sounds like one of the things you write on
Speaker:one, on, like, one of those things an American would wear on a T-shirt.
Speaker:It's like, "Just do it."
Speaker:Nah, Nike already put that on a T-shirt, fuck.
Speaker:But I haven't, I didn't prepare myself for that.
Speaker:I didn't even plan the route.
Speaker:I didn't, I didn't know where to go.
Speaker:I didn't even had a tent.
Speaker:I just had a mattress, a sleeping bag, little money, and willpower,
Speaker:and this fucking brought me here.
Speaker:It brought me exactly where I wanted to be, out of control
Speaker:and outside of my comfort zone.
Speaker:It taught me that you have to fight for what you like in every aspect of life.
Speaker:I try to live outside of my comfort zone starting today.
Speaker:Big words, little guy.
Speaker:Peace out, guys.
Speaker:The United States has done an amazingly good job at, A, making it very easy to
Speaker:not have real-world experience, to not have to interact with anyone, to be able
Speaker:to isolate yourself in a profound way And has also done a very good job at
Speaker:portraying the world, the real world, the outside world, the world where you
Speaker:have to interact with other humans, as a scary place, as a dangerous place, as a
Speaker:place that maybe you shouldn't go out into lest you, you know, fall victim to one
Speaker:of the many news stories that they play on the local evening news every night.
Speaker:Which if you've never seen the local evening news in the United States,
Speaker:it is truly something to behold.
Speaker:It's 30 minutes long, usually at about 6:00 PM.
Speaker:Of course, there's now one at 5:00, there's one at noon, all these
Speaker:local news stations, because old people are addicted to the news.
Speaker:I've said it and it's true.
Speaker:But this local news, I mean, a friend of mine used to work in, uh, at a TV station,
Speaker:and she said their motto, this is tw- 30 years ago probably, their motto was, "If
Speaker:it bleeds, it leads." But now I would say that that motto would be, "If it bleeds
Speaker:or terrifies or keeps the public afraid or worried," then that's the local news
Speaker:for the whole night, except for a brief respite where we talk about the local
Speaker:sporting teams and another brief restit- respite when we talk about the weather.
Speaker:But the weather also can be terrifying.
Speaker:They, they do their best to do that, too.
Speaker:You get a little storm coming through, "Uh-oh, everybody be careful, you know?
Speaker:There might be some power outages." I mean, my mom's got three flashlights,
Speaker:so she's ready, and I'm sure many people are ready at any moment for something
Speaker:horrible to befall them, because that's what they're seeing on the news.
Speaker:That's what the news is conditioning them to believe about the world outside,
Speaker:the real world, the world of messiness and human interaction and all of that.
Speaker:Which certainly can be scary.
Speaker:It can also be beautiful.
Speaker:It can also be wonderful.
Speaker:I would argue it's mostly beautiful and wonderful out there in that
Speaker:real world than it is scary.
Speaker:But try convincing that to most people who spend too much
Speaker:time watching the evening news.
Speaker:Be afraid.
Speaker:Be afraid of illegal immigrants.
Speaker:Be afraid of, uh, random criminals in your neighborhood.
Speaker:Be afraid of the weather.
Speaker:Uh, be afraid of these horrible politicians.
Speaker:Be afraid of Donald Trump, of course.
Speaker:Um, be afraid of Iran, whatever.
Speaker:Be afraid of something.
Speaker:Afraid, afraid, because afraid and fear, well, it's about, it's the same thing.
Speaker:Great job, Jeff.
Speaker:These things keep a populace in line.
Speaker:These things keep a populace obedient and quiet.
Speaker:You keep them afraid and comfortable, and they'll, they'll be cool.
Speaker:They won't bother you.
Speaker:And we're seeing that right now.
Speaker:They learned the lesson from the bread lines, right?
Speaker:They learned just keep them comfortable enough so that they don't really realize
Speaker:what's going on at the top here, the level of corruption, the level of
Speaker:completely working against their own best interest, the interest of the population.
Speaker:Just keep them comfortable.
Speaker:Let's lower the price of TVs.
Speaker:Let's practically give TVs away
Speaker:I don't know, my friends.
Speaker:It's like uncomfortably comfortable to me
Speaker:Went to a Target earlier today.
Speaker:It was, granted it was the middle of the day, but it was
Speaker:like a ghost town in there.
Speaker:There was a woman pushing a cart around with a screaming child in it.
Speaker:What were you doing in Target, Jef?
Speaker:Mind your own business
Speaker:But I think she was one of the only, like, one or five or 10
Speaker:people in that Target today.
Speaker:And just shelves full of things to buy.
Speaker:Full, so many things you can buy.
Speaker:So many different varieties of the things you can buy.
Speaker:So even when you go to buy something, you're overwhelmed by
Speaker:the number of choices that you have.
Speaker:Which toothpaste do I get?
Speaker:Do I get tartar control?
Speaker:Do I get whitening?
Speaker:Anyway, the moral of the story is…
Speaker:The moral of the story.
Speaker:I don't know what the moral of the story is.
Speaker:I mean, the ultimate moral of the story in terms of the podcast and
Speaker:the arc and the philosophy would be get out of your comfort zone
Speaker:Get out into the world.
Speaker:Experience life, this magical, random thing that happened to all of us.
Speaker:Existence.
Speaker:It's insane.
Speaker:It's insane if you think about it, the odds of this happening,
Speaker:me and you, listener, existing.
Speaker:Existing at all, but existing at this same exact time in the universe.
Speaker:We could be cats.
Speaker:We could come back as cats.
Speaker:Maybe we will.
Speaker:I would like to come back as a cat.
Speaker:That'd be a great animal to come back as, 'cause cats seem like
Speaker:they're having a wonderful life.
Speaker:Like, dogs seem happy, you know, often, but then there's d-
Speaker:there's, like, anxiety with dogs.
Speaker:The, you know, they n- some of them just need to have something
Speaker:to do, or they just get lazy and then they start barking about food.
Speaker:Cats will get a little finicky about food and meow at you, but
Speaker:they're not gonna get too crazy.
Speaker:They're not gonna start, like, you know, screaming at you.
Speaker:Then you gotta go to the vet though, so that's not great.
Speaker:But that's, like, one day out of the year that's gonna be bad for the cat.
Speaker:The other 364 days are just, just existing, philosophizing
Speaker:in their head about other cats, or humans, or I don't know.
Speaker:Moral of the story is when you go to the store to buy toothpaste,
Speaker:know which toothpaste you're gonna buy before you walk in that door.
Speaker:Greetings from the border of Idaho to Washington.
Speaker:I'm still in Idaho, though.
Speaker:I'm staying in this huge villa with, like, panorama lake view.
Speaker:Shit is just getting out of hand.
Speaker:I'm not kidding
Speaker:So the past four days I spent with Kim riding her side by side down
Speaker:the devil, devil's dunes of Idaho.
Speaker:We said goodbye to each other this morning.
Speaker:I wrote her a letter.
Speaker:I said thank you.
Speaker:She cried.
Speaker:It was quite emotional.
Speaker:We forgot to exchange contacts.
Speaker:I figured half an hour after she left.
Speaker:So I'll probably never see her again, but I will most definitely never forget her.
Speaker:This sounds stupid and maybe selfish, but I think I taught,
Speaker:taught her a lot about the world.
Speaker:And I think she appreciated that.
Speaker:Like we had an interesting way to communicate.
Speaker:The moment I got into her car, I fall asleep.
Speaker:I felt comfortable.
Speaker:See, she, she very much seemed like an incarnation of my dead grandmother.
Speaker:My grandmother was also a rich, super fit, crazy lady, and Kim was too.
Speaker:And very nice, very nice.
Speaker:And today, she dropped me off at a gas stop 50 minutes from the dunes.
Speaker:Again, we said goodbye.
Speaker:I smoked a cigarette and went on.
Speaker:And then a couple picked me up pretty quickly, actually,
Speaker:like after maybe 15 minutes.
Speaker:And they brought me up until back on I-90, like all the way through
Speaker:Idaho up to Montana on I-90.
Speaker:At one point, they pulled over to get some rocks.
Speaker:And got another ride with, I forgot her name, but also a nice lady.
Speaker:But also, uh, she was also collecting, like, rocks, stones.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Is this a thing in Montana?
Speaker:I don't fucking know.
Speaker:Well, this copy before was from Maine, so… But do people come
Speaker:to Montana to collect rocks?
Speaker:She brought me a bit further west, back into Idaho
Speaker:Got me a bison burger and a huckleberry milkshake.
Speaker:I never had huckleberry before, but it's awesome.
Speaker:After we finished our burger, we said goodbye to one another, and I went on.
Speaker:It was almost like eight… Well, it was past eight, it was almost nine-ish.
Speaker:So I figured I may have like half an hour to may hitch a ride further west.
Speaker:But I, I was… I, I figured I will probably won't… I won't, I won't get
Speaker:one and, but I gave it a shot anyways.
Speaker:And then Molly pulled over.
Speaker:She never picked up the hitchhiker before.
Speaker:Asked me if I will murder her if I'm a mass murderer.
Speaker:I said, "No." She invited me into her car.
Speaker:We had a
Speaker:chat, and after some time passed and the sun was going down, she invited me to her
Speaker:place, to stay at her place for a night.
Speaker:I think it was a spontaneous, random decision.
Speaker:See, she said since she's 50, she's living life a bit differently and sc-
Speaker:is getting less scared because time is running out, and she still wanna
Speaker:do lots of she never done before.
Speaker:So she just picked me up and invited me to her home, and she lives in this
Speaker:huge, beautiful mansion on a hill with like… I forgot the name of the lake,
Speaker:but the lake is probably 30 miles long.
Speaker:It kinda looks like the
Speaker:northern version of Lago di Garda in Italy.
Speaker:It's beautiful.
Speaker:The sun sets to her right, and the sun rises to her left
Speaker:Just a perfect view over the entire lake
Speaker:Couple stories, way too much space, and she lives here on her own.
Speaker:I don't fucking know why life, why luck is chasing me so hard.
Speaker:I can't sleep in a fucking bed.
Speaker:No bugs for me tonight.
Speaker:Friendly Empire
Speaker:Say yes more often.
Speaker:I will say yes more often in the future
Speaker:Open up a bit
Speaker:Life is outside of your comfort zone
Speaker:But this bed pretty much is a very comforting piece I am still
Speaker:unpacking and it is raining.
Speaker:It does rain every day during the rainy season.
Speaker:The rumors are true.
Speaker:I have not been here during rainy season yet, but I mean,
Speaker:I'm here during rainy season now.
Speaker:And what everybody says is accurate.
Speaker:It rains every day at about 5 o'clock.
Speaker:Tonight it was like clockwork.
Speaker:5 o'clock, boom, rain.
Speaker:Some days it rains more than other days.
Speaker:Yesterday it was a torrential downpour.
Speaker:And it's kind of nice really because I can open my sliding glass doors and
Speaker:just listen to the rain until it gets too bad and then I have to close them
Speaker:because the rain starts coming in.
Speaker:Anyway, enough about my apartment.
Speaker:Needless to say, I'm happy.
Speaker:What I'm not happy with is the fact that my landlord of my last apartment is not
Speaker:apparently giving me my deposit back.
Speaker:So I begin to ask myself, is it worth the trouble to find a lawyer
Speaker:here in Mexico to send him a threatening letter of some sort?
Speaker:Because I am in the right.
Speaker:He is in the wrong.
Speaker:I'm not going to explain it why, but I know I am.
Speaker:And I think he thinks he has the leverage here because he
Speaker:is a Mexican living in Mexico.
Speaker:But the reality is I don't think that he does.
Speaker:He's violating the law and the law protects tourists and short-term
Speaker:residents as well as citizens of Mexico.
Speaker:So we'll see.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I don't know if it's worth the trouble for 21,000 pesos.
Speaker:Part of me thinks it's worth it just for the principle of the thing.
Speaker:More than anything, it just bums me out.
Speaker:It was like the first place I rented here in Mexico City and
Speaker:I think I did everything right.
Speaker:I was nice.
Speaker:I was, you know, I gave him all the notification and everything, but he's
Speaker:just being a dick and it just bums me out.
Speaker:I just kind of got to let it go.
Speaker:Part of me is like, just don't bother because I don't want to have to deal
Speaker:with this negativity for longer.
Speaker:But part of me is like, you know what?
Speaker:Fuck him.
Speaker:I'm going to show him.
Speaker:I made it to Seattle.
Speaker:I made it.
Speaker:I'm not even two hours away from the border in North Bend, Washington.
Speaker:It's not exactly Seattle I let myself get dropped off before
Speaker:Seattle, 'cause I'm trying to,
Speaker:like, there's a street which is taking me around Seattle more or less, trying
Speaker:to avoid Seattle because it's… The sun is setting, slowly though,
Speaker:but soonish, and I don't wanna be stuck in downtown Seattle this night.
Speaker:I actually hope to make it to Canada today.
Speaker:Like, I really do hope that I will make it.
Speaker:Go to North Bend, Washington.
Speaker:There's nothing much to do.
Speaker:There's a theater and a coffee shop, but people look cool, and it's the
Speaker:first time I see people walking , like, actually, like, pedestrians, and a good
Speaker:bunch of them in small town America.
Speaker:I c- just called my sister.
Speaker:She said, "Well, I think you're getting close to Canada." Today I had four rides,
Speaker:and two of those rides just
Speaker:got, they landed on the streets within three weeks because of an injury.
Speaker:That's how quick it goes in the US.
Speaker:They were both working in construction and this was, their
Speaker:life story was very similar.
Speaker:Both of them were very smart.
Speaker:Just searching for answers for the mi- the misery in the wrong, they
Speaker:were digging in the wrong holes.
Speaker:They were, they had some conspiracies going up.
Speaker:And I figured they were pretty smart, like, they had some knowledge, and
Speaker:when they were not talking about their conspiracy theories, they were
Speaker:actually, like, pretty well educated.
Speaker:But they, they didn't seem to, like, put it all together.
Speaker:There was a lack of critical thinking, and I think this is a
Speaker:weird symptom of a lot of people.
Speaker:Like, they have loads of knowledge, but they just can't put it together.
Speaker:He was, like, contradicting his arguments all the time, like,
Speaker:hating on homeless and, but understanding the homeless crisis.
Speaker:Hating on, like, I first thought he was racist, then he was, wasn't racist
Speaker:at all, and actually understood the structural causes to some of the
Speaker:conflicts going on in the country.
Speaker:But he just couldn't put it together.
Speaker:He, the both of them couldn't piece the shit together.
Speaker:I don't blame this on the US.
Speaker:I think it's
Speaker:The same in Germany.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:I hope to leave the US today.
Speaker:It's been treating me really good, honestly.
Speaker:Friendly empire I took a walk last night around my new neighborhood while
Speaker:I was trying to finish this episode.
Speaker:I've been trying to finish this episode for like two or three days.
Speaker:But as I was taking a walk last night
Speaker:I thought as soon as I finish this one, I just gotta start the next one And I
Speaker:realized that I need to take a break, that the best thing that I could do for
Speaker:this podcast right now is to take a short break and, uh, retool myself, retool
Speaker:my ideas of what the podcast is and is going to be and so forth and so on.
Speaker:So with that, the podcast is going on a hiatus for one month.
Speaker:The podcast will return the week of August 16th.
Speaker:Until then, I'll be re-releasing some of my favorite older episodes.
Speaker:I think I've got enough of a catalog to, uh, justify that, and also, that's what
Speaker:people do when their podcast is on hiatus.
Speaker:They re-release older episodes, so that's what I'm gonna do.
Speaker:That's what I'm gonna do.
Speaker:So I appreciate you understanding, and, uh, I hope you enjoy the,
Speaker:uh, re-releases that'll be coming out in the next several weeks.
Speaker:So there you go.
Speaker:I also wanna thank Jonathan
Speaker:once again for sending me dispatches from his hitchhiking
Speaker:journey across the United States.
Speaker:Congratulations on making it to Canada.
Speaker:If you'd like to ask a question, express a concern, express confusion,
Speaker:express anger, express happiness, joy, whatever you want, send me an email
Speaker:at the podcast onefjefpod@gmail.com.
Speaker:You can also leave a voicemail at 1-669-241-5882.
Speaker:I actually recorded another version of this outro before I realized I
Speaker:was taking a hiatus, and there's a much better version of the phone
Speaker:number song, one of the best.
Speaker:I'm gonna play that here.
Speaker:1-669-241-5882. What you gonna do?
Speaker:1-669-241-5882. Now, that's an earworm, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So yeah, call that number.
Speaker:And, uh, as always, like, rate, subscribe, and review.
Speaker:If you haven't done it, do it now.
Speaker:If you have done it, do it again more than once.
Speaker:Keep doing it over and over and over.
Speaker:I'm gonna end this episode with another poem from Rumi Rumi, Rumiford E. Rumi,
Speaker:The Room Machine, Senior Rumiford.
Speaker:Anyway, you get it, Rumi.
Speaker:It's called Quietness.
Speaker:"Inside this new love, die.
Speaker:Your way begins on the other side.
Speaker:Become the sky.
Speaker:Take an axe to the prison wall.
Speaker:Escape.
Speaker:Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Speaker:Do it now.
Speaker:You're covered with thick cloud.
Speaker:Slide out the side.
Speaker:Die and be quiet.
Speaker:Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.
Speaker:Your old life was a frantic running from silence.
Speaker:The speechless full moon comes out now."
Speaker:I'll see you guys in a month Very good, Jeffrey
