Latest / onefjef / Uncomfortably Comfortable

Transcript

Uncomfortably Comfortable · onefjef

• 0:01
  One six six nine two four one five eight eight two.
• 0:05
  What you gonna do?
• 0:06
  One six six nine two four one five eight eight two.
• 0:11
  Now that's an earworm.
• 0:12
  This is USA Dispatch number three, with a little bit of CDMX sprinkled in there.
• 0:20
  Hola, mis cabrones.
• 0:21
  ¿Qué tal?
• 0:21
  ¿Qué pedo?
• 0:25
  How are you?
• 0:26
  I hope you're thriving as always.
• 0:29
  Maybe I'll get T-shirts made that say, "I hope you're thriving." Would you buy that?
• 0:35
  Let me know, onefjefpod@gmail.com.
• 0:37
  I'm back in Mexico City at long last in my new apartment here.
• 0:43
  The terrace, it's truly a game changer.
• 0:46
  The apartment is smaller and there's no oven.
• 0:49
  There's a microwave oven, but there's no, you know, real oven.
• 0:52
  But the oven at my last place didn't work anyway, so what,
• 0:55
  what difference does it make?
• 0:56
  It doesn't make any difference.
• 0:58
  I am still recovering from the elevation, readjusting to it that is.
• 1:04
  It's not as bad as it was the first time, I think, because you never really…
• 1:08
  If-- I was only gone for like two and a half weeks, so it never really
• 1:10
  readjusts back to, you know what I mean.
• 1:13
  Ugh, am I gonna start to say, "You know what I mean?" all the time just
• 1:15
  so I, 'cause I don't wanna explain it?
• 1:17
  'Cause I'm too lazy to explain to you, my listeners?
• 1:21
  Maybe.
• 1:22
  Anyway, you do know what I mean.
• 1:24
  But I did forget about the farting, and it's something nobody really talks
• 1:29
  about in any of the, not that I've seen anyway, in the, you know, the Mexico
• 1:34
  City, moving to Mexico City TikToks and Instagram Reels and so forth and so on.
• 1:38
  Nobody talks about the farting.
• 1:41
  But there is a good deal of farting in the first few days for most people once you
• 1:45
  move to a higher elevation from sea level.
• 1:49
  What I'm trying to tell you is that I was farting a lot yesterday
• 1:52
  and this morning and on the plane.
• 1:55
  I think people fart more on planes because of this as well.
• 1:59
  Just something to keep in mind if you're thinking about visiting Mexico
• 2:02
  City or moving here, you will fart a lot for the first few days, and
• 2:06
  you may have a pounding headache.
• 2:08
  You've been warned.
• 2:09
  You've been warned.
• 2:11
  Jonathan did make it to Vancouver.
• 2:13
  Uh, I think he's just started to hitchhike again now to somewhere
• 2:17
  else, to the capital of British Columbia or something with his sister.
• 2:20
  But I have a bunch of his, uh, uh, voice memos that I'm gonna play in this episode.
• 2:25
  And thank you to my new Patreon subscriber.
• 2:27
  You know who you are.
• 2:28
  And if you yourself have not yet subscribed to the
• 2:30
  Patreon page, please do so.
• 2:33
  Five dollars a month or twenty-five dollars a month
• 2:35
  or a million dollars a month.
• 2:37
  Patreon.com/onefjef.
• 2:40
  You'll get access to extra content, early access to new
• 2:42
  episodes, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:44
  You've heard me talk about it.
• 2:45
  Patreon.com/onefjef.
• 2:47
  Thank you so much to my continuing subscribers.
• 2:48
  I really appreciate it.
• 2:50
  And to all my new listeners, of which there are quite a few, welcome.
• 2:54
  Welcome to the onefjef party.
• 2:56
  Welcome to the onefjef Fiesta.
• 2:58
  Welcome to the onefjef Nation.
• 3:03
  Sovereign nation.
• 3:04
  We have our own currency.
• 3:06
  That currency is on patreon.com/onefjef.
• 3:08
  Thank you very much.
• 3:11
  And I haven't said this in a while, so I'm gonna do it for this episode.
• 3:14
  Thank you for listening.
• 3:16
  Thank you for being here.
• 3:18
  Here's Jonathan somewhere in the United States.
• 3:24
  I wanna talk about what I learned from all this.
• 3:28
  It is that life
• 3:32
  happens outside of your comfort zone and not within
• 3:39
  Life doesn't happen bet- in your routines, in your everyday life.
• 3:43
  It happens the further you go outside of your comfort zone, the more you will
• 3:49
  remember it, the more it will mean to you.
• 3:54
  This journey probably brought me the furthest outside of my
• 3:57
  comfort zone I've ever been.
• 4:01
  I traveled a place which probably it's not hard to oversee while
• 4:07
  listening to me, I guess.
• 4:09
  I'm not the most drawn to, um, you- the USA structurally.
• 4:14
  I don't talk about the people.
• 4:16
  They've been amazing, but structurally, at least for me, it's not attractive at all.
• 4:23
  You could pay me a million dollars, $10 million, I wouldn't move here.
• 4:30
  But what this place did, due to probably being so fucked up as well, it brought me
• 4:36
  very far just outside of my comfort zone.
• 4:40
  It got me places I could have
• 4:43
  never imagined and have not even done.
• 4:44
  I still have a 15, 16-hour ride ahead of me.
• 4:49
  Will try to finish it up, and I will probably cry when I
• 4:51
  cross the border to Canada.
• 4:54
  But what this also tau- taught me, unlike a lot of things I did before in
• 4:59
  my life, it sounds stupid, it sounds like one of the things you write on
• 5:04
  one, on, like, one of those things an American would wear on a T-shirt.
• 5:08
  It's like, "Just do it."
• 5:10
  Nah, Nike already put that on a T-shirt, fuck.
• 5:14
  But I haven't, I didn't prepare myself for that.
• 5:16
  I didn't even plan the route.
• 5:18
  I didn't, I didn't know where to go.
• 5:20
  I didn't even had a tent.
• 5:21
  I just had a mattress, a sleeping bag, little money, and willpower,
• 5:28
  and this fucking brought me here.
• 5:30
  It brought me exactly where I wanted to be, out of control
• 5:33
  and outside of my comfort zone.
• 5:36
  It taught me that you have to fight for what you like in every aspect of life.
• 5:42
  I try to live outside of my comfort zone starting today.
• 5:48
  Big words, little guy.
• 5:50
  Peace out, guys.
• 5:52
  The United States has done an amazingly good job at, A, making it very easy to
• 5:58
  not have real-world experience, to not have to interact with anyone, to be able
• 6:04
  to isolate yourself in a profound way And has also done a very good job at
• 6:12
  portraying the world, the real world, the outside world, the world where you
• 6:17
  have to interact with other humans, as a scary place, as a dangerous place, as a
• 6:22
  place that maybe you shouldn't go out into lest you, you know, fall victim to one
• 6:26
  of the many news stories that they play on the local evening news every night.
• 6:32
  Which if you've never seen the local evening news in the United States,
• 6:36
  it is truly something to behold.
• 6:39
  It's 30 minutes long, usually at about 6:00 PM.
• 6:43
  Of course, there's now one at 5:00, there's one at noon, all these
• 6:45
  local news stations, because old people are addicted to the news.
• 6:49
  I've said it and it's true.
• 6:52
  But this local news, I mean, a friend of mine used to work in, uh, at a TV station,
• 7:00
  and she said their motto, this is tw- 30 years ago probably, their motto was, "If
• 7:03
  it bleeds, it leads." But now I would say that that motto would be, "If it bleeds
• 7:10
  or terrifies or keeps the public afraid or worried," then that's the local news
• 7:20
  for the whole night, except for a brief respite where we talk about the local
• 7:25
  sporting teams and another brief restit- respite when we talk about the weather.
• 7:31
  But the weather also can be terrifying.
• 7:33
  They, they do their best to do that, too.
• 7:35
  You get a little storm coming through, "Uh-oh, everybody be careful, you know?
• 7:39
  There might be some power outages." I mean, my mom's got three flashlights,
• 7:44
  so she's ready, and I'm sure many people are ready at any moment for something
• 7:52
  horrible to befall them, because that's what they're seeing on the news.
• 7:57
  That's what the news is conditioning them to believe about the world outside,
• 8:04
  the real world, the world of messiness and human interaction and all of that.
• 8:12
  Which certainly can be scary.
• 8:14
  It can also be beautiful.
• 8:15
  It can also be wonderful.
• 8:16
  I would argue it's mostly beautiful and wonderful out there in that
• 8:20
  real world than it is scary.
• 8:23
  But try convincing that to most people who spend too much
• 8:27
  time watching the evening news.
• 8:29
  Be afraid.
• 8:30
  Be afraid of illegal immigrants.
• 8:32
  Be afraid of, uh, random criminals in your neighborhood.
• 8:37
  Be afraid of the weather.
• 8:40
  Uh, be afraid of these horrible politicians.
• 8:42
  Be afraid of Donald Trump, of course.
• 8:45
  Um, be afraid of Iran, whatever.
• 8:47
  Be afraid of something.
• 8:48
  Afraid, afraid, because afraid and fear, well, it's about, it's the same thing.
• 8:54
  Great job, Jeff.
• 8:55
  These things keep a populace in line.
• 8:58
  These things keep a populace obedient and quiet.
• 9:01
  You keep them afraid and comfortable, and they'll, they'll be cool.
• 9:07
  They won't bother you.
• 9:09
  And we're seeing that right now.
• 9:12
  They learned the lesson from the bread lines, right?
• 9:14
  They learned just keep them comfortable enough so that they don't really realize
• 9:21
  what's going on at the top here, the level of corruption, the level of
• 9:25
  completely working against their own best interest, the interest of the population.
• 9:29
  Just keep them comfortable.
• 9:30
  Let's lower the price of TVs.
• 9:33
  Let's practically give TVs away
• 9:37
  I don't know, my friends.
• 9:40
  It's like uncomfortably comfortable to me
• 9:47
  Went to a Target earlier today.
• 9:49
  It was, granted it was the middle of the day, but it was
• 9:52
  like a ghost town in there.
• 9:54
  There was a woman pushing a cart around with a screaming child in it.
• 9:59
  What were you doing in Target, Jef?
• 10:00
  Mind your own business
• 10:04
  But I think she was one of the only, like, one or five or 10
• 10:06
  people in that Target today.
• 10:09
  And just shelves full of things to buy.
• 10:13
  Full, so many things you can buy.
• 10:15
  So many different varieties of the things you can buy.
• 10:18
  So even when you go to buy something, you're overwhelmed by
• 10:21
  the number of choices that you have.
• 10:22
  Which toothpaste do I get?
• 10:23
  Do I get tartar control?
• 10:24
  Do I get whitening?
• 10:26
  Anyway, the moral of the story is…
• 10:29
  The moral of the story.
• 10:31
  I don't know what the moral of the story is.
• 10:34
  I mean, the ultimate moral of the story in terms of the podcast and
• 10:38
  the arc and the philosophy would be get out of your comfort zone
• 10:47
  Get out into the world.
• 10:49
  Experience life, this magical, random thing that happened to all of us.
• 10:59
  Existence.
• 11:01
  It's insane.
• 11:01
  It's insane if you think about it, the odds of this happening,
• 11:06
  me and you, listener, existing.
• 11:11
  Existing at all, but existing at this same exact time in the universe.
• 11:18
  We could be cats.
• 11:20
  We could come back as cats.
• 11:23
  Maybe we will.
• 11:24
  I would like to come back as a cat.
• 11:26
  That'd be a great animal to come back as, 'cause cats seem like
• 11:28
  they're having a wonderful life.
• 11:32
  Like, dogs seem happy, you know, often, but then there's d-
• 11:38
  there's, like, anxiety with dogs.
• 11:40
  The, you know, they n- some of them just need to have something
• 11:42
  to do, or they just get lazy and then they start barking about food.
• 11:46
  Cats will get a little finicky about food and meow at you, but
• 11:48
  they're not gonna get too crazy.
• 11:51
  They're not gonna start, like, you know, screaming at you.
• 11:55
  Then you gotta go to the vet though, so that's not great.
• 11:57
  But that's, like, one day out of the year that's gonna be bad for the cat.
• 12:01
  The other 364 days are just, just existing, philosophizing
• 12:09
  in their head about other cats, or humans, or I don't know.
• 12:14
  Moral of the story is when you go to the store to buy toothpaste,
• 12:19
  know which toothpaste you're gonna buy before you walk in that door.
• 12:24
  Greetings from the border of Idaho to Washington.
• 12:28
  I'm still in Idaho, though.
• 12:30
  I'm staying in this huge villa with, like, panorama lake view.
• 12:37
  Shit is just getting out of hand.
• 12:40
  I'm not kidding
• 12:43
  So the past four days I spent with Kim riding her side by side down
• 12:47
  the devil, devil's dunes of Idaho.
• 12:52
  We said goodbye to each other this morning.
• 12:55
  I wrote her a letter.
• 12:56
  I said thank you.
• 12:57
  She cried.
• 12:58
  It was quite emotional.
• 13:01
  We forgot to exchange contacts.
• 13:03
  I figured half an hour after she left.
• 13:07
  So I'll probably never see her again, but I will most definitely never forget her.
• 13:12
  This sounds stupid and maybe selfish, but I think I taught,
• 13:17
  taught her a lot about the world.
• 13:20
  And I think she appreciated that.
• 13:22
  Like we had an interesting way to communicate.
• 13:25
  The moment I got into her car, I fall asleep.
• 13:27
  I felt comfortable.
• 13:29
  See, she, she very much seemed like an incarnation of my dead grandmother.
• 13:36
  My grandmother was also a rich, super fit, crazy lady, and Kim was too.
• 13:45
  And very nice, very nice.
• 13:49
  And today, she dropped me off at a gas stop 50 minutes from the dunes.
• 13:56
  Again, we said goodbye.
• 13:58
  I smoked a cigarette and went on.
• 14:03
  And then a couple picked me up pretty quickly, actually,
• 14:07
  like after maybe 15 minutes.
• 14:11
  And they brought me up until back on I-90, like all the way through
• 14:15
  Idaho up to Montana on I-90.
• 14:19
  At one point, they pulled over to get some rocks.
• 14:24
  And got another ride with, I forgot her name, but also a nice lady.
• 14:29
  But also, uh, she was also collecting, like, rocks, stones.
• 14:37
  I don't know.
• 14:38
  Is this a thing in Montana?
• 14:40
  I don't fucking know.
• 14:42
  Well, this copy before was from Maine, so… But do people come
• 14:47
  to Montana to collect rocks?
• 14:50
  She brought me a bit further west, back into Idaho
• 14:57
  Got me a bison burger and a huckleberry milkshake.
• 15:03
  I never had huckleberry before, but it's awesome.
• 15:09
  After we finished our burger, we said goodbye to one another, and I went on.
• 15:14
  It was almost like eight… Well, it was past eight, it was almost nine-ish.
• 15:20
  So I figured I may have like half an hour to may hitch a ride further west.
• 15:27
  But I, I was… I, I figured I will probably won't… I won't, I won't get
• 15:32
  one and, but I gave it a shot anyways.
• 15:37
  And then Molly pulled over.
• 15:40
  She never picked up the hitchhiker before.
• 15:44
  Asked me if I will murder her if I'm a mass murderer.
• 15:46
  I said, "No." She invited me into her car.
• 15:49
  We had a
• 15:52
  chat, and after some time passed and the sun was going down, she invited me to her
• 16:02
  place, to stay at her place for a night.
• 16:06
  I think it was a spontaneous, random decision.
• 16:09
  See, she said since she's 50, she's living life a bit differently and sc-
• 16:15
  is getting less scared because time is running out, and she still wanna
• 16:23
  do lots of she never done before.
• 16:25
  So she just picked me up and invited me to her home, and she lives in this
• 16:31
  huge, beautiful mansion on a hill with like… I forgot the name of the lake,
• 16:40
  but the lake is probably 30 miles long.
• 16:45
  It kinda looks like the
• 16:47
  northern version of Lago di Garda in Italy.
• 16:52
  It's beautiful.
• 16:55
  The sun sets to her right, and the sun rises to her left
• 17:03
  Just a perfect view over the entire lake
• 17:08
  Couple stories, way too much space, and she lives here on her own.
• 17:13
  I don't fucking know why life, why luck is chasing me so hard.
• 17:18
  I can't sleep in a fucking bed.
• 17:21
  No bugs for me tonight.
• 17:23
  Friendly Empire
• 17:27
  Say yes more often.
• 17:30
  I will say yes more often in the future
• 17:37
  Open up a bit
• 17:41
  Life is outside of your comfort zone
• 17:46
  But this bed pretty much is a very comforting piece I am still
• 17:52
  unpacking and it is raining.
• 17:54
  It does rain every day during the rainy season.
• 17:57
  The rumors are true.
• 17:59
  I have not been here during rainy season yet, but I mean,
• 18:02
  I'm here during rainy season now.
• 18:03
  And what everybody says is accurate.
• 18:05
  It rains every day at about 5 o'clock.
• 18:08
  Tonight it was like clockwork.
• 18:10
  5 o'clock, boom, rain.
• 18:12
  Some days it rains more than other days.
• 18:15
  Yesterday it was a torrential downpour.
• 18:18
  And it's kind of nice really because I can open my sliding glass doors and
• 18:22
  just listen to the rain until it gets too bad and then I have to close them
• 18:25
  because the rain starts coming in.
• 18:27
  Anyway, enough about my apartment.
• 18:30
  Needless to say, I'm happy.
• 18:31
  What I'm not happy with is the fact that my landlord of my last apartment is not
• 18:35
  apparently giving me my deposit back.
• 18:37
  So I begin to ask myself, is it worth the trouble to find a lawyer
• 18:43
  here in Mexico to send him a threatening letter of some sort?
• 18:47
  Because I am in the right.
• 18:48
  He is in the wrong.
• 18:50
  I'm not going to explain it why, but I know I am.
• 18:54
  And I think he thinks he has the leverage here because he
• 18:58
  is a Mexican living in Mexico.
• 19:01
  But the reality is I don't think that he does.
• 19:04
  He's violating the law and the law protects tourists and short-term
• 19:09
  residents as well as citizens of Mexico.
• 19:13
  So we'll see.
• 19:14
  I don't know.
• 19:14
  I don't know if it's worth the trouble for 21,000 pesos.
• 19:19
  Part of me thinks it's worth it just for the principle of the thing.
• 19:22
  More than anything, it just bums me out.
• 19:24
  It was like the first place I rented here in Mexico City and
• 19:26
  I think I did everything right.
• 19:28
  I was nice.
• 19:28
  I was, you know, I gave him all the notification and everything, but he's
• 19:32
  just being a dick and it just bums me out.
• 19:35
  I just kind of got to let it go.
• 19:38
  Part of me is like, just don't bother because I don't want to have to deal
• 19:40
  with this negativity for longer.
• 19:42
  But part of me is like, you know what?
• 19:43
  Fuck him.
• 19:45
  I'm going to show him.
• 19:46
  I made it to Seattle.
• 19:48
  I made it.
• 19:48
  I'm not even two hours away from the border in North Bend, Washington.
• 19:55
  It's not exactly Seattle I let myself get dropped off before
• 20:02
  Seattle, 'cause I'm trying to,
• 20:05
  like, there's a street which is taking me around Seattle more or less, trying
• 20:09
  to avoid Seattle because it's… The sun is setting, slowly though,
• 20:15
  but soonish, and I don't wanna be stuck in downtown Seattle this night.
• 20:20
  I actually hope to make it to Canada today.
• 20:23
  Like, I really do hope that I will make it.
• 20:27
  Go to North Bend, Washington.
• 20:30
  There's nothing much to do.
• 20:31
  There's a theater and a coffee shop, but people look cool, and it's the
• 20:35
  first time I see people walking , like, actually, like, pedestrians, and a good
• 20:41
  bunch of them in small town America.
• 20:44
  I c- just called my sister.
• 20:45
  She said, "Well, I think you're getting close to Canada." Today I had four rides,
• 20:53
  and two of those rides just
• 20:57
  got, they landed on the streets within three weeks because of an injury.
• 21:02
  That's how quick it goes in the US.
• 21:05
  They were both working in construction and this was, their
• 21:07
  life story was very similar.
• 21:08
  Both of them were very smart.
• 21:10
  Just searching for answers for the mi- the misery in the wrong, they
• 21:15
  were digging in the wrong holes.
• 21:17
  They were, they had some conspiracies going up.
• 21:20
  And I figured they were pretty smart, like, they had some knowledge, and
• 21:23
  when they were not talking about their conspiracy theories, they were
• 21:26
  actually, like, pretty well educated.
• 21:30
  But they, they didn't seem to, like, put it all together.
• 21:34
  There was a lack of critical thinking, and I think this is a
• 21:37
  weird symptom of a lot of people.
• 21:39
  Like, they have loads of knowledge, but they just can't put it together.
• 21:42
  He was, like, contradicting his arguments all the time, like,
• 21:46
  hating on homeless and, but understanding the homeless crisis.
• 21:50
  Hating on, like, I first thought he was racist, then he was, wasn't racist
• 21:54
  at all, and actually understood the structural causes to some of the
• 21:57
  conflicts going on in the country.
• 21:59
  But he just couldn't put it together.
• 22:01
  He, the both of them couldn't piece the shit together.
• 22:05
  I don't blame this on the US.
• 22:06
  I think it's
• 22:09
  The same in Germany.
• 22:12
  Um,
• 22:15
  I hope to leave the US today.
• 22:18
  It's been treating me really good, honestly.
• 22:22
  Friendly empire I took a walk last night around my new neighborhood while
• 22:27
  I was trying to finish this episode.
• 22:30
  I've been trying to finish this episode for like two or three days.
• 22:34
  But as I was taking a walk last night
• 22:38
  I thought as soon as I finish this one, I just gotta start the next one And I
• 22:44
  realized that I need to take a break, that the best thing that I could do for
• 22:50
  this podcast right now is to take a short break and, uh, retool myself, retool
• 22:56
  my ideas of what the podcast is and is going to be and so forth and so on.
• 23:00
  So with that, the podcast is going on a hiatus for one month.
• 23:05
  The podcast will return the week of August 16th.
• 23:10
  Until then, I'll be re-releasing some of my favorite older episodes.
• 23:14
  I think I've got enough of a catalog to, uh, justify that, and also, that's what
• 23:19
  people do when their podcast is on hiatus.
• 23:21
  They re-release older episodes, so that's what I'm gonna do.
• 23:27
  That's what I'm gonna do.
• 23:28
  So I appreciate you understanding, and, uh, I hope you enjoy the,
• 23:32
  uh, re-releases that'll be coming out in the next several weeks.
• 23:34
  So there you go.
• 23:38
  I also wanna thank Jonathan
• 23:43
  once again for sending me dispatches from his hitchhiking
• 23:46
  journey across the United States.
• 23:49
  Congratulations on making it to Canada.
• 23:53
  If you'd like to ask a question, express a concern, express confusion,
• 24:00
  express anger, express happiness, joy, whatever you want, send me an email
• 24:05
  at the podcast onefjefpod@gmail.com.
• 24:09
  You can also leave a voicemail at 1-669-241-5882.
• 24:14
  I actually recorded another version of this outro before I realized I
• 24:19
  was taking a hiatus, and there's a much better version of the phone
• 24:21
  number song, one of the best.
• 24:23
  I'm gonna play that here.
• 24:25
  1-669-241-5882. What you gonna do?
• 24:30
  1-669-241-5882. Now, that's an earworm, right?
• 24:37
  Yeah.
• 24:37
  Exactly.
• 24:39
  So yeah, call that number.
• 24:41
  And, uh, as always, like, rate, subscribe, and review.
• 24:44
  If you haven't done it, do it now.
• 24:46
  If you have done it, do it again more than once.
• 24:48
  Keep doing it over and over and over.
• 24:51
  I'm gonna end this episode with another poem from Rumi Rumi, Rumiford E. Rumi,
• 24:58
  The Room Machine, Senior Rumiford.
• 25:02
  Anyway, you get it, Rumi.
• 25:04
  It's called Quietness.
• 25:07
  "Inside this new love, die.
• 25:11
  Your way begins on the other side.
• 25:14
  Become the sky.
• 25:16
  Take an axe to the prison wall.
• 25:18
  Escape.
• 25:20
  Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
• 25:23
  Do it now.
• 25:25
  You're covered with thick cloud.
• 25:27
  Slide out the side.
• 25:28
  Die and be quiet.
• 25:31
  Quietness is the surest sign that you've died.
• 25:35
  Your old life was a frantic running from silence.
• 25:39
  The speechless full moon comes out now."
• 25:43
  I'll see you guys in a month Very good, Jeffrey