Week 2 in New Town (November 2nd, 2026)

02 Nov, 2026

There’s a confluence of recent events that have been stewing in my mind: my recent meeting of M. in Munich, my trip to Dachau concentration camp, and my current presence in New Town. There’s also this sense that I was trying to describe to Erik: if my twenties were about discovering who I am, then my thirties will be about discovering the inner and invisible mechanisms of my environment. At first I thought it was ironic that this sense began far, far away from my home, but on second thought I think it’s actually quite logical: after all, my modern life in New York is mostly fabricated with outsourced materials:

• careers and institutions (outsourced wealth/labor)
• energy (outsourced material extraction)
• health (outsourced sickness)
• religion (outsourced ignorance)
• superiority (outsourced suffering)

Last Saturday Erik and I went on a walk down to the overlook above Lake Sakakawea again and at one point I meditated on how my friends are all over the world, and how in a certain sense they’re like passing angels. How many friends in my life have I met and then left? And how many have come and then gone?

And then, looking over the bridge out into the open horizon, I started to feel like I was at “the front,”—this being the cold, adventurous edge of life and the world: in Europe, in North Dakota, in aging, in beginning a family. Then I thought to myself about the son at Better ‘B’ who “went south” to find work, and thought how we’re probably more similar in this way than we are different: but it doesn’t have to be this way! There’s some way, some world where neither of us have to go it alone, and where our lives can be filled with people who want to stay and not go. Then I got this intense desire to curl up around a bowl of soup and a fire and finally just exhale. I wonder how shared this feeling is, universally speaking. Probably very. 

But the wind was biting and I was instead curled up, shivering, and facing the sun like a flower, to be a little Lawrencean. I did really feel like opening up like a flower, only it was so cold and I couldn’t; for the moment I was a closed bud. Erik was similarly bunched up, and whether it was because of the wind or the cold, we were mostly silent. I asked him at one point what he was thinking and he said smiling, “gratitude, mostly—for everything. For being here, for this moment, for being alive.” I knew this last point was real, considering he’d momentarily gone into V-fib and died after being hit in the heart with a lacrosse ball. He described the moment he was revived and came back to life as like “being pushed out of the darkness by [his] chest by someone." I recognized in that moment the bravery that it took to return to playing lacrosse, let alone enter into the discipline of medicine; many in his position wouldn’t have dared. 

I am very glad I am here with him. The following day we went to the casino for another round with chance, or fate. Other new places we’ve been together this week: a nearby city called Williston, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and somewhere else in-between for stargazing.

Then, on the phone the other day with J., he asked me the following, without my having prompted him: “is it too much to ask to live near to my loved ones? And is there no greater good?” He must’ve had a similar moment on a windy hilltop. He also recalled to me—again “coincidentally”—how he realized that there were “two times that one wakes up: once to himself and once to the world.” So perhaps my realizations were not my own but everyone’s. Or perhaps it’s also just reflective of our particular Erikson’s stage of development i.e. generativity vs. stagnation (said to begin in one’s thirties).

On Friday of last week I woke up from a dream in which someone was telling me I needed to drive to the nearby town of “Menchen” in order to “find spiritual development.” When I awoke I immediately checked google maps to see if there was a city called Menchen anywhere near New Town, but I caught myself smiling after there was no such town to be found: of course this was my subconscious’s way of spelling Munich (München, in German). Was this an injunction to return there?—I didn’t think so. The alternative interpretation was that I could continue to divine spiritual knowledge from a time and place gone past.

It may be more difficult, but if spiritual observations can be made in the absence of a physical object, then my time in Munich need not limit my development thereafter. In other words, spiritual development can be like a chain of dominos, falling down in sequence from an initial hit. This is also just causality.

Though all this is a too-long precursor to the question, “what did my time in Munich awaken in me that continues to develop in this very moment?” The answer I believe is the realization that both J. and I shared in the past week: it was an awakening to the invisible world around me, and moreover, that my existence is predicated upon precisely that invisibility. 

This was the initial hit that caused the dominos to fall over, yes, and it was quite a hit: I’m still feeling its aftershocks. But what are the dominos that continue to fall? Logically, they are either:

1. me working to reveal those invisible truths, or
2. working to rectify the untruths that obscured them in the first place.

Now this is of course the most straightforward and naive interpretation, and also perhaps just plain impossible: I cannot undo globalization. But perhaps with those steps serving as a basic framework, even my small actions may have some spiritual momentum.

Those actions will unfold in time if I stay true to myself. I do see these kinds of small gains when I talk to the people in New Town about their history, or their struggles, or their culture. Just their faces lighting up when they get to tell their stories, for example, is a tiny, tiny step in the direction of healing.   But I also think it’s worth going back to the inciting “hit” for a little more direction; I think it was probably before North Dakota, or Munich, or the Center for Discovery, even: I’ve come to the understanding that it was on my birthday this past July when E. picked up this huge crab out of the tide at Coney Island and held it up by the carapace. Mostly what I remember is its legs each moving very slowly and independently. But what I didn’t realize then was that E. was actually holding up the banner under which I would operate for the next few months, and under which I still feel intensely resonant.

Resonance here for me means naturalness, like the frequency of the thing was always inside of me—a natural harmonic. Specifically though I think my resonance was with Cancer’s exoskeleton. I believe I’ve always had an exoskeleton of some kind, and at alternating points in my life I’ve been made to believe (rightly or wrongly) that it is either an asset or a liability. At other times too, I’ve been made to believe that it must be discarded entirely. 

Perhaps my parenthetical ‘rightly or wrongly’ is just entirely moot: an exoskeleton is a dual-edged sword, for obvious reasons; evolutionarily speaking, Nature herself determined that it was beautiful and true, and so here we have it. I write this because today the exoskeleton is wrongly maligned. In our age, to have an exoskeleton is basically always seen as a liability, or worse, a disability. We live in an age where two forces conspire to break down the exoskeleton. The first comes in a kind of post-Freudian era where attachment theory and psychodynamic psychotherapy reign supreme, and which in 1967 the writer Richard Todd just about summed up. What he observed as a particularly Californian zeitgeist has since become universal:

“Californians of many sorts are in its grip. Bulletins from the soul fill the air; all manner of private data is yours without asking. Telephone-talk-show callers crowd the switchboards for a chance to talk about their personal commitments; young marrieds eagerly discuss the state of their relationship; everyone will share with you the latest information on his "growth.” Are you curious about anything? [The woman] lolling down Sunset on the arm of a Beatlesque older man—do you wonder what her parents think? She will let you in on her hang-ups with them. Do you find it odd that the strapping Santa Cruz surfer has peroxided his hair into golden fleece? Talk to him; he will at least let you know that he uses Lady Clairol. The Berkeley girl will tell you that she smokes nickel cigars, lived with her boyfriend first semester, works hard, and that "I feel this growing… I guess I'm building my own truth.” [...] At best they are trying to substitute a new and clumsy set of manners for the ones that have served fairly well to protect people from one another for centuries. At worst, they are “going through a phase.” [...] They are impatient not just with “polite” language, but with all the old forms of literate speech, which they see as a barrier to feeling” (Todd 172-180).

This “barrier” here is the exoskeleton, and it’s protected its inhabitants much longer than “centuries”—550 million years, around. But what perhaps in 1967 were a set of clumsy manners are now iron-clad, and the “substitution” now the default. 

But perhaps more impactful even is the chief development of the last twenty years or so, the second force, the smartphone. It was the final nail ensuring that no one ever has a solitary moment to themselves, even when alone. The smartphone—along with social media—serve as a constant and blinding spotlight whose aim is always to disarm, denude. Much more so than Mr. Todd could possibly ever imagine. These two forces together make it unimaginable to most that one can live a fully-activated emotional life with an exoskeleton. 

This reservation also perhaps arises from the fact that most people begin their emotional lives by emerging from an exoskeleton. One’s own emotional awakening is often marked by a kind of “breaking,” i.e. breaking free of one’s parents’ expectations, breaking up, breaking out, etc.—all of this necessitates a shell to break out of. The very concept of growth itself is framed via the metaphor of eclosing from one’s cocoon or chrysalis. Intuitively then the idea of having an exoskeleton be the sign of emotional maturity is nearly impossible. 

This obviously discounts the entire phenomenon of molting, which represents periods of intense change for the creature with an exoskeleton. Fundamentally, molting (or ecdysis) is a very similar process to eclosion, putting aside their relative frequencies of occurrence in a creature’s lifetime. (There are probably many other biologic dissimilarities I’m sure—as well as etymologic ones; ecdysis from Greek and eclosion from Latin). Both represent a kind of change mechanism, as well as a kind of pressure-release valve. A crab literally absorbs seawater to swell and break out of its shell! And yet, even given these similarities, eclosion remains the paradigm of change and molting nothing but a strange and outdated vestige of evolution. Therefore the liability of having a shell remains as such—a liability.

From a Jungian perspective the exoskeleton is frightening because it represents the unknown in the mammalian consciousness. To the mammalian class who wears its insides-out (which of course to the Arthropods must seem equally backwards and counter-intuitive), the crab with its impenetrable, chitinous shell is as intimidating as an armored enemy soldier in battle: faceless, pulseless, and therefore soulless. Hence the common injunctions heard today: “stop being so dense,” or “loosen up a bit!” Simply put, we hate the exoskeleton. 550 million years later and we’re still not over our split from Arthropoda.

What actually would be the claim of our loved-ones here? Probably something like, “what I’m saying isn’t getting through to you.” When someone is being hard or rigid, they’re said not to be hearing what you are saying, or at least not adapting themselves accordingly. 

Clearly there is no defense of this behavior: the basis of every relationship—of society—is two-way communication. But to this I would say that these claims are misdirected at the exoskeleton, again based on a fear of the unknown. Crabs have eyes, mouths, noses, and while they don’t technically have ears, they can detect the smallest vibrations underwater. In other words, despite their hard exterior they undoubtedly perceive and respond to their environment. Very well in fact.

Nevertheless, their sense organs don’t look like ours and so we choose to ignore them altogether. I was once talking to H. about humanity’s hatred of cockroaches and this was her reasoning exactly—”we hate them because we can’t see their faces.” From our perspective above them, H. noted, we can only see their hard, ovular carapace. This was juxtaposed to the ladybug, who has very recognizable features, especially its eyes (or at least the spots that resemble eyes). So even though crabs have eyes and most of the sense organs that we humans do, it's just that they’re obscured by their exoskeleton. Invisibility, once again, serves as the basis for profound ignorance. 

The ultimate and inevitable conclusion of such ignorance, of course, is murder. Specifically, this occurs through the denial of the crustacean’s ability to sense and feel pain. (And there is a long history of denying even some humans of their ability to feel pain, along with all the consequences that follow.) Though they have nocireceptors and can feel through their exoskeleton, we have denied the fact that they feel pain simply because it’s inconvenient to our society, and because we hate them. It took until 2021 for crabs to be classified as sentient under UK law (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2021). All because they’re brave enough to wear their bones on the outside.

Yet I reiterate: crabs can feel through their exoskeleton! It is not an unfeeling shield as we would naively assume. Really there’s no reason to believe an exoskeleton doesn’t operate more similarly than not to our own skin, outside of its hardness. And the one bone that we do have on the outside of our body—our teeth—we can feel through. This is to say nothing of the boiling of crustaceans alive, which is the logical conclusion of us believing them to be unfeeling, armor-covered nothings. 

But enough speculation as to why we hate exoskeletons, and back to my initial question. Why even am I resonant with the exoskeleton in the first place? And how does it serve as the framework for my development recently?

My recent resonance with the exoskeleton, specifically the King Crab’s: mostly the sense of nobility it grants him, like a richly woven cape or suit of royal armor. It’s a humble nobility, which is probably an oxymoron to some, but would also be a misunderstanding of the term. Nobility can be pushed to cruel excesses, yes, but the King Crab maintains the fine balance that most human kings can only ever dream about. Said balance: the King Crab is the king, the soldier, the fool, the wiseman. Solitary as the night he scours the depths, swords in hand, all very silently. His armor is sometimes red, sometimes blue, though always solid and silent. And what his armor detracts in mobility it confers upon him in bravery tenfold. Bravery to wear his insides out, bravery to face the crushing depths—over and over again—in complete and permanent darkness.

And had he his way, he would remain forever unknown. He would be content to spend his life at the pure bottom of the world like the thankless and mute Atlas, holding us all up on his shoulders. Ancient as Atlas too, he is as old as the rocks he walks amongst; and yet his claws are still very much razor sharp, almost as if they were minted yesterday. His other limbs all move independently, like the heads of Hydra guarding the gate to the underworld, sprouting anew if severed, too.

In his humility I draw up candor, in his beauty repose, and in his nobility solace. Especially here now in North Dakota, while I am defenseless, and pulled out of my depths—how I would fight for him! Like Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith I’d follow him to the ends of the earth, if I could only find him. 

To think of how the great king is pulled from his home and laid out on the chopping block. Oh the disgraces that are inflicted upon him; the horrors of how he—the silent, humble benefactor of the sea—is boiled alive in his own crucial element!

And I find pity too, and purpose, when I think of how thusly he is made into the fool. The king, the fool: bashed into pieces by a mallet and eaten with a plastic bib…  

This is the very same king who swells himself up with seawater in order to bust open his own shell. Now this is the strength that the exoskeleton grants—the strength to drink in one’s surroundings, to see the invisible among him, even when it is supremely painful, even with the knowledge that it may break one’s own armor. After a long and dark night scouring the deep—after who knows what kind of battles and encounters—the King Crab pauses, drinks in his surroundings, swells, and emerges from his armor to begin his life anew, defenseless and pure. 

Yet despite his deep nobility he remains the fool, and is tricked again and again into one-way cages, only to be boiled alive. But ever still the wiseman, he trusts in fate and in karma, and after millions of years the ancient king still knows that he is royalty, though he has been severely derobed. He remains silently armed, razor-sharp and faithful. 

For me in my second week here, wondering where my faith should lie, I turn to this humble creature for guidance. Keep your flag held high and go about your work humbly. Love thy neighbor, though you were made to believe you should despise him, that you should step on him. See thy neighbor, though he was made to be invisible to you. Hear thy neighbor, though his cries are muffled.  

The novelty of my arrival in New Town has all but worn off and I (believe I) am now seeing the rusted-out underside of history: in it, the tragedies that have befallen this land and its people, and the repercussions that live on in the now.

The memory of the Garrison Dam haunts me this week, especially through its presence in the supermarket. When I walk through the aisles this video from the MHA Interpretive Center plays in my head. It was about the MHA soldiers that returned from the warfront in Europe to find their homes—and everyone else’s—underwater: “and also gone was our food source [...] and they sold us back poison to eat…” 

This particular tragedy reflects precisely the same universal tragedy: we sold them back poison because we ourselves learned to eat poison. We hate them because we hate ourselves. The particular that afflict the reservation—diabetes, addiction—are a concentrate of those that plague the whole country.

In a book of Twain stories that I brought with me on this trip, one titled ‘A Day at Niagara’ coincidentally demonstrates this exact irony when the narrator is attacked by a group of “Indians” who are actually Irish immigrants pretending to be natives in order to sell Niagara Falls merchandise to tourists:

“‘It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork and moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from?’
‘Limerick, my son’” (Neider 22).

At the precise moment we claim to finally understand the other, they evade us; in their wake we see the spitting image of ourselves. For me now, this maybe represents the frustration phase of culture shock, or maybe the beginnings of acceptance. 

My frustrations at the headstart curriculum are perhaps just a reflection of my frustrations at the modern education system today, namely that it is undervalued, understaffed, and consequentially, screen-based. Or my frustrations at the supermarket not having what I want—is this just a reflection of my frustration at the fact that all of our ancestral foods are being sold back to us as packaged, ultra-processed products? 

This is not to say that these issues aren’t concentrated here—they certainly are—but rather to suggest that we must not limit the help that we give ourselves, to ourselves. Maybe we need more of the “you break it you buy it” mentality, and finally take ownership for the destruction that we inflict on each other. Even and especially when we’ve inflicted ourselves with the very same pain. One person’s suffering does not negate the other’s, it should only highlight where the wounds are the same.

When Erik and I went to the Casino last weekend we each lost fifty dollars, him on a parlay and me on roulette. But more disappointing were the hosts of senior citizens (of all backgrounds: white, black, native, hispanic) sitting silently at slot machines, eyes bright with digital confetti and rainbow-colored explosions. The whole place was windowless, labyrinthian, and after a few disorienting hours placing alternating, nominal bets on red and black, I felt like I had reached the bottom of the karmic ladder: even when I won my bet I was still losing. For one only turns to chance when one has given up on one’s agency—and pure chance is at least better odds than whatever the American government doled out here. 

Had the American government doled out pure chance, pure randomness, it would have been far better than what they did dole out. Yesterday Erik and I drove about an hour and a half to Theodore Roosevelt National park and hiked for a few hours. Putting aside ineffably beautiful geologic formations, we saw exactly seven bison. The first one we saw was majestic, standing tall, and whose broad shoulders looked like they could carry anything. Though as we saw more of them—all separated from each other, extricated from their herd—they seemed to me more and more tired, each thinner than the last, and all of them looking hopelessly lost (this last one perhaps was my own projection). I imagined the millions that used to roam these very same lands, all since exterminated. Specifically I imagined how people used to shoot them en masse from the windows of locomotives, for sport. There’s a famous photo that H. reminded me of, of two men standing proudly next to and on top of an enormous pile of bison skulls. The two men each have a foot planted firmly on top of a bison skull as if they owned the whole race of them; I’d like to see them standing a fraction as proud before a live bison, unarmed. 

Here I think about the invisibility of the bison too, and how we now "utilize" the land they used to roam. No one better talk to me about data centers. 

In the “Buffalo Treaty”—signed in 2014 by many North American tribes to work towards the restoration of the buffalo population—it states that “Buffalo is part of us and we are part of buffalo” (Buffalo Treaty). This is the kind of relationship that seems practically impossible in today’s world, a world which is predicated upon the illusion of each of us being at its exact center. And in order to complete the illusion, all of those who don’t fit must be blocked out, must be made invisible. There are still some of us who understand this central folly, though like the bison, they’ve also been made hidden.

There are also those who are working to reverse this trend. (Most people I suspect would if they could only see it.) This past week the reservation held its elections for a new councilman, and at The Door Erik and I watched a segment of the debate. One of the central debate questions was basically, ‘how do we get people to stay in New Town?’ Whether they used the terminology of  jobs, infrastructure, or culture, each prospective councilman had their own slightly different version of the answer “invest more here!” It seems obvious, but perhaps not so. Last week we were with L. on top of the overlook above Lake Sakakawea and I pointed to a field of freshly harvested grain. I asked, “where does all this grain go?” and L. turns back to me from the passenger seat, looking at me with wide gray eyes, lit up by the setting sun: “oh, that’s not owned by us. It doesn’t come here.” I got the sense that there was a lot of such cropland, at least based on what’s stocked at Jack and Jill’s.

Next we drove to the local community garden called “Four Sisters,” which refers to the four historical staple crops of the MHA people, always planted together: corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. Again, these crops were not planted in isolation; their stewards understood that they were always meant to live in a state of symbiosis. Though once again through the passing of the Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944 and the construction of the Garrison Dam, about ninety percent of the MHA tribes’ agricultural land—which all lay in the most fertile ‘bottomlands’—was destroyed.

The “Four Sisters” community garden was empty while we were there and the only produce I saw were a few mushed cactus fruits and squash scattered across the fields. It’s usually very active though, L. promised us, and it did seem like a community hub. Since then we’ve also learned about a few other hopeful agricultural initiatives including a native seed bank and a new greenhouse (Barnett; “Native Green Grow”). 

That brings me back to my initial question, “why am I here?” Yes, I am here to learn, and yes I am here to heal, but what have I actually done so far? Aside from my work in the clinic I feel somewhat powerless: who am I to the prevailing powers that be? And aren’t I always liable at the end of the day to be instead the “white savior?” No doubt I play a supporting role here. Practically, our projects here are making some slow progress, and in the next two weeks they should pick up. In some sense though, even the very concept of a “research project” at the moment feels a little in-over-its-head: even the billions of dollars in oil revenue feel invisible to some here, with one billboard on the side of the road reading, “6.7 billion dollars. Where has it gone?” and another one reading, “if nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed!”

But then again my initial suspicion may have been correct: the smallest actions can have real momentum. This past Friday at “Trunk-or-Treat” we were greeted kindly and very happily by a handful of local teachers and community members: it was a small reminder of the good that I can impart merely by my presence. If anything, I feel most utilized here when I am bearing witness. And ideally, hopefully, I can share a fraction of that witnessing upon my return to New York.

Works Cited:

1. Barnett, Tracy L. “Reclaiming Indigenous Agriculture of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.” ICT, 23 May 2024

2. “Buffalo Treaty.” International Buffalo Relations Institute, 2026.

3. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. "Lobsters, octopus and crabs recognised as sentient beings." GOV.UK, 19 Nov. 2021.

4. Men Standing with Pile of Buffalo Skulls, Michigan Carbon Works. 1892, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.

5. Native Green Grow. Three Affiliated Tribes, 2026

6. Neider, Charles, “A Day at Niagara.” The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. Bantam Books, 1957, pp. 22.

7. Todd, Richard. "Turned-on and Super-Sincere in California." The Harper Reader, Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 172–180.