icalamity

the East Coast

Sun, 29 May 2005 19:52:07 GMT

Thank God for California. That statement is absurd for a variety of reasons; two of them, however, are outstanding. 1) This penchant of mine for thanking God does not cohere very well with my own latent agnosticism, and 2) I seem to love that place so much solely because it gives me something to come back to. That may be unfair. I don't care.

As it turns out, the one location in which I spent the most amount of time, during the entire four months of traveling that will be finished tomorrow, is the East Bay. two weeks. the only other place that comes even close is Dublin, where I spent ten days. but at least a few of those days don't really count, due to either grief or inebriation. or both.

In many ways, the East Coast is a strange representation for me. For whatever reason, when I spend time here, it really reminds me of all the things I may have missed, all the things I could've done. Atlanta--too many trees. It's hard to get a sense that you're in a city at all. I don't like that. I've heard all the perditious notions (or at least some of them): cities are just concrete jungles. But this was truly unnerving. And I learned that skydiving is more complicated than I ever thought. Richmond--no fucking time. Philadelphia--if I do ever move to the east coast, it will be this place or Providence. As a city, it is amazing. And apparently corrupt; my friend Quinn and I were waiting for a train, and the first two trains were somehow going in opposite directions but bound for the same station. That has never happened to me before; I think that maybe this place has its own special form of providence. NY--I sprained my foot. It hurt. The only good things about that week were: I got to spend a lot of time with my aunt and uncle, I did nothig but read for like four days, and I'd never ridden in an ambulence before. I'd love to say that I had an awesome time there, but I barely ever made it to the city; instead, I convalesced in Westchester County. But it was good to know that within five minutes of being in NYC, my New York alterego made a special cameo appearace; I haven't yet lost that capacity for scorn. Boston--city of disillusionment. I think that loving Boston in a very abstract sort of way fulfilled some kind of vague teleological aspiration for me. It's too expensive, even for dreams. A lot of people expressed disbelief when I said that, insofar as I live in the Bay Area, one of the most expensive parts of the coutry. But those people don't realize that that's what Oakland is for, and Boston has no Oakland equivalent. Or at least nothing qualitatively similar.

And now I'm heading home tomorrow. To uncertain prospects and destitution. And friends. And strange wonderings about the people I've met, who could've been friends, perhaps, if only I weren't so tied. And a faint uneasiness owing to the fact that I still can't figure out whether everything being completely different or everything being the same would be more terrifying.

And yet I can console myself: while this trip wasn't quite what I wanted it to be, it was probably what I needed it to be.

The End of an Odyssey

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:59:43 GMT

Odysseus, I have discovered, I am not. For starters, he did not thrust upon himself that eponymous journey, it was rather a condition of his destiny, a return to a paradisical Ithaca unspoiled by easiness. Of all the brave companions he led to Troy, none returned to with him to revel in the righteousness of a well-deserved massacre. Trademark cunning saved him, resourcefulness epithetically bestowed upon him in order for his heroism to have a meaning unrealizable by a million heroes at a million different Iliums.

What future me do I encounter when I look into the mirror? Is that haggardness the result of my encounters on the road? Cause I´ve striven with a Cyclopes: a one-eyed fixity exuded by the devestating indifference of what I have come to call circumstance. I´ve battled with with the lotus-eaters delight in forgetting: slowly, so slowly that its almost painful, the memories of better times disappear until I can´t seem to recall those faces at all, and the thought creeps up that lying prostrate in an agony of inertia is better than the madness we call life. I have heard thje siren-songs of a temptation to flee fate--self imposed or not--for whatever better or worse fortunes await. And around it all loom the Scylla of boredom and the Charybdis of loneliness.

No, I am more like Joyce´s Ulysses, my exile self-imposed like his, alone with our inability to believe in a system that that grants preternatural consolations. I ran away, but I am not sure that I found myself--perhaps more a mockery of it--cause I´m inclined to believe that I left myself in the secret safety of the East Bay, ready for being reclaimed when that time would come. I bolted for the sea, ever westwards in search of a Hysperia that probably doesn´t exist, and found that there isn´t necessarily a correlation between time and distance, that there isn´t necessarily even a correlation between two different kinds of distance, and two different kinds of space. Home is a magic word for me, a talisman to whisk me away from this maddening Oz, without wizards or witches, only with a malevolent face that, if it look at me at all, it looks through a targeting scope, one eye closed with a smirk, a winking premonition of maybe today, maybe not today, and a thin veneer of civility that hides feral teeth behind a warm smile.

But upon these words, my tongue falters, and even my pen takes on a hesitancy transmitted from the brain like a mount assuming its rider´s unease. I think about how much simpler life would be without pride--for better or worse, although I suspect the latter--without the temporarily crippling blows that it and it alone can deliver. Thrashing in a net of my own devising--or so it seems--I begin to feel the panic of pressing time, knowing that I don´t really have much of it left on this trip and that there is a simple but shaming way out of it, summoning up a decisiveness and determination that has already been dashed too many times against the illustrious Trojan walls and the angry blue-green surface of the Aegean´s breaking waves, I feel that instant of wavering doubt, stretched to absolute tautness while I seem to be suspended wondering whether the sweetness of home will be enough to dilute the bitterness of the sense that I haven´t really finished what I meant to do out here.

The legend must die, for all of us, but I never thought that this particular one would go before its time. I want to be remembered for all of the recklessness and courage I know exists somewhere inside of me, but they´ve been frayed to the point of snapping. To borrow again from mythology, I remind myself of that one giant who fought Hercules, the son of the earth, who was rejuvinated and restored whenever he made contact with his mother: in this case, my mother is the Bay Area. Everyone has their limit, and I know that I haven´t yet reached mine, but I begin to question the wisdom of experimenting with the metaphysical weight it would take to break me entirely.

Less than I thought, but, realistically, perhaps more than I should have hoped for.

This has been far too long of a prelude for a very simple and singular matter of import: I´m coming home early. I will see you all within a week or so.

Postscript: I hate to make it sound more dramatic than it was, but the decision to come home early was a very serious one. I know that some of you have been concerned about my welfare, concerned that some of these posts seemed a little too morbid or distressed, and I wouldn´t want to give any additional reason for that belief. No need to be concerned about this decision either. It´s just a simple matter of my being away from home for too long and being too sick of wandering around by myself. That´s really all there is to it. And its not really the end of the trip. I´ll be returning to Oakland for maybe two weeks, and then going back to the East Coast for the month of May, as planned. This return is just a little vacation within my vacation, as it were.

And to end on a happy note, I finally this evening got my revenge on the many predators of tourists. Here in Prague, some guy tried to get me to exchange two 1000 Crown notes for one 2000 Crown note. I knew he was a counterfeiter immediately--there is no such thing as a 2000 Crown note--and called him on it. Reckless, and perhaps a little dangerous, but fun: the guy got really freaked out and started booking in the other direction. Triumph at last.

No subjects, only objects

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 20:15:49 GMT

France is not, I have learned, the best place in the world to convalesce. Better than some, yes indeed, but worse than others. Which isn't very informative, I suppose. (In the grand scheme of things, is any place a good place to recover from sickness? Fuck if I know.)

Yes, France is cutting into my time in eastern europe--kinda like how France cut into Eastern Europe after the Thirty Years War, 1648--for which reason, this is a moment, unlike others of my journey, that I seek not to aggrandize, or even remember, but rather to forget.

But something has Come Up, and yes, it is ominous. I've been told--by people my age, by those younger, and (rare as this is) those older even--that by 25, I've already passed the prime of my life. It is, however, a strange optimism that begs me to differ. (It's also a somewhat schitzophrenic optimism, cause I find that I'm also tempted to just say "bullshit" instead of "i beg to differ".) The old familiar imperviousness of youth is not only still with me, but is these days working a double-shift, dawn til dusk, and then til dawn again. For a number of reasons--illness, homesickness, restlessness, loneliness, etc.--and as a result of certain recent circumstances, I should feel much more terrible than I do. But I don't feel terrible at all; I feel, as Gogol before me, like doing a jig. I'm in better shape than ever before--the result, I imagine, of carrying with me at all times anywhere from like 20 to 60 pounds of baggage (it has already changed, in both directions, more than once)--and it seems that I'vze only recently come into full inheritance of those emotional and intellectual faculties that permit one to enjoy the world to the greatest of one's abilities, irrespective of that world itself and all of its scheming circumstances. Oh yeah, and I'm almost done with my book. It's gonna be a bit bigger than I initially intended; maybe more like 500 pages.

And soon, I'll be on my way to Prague and the rest of the old east of Europe, land of the first heralds of the Dark Ages. And there will occur some new defenestrations there. (The allegedly famous Defenestration of Prague was said to start the Thirty Years War.) Figurqtively speaking, that is. Well, at least I hope its only figuratively speaking, but I make no guarantees. It's because of guarantess and obligations that we grow old prematurely. And I ain't never gonna.

Amsterdam

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 09:04:44 GMT

If Chiang Mai was the city of infinite cafes, then this place is going to have to be the City of Vice. I arrived on Easter Sunday--continuing the tradition of arriving at a place on a major holiday--just a few hours and nineteen centuries or so after Christ rose from death, saving or dooming the world, depending on one's perspective. Now, I've talked before about how some cities have been mad, or reckless, or crazy, etc.; this was psychosis, pure and simple. rationally-induced pandemonium. The first thing I thought was something like: where's the Northerner proclivity for reservedness I've heard about? Absent in Amsterdam on Easter, apparently. Jesus died for our sins so that we could drink in the streets and smoke weed, dangling from public monuments. An enterprising stoner even offered me a room in an old squat for a discount price--he wanted me to pay to sleep in a squat! I hope the guy didn't take offense when I told him that was absurd. I recently read in a book the conjecture that tourism is simply a different form of colonialism; while I agree, perhaps reluctantly, with the idea, I do not agree with its derisive attitude: the recipients of that colonialism can prey on the tourists like a cat stalking an inert piece of string. It's a vicious cycle, which honestly I don't think anyone really minds all that much.

After some time had passed, I realized the answer to my own question: more so than the celebrating psychosis of the Dutch, mine is the Northern reservation. Think about it: I am a third generation American, assimilated yes but still in the grand scheme of things only recently immigrated, a quarter Irish, Swedish, and Russian, with unequal parts Scottish, Danish, and Dutch tossed into the mix. I'm not sure about the exact latitudinal or longitudal quadrant at play here, but suffice it to say that none of my ancestors made it anywhere near the equator until enterprising great-grandparents of mine fled their respective countries of origin for the opportune dreamscapes of the USA. My strange delusion about regional characteristics may not exist outside of myself, I know have to admit.

It does much to throw a nebulous wrench into my theory regarding the archetypal nature of my journey. Time--that great but secret interlocutor--will tell, I suppose. But ultimately, its possible for archetypes to differ from one another and still be archetypal.

So yes: Easter was psychotic. And Amsterdam was rewarded for its abandon with a diluvian rain the following day. One may be curious at this point why I continue to use the term psychosis. Its a simple device. It's because, sitting in a cafe with all of my bags, getting progressively more and more sick from all of the pot smoke wafting from the inside, waiting for the rain to pass--I don't mind getting wet so much, but sleeping in a thoroughly wet sleeping is miserable--I had to face a certain difficulty. For the past however many years, I have been in the thrall of a certain principle which for lack of a better term I give the appellation calamity, and describe as recklessness. It's like a calling card at this point. What confronted me on Easter was probably a more conventional sense of what those words mean. But I cannot accept--for reasons ranging from the ethical to the aesthetic--that my principle of calamity is in any way related to that kind of carousing. The principle to which I adhere, for example, has nothing to do with chemical intoxicants--conveniently excluding tobacco and coffee, which technically don't intoxicate, per se--or narcotic-induced cerebral illusions. But I realize at the same time that that's all surface jargon, a circumstantial case that any judge or jury would dismiss or refute easily. As far as what distinguishes that carousing from my principle, the term psychosis offers a helpful starting point. Psychosis is clinical; madness, calamity, and recklessness are all, as notions, preclinical. (Even as I write this, I know that it's not a very formidable argument. I feel like it would be cheating to resort to that most unimaginative device of prose or verse that the difference--or anything, for that matter--is indescribable. my own not unimpressive career as a reader of good books has taught me that nothing really is; that device represents a willful decision by the author to forego description, an abnegation it is hoped will be passed over or, juvenile as this is, is hoped will be considered to be mysterious.) Short of this, I'm not sure how to describe the difference, and that makes me morose. Any assistance from readers would be providential; this here has the potential proportions of a crisis (however, an intellectual one, which are the best sorts of crises, easily).

I wouldn't want those close to me to think that I've become some kind of an embittered hater of everything I see. This city of vice has lots of canals--how many Venices of the North are there? Three that I know of--and beautiful gardens. Nothing that I've seen can compare with the natural beauties of New Zealand--I haven't bothered much in anticipation of this--but that place is younger than San Francisco in terms of its cities. The old beauty of Dublin satisfied much of that lack, but still much of the city had to be rebuilt after the failed Easter Uprising of 1916. Paris and Munich are both too modern to impress me in the sense of that old beauty (besides which, Paris was razed--though they hate to admit it--in 1870, and Munich, much worse so, in 1944). While the irony of a destroyed beauty does appeal to some sense of me, Amsterdam fulfilled something that I hand't yet seen enough of. (To the best of my knowledge, the last razing threat the Holland raced was the tercios of the Spaniards, sometime in the 17th century, through which it stopped being the Spanish Netherlands.) In many ways, therefore, Amsterdam is the best examplar of a tangible and concrete representation of what I have been waiting for. The Old World at last with all its faded glories and beautiful ageing. And so at that point it occurred to me that it simply remained to counter that psychosis with some East Bay recklessness of my own. The City of Vice has been forewarned.

And things would continue to get better with time. I began speculating realistically for the first time in a while about how I am doing. It was a temptation--rarely for me, one of oversimplification--to answer "better" or "worse." But I know, in the grand scheme of things, that those answers are meaningless. I am now prepared to say, in all earnestness, that Amsterdam is the most beautiful city I have ever seen. I love how the streets bordered by canals--or canals bordered by streets--away from the city center at a certain distance form concentric sectahedrons, more or less at least. (That should mean six-sided rhombi, or shapes, with straight lines. whether it does or not, i suppose, is open to interpretation.) The Red Light District even rivals Khao San in Bangkok and whatever part of the old quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam--I forget what it's name is--in terms of its plethora of prostitutes, hiding coyly inside of red-lit (and sometimes also tinted) windows, and pornographia (another word suspect of recent invention, pl. of pornographium, i.e. a place where porn is sold dissemminated, viewable, etc.)

These are the same sorts of evasive tactics I have been using against myself and my own self-concerned introspective queries. Ask a question, give a meaningless answer, move on to other thoughts. Its unintentional but addictive. I wonder these days whether some of the anxieties that have come up for me while traveling will follow me back home, or whether they would've arrived on their own if I hadn't left in the first place. There's an internal timer in my head, counting down the days until I come home, but I'm largely ignoring it these days. There's lots of pretty girls--although not quite so much as Dublin--and even more pretty buildings; and for perhaps the first time in my life, I'm cognizant to a greater degree of the fact that this face of mine--warantedly or not--does atract its fair share of female eyes. its strange: having spent so much time in dejection and ambivalence, i'm starting to become numb to it. as a result of being bored with those emotions as much as anything else, I expect. Maybe that's the answer to the old question of evolutionary (or not) adaptation: boredom. when the monkeys got bored of eating and copulating all day, they grew apposable thumbs, conceived religion, felt guilt, built civilization, started wars, and prospered (perhaps not in that order though), all so that their more primal enjoyments could be limited to more refined durations. It seems as reasonable as any other answer I've heard.

As for how I'm doing, I'm not really sure. its difficult to separate how I'm doing from how I imagine I will be doing once I settle back into life in Oakland. This trip, more than anything else in this regard, is an interruption, and its easy for me, now, to imagine myself, in the future, looking back into the past, retrospectively, and wondering whether it was real or a mere dream. The really great thing is that I don't feel cut off from home, as I so often did when I left California for school in New York. In a month, more or less, I'll be back on native soil with a re-activated cell phone--same number, everyone--which will, thankfully, make it even more difficult to feel cut off. Thank you, orbital satellites.

And Amsterdam has been quiet. maybe the psychosis of easter has made me take a small respite from calamity, has caused me to retreat back to older pursuits; which are unexciting, but given more experience and a better imagination than before, they are easily converted into interesting stories and tales.

And so I think I may just have to settle for a minimalistic form of giving in to temptation. Am I well? is the question. The answer: well enough.

And now, as I type this up, two days later, I am struck by the sinister irony of the feeling that the world is conspiring against me to plunge me into continual falsehood. do you ever get that feeling? about 50 hours ago, I wrote: I'm well enough. Now, I'm fucking sick. Go figure.

Dublin, Ireland

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 10:40:04 GMT

[The following comments, for all perpetuity, are to be censored in their entirety.]

I finally made it to Dublin after three hectic days. I began on Thanon Si Phraya in Bangkok, took a taxi to the airport, jetted eleven hours to Munich, rode the U-bahn to downtown Munich, got on a train from Munich to Paris, took the Metro from Gare D'Est to the west side of town and an airport bus to a small airport outside of Paris, rode a plane to Dublin, and arrived as festivities of St. Patrick's Day were well underway. That took three days. It was madness. And then I was plunged into the festivities. A word to the wise: festivities in Dublin are more psychotic than anyone could ever understand. hundreds of thousands of people came to Ireland just for the weekend, and hundreds of people were arrested during the excitement. ambulences were all on overdrive that night.

On the waters of the Liffey, Dublin gave me my own Irish tragedy. Yes, Dublin is indeed a city susceptible to the terrible complicities of romanticism, as predisposed to that wonder as Paris is to hypocrisy or London to sensibility. or that's what they say. Old Dublin, in fact, just happens to fit the measure, with winding streets and dark rains, fucking impeccable accents--its great to hear that brogue every day--and storied traditions. Here is a place where stories still haven't been forgotten, where it seems like every streetcorner has its own private endowment of history or old lore. My own involvement with it was bittersweet:
[The following comments, for all perpetuity, are to be censored in their entirety.]
Dilemmas are not for me a new issue, but retrospective ones are nonetheless worse. It is a terrible thing to feel regret for an opportunity that you are certain would have turned out a certain way. But in which case I wouldn't be here now. This trip, then, must come to assume some desperate measure of greatness for it, in the grand scheme of things, to be worth it. and that, perhaps, is what Dublin has taught me best. Riding the 84 bus up Nassau, I was reminded of Jeff Ott's musing: is there any escape from being alone? I won't trouble you with the thoughts that now seem insignificant and petty, but as a condition isolation is ultimately, I think, as promising as the good things in life--overcast skies and open roads that know no end. I would love nothing more than to spit in the eye of inescapability, and I get the opportunity to do so daily; how fucking cool is that.

What Dublin has also done, however, is give me the strange sense that I'm not really going anywhere. Of course, Dublin is quite different from Auckland, and I'm sure that both will be different from Amsterdam and Prague--my next two destinations, I think. But if there are in fact distinguishable characters--not characteristics--to these far away cities, they are archetypal. and this traveling of mine has been almost Jungian in the degree of the archetypicality of it. Yes, I continue to rediscover the same archetypes: quiet cafes, old streets, panoramic views of foreign beauties, beer-halls in which to sink my sporadic and (ironically) archetypal woes. It makes me wonder if I wouldn't be better off just staying in one place for a month, and exhausting its stores of newness. what do these differentiations of character--which seem so significant that I struggle to seek them out--really achieve in any ultimate sense of the word? I'm really not sure, it is the same basic question I asked myself on my first day in Auckland, almost two months ago. I don't have an answer, but I have a better sense of things now: that manner in which I like to imagine is that places, events, and memories become or assume characters, almost even personifications. Geographical anthropomorphises, perhaps? Like a comic book colored in gray, without superheroes or villians, only cities, personified, struggling with one another cause that's what's done in life. no titanic clashes, just minor disputes; which may in fact be interpreted as representing good or evil, but which are in truth merely disputed. Nothing more.

It's been fun, but has left me with the feeling that I'm becoming deplorably unoriginal. I would seriously kill for a good show right now.
[The following comments, for all perpetuity, are to be censored in their entirety.]

These paroxysms of uncertainty have been recast into opposing roles of reliever and destroyer. I finally have a good idea about what I'm doing with myself: living a reckless adventure, and keeping one eye out for the prospect of meeting someone as interested in the lunacy and style of that enterprise as I am. Going and coming, indefinitely. Besides, you can't leave a place where you've left your heart for long before giving in. I'll never leave the Bay altogether; I don't think I could survive that. Maybe in the Bay they'll sing leys about my courage, or my insanity (either would be complimentary). maybe someday i'll become a legend. or maybe, just maybe, i already am.

Vietnam

Mon, 14 Mar 2005 05:19:45 GMT

Sing out your legends, Vietnam. The elder tales say that once one of your kings was given a heavenly sword, with which to drive out the incursions, cultural and militaristic, of the goliath China. with that divine instrument, you were saved. but a thousand years later, you embraced the precarious wisdom of China again; a new legend, promising a new form of justice that secretly no one believes to be possible anywhere in the sublunar world, whether those interpreters and interlocuters be clerical or mandarin.

And that was a new sword, Vietnam, but not from heaven; no, this came from the bowels of the conscience of men. and it was needed to fight off newer furies: the razor-shaved and corn-fed Joes and Charlies of America. and you bled, Vietnam, a sacred blood of mistruths and brutalities only inspired by an idealism gone to the mud of your jungles and deltas, made slippery through the heat of bodies seeping into the ground, decomposing into history.

I wonder, Vietnam, whether that blood purified or merely eviscerated you? for good or ill, you are unforgetable, and your sights conjure for me imaginations of what my Vietnam will be, if it ever comes. for you have entered the weary realm of the idiomatic.

Yes, Vietnam was an amazing place, full of traffic lights that no one pays any attention to, red flags with stars, traditional costumes, Chinese-inspired architecture, and reserved faces under Party officer hats. I promised myself, up until now, that I wouldn't make any jokes about painting Hanoi red (cause its already red, ha ha ha. Yeah, fucking terrible.) but it was a great city, probably my favorite one in Asia so far. Someday, I'm gonna have to come back here for a more extended stay, but someone's gonna have to come with me. Riding on the back of the scooters there (and I wish I could come up with a better analogy) is like playing GTA--Vice City, for all of the improbability of ignoring traffic laws, going wherever the fuck you want, and, for all I know, engaging in high-speed gunfights. I almost got hit probably at least five times by oncoming traffic--once it was a bus--as the secret is to slowly cross a street, while scooters drive around you, as you are crossing the street. there are no pedestrians here, only the fast and slow (and faster and slower), and right of way is determined by means of weight and velocity, nothing more.

From Hanoi, I went on to Danang and Hoi An, and from there to Saigon. A strange trip along the east coast of Vietnam (there is no other coast, although), down to the south. All things considered, it was unique being in a genuinely communist country. (I'm not sure China really counts anymore, which means that there are few such places left.) Make no mistake, I left my illusions about communism behind, probably around eight or nine years ago, but it has only been in the past few years that I have misplaced my illusions about representative democracy. in both cases, as far as I am concerned, whatever the names or premises, a country has two basic groups of people, a few with power, and a many without any. In both cases, the few exert an extraordinary amount of control over the many. In both cases, the few follow the basic ideology that they serve the many, but without any real expectation that that is true. In both cases, the few are separated from the many, and with a smile of defiance they make it explicitly clear that any member of the many who joins the few becomes de facto one of the few, with all of those priviledges and responsibilities to propagate the sense that everything is fine.
Obviously, I've just made a great many generalizations, and perhaps hyperbole would a kind description of the idea I've just expressed. But I wonder--like the Zen riddle about sound and hearing in the forest--if a problem continues to be insoluable for long enough, does it continue to be a problem? Milan Kundera said of his book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting "The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. ... the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties." I'm not sure that I agree with him, but its tempting.

Hanoi brand Vietnamese cigarettes are perhaps the cheapest in existence: $0.40 a pack. Made in a Hanoi factory, no less. they say each cigarette takes 10 minutes from your life. For these cigarettes, let's triple that figure, on principle if nothing else. I smoked two packs while in Hanoi; thats 40 smokes at 30 minutes a cigarette, for a total of 1200 minutes, or 20 hours. when i come back to Hanoi, I'll have to smoke another eight, to bring the total up to an even 24 hours. and i remain cheered by the vulgar hope that the day you will have robbed me of, Vietnam, wouldn't have beena good one anyways.

Laos

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 12:38:45 GMT

Today, I find myself unable to get out of my head an old b-side by Screeching Weasel, back in 87 just after they stopped being 24 hour garage sale, that consists, as far as i can tell, of Ben Weasel screaming "hate hate hate" repeatedly, backed up by jughead's angry playing, affected by the cheapness of their equipment.

Bangkok has become my base of operations for as long as i remain in Asia. That's where I am now, and for the first time here i got lost, wandering up Thanon Silom, looking for a street that was just a few blocks away, but which i was convinced i was missing. i did this, repeatedly, for like two hours. it makes me think that whenever i get tired of traveling--which i mean literally, not idiomatically (as in: I am tired by traveling, rather than tired, sick, or no longer enjoying, traveling)--something will come along to make me angry, which will make me wild, which will make everything okay again.

Last weekend, I traveled with my father down the Maekong River valley, through the mountains of northern Thailand and southwestern Laos, a serpentine chasm the color of the swamp-thing, with villages where they think that white people are legends--or demons--depending on their parentage. we went from Chiang Khong in Thailand to Luang Phrabang in Laos, an old town that was one of hundreds of old capitals in Laos, where they sell genuine silver French Indochine coins dating from the mid-16th century. (The jest, for those that may not know it, is that French Indochina was not established until the middle of the 19th century, at the earliest.) Because I was traveling with my father, it was an exquisite taste of luxury, on a boat where i was--aside from a recently college-graduated girl from Ney Jersey traveling with her parents--the youngest person by at least 20 years. on the river, i was reminded of an old epigram that Tyler would tell me on occasion when i was plagued by bleakness or irritation: the world is your bitch. (You still need to get me that globe, incidentally, Tyler.)

Luang Phrabang is the sort of place that makes me remember that my sense of what makes a small town isn't really true. if a place has more than a few (say, less than ten) main streets, then it qualifies as a small town, which was true of this place, which nevertheless has like a hundred temples. nothing especially interesting occurred there. its more just a matter of my sense of cohesion that makes me write about this part of the trip. Time to go now; if something else occurs to me, I will try to remember it. but if not, then so be it.

Thailand

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 06:02:51 GMT

I needed a restorative elixir, a panacea not only exclusively available but exclusively conceived in the alchemical mysteries that are now gone if they ever existed at all. Old Siam squared itself for that challenge, and surpassed my wildest dreams. My experiences in Bali left me in dire need of some repairing of my confidence; fear is no simple opponent, and is cunning enough to project itself onto all kinds of perfectly happy and ordinary scenarios. I would call the week I spent in Bankok a convalescence if that term were even remotely true in any empirical sense of the word. Thailand was once known for its vast jungles, 80% of which it has cleared in the past half-century; such a prediction, however, neglects the reciprocal truth that jungles are in its peoples blood, and their cities are merely concrete versions, demons' warrens which no map can ever accurately duplicate. Nothing I have ever seen compares with it, and the extent of all those remembered sights is not small. There is no such thing as peace or relaxation in that city--provided that you spend any time in the actual city itself, that is--and I must have reaped a legendary treasure's worth of calamities so daily and minor that after a while they began to seem banal.

In truth, I cannot say that my confidence has been entirely restored; I still face the month and a half in a lonely Europe with recurrent anxieties. What has changed, however, is my having abjured the secret hope that things will go back to normal when I come back home. There will be no return after what I have done and seen and so on; but now, that thought is, while not consoling, exciting. I no longer believe that we break up time into manageable episodes, but rather that it--and the circumstances to which it gives occasion--breaks us up into pieces, so that any sense of development is not only conceptual, but a real fracture, divisive and implacable. And I suppose that I have Thailand to thank for that.

Initially I did not intend on writing this narrative. Old Siam forced me to pen a short story entitled "Death Wears a Dark Shirt"--the kind of story inspired by a meaningless and surreal stray thought, intended as a kind of silly defiance against statistical models of realism--and I was going to record it instead of these scattered musings. But two things occurred to me on rereading it: 1) I was unsatisfied with it, and 2) its bleakness raises existentialism to the point of the occult. anyone who reads it and cares for me could be easily forgiven for mistaking it as being based off of myself or my adventures (which it isn't, not really), and becoming afraid for my sanity if not my life. To avoid that, I decided to forego the option.

Circumstance never tires of its old jokes, even if we do. In order to evade lengthy reenactments, and because not only my feelings are at stake, I will limit myself to two observations about one recent occurrence that has made things difficult, observations purposively vague enough to eschew anything more than superstitious premonitions as to their meaning: there have arisen certain complications with a certain girl back home, and--perhaps needless to say--these complications have failed to improve my bearings or mood.

I continued on to Chiang Mai, my spirits as tattered as a bachanalian funeral shroud, the city to which I have given dozens of epithets in problematic verse, but which I seem to like the best is the city of infinite cafes. If an place in the world could so easily cause and cure madness simultaneously, this place is it. It reminds me of a fictional version of Oakland that I have used as the setting for a number of stories insofar as no one needs companionship in this place; the city is companion enough. It is a place paralyzed by heat in the day, but by night its many red lights shine brazenly, and it croons sad songs so miserable that one can find oneself suddenly lost, having intermitently followed the sounds of sorrow that lurk somewhere deep inside all of us.

As I write this now, I am recovering from that special variety of madness. In the vespertine haze of a twilight on Tuesday, I believe that I did, in all seriousness, lose my mind; temporarily, of course. There I was, having roamed the surrounding countryside for perhaps ten hours or so, lying on the bed in my room--so filthy that it fit my mood like a glove, as they say, but for only $11 for three nights lodging--startled by the onset of a sudden delirium. so tired that I couldn't think, but not so tired that I couldn't read, I lay there for an eternityof shivering with fever in the heat that lasted impossibly for only two hours. eventually, I put aside the book, and spent the rest of the time formulating complex plans that took so much of from willpower that I couldn't reasonably expect to enact any of them, astounded by the slowness of time passing. this was a fever from legend, bringing imaginations of parts of the city coming alive to beguile me with witticisms and tragedies. imaginations that, my sanity restored, I still retain.

I am left with the consolation that, so long as I never forget how to seize wild-eyed calamity and shake it down for all its hidden loot, everything will be fine.

Postcript: for those of you who fear that this is the result of some real insanity, understand that much of what I wrote has been hyperbolized for effect. If that does not assuage you, then you must not know me very well.

Postscript for Anne alone: I must sadly report that I have as of yet not engaged in any acts of piracy. But here in Thailand, because the ratio of nuns to prostitutes seems to be appproximately 1:100--and this is always a substantial proof of the nearby existence of pirates--I remain convinced that they are somewhere around, and it is just a matter of finding them.

Bali

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 10:22:50 GMT

Yes, I did go to Bali, and no, I didn't tell too many people about that intent. I was there for such a short period that it seemed a slightly silly endeavor--and beyond the capacity of my interest in doing so--to make it seem a fundamental part of my journey. Nevertheless, it is odd that the few days I spent there were the most eventful of my entire trip so far, to the point of suggesting more destiny, and less circumstance.

Bali will leave me with many memories: timeless streets that should have been ground to dust eons ago with daunting curves that leaves one to wonder how they are navigated; butterflies the size of small birds and ants that move with the speed of the most rapid catamarans; fathers who regularly lifted as many as three of their children onto their motorbikes, taking them to who knows where, but all of them laughing at the great game they had consequently invented without intending on doing so; a snake who attempted to give me a welcoming kiss (this deserves some more substantial explanation. While walking out of my room one day, the snake leaped from a nearby tree where it had been coiled. It produced in me an unrefined terror, as instinctively I grabbed for it, and against my expectations caught a hold of it, where it squealed in protest and tried to bite me more. after a moment of fearful uncertainty, I threw the poor thing as far and hard as I could. I hope it wasn't too badly injured, as even snakes need some affection, I'm sure.); a people whose kindness and sincerity is a marvel, 9 out of 10 of whom, unfortunately, are trying to sell you something illicitly or not (a lesson no doubt inculcated by Dutch warships); and the shame of knowing that I lost my equinamity.

Yes, the famed (in some cases even storied) composure of my character was shattered by a sudden fear, the likes of which I have not known since I first learned to fear death as a child. I found myself so stricken by a panic that I was immobilized, both in thought and action. Although the specific details of the incident would involve too much to tell, suffice it to say that being alone and friendless in a place that held no familiarity whatsoever, not knowing where I was going or why, without even the ability to speak to anyone I know or trust, was a scary thing.

I would avoid great recollections by calling the whole thing a disaster if that were entirely true, which it isn't. I visited some temples and a museum; it was fascinating, in the way that erosion is fascinating, i.e. gradually. I also discovered that the worst disease in Bali is incessant joviality; to not smile, nearly all of the time, is one of the few sins, and a great exhaustion moreover. it has nothing whatsoever to do with civility; no civitas has been abandoned here, and the result is a brief glimpse of a beauty whose full priveledges I could never entirely enjoy. In a very real way, it is reassuring: I am a product of my own world, without fail, and there can be no reversals or alterations. it has confirmed something i have suspected for a long time, but never entirely believed, and therefore never entirely appreciated. which in itself enriches the subtle joys of this small world, removed from the kind of madness which is, some believe, the basis of the grand old Occident. to embrace that madness is on some level necessary, which is fundamental to the life I have led; and at this point, for good or ill, the only one I can truly imagine.

By virtue of logic--insofar as I earlier indicated that New Zealand will always have a portion of California in it, as a result of leaving my blood and sweat there--Bali will always have more than its fair share of the Californian. I sweated on one of Ubud's holiest grounds so immensely, without abandon, my pores being initiated in a sun scorching purification, almost to the extent of the Messianic. I would believe that those lands should now belong to California, by the same inductory method, if not for my certainty that the sweat of all of the peoples of all of the nations of earth have been so cleansed by terraced rice paddies and a pitiless sun that can and will, given the opportunity, to kill. I screamed my frustrations at the spirits of Bali, and wailed my panics; and, in a way, I am somewhat relieved that Bali rewarded my impertinence by visiting upon me the misfortune of sunstroke.

I would not want anyone to make a mistake about the odd confluence between misfortune, time, and Bali; it really is a great place, given decent circumstances. It was there, on a terraced cafe, that I discovered a secret to traveling. I simply roll my r's in an improbable but mythic sort of way. by doing so, i take on the strange quality of appearing to be a foreigner everywhere i go. ergo, the duration of the journey is infinite.

and again, there was one very simple, and thus pleasant, consolation in Bali: filtered Lucky Strikes, which I haven't seen anywhere else abroad and don't expect to see anytime soon. I have chain-smoked in Bali more than ahywhere else before, ever, in all of my life. It is in part due to one of Marquez's recollections (from Living to Tell the Tale) of having dinner with a psychiatrist friend of his in Barcelona, who justified the addictiveness of tobacco with the elegant analogy that quitting smoking is like "being asked to kill someone that you love."

I have, however, begun to worry about how to fill my time.

Goodbye to New Zealand

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 08:52:20 GMT

You will be missed. Now I can say as a matter of course, in all honesty, that I have trod your shores, been confined by your ephemeral mists and drenched by your rains, devled through your hills and left a few drops of sweat and blood on the way, assuring that there will always be a small part of California within you.

New Zealand is a good place to visit. Flying over the two islands--after Queenstown, I went to Dunedin (Edinburgh of the South) and Christchurch (New Zealand's equivalent of London), from where I flew back to Auckland, from which I will depart tomorrow--was a rather impressive exercise in climbing the promonotories of envy. The lakes, of which there are impossible numbers in a country so small, each allegedly bigger than the last, are so blue, with a gossamer cloud-cover so low, that it must be a device of heaven to permit the pleasant illusion that the plane was flying on the ground, from where the sky may be viewed below.

But its residents are particularly weak-blooded when it comes to the subject of the consumption of coffee; no one I have seen drinks it black, and more than a few have remarked at my doing so. It is disappointing in light of an old Arabic proverb my friend Melanie dug up in one of our Guinness-inspired midnight conversations in the wastes of untrendy neighborhoods of New York: coffee should be as black as night and hot as hell.

More than anything else, it comes to me that the purpose of this roaming--if it can be said to have a purpose at all--is to hoard more items in my already not small repertoire of stories. And I can't imagine the pursuit of a purpose more fulfilling. At some point in the past few years, I have left behind the reckless pursuit of deeds, and now allow for the existence of those conditions for some sake other than their own.

And we'll see how long that absurdity lasts.

Queenstown

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 02:16:20 GMT

It is a pleasant indulgence to awaken in a place like Queenstown; as a city, it reeks of artificial recklessness. It is frequently referred to as the adenture capital of New Zealand, and with good reason: there exist more structures from where one can launch oneself than all of the restaurants, cafes, bars, and hostels together. It forces me to reconsider a fairly common conditions for which I have ineffable descriptions: calamity. Maybe it exists somewhere on the conceptual spectrum between apathy and obsession, I'm not entirely sure. Which is why I always think of it as a condition, which as a term is vague enough to preclude any active association with medical or clinical ones.

Whatever it may be, Queenstown exists as a kind of ephemeral opposite to this, and it shows, in the streets literally overflowing with backpackers, unwashed bodies creating a scent whose sweetness is the result of compassion, nothing more. The good aspect of this opposition is what it has done to my own thoughts on the subject of my writing. In order to make the distinction absolute, my time in Queenstown was spent doing as little as possible, successfully. (Partially responsible for this initiative was the fact that I was exhausted, having been going nonstop since Auckland, and this was my first chance to take a break, and spend more than one night in a place.) The briefest moment of speculation allowed me to determine that in lacking a style, per se, I have gained an affliction. I would say an affliction of style, if I was more inclined towards the popular tropes of literary criticism (and thank God I'm not). I think of it in the sense of Cicero's aggritudo, a sort of sickness of the soul, inflicted by an overwhelming power whose irreverence tolerates resistance in only the most resolute of men and women. from those tragic tales of stoicism did i find many consolations, but not in this matter. perhaps a more comprehensible analogy would be to relate the concept to demonic possession. except that these demons are the genuises (or genii for the ironically minded) of time, and the blight to which they have condemned me is a form of bliss, I think, that allows a sort of literary freedom that never really seemed possible before.

This newfounded introversion is a good thing, because I have lately found myself becoming daily frustrated with the more social aspect of traveling. While it would be untrue to say that I am getting tired of traveling--that would be a blatant and distasteful hypocrisy--it would be true to say that I am tired of meeting cleverly misleading duplicates of the same archetypal person, and of answering the same unending questions--all of which possess only one really true answer (i.e. that the response, ultimately, doesn't matter)--with the most blatant sorts of lies, with a facetiousness so incontrovertible that it is mistaken for sincerity. conversational initiations, one may call them. it has reached the point where I am beginning to be sincere in my dishonesty--instead of dishonest in my sincerity--if for nothing other than the sake of variety. I have concocted the most fabulous tales, and it is a matter of amusement that they seem true. A testament to my merit as a storyteller, I enjoy believeing in moments of particular insolence.

a more revealing recognition lately has been that regarding the intense discoloration of my hands. it comes as a matter of pride, having read too much Borges and being familiar with Homer's "of the white arms" epithet that my hands these days are continually sunburned, which almost burns the blue inkstains of my pen onto my hand, coupled with a yellowish-brown tinge from rolling too many cigarettes. If there is some credibility in the thought--that, for example, lumberjacks demonstrate their intensity and devotion by being dirty and unshaven, then so do writers show theirs by means of tabacco and ink stains--then it gives me hope.

one last thought; I have never before found myself more in agreement with Goethe's axiom: the more incomprehensible or incommensurate for the understanding an object of beauty is, the better.

Wellington to Queenstown

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 02:30:00 GMT

The Southern Island of New Zealand is said to be the more beautiful of the two. Many things are said about New Zealand; too many things. This is a country just like any other; its only really exceptional feature are the millions of different sorts of terrains contained in a country that is the size of two Californias put together, give or take some.

Between leaving the former place and arriving at the latter place, I have climbed straight up an ice glacier and got rained on a lot. I have also witnessed a bout of jelly wrestling in a sleepy little village with one bar, and engaged in the "sport" of wood-cutting, where I and another competitor adeptly cut a log in two with a ten or so foot saw. the purpose of this act I cannot even guess at, but people are fucking crazy here anyways. There is this one Pacific-ish tradition from ancient times, which entails use of a god-stick. apparently, a priest can carve a stick with the likeness of a god, and then this ceremonial rod can be used to summon the god in such a way that it is trapped in the stick, and must communicate with the priest before being let out; like a genie granting wishes i suppose. these are the kinds of people I am among.

The harem has since disbanded, and I have traded my fortunes to hanging out with three Irish guys, between whose influence my liver may not survive. I should write more, but nothing else really makes too much of an impression. I have mostly been sleeping on buses and writing, trying desperately to finish the Satires before I return, so that I can begin working on the two or three other ideas that have come up since I left. I don't care, and you shouldn't either.

Wellington

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 01:53:25 GMT

I am struck by two thoughts. First, how much non-fiction seems to be a great burden to me; I find myself dejected about the fact that what I don't hear or understand or reveal seems so much more evocative than what I do hear or understand or reveal. And second, how Wellington is one of those truly odd cities where I feel apprehensive about entering but sad about leaving. I don't think I have ever felt any apprehension--or anything remotely like it--in any of California. And while I have felt that way entering some cities for the first time--for example, New York--I have never really felt sad about leaving those places.

It just so happened that my entry into Wellington coincided with two events: the eve of New Zealand Day (which has some incomprehensible Maori name as well), where the Maori signed a treaty with Great Britain that sealed their doom and probably ceded most of their land away (foolish natives), which is somehow remembered favorably today, like Colombus day in the U.S. but only worse. I'm sorry; Indigenous People's Day. (Why again do we celebrate those peoples on the day that allegedly began the massacre of their civilization?). And secondly, the New Zealand rugby team won the finals against Argentina in a match that reminds me of David Foster Wallace's description of a decimating tennis match in Infinite Jest: "it was like cheering for Italian tanks against Ethiopian spearchuckers."

The city, as a result of the confluence of those two events, was crazy; akin, I imagine, to what Berlin would have been like in 1945 (or anytime thereafter) if Germany had've won World War II. (Owing of course to my agreement with the epigram that adduced Germany's national pastime during that time period as being war.) There were drunk people everywhere. (Maybe Ireland in the alternate history where Parnell defeated the British would be a better example.) They were falling over each other; literally. Men of loose virtue were doing everything in their power to make women loosen their own virtues. I found a neat cafe, way in the back of the city, where a gothic girl with a face painted like a porcelain doll sat, drinking some kind of strange, green-colored drink that reminded me of swamps. She kept her perspective rigidly on the small stretch of space just to my left, in an eerie sort of way. I did some writing, and read more of Living to Tell the Tale, which everyone should read, especially writers. I would make it compulsory, if it were up to me.

Eventually, I gave myself up to the abandon of the city, the euphoria of alcoholic passions, and got wasted. to the extent that my attempts at playing pool--at which I become significantly worse when intoxicated--ceased being comical, to the point of being embarrassing, and then ultimately painful.
My only strong general impression is that Wellington is not, as is claimed by deceiving locals, the "windy city" of New Zealand. It was fucking hot.

Auckland to Wellington continued

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:15:24 GMT

that is...

a nearby National Park whose name is either foreign or unmemorable enough that I can't recall it, and then through some well managed farmland (one part of which was the setting for Hobbiton in the Lord of the Rings trilogy), and down to Wellington.

Life on the tour bus reminds me of all of the awkwardnesses of junior high school, all over again, with so much preplanning as to prevent even the briefest moments of spontaneity. but on the converse side, I have actually managed to meet some people (unintentionally). Fortune has thrown my way an odd jest: a commom joke these days is to speak of my harem. all of the people I have met so far have been girls, and on a number of occasions, I have gone out with them, and witnessed peripherally the envious glares of other bar-goers who seem strongly affected by the delusion that I am somehow "with" all of them. It has been great fun.

Along the way, I have been busy claiming various parts of New Zealand for California: these acquisitions include a few parks, a Maori village, an old monastery converted into a hostel, and a artillery command post located on the top of Mount Rangitoto from the days of World War II. I have also discovered that the best means of rectifying some of the difficulties I mentioned in my last entry is to simply preview the park in question illegally, by entering at night when the parks are off limits but infinitely more accesssible. this crime, tresspassing on DoC grounds, is a misdemeanor in NZ, and is punishable by deportation, as are most non-felonious crimes committed here. I find the prospect of having my trip shortened greatly by being kicked out of every country I visit to be an amusing one; the sort of goal I may try halfheartedly to achieve. or not.

Nevertheless, I continue to miss home, all of my friends who may or may not be reading this, and the relative coolness of Oakland.

Auckland to Wellington, North Island, New Zealand

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 05:32:41 GMT

The North Island proves to possess an elusive beauty. Much of the claims made by the wayfarers of New Zealand appeal the sense of untamed, wild lands; regions whose accessability is a matter of adventure all on its own. I have found, however, this claim to be more than a little exagerated. The wild lands have been sculpted, prepared as a matter of aesthetics, allowing for easy walks through the wonders, pathways roped off from the unspoiled wilderness, presenting a very dichotomous portrait.

I have also come to start referring to the local Department of Conservation jestingly as New Zealand's own Gestapo. It's a private joke; they encourage a form of eco-commercialism that can be surprisingly seductive. All of the wild lands, the ones that aren't prepared for tourism, are usually accessible only by means of boating, abseiling, or helicoptering in. Occasionally, it is possible to catch a bus to the location, but this isn't very frequent. all of these transportations are arranged by local tour companies, and their rates are exorbitant, effectively limiting one's capacity to explore the countryside to one's wealth.

I would hate to be misunderstood, though: the country is still remarkably beautiful, but there is nevertheless an irrevocable lurking of how much better things could be, if I had more money (and time).

Setting out from Auckland with a tour-bus-for-backpackers sort of company, I headed south to the Waitomo caves, east to Rotorua (the town with the largest indigeneous Maori population in the country), down south past some geothermic parks to Taupo, on the lake of the same names and nearby

more later. no more time.

Auckland continued

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 08:44:22 GMT

So far, all I've managed to recount has been the coolness--that meant literally--of Auckland. it has remained to date the most lasting impression. if it were possible to transfer weather systems between different locations, I would take the weather of Auckland on Wednesday afternoon and make it permanent. I can't think of any other thing I'd rather do, including even acts of selfless benevolence like curing a major disease or ending war. seriously.

So Auckland is a pretty decent place. Lots of cafes and bars and restaurants and hostels and convenience stors. and little else. lots of travelers, which at times becomes a pain in the ass. the people--the locals--are really nice, and seem genuinely concerned in one's capacity to have an enjoyable stay here. and lots of homeless people have tattooed faces, which for novelties sake if nothing else is fucking awesome.

So far, I've done your average sorts of things, with little excitement. I've been eating better than I have in years, going to museums and cafes and hiking up to the top of a nearby volcano which had a behemoth crater in the middle, filled with trees. I kept thinking that if the whole thing blew right then, it'd be the best way to go I could think of. Excepting that magma must hurt beyond my ability to imagine.

For the most part, the most difficult thing so far has been dealing with the familiar (by now) intimidation factor of being somewhere new, on my own, knowing no one and nothing. Once I realized that my primary intent was just to exist in Auckland as I would in Oakland, but being in Auckland instead, things became much easier. So that's how things have been going; my mode of existence hasn't deviated much from that at home, except i'm in New Zealand, which makes everything better. or so i think they may want me to say.

I miss home, but the thought that everyone is jealous of me gives me hope. I leave tomorrow for New Zealand's wildlands.

Auckland

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 21:43:26 GMT

Auckland is an interesting city, the sort of place that makes you think paradise existed here maybe fifty years ago, prior to all of the trash and development. I love cool winds, and those are much in abundance here. Fucking awesome, is what I have to say about that. more later.