Raoul Duke Lives

Morning at the beach.

2011-07-18T10:36:00.000-07:00

Three birds, seagulls, sat in the sand, curled up in their own feathers, almost like cats fast asleep on the beach.

One of the gulls had been eyeing me ever since I took out an apple from my sack.

Another hungry bird had his eyes on the family of six struggling to roll their ice chests and picnic gear along the sand. The mom and dad were young looking enough that their lot of rather grown children gave them away as the kind of people that procreated at a very early age. But they seemed happy, despite the struggle. And while a hungry bird don't care much, a family's happiness is a good thing.

The last bird, the most haggard and janky of the three, with her feathers all aruffle, was hacking something out of her mouth, if the intrusive object were a hairball the bird would be making the same expression a cat might make when hawking up something of considerable size.

A little morsel of something plopped out from the bird's beak. The action resembled pooping. The bird poked at the oral defecat with its beak, rolling it around a little in the sand.

The best word to describe what happened next is reconsumption.

Birds can be foul creatures. And fowl creatures too. If you think about it.

The two of us, me and Eva, were leaning back against a huge rock stuck in the sand, its oceanfacing side smooth and flat and perfect for reclining against. She had a magazine and I had a book to read. And I was most of the way through eating an apple. This bird over there was hitting me up hard for a bite with a cold stare.

Upaways a bit a woman and dog walk along the shore. Great waves crashed at their feet.

Dogs always look like their people. This dog was a bit thick and so was her woman. You could tell this beach outing was about as much exercise either of them got all week. They made it along all right. But these two also represented something greater, like a shared life experience :: Human and animal, companions on a journey, together alone in the raw world.

The dog crapped in the sand and Eva said it would have been good of the woman to clean up after her companion, for the sake of others. But we were out here in the wild, amidst the rocks and crashing waves. In the distance, great Point Lobos jutting out into the sea, its cliffs colorful wonderlands of native plants and shrubs of the seaside. I thought maybe the woman didn't really need to pick up her dog shit. Shit is as real and as present a thing as the air we breath. We live in a world of shit. Having to navigate around a pile of shit on your path is just part of the life game.

That a dog may shit in paradise is confirmation that we are all alive and in this world together.

It was a grand morning.

Some people wake up on a Sunday and tagteam the Times crossword in bed. That's never been us. If it weren't for Eva I'd still be sleeping. But what a lovely way to start the day, laying in the sand before the great ocean, the wilds of Big Sur all around us. Being out in nature instantly clears a space, as if a broom swept out the clutter inside your brain. Suddenly at the forefront of everything is the moment. The emails and projects and contracts can wait. The music can be heard another time. For to have an intimate moment with nature is for humans the ultimate way to make a reconnection with the earth.

Off in the distance the young family's smallest child dropped her sandwich in the sand.

The birds saw it and took to the sky.

Asian Winter

2011-07-13T23:42:00.001-07:00

A photo montage of my Asian winter in Japan, China and Mongolia.

The Move West

2011-07-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

[7]

Nearly six weeks to the day, we arrived in Monterey. The most urgent of pieces of our puzzled new life fell into place easily. We found a good apartment in the town of Pacific Grove, which is nicer than Monterey, but has markedly less of just about everything, comparatively. The 16-foot truck suffered no noticeable damage and we returned it in one piece. Life, it seemed, was getting on nicely.

It was a long journey to the coast and the hardest and most stressful of the days was the last. We were in Reno, a place full of casinos and people glued in front of slot machines at surprisingly early hours of the day.

The idea was to finish our lunch and make a mad dash towards Monterey, driving the final 316 miles in one last great burst of life on the road. The only obstacle between us was a section of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, a 7,600 foot pass called Donner's Pass, right around Lake Tahoe. We had wondered about it with foreboding anticipation, the pass, because of the truck's great weight and wanting engine.

The sky was heavy and grey as we made the ascent. The fierce wind of the desert planes now gone, replaced with rain. Rain turned into faint snow as we gained altitude. At first it did not lay on the ground, merely melting upon contact. We crossed into the state of California and it was nothing like we imagined, high up on a mountain peak with great rocks and evergreens. We drove through the snow at an incline, the peak no where in sight, the snow falling heavier with each minute of ascent. We made a mandatory stop at the California Agricultural Inspection Station, where our bag of delicious organic apples was confiscated by the authorities because their origin was considered dubious, the apples, which were bought back in Pennsylvania.

The woman who confiscated our apples gave us no indication of what we would find ahead. But merely minutes beyond the Inspection Station our journey came to a halt. A line of cars snaked around a bend, obscured by almost white-out snow, all with their brake lights shining red though the wintery haze. We sat. And waited. The snow fell heavier. I turned off the truck to conserve fuel. I climbed outside to look around. There was a large 18-wheeled shipping truck stopped behind me so I walked towards the driver to see if I could learn something. She said that her radio said that there were multiple accidents due to the snow and that when the road re-opened they would only allow vehicles with snow chains to proceed. This will be hours from now, she said, through long drags off a Marlboro 100.

It was hard to believe we were stopped in traffic in the middle of a snowstorm in California at the end of May, but it was true. The beach could not have seemed any further away.

I sat in the cab and worked a crossword puzzle form yesterday's paper. Eva smoked cigarettes and tried to use the radio to gain some useful information, to no avail.

All we could do was wait. Our dreams of golden California hills and crisp blue beaches would wait with us upon the mountain with the snow.

Tow trucks came and went, hauling wrecked corpses of automobile down the mountain, like some awful harbinger of the death we would surely meet ahead.

After about four dull dragging hours, signs of movement from ahead gave us a renewed energy. I put the keys in the ignition and gave them a turn. Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. Dead. The truck was powerless. In my effort to save fuel by shutting off the engine, I neglected to turn off the headlights. Since it was still daylight up there above the storm, there was enough visibility to not be able to tell I had left the lights on. It was one of those moments of being shit at life. Eva was pissed. I had to fix the situation immediately. Luckily all I needed was a set of jumper cables and a working engine. These were not hard to come by and what would have been a catastrophe was averted with haste.

However, not long after we began crawling up the mountain again, we were turned around, told that we could not pass unless we had snow chains on the truck. I called the 1-800 number to speak with a road side assistance agent about some chains. He said I was on my own. We headed back down, slowly, to a small mountain town called Truckee where I learned that four sets of chains for the rig would cost about as much as three nights in a hotel.

Defeated by nature, we drove sullenly back down to Reno and found a room with the rest of the folks beaten by the mountain.

We would try again the next day. And we would make it. At last.

The Move West

2011-06-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

[6]

And where are we now, after the storm?

Roll the ball up hill, each day get a little closer to the top. And then finally you can't get any higher, the days can get no longer, and we now just coast on & on & on into life, love, death, rebirth, chilly, hot, winter, spring ...

:: days ::

We hit the solstice and now days will grow shorter and shorter and we can sit back and reflect on the journey and all.

I live in a place called Pacific Grove, California. The apartment I've rented at a reasonable sum. Like I think I can work minimally and still make rent. Which is nice, because I haven't worked in about a year, in terms of selling time to a place/man/institution in exchange for legal tender currency. My rent is more than I've ever had to pay before, but still several hundred dollars less than what I imagined it would be before getting into a 16-foot Penske moving van and driving the 3,000 miles out here to the Monterey Bay. This drive was nerve wracking in a number of ways, but especially because the entire time we drove west, we were without a residence, as in, like, we had no place to move into.

But we found one, a place, without too much ado. It's a little one-bed-room on the top of a hill overlooking the water. We get a lot of windy days and sometimes the sky is grey but usually blue and sunny.

The other day we had come off a spell of a couple grey ones and the weather beckoned. Do you ever feel like that? Like you go outside to do something and you realize: Yes. This is where I need to stay. Being inside would be silly. I must soak in this all.

I feel that way sometimes.

Eva's dad gave me a mid-1970s' road bike that hung in his garage unused for some time. Its 27 inch tires are hard to come by these days, said the guy at the bike shop on the corner who gave it a once-over for me after I purchased from him a helmet and cable lock for $70 USD. 'The wheels are true. And the breaks aren't worn yet.' is what he said. Though he did offer to tune it up for me for $60. I told him I'd come back another time, probably when I've broken something. The bike is maroon and says SHOGUN on the frame. It's Japanese. It has handlebars that drop out, and to effectively break you definitely have to ride over the handlebars in that way you ride when you're going for aerodynamics and speed. Otherwise you won't be able to break and will fall victim to vehicular manslaughter because the drivers in California don't fuck around.

But even the cyclists too, are suspect to road rage.

There is a bike path that runs much further than I've ever had the time to explore. It winds along the Monterey Bay's coast, taking you at least from Carmel-by-the-Sea up to Marina. Maybe even to Santa Cruz. It's a very scenic bike path. The bay in sections is a marine life sanctuary and in places you can spot sea lions sunning themselves on the beach's sand. So naturally you'd want to have a look and mayhaps take a photo. And you might use the bike path to get there. Or maybe you'd like to go jogging for good health. The bike path seems good for this too. But some cyclists see it as theirs alone and will berate the pedestrian with profanities as they zoom by in cushioned lycra pants.

Sometime I get confused because our apartment in Pacific Grove is situated on a peninsula that juts out into the bay. But when you look at the water from the end out our street, you are looking north. This is spatially disrupting because being in California, you're apt to assume that water lies west.

To get to many places of importance, you must ride down the hill and turn right, or east once you hit the water. Going this way will take you to Cannery Row, old Monterey, The Monterey Institute of International Studies, a fisherman's wharf, bars & restaurants, a taqueria perhaps...

My freelance projects at a lull for the week and my first day serving tables for The Big Shrimp in Texas yet to come -- The weather beckoned me.

I got on the cycle and took to the road. I decided to ride only down paths I'd never traversed before, taking a circumambulating route through the small city of Pacific Grove until I came out by Lover's Point, a nice public space where people make barbecues and girls in bikinis play volleyball in the sand. I stopped for a time and took it all in. The idea of saying here, amongst people and lounging in the sunshine had its appeal. But I was determined to see what lay beyond the park. I cycled onward, the sea to my right crashing upon the rocks in great waves. The wind picked up and the population of cars and people shrank as I ventured out into territory unknown. I thought perhaps it would blow me off my cycle, the wind. I dropped into a lower gear ratio and pedaled uphill and into fierce wind at my broadside.

It reminded me of our journey west in the Penske. After Nebraska the state of Wyoming rose like mountains above an ever-nearing horizon. Off in the golden pastures where herds of cows chomped away, little hillsides were frosted with snow. The scene was picturesque. Wyoming, the desolate frontier of the country's interior. Utah was just as beautiful. The mountains grew taller and the sky seemed everblue. We saw the Great Salt Lake for a hot twenty minutes or so as we zoomed by. And then we were in the desert. The salt flats. The road was so bleak, so straight and unyielding that there were official signs that warned sleepy motorists to pull over, lest they drift asleep and careen off into the flats. At high speeds we could briefly make out spots where those going slower must have paused to form rocks into words and symbols upon the flats. Things like JAKE + SALLY or E=MC²or ☮.

At one point the air must have had a particularly high salinity because my eyes grew watery, stingy, like when you cut onions and all you can think to do to calm the intense irritability of your peepers is to stick the old head into the freezer and let cold moist air do its work. This could not happen and I had to pull the van over on the side of the road and regain control of my tear ducts.

I suspected foul play by the military institution situated not far off in the forsaken distance. Who knows what kind of ill some surreptitious weapons tests may have caused.

Once the salt flats are over and you're some 2100 miles west of Pennsylvania on Interstate 80, you enter Nevada. Nevada is a rugged desert state, one of only two that legally allow gambling in all its forms. There is large casino directly west of the state border line, much like you'll see with liquor stores amongst the dry/wet counties of USA's Bible Belt.

I discussed with Eva the merits of pulling over and using our dinner money to win at blackjack. She would have nothing of it. We drove on into Nevada and into the next day. And it was about here where my uphill-against-the-wind bicycle ride mentally coincided with the drive west. For the winds of Nevada are fierce, so fierce in fact that there are digitized signs along the highway warning drivers of highspeed wind gusts. They may as well say Don't Forget Your Diapers, because shitting one's pants is absolutely a possibility when balling a truck with ZERO aerodynamic grace broadside into winds gusting at some 40-50 mph.

This was Nevada. And it got worse before it got better, the drive west. But that's for a different time.

Back in Pacific Grove the wind had blown me off course and into a residential area that reminded me vaguely of the somewhat wooded & low-rent sections of Little Rock, Ark. where my father and sister reside.

I thought maybe I could find a street name of use by riding uphill some more. I didn't know where I was or what I was looking for. I was literally along for the ride. A street sign caught my eye, Asliomar Boulevard. The name sounded familiar, Asliomar, and I recalled photographically from memory a map of the peninsula and a large section colored with that shade of green ink used to designate parks or public space.

I approached Asliomar State Beach in an odd manner, by making my way through the campus of the Asliomar Conference Grounds – which seem like a lovely place to come together and, you know, confer.

And finally I was back with the ocean. The Pacific winds made for a chilly day at the beach, and huge blobs of alien seaweed lay washed up on the sand like dead bodies. But people made due.

I found a nice little patch of sand upon which to meditate life and earth and kite boarding.

The Move West

2011-06-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

[5]

And then we were in Omaha.

On the news reports of carnage and destruction from Joplin dominated headlines. We sat at Cracker Barrel, an institution of the American road if there ever was one – a traveler's restaurant serving country-style USA fare: things like meatloaf, macaroni & cheese, grits & biscuits, fried okra, chicken & dumplings; it's all very bad food, both in terms of heath and deliciousness – we read newspapers and smoked cigarettes on rocking chairs.

I told Eva what I knew about Omaha. It's the hometown of two old girlfriends of mine, so I've had the opportunity to spend some time in the city, which rests on the precipice between central USA's rolling hills and the Great Plains to the west.

Omaha has a a lovely historic downtown made of lots of old bricks. From there the city extends west into the far extremities of American exurban grandeur. You can drive in a straight line west in Omaha and watch the numbered streets grow at preposterously exponential rates. You can be on like 158th street and still have not arrived at your destination, having driven all the way from 3rd.

And it's amusing because as you travel through urban, suburban and on into exurban Omaha you'll see the city start to literally repeat itself. You will see McDonald's and Chili's and Applebee's and Home Depot and Wal-Mart and Target and Best Buy and Bed Bath & Beyond and every conceivable institution of American mass capitalism :: and then you drive twenty blocks and you'll see a fresh round of McDonald's and Chili's and Applebee's and Home Depot and Wal-Mart and Target and Best Buy and Bed Bath & Beyond :: and then you drive twenty more blocks and ...

... It will take you a while to escape it all.

But once you're out. There won't be much of anything for the next 11 or 12 hours.

There will be farms so huge entire cities could fit within their vast acreage. You will see cattle grazing the pastures. You will see feed lots. The air will smell at times like fresh, pungent fertilizer. The signs on the road will indicate huge distances between you and the next settlement of people. Some highway exits will mystify: Ex. 234A – Bougainville. NO SERVICES. Population: two. Plus cows.

Suddenly agri-business will start to make more sense. They might as well do something with all this land. Farming on a mass scale seems like the only real option.

Eva was at the wheel, making good time. We marveled at the lonely golden plains set beneath perfect blue sky. The clouds were cumulous, like celestial pillows for the heaven's seraphs.

Though it's beautiful and bucolic, Nebraska is a bitch of a state. It just never ends. The long, non-curving stretches of Interstate 80 make it possible to accel to great speeds, and yet hours become meaningless. Time starts to revolve around measurements of one hundred miles. I looked at the Nebraska map after Eva asked how far we have come. My answer: About a thumb. On the map. A hundred miles. Enough time to listen to Adele's 21 and Mumford & Son's Sigh No More all the way through, bonus tracks included, and at least one half of another record of my choosing.

If I never hear those records again it will be okay because Eva had me listen to them about a hundred times as we journeyed west. If I hear them any more I may grow to dislike them.

After about two and a half thumbs, Eva gave me the wheel. We were entering the nub, the little bit of Nebraska that sticks out above northeastern Colorado. It began to rain when we stopped for ice cream. After a day of unbeatable weather, the skies one again grew dark, ominous. Rain. Heavy rain. Darker still the sky. The lightning came with blackening heavens. It was like the sun was extinguished. The middle of the afternoon and it looked as if it were midnight. It was a perfect canvas upon which to paint a lightning storm. Never have I seen such incredible lightning. Like fireworks, it crackled in the air. Chain lightning. A plasmatic string of electricity in the sky, lightening it in places for a fleeting moment. Then from somewhere nearby, another flash. If I were epileptic it may have induced a seizure, the lightning. Rain pummeled us in heavy bursts, like violent waves breaking on a shore. We slowed to a crawl. I could barely see anything before me. Even the highest speed of the windshield wipers was not fast enough to keep the rain at bay. More lightning. Eva said she was scared. I tried to comfort her, told her the system was not tornadic. While this looks scarier, we were in more danger the day before when we drove underneath a wall cloud in Iowa.

Our goal to hit Cheyenne, Wyoming by the end of the day was shot. We were beaten by mother earth and her tremendous nature. We stopped in an unremarkable nub town close to the state border to wait out the storm and the coming night.

The Move West

2011-06-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

[4]

And the weather grew strange and hostile. Which is a shitty way to open a piece of writing, talking about the weather, but I actually do think it's worth discussing. For the United States of America plays host to climactic events that inspire both incredible shock and awe.

We began to catch the rains as we roared around the southern edge of Chicago, on I-80, a far reaching swath of road that almost spans American coast to coast. I think it was a Sunday. We couldn't shake the rain. It grew heavy as we entered Iowa. It was my turn to drive. I used to live in Kansas, which in terms of contiguity is not far from the slow rolling hills of Iowa. Kansas and its neighboring states are geographically located in what colloquially is known as Tornado Alley.

So when the late afternoon sky changed from a rainy shade of gray to an ominous yellow green, I told Eva to use the Internet on the phone to see where the storm would hit. I know a tornadic weather system when I see it.

The wind picked up and rain fell down in volumes that would fill Olympic swimming pools. The Internet said the storm was moving north and east. We travelled due west.

Because the afternoon sun was up there somewhere beyond the clouds, visibility was not an issue. Our greatest enemy was the wind. The truck, Ole Bessy, was due for a realignment. Keeping her on a straight path was an operation even during normal conditions. She is also the most unaerodynamic and graceless beast on the road, Bess. So to keep her driving in between the lines on the road while north-blowing winds pummeled our broadside so hard we could hear, from inside the cab with the windows up, the metallic phwack of thin metal siding being raped by the violent wind -- it was difficult, the driving. The clobbering wind sounded like if you took a giant handsaw by one end and phwacked it with every ounce of your strength in front of a microphone at unpredictable intervals, like if you were trying to scare young children with a cruel and menacing noise.

At some point our speed was reduced to a mere 40 mph. Other cars and trucks zoomed past us, racing into the storm and fate unknown.

Like all things, the storm came to and end. We were treated with a spectacular midwestern sunset. I've traveled around in my twenty seven years. I've sat on perfect beaches at the end of the world and watched the sun melt out of the sky in slow, pyroclastic dramas of fiery orange and crimson known only to the eyes of a lucky few. And the sunsets of America's midwest are still, undoubtedly, the most beautiful on earth.

But while we avoided disaster, others were not so lucky. We ended up driving right in between two major tornado systems, one of which spawned in the state of Minnesota, the other, to the south, decimated the town of Joplin, Missouri with the deadliest tornado America has seen in more than six decades.

The Move West

2011-06-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

[3]

States like Ohio are a testament to my theory that America is just one big farm with a few cities plopped in between. It seemed to never end, the vast swaths of farmland. By the end of the day it is possible we saw the majority of all the corn being grown in America. This country has a lot of cars and nearly four million people. But definitely more corn than anything else.

There is a film called Food Inc. that says as much, that in fact we grow so much corn in the US that people are actually paid to come up with new ways to use the corn. Corn can be found in everything from ketchup to toothpaste (in a compound called Maltodextrin, i think).

Ohio is only one of four US states where more than 50 percent of the land is considered “prime farmland.”

You'd think with all the corn around, they'd make more of an concerted effort to turn it into fuel. The technology exists, and most gasoline stands sell a product that is at least 10 percent ethanol.

I've gone off the deep end and I'm lost in the Wikipedia abyss. Right now, this seems interesting and also sort of relevant:

Ethanol fuel is widely used in Brazil and in the United States, and together both countries were responsible for 88 percent of the world's ethanol fuel production in 2010.[2] Most cars on the road today in the U.S. can run on blends of up to 10% ethanol,[3] and the use of 10% ethanol gasoline is mandated in some U.S. states and cities. Since 1976 the Brazilian government has made it mandatory to blend ethanol with gasoline, and since 2007 the legal blend is around 25% ethanol and 75% gasoline (E25).[4] In addition, by December 2010 Brazil had a fleet of 12 million flex-fuel automobiles and light trucks and over 500 thousand flex-fuel motorcycles regularly using neat ethanol fuel (known as E100).[5][6][7][8]

High ethanol blends present a problem to achieve enough vapor pressure for the fuel to evaporate and spark the ignition during cold weather (since ethanol tends to increase fuel enthalpy of vaporization [33]). When vapor pressure is below 45 kPa starting a cold engine becomes difficult.[34] In order to avoid this problem at temperatures below 11 ° Celsius (59 °F), and to reduce ethanol higher emissions during cold weather, both the US and the European markets adopted E85 as the maximum blend to be used in their flexible fuel vehicles, and they are optimized to run at such a blend. At places with harsh cold weather, the ethanol blend in the US has a seasonal reduction to E70 for these very cold regions, though it is still sold as E85.[35][36] At places where temperatures fall below -12 °C (10 °F) during the winter, it is recommended to install an engine heater system, both for gasoline and E85 vehicles. Sweden has a similar seasonal reduction, but the ethanol content in the blend is reduced to E75 during the winter months.[36][37]

So that's why you don't see more than 10 percent ethanol most places -- colds starts. That's a shame. Because if more engines could run on higher ethanol saturated fuels, the cost of filling up the tank would drop, and since we're only in Ohio and we've seen more corn than people four about two hundred miles now you'd think there would be a strong case to push biofuels. (Though an argument against biofuels is that you're taking food away from people's mouths. I can see the point, but I don't think the US is hurting for corn, I wager that we export the grain in insane quantities.) There are a surplus of autos on the road with us though, and we're all burning through gasoline like it's cold beer on a hot day.

Filling up the truck's 35 gallon (132.489 L) tank grew to be akin to walking into a malodorous living room, or like when someone farts and it really smells – it's a shock at first, the unpleasant sensation, but eventually you just get used to it and carry on with things.

The first time we spent $100 USD on a single trip to the gas station I may have threw up in my mouth a little, what with the shock of being ass raped for a hundred dollars and all. And that didn't even fill up the tank. There is evidently some kind of governor on the fuel pump that caps the output at a maximum of one-double-zero. So be nearly on E and then lose a C-note on gas and not even have the small gratifier of seeing that little orange needle rise all the way up to F – that sucks. But like what sucks even more is that we just got used to it. We had to get out west, there was no turning back. We simply has to stop considering the money, for the sake of our mental health.

The Move West

2011-06-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

[2]

I had a birthday yesterday and everything seemed good with life. It's been nearly a week now since we've moved into our new apartment in Pacific Grove, Calif. And nearly two weeks ago we first set out on the road west.

The entire way across the country I kept marveling at its sheer immensity and drastic, encompassing landscapes, America's. And I kept on going back to pioneer images and thoughts of homesteaders and settlers and natives all heading west in a grand Kerouacian journey across this land.

Eli mentioned once about how once you get going out in the west, the population becomes inversely proportional to land – the density of people is low and the abundance of land is prolific. As we drove through the forests and hills of the American east, we saw a lot of life. Humans have etched out little cities for themselves between hillsides and riverbanks all along great swaths of eastern America. Once you get out west, in places like Nebraska or Wyoming you'll travel great distances to reach the next encampment of humans along the road – and when you do, you think, What the hell are people doing living out here? Like, what do they DO to get by?

Then I think about Australia the continent and how it's roughly the same size as the contiguous United States. But the interior of Australia, the outback they may call it, is inhospitable and desolate – a testament to the country's population as well; for the United States is the third most inhabited place on Earth and there is evidence of the nation's great populace visible even in our most unforgiving of lands.

The date of our move was peculiar too, the twenty first of May, two aught eleven. This day was highly advertised to be something called The Rapture. Some man in California, a preacher or similar religious authority, claimed he pinpointed the exact date of the rapture to this very day, at precisely 6:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

I feel with certainty that any sort of divine armageddon will not consider the man-made concept of time zones when deciding to let all hell reign upon us. So when I read a message from a girl I know in Malaysia saying it was seven in the morning the next day and she hadn't seen no rapture... I thought, Ahhh, right. God is totally waiting until 6 p.m. American PST to let the shit start hitting the fan.

It makes total sense – all those Christians in Malaysia will just have to sit through a day and a half of purgatorial waking life until the Americans catch up with the rest of time. And then when you think how the state Alaska is about the farthest behind the times when you consider the International Dateline at play. When you think about it that way, Sarah Palin starts to make more sense in terms of where she's coming from, contextually.

And like I said before, we were up'round about DuBois when it was 6 p.m. in the east, in Pennsylvania. And all these dead deer on the road could have been an omen that the rapture was to come. Also around that time there were scattered reports of 13-year locusts coming out of their epic hibernation and swarming the land in biblical proportions. That might also have been like a warning sign. But 6 p.m. American EST is three hours ahead of the man preaching of a rapture in California. We had to wait until 9:01 p.m. EST before we knew shit was gonna be all right.

The Move West

2011-06-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

[1]

I woke up one morning with Eva and went to Bath to get a 16-foot moving van with an attached car carrier. The idea was simple enough: pack our entire history together: Japan, the years on the Asian route, the possessions and memories and shared experience—pack all that up along with any other baggage we have been hauling around from previous lifes—then meticulously pack it all into a Penske moving truck and ball that jack clear across the entire country, three thousand one hundred and ninety miles all the way from Northampton, Pa. to Monterey, Calif. -- do that while also making it there in one piece, incurring as little debt or expense as possible, and then upon arrival into the unknown, picking up from there in terms of life and experience and making it in the world—and then have a go at it, at life.

I have a general dissuasion from driving cars. My luck with the things is pretty lousy. The last time I owned a car was in 2007. I was 23 and he was my fourth, car that is—no homo or anything :: Tiger Woods; my car with so much hail damage it resembled a golf ball. 'Hey, here he is drivin' up now it's Tiga Woods, y'all.' :: I wasn't really going for that, but maybe I'd make the joke once. Anyway, the point is that I was 23 and TW was my FOURTH car. Now, this was not by my fault but through sheer circumstance that I plowed my way through so many automobiles in the, what?, eight years since I was first legally allowed to drive a car. The first was stolen. A second recommandeered by a father stricken with circumstance as well, the third a hapless victim of a hit and run that ultimately ended its life when the engine hood flew up as we cruised down Highway 71 in Harrison, Mo. going 60 or 70 mph, smashing in the windscreen and then bending right over the roof of the car and smashing up the moonroof as well, the hood —it was a pretty horrifying thing to have happen to you whilst in control of an automobile. What's also horrible to deal with is when the car you are driving collides at high speed into the rear quarters of a deer. I saw it once in the headlights and then OH MY GOD!!! and slam on the brakes and the deer I saw lit up like Lady Gaga on some great neon crucifix and next thing you know and it's BLAM! You can't even think of anything else. There's no to time to think and any other decision you could have made will matter not anymore. The air will smell acrid, like gunpowder and smoke. There will be a chokey haze of particulate that you suffer to breath through and you will think: the Car Is On Fire. This smell is because of the airbags, which each deployed. And you will be so bewildered that you just stumble out of the car and not even have the wit to put the motherfucker in park before you start to climb out and cling for your life. The doe, she's lying there choking in a pool of her own blood, black eyes bleating for help. This is exactly the point where I see her and make good, solid eye contact, like man to beast, and witness the poor doe's end as she gets churned round-and-round the axle of a 18-wheeler that wasn't stoppin' for no one – this is all absolutely true, by the way, I'm not even trying to make shit up – I had to listen to the tow truck driver's war stories about how sometimes folks hit buck and antlers go in through the windows and impale the car's front's occupants so they can watch the fallen buck try to wriggle free as they all bleed out into death – I was lucky, the tow driver says.

So you can see why I have an aversion to driving.

One of the many economies at stake when moving across the United States is money. We had some of it, but not enough to make it seem affordable to hire movers and fly the vast distance from American coast to coast. But I hate airplanes too, and that's an entirely different story. The overland journey is quintessential. The luxury of flight also disfigures the sense tremendous distance traveled.

Overland you are face to face with god and nature and man.

I was looking forward to going west, by automobile, back to my beloved Pacific Ocean. The great American road trip indeed.

The woman at the truck rental office in Bath was sweet, but she didn't have a clue about how to operate a 16-foot moving truck or the trailing four-wheel car carrier. She just threw me the keys and said have at it. I began to call the moving truck Bessy as soon as I realized she took to Pennsylvania's hills like a vegan to a cheesesteak. I'd have to coax her up the hills like an old wasted pioneer, like, 'C'mon, old Bessy, you can make it, just push on a little longer.'

And this is a moving truck that when loaded with the temporal possessions of two almost thirtysometings and towing Eva's crotchety red Pontiac Sunfire to boot, the weight of the rig is considerable. More than a few tons, easily, of weight. And this is just a Penske truck. It ain't no semi tractor trailer.

Imagine how it must have been for settlers moving west overland, in wagons and carriages.

Even with Bessy's hardworking gasoline engine, it was an ordeal to make it up'round about DuBois, where we reached the highest point on I-80 east of the Mississippi. For nearly a week I would wonder about the equivalent on some towering peak somewhere west of the iconic river that divides the east from the heartland of America, the midwest.

I gave Eva the Fear one day when we were in the car back in Kansas and we were driving down the same stretch of road where I ended that doe, Highway 71. I told her the deer story back when we were on the road in Asia, and now after speeding through the American midsouth in a great arc of travel, stopping there only to collect some belongings and pay visit to old friends from before the years I was away, we were on the way to Springfield, Mo. where my brother was in residence at university. She drove through the night scared shitless, Eva. And I was out of my mind as well, for I had smoked a Du Bois myself and was caught up in horrible flashbacks of the entire smashup. This went on into the night until we made it to my brother's place and crashed for the night upon a bed of garbage.

That old Fear was conjured up again at the sight of all the mangled deer corpse that litter Pennsylvania's Interstate 80. You can't hold it against the deer, really. There is a direct reference in the state's name to its general woodsyness. Like it says, Penn's Woods is a real life forest. And plenty of deer live in the forest. And plenty of them meet their end along the interstate. We drove slowly and prayed for good things to happen.

It was only a few hundred miles out, but as soon as we made it out of Pennsylvania and into Youngtown on the Ohio boarder we pulled into a Motel 6 and tucked in until sunrise.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

2011-05-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

There is a chopping knife on the granite countertop in the kitchen. In the bin lie a discarded styrofoam container of a leftover diner salad. I've just taken a shower. I'm trying to win Adele tickets on the radio. I recently took a few good rips off a one hitter and am a little out of my mind. It's a little out of itself, maybe...even.

Strange times. I returned from a few weeks on the road down in south central USA: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri where the major family relations reside. There were weddings and tornadoes. A lot of animals. Moderate use of drugs and alcohol. Many hours traveling great distances in my father's sleek blue Honda, a quick fox of an automobile, the Accord. The Blue Fox darted over the lush green hills and rolling planes of the great American Midsouth, a strange pocket of our society where the weather is particularly volatile and the people are a breed of their own. It's all been a quintessential American experience, down to the last drops of Miller Lite.

Americans take their beer very seriously. And they also don't. A craft brewery in Texas called St. Arnolds brews about 3000 bottles of beer a month. A megacorporation like the brewers of Miller Lite can brew 3000 bottles an hour. It's a match of David and Goliath: a desperate offspring of the free market and American excess. Goliath is the Miller and can impact thousands in a single instant, his reach as far & wide as the arc of a cannon ball or one of those Angry Birds. In this case our David is a guy called St. Arnold. Except in this story, David doesn't slay Goliath... good ol' Dave asks him out for beers and ends up getting roofied and surreptitiously boffed up the arse at his own expense. This is all very heinous, the boffing.

But we have a lot of other drugs in America too. Not just roofies and beer. But don't forget roofies and beer are just as American as baseball and Steve Jobs. And the story of David and Goliath, the triumph of the underdog, is a sentiment time-worn and deeply reticent with the American Paradigm. The little guy standing up to the big beast is a story all too often told in the history of America, from women's suffrage to civil rights. The little guy can kick the beast's ass more often than not. And yet the beast survives. Americans are so programed along the financial bottom line that getting mindfucked by the corporation into throwing our dollars at the cheapest products brought to market is passed off as some corrupt yet morally acceptable form of slavery. We all know and love craft beer -- Not a single self-respecting beer drinker doesn't like a premium brew. But our alegorical David, St. Arnold, could not ever brew enough beer to be sold at the voluminous levels Miller saturates the market with. But the thing is, we don't want St. Arnold to even try. Not only do we know that he can't beat Miler, we don't want him to.

If Miller wasn't around, we'd be running amok like thirsty vampires trying to score copious amounts of blood before the sunrise. If 25,000 people couldn't walk into the Philly's stadium and buy a couple Miller Lites each, they'd start demanding that they should be able to. And ironically, our demand for excess is exactly what props up the market infrastructure to let operations like St. Arnold exist in the first place. People seek the craft beer as an alternative to the norm. Miller is so ubiquitous that there's a hunger for something less common than air. As much as he'd like to kill him, David needs Goliath around to entice more customers to flock his way.

But anyways, that's a huge digression: the trip was distinctly American: I drank a lot of beer. There was barbecue and marijuana and baseball and driving and Mexicans. From cold stone patios we watched lighting dance in the night as we sat there and blew smoke from cigarettes burnt down to the quick. I'd chuck the butts into a filthy pale of black rainwater where they would ultimately grow bloated like sodden tampons. It didn't make any sense at all.

Which is I think what I'm getting at. American life makes no sense. For me, at least.

Random notes from the bar.

2011-04-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

April 8, 2011

DETROIT | Maybe it is simply my dipsomaniacal nature, but the offer of a free drink is not only impossible to turn down—it's a great way to bribe me.

After waking up at about four o'clock this morning to catch a dawn flight, the last thing I hoped for was to be told to unbuckle my seat belt and get off the airplane because it would be grounded for an undetermined time as requisite maintenance was preformed.

As you might expect, an entire airplane's worth of people were righteously pissed off at Delta. (Even more pissed, it seemed, were the lot who because of delays the night prior, were shuffled to this morning's red-eye.) The plane held 76 passengers, and only about six of us were actually flying to Detroit from Allentown, Pa. For the other 70 connecting passengers, missed flights and busted schedules were all we had in common.

Since I'm not the type to be tied down to things like a schedule or a career or children, it wasn't the end of my world that I had to wait around the Allentown airport on a rainy Friday morning. But I was pretty pissed at having to wake up so early. I was also slightly terrified to get onto an airplane which had been barred from taking flight due to mechanical issues.

The mood of the cabin was generally foul and contemptuous.

One man raged, “I'm never flying this god-forsaken airline again!” Another suggested Delta sever its ties with the morning's flight operator Pinnacle Airways because “they obviously don't know how to run an airline” and it would be in Delta's best interest to pull out.

Then, once were were all once again aboard the plane, the slightly overweight flight attendant (who resembled songstress Adele and was actually rather beautiful) told us that because of the delay, all spirits, wine and beer offered on the flight would be complimentary. It was 08:00.

Somewhere around my second bourbon and coffee I totally forgot about the inconvenient two-hour delay and sat there simply enjoying the in-flight magazine's crossword.

I can't speak for all passengers involved, but I'm confident I was not alone: the airline, in a psychologically tactical attempt to quell a mutiny, acted on the innate desire of man to forget and the chemical promise of free booze to help him get there.

As far as I'm concerned, it worked.

2011-04-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

The bum we've commissioned to write RaoulDukeLives has complied the following list after wasting the vast majority of office funding on an dispomaniacial and vagrant tour of the world's north hemisphere:

Rules of the Road:

Tips for a trip well traveled

#1. Do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, ask the cook at the Thai restaurant to 'make it hot' the evening before you are to board an airplane at dawn.

#2. When traveling anywhere to see any kind of of natural phenomena, budget one day on either end of the trip to account for the inclement weather you will encounter which will inevitably cancel the tour you've been trying to book to see said phenomena.

#3. Pay close attention to punctuation. Glossing over a period ( . ) where you think there should be a comma ( , ) may mean the difference in you taking the $60 worth of foreign currency you did want from the ATM and the $600 you didn't.

#4. There is no way of hiding the truth: You are a North American. The best you can hope for is that people will think you're Canadian. This will probably not happen.

#5. If you happen to encounter fellow North Americans on the road, be polite; even say Hello. But maintain a safe distance. These people will invariably shame you and the image of your country. (Note that this rule need not apply to Mexicans of Canadians.)

#6. No matter how appealing the brochure or alluring the guidebook's promise—no museum is worth paying 10 of anything. The best ones are free.

#7. Do no foolishly book a week in a Tuscan villa so remote that the nearest town isn't even on the map and think you'll be able to survive w/o a car.

#.8 If you meet anybody who is steaming dunk at noon on a Sunday as you ride the subway, and this person recommends to you a type of beer—Listen to them. You have just received free Expert Advice.

#9. Never offer to drive. Always offer to pay.

#10. You don't wipe somebody's ass with your bare hands unless you really love them.

#11. The deluxe bus is usually worth is. The deluxe hotel room usually isn't.

#12. Being able to use a squat toilet ranks right up there with the ability to drive a car with standard transmission in terms of good life skills to have.

#13. No matter where you are, waiters and doctors are the same. They'll only see you when they want to see you.

#14. “Taxi” means different things to different people.

#15. Don't hide your tears from your love, for when she's gone you'll weep all alone.

#16. Free chai always tastes better.

#17. Don't buy it without seeing it first. Ever.

#18. Boarding or alighting from platform Number One is always a win for the day.

#19. There is no reason why anyone should ever have to leave home at 07:00 for a flight that's at 14:00. Yet this happens.

#20. Bonus points for being able to successfully use that squatter on a moving train.

God, Drugs and Men of Smoke :: OR :: The End of a Season :: OR :: Notes from India Part #5

2011-03-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

This might be my last entry on India. It's the end of March. I've somehow acquired a room on the bottom floor of a split-level house near a dairy farm in semi-rural Pennsylvania. The first day of spring was just the other day—I heard the newsman say it on TV—but the five or six inches of fresh snow on the ground make it hard for me to believe there's any truth in that claim. The house is quiet now. Nobody is around most of the day. The occupants all seem to have jobs. It's quiet. I can hear clocks ticking and snow falling off eves and limbs. The white princess cat is lounging luxuriously in the other room. It's taken me a few days, but I think my charm is winning her over. But anyways, India. A whole season has come and gone since my adventure there. It was a long, cold winter; and the flip-flopped, smokey days spent in the holy river town Rishikesh are far, far away from the snowy suburban reality of my life as it stands now.

But there's at least one more good story to tell. It's been haunting me for months, the task of getting it down in print is daunting. It's hard enough to tell the story out loud at a bar. It takes a while to get through. People get distracted. Thirsty. I hope you have a cup of chai in hand. This one might take a while...

Notes from India

part # 5

Two days after the wild party at the East/West Cafe, my consciousness is rocked awake with the usual morning sensations: jeeps honking outside the window, chai-wallas yelling, the characteristic smell of hashish and tobacco burning behind closed doors of the guesthouse, the old housekeeper singing his little songs to himself as he sweeps away the mess of another set of departed occupants...Maybe some people wouldn't settle for such a noisy abode. But who was I kidding? My room cost about two dollars a night. It was safe, clean. I just had to wake up whenever the jeep-taxi parking lot roared to life across the street.

Prem said to meet him at the cafe at ten. I had a few hours to kill. The open-air traveler's restaurant below my room had a bunch of wobbly wooden benches and more flies than India has people. A large sweaty man in a wife-beater manned the fires and tandoors in the kitchen. His job seemed hard. Whenever I saw him it was through that distorted fiery haze illusion that you see when you look towards something really fucking hot. He worked in that kitchen all day. I envied him only because he could make the best tasting food I would ever eat in India. The restaurant didn't get a lot of foreigners. Maybe it was the billions of flies. But they obviously knew the secret too, the flies. For less than a dollar I would breakfast on a masala dosa and chai. I did this every day, sometimes twice. Two hours of yoga in the evenings for another two bucks was the only luxury I afforded myself. My budget was shot to hell after six expensive weeks in Europe. This six-dollar-a-day life in Rishikesh would help make up for it. I ended up staying two weeks not really doing anything but surviving.

I went to the East/West Cafe a little after ten. Prem wasn't around. Xavier Simon was there, having just woken. He was sitting on a sofa wrapped in a blanket and having a coughing fit.

'Jesus, Simon, go see a doctor about that cough.'

'I will, man. Today, this afternoon after I go see the priest.'

'It is Sunday? You going to mass?'

'No man, It's Tuesday. But the priest and I are close. We're working together on a couple projects to help the children in town. My sister, she's a nun and runs a school for the orphans in Madras. Are you a Catholic, Lands?'

'I'm not, no.'

'A Christian then?'

'I wasn't brought up with any religion. I respect Christianity, Catholicism. Just like I respect Islam and Hinduism. They all have good things to say. It's really easy for a small number of people to take a good thing an turn it upside down, distort the good intentions in the name of a twisted cause. It happens with Christians and Muslims all the time. So I don't follow a religion, but I respect the underlying foundations behind them.'

'I think you're a Buddhist, man.'

'That's one I do find very agreeable.'

'I'm a Catholic until I die, man. Mary mother of God.' he untucks the wooden rosary from his shirt and kisses it with his eyes closed. 'But I'm the same way. I like to know what else is out there. Once I spent six months living in an ashram of Sikhs. Just to learn. They knew I was a Catholic. They didn't try to convert me. But they were happy to educate me in their ways.'

'Was that in Amritsar?'

'In Amritsar, yeah. You've been to Amritsar?'

'For a few days. I went to see the golden temple. It's incredible.'

'Fucking beautiful, man. It's the most holy place on earth for the Sikhs. I studied with a Sikh guru. He taught me so much. He was an old man. I bet he's dead by now. But he taught me the teachings of the tenth Guru Sikh Gobind Singh. Singh instructed that all Khalsa, baptized Sikhs, follow the holy oath he called the Five Ks. They must wear a Kachera, the loose fitting undergarment for modesty. Then there is the Kesh, the long plume of sacredly uncut hair kept beneath the turban, symbolizing their connection with God. The Kanga, or comb used to maintain the long hair. The silver bracelet, the Kara, that is worn around the wrist. And the Kirpan, the small dagger worn at the waist as a symbol to protect the innocent from harm.'

'You're like an encyclopedia, Simon.'

'You should be writing this down, man.'

'I've got a good memory. I won't forget it.'

We sat around the cafe drinking chai and talking about life and God until Prem showed up later on to take me to meet his uncle Shankar. I didn't really know what to expect or say when I met Shankar, but I knew it was important to at least pay him a visit. Prem lead me outside to the dusty road that runs parallel with the south bank of the river Ganges. The streets are alive. Travelers checking out the scene mix with Hindu pilgrims and holy cows, everybody stepping carefully over eachother's shit. Prem tells me to follow him down a path opening out of a break in a stone wall just big enough to squeeze my body through. We come to quiet beach with big rocks atop white sand. Sadhus bathe in the morning sun, while others make ablutionary pujas in the holy river. The footpath runs directly along the river. It is quiet and serene, away from all the jeeps and motorbikes dominating the south bank's main road. We walk for some time, passing the odd group of sadhus, some of them smoking charas, some patiently sitting with their hands out, hoping a passerby will drop them a few rupees. I notice there are many monkeys roosting in the trees along the riverside. But their numbers were paltry in comparison to the troops stationed along the suspension bridge Ram Jhula. I don't trust monkeys. And having to walk ten minutes across a bridge dominated by scores of them did a number on my nerves. My friend David T said once that monkeys can smell whether you eat meat, and can show more aggression towards those who do. Thankfully my diet was meat-free for weeks at that point. No one around me seemed to have the same fear of monkeys. Lots of folks even stopped to photograph the beasts. I'll never truly understand why. But Prem and I make it across the bridge unscathed and turn left on the the north bank to find his uncle Shankar and the Amrita Chai Shoppe.

The place is permanently closed for business. The last flood of the Ganges in October ruined his outfit. Shankar is fixing up the property, then has plans to sell and retire. Prem leaves me with his uncle. Shankar gives me a newspaper and says he'll be back in a few minutes with a pack of cigarettes. I've rolled one of my own and smoked most of it by the time he returns. We have a black coffee and talk about Ashokanada, who we mutually refer to as Baba.

I'm met with an odd stance from Shankar. He's saying my Baba is now living a horrible life, that he is not well off, not happy. This is not what I expected. Skankar seems more like an adversary than a friend. He asks how Baba is doing, his health. I say it's no good, he has no power in his legs. Again this prompts Shankar to berate. He shows but little concern and perhaps even contempt. Shankar insists he is happier than Baba. He keeps talking about money. How Baba makes more in Japan, but that the money in India is plenty good. And they're the same age. And look who's in better health, he says to me.

A man comes up to us and Shankar excuses himself to his business. I'm left sitting there in the sun. I roll a cigarette while I'm thinking all this over. Maybe he he's right, Shankar? Maybe my Baba is trapped and will never escape. He is not free, his life is his restaurant. It's true when I say that in all the time I've known him, I've seen my Baba outside of his restaurant once. And even that was just down the steps and on the ground floor.

I leave not really knowing how to feel. Back in Iwaki, in Japan, my Baba is famous, well loved by all. Sure, he may be living in a shadow of his former self, but all of us came to know him the way he is now. We are not old Indian men like Shankar. I've never really known Ashoskanada the yogi. I've only known Pandey, my Baba, the fat happy guru of Iwaki, owner of Purnima, the best curry house in the world.

After I realize that Shankar is probably not coming back to talk some more, I get up and start walking, a bit miffed at the hostile reception of a man I thought would be a friend.

I walk until I come to a public ghat. I walk down the steps to the edge of the river Ganges. Many pilgrims are bathing in the water. A boy is crying as his father dunks him over and over in the holy river. Some people sit on the ghat smoking and watching the world unfold before them. I keep walking along the river until there's a break in the path and I must walk up back up the steps to keep going the direction I'm headed. This takes me to a footpath above the ghat. I keep on walking, passing many small hovels along the bush and some old concrete buildings standing further back. Some men in white robes have built a pyre upon the riverbank and a fire is raging. I stop and look to see if they're burning a body but I don't think they are. Peppered along the steps of the ghat are solitary sadhus some of them epically bearded and hardened by the sun. To my right is a school. Boys are in the small field flanking the swampy overflow left by the river on the opposite side of the ghat. They are playing cricket in the field, the boys. I stop and watch them for a while. I have never seen cricket being played before. I do not really understand what is happening, but I can only assume that hitting the ball is a good thing, something that the player at bat is trying to do. But the boy pitching is throwing wild and wide pitches at the batter and they all fly out of bounds behind box. Either I don't understand the brilliance of this strategy, or the kids just aren't very talented. I walk on.

It's a lot more of the same: holy men meditatively lounging in the spectacle of the great river, some families and devotional people coming and going. This part of Rishikesh is quiet. It's not commercial, it's not anywhere near the main road and its great Din. It is nice and quiet. Devoid of beggars. Drowning in devotees. I decide that I've walked far enough, that I should head back to where I came from and maybe eat some lunch.

That's when Raj saw me.

He crossed my path looking like a rock star in the sunlight. Dark Ray-Bans over his eyes, his hair, like a lion, untamed and blowing wild in the wind. His beard is epic. He is smiling as he strides along in his ocher and white robes.

Hari Ohm he says to me as we cross paths.

Hari Ohm is both a blessing and a common greeting. I say it back to the rock star, amazed at the sight of him, but not breaking my stride. But he stops walking and calls after me:

What part of world you come from?

'USA.' I say, still walking away from him. In India, people engaged me like this so frequently that I often would just pass them by, lest I never get to where I was going because of constantly engaging every stranger who approached me. But this guy fascinated me. He just looked so at peace, like some great smiling Buddha. He only had to say one more thing to get me to stop in my tracks.

You like smoke?

'With you?'

He smiles.

And suddenly I'm walking even further down the path above the Ganges, walking even further away from my world so many miles away.

Your name is?

'Lands. Lands Easton. And yours?'

You call me Raj.

'Where are we going, Raj?'

Going my ashram, there we have smoke.

We come to a small flight of mostly broken stone stairs leading down and inland, away from the Ganges. At the bottom is grassy footpath leading to a concrete building with two storeys.

'Your ashram is here?' I point to the concrete building.

No, you coming this way.

Raj steps off the stairs and starts walking through the sand and rocks. We hop over a small drainage stream and walk up a while until we reach a secluded hut made of bricks and bamboo. My height is more than six feet. The top of this hut came up to my chest.

'Where are we?'

This my ashram. Come. My baba-ji inside.

Everybody needs a guru, a baba. Mine is living out of a restaurant in a small town off the coast of Japan. Raj's lives inside this hut. We take off our sandals and go inside, stooping through the low entryway.

The hut is tiny and organized. A fire pit is in a corner with chopped wood stacked on a concrete shelf atop, near it a large urn of water. Above the urn is a hanging basket filled with shiny steel dishes. Along one wall are various pictorials of Shiva, in full color. In the back there is a small area for washing. In the center lying on a small pallet slightly raised off the ground is the rock star's guru, his Baba-ji.

Hari Ohm, Baba-ji

The baba sits as we come inside. He is old with closely cut white hair that contrasts sharply against his time-hardened brown skin. His teeth are mostly brown as well, only the finest sliver of white remaining at the tips, as if his mouth had been given a French manicure, except the leftmost of his front two teeth was missing, which is actually a lot less noticeable than it would be if his teeth were all white. His eyes are brown, they shine like crystals.

I sit down next to Raj the rock star, his sunglasses now off in the dim light of the hovel. There is barely enough room for the three of us. The pallet in the center takes up most of what little space there is in the hut. Raj and I are sitting with our knees to chest. Raj explains to the baba how he found me, and that he brought me here to smoke. The baba laughs, bearing his mouth of teeth stained brown by a lifetime of smoke, and asks, through Raj, if like to smoke.

People have smoked since the dawn of human civilization. It is one of the most humble and communal rituals man can engage in with his fellow man. To not smoke as a personal preference is fine. But to shame or frown upon those who do would be like disowning part of our common history as men on Earth. Not only do I enjoy smoking, I respect it as a communal bridge across cultures and generations.

I say this to Raj in a simpler way, because his English, while passable, is not fluent. But he must have caught my drift because after he translated my bit of philosophy to his baba, the old man started laughing again, those brown crystal eyes shining with delight. He starts speaking at length in Hindi to Raj. Once he's finished I ask Raj what he said.

He say he like you.

I wonder what all got lost in translation as I watch Raj pack a chillum with mixture of marijuana and tobacco. Raj tells me how his baba-ji has been here in this small hut near the river for 14 years. Before that the baba was in the forest, he was a forest guru. People came to him from all over for spiritual advice and guidance.

But, says Raj as he strikes two matches against the matchbox he has pined to the ground with his toe, pausing to quickly bless the pipe with a Hari Ohm and taking the fire starting green hit off the chillum, thick smoke fulling up the room,

Through the plume of smoke that has filled the room upon his exhale Raj continues his thought:

Once he lose his legs, he come make ashram Rishikesh.

Raj gives me the chillum and I take a big hit and it feels good. It's the first time I've smoked any grass since I was in America. I offer the chillum to the baba, but he shakes his hand, saying no.

Baba-ji make he own chillum. This smoke just for you and me.

Raj and I sit there and get stoned. Hari Ohm.

Raj tells me how he came to Rishikesh ten years ago and met his baba. As he's saying all this the baba unfolds his legs and scoots off the bed. He has no feet. Only bony, scared nubs crudely ending right above where his ankles may have been. While the scars appear to be too old and healed-over to be considered wounds any longer, the baba's legs are in awful sight. It is painfully obvious that be did not lose his extremities in a clean, surgical manner.

In the dim light of the ashram the legless baba pulls himself across the floor with his palms. His body merely skin and sinew and bone, he is not much of a man physically, yet he has tremendous power. He walks himself out of the hut on with his arms and goes to chopping firewood in the sand as we two legged men sit idle and stoned.

Though is body is useless from the waist down, the old man is still capable. With an ax he splits wood for the fire he stokes each day for chai and each night for warmth. He seems well-liked as well. As Raj and I sit there and smoke the never- ending chillum men come and greet the baba, giving him food, tobacco, perhaps even money.

'He's a pretty incredible guy, your baba.'

My baba-ji have much power. He is Shiva, the Rama, the Guru, the Brahma, the Mahakala.

Raj talks to me about earth and god and guru. He says the earth and humans are made of same five elements, the Panchakshara, the Namah Shivaya, the mantra of Shiva—Na—Mah—Shi—Va—Ya.— The Earth. The Fire. The Water. The Air. The Ether. Raj says this is the Mantra of Shiva:

Ohm Namah Shivaaya. Ohm Namah Shivaaya

We chant it together. We smoke more together. Hari Ohm.

We talk about where I come from. I give him a cover, that I'm on holiday from teaching English in Japan, that it's my second time in India, but the first time in Rishikesh. I tell him that the Japanese countryside and Rishikesh look similar, full of gushing rivers and green mountains. How beautiful it all is.

Shiva is beautiful

Nature is beautiful

God is beautiful

Beautiful is God

God is Nature

Nature is Shiva

Shiva is Everything

Everything is Nature

Between hits on the chillum Raj says to me:

See God as Nature. Enjoy the Life.

'Hari Ohm,' I say to that.

Raj cashes the chillum in one final smokey puff.

'Hari Ohm, Raj. Hari Ohm. Thank you for the smoke.'

Ohm is my home

Ohm my home

Shiva know everything

Hari ohm.

Raj smiles with stoney eyes. He is out of his mind. It's all so wild. Sitting here in this tiny ashram totally cut off from society with men who have renounced everything in the name of Shiva, these great men of smoke. I look out the small door of the hut, the footless guru is still chopping wood outside, splitting timbers in half with great force. His power is incredible for such a slight man.

You eat?

'I ate this morning. Breakfast.'

Hungry.

It wasn't really a question, I realized. Raj wanted to take a meal. He produced a steel pot filled with yellow rice and some vegetables and little round balls of mystery. He used his hand and scooped a heaping pile of rice on to on of his shiny steel dishes and then covered it in wet milky curd. He set the dish in front of me. He then took what remained of the wet curds and poured it into the bowl with leftover rice and began eating voraciously with his right hand.

Some people devour everything in sight when they're stoned. Maybe it's from years of working kitchen shifts blazed out of my mind, but I never get the munchies. In fact, when I'm high food is the last thing I usually want. I do, however, get unbelievably thirsty. I gesture to the dish on the ground before me, 'This food is for baba-ji?'

No Lands. It's for you. Eat.

'Are you sure? I mean, I don't want to take your food. Doesn't baba-ji need to eat?'

Baba ji no eating. Has much power today still. He eating when run out of power. Baba-ji once go two years no eating.

'No eating? Nothing?'

Nothing eating. Only water, chai, chillum.

'For two years?'

Yes two years time.

'That's incredible.'

My baba-ji, he's incredible. So please eat.

The fist full of rice in my hand tastes sour. Not sour like it is off, necessarily. But as if it's meant to be sour. It wasn't particularly good. But as I ate it, I came to be aware how long I have gone with just the morning's masala dosa inside of me. It started to taste better the more I ate. But there was so much. I could not finish it all. I hated to do it, but I asked Raj where I should put my scraps. He pointed outside towards a small stone wall that seemed to be the receptacle for waste and just said for me to throw it over there, that the cows will eat it, as if he did the same all the time.

All the smoke and food made me incredibly thirsty. Along with the dish of food, Raj had also put before me a cup of water. I had been staring at it the whole time. I was fucking parched. I really wanted to drink it. But I knew it was river water. Holy as it may be, it's still water from the river. And the last thing I am wanting at this point is to pick up a water-born illness.

Drinking water? Again, Raj is saying more than he's really asking.

'I dunno, Raj. It's not my custom to drink water from the river. I want to drink it. But I am worried I will become sick.'

Sometimes sick comes. Sometime no sick comes. We drinking holy Ganga water every day. This water is clean, is pure, is holy. You do as you like of course, all is shanti. But I think you should drink. Is holy pure water.

Raj is looking at me. I'm looking at the cup. Outside the mighty river Ganges flows on and on, larger and more supreme than any of the mere trivia of our lives.

I look at Raj and the cup before me. Them I pick it up and take a sip. Just one. For luck. Hari Ohm.

Raj goes outside to do the washing up. The baba-ji has now been joined by a few others, locals judging by their dress, but not sadhus or yogis, just normal guys. Alone in the hut for the first time, I take a clearer look around. I take some photos.

Raj comes back inside and sits down next to me.

You smoke cigarette?

'Sure. You want? I have.'

Lets smoke.

I take out my pouch of Drum shag a packet of Rizzlas and a few filters.

Oh, you smoke like that? Many many European smoke this way, but I don't like.

'What don't you like about it, Raj?'

He says something about making water dirty, but I can't exactly catch his drift, he can't explain to me so well what he's thinking this time. I take a clump of tobacco out of the pouch and sprinkle it in a paper. I roll it up like a spliff and seal the gummy side of the paper with my tongue.

It's that, Lands. It's that I no like. You making like that with tongue. And your hands too, you've no wash them after you eat. Must wash hands after eat, can't bring smoke to mouth with dirty eating hand.

How funny it all was! Me, not wanting to drink the river water because I thought it to be dirty. Raj, not wanting to smoke something I've stuck my dirty mouth on. He didn't make me feel bad about my actions, he just pointed out that I'm not doing it his way. And since we were in his world, it's only right that we play by his rules. I was thankful for the way he pointed out my insensitivity.

How similar we all are in our differences.

The baba-ji and the men who joined him outside have all come into the hut as Raj and I try rolling cigarettes and sealing them with water from the fingertips. This process does not work well for either of us. A drop of water on the finger is far too much to seal the gum of a cigarette paper. I ruin several sheets of paper before I remember I have a Gudang Garam in my pack. It's my last one from an old packet and it's a bit stale, but I think it will still make a good offering to the baba-ji. I take it out and give it to Raj, telling him to smell it.

Smell sweet.

'Yeah, it's garam, it's spice from Indonesia. Heavy smoke, very strong.'

Raj passes it to his baba. The baba smells it and looks at it and questions it a bit before he lights up, smoking quietly on his own.

I ask him if he likes it. He replies with what could only be his native version of 'meh'.

He says it's okay.

'Just okay? Not his favorite?'

No, not he favorite. Baba-ji favorite is charas. He say he thinking he like smoke charas. You want smoke charas?

'Sure, you have?'

We can get.

'Where?'

Down the road. You stay. He points to the men who are with us in the hut. They go, can get Indian price, one thula 500 rupees. Can you give 500 rupees so we can all smoke charas?

This is where you'd be absolutely right to question the legitimacy of the entire situation. I certainly did. It came out of nowhere, the asking for money. Five hundred rupees was about $9 USD at the time. It wasn't going to break me to part with it, but it was about two days of living expenses, so it was worth giving pause.

I looked around the room at the pictures of Shiva, the pallet on the floor, the bucket of water they haul from the river each day—the meager possessions of men who live on the fringe of society. I look at Raj who brought me into his ashram to spend the day. I look at the legless Baba and marvel at his godly existence. I look at the other two guys. They look nice enough, wearing jeans and shirts. And I think—what the hell, I've come so far already, what's 500 rupees?

Like the Great Doctor once said: Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Plus, I knew from my time spend walking the streets of Rishikesh town the asking price of a thula of charas was 1000 rupees. Paying half of that was a good deal no matter how you cut it.

I kept my money in my shirt pocket. I took out what I had: One 500 note and a few 10s. Raj sees this is all I have and says that I shouldn't give 500 if it's almost everything I have. I tell him it's alright, it's a lucky day of good karma for everyone, let's all smoke together. I give the 500 note to one of the guys and he goes off to make the buy.

Now it's me and Raj and the baba in the hut. The baba pulls himself over to his little shrine and gets out a box, out of which he retrieves a photo album.

They are very old photos of the baba, back when he was a forest guru, back when he had feet.

There are pictures of him leading meditations. Pictures of him with a massive cobra wrapped around his neck, trident in hand like the living Shiva incarnate. Old photos, back when his hair was long, black and dreadlocked, and not white and cropped like it is today. There is a photo of his students at his forest temple. And even a photo of a beautiful Japanese girl who may have been a love interest. And the last photo I was shown was of the baba in a swing, one of those swings used by the standing babas, the babas who go their whole lives without taking a seat, even while they sleep. This man was a standing baba. And now he has no feet! If he still had feet, he'd still be standing!

I tell Raj I'm impressed by the photos.

He says he is impressed by always by baba-ji

Baba-ji is true guru. He live here in peace. Make no trouble for nobody. He just live and pray and smoke. He ask nothing of no one.

'He seems to have a lot of people around who respect him, a lot of people to help him out.'

Yeah he have much respect, many devotee. Those babas by the Ram jhhula and Laxman jhula, they all business baba. Just ask for money from tourist all day. Not holy men. My baba-ji no business. Just peace, shanti. Ask nothing of no one.

This man in front of me is the essence of holy. He is a true guru, a man of great spiritual strength. The story of his life so incredible, so devoted to the guru Shiva.

The charas arrives while this photo show is happening. Raj shows me how to tell if it's good charas by lighting it on fire. If it goes soft and crumples nicely, making good smelling smoke, then it's quality.

Other stuff might have chemical. Not pure. Cow shit.

'Cow shit!?'

Cow shit.

'Really?'

Really.

I want him to say more. I grow concerned that the other day I may have paid a con artist business baba 1000 rupees for cow shit. But Raj has packed the chillum and says a quick Hari Ohm before lighting the fire. We start smoking and suddenly I don't care weather or not I got conned by that other guy. That was a learning experience, a learned enough experience to know now that if that first time was a con, then this time, it's genuine.

We smoke two chillum. The baba-ji boils water over the fire to make chai. We chill out together in the peaceful hovel without a care in the world. The baba hands me a cup of chai and a sugary cube of dried mango to eat. I have a sip of the chai. It is the best chai I have ever tasted, made by a holy man with holy water.

Raj gives me the unused bit of charas, since I paid for it. I break it in half and give one piece to the baba-ji, as a donation. Raj gives me a big pile of marijuana as a parting gift.

I walk home in the sunset having spent the day with true men of smoke.

Raj

Shiva

Urn for water

Ashram

Raj (left) and the legless Baba (center background).

Back in the USA : Tragedy from Afar : AND : Notes from India #4

2011-03-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

Hokayso, I'm out of China after nearly two months and now I'm back in North America. I landed in Seattle and got quickly reaccustomed to my old ways. When the tragedy in Japan struck I was in Vancouver. I suppose it wouldn't have mattered where I was, I still would have been helpless as I was/am. I'm trying to figure out ways I can help. If you have any ideas, let me know. We're trying to get a local restaurant to have a fund-raising night. If I could get commissioned to write stories about the people who are still there trying to survive, I'd give 100 percent of the compensation to the relief fund.

This part of the India story has been finished for a while, but I was sitting on it until I was back in the land of unbridled internet access. Then Japan happened and it just didn't seem important. It's still not important, really. But maybe people need a bit of lite reading nowadays....

Notes from India,

part #4

Xavier Simon is the kind of unsung man of the world that legends get their start from. Well, that's probably a gross overstatement. But he has certainly lived the sort of life that a guy like me can only marvel at. He doesn't smoke anymore; he turned down my offer of a cigarette with a whooping, phlegmmy cough that hinted he'd smoked more than enough in his lifetime. Like some of the best Indian guys I know, he's older than me by decades. He's beat; walks with a limp; can't see so well out of one eye on account of a metal plate inserted beneath his skin to keep his face together after he laid down his 500cc Royal Enfield driving back down the mountains from Dharamsala. 'OOOH how I wish I could ride like that again.' he moans.

'You don't ride any more?'

'If you almost killed yourself riding a bike, would you?'

'They say if you fall off the horse that you should get right back on.'

'Yeah, man. But no fucking horse goes 110 kilometers per hour.'

'Jesus! You were going that fast?'

'Yeah man, fucking flying.'

'You must have been wearing a helmet. Right?'

'No helmet, man. You ever see any Indian guy wearing a fucking helmet?'

'So you just gave it up? You don't ride at all now?'

'I have a couple bikes, Lands. I get around. But I don't ride anymore.' His thoughts seem to linger on that word—ride—like it's some great lost love that will never leave his mind.

We walk back inside the East/West Cafe. No customers are inside. I don't know how late it is, but with no one around the place looks closed for business. Some Indian guys are hanging around in front of a laptop. Modern Hindi pop music is playing on the cafe's soundsystem. It's catchy, even, say, good music. But to me it sounds just like any other song from a Bollywood film.

I tell Xavier that I've come to Rishikesh because of my friend Pandey Sunil Kumar.

'I don't know that name.' says Xavier.

'You wouldn't. He didn't go by that name when he was here. This was a long time ago, too, when he was here. I was just a boy. Pandey was a great yogi who practiced in the hills of Gangotri. Anybody here who knows him would know him as Ashoskananda.'

'Ashoskananda?'

'Yeah. Does that mean anything to you?'

'I'm not from here, man. I'm from Goa. Just here to help out Prem. Prem owns this cafe. But he's young, inexperienced in the industry. He's not making money. I've come up from Goa to see if I can't help him get everything working right.'

'How long have you been in town?'

'Three, four months now, man.'

'Well, then maybe you will know these names.' I get my notebook out and find the page where I have a note of people to find in Rishikesh.

'Do you know Swami Laxman Dass?' Xavier shakes his head in the negative. 'Okay, well what about the Amrita Chai Shop, the owner is Shanker and he has a Japanese wife called Hir--'

'Hiromi.' Xavier completes my sentence. 'How in the world do you know that?'

'I told you, my yogi friend knows these people. He told me to get in touch with them once I got in town.'

Xaiver starts laughing in wild amusement. Then his cough creeps up on him and he has to sit down and regain hisself once the coughing fit is over. He looks over to the group of guys around the laptop and yells over the music for Prem to come over to us. A short guy with dyed hair, wearing a green army jacket and baggy pants gets up and walks over to us. 'Lands, this is Prem.' I shake his hand and ask how it's going. 'Prem,' Xavier starts,'this guy wants to know if you know Shankar and the Amrita chai shop.'

'Yeah, sure. I know it.'

'Really?' I ask, surprised. 'Can you tell me where it is? I have this friend Ashoskananda who told me I should meet Shankar, the owner.'

'I can tell you, sure. But if you want I can take you there myself. Shankar is my uncle.

'Your uncle? Really?'

'But more important, how do you know Ashoskananda? I haven't heard that name in a long time.'

I briefly recount to them my days in Japan, how it was there in a small coastal town about ten thousand miles and a whole lifetime away from India, that I came to know the man known as Ashoskananda.

'So you know him too, Prem?'

'He's a family friend. He knows my uncle more than he knows me. But yes, I know him. When his daughter was born I was in the room.'

'Man, the world is a small place, huh?' I say, bemused.

'A lot smaller than you think, man. By a whole lot.'

The beauty of happenstance is that often it will take you exactly where you're trying to go, but via a route you never knew existed. Meeting Xavier and the subsequent introduction to Prem gave me an 'in'. The East/West Cafe would become my base of operations, a spot to relax and chat and I would even come to do a bit of freelance design and editing for the cafe in exchange for what amounted to free food and drink for the next two weeks.

Prem promised to take me to Shankar in two days time.

'So tonight, you relax. We close the cafe and have a party. Do you like whiskey?'

'I've been known to enjoy it.'

'Yah Lands,' Xavier interjects, 'You must stay for the party. Prem is making chicken. He's a hell of a cook, man.'

Rishikesh is a holy town; meat and alcohol are both technically banned from being sold or consumed by the people within. It occurs to me that this might not be just an ordinary night at the East/West Cafe. I agree to stay and join in the fun.

Xavier walks me over to a quieter corner of the cafe and we sit down on low sofas. A nicely dressed guy is sitting on a similar sofa against the wall opposite us. There is a table in between us. On it lay a white marble chillum and a packet of Indian cigarettes, which are about half the size of standard cigarettes and twice as strong.

Just then a slimy looking character wearing tight jeans and shoes of fine leather that were made for dancing bursts into the cafe towing behind him a much taller Spanish woman. He is yelling and clapping wildly, speaking Urdu and waving his hands in the air frantically. He doesn't appear to be angry—just mad, like he's out of his mind.

'That's Lavi,' Xavier informs me. 'I hate that fucking Punjabi bastard. He's no good.'

'Who's the girl?'

'Simone.'

'She's with him, Lavi?'

'She comes, she goes. She'll be around for weeks. Then disappear for a while. I don't know what she does or where she goes. But Lavi has her at least some of the time.'

Lavi has brought with him several bottles of Indian whiskey. The cafe is shuttered behind him and the music gets louder. People start drinking, dancing. Lavi is the best dancer of them all. He also appears to be more out of his mind than anyone in the room. He is spinning and breaking and popping, all in between shots of whiskey. A cigarette dangles from him lips, the ash falling to the floor as he spins around and around.

The nicely dressed guy has packed the chillum and after engulfing himself in a cloud of smoke, offers the piece to me. His speech is peculiar. He says something like: Hey, mate, you wanna 'ave a toke on this?

And he says it in a perfectly posh English accent that reminds me of my friend Tom Holmes and the days we used to run around London in ale-laden stupors. I comment to the guy on his accent, to which he replies that he did in fact live in London for years. But now he's back in Delhi and just up in Rishikesh for a bit of R&R.

And here comes the night.

We move our party to the back of the restaurant, where there are many cushions and pillows to lounge upon, like in some Turkish shisha bar. We smoke a chillum and drink some tea, all of us in the cafe.

The Posh guy breaks out a bottle of white Bacardi and starts pouring drinks.

The night turns into a party. People are dancing and smoking and drinking. There is loud Indian techno blasting from the speakers. I am talking with Lavi's Simone from Spain about the dated American sitcoms she enjoys and with Xavier about his travels in India. The night is getting better. I am not feeling so lonely anymore. I tell some stories about my days in Japan and how I came to know Ashoskanada-ji.

We are a mixed lot: Me, the American from Japan coming to Rishikesh to see the hometown of Ashoskanada. Xavier, the Goan hippie Catholic motorhead. Simone, the Castillian who speaks 'pure Castillian Spanish' and has been bumming around in London for the last 15 years, coming to India every time she is eligible for a new six-month tourist visa. Sanjay, the Delhiite who lived in posh London for five years and speaks like my friend Tom Holmes but is a Chelsea fan instead of Aston Villa. He lives in south Delhi and comes across as quite well off. He is the purveyor of the rum and charas, Sanjay.

My comment on his posh English gets him laughing. Prem says he can't understand the posh English. Xavier says the easiest English to understand is basic Indian English. I believe him. You can put an American and a Brit in the same room and watch them completely confound and misunderstand one another in supposedly fluent and native English conversation. But you put anyone in a room with someone who speaks proper Indian English and everyone understands. Xavier says that in the tourism and travel industry he's met people from every corner of the world and he's used English to speak with all of them and everyone can understand him always, so for him, basic Indian English is the best English in the world.

It's all getting very incredible.

People are high and drunk and dancing all over the place.

Xavier has to practically yell over the music to talk to me.

'Everyone says I'm not a real Indian.'

'What do you mean, not a real Indian?'

'Look at me man, I was Baptized with the name Xavier Simon. I'm not married, I have no children. I'm not a Hindu. I opened up a travel business in Goa in the seventies, got mixed up with all the hippies and freaks. I organized motorbike rallies across the length of India. Traveled all over India. Been to the middle east, the UAE and to south east Asia. Never America, Europe, Australia. But that's enough for me. I've traveled enough.'

'But you're not an Indian?'

'Of course I'm an Indian, Lands. But they say I'm not a real Indian.'

'So then what's a real Indian?'

He looks across the room at Lavi going crazy with the basic techno blasting from the speakers, high out of his mind. He is not alone in dance. Three or four other guys are partying the night away with equal zeal.

'Guys like those, they're real Indian guys. Indian guys like it heavy like this. They like to have it all. The like the Pom-pom-pom of life, the heavy bass you know man. The drink and the smoke and the music and the girls. They like to have it like this.'

'You don't drink or smoke at all?'

'I used to man, but...' he coughs deeply, as if he'd been trying not to for a while but finally had the chance to let it all out. 'I had to stop, you know. But in the seventies man, down in Goa with all those hippie freaks, I tried it all. Just to see, you know. To know what it was like. The smoke, the sniff, the acid, chasing the dragon. I tried it all, just to see how it made me, how it affected me. But none of it was really for me. I'm glad I did it all, I'm glad I know what it all means, I'm glad to have the insight into how people can see things like that as so important. But none of it was for me man. Except the smoke. I used to smoke all the time. But from ten years ago, nothing, not even a cigarette.'

'Nothing at all huh?'

'Well maybe during the Christmas season, I'll have a little to drink. But it's a special occasion. Every one does it, even the women. In Goa at least.'

I am getting stoned and growing aware that it's getting late and that my hotel locks its gate from the inside at midnight.

I explain my concern to Xavier. He tells me no problem, that I can stay here with everybody else. Looking around, there are definitely enough sofas and mattress to sleep the nine or so people hanging out. Xavier keeps talking about how good Prem's chicken is and that I must stay and try it. That I can stay there with them no problem.

The night grows more wild. And I'm struck with The Fear that they are all out to get me in my sleep, to rob me or something wrong. Everybody seems wild-eyed and crazy, even Xavier. Maybe it was the charras spooking me, but I had been stoned for hours and had no signs of paranoia setting in as a side effect. I want to trust these people. I have spent hours with them. They are good. I want them to be good. I want to stay with them and see how this night turns out. But I know I should leave. When The Fear sets in, it's time to pick up your chips and cash out. And by now it's been at least five hours that I've been locked inside this cafe doing illegal things with complete strangers. And their faces are growing more suspicious with each shot of contraband whiskey. It was time to move. It felt right. Plus I was tired and this party was not settling down anytime soon. I get up and say my thank-yous and goodbyes. They all seem sad that I am leaving, especially so close to dinner.

I promise them I'll be back tomorrow. They say I'm welcome back anytime.

I saunter away in the night, wondering how good that chicken really is.

Please don't mind the gap :: OR :: Notes from India #3

2011-02-24T02:28:00.000-08:00

“'...and we know TIME and we know everything is really FINE.' Then he whispered, clutching my sleeve, sweating, 'Now you just dig them in front. They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there – and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expression to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by then and they know it and that too worries them to no end.'"

--Jack Kerouac

Sometimes you just have to live. Write about it later.

Last time I made a blog post was back in India. That was months ago, India. I was there six weeks and got mixed up in some pretty wild shit and before I knew it I was chewed up and spit out onto an airplane in Sri Lanka, high on Valium and those tiny bottles of Scotch handed out by flight attendants. I was bound for Tokyo.

Tokyo – and Japan as a whole, as you might know – is a bit of an old haunt for me. A lot of top-class folks are still making it in Japan, still reeling in the neon and debauchery of it all. And I had to see them all.

This all went on very well, Japan. Plus it was the holidays, so everybody had time to take off work and money to spend. I had come at a good time. What ensued was a month of riotous drinking and smoking bookended by an epic roadtrip to the beating heartcenter of Japanese Buddhism and a wild NYE2010 in the biggest night club in Asia. There was a weekend in a log cabin in the snowy mountains. There was more spicy delicious curry than I've ever feasted on, even in India. Reunions with old friends abound, new bonds with fresh faces too; it all happened so quickly. And before I knew it I was in China and all that past time in Japan and India seemed so far away, like some great old dream that only ever exists in the brief flashes of the impermanent now of my mind eye.

And in China there is a vast network dubbed by someone clever as The Great Firewall and that makes using the better parts of the internet most difficult, what with the long pageload times and dial-up-modem era speeds that exist when trying to circumvent The Wall. And so now after being here in Beijing five weeks and certainly having the Time to write I just don't have the patience for all the waiting I have to do at places like Facebook and Blogger to make what I write visible to any eyes other than my own—and that, in brief, is my explanation for the absence of the blog posts.

But before I get too ahead of myself, let's get back to India.

Notes from India,
Part #3

It's December in Rishikesh. The mornings and nights are cold in the sub-Himalayan town built on the banks of the holy river Ganges. But the afternoons are warm. A pair of sandals and a t-shirt was all I really needed during the days. But it's nighttime now and I'm shivering at the East/West Cafe. I wound up here a few hours ago. I had to see Xavier Simon and tell him my story. But Simon he's a storyteller himself. And he's an Indian guy to boot. It can be difficult to get a word in with Indian guys. But if you listen to the right kind of Indian guys, you'll hear volumes of riches. The trick is being able to successfully wade through the ocean of guys who just want to talk bullshit at you if you're ever to find the sunken treasure of the one who actually has something good to say. I got lucky with Simon, he's one of the gems of India.

Before I get into Xavier Simon and his story, let me digress into the events leading up to how I came to know him, for that's a good story in and of itself.

Flashback to a few days ago. I'm in Delhi, at the airport. I have to say goodbye to Marasco. She's going home.

I left her crying at the airport. It was picturesque, one of those cinematic goodbyes where she's inside taking two steps and gazing backward with sad eyes every time she walks towards the gate. I'm outside blowing her teary kisses and wishing like hell I could just get on that plane with her and get the fuck out of India.

Because I don't want to wreck the plot with something completely devoid of pragmatism like, say, abandoning ship by running into the airport and buying a transcontinental airline ticket at the very last second in the name of love-- I let her go. It is hard. Fucking hard. A lot harder than I thought it would be. But in the end I let her go. And I get in a taxi with my backpack and head for the next train out of Delhi.

Problem is that next train out of Delhi is three hours late and since her flight departed hours before the train was meant to, I have exactly four hours and thirty eight minutes to sit around all by myself and wish I had just bought that fucking plane ticket.

I look around the station, trying to not make direct eye contact with anyone because I'm too emotionally wrecked to deal with anyone other than myself, shooing away the children begging at my arm hairs and the crippled men who pull themselves along with their palms open on the pavement. I am having the world's biggest pity party for the loneliest boy in India. No one is invited.

And this isn't getting us anywhere good or healthy so it's prudent that the train finally arrives after a great delay.

The train is painted two tones of blue that run on for mile after mile of bogie. They're all labeled, the cars (they call them bogies in India), with various classes: sleeper - non-reserved - AC 3-tier - AC 2-tier - pantry – there are others but you get the idea. They never end. I never knew a train could be this long. I'm getting nervous. They train is just meant to make a ten minute stop. I must have been walking for nine. Whistles are blowing, people scurrying frantically. I zag left to avoid a troupe of porters carrying luggage on their heads. I leap over a man lying on the ground, apparently asleep amid all the chaos. Hawkers sell old samosas to passengers through the windows. I'm lost in it all. I finally get to car A1 and find berth 41.There is a sweater vested man with square rimed glasses lying there in my space.

The berths across form mine are also occupied with bodies, but the car is pretty empty otherwise. No problem they say. 'Sit anywhere you want. We've been riding this train since yesterday, 2,000 kilometers and these seats have been empty the whole while.' I take the lower berth behind them. We make some small talk from across the aisle and then I settle into my iPod for the ride.

I'm still hosting my own little lonely pity party when I see the men they break out an enormous feast packaged in aluminum foil. It looks delicious. Warm parathas and curried peas and potatoes with cups of yogurt. Pickles. Delicious sweets. It's about now that I remember I haven't eaten anything all day.

And it was almost as if they read my mind because when I yanked out my earbud to hear that the vested man with the glasses is asking me if I want some food, I was suddenly not so lonely anymore. There wear five people, plus me. Over the course of the meal they share with me, I'm told that none of them knew the other before today and getting on the train. But that they've all come traveling with a packaged meal from home and they've been sharing the food together all day long. I graciously accepted their delicious and genuine hospitality. I chat with them a bit, but English isn't great with a few of them and soon enough the entire back and forth reverts back into their preferred regional dialect. I'm at a loss for translation and I retire back to my berth and plug back into the music.

The countyside rolls by. It is dusty and dilapidated. Mountains of garbage everywhere. Stray dogs and pigs rummage through for edible refuse. The refuse is testament to India's incredible population. It takes a billion people to make this much garbage.

When the train makes its next stop a couple of nicely dressed guys get on board, gesticulating wildly in conversation. I suspected something about them when the conductor came by to check their tickets and they did not produce any, simply having a chat at the guy instead. Not long after the conductor has gone a chai-walla came to them handed to them two hot cups of chai for free. I bought one for myself for five rupees. This prompts the two guys to talk to me. Turns out they're members of parliament in the state of Uttar Pradesh and they're just hitching a ride a few towns up. With his white head of hair wagging to and fro the elder of the two rapidly fires questions at me. Where am I from? What is my name? Where am I going? Where is my wife? Why am I not married? How old? You are Christian? How about India? Of course you will come one day to Uttar Pradesh, come to my home and meet my daughters. Here is my address....this went on for a while, the friendly interrogation. I fielded the questions and fired a few of my own back. The pacing of his English was very quick and his North India accent heavy making it hard to understand what the he hell is saying. Now he is trying to tell me about diversity in India and America and how in India you can't be diverse but that in America it's very easy to diverse, isn't it? Yeah yeah we're a diverse nation. In India he says there's a lot of women being killed over diverse and that in America no woman has even been killed by diverse. It is about now that I realize that he's talking about divorce and not diverse. When the chai walla came back around he told the walla to pour me one on the house. It is nice making friends in high places. Free chai always tastes better.

By the time the train terminates at Haridwar station it is midnight and the city is dead. Foreseeing my late-night arrival being a problem, I tactically made arrangements at a hotel in Rishikesh and arranged a taxi while I was riding the train. Rishikesh is a 40 minute drive from Haridwar. My driver did it in 20, flying down the black road of the night, blaring the horn as we took curves at dangerous speeds, slowing down only for any vehicle larger than our own, and even then only for a moment.

I got to the hotel in one piece and went to sleep immediately. In the middle of the night I was woken by a feral troop of monkeys rattling the bars of my window and pouncing violently upon the rooftop.

My arrival was so late in the night that the man working reception was fast asleep. He simply handed me a room key and went back to sleep. In the morning I was up with the sun and I had for the first time a clear look at my surroundings. Not only was the hotel room exquisite, but it's location was amazing, situated on the top floor of a hillside hotel with a perfect view of the river Ganges and the green mountains all around. I knew I had to get out immediately. This room will cost me a fortune. Plus I'm not having it with those fucking monkeys.

Downstairs I find the guy who gave me my keys still asleep behind the counter. I wake him up by drumming loudly on the wood counter top. He asks how I slept. Not great; monkeys, I say. Ahh yes the monkeys, he unsympathetically confirms. The lobby is windowless and I begin to see how the guy sleeping there gains him the advantage of a full night of monkeyless sleep. I ask him what he's charging me for the room. 'One thousand three hundred rupees a night,' he says, confident. 'What time is check out?' I respond, not even attempting to bargain down the price.

I left the place and went across the river and after scoping the scene found a roadhouse offering a room with hot water bucket shower and a ceiling fan for a hundred rupees a night. It's not much to look at and the view from the window is a jeep taxi parking lot, but it's 1200 times cheaper than the Monkey Palace and since I'm on my own I can lower my standard of living considerably.

The room has a bed and desk and cold marble floors. I unpack my things and make myself at home. I'm beat from months on the road and intend to stay here in Rishikesh for a while and regain my senses.

I take a nap on the hard bed and after I get up I'm ready to start getting a feel for the town.
Rishikesh is a holy town. The sacred river Ganges runs right through the town, flowing down from the mountains in unpolluted purity. Droves of devotees come to this place to wash away everything foul in life in the river's holy cleanse. Rishikesh is also the self-styled yoga capital of the world. It's also incredibly chilled out, the scene. It's quite, not so many cars. The great river runs serene. Nature is all around us. The prolific presence of religious sadhus in the town also makes it a hotbed for smokeable goods, which are legal in parts of India when used for spiritual enlightenment. Three kinds of people come to stay in Rishikesh for the long term: Those seeking improve their karma, those seeking to improve their yoga and those seeking to improve how high they can get. I guess I fell somewhere in between.

I didn't come to Rishikesh at random. A great friend of mine from Japan, an Indian man called Pandey Sunil Kumar, is from Rishikesh. His life now as the owner and chef of the Purnima Indian Curry House in Iwaki is the life I know him from. But before he came to Japan with the love of his life more than twenty years ago he was a yoga master in the hills of Rishikesh. I've seen only photographs and heard his stories of his old life as a yogi, but they were inspiring. The term baba is an honorific one, used in many parts of south and east Asia to denote men of great respect. Everybody I know calls Pandey Sunil Kumar, simply, Baba.

So it is by Baba's recommendation that I am here in this place. We talked on the phone the other day and I told him I was coming. He gave me some information to look into, people he knows that I should get myself involved with. I look down at what I have written in my notebook. It's not much of a lead:

in Rishikesh,
just by Ram Jhula
small chai shoppe AMRITA
owner is Shankar, Jap wife Hiromi
-Also, Swami Laxman Dass.

It wasn't much, but it was a start and I had nothing but time on my hands as I set off down the dusty street leading away from the roadhouse. The street is lined with shops selling yoga accessories and Indian nicknacks and cheap clothing. There are just as many yoga studios as there are restaurants and hotels. Cows and dogs roam freely in the streets. The great mango trees chirp with the sounds of monkeys amid the leaves. Large piles of shit are obstacles in the road. Life is full of shit everywhere in the world. It's just harder to forget it when you're in India.

I walk along the river Ganges. There is a great beach of white sand. Men in ocher robes sit in quiet meditation. An occasional beggar sticks their hand out as I make my way down the path. I don't know where I'm going, absolutely no direction. I've just this notebook with some mysterious names to guide me. I just kept on walking and walking, taking in everything I could, just trying to feel the scene completely, it's green jungle hillscapes and dusty footpaths and piles of garbage and poo and savory smells of frying goodness blowing out of open kitchen windows all around me. I just walked and looked and smelled and breathed.

I came to the great pedestrianized suspension bridge, Ram Jhula, and used it to walk across the Ganges. I then turned to the right and started walking back the the way I came but on the opposite side of the river. It was here along the way that I was approached by goateed man wearing ocher robes under a thin navy jacket. 'Where from?' he asks. 'USA.' I keep walking. 'Where going?' I keep on walking, 'I don't know.' He says okay, that he'll come with me. 'I have many many friend,' he says, pulling a small packet of short Indian cigarettes from his satchel. He offers me one. I take it. 'Many European friend. I learn English. German school.' I don't feel the immediate need to shake this guy. He knows a bit of English and gave me a smoke, seems decent enough, although a bit suspect. But since I was new in town and didn't know what to make of anything, this guy seemed all right. We talk for a while as we walk. I ask him if he knows Swami Laxman Dass, the name from my notebook. 'Yes, yes!' He says. He'll take me there. We walk on. We run into a couple of Austrians who seem to know my new friend. We stop for a minute to talk and smoke. This time I give the sadhu one of my cigarettes. The Austrians give me no indication that I need to lose this guy. We say goodbye and walk on. It's a long up hill walk on this side of the river. I'm sweating in the December afternoon once we reach the top of the hill. I buy a bottle of water off the side of the road. I drink half and give the rest to the sadhu. 'So where's Swami Laxman Dass?' I ask. 'We going. Come please this way.' I follow him further up hill. The river is now hundreds of feet below us to one side. The path is just dirt and rocks and cow poo. After a long walk we reach a gated ashram. 'This Swami Laxman Dass ashram.' he says to me. I try the gate. It's locked. 'How do I get in?' He searches his mind for a word. 'Maybe you need appointment.'
I exclaim, 'An appointment? What is this guy really important or something?'
'Yes, important man. Very holy man.'
'So how do I get an appointment?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't know?'
'I don't know. I no see.'
'Jesus, man. You could have mentioned this before we walked all the way up this mountain.'
'I find out for you tomorrow. Now we go my house, have smoke.'
'Where's your house?'
'Down mountain, by river. My house.'

Since I had to walk back down the mountain and to the riverside anyways, I didn't object right away to this guy's offer. After a lot more walking we are back to earth and sitting on a rock overlooking the river Ganges. 'I thought you said we were going to your house to smoke?' I asked, a bit annoyed and suspicious of the whole situation.
'This is my house. I sleep every night here.'
I look around. We're on a large flat rock resting about five feet above a field of smaller rocks build up along the river bank. A small campsite is set back a ways from the water. I assume it to belongs to my new friend; the charred remains of last night's fire lay black on the ground. The town is built up on the hillside behind us. The other great suspension bridge, Laxman Jhula is near by. In front of us is the sunset and the great river Ganges glowing in the dusky haze.

I look over at the sadhu to see him lighting thick black stick of charas on fire at one end.
'This best charas,' he says, not taking his eyes off his work. 'Other baba's no good, sell you cow shit.' He takes he free hand and gets a cigarette and breaks it open, the tobacco spilling into his palm. 'I no drinking. I no take drugs. I no sex. Just smoking, eating, drinking chai.' He takes the charas he's just burnt and with his fingers crumbles it into his open palm with the tobacco. It's a solid ratio of hash to tobacco. He proceeds to roll it into a ball and pack it into a red clay chillum. He hands it to me, 'Hold please.' He rummages through his satchel, looking for something. He can't seem to find it. He looks around the area. Still nothing. He then takes a piece of his robes and takes a lighter to it, tearing off a small piece of fabric with the help of the fire. 'Go ahead, smoke,' he says, offering me the torn piece of robe and lighter. I don't know what to make of this. Not only do I still have my suspicions of the whole situation, but I honestly don't know what he means for me to do. I understand the pipe and the lighter. But what's the story with the fabric? 'Go ahead, you go first,' I differ to him, handing back the chillum. He takes the fabric and wraps it around the mouth piece at the bottom of the pipe, holding it vertically, the fabric and pipe secured firmly between his middle and index finger. He lights the pipe from the top end and starts smoking vigorously, using the scrap of fabric as a filter. The whole of his hand he makes into a chamber of sorts for the smoke to fill in to before he inhales it into his lungs.
Then he passes the pipe to me. We got high on that rock overlooking the Ganges and watched the red sun fall behind the mountains with happy stoney eyes. I had not a care in the world.

The next thing I know I'm back in my hotel with music on the headphones and staring at the ceiling, entranced. On the desk is a tarry black memento I acquired from my little goateed friend. Life is full of such great music! How wonderful it all is. I let my mind wander any which way as I lay there, supremely stoned. It occurs to me rather immediately that I have once again, not eaten all day. This notion rouses me out of bed and gets me back out on the streets. The roadhouse has a dingy open air restaurant on its ground floor. Sweaty Indian men bake and fry innumerable things over raging fires and swarms of flies. I am reluctant to try eating here because of how unsanitary everything appears. A few days later I get over myself and sit down for a meal at what would become the best restaurant I would ever eat in in India. But for tonight I walk on by. Earlier in the day when I began my journey I saw a sign for free wireless internet at a place called East/West Cafe; I had my laptop and a book with me, I knew my destination.

The cafe was dead. A few Indian guys sitting in a corner with a laptop. One Russian girl hanging out with them, laughing at the screen. I sprawl out on the other side of the cafe on a large raised mattress flanked by pillows on three sides. I order chai and curry. I hang out by myself and read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying I bought when I was up in Dharamsala a week or so prior.
A older Indian guy with dark brown skin and lines of silver in his hair walks over to me with a bit of a limp and and asks if I want to read today's newspaper instead.
I tell him I'm good with the book. I don't see him again until I step outside for a smoke on the veranda overlooking the street. I offer my pack to him. He says he doesn't smoke anymore then starts coughing violently, spitting whatever he hacks up over the railing and onto the street below. He tells me he's had the bad cough for 10 days, can't shake it. I feel him. I was hacking up green shit and pulling black boogers out of my nose after just a day in Delhi.
A thin woman with a pigtailed mullet of a haircut and wooden drum walks past on the street below. She looks like she's been in India a long time. You can tell the longtimers apart from the casual backpacker just visiting the subcontinent for a look around. It's their outfitting that gives them away. People who've just gotten to India walk around with day packs and cameras, money belts under their pants and suspicion in their eyes. This girl, all she had was the hippie clothes on her back and that little old drum.
The old guy calls out her name. She looks up and waves. 'See you Wednesday?' he asks. 'Yeah, of course.' She walks away.

'How do you know her?'
'She's been here a few months now, from Italy. She'll preform at the open mic here on Wednesday.'

And this was how I got to talking with Xavier Simon.

notes from India part #2

2010-12-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

So now it has been one week since I arrived in Rishikesh. The days seem to melt away. I've hired a room in a guesthouse for 100 rupees a day. There is a restaurant on the ground floor that I believe to be the best in town. I have just returned from my afternoon meal there, a thali with dal and two vegetable curries, rice and chapati—a hearty portion of food, all for 40 rupees. At this same restaurant (it's called Traveler's Restaurant, creatively, perhaps because of its location opposite a taxi stand.), I often take a south-Indian style breakfast of masala dosa and chai, again for 40 rupees.

My cost of living is low. My quality of life is high. If I take an afternoon yoga class, the grand total for a day's expenditures is less than 300 rupees—less than six and a half US dollars.

Because of this golden cost-to-life ratio, I find the idea of moving on to somewhere else difficult to grasp. Part of me thinks: You only have two weeks left in India, take advantage of them, travel around and see as much as you can, who knows when you'll be back?

And another part of me thinks: Relax, chill out, the longer you stay, the more you'll know about Rishikesh. You'll spend less money, and you won't have to deal with the hassle of traveling within India.

My flight to Tokyo is booked for 17 December, Friday. At first I thought of staying in India for the holidays. Canadian friends Ian and Jess will be in northern India around then and I could easily spend the time with them. It would have been great fun. We would have gone together on great camel safaris through the deserts of Rajasthan and drank bang lassis under the stars.

But when it came down to it, financially, I was given a great window of opportunity—a chance to get to the next part of the world I planed on visiting, the Far East, at a nominal cost. Only 360 USD, which is a great deal considering the distance involved.

The tracks for the next stage of the trip have been laid. When I wrote Japan with hints that I may be stopping by, I was met with overwhelmingly positive response. So it looks like I'll be spending Christmas and New Year's with some familiar faces.

I guess I do feel a little regret leaving India so soon. I was issued a six month visa and I'm leaving after six weeks. I'm certainly not getting my money's worth. But as it is, funds are dwindling and I may as well keep moving forward with the plan.

I had always intended to make a grand return to Japan. It's just going to be a lot sooner than everyone expected.

from the veranda of room 202

writing desk.

shrine I've made upon the desk.

living life.

River Ganges and the Sun

Notes from India, part 1

2010-11-21T04:52:00.000-08:00

Notes from India.

Delhi

***

That dalmatian, I keep thinking about that dalmatian with his perfect purebred spots and round saggy balls. A purebred dog roaming the streets of Delhi seems markedly out of place in this city of dirty mutts. His spots put a mark on his head. He is a foreigner in this land. Just like me.

I wonder where he came from and how he got here. In fact I wonder where all these stray beings came from. All these wandering souls, where are they going? Where have they come from? Where am I going, where have I come from. When you're one in a billion, I guess it doesn't really matter in the end.

---

Nobody seems to smoke standard cigarettes in India. But everybody is undoubtedly smoking. It is evident by the piles of matchsticks discarded in areas where groups of men congregate. But I never seem any of them smoking, and there are no butts littering the ground along with matchsticks and everything else.

The men of India seem to prefer the smoke of beedies, stout little hand-rolled joints that smoke a little harsher than an unfiltered Marlboro Red; it's a little stingier than a cigarette's, too, the smoke. The absence of standard cigarette butts swimming in the sea of matchsticks littering the ground helps me conclude that the men must be smoking beedies, the discarded end bit of which is easily overlooked by anyone not searching for it.

The women, they don't smoke at all. Except Marasco. She puffs down the gaspers like they're going out of style. And everybody seems to watch her while she's doing so. To date we have encountered one Indian woman smoking. But she was also riding an autorickshaw by herself in Delhi so she was obviously a rebel against social norms on many levels. (According to one source, Indian women do smoke quite a lot, but only in private.)

---

Never in all my travels have I been to such a dense and crowded place. The volume is outstanding. Anywhere you go, no matter the time of day or far-flung the local, Delhi is fucking crowded. Some people here badly stink. Some folks you can have one look at and give them a pass on stinking: the poor and disadvantaged, the athletic, the young or old. But it is hard to grasp how a person who is fashionable, who invests both thought and effort in their appearance, can allow their body to stink so incredibly. There is nothing wrong or bad about stinking. I sometimes relish my own scent after three showerless days. But it just seems under-prioritized or out of place when a fashionable person allows their body to smell like my armpit after a day at the gym.

I came to this revolution just yesterday when my nose was in fact buried in the armpit of a fashionable man riding the subway. His outstretched arm was holding on to the handrail. My nose nestled precariously near the dark-moist circle of sweat on his satin shirt around the point where humerus meets scapula. I could not move because I was sharing the subway car with about 5,254 other people. The fact that my nose was stuck in another man's armpit was not a concern of any of theirs. In fact I think I may have gotten a few jealous stares because of my extra breathing room.

---

If you've ever made it through a role-playing videogame (an RPG, a game like Final Fantasy or Xenogears), you're certainly familiar with the term strategy guide or walkthrough. Games like these take upwards of 70 or 80 hours to complete and are chock full of so many nuances and easily-overlookable-yet-of-paramount-importance-to-finishing-the-game type items that successfully playing an RPG without a walkthrough is nearly impossible. Yet having the walkthrough hurts you as much as it helps you. Every new screen clear means another page of walkthrough to read and more seemingly important items to get. And soon enough you realize that you're not really playing the game as much as you're reading how to play the game and then just gaming what you read.

I don't think it's much of a stretch to draw a parallel to a videogame walkthrough and a travel guide such as Lonely Planet. Both the walkthrough and the travel guide serve the same purpose, to help you win. So they are unarguably a great resource, because who doesn't want to win at life. But I think it's important to not over-rely on the book, if you do I think it can greatly devalue the experienced, or even worse: turn what is meant to be a truly unique and personal journey into the same pre-constructed package trip that came to everyone else who bought the book.

---

On getting to Amritsar

We booked an overnight bus, which may or may not have been the great mistake in the first place. The printout confirmation of our tickets said something mysterious like Boarding: 8:00PM which is a long way in terms of meaning from Departure or Take Off. Plus, a separate timetable said the bus was to depart at 10 o'clock Friday evening. We decided to get to the bus station in Old Delhi at half nine.

Upon arrival I realized I did not have my phone. We made friends with some white girls waiting for the same bus and used their phone to call Caitlin to have her call the driver Ravi and tell him to come back to where he dropped us off with my missing phone. Could have been a disaster. But it worked out in the end, and we made a few new acquaintances. The girls who loaned us their phone all lived in Delhi and were escaping for the weekend to Amritsar. They had been sitting around the filthy open-air bus depot since before 8:00PM, like we would have been if we trusted our tickets. They were not as perturbed as I may have been if I had a similar folly. 'Welcome to India,' I joked wryly. They smiled and nodded back in a way that told me India had been welcoming them for far too long already. The man who dealt with our tickets out of his wooden shack which was stuck between an endless row of similar bus ticketing shacks assured us that our bus would arrive at 10:30. Once it had come to and past that time, the ticketing agent assured us every ten minutes that bus would arrive in as much time. This went on for an hour until a rickety old Soviet-era clunker with fading white paint job came sputtering around the bend. The ticketing agent called out to us: There's your bus! Hurry before it leaves you!

We high-tail it across the filthy bus depot lot and get to the bus. We have on large rucksacks, Marasco and I. The first instinct I have is to allow my pack to be thrown on top of the bus by porters and tied down amidst all the other parcels so dubiously secured to the rooftop with old rope. I entertain this notion until I observe that none of the other luggage meant to be secured on the rooftop is actually making on top. Some if getting hoisted up and then tossed back down by the porter. Some of it just lay there roadside gathering grime and dust. Marasco makes the wise decision that we are not allowing our packs anywhere near the roof and come hell or high water they will ride inside the cabin with us. We squeeze on board. There is great chaos and confusion amongst the passengers. The three girls from earlier have disappeared into upper berth sleeper seats. They have all seem to have filled up, the sleeper seats. Our assigned sleeper seats were certainly taken up by other bodies. We made an executive decision to take the last available sleeper compartment at the front of the bus. This seems to annoy a whole lot of other people who had their eyes on the same space. Couple with this fact that Marasco and I, a man and woman, are sharing the upper berth sleeper cabin, and you have a lot of scowls and stares coming from the crowd we just so royally pissed off. At any rate, we climb up and secure ourselves and our packs inside a space that probably was not even large enough to fit a refrigerator turned on its side. It was just enough space to make an L shape with our packs along the narrow perimeter and cram our bodies into what little space we had left between.

My feet were stuck in Marasco's face, her's in mine. One of us may have stepped in poo a while back; it's hard to tell which one of us it was. The outside facing windows of our coffin-like cabin have a thin steel bar bolted across the midway, presumably to prevent any body from falling out. This bar has a twofold use in that we also can use it to grab on for dear life every time the overcrowded, overloaded bus makes a turn of greater than ten degrees. The shift in weight of the top-heavy bus was so pronounced that with each wild turn we convinced ourselves that the bus really was going to tip over this time. It never did though. And after that first gut clenching thirty minutes, we kind of got used to the weird sensation of gravity failing us each time the bus rounded a corner.

Eventually, through the din of horns and motors, we even managed to fall asleep. On several occasions the bus would stop inexplicably for long periods of time. There was not anything resembling an information ticker or even a friendly announcement by one of the four guys riding in the front with the driver whenever the bus stopped. The driver just seemed to stop the bus whenever he fancied and us passengers just had to wait like the captive audience we were. At some point in the night the bus stopped for two hours. Armed guards boarded and searched all over with flashlights. This happened twice. By the time the sun had risen to the new day we were still at least five hours away from Amritsar. It was painfully obvious that this was not going to be the ten-hour bus we signed up for. Somewhere around 10 o'clock that morning Marasco says that she's had to pee for hours and that she's considering straddling a plastic sack unless she can get off this bus and take leak. I climb down from the upper berth and knock on the glass door dividing cab from the rest of the bus.

'Toilet?' I ask hopefully.

A blank stare responds.

'Toilet,' I say again, this time gesturing with my left hand next to my cock like I'm taking a piss.

One of the guys points to the open door of the bus, seeming to indicate to me that it's cool if I take a piss off of the moving bus.

'No, no. For the Lady,' I say, pointing to Marasco tucked away in the upper berth about to piss herself.

They seem to understand me and after not so long the bus pulls over to the side of the road. Marasco runs out and pops a squat behind a building and takes the longest pee in the world. The rest of the bus happened to be mostly men and we all just pissed out in the open on to the dirt and weeds.

Back on the bus, bladders emptied, we enjoyed the small bottle of water and cookies we brought along for the ride. We fell asleep. When we woke up we weren't there. We fell asleep. When we woke up again the bus was stopped again. The driver was giving it his best shot, but he couldn't get the engine to turn over. Our bus was officially broken down. We knew it was time to cut our losses and get the hell out. The three girls from Delhi had the same idea and somehow managed to find out that the city bus that just rolled by was headed to where we needed to be. We all start running for it and literally jump on through the back door as it is driving away. I make it on last, somehow managing to carry both Marasco's rucksack and my own, and get inside just before the bus passes through a narrow underpass that would have clipped the pack that was protruding from the open door only seconds earlier.

And now we're in Amritsar. The food is delicious. The Sikh pilgrims all over the place are fascinating. The golden temple is outstanding as the best thing to happen in India so far. Our room at the Hotel Grace is nice and the staff is friendly and has not robbed us of anything. The only big problem now is that Marasco is realizing that she must leave India soon. Even though I gave her $500 to keep her floating, that won't take her all the way to the end. She knows she has to go, but she's really torn about leaving. I don't want her to go. Not really looking forward to traveling alone, but I think it will be good for me too, to go solo. I'm trying not to think about it too much. She's thinking about it quite a lot, enough for both of us really. It will happen when it happens. And it will be so sad. But we'll make it through just fine and come out stronger in the end, the two of us.

the longest day ever :: OR :: How to get to India. In 21 points.

2010-11-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

1.) Mistake your 00:35 departure for the same time the next day.
2.) Spend three hours getting to the Istanbul Asian-side airport once you've made it there on the Right day.
3.) Get to the airport for the midnight flight only to find out that due to heavy fog all flights have been diverted to another airport.
4.) Get thrown on a bus with an entire airplane's worth of people and get shuttled to a different airport 90km away.
5.)After a three hour delay, finally get on the plane bound for the Middle East.
6.) Arrive before noon. Realize you have not slept.
7.) Weave through crowds of haj pilgrims at Sharjah airport. Get angry because no eateries take plastic. Except McDonalds.
8.) Eat a McArabia wrap. Enjoy.
9.) Wait.
10.) Wait. Some more.
11.) Wait. Some. More.
12.) Get on plane bound for Mumbai. (finally!)
13.) Land in the city at night, as fireworks are exploding for Dwali.
14.) Have two hours before the 11pm flight to Dehli.
15.) Have it all unfold into chaos before your eyes.
16.) Guards with guns refuse us entry into the domestic side of the airport because we dont have a printout of our onward flight itinerary.
17.) We are ejected from the airport and must take a taxi around the premises to the domestic airport 4km away. This is nerve racking because we have 30min until the ticket desk will close at 10pm.
18.) Unscrupulous taxi driver aside, we make it to where we need to be with minutes to spare.
19.) The flight is canceled.
20.) We are booked on the next flight. At 6 a.m.
21.) Spend the night in an airport for a second night in a row.

becuase facebook only lets you post 420 letters for a status update, and this is 492

2010-10-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

having gone downstairs to the street to smoke a cigarette with the wine, we hear music coming from around the corner. It gets louder as we round the bend. We see a crowd of people surrounding a makeshift stage between epic statues of killers and gods. And it was just a skinny baritone voiced guy with guitar and his old friend with a trumpet, but they sounded powerful. Now the wine is gone and we're in bed, but the music is still going on and on into the night. I do think I love Florence.

Prague, you're a toilet for my love.

2010-10-11T02:59:00.000-07:00

Prague is probably the most beautiful city in the world. Therefore, Prague is also probably the world's biggest tourist trap, because aren't we all a sucker for pretty things.

Imma go head and say that Prague is even more beautiful than Paris. Marasco will greatly contest me saying so. But insofar as pound-for-pound beauty I think old mother Praha is the winner.

The point of contention here, as Marasco is not shy to point out, is that while Prague is beautiful, every part of the city worth seeing is crawling with tourists and otherwise populated with people who are more than willing to take her money, which she thinks seriously erodes the charm of this city.

The restaurants are seemingly absent of actual Czech people. The souvenirs are so egregiously marked up that one cannot walk away from this place without paying dearly for even a pocket sized memento. Tours of the city will cost double what you'd pay in any other major European capital, and entry to the sights will cost what you'd otherwise spend in a day for food.

So you can see her point that these big minuses degrade the experience of Prague and therefore also its beauty.

But for reasons not really clear to me or Marasco, I still fucking love this place.

Is it a rip-off?

Absolutely.

But does that take away from the experience of the city?

Not at all.

I see it like this:

This place, with its cobblestone roads and charming European facades, with its medieval castles and baroque churches, and baroque churches that look like medieval castles, with its river and bridges so old they grandfather an entire young country like my own--it's so picture perfect it's priceless.

And that's just the thing. You can walk right into this city for nothing more than the cost of your transportation; you can wander around its multicolored labyrinth of alleys and avenues, looking at the stunning display of architectural beauty that man is capable of when he puts his mind to stone and steel, all for the cost of a train ticket.

Since a city can't rightly charge an entry fee, the cost is made up in other ways, i.e., in the shops and museums and attractions you'll inevitably patronize while you're in Prague. And a 20 percent tax on everything you buy adds to the total even more. But I'm sure part of that tax goes to helping keep the city as beautiful as it is.

But Marasco holds her ground. 'You can see these old European facades in any city on this continent! Half of this shit was rebuilt after the war anyways, it's a fucking rip off! When those little furry fake ferrets chasing balls cost 17 euro, you know there's something wrong. Take me back to Germany.'

'Why Germany?'

'Because things were really reasonable in Germany.'

'Like what?'

'Everything.'

'Everything?'

'The only thing that's reasonable in Prague is public transportation and beer.'

'And god bless the beer.'

'I know, right? Wait...Are you typing this?'

'...'

' You are! You're just scribing this conversation, aren't you, you cheeky fucker?'

'...'

'Stop that!'

It was chilly in the morning, so we bought hot wine. It was outside of a church. On Sunday.

Some busted glass on a door by the river

See? This place is gorgeous, right?

Annnd, it was the first time we had blue sky in weeks.

View from the top

View from the bottom.

View from the absinthe bar where I indulged myself way to early in the morning

lesson learned the lush way

2010-10-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

When you're doing Europe on the cheap, as Marasco's mother would say, going for quantity over quality, you will constantly find yourself sleeping in a room with ten other people. Some of these people go to sleep early. Some of them late. The point is, whenever you choose to go to sleep will be exactly when half of the room is fast asleep and the other half is still out for the night. What follows is a fascinating display of comeuppance, really—when knowing full well that you have woken up every soul in the room with your unzipping of zippers and unlocking of locks and rustling of sheets and the creek and squeak of the bed all while epically failing to be as quiet as possible throughout this whole ordeal in complete darkness—well—you will undoubtedly annoy all those folks you woke up so innocently.

And, hours later, after you have finally fallen asleep through all the nighttime noises of a backpackers' hostel—the opening and closing of doors constantly, the muffled voices from adjacent rooms and hallways, the various and unique individual sleeping snores and snorts and grunts and farts of your bunkmates—and you're all nice and asleep in spite of it all, and then the rest of the room will stumble in in the middle of the night and wake you up, just like you woke up everyone else. And really there is no better word to describe this scenario than comeuppance.

There are only two choices to really get rest in a ten man dorm: 1.) Go to bed early, factoring in several hours of time which you will spend lying helplessly wide awake as the room settles around you. Or, 2.) Get so blindingly drunk that you can simply stumble in without a care in the world and just pass out.

I have tried both.

Each choice has clear advantages and disadvantages. Going to sleep early and sober affords you the time to have a shower, to clean your teeth, to take care to lock up valuables, to actually change into pajamas. But you will sleep awfully in the noisy room around you.

With the latter choice you basically strip off your bar-soaked clothes and crawl under sheets of questionable cleanliness, naked. You thoughtlessly leave all of your valuables open to theft, for in your drunkenness you have no presence of mind to lock them away. You are prone to all sorts of violation in the night. When you wake up in the later portion of the a.m. hours, these facts dawn on you once you realize where you are and what has happened. But it is undeniable, you slept like a king for a solid eight to ten hours, absolutely oblivious to all the snorts and squeaks and sounds of reconstitution that kept the rest of the room awake as you make them all night long.

Which scenario is better, I don't really know.

Drinking Beer in Germay

2010-09-29T15:01:00.001-07:00

Here's how to go on a pub crawl in Germany:

You pick a random German town, any one will do. In this example, we'll use Cologne, which I suppose is technically the fourth largest city in Germany—but this choice should effect nothing but variables in this experiment anyhow, so there is no worry if you choose a different town. I am confident everything will work out for you.

It helps to have a beautiful woman with you. For whatever reason, a beautiful woman at your side—or at the very least, one who walks in the door with you—will get you noticed by the barmen faster. If you do not have a beautiful woman to make an entrance with, now is the chance to pick one up. Make sure to wear nice shoes and try not to look too homeless as you loiter outside the entrance until a lovely lady walks in.

(I have been fortunate in that I have not had the need to pick up a beautiful woman in years. The one I got is mighty fine.)

This causes the barman to say Hallo. He does not say this to you specifically; it is more so in your general direction, which is the same as the beautiful woman's.

Now suddenly there is a large German man behind a bar looking at you like you need to engage him rather immediately. You must speak to him. If you've done your research, you'll know the specialty beer of the town you're in. If not, here's to hoping you've at least had the foresight to at least look at the specials menu written on the chalkboard outside.

The specialty beer in Cologne is Kölsch. A glass of the stuff should cost no more than 1,60 euro. You're making out well if you can find it for 1,20.

It is clear by your lack of Germanic social graces that you are a foreigner.

The chance that the barman speaks better English than your German is fairly high. This does not matter.

According to a good source who is German with an American wife with whom he's lived away from his home Deutschland for many years and therefore has vast experience in not speaking one's native tongue in a foreign land: You should try to sprechen ze Deutsch.

You must order two beers. You have no knowledge of countable nouns or plurals in German. You don't even know if this shit is masculine or feminine or whether or nor it matters.

You say the word for two: zwei; the word for the type of beer you like: Kolsch; and the word please: bitte.

Zwei Kölsch, bitte

It is miraculous, but somehow how this works.

He hands you the beer.

This is a great success.

Then he says to you something high speed and undecipherable. It is presumably the price, he has said but you have no fucking idea. He might be asking you if you want schnitzel.

This is why it's über important to check the price on the specials chalkboard outside, so you know beforehand what you'll owe, and so that you can complete the transaction looking like you at least tried—which according to our good source will have pleased his kinsman greatly.

(This is wayy off point, but German lat night tv, specifically the adult services commercials is fucking down right softcore pornographic. I am sitting in the smoking lounge of the Station Hostel writing this after having come off a Kolsch heavy pub crawl across the city and I'm riding out this heavy feeling in my legs here in front of the keys instead of going to bed, and there is this Tv on the wall showing these fucking erotic adverts for those services which you call a number to have sex on a phone. And all I can think is that if it were like this back home and about 15 years younger and secretly watching Tv late at night specifically to see these sort of things and lean something about the opposite sex, well, I'd be in boob heaven.)

Anyways....

You have a beer. It is deliciously successful.

You leave and go to a new bar.

You try a new kind of Kölsch.

It is delicious.

You leave and go to a new bar.

You try a new kind of Kölsch.

It is delicious.

You leave and go to a new bar......

….you can see where this is going...and where it gets you.

And now you've broken the seal. You have to piss like ze German racehorse.

You go downstairs to the toilet.

You have neglected to look up in your German phrasebook which is the word for Male and which is for Female.

You have to make a choice.

Only one is right.

Here's to hoping you make the right one.

Prost!

last one from stateside

2010-09-20T21:35:00.000-07:00

Not dead. Just on the road. Sixteen states in six weeks. Like a hurricane blasting its way across the seas, my path was well charted. The timing, too, was impeccable, for this trip. And now, after it is all said and done--the repatriation in Texas, the reunions in Seattle, the first steps into New York, the embrace of Marasco and her family, the high times in Philly, the beautiful farce that is Washington DC, the long drive West, through more and more fields of corn and soy than I ever knew could exist, Kansas--no place like home, then on we went, Marasco and I, down to see my brother in his roach motel of a home, then into Arkansas, a strange state where shop clerks are friendly and baseball caps are sold with bottle openers affixed to the bill, then after a week of opening beers with our hats, drove all the way across the longest state ever, Tennessee (okay maybe tenichally there are longer states, but I don't really give a shit) and all the way up and over the great Smokey Mountains and down into the Navajo res in North Carolina and then epic goodtimes with the Davidsonians and after all that a week at the beach in Ocean City Maryland and now, finally, after everything, I'm back here where i started, at Marasco's parent's house, with so many stories to tell, but no time to write them because we're leaving for Iceland in two more sleeps and there's way-too-much-shit-to-do-before-we-leave and I shouldn't even be on the computer, so fuck it.

Reduced Price Sociology. Buy Now!

2010-09-03T18:48:00.000-07:00

Little Rock, Arkansas |Two disgruntled adults, one complaining about the negativism found in wearing suspenders and a belt together, the other trying to convince herself that she's not an old woman get a blast of cold air conditioned goodness on the outside, before they walk into the automated sliding class doors and into the mammoth grocer in the suburbs at the end of the world.

They are now in the largest vessel of the Kroger chain of grocery stores in the USA, the old adults.

An attendant in white, one of several manning the antechamber, offers a map to make the store less maze-like without noting the conciet that needing a map to a store makes it a maze intrinsically or the idea of a grocery having an antechamber is a bit redonk in the first place.

They walk past the attendant at a brisk pace and go inside and take a hard left and the elder of the two mutters something about not needing a map to do his shopping.

Now the old man is standing next to a wall of bagged ruffages going wild at the choice. Here available to him are the the typical iceberg lettuce with the little bits of purple cabbage and carrot cut up so thin they all end up swimming together in the pool of dressing at the bottom of the bowl once you eat all the green stuff, and there's the spring mix type where there are bitter tasting crunchy little plants mixed in with some leafy shit, and you have the kind that's like a romaine type with the accouterments to make it Caesar, croutons and all, and there's Garden mix and Italian mix, and Family Size mix and Baby Spinach mix and he is absolutely inundated with choice, the old man.

'Which one do I get?' he asks his wife.
'Whichever one you want, honey.'
'You mean, I can pick any of them?'
'You can have anything you want.'
'This is amazing.'
'Welcome to America.'

Over their shoulder, next to the mountain of apples that were trucked in from Everett, WA to a fruits distributor in the USA state of Georgia and then redistributed with 'From Georgia' stickers when they went back out on the the truck. And now they're here, the apples, next to pair of Indian people sorting out how much pound-for-pound value they are worth over some other type of apple. Another couple across the way seem to be making the same evaluation over peppers of disputable origin.

A woman of presumably Caribbean ancestry and with a considerable amount of both hair and tattoos almost drops her child as she browses the olive bar.

Now deeper in the labyrinth, browsing the aisle of cold beer, a trio of hicks with gold tipped Lucky Strikes stuck behind their ears-- one of them wearing a sleaveless tshirt with a Confederate flag and something about being born and dying a rebel-- pick up 24 pack of beer which they will consume much like a flock of middle schoolers would a case of Coke Classic on a hot summer LAN party night.

On mid-aisle display somewhere in the back, towards the processed cheese foods, are 10 for $1o quart sized tubs of sour creams of varying fat content. The old man has elected to carry his own basket over choosing to maneuver one the massive shopping wagons. He cynically ponders the dubiousness in providing only such massive pushcarts so that shoppers feel impulsively the need to fill their carts to the brim, lest they go home without enough. Then he sees a cart of alternate size and notes the ingenuity in the old man pushing the cart while also using it as a functioning walker. Clever and resourceful, these USA type old men.

He takes a turn down the aisle 20xx-A, and now his is wishing he had taken that map from the attendant in the antechamber to consult on which side of the aisle he might be able to find some salad dressing. But when he takes a look around he realizes he is surrounded by about 52 million different kinds of salad dressing.

'How long has it been since we've gone to the shop?' he wonders aloud to his wife.
'It's been years and years, my sweet dear.'
'We've been away for far too long.'
'How could we have ever lived without 52 million choices of salad dressings?'
'Why are we living like this?'
'Isn't it grand?'

In a checkout lane the under-21 cashier and her over-21 cowoker who was paged over the in-store PA to come to the checkout and ring up an alcoholic beverage purchase for a Jewish woman who's already pulled out a Amex Gold card and just previously made the under-21 cashier run across the store and price check some Hass avocados that were ringing up for $1.39 a piece when she swore she saw a sign that said they were on sale for a buck each, and she has absolutely nothing but the minimum desire to have anything to do with this person for the least amount of time possible. Both of these woman feel this for each other, the minor and the Jew.

Stuck behind them in line while all this pans out are a sorted lot of drunk looking men with the night's bounty of cold ones clasped to their chests. One of them babbles something incoherent about the cashier girl's age and it not being high enough to enable him fast enough. The guy in front of him wonders if the law is in place so that this poor girl has a fighting chance not to end up just like all these drunk hicks.

Off in the parking lot, a seventeen year old girl gives a bj in her dad's car.

city of clouds & water : photos

2010-08-14T10:37:00.001-07:00

Woke up on floor to bright sunny day

in Seattle, USA

first there was a walk to Fremont cafe

with old friend jamil and new friend tara

then we saw soviet-era bronze working of good comrade Lenin, $150,000 obo

after, we travel downtown

and check out the market

but not long enough to see them throw fishes

somewhere there was big chess

and people making art

at volunteer park, we walk up the water tower

to see mt. Rainer in the distance
taller than mt. Fuji, but not by much

then, around the water

we find allison

and we take some pictures

of pretty things

and ugly things

and old things

until we finally reach

the best view of them all.

city of clouds & water

2010-08-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

And now where are we? Out of that big TEJAS place and now into the city of clouds and water. Except that now the city is shrinking away from view as this passenger ferry floats away from the City and out in to the great Puget Sound towards the outer rim, the northewestern peninsula where the old man and old woman, my grandparents, live in their house upon the hill. Yesterday Jamil and Tara opened their home to me. Beautiful!, those people, that home. And I will end up back there again one day, I hope soon. Smaller now, cloudy city, middle of the water, this boat, it goes and goes, never stops, can't even say how many times I've been on this same ferry boat, chug-a-lug along the water. The old folks on the hill, they'll see me and say My Oh My look at you, look at the BEARD, come now, son, shave that beard, you look homeless. But for once, it's true, the homelessness. But so far so good, this newly minted lack of residence. The only problem is the stuff. The ANCHORS in life, weighing in, hampering movement, pressing hard and fast and heavy on my shoulders, this 40L North Face hiking pack, now containing the end sum of my most valued possessions. But no sweater. Wish there was a sweater, in this PACnw climate—technically Mediterranean, if'yer book learned—cause it's chilly. Chilly enough to make you regret sleeping naked. Not Cold, now, no—just chilly. You don't need shoes. Which is nice, because anything more than flip/flops doesn't mesh well with le homeless chic. But man, a sweater would be nice. Good NZ wool sweater, merino if you don't mind. That would be choice. But I'm settling for this torn pair of jeans and the black oxford shirt, the outfit I carry along in case I go some place fancy, for the time being. And now we can't forget Allison! She's an old soul and an old friend. We're going to have a curry one day. It will be a highlight of the 10 days in the northwest, I am certain. She (Allison) and Jamil and I had a ren.dez.vous just after my landing on the Continental flight 1888 and it lasted late into the night. But those two friends of mine, they're employed and today is a Monday and so, now they're doing what most employed people do on Monday. And I'm on this boat. Get on the boat! There's plenty of seats! I can keep you company! All alone now, on this boat with my anchors. I don't handle solitude well. Some people thrive in it, but I get this strange feeling when I'm alone on the road, like I Need to Be Somewhere Else. And so I tend to blast through whatever I'm trying to see or do when I'm alone so that I can get so somewhere with more people. Could have spent all morning in cloudy Seattle but went straight for the ferry after only 20 minutes of city time alone.

And now I'm in the heart of the House Upon the Hill and it's a day or two later and the city of clouds is off around the bend in the water. I arrived at a time when nobody was home and they said Wait and they'll come get me in half and hour, but I decided that I didn't want to wait, so I walked from the ferry terminal along the rocky algae green low tide pacific rim sea side road in this gem of a town Port Orchard, carrying with me the 40L Northface hiking pack which must weigh its volume in pounds, as well as a soft guitar case, which in addition to my old wooden axe, contained a macbook and a week's worth of clothing and may have weighted 20 pounds. The air here, along the coast, smells like sea musk. I strongly associate this place and that smell together. I underestimated the distance it takes to walk from the ferry terminal in the quaint town center to the gparent's House Upon the Hill and I regretted turning down a lift from a man with half a mouth full of teeth driving a red pick up filled with lawn maintenance equipment. The Hill, I forgot, is brutal. But I made it. Here I am. Until tomorrow. I got to get out of here, back to the city of clouds. Got to see Jamil & Allison & Tara. Got to take some photos. Got to find The North Face store and price shop a newer, bigger pack for the upcoming trip around the world.

So much to do. All I have is time.

homeless in houston, part 3

2010-08-04T16:49:00.000-07:00

'And le poos how are you finding them now, on the third day?'

'Why are you so concerned about my poos? What's your deal?'

'I recall with great clarity le poos from the last time you tried going to USA. It was nothing but an explosive mess; for weeks. I am simply concerned for your well being.'

'Well get off it.'

'Oh, come on now.'

'Fuck yourself.'

'As your personal physician, I demand to know about them, le USA poos.'

'Fine. They're just fine.'

'And the colour?'

'...'

'Green. Brown. Black. Depends on the day.'

'...'

'And your condition, of the sleeping...la jisaboke in the Nipponese?'

'Give me till Friday, then I'm golden.'

'You seem feverish, may I take your temperature with this Fahrenheit thermometer?'

'I'm still getting used to the Fahrenheit, don't you have Celsius?'

' I'm afraid all we have is the Fahrenheit, this is America you know.'

'How could I forget?'

'You can't, actually. Oh, look--I found a Kelvin thermometer, this will do?'

'I don't think so.'

'...'

'What do you want from me? It's fucking 40ºC here and you're going on about a Kelvin thermometer?'

'Perhaps we can use it to measure the degrees in K of these shops in town.'

'Fucking iceboxes, these places.'

'You'd rather be hot?'

'When it's 40ºC outside and 20ºC inside, it kind of fucks up my system. I have a delicate constitution these days. It's summer; it should be hot. Why kid ourselves with this air-con.'

'Because we are Americans. We love to kid ourselves.'

'No kidding.'

'...'

'By the way, what is 40ºC in Fahrenheit?'

'...'

Vagrancy Blogs: homeless in houston: the second night

2010-08-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

Wake up in a soft blue carpeted room on top of a USA bed. Clock says 04:00, pitch black sky, yet wide awake eyes. Such great Contrast, then and now. The sun will tell you a lot about a place, this place is different, TEJAS, old frontier state now so big Big BIG on everything, so much of everything ::: direct effect, here, on le poos, which now consist of USA diet and are USA sized, TEJAS sized, which--for the record--is abnormally large ::: as are the cars, no, trucks really-- cars are too small for this place--but so big Big BIG...I mean you know, they have to be of such notable size, to fit the people, the big people, of which there are more than plenty of, the biggies. But I have this grandmoms and she's no biggie, no, small lady with small lady car but big ideas and heart and mind so right, righter it seems than most, righter than mine for certain, the mind...it goes on tangents processing this all this change. But

the consumer zeitgeist--The Spirit, if you will--is the same here as it was back on the island Nippon. Shop & Buy & Drive & Pay & Shop & Buy & Spend & Go & Go & Go...& it's all the same idea, the way of life, the pursuit of happiness, except the scale is askew to me because I still have not overcome the difference in Proportion. More cars for more people, more people for more space, more space for more stuff, more stuff for more money, more money for more power, more power for more prosperity, more prosperity for more happiness, more happiness for more self-worth, more self-worth for more esteem, more esteem for more acceptance, more acceptance for more complacence, more complacence for more of the same and same and same and same, but not same. Different. Same Same Different, like anyone in Thailand will tell you, it's all the same. So why, then, do we need to walk into the SUPER market and have such overwhelming choice? I had forgotten there are about 52 million different types of salad dressing and twice as many TV stations. Everyone is begging me to consume something, and so nicely, they've given me a mindblowing array of choice, but it's so much choice that I am spending more time choosing what to consume than I do actually consuming it. And this is starting to seem a little excessive to me on this third night.

'And so are you losing your mind?'

'I don't think so. I think I can handle it.'

'But you are in the heart of the American Dream, how nightmareish, is it not?'

'I am sleepwalking, I have no control.'

'Who needs control anyways? Let us control it for you. Just sit back and relax.'

'Something about just giving in to it like that seems wrong.'

'You can do no wrong, You must pursue the American Dream, it is your God Given Right.'

'Nobody'll tell me what to do !!'

'Right. Except me.'

'Who are you?'

'I am you.'

'No.'

'Yes.'

Vagrancy blogs: homeless in houston

2010-08-02T04:07:00.000-07:00

20:01 and the sun is still shining, at a dining room table in suburbia, welcome to Kingwood, TX -- "The Livable Forest"

'And so you are feeling the sickness, like anti-home sentiment--a reverse-homesickness, if you will?'
'No, no, it's not quite that. At first there was this profound sadness, this deep-gaping-wound sort of feeling...as if there were a death in the family.'
' 'At first' you say, but now?'
'But now that feeling is so far removed. Not like it's Gone, but like removed, physically, like some under the trousers wart, clandestinely removed, from an inner thigh, perhaps--nobody around knew it was there in the first place, so now that it's gone how can they possibly relate to it being gone, the metaphorical absence, as it were.'
'So like the total lack of familiar understanding of what you gave up when you left what became your home for what was your home before you left for the future home is difficult for them to grasp, the members of the family of the original home?'
'You couldn't have said it less clearly, but yes, that seems accurate.'
"And so visa vis the total lack of understanding and empathy, the fact that you're dealing with such great psychological shock is overshadowed by the fact that you are home?'
'Something like that.'
'So you are spending your time lamenting the fact that there will be no more time in the old home?'
'No, that's just it. The fact is so totally unrelatable to anyone that it's a moot point. totally unconversable, this stone cold lack of empathy is helpful in a way.'
'The American people couldn't give a shit, so you might as well get over yourself and get on with their game?'

'Pretty much. Why do you think we're having a conservation with ourself? It's not just to be clever.'

'And btw, how is your shit these days, now 24 hours in to your arrival 'Home'?

'After the 12 hour flight it came out explosively, with great force. There had to be a shower afterwards. The altitude perhaps the culprit. But now after eating standard USA food for a day, everything is coming out black, the turds.'

'Well, like your sadness, this too will pass.'

'Stop being an asshole with your puns.'

'No, sir, why don't you?'

The Vagrancy Blogs: one last post from Iwaki

2010-07-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

When you have a looming deadline and serious work to accomplish, it is vital to waste no time. Some people may think this means that one should spent all their time working towards said deadline, fuck all else. But what if you finish early? Then you have wasted time doing something that did not need to be done until later. The gods of time have blessed me, I have very good timing. Yesterday I handed over the keys to my top floor apartment. I no longer live there. The space is now someone else's to occupy and I am technically homeless. And unemployed. Let experiment Vagrancy 2.0 begin!

The best image I can give to the experience of the last few days living in the modest top floor apartment is that of Me pushing a gigantic ball up a very steep mountain. The Saturday and Sunday before the move proved to be more play than work and the ball did not progress to new heights and then on Monday I finally had the power to push the ball over the peak of the mountain, at which point I had to run along with it at top speed: packing, mailing, cleaning, scrubbing, giving, discarding, scouring, drinking, sweating, cursing, fucking, purging, praying, dreaming, loathing, paying, losing, finding :::: until finally acquiescing into the reality that after three years of great times in that top floor apartment that I love so much, it was time to say goodbye. It got more cleaning in two days than I gave it in three years. Layers of black scum, caked on by the feet of countless good nights all over the floors, scraped away by me and Marasco on our hands and knees, a fitting final homage to the shrine we called our home, our life.

And now it's Friday. And life is going on.

I have no home. I have no job. All I have is time.

It's going to be a wild ride. I hope to take as many of you as I can along with me.

Vagrancy 2.0 – the beginning : Purge-ery

2010-07-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

>Last paycheck: 300,000 Japanese yen, cashed in three days ago

Last day of work: Today. 4:05pm marks the beginning of Unemployment

Next Thursday: One week, until I'm officially homeless

Now, the goal: To make this seemingly undesirable scenario into the best time of my life. Perhaps even to make my position as an unemployed bum enviable...to make vagabonding sexy again, to but the vag back in vagrancy, if you will—This is the goal.

The process of having to pack life into suitcases can be therapeutic. But more than that it raises awareness of just how much one consumes in a given time.

Almost exactly three years ago I moved to Japan. When I came, I had with me two suitcases, a guitar and the small black Kelty backpack I used all through university. That's it. I didn't mail a single box to myself. Some of my things (books, dvds, games) got left behind in the states in the care of friends. But the rest came with me, my entire life in three bags.

But oh how life can change in three years. Just how many important things can one acquire? The answer, it seems, is a lot.

I came with about 10 books. I'm leaving with more than 50. I came with all the clothes I owned. I'm leaving with almost all of them, plus plenty of recent acquisitions.

I still have the thee bags I came with. But there are three more very nice bags I've bought since then.

One computer and one musical instrument on the way in, two of each on the way out.

I've already mailed 55 kg of goods home via sea mail. I have at least another 10 set to sail at the end of the weekend.

It is inevitable that what remains will not be able to fit nicely into those two suitcases I brought over. I will pay a hundred dollars for the cost of checking a third bag. This is my life. It's heavier now than it was three years ago. There's more baggage. Literally.

But this makes no sense to me. How can I possibly have acquired all these things? How important, really, are any of them? If they suddenly dissolved into nothing, I would wake up the next day and go on with life. No thing is important.

The last big trip I took was to Indonesia. Eighteen days out. And all I had was a book to read, this netbook for journaling and maybe five full days worth of clothing. Of course meals for the day and a bed for the night all cost money, without which, survival would have been tough. But the point is that to really get by, it doesn't take much at all. And yet look at me, trying to carry more stuff than my own two arms will allow: 65kg of boxes, paying dearly for an extra piece of luggage on the airplane.

It's all very contradictory-- for a common criticism I have for such materially attached persons is that they have more anchors than a ship. What is all this shit? Why am I allowing it to weigh me down. The longer you stay in one place, the harder it will be to move. You'll have more anchors to hoist aboard before sailing off into something new. If I flew in on a hovercraft, I'm leaving on a tug boat. This is what three years will do to you.

Fuck this shit. Seriously. All this stuff, why is it here? I look around this room in shambles and I ask myself what is so important about this that I move it with me half way across the world. I look at the hand thrown ceramic tea cup my shamisen teacher gave me--I have to keep this, I think, he gave it to me. It is important. The Playstation 3. Sure I could sell it or give it away. But I'd just end up buying another one. The list of excuses and reasons to keep all this stuff just goes on & on.

I have to regroup.

The first step in this new vagrancy plan: Purge. This, hopefully will take place in Philadelphia, where at some point late this summer, I and all my positions will be. For the first time in about four years, me and all my stuff will be in the same place at the same time. And once we're there, we'll have a great conversation and then a lot of us will end up parting ways.

It will be hard to do. It's too hard to do now, to assess the value of these things whilst in the throes of packing life into boxes. But after time, when everything has been packed away and out of sight and out of mind for some time, it will be the right time to go through all this stuff with a more discerning eye.

For now all I can do is stick this shit in the mail.

I'll deal with it in Philadelphia.

about the goodtimes

2010-07-20T19:03:00.001-07:00

Marasco: What's the best thing that happened to you in Japan?

Raoul Duke Lives: Meeting you.

M: Good answer. Now what's the Real best thing that happened to you in Japan?

RDL: Doin' all those bitches.

M: Bad answer! Now what's the Real best thing that happened to you in Japan?

RDL: Hmmm, probably Mo & Wakako's wedding.

M: Really?

RDL: Yeah, it was fun, unique, very special. Great memory.

Signs of the Times

2010-07-08T00:50:00.000-07:00

Two giants of men, wearing nothing but knee-high leather boots and speedos square off in the ring. Between the four turnbuckles the two long haired, well-oiled men grapple and twist and climb and jump all over one another. There are suplexes, backbreakers, pile drivers, aerial assaults, gripping submission holds, trademark finishing moves, all of this... over and over again until finally after a titillating number of 1...2...shoulder off the mat before the strike of three counts...finally the blue shirted referee slaps his hand against the mat for a third and final time. The match is over. The victor, now proudly hoists the hyperbolically oversized gold championship belt over his head. The loser, stumbling out of the the arena with his shame between his legs, vows there will be justice, ensures a triumphant comeback. Then out of nowhere a masked deviant in his own mysterious speedo comes in out of nowhere and whacks the sorry motherfucker on the back of the head with a steel folding chair, thus thickening the plot and upping the knobs on the drama dial to be sure millions more tune in next week.

This is professional wrestling at its finest. And a long time ago, maybe like 12 years ago, I was one of the millions of regular wrestling fans who couldn't get enough. There were three nights a week when pro wrestling came on TV; Sunday, Monday and Thursday—and those nights spent in front of the TV are among the most memorable of sporting events I've ever watched.

It's low brow Broadway.

Pro wrestling has all the making of a modern day epic: Torn relationships, gratuitous violence, warring factions, over-the-top megalomaniacs for characters...and a fanbase large enough to sell out arenas nationwide, weekly. Talk about die-hard fans, wrestling fans have it all: the t-shirts, the books, the fanzines, the action figures, erudite memorization of all character's signature moves and the chronology of their rivalries, massive fluorescent sheets of poster board proclaiming in tall block lettering the utter awesomeness of the bearer's favorite wrestler.

And all this is still around, just like me, 12 years later. But a lot can happen in 12 years. Nothing is immune to change. Not me. Not pro wrestling.

The other weekend Marasco was out of town and as a result I wound up spending the weekend with a bunch of single dudes sitting around in a room adorned with bikini chick posters and beer adverts, watching several hours of professional wrestling. Surprisingly there were a lot of names I recognized from my fan days of yore: Kane, Big Show, Sean Michaels, Rick Flare to name a few. They were all still there, along with a new class of fighters—people who've I've never heard of—but guys popular enough to send the crowds roaring upon their entrance to the arena.

And this is where I started noticing differences, major changes in the atmosphere that had taken place in the decade-long hiatus I'd taken from watching pro wrestling. And what's fascinating about this, why I'm writing about this at all, is because I think there is some correlation the attitude of America and the attitude of America's wrestling fans.

Twelve years ago the fans flooded the arena, many of them carrying massive fluorescent sheets of poster board proclaiming in tall block lettering the utter awesomeness of the bearer's favorite wrestler: HELL YEAH blocked out in black Sharpie on neon green with a skull and cross bones in homage of Stone Cold Steve Austin ::: I (heart) Heart in honor of the late Bret Heart ::: my memory is failing me as to what else might have been around...but the Idea was that you were a Fan and you expressed your fandom with your neon posterboard sign.

But now the signs have changed with the times. Gone it seems are the days when you admired someone else with a three-foot paperboard sign. These days everyone seems to be admireing themselves.

Big bold downward pointing arrow → CHRIS IS HERE

Two stoned loooking eyes for the double OOs in LOOK AT ME

A clever nod to pop culture → Sam I Am

In the something like three hours I spent watching wrestling I glimpsed hundreds of signs like these, all of them intending to bring attention to their bearer, only a countable few proclaiming anything about a wrestler.

And this is fascinating because it's tantamount to the American zeitgeist of the last decade—the self aggrandizing carnival of perpetual narcissism that we call American pop culture and media.

It's all about me. Fuck you. Who cares about you. Get of of my way...this is the Attitude, it seems, the thesis as it were, if we try to extract meaning from raw cultural experience.

And this all ties in with this idea people have been throwing about about Self Branding. It's been a buzz word for a few years now, but with self-effusing media like Twitter and Facebook having permeated the cultural paradigm, it seems we cannot ignore its relevance in the modern conversation.

I've been resistant to shamelessly self promoting Raoul Duke Lives. I keep the spamming of my own shite to a minimum. You can't even Like me on Facebook.

But maybe that's me being out of touch with my own culture, or at least I'm a few beats behind the times.

Maybe I need to grow up. Maybe I need to make my own sign.

a good thing that happened.

2010-07-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

2 July 2010 | Taira 4^th Elementary

Most Fridays it seems I give in to temptation. Classes over for the day, I step outside after lunch and walk across the road to the Maruto grocer and buy a pack of smokes and a blue berry frozen yogurt. Later, undoubtedly, I will wind up binge drinking summery libations until we close the bars. But for now, it's just after noon and drinking is not quite yet in the cards. Give it a few more hours. On Fridays we usually get started around half four. But anyways, it's so hot wax will melt and the nice cold blueberry yoghurt... yogurt? yoghourt?...how do we spell this word? these all seem to be valid spellings... is a fine addition to the day. I'm sitting where I always sit when I nip out of Taira 4^th after lunch, on the bench next to the ashtray near the corner of the grocery. I can see the school, but the school can't see me. If they come on the PA I can hear. Same for the bell, I can hear it ring once at 1:20 and know that I have 10 minutes to get back in time for class to start with the next bell at 1:30. But classes are finished for the day, and so I am ignoring the bells as the chime in the hot summer air. Presently I am reading through an issue of Budget Travel, the first time I have ever read such a magazine. My eyes are glazing over copy of Spanish hotels I will never go to. My mind is thinking, Fuck me. Do I really want to be a travel writer, do I really want to be one of those people who reviews hotels in 200 words or less for a paycheck. Aren't there more important things to write? Aren't there better stories to tell? Do I really want to lead myself down this path? I've spent three years worth of paychecks bumming around Asia. The work here at these schools has financed that travel. And now, the idea is that I will travel using the accrued Japan money until it runs out, and theoretically convince people to pay me to write as I travel onward, thus propelling me forward. The idea is Vagrancy 2.0 –making the vagabond life sexy again. But even the homeless have to eat, and I may be biting the bullet and attempting to sell myself into a one of the world's largest industries: Travel. Maybe this is a horrible idea. But then in this same Budget Travel magazine, I read about some woman, a traveller for sure, who wrote a book, a travelogue no less, about her time in Rome and India and Bali. And since Hollywood bought the rights and made Eat, Pray, Love into a film with Julia Roberts the traveller cum author Elizabeth Gilbert is now certainly sitting so pretty on royalties that she can be a vagrant for the rest of her days so long as she doesn't get greedy. This is impressive. Ms. Gilbert seems to have the right idea. She didn't have to catch a break writing hotel reviews. I don't think anyone ever will catch a break writing hotel reviews. The only way you're going to catch a break is if you have a great story. And isn't that really what we all need life to be, one great story? I hope I can catch a break. I've got enough stories to fill a book.

Today's:

Sometimes Mom is wrong. We learn from our mothers, our first great teachers, from as soon as we open our eyes into the world. And Mom's maternal instinct is to protect you, her baby. She tells you Do and Not Do innumerable things to keep you out of harm's way. Don't run in the house. Do come home before dark. Do eat all your vegetables. Don't take candy from strangers.

But as we grow old, we realize that Mom is just as fallible as anyone else. Sometimes Mom's nature inhibits you from seeing the world for how it really is.

Today I took candy from a stranger. It made the day better.

So I was sitting there, having killed the blueberry yoghurt, and now smoking ultra light cigarettes and reading an American travel magazine on the bench in front of the grocery. This part of town is inhabited entirely by stay-at-home moms, school children and population of senior citizens so prodigious it makes Japan's 1:5 ratio of seniors to non seem vastly askew.

The seniors, septa- and octogenarians if not older, come and go from the grocery on their little shopping bicycles. Some of them are so battered by life—farm life, that is, for this part if down is markedly agricultural—that their tiny frames are permanently bent to 90º at the waist. The women, they all wear floral print aprons. The men, seem to favor coveralls and those baseball caps with mesh backing.

I always watch them from my perch. I never talk with them. They never talk with me. We just casually observe each other in a nice stasis of non confrontation. But today and old guy, wearing no doubt cover alls and a mesh backed baseball cap, rounds the corner next to the ashtray by which I am sitting and gets a good look at me and says Hello. I return his salutation and give him a smile between puffs on the gasper. He goes inside. Then a few minutes later he's back with a pack of his own gaspers and standing next to the steel grated ashtray by which I am sitting, still smoking my own.

Earlier his salutation was in English, but now he's switched to his native Nipponese and is asking where I'm from. I give him my standard answer: Kansas, which is only a half-truth but for the sake of not getting into my nomadic lifestory with complete strangers, is the answer I give anyone I meet overseas. He tells me he has been to Los Angeles, to study. To study English? I ask, lighting another with the embery butt of the last. No, to study flowers and plants, growing them, he says. Makes sense, I offer with smoke rings. This area is the agricultural heart of the city.

'How long have you been here, in Iwaki?'

'Me? Three years.'

'And the Japanese, you knew before you came?'

'I'd say I picked up most of it here, the usage.'

'You're a business man?'

I laugh because I am wearing five-year-old cargo shorts and a polo shirt with Toshi's Gym embroidered on the sleeve. Another long plume of smoke from my mouth, disappearing in the hazy summer sky.

'English teacher.'

'Here?'

I point across the street to the Elementary school. 'There.'

Just then a political campaign van drives past, campaign promises blaring from a bullhorn PA.

'You'll vote in the Election?'

'Me? I'm gaijin. I can't, I'm afraid.'

'Oh well. Not important anyways.'

'Maybe not. Considering Japan's had five Prime Ministers in the three years I've been here.'

'Japan's bad eh?'

'Maybe. But America's no better. It's all a big lie.'

'You're a smart kid.'

He crushes his cigarette in the grated steel hash of the standing ashtray, the small reservoir of water inside hisses as he drops the butt inside, extinguishing it.

'Well, good luck.' he extends his left hand to me.

I counter with my right. He realizes a handshake is to be done with the right hand and makes an adjustment. We shake hands and then I give him a humble little bow, happy to had talked with him.

He disappears inside the store. I resume my magazine.

One minute later he's back, ice cream cone in hand.

'You like sweets?'

'On a hot day like today, definitely.'

'Here, this is for you.'

I took the ice cream. Having already eaten a frozen yogurt, I didn't really need it. But the gesture was amazing, so kind! so genuine!

I took a big bite off the top of the vanilla cone.

It was delicious.

The Exit

2010-07-01T03:49:00.001-07:00

1 July, 2010 | Kawamae Elementary School, Japan

Thirty one days until The Exit. One month exactly when this all ends, this life as it were. Not to say things will stop, no. But things will finish. Three years on the island, spent entrenched in a lifestyle that was once as foreign to me as fried octopus, now so normal and routine that upon The Exit I will have to spend indeterminate time uncrossing all the wires. I don't think I'll ever get back to the way I was, I don't think I'll ever really rewire my viewpoint back to my old American eyes. No, I'll come back a new American...which is the idea, I think—the idea of this whole JET scheme is to promote internationalization, but they never tell you in the literature that you very may well be the one on the receiving end of grassroots internationalization.

Last day today at Kawamae Elementary, the mountain school, the school with four kids. Nobody was really concerned with having an English class today. We played t-ball. Later they asked me what I thought was weird about Japan. Since children were present I neglected to mention that selling used girl's panties out of vending machines is certifiably weird. I settled for an anecdotal story about how Japan weirdly follows rules for the sake of following rules by telling my story about being unable to buy a sno-cone without any flavored syrup. (Full story here.)

Then they asked me what things about Japan I like, what things I may keep with me. My answer was that I've come to embrace taking off shoes upon entering home. I do it habitually. When I went home for a visit two Christmases ago and walked into my brand newly carpeted grandparent's home with shoes still on, I felt like I was sinning. They laughed, said I was becoming Japanese. The truth, I think is somewhere in between.

I am not becoming Japanese. I never will. The best thing about being in Japan is that I am a foreigner. Being Japanese in Japan would depraved or something awful, with all the social expectations and systematic bureaucracy. But being gaijin, especially an American with a shelf life—an imminent Exit—garners a level of respect and hospitality greater than anywhere else in the world. But Japan has taught me a lot. We all have great teachers in life, ones that we remember forever and ever. Japan is one of my great teachers. I can only hope that I have given to Japan at least a fraction of what it has given me.

Here are some photos of my last day at Kawamae.

a rice field growing at top speed in summer heat

Iwaki City Kawamae Elementary School

It looks just like any other school on the outside

there's a nice old lady who tends the gardens. she always gave me snacks. she was off today. i will never see her again.

I only ate the school lunch at Kawamae b/c they made it at the school, not some factory where the rest of the schools get theirs. Last school lunch.

Later I was introduced to kami-zumo, or paper sumo

My fighter

Grand parade

so you put your fighter on a cardboard box and tap the box with your hands until one of the fighters falls over or rings out

I'll sleep in August.

2010-06-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

I am naked and passed out on the couch. The Wimbledon tournament is still on the TV I failed to shut off as I lost consciousness. I awake to the yellow twang of a shamisen ringtone. Missed that call. But just barely and now I'm roused out of a vivid dream where the taste of jasmine tea plays a lucid role and it's curious taste to wake up with on your mind at three in the morning. Again the digital yellow twang of the phonetone. Groggily, I answer, expecting it to be Marasco phoning from America with something to report. The only information the caller identification feature yields is Unknown.

There is dead air on the line for some three seconds after I say hello.

Then, 'Hey baby, where are you? Come on over.'

This voice, one of a man who sounds like he's been smoking prodigiously for a lifetime, is seductive yet unsexy. But it's also a voice I rarely say no to.

Things are starting to make sense now, at this strange Hour of the Tiger. 'Hey Baba-ji. What up?'

'It's the perfect time, brother. Game starting ten minute. You come over.'

Eyes more closed than open, I suck in the hot summer air, the smell of rain. I dream quickly of sleep, then contradict everything my body tells me. 'Fuck it. Yeah, let's watch the game. I'll be right over.

I must find clothing.

There are various discarded articles laying about the floor. I collect an ensemble consisting of a red t-shirt, black boxer briefs and green Thai fisherman's pants. Everything I'm wearing is at least two days old. But it's not like I'm going to a gala, so who gives a shit.

Is there something deviant in accepting an 11th hour invitation leave home and walk through the rain to an otherwise closed-for-the-night curry house to watch a USA vs Ghana World Cup matchup? Absolutely. Most people would tell Baba to have a good night and they'll catch him next time, when there's daylight and curry to be had.

But I'm not most people. And for me, going to Purnima is not going to a restaurant. For me, going there is no different than going to a friend's house. Because in all actuality, Purnima is Baba's house. It's the place where he invites friends to share food and conversation and beers and smokes, and once every four years, early A.M. screenings of World Cup soccer.

It's a shame the US lost, and it's a shame that I'll only be able to visit my friend Baba at his place a few more times before I leave my place for future that will be devoid of anything resembling me having a place to call my own.

But there is no shame in all the great times I've spent with my friend Baba. All the hours and all the curries and all the goodtimes will never be forgotten.

excerpted from an email to Jamil...

2010-06-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

...because I must have gone in to bat country, as The Great Dr. might have said if he were still around--bat country or something equally wretched as I rounded out a 5km run through the serene Japanese countryside, past little flooded rice paddies and small terraced outcrop farms and gardens as I ran at a usual pace along the riverside in the blood red sunset. And I said Konbanwa to an old couple as I flew by in the red light and I thought about how few times remain, times that'll be able to remark about the good evening to passersby on the old running trail. Gaining speed I was, more and more, trying to ignore the awful shin splits that beleaguer unfortunate runners such as me, and my body, getting heavier from the exhaustion, and my clothing, getting heavier from the sweat absorbed and my mop, my old shaggy mop of curls glistening in sweat and sunlight...and I'm thinking Fuck me man, my hair must be in need of the cutting, it's like it's stabbing me in the neck, like scores of little sickles are jabbing at my skin in the cadence...and like it starts to fucking hurt me, my hair stabbing my neck, and so as I'm running along there in the farmlands, flanked by rivers and trees, I reach back behind me with a hand and swipe my hair, but I find not my hair but something hard, something sharp, something wicked, which I had no time to see with my own eyes, because I promptly screamed like a school girl as I felt this satanic otherworldly presence stabbing it's pincers into my sweat-soaked body and knocked it off and went in to warp speed escape mode and so I had no time to take a photo of my own but this one from google will give you an idea of what i'm trying to describe....

Sumo Trip!

2010-06-09T05:30:00.001-07:00

Take Friends

Sake

Sushi

and ripped bods

cram four bodies in enough space for two

get some fat guys

and make 'em fight!

and parade around!

huzzah!

who dat!

huwah!

see the white guy?

the yokozuna

lovely thighs

(don't) say what?

2010-06-08T03:05:00.001-07:00

My days left in Japan are numbered. As of today there's about 57 of them left, days. Some days I think about my imminent departure and I want to vomit. Other days I think about leaving here and I can't wait to get out. Often I can feel either way, multiple times a day. It's a grand contradiction of feelings. But how fitting for such a contradictory place as Japan. The Japanese are in a constant state of saying what they don't feel and feeling what they don't say. The phrases in Nipponese are tatemae –what is said and done to be superficially polite and agreeable, as opposed to honne-- what is truly thought and felt.

So simple! Such perfect contradiction! Don't say what I mean, and don't mean what I say, you know what I'm saying?

Honne(本音) and tatemae(建前 )play directly into Japanese social hierarchy. An easy example would be a group of coworkers going out for drinks after work. The boss initiates the evening, suggesting, say, they all go to a sushi bar and eat raw fish and drink beer until they can't feel their legs. The lower level associate, in no real position to disagree or offer a different suggestion, must agree to go, a la his tatemae.

In reality, or in honne, this associate guy happens to be allergic to fish, repulsed by beer and really needing to get home to his wife so he can try and make up for missing their anniversary yesterday because of the face time he has to put in even after he's finished his work to validate his existence. But he's fucked because can't rock the boat, for the sake of everyone else. Never mind that the boat is full of superficial facades and that in honne maybe none of them want to go out drinking with the boss because they think he's a cocksucking prick.

That's just not how things seems to work here in Nippon.

A real life example would be today, when after standing silently in front of a class of eight-year-olds, waiting for them to get their shit together and quiet down so we can start our ABCs lesson, for like five minutes, I'm watching this 21-year-old-fresh-out-of-Uni-with-maybe-60-hours-of-real-time-teaching-under-her-belt home room teacher just getting absolutely eaten alive by these particularly unruly eight year olds. They were yelling and getting up out of their seats and throwing shit across the room and changing desks and being general bastards, especially these three boys who kept instigating shit with each other.

I am paid to teach English, not to babysit, be a disciplinarian, or waste my time standing silently in front of a blackboard trying to get this shit together. The Jap teachers get paid a lot more than I for such privileges. So I stood back and let her handle the situation...which crumbled in front of her like a sand castle in the waves.

I guess I got pissed off about the time a buzz cut boy with unfortunate eczema was chasing some other dip shit boy around the room. I had singled out buzz cut as the root of most of the problems, so when he chased the other kid right in front of me, I stepped in front buzz, picked him up about a meter off the ground so he was eye level with me, looked him square in his shocked little black eyes, told him he was finished, threw him out in the hall way, and locked the door. See You!

He was livid. Screaming, crying, throwing fists at the locked door. His teacher was mortified. Partly because the vagrant looking American English teacher (with whom she is teaching today for the Very First Time) just literally ejected a child from her classroom... partly because she had so utterly and tremendously failed to keep these kids in line herself.

After this incident, the kids all fell in line and we had an unremarkable lesson.

...later on, in the staff room, I approach the previously mortified teacher:

My tatemae: Sorry about earlier. That kid was no good. He was wasting everyone's time. I had to throw him out.

Her tatemae: Oh, no, I'm sorry. Thank you so much for helping! The children all really enjoyed your lesson!

My honne: Jesus, woman, these kids are going to absolutely eat you alive. You have got to get your shit together. It's your job to maintain control, not mine. My job is to teach English. That's it. You're a failure for letting your class devolve so greatly that the ALT has to step in and get it under control.

Her honne: You self-righteous American prick! fuck you! Do you have any idea the kind of shit I'm going to get now? Can you imagine what everyone will Think of me? That kid is going to go home and tell his parents that he was thrown out of class, the parents will call the school complaining that the kid's Right To Learn* has been violated, I'm going to have to personally go to the parents and apologize....Jesus, man! you just fucked my week!.

*Worth noting that unlike a typical American public school where sending kids of out class for the hour, or even suspending/expelling them from school is a common occurrence, in Japan, all citizens have constitutionally mandated compulsory education through junior high school. In other words, they have the right to learn and obstructing that right could be regarded as a violation of their civil liberties, so throwing a kid out of class is a no-no.

Ok, that enough two-bit Japanology for one night.

See You!

Photoblog: in search of wild horses

2010-06-05T22:52:00.001-07:00

Got on the bike

And rode out, towards the mountains

Past rows of flooded paddies

basking in the sun

they say wild horses roam atop mt. mizuishi

so I rode and rode, up the holy mountain

and found no horses

only strange christian cemetery

in the middle of shinto Japan

further up the mountain

was a great temple

with a grand path of

88 Buddhas

leading the way

to the top of the hill

where we find

the most enormous tree in the forest

Birthday Week #26

2010-06-04T04:04:00.000-07:00

Monday, 5/31

Dave Cornelius, on business in Japan, takes an extra week on the island to enjoy for himself and makes our fair city Iwaki one of his stops. This marks the first and likely only time that a friend from America will visit you in Japan.

Tuesday, 6/1

You call in sick to work with horrible diarrhea. The vice principle who fields the call makes a frantic, guttural noise like one would make after narrowly avoiding running over a bunny in the road. This ruse buys secures you an entire day off work to catch up with an old friend, which is spent almost entirely in front of the Japanese TV because your friend finds it 'fantastic'. Later you eat curry and cake.

Wednesday, 6/2

Happy birthday. Now eat strawberry chocolate pancakes and hug your friend goodbye and go to work. Make children sing happy birthday to you on command. Eat special birthday lunch box. Accept invitation to train for 100 meter dash with 12 year olds. Manage to keep your alpha male persona in tact, but just barely. Those children are nearly as fast as you. Your inner thighs will be sore for days. But god dammit you won. Now go to your shamisen lesson and get berated by sensei for sucking ass. Tell him it's your birthday. Watch him stare cooly back at you, like he could give a shit. Teach a nine year old English for 30min. Receive 2,000 yen. Eat birthday feast, including two curries and a cake made of pudding. Now ride train home and run upstairs and trade shamisen for a bottle of brandy. Meet friends and drink steadily for one hour, 30 minutes. Leave your own party early b/c you told your gf you'd be home by 10 to receive presents, which turn out to be pretty awesome. You fall asleep exhausted from a long, good day.

Thursday, 6/3

Wake up with manageable hangover. Consider the shower. Realize that there are just two classes to teach because today is the day you go to your school with Four Students. Begin to wish you would have drank a little more, given that today is turning out to be a joke. By the time you arrive back home you realize you spent more time getting to and from the school in the mountains that you actually spent teaching there. Consider going on the roof. Realize it's more effort than it's worth. Now go crazy because you have nothing to do for like the first time in weeks it seems. Go to sleep and try again tomorrow.

Friday, 6/4

Experience bizarre weather phenomena throughout the day. The mid afternoon thunderstorm harks nostalgia of your once upon a time in America days. Your thighs are still sore from running the 100m dash the other day. You leave work early with permission from the boss. It's nice he can see the futility of you just sitting around riding the clock. This newly acquired time is spend playing Street Fighter 4 with Ryan Nagle, whom you beat cleanly with a 60 percent win ratio over ten bouts. To celebrate you buy a fried sandwich.

Saturday, 6/5 (tentative)

You wake up early to the most wonderful weather god can offer and find your gf in between your legs. Hours later you feast on fried eggs and hashbrowns. Now, fully nourished, you dawn your newly birthday presented cycling jersey and ride out into the mountains to look for the wild horses that allegedly roam the tops of Mt. Mizuishi. You succeed not only in finding the horses but also in burning off a birthday week's worth of calories. Once the sun sets you are walking to the Cafe del Mar, where everyone has gathered to celebrate your 26 years. You will eat and drink so much and for so long that now it's already Sunday, 6/6 and you and all your friends are roaming the streets in the warm summer night and having the time of your lives and it feels so great to be alive...

A day in the life...of an ALT

2010-05-28T00:56:00.000-07:00

Every day I wake up and Dutch oven my girlfriend. This morning I was eating toast as the Dutch ovened girlfriend read out loud to me an article online about things a man should never do to/around/while thinking about his girlfriend. Dutch ovening your girlfriend was high on that list. For what ever reason, Dutch ovening seems to be socially unacceptable. I start my days on the wrong side of the covers.

I have a comfortable familiarity with the vast majority of the entries on The List. Except leaving the seat up. I'm not familiar with leaving the seat up because I can't honestly ever be bothered to lift it up in the first place. But at least putting it down never is a problem. And not putting the seat down was pretty high on The List of things never to do, so in that regard, I'm way ahead of the game.

The List went on to list items of praise the girlfriend will enjoy hearing frequently. Most of these entries involved using the word Phenomenal re: her breasts/her cooking/her prowess in bed and/or her general beauty.

There was a companion to this list, one for women to read to teach them about men. I found most of it unrelatable. Except for that part about smelling like a lumberjack who just kicked the crap out of a tree.

I am not an Excel man. I don't even use Microsoft Word. I use a Mac. It runs Open Office.

But in spite of that, my days revolve around a 6x30 Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Each day has six 45 minute hours, represented by six columns on the spreadsheet. There is a row on the spreadsheet for each day I am scheduled to come to this school this term. The columns are filled with data signifying which class of which grade I will teach upon the corresponding hour.

I prefer datum to be inserted into no more than four columns of any row on any given day. Some days the school will have an event and so I cannot teach any class during an hour of 45. These times are represented by black Xs in the cells. Black Xs are a boon the psyche. I wish my days were full of black Xs.

I am looking at my spreadsheet now. The space I now occupy, the first hour of 45, is blank. I prefer this space to be blank. I spent this week tactically avoiding the woman in charge of filling in the blanks on the spreadsheet so that she could not give me any work to do on this first hour of 45 today, Friday, the best of days because of its distance from the next time I will have to pretend to work again.

The first hour of 45 is the hardest to get through in terms of mental ability. The last hour of 45 is hardest to get through in terms of physical ability. It's in my best interest to avoid working at these times, for the sake of my well-being.

When I do have to work, it goes something like this. The bell rings. Two students of the class come get me from my desk in the teachers' room. We walk into the classroom. I say Hello how are you? They say I'm fine thank you. No true communication is achieved. I quiz them informally on the weather, month, date, day of the week. The wheels start to turn. Maybe we'll sing. Maybe we won't. Depends on the class, really. I like singing in class. It kills five minutes. But I'm no torturer. Some kids are too old to sing in class. I get it. OK, let's review. Do you remember what we did last week? The kids who study English extracurricularly answer in time, because this shit is easy peasy for them. The kids who don't are still struggling to compute How's the weather? This shit moves at lightning speed. I wait for no one. They don't give a turd anyways. You're either tuned in, or your not. On the bus...or Off. This bus is flying at high speed, breakneck speed, reckless speed, flying forward, racing the clock as it ticks on and on steadfast, towards the sweet, freedom-filled release of the bell. OK let's start a new lesson. Today's new lesson is Where do you live? Let's break this shit down slowly, so y'all can compute. Where. Do. You. Live? Yeah, I know—it's hard to say, live. It contains no B. You've been warned. OK. You got it? So what's the answer?...The entire classroom is stupefied.... Who is this man...what is he Saying?? The Japanese classroom teacher, who may or may not be terrified of me (the younger ones, especially women, are particularly terrified &/or dumbfounded when near me, much like a doe glued to the headlights of an oncoming truck), if they're On the bus, will perhaps try and make some sense of what is happening to their pupils by translating it roughly into Nipponese. OK, so if you're still tuned in you can now wax with great fluency on the turns of phrase Where do you live? and I live in _____, near _____. You think it's funny that near when pronounced with a Nipponese accent sounds much like the ~nyaa~ sound of a cat's meow in your native onomatopoeia. The wild eyed, vagrant looking American teacher of English is flailing his arms spasmodically from the words written on the chalk board to the horrified student body cowering behind their desks. You think he's trying to get you all to say aloud what's written on the chalkboard in unison. It seems best to give him what he wants... He never even taught you to how to read...Oh sweet Jesus Christ, what is he doing with that dodge ball? He's rambling on incoherently, his perm bounces along in rhythm...he has a nice perm, wonder where he gets it done? Mom could use a referral; her perm's a bit shit, comparatively. Maybe once he explained that it was natural. But who's ever heard of natural perm? That shit don't exist here in Nippon. And what gives with the dodge ball? It is Not a hot potato. I do not fucking believe you. It is a fucking dirty old ball that we play with outside. Put it the fuck down and get over it. No. Don't you dare throw it to me. Absolutely not. Fuck you. Dick. What are you saying? Uhehya doo yoo riib? What are these foul noises coming out of your mouth? It's more disgusting than Korean and that shit sounds as lovely as a pig blowing snot bubbles in the mud. I am not warranting this pig shit language of yours with a response. I won't play this game with you, not today. I'm not answering. Make someone else do it. Not me. That's right, let's move on to the next round. Take that, bitch...:::: Bing Bong Ding Dong—Bum Bong Ding Dong::::...Free at last! Thank you very much! Domo Arigatou Gozaimashita! See you!

This shit is clockwork.

I am clockwork man.

The bell rings. The clock ticks. I am now three minutes into the Second hour of 45. Now is the time of day I start praying that I'm forgotten about. If I can make it all the way to five minutes in, the chances of being forgotten about increase exponentially. And with each minute that ticks by beyond the elapsed five, the exponential chance that I indeed have been forgotten about will increase by a power of one, and I am one step closer to being left alone, uninterrupted, at my desk.

This shit is mathematics.

I am mathematics man.

The children arrive precisely four minutes into the Second hour of 45.

Lunch cutters. Cock teases. Slave drivers. Work horses.

I was so close to freedom, almost narrowly escaping the Second hour of 45.

And now that's all gone. Now I'm locked in. The wheels are spinning. The bus is flying. Flying on & on & on, until freedom finally rings.

Again.

The Holy Grail (sic?)

2010-05-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

Ohhh Japan, how you amuse us....

A country with such a deep and rich history. An epic nation that brought the world such delicacies as sushi and sashimi and chicken teriyaki, the age-old martial arts of karate and judo and sumo, such iconic giants as Nintendo and Sony and Mario & Luigi, the ever reliable Toyota, a temple made of gold in Kyoto, cinematic master Kurosawa Akira, robots!....

:::: and ::::

Vending machines stuffed with used girl's panties.

This was yesterday. For reasons inexplicable, Marasco makes a mad dash inside a 6-story sex shop in the middle of Tokyo. It was raining heavily, so I followed her in.

On the top floor we found various colors and shapes and sizes of pocket pussies and/or anuses.

The floor below was an impressive selections of chains, leather whips, bondage masks, dog collars and general BDSM regalia.

Of course there was a whole galaxy of pornography that would take reams of text to fully describe.

On the way back outside to meet the friends we inexplicably ditched to go on this sordid sojourn, we decided to have a look in the basement. (Ok, really I wanted to look in the basement for more porn, hopefully catch something that didn't have all the money shots blurred out like J-porn so often does...and where else but a basement would one find the most choice selections of pornography.)

The basement smelled of musk and seminal fluid. The walls were lined with an incomprehensible library of J-porn; many of the titles available for preview on tiny monitors (perhaps there were private screening also available, hence the odor, but we didn't need to confirm this for ourselves).

And there, just at the bottom of the staircase was this handy vending machine, quite similar to the ones we stuffed quarters into as children, filled with opaque easter-egg-like plastic containers, where, for the price of 2000 unsullied yen, one can crack open a used pair of girl's underwear.

I did not understand the Japanese at first. And since photography was forbidden, I didn't have time to stand around and figure it out. But upon arrival back home, I did some looking into the term ロリパン:

ロリ-- (Loli; Japanese truncation of'Lolita')
パン --(again, J-truncation for 'Panties')
Stick 'em together and you can figure this one out.

Well, there you have it. What more can I can say? Japan, I love you, but you're a fucking sicko.

The Great Conversation

2010-05-17T03:04:00.000-07:00

A dead dandelion. I opened the postbox and found a dead dandelion. It was Sunday yesterday, so I didn't check the postbox after work like I would on a weekday. And Saturdays, too, are sometimes a wash as far as getting mircoproductive things done like getting the post out of the box, and so it's very well possible that Somebody put a freshly cut and lively dandelion in my postbox on Friday evening and I, being generally apathetic about all things concerning postboxes, did not check the post again until Monday afternoon, whereupon the once lively dandelion mysteriously placed inside the postbox withered into death without so much as an iota of acknowledgment from the world zooming by at top speed outside the dark steely confines of the postbox at the foot of the steps. I wonder if this is all strangely metaphorical?, or just bizarre or wind-blown coincidence that should not be taken as any sort of omen.

I didn't exactly know what to do with the dead dandelion, so I just left it where I found it hoping maybe it will take care of itself. I probably should have taken it with me, along for the ride across town on this cool May evening. I had my sleeves rolled up to my elbows and my cuffs rolled up to capri length, snug against my calves...and my barefoot-flipflopped feet were pumping nicely against the pedals of the 18-speed as I wove in & out & through&between&up&down the narrow streets of the city. Take the shortcut down the alley between the liquor store and block apartments and zip down a landscaped avenue with a nice walking path that nobody ever walks on, lined with benches nobody ever sits on, until I'm at the intersection along The 6 and I get lucky and make the northbound green light and don't have to spend a fucking eternity riding round in concentric circles, waiting for the signal to change, like I'm forced to do so often. And from here it's a straight shot, past the bowling alley next to the yellow curry shop that I'm told used to be a meth house or something, and around the bend to the next light (a red one but no cars seem to be within a thousand miles so, fuck it, right?) and just to be safe I slow down a little lest I wipe out and shatter my helmetless skull on these otherwise bloodless streets, but now the gear differential is off and it takes some working of the thumbs and forefingers at the handlebar controls to get things moving smoothly again as I pop the curb and start riding along the sidewalk. I'm weaving in & out of bodies and probably should have just stayed on the road but I was looking for a good spot to park the bike and as I was scouting the scene I nearly ran into Nana-chan, to whom I teach English at the Clean Elementary School. The only reason I can remember Nana's name is because she wears her long dark hair in two twisted pigtails with frizzy bob ends that bounce around like pom-poms...freely, like some pixy or sprite... which is rare thing to see in a place like the Clean School which is usually filled with dykey crop haircuts and shapelessly uniform boys scissor cuts that form the silhouette of an upsidedown lowercase j without the dot from the tip of the mid-ear sideburn around the top of the ear and back down and then flattened out promptly at the midpoint of the neck, just below the ears. Nana evidently comes from good biological stock and if she grows up to look anything like her mother (who I only glimpsed briefly as I swerved to avoid collision into her family of three walking three abreast down the road) she'll end up the genesis of more little Jap erections than a manga rendition of Heidi Klum at Comic-Con.
And so now the bike is parked around the back part of an alley next to a place called “Potateuhaus” and I'm walking down tiled steps into an adjacent basement and then down a long white-tiled corridor with low ceilings...all the way to the end, which is like meters and meters deep into the concrete underbelly of this sprawling basement and there at the end of the line is a man in an expensive suit who is demanding 500 yen from me even though I have a ticket for entry. The face value of this ticket is 7500 Yen, which is outstandingly high considering the venue and its location hundreds of miles away from any sort of established music scene. I mean, maaaaybe there's a Jazz scene in this town that I'm just absolutely unaware of, but I've been here a long time now and somehow I just don't think that's the case. And if this spot were a Jazz spot it would be smokey and have a quaint scattering of select round tables and plush velvet sofas in dark corners and photographs and autographs and phonographs adorning the walls. So let's pretend it is that way, and not the way it really is...which is a room big enough for fifty, cramped with a hundred bodies on a closely packed assortment of whatever chairs, folding or otherwise, that could be mustered together and drug into the depths of this concrete basement and rounded out with a bar that only offers as much as Four Roses in the category of bourbon. (And Four Roses, by the way, is a decent bourbon out of Kentucky and a bottle of the stuff usually retails at 999 yen at the grocer and so it seem egregious to me to pay 500 yen for a short pour over rocks each time I squeeze my way to the bar.)

So fuck it, let's pretend that it really IS a Jazz bar and the decorum fits the scene, which this thriving, having caused the city's finest to don their best hats and suits and flapper dresses and abscond away to this secret basement to hear the great alto saxophonist Watanabe Shunto and his quintet. I walk into the bar and it's filled with heavy smoke rising from a thousand ashtrays. There is a feeling of anticipation in the air. The stage, low lit and off in the corner—unobtrusive, is vacant...a glossy black baby grand unmanned, an upright bass sleeping quietly on the floor, the drums make no noise. A stunning lady in black pours me a bourbon from the top shelf. The room is hot so she makes it on the rocks. I take a seat at my table and pull a fag out of a stainless steel Japanese cigarette case. I reach into my jacket pocket and fumble for a lighter but before I can even find it there is already fire burning in front of my face. I light the smoke and let my eyes follow beyond the flame and along the arm and up up up along the massive frame of a man who's so tall his head scrapes the ceiling. It's The Fucking Guru. A local legend, the enigmatic orchestrator of some of this city's most successful latenight events. I'm sure he has a real name on record somewhere, but everyone I know just calls him The Fucking Guru, or The G for short. The G himself blows a mean alto sax but he says he's just here for the show tonight as he puts away his Zippo and sits down at the table with me. With him are two mutuals, dressed to the nines, Mrs. Wakako Shio-Diaz and her Canadian born Filipino husband Morris. Cheeks were kissed and hands shaken and drinks were delivered to the table and we all sat in eager anticipation for the show to come. Mr H comes in to the scene predictably, yet fashionably late, arriving just in time to sit down before the guy in the fancy suit who was earlier at the door collecting cover charges is now on the low lit stage and asking the crowd to warmly welcome the talent on to the stage.
Watanabe is an aging grey headed man with pastel technicolor striped shirt tucked into his jeans. The way his face is shaped makes him vaguely resemble a turtle in the way that so many older generation Japanese faces seem to do. He appears to give as much regard to his wardrobe as jazz musician would be expected to, probably having not bought a new shirt in decades. He walks on to the stage with his shiny silver alto strapped around his neck, takes a brief bow and then beckons the rest of the band to come out. A guy called Ono slides in behind the baby grand. For most of the night all we can see is the back of Ono's head, which is full of jet black hair, save for the section comprising the last three inches of his neckline, which has gone a sort of silvery midnight grey. A hip looking young guy with a thin goatee and forearms made out of sculpted bricks picked up the bass, which equaled him in size. A drummer who fits the bill for any old hat jazz drummer sits down behind the kit and lastly, a huge Senegalese man with a mop of those skinny dreads and skin so dark you couldn't see him in a poorly lit room sits down behind an percussion array. The four Japs make sense. But who the hell is this spade? This is this operative question at the table, and most other tables in the smokey bar. What is his story? what does he have to say? But that's the thing about Jazz, man. You just gotta listen, then you get clued in.

Jazz is like this great conversation that takes place on stage. The audience can't really get in on the conversation, like they can't contribute, but they can listen and agree or not when the time is right. But no, the ones on stage are the ones to be listened to. Each man gets absorbed in a synchronous conversation with his instrument, becoming one great musical being. And these five great musical beings are having a chat on stage, for everyone to hear. The alto starts talking to the drums. The bass bumps out the time. The keys dance around them all, chatting up a storm, building story, leading up to a punchline, getting ready to pour all out over the room in a sprawling soliloquy that takes the tone of the conversation up a few keys and gets it all really heady and intensely difficult to compute but presented with such great eloquence that it's impossible to really disagree with what you're hearing until just at the right moment the alto speaks up again and resets the tone for everyone by refraining what it said in the beginning, reminding us what we're talking about before we get to lost in the jazz of it all and the bass starts walking, slowly, bee boppy at first as the bassman, a pure genius at extemporaneous speaking, get to get his two cents in and walks those thick fat notes all the way down the to fretless bottom of the board and does a little dance with his fingers on the fretboard and the tango of notes sends the room all the way up to the clouds in a flurry of Oohs and Aw Yeahs, absolutely mesmerizing shit this bassman has to say, man. And but then the bassman asks the spademan to say a few things, and I think we're all the most interested to see what this black guy has to say on stage with a bunch of Japs. What can he being to the table? Where will the great conversation go next? And the man behind the djimbes lets his taped fingers wail on the sheepskin drum heads. Such range to which this man can speak, what great rhythm he brings to the conversation, what unique perspective! And yet he's speaking the same language as everyone. He is as fluent in this great conversation as any of the other musical beings. Language holds no meaning here, on this stage. The only thing anyone understands is music, that's the language, that's the only thing worth listening to anyways, man.

i mean, at least he didn't start a war?

2010-05-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

A golden week in photos, part 2

2010-05-10T07:11:00.001-07:00

So we tried, Lauren and I, to escape the hordes amassed on land.

And took off to sea

To see...

...beautiful islands...

...afloat in the bay...

And...

Then...

WE ARE ATTACKED BY THOUSANDS OF SEAGULLS !!

SEAGULLS !!

AHHHHHH !!

OH SWEET MOTHER OF CHRIST !!

GOD SAVE US ALL FROM THE SEAGULLS !!

THIS IS MORE TERRIFYING THAN BEING IN BAT COUNTRY

Oh jeez... I think we're safe

Hokay. Time for ice cream.

Mmmm

and now we go home.

(next day)

This is Peter.

We rode our bicycles deep into the mountains

And then hiked into the woods.

And went swimming under waterfalls.

wtf?

(anyone seen the segue?)

This is Tokyo.

Our friends Yasmin and Andy live in Tokyo now.

Also now they live with Henry

He seems like a nice baby

see?

Mom looks happy

A golden week in photos, part 1

2010-05-10T07:06:00.001-07:00

THIS IS RYAN.

WE LEFT RYAN'S APARTMENT AND TOOK A WALK

ALONG THE HILLSIDE

UNTIL WE FOUND A STRANGE PLACE

And A Large Stick.

Day 2

This is Lauren.

She bought two tickets to Cirque du Soliel

(Unfortch, they said no photos)

But the circus is in Sendai

And it's a lively place.

A famous spot is Mastushima

Many national treasures and important shrines are here.

IMG_0353.JPG

But maybe Japanese are good at overrunning anything of great beauty

curry and convos with captian of the sky

2010-04-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

The pilot was huge. Probably not 200 kilos, like Baba said, but definitely a big guy. He was wearing a navy polo shirt tucked into dark jeans and a black baseball cap with a maple leaf and CANADA floss embroidered across the front. He looked more like an IT guy than a pilot of commercial 737 passenger jets. I had always envisioned pilots to wear blazers with shoulder pads and look a little coked out.

We shook hands. He said his name was Scott. Baba brought three beers. Cheers.

'So, are you out of work because of that volcano in Iceland?' I ask Scott as we sip beer.

'No, I'm on paid holiday now. It's just good timing that I'm not out of work for real.

'Yeah, this ash cloud is having a huge effect on the travel industry. What is it, two billion dollars in losses now?'

'Something like that. It's bigger than 9/11 in terms of net loss for the industry.'

'I'd believe it. Europe is some of the busiest air space in the world. You don't fly over there, do you?'

'No. I'm with Air Canada. But I'm taking a leave of absence to fly in Vietnam.'

'Vietnam is awesome. Beers for 25 cents every day. How'd you get that gig?'

'Air Canada has a surplus of pilots right now. They made an announcement that we could leave for up to five years, keep our seniority and benefits and resume at the same pay level when we get back. From there it's just looking for a contract that's out there that sounds appealing. I know a bunch of guys who're doing. it. I was thinking Korea, but they don't fly my plane on Korea Air.'

'I love Korea Air. One of the best airlines I've been on.'

'They've changed a lot. Used to be one of the worst. Ten years ago they had a horrible down rate. That's the number of planes that fall out of the sky. It got to be so bad that the manufacturers of the planes stepped in and said that if the didn't stop crashing their planes they would take them all back. So then a bunch of American pilot trainers went in as consultants and really turned things around.'

'Jeez. I'm glad I didn't fly them a decade ago.'

We sip more beer. Baba is smoking another cigarette.

'What's your favorite air port?'

'As a pilot or a passenger?'

'Either really.'

'Hong Kong.'

'I've only been there to make a connection. Didn't see much, but I hear it's nice. Marasco has been there on like four separate occasions, spent quite a lot of time in its various smoking halls and duty frees. The Burger King too.'

'Gotta love the BK. Who's Marasco.?

'My hot gf.'

'Nice.'

'Indeed.

'So you fly internationally, right?'

'Yeah usually. It will be mostly domestic in Vietnam though.'

'So like what's the deal with commercial cargo transported underneath international passenger flights?'

'We never really know what's down there or how much. I can tell you it's a lot though. The revenues from the cargo on commercial flights are worth at least the revenues of actual seats on the airplane.'

'It's a huge industry, eh?'

'It's bigger than you'll ever believe.'

snowing sakura

2010-04-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

Snowing Sakura

Spring sun warms blue sky breeze as

Granny climbs the steps

to pray before Gods enshrined

that this spring won't be her last.

Snowy white symbols of life

torn off trees by eastern wind,

relinquished to the earth.

Our eyes?

Shall have to wait another year.

But our hearts?

Like white elephants, never forget.

Fleeting beauty flies far and wide,

but always must land somewhere--

and those pretty petals pile up

like so many love-me-nots off lone lovers' flowers

But our memories will blossom on for a thousand springtimes.

Like you, they will never die.

"i'm honored you keep such a vestige to happy winos of yore"

2010-04-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

what is happening now? the sun is shining for the first time in at least a week and it's a good sign maybe that this self-imposed hermitizm might be over when the weather starts acting like spring and fucking quits it with the raining and winding and cloudy daying and even fucking snowing in april... and none of this should be happening? i wondered about global warming to my shamisen sensei and how japan is getting colder and he sagely told me to be warned of 2012. maybe the old coot is right. but we can't talk about music so much, oddly. there is never really an outlet to tell sensei that i can appreciate MGMT's effort to make a sophomore album that wasn't just a clever rehashing of their break out debut, Oracular Spectacular... but their new record just might not be as good, from a from a psychedelic-pop point of view at least, i mean, it doesn't have those hooks and dancy beats that made their first record so great. maybe it'll be a grower and not a shower. some of the most magnificent things in this world are. maybe sensei'd agree with that.

i'm downloading openoffice.org for the macbook as we speak. all these clouds are rolling away. it's going to be a sunny day after all. but it's windy I can tell. i can't go out there yet.

i'm just watching the lite.mac.blue progress bar tick onwards, towards the right.

well, that shit's done and now my toes are frozen purple and the program seems to work just as well as the version of open office that i run on my aspire one netbook.

also: this is an honest recommendation of the new Broken Social Scene album. get it as soon as possible. listen to it on headphones. let it rip. let's hope MGMT makes a better record next time.

Yes, that's right. A PENIS FESTIVAL.

2010-04-13T02:11:00.000-07:00

It was Easter Sunday morning and I was two gin & tonics deep into an all-day-long bender as I pushed and punched my way through a dense sea of human bodies that had collected between the buildings of some indecipherable back road in a sprawling urban conglomerate called Kawasaki, near Tokyo. The swirling sea was a motley lot of fags, drag queens and gaijin and there were also a few normal Japanese folks in there for good measure. And everybody in this huge sea of people was chanting and screaming and drunkenly gyrating, arms flailing in the air and paying homage in the general direction of the two-meter-tall hot pink penis (which was, in fact, erect and circumcised) that was bolted to upper side of a palanquin-like carrier and being hoisted down the alley by a glittery group of flaming yellow faeries and an Shinto priest. Further out in the sea of bodies a smaller (oddly?) black penis was being paraded about in similar fashion.

'You know, I thought we'd be seeing a lot more cock at this festival. It's pretty tame,' I said aloud to no particular member of the posse I was swimming along with in the skanky sea.

My good comrade and driver, Mr. H, pulled his face away from the video camera pointed at a man with a pair of those costume disguise eyeglasses with the attached schnoz which had been modified with a rubber cock that dangled down to the guy's chin-- long enough to comment about it being Easter and that maybe the festival was holding back out of respect.

I postulated that Easter might have never caught on in Japan because it's not really a good excuse to buy people a bunch of shit they don't need and therefore not something the country would have any interest in.

Maracso had her lips wrapped around a six-inch-long candy cock sucker and couldn't say much at the time, but I could tell by the look in her eyes she was having a fine morning.

By the time we managed to swim successfully past the tide of bodies flowing down the alley enough time had passed that we had missed the ceremonial carving of the radishes into big erect johnsons and elaborate vagainae that took place inside the grounds of the Shinto shrine that was the genesis of all this cocksure tomfoolery.
It took the better part of an hour and a few long, hard pulls off my hip flask of bourbon before we managed to push our way through enough cockhungry bodies to get inside the grounds of the actual shrine.

This is the point in the story where the reader might stop reading and wonder what kind of foul, unholy sacrilege goes on that fucking island Japan?

Allowing people to parade around in drag and sell phallic paraphernalia to anyone with a fist full of cash wouldn't fly in a place of worship in the west (well, maaaaybe a Catholic church). But it's important to remember that Sin is one western concept that Japan has not yet assimilated. This not to say that the Japs have no sense of right and wrong. But in the Judeo-Christian West, there is a sense of shame attached to sexuality. It's bottled up and locked away only to be taken out when we are under the covers and the lights are off.

But moral compass guiding what is good and bad and holy and sinful starts spinning in all directions as soon as you set foot in a place like Tokyo. Original sin got lost in translation. Selling booze and used underwear out of street side vending machines, reading porno on the subway, buying softcore DVDs at the 7-11...this is all par for the course in Japan.

Sex is everywhere in Japan. I can walk fifteen minutes down the road from my top floor in the inaka (read: The Farm) and have a choice of literally dozens of places to get a handjobs, rimjobs, blowjobs, footjobs...pretty much anything short of actual sexual intercourse. And this is The Farm, remember, not a megalopolis like Tokyo where the quantity of such places is exponentially higher. (Worth noting that since I'm gaijin, I will be almost universally denied access to these places, even if I were to go with a native Japanese. The exception might be the bars run by Filipinos, but I'm not even sure about that.)

So it is not exactly odd that such a thing as the Kanamara Matsuri (lit: Festival of the Steel Phallus) goes on in a place like Japan. Back in the day, prostitutes would go to the this particular shrine to pray for protection from VD. There's also a legend where a daemon with long, sharp fangs hid itself away in the vagina of a young girl, only to savagely castrate every lover who tried to suit her. Because of her rather unfortunate problem, the girl sought the help of a blacksmith, who forged a steel dildo which the girl used to shatter the daemon's teeth and berid her of a rather arid dry spell in matters of pillowing. The steel phallus was forthrightly enshrined. Nowadays the festival is awash with freaks like me. Proceeds are said to to towards HIV research.

2010-04-13T01:58:00.000-07:00

Saw this floating around on facebook and thought it might be worth posting on RDL for anyone who want's to see a video about japanese stereotypes based on ambiguous statistics.

in a room alone for hours on saturday afternoon while cleaning out my camera we find these photographs and give them to the internet.

2010-04-03T01:55:00.000-07:00

2010-04-02T23:39:00.000-07:00

LMM: I want to be part of your America life.

RDL: My what?

LMM: Your life, back home. When we go back. I want you to share that with me.

RDL: Oh, yeah... Definitely.

LMM: Sometimes I think you have no interest in the sharing of that.

RDL: There hasn't been a good opportunity to share that with you. When there is, it will happen. I think the summer will be the best time for this. Don't you?

LMM: Yeah, I do. I think it will be great.

RDL: Mmm, it could be.

LMM: Whaddya mean, could be?

RDL: What if you don't like any of my friends because they're all drug addicts, and I don't like your friends because they're all slutty sorority girls.

LMM: Most of my friends are not sorority girls, nor were they ever.

RDL: Most of my friends are all drug addicts. Certifiably.

She makes some noise indicating feigned humor, realizing her life is ruined.

2010-04-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

OH MY GOD THIS JUST HAPPENED

Raoul Duke Lives

Morning at the beach.

Asian Winter

The Move West

The Move West

The Move West

The Move West

The Move West

The Move West

The Move West

I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Random notes from the bar.

God, Drugs and Men of Smoke :: OR :: The End of a Season :: OR :: Notes from India Part #5

Back in the USA : Tragedy from Afar : AND : Notes from India #4

Please don't mind the gap :: OR :: Notes from India #3

notes from India part #2

Notes from India, part 1

the longest day ever :: OR :: How to get to India. In 21 points.

becuase facebook only lets you post 420 letters for a status update, and this is 492

Prague, you're a toilet for my love.

lesson learned the lush way

Drinking Beer in Germay

last one from stateside

Reduced Price Sociology. Buy Now!

city of clouds & water : photos

Woke up on floor to bright sunny day

in Seattle, USA

first there was a walk to Fremont cafe

with old friend jamil and new friend tara

then we saw soviet-era bronze working of good comrade Lenin, $150,000 obo

after, we travel downtown

and check out the market

but not long enough to see them throw fishes

somewhere there was big chess

and people making art

at volunteer park, we walk up the water tower

to see mt. Rainer in the distancetaller than mt. Fuji, but not by much

then, around the water

we find allison

and we take some pictures

of pretty things

and ugly things

and old things

until we finally reach

the best view of them all.

city of clouds & water

homeless in houston, part 3

Vagrancy Blogs: homeless in houston: the second night

Vagrancy blogs: homeless in houston

The Vagrancy Blogs: one last post from Iwaki

Vagrancy 2.0 – the beginning : Purge-ery

about the goodtimes

Signs of the Times

a good thing that happened.

The Exit

a rice field growing at top speed in summer heat

Iwaki City Kawamae Elementary School

It looks just like any other school on the outside

there's a nice old lady who tends the gardens. she always gave me snacks. she was off today. i will never see her again.

I only ate the school lunch at Kawamae b/c they made it at the school, not some factory where the rest of the schools get theirs. Last school lunch.

Later I was introduced to kami-zumo, or paper sumo

My fighter

Grand parade

so you put your fighter on a cardboard box and tap the box with your hands until one of the fighters falls over or rings out

I'll sleep in August.

excerpted from an email to Jamil...

Sumo Trip!

Take Friends

Sake

Sushi

and ripped bods

cram four bodies in enough space for two

get some fat guys

and make 'em fight!

and parade around!

huzzah!

who dat!

huwah!

see the white guy?

the yokozuna

to see mt. Rainer in the distance
taller than mt. Fuji, but not by much