idleness and clouds

Long, uninterrupted blocks of idle time seem to be the most conducive to writing. While it wasn't great for organizing or researching longer works (I usually lacked the materials and physical space necessary for extensive note-taking, let alone access to encyclopedias of any kind),  I recall that I wrote frequently during my backpacking travels. I mostly travelled alone, kept a book and notebook with me at all times, and had many long periods of downtime in between activities, in which there was nothing to do but read, write, or simply think, even if I had wanted to do something else. I was not only allowed, but forced to be alone with my thoughts. While I can't claim that it was always pleasant, it really does feel like a lost luxury these days. Calls to adventure aside, I begin to think that that roving, lonely lifestyle was the most natural state of existence for someone like me.

While flying is an almost universally abysmal experience - bureaucratic, callous, commercial, an A-Z of pejoratives if you like - there is still something magical about the clouds themselves, perhaps in the act of looking down on them, though that sounds too hostile or paternalistic. I can negate that, though, for the best part is being among them, the sense of climbing a mountain range in the sky, filled with the dwellings of some colorless people. Rather, they are a canvas on which to paint any and all possible colors. Their steeples and minarets are all possible architectures from all possible cultures at once. Their children pass up and down the steps of cathedral cities as templates for a sort of prismatic future, where each one of them can become all things that they have the slightest inclination to be, as time stretches out to infinity, and layers itself one iteration atop another. 

Then the wind blows, and it is all obliterated.

While I don't remember when it happened, I feel like there was one moment in my life when the clouds were the most beautiful, and every sky I have seen since then contains some amount of that moment, some tiny, reflected grain of an image imprinted forever on my spirit. This living, but static image, so dimly recalled as to be impossible to reproduce, may be the closest thing in this universe to eternity.

to see with eyes unclouded

My neighborhood in America

A neighborhood in Syria that we bombed

    "I have quoted John Winthrop's words more than once on the campaign trail this year—for I believe that Americans in 1980 are every bit as committed to that vision of a shining "city on a hill," as were those long ago settlers ...
    "These visitors to that city on the Potomac do not come as white or black, red or yellow; they are not Jews or Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans. They are Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is still… a shining city on a hill." --- Ronald Reagan

"A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden." --- Jesus, possibly

    In the second Urusei Yatsura movie, Ataru and the gang find themselves trapped in a nightmare version of their town of Tomobiki, reliving the same day over and over, unable to escape the city. Toward the end, they all pile onto the private harrier jet of their obscenely wealthy friend, Mendou. They fly up and away from Tomobiki, only to discover that the whole town rests on the back of a giant sea turtle floating through space.
    As I've spent more of my life away from home, away from the Western world, and learned from those much more well-informed than I, I've come to see my own town in the same way. Except that Bloomington (or at least the version of my experience) is more a pleasant dream than a nightmare, and instead of a giant turtle, it sits on the backs of the rest of humanity. It's not the fault of the town, or the people who live in the town. Bloomington is a nice place full of mostly nice, even socially conscious, people. I live in a quiet, pleasant, affluent neighborhood. I bike down the road to see rows of identically pleasing houses and apartments. Everything is quiet. Bombs never fall from the sky. No one is killed by a drone strike. There are no political assassinations that I'm aware of. Yet I cannot help but wonder who had to be killed or exploited to make it this way.
    American politicians love to talk about American exceptionalism, that we are a 'city on a hill', yet I can't help but think that our city only reached this height by being built on top of the corpses of countless generations of slaves, displaced natives, sweatshop workers, murdered freedom fighters, and marginalized peoples around the world. I can't help but think that the 'globalization' that now rules the flow of wealth is still just imperialism rebranded.
    And who is to blame for it? I cannot blame my family and friends. They are hard-working, kind people in an imperfect world. I can blame the system, 'The Machine', but this machine is made up of my family and friends, and their families and friends. Where does the abstraction stop and personal responsibility begin?
    I can blame our government, but that's just a different word for the same thing. I can throw vitriol at our president and his cronies all I want, but the truth is that he is just the latest in a long line of figureheads atop of a vast structure of exploitation that has existed longer than the country itself, an apparatus that continues to run every time I buy a book about humanism on Amazon, or an organic coffee at our local store; or every time I pay my taxes while keeping silent about the latest police shootings, or our massive prison population, or the extrajudicial murder of who knows how many innocents abroad. Every time I take a look at Facebook politics, or see a Republican raging at Democrats, or a Democrat raging at Republicans, all I can think about is Erich Fromm's ever-prescient analysis of modern society. A society so beyond the action or comprehension of most individuals that a person gives up their will, even their identity, to a collective. To, in a sense, regain their self-worth by abdicating responsibility. In this morass of humanity, how could I single out anyone?
    No, the only one I can blame without equivocation is myself. When I sit down for a nice meal, I think of those who can't and blame myself. When I sleep in my climate-controlled bedroom, I think of the lean-tos in Rangoon housing whole families and blame myself. When I choose to teach rich kids because poor kids can't pay me enough, I blame myself. And when I can only respond to these thoughts with resentment instead of action, either constructive or destructive, I blame myself. And above all, I blame myself because while many people are born into their only lifestyle, I have had the opportunity to choose something else if I wish to. Yet I still live like this.
    The old stereotype is to finish your meal because somewhere else people are starving. And gratitude is a nice sentiment, I suppose. But is it really what I should be feeling? Is it true that I'm just fortunate and someone else isn't, so I should enjoy what they can't? Or is it more true that I have, in fact, taken the food they were going to eat, though I have too much already?

    The words that Reagan was referring to in that quote were from a lecture Winthrop gave called "A Model of Christian Charity". An ironic place from which to glorify ourselves. The city is on a hill not as a measure of superiority, but because everyone is watching them. And when I look at America from the outside, I wonder what the world sees. Because I see a nation that hoards wealth above all else in a world of poverty and strife, a nation that is willing to lash out to protect itself or take what it wants; I see a dragon in its mountain cavern, grown fat atop its treasure while the world outside burns.

so long yangon

crumbling buildings and sewers
green things choke the city from all directions
every rooftop is full of spiders
every sewer with rats
every alley with stray dogs

the wealthy grow paler and fatter by the minute (their husks permeated with the stench of air-conditioned hypermalls and the skin-care products within) while the poor remain skeletal and dark, the ridges of their bowed spines visible out the top of grimy tank tops as they stand like scarecrows around the trashfire behind the abandoned truck frame

white cabs pack the streets between the public buses (secondhand imports from every country that makes buses) all vying for space, the drivers playing lane chicken while hopped up on stimulants

soon i'll be gone
but the city will still be standing here, if only because they will keep building it, even as the monsoon rains and the dust and the jungle beat it down

---

from the plane window at night
i can see the twinkling of the lights as the trees pass over them
rice paddies give way to ocean, and eventually to corn fields

at home, it's Fall
i grow a beard and wear flannel
the highways are massive, the trucks the size of battleships
billboards and strip malls fester on the endless rolling hills
the countryside is eerily silent
no chanting or EDM blasting from speakers down the flooded streets
no ants or spiders or beetles or mosquitos or mushrooms growing in my bathroom
no dogs howling
no cat fights or screaming children
no bells twinkling from the pagoda top

but weirdest of all, it's not hot

so long Yangon
i'm back in the land of parking lots

moussaka (watching the world go by)

Around the corner from my friend's apartment here in New York is a diner that serves moussaka (among many other things). It's good, but not the best I've had, and that got me thinking of the best I've had, and the memory connected with it, half the reason I like ordering it here.

Moussaka is a Greek dish made from ground lamb, eggplant, tomatoes, and bechamel, kind of like a lasagna without pasta or tomato sauce.

I think it was less than a year ago (feels longer) that I first tried it. It was either on the coast of Turkey, or at a small resort on the Greek isle of Thera – where the Minoans used to live before a volcano wiped them all out. I can't remember now. It was better, of course, but still not the best.

That came a week or so later at a restaurant in Athens. My plane had just landed there from Thera early that morning. The previous night had been filled with beach sunsets and wine, so I was more than a little bleary-eyed after the flight. I took the train into town and came up out of the station into Monastiraki square, pigeons and street performers scattered across the cobblestones. The Acropolis was visible on its plateau through the gaps in the buildings.

I arrived at the hostel to find that they wouldn't be ready for me until sometime that afternoon. So I headed back to the square and did what I usually do when I have no place to go. Find a restaurant or cafe to hole up for a while, probably while reading or scribbling away in my journal. This time it was a nice place down the street that looked out onto the square, not far from the Ancient Agora. I asked for a table inside to get away from the crowds. It was well lit, cavernous, and completely empty that time of morning. I was wearing two sweatshirts because they wouldn't fit in my bags, which were arranged around my chair in a mound. My hair stuck up and out in all directions. I couldn't remember when I had last showered or had a decent night's sleep. I ordered moussaka and coffee and sat there for several hours, reading, taking advantage of the wi-fi; the wait staff standing around their giant, empty dining room with nothing to do but check on me occasionally. Outside, the city paid me no mind, but simply went its own way. One man shouted gibberish at a monument that had probably stood hundreds or thousands of years before he was born, while the terrace diners ignored him with ease. I didn't know a single person in the city, and barely in the country for that matter. No connections, nowhere to go really, and no one to care if I didn't go anywhere. This time and place wasn't my life, it was just the world. I could've been a phantom, or an unseen camera spying a time lapse of history.

Not sure where I was going with this. Other than to demonstrate what I think about when I eat moussaka.

second day in the village

 first part here

    I won't pretend to understand the relationship between the authorities and the monks in Myanmar. Nevertheless, it was prudent for us to pay a visit to the monastery. Down a path behind the house was a small store from which we bought gifts to take with us. Snacks, mostly. The monk himself was much like other monks in appearance, bald, tan, draped in crimson robes, though thinner and lankier than many. He sat with his back to the Buddha statues and faced toward us as we knelt and placed the gifts on the floor. The apprentices were gathered to one side, a little crop of dark scalps, miniature versions of the same person. They sat dead silent and stared curiously for a bit before reverting to an idle sort of boredom. At the monk's direction, one of them brought a plate of food for us. Aww zar thee, a fruit which could be mistaken for pineapple from a distance, but segmented inside, and very sweet with a grainy texture.
    The only light drew in from the doorways set in each wall. We sat while the monk talked at length about the situation in the village. Money that had been donated for the school was instead languishing in the chairman's pockets, among many other problems. Though I was wholly ignorant of the law, it seemed that foreigners were not to stay anywhere but hotels in the country. A law which seemed to have no connection to reality. Or perhaps it was only in certain areas. All I understood was that there was some issue with the police. But of course, they didn't like to mess with the monks. It was suggested that perhaps I could just "stay" at the monastery. I sat and listened even though I couldn't understand. Thanks to my travels in the past few years, I'd grown used to being a passive member of most conversations.

    The next day, we went to the farm. Down the dirt road, which was finally drying out after the rain, cows lingering along the side. They're used as pack animals and to work the land, but not livestock. On the way, we stop at more houses for lahpet and tea. One old couple lives in a two-story house with plaster walls and a real roof. They both look carved from wood, wrinkles and all. They are hardened instead of saggy, experience manifesting physically in a way that commands respect; for them specifically and perhaps for all who live their lives in the sun and wind, in the world as it is. Or maybe a life of watching that world on TV, in movies about the beyond, documentaries, old Walker Evans photos of the Dust Bowl in the Depression, has conditioned me to romanticize. 
    Fields of rice, chilis, chick peas, and beans. The farm is segmented and divided between different members of the family, though most or all worked by her brother-in-law and his hires. The three of us cut along a creek bed and up to the fields as he clears a path with his machete. The air is much more clear here than down around Yangon, the sky almost reminiscent of home, clouds like veins of light in a blue sky near sunset. Wild stretches of growth and palms mark the borders between fields. Along the far edge of one, several strangers stand like statues, watching us pass. "They come to steal the cows' food when we're not around," my friend explains.
    In one small patch, the crops are not growing. The brother-in-law points to it. "My friend sends American seeds, they don't grow." He laughs. I feel a sudden urge to defend my country. I mean, of course they wouldn't grow in soil on the opposite side of the planet. Right? Back home, I do nothing but complain about my country. But anytime a foreigner does the same, I switch sides.
    Back by the house, he's harvesting corn in a small field with a sickle. He passes it to me, and I try my city slicker hands at it, while he laughs.

    During my stay, it's been repeatedly suggested that I should get a haircut. There is one barber in town. My last haircut was a year ago, so I finally relent. We track her down and she borrows a pair of scissors from a friend. I take my shirt off and sit on a tree stump in an open spot of the village. My skin is rrreeeeaally pale. Anyone nearby gathers around to watch in a big circle while she cuts my hair.
    Bathing is usually outdoors with a spigot, a plastic bowl, and a longyi. A longyi is just a big cloth tube you wrap around yourself, part of the traditional dress for both men and women. Fill a metal tub a bit with water from the spigot. Less of a haven for mosquitos than the big open cisterns they use at my school. Soap up and throw some water on yourself with the bowl. I'm not good at it at all. My friend doesn't believe that I actually bathed. Maybe that's why, on the second day, her brother-in-law is there throwing water on me and laughing.
    Ealier that day, I'd asked my friend if I could buy whiskey for her brother-in-law. Her sister quickly chimed in: "No whiskey." For that last night, we had settled on beer and palm wine with dinner. A sort of going away, maybe a chance to repay a little hospitality while getting further in debt at the same time.
    I stepped back into the house, dressed, and went out to the front porch, where a crowd had gathered, having a somber discussion with two police officers. One a jovial fellow with a wide face and protruding stomach, an old friend of the family, apparently. Next to many of the villagers, he looks like a dirigible floating through a flock of sparrows. The other a thin, twitchy man with red teeth that I've never seen before. He exhudes an air of anxious disdain for those around him, which makes me uncomfortable. They ask to see my passport again, and examine every page of it for what seems like hours, while having a serious talk with the locals. I can't understand any of what's going on, of course, except for the occasional question put to me. I'm conscious of their holstered pistols, especially the twitchy one. Little hints of the situation reach me, but I still don't really understand. I'm waiting for them to ask me about my expired visa. They eventually do, and I tell them what I know while my friend translates. I suggest we should call my principal, but of course there is no phone service except for the house's landline, which is hooked up while the generator is running. Nobody gets called, though. The officers don't seem to want anyone else involved. The state of my visa is irrelevant to them, anyway. All they want is a bribe from the villagers or they kick me out. I'm not aware of any of this until afterwards, of course.
    The jovial one maintains his good humor throughout. He tells me he went to school with their uncle. "Coco, you know? Drinky-drinky." It's true, I had met Coco earlier, and learned that he drank himself out of college, and it seemed to have taken a permanent toll on him, both physically and mentally. [Many people in Myanmar don't drink at all, but the ones who do don't mess around.] All the same, there was something I didn't like about this guy's tone when he spoke of his 'friend'. And that anyone could be so friendly and nonchalant about extorting money from the people he should be responsible for protecting leaves me fuming inside. Outwardly, of course, I'm agreeable and passive - if quiet - while he claps me on the shoulder or tells a joke in broken English.
    In general, the position of the police in a place like Myanmar is strange. In the US, of course, the relationship between the public and the authorities isn't always a bed of roses, but at least in principle, our police force exists as a public service, like the government itself. To Protect and Serve and all that. Not so in Myanmar, a place where I often felt that if there were any police at all, they only existed to protect the government from its people. Just a week later, I would read an article about gangs of taxi drivers in a Yangon neighborhood who had organized to dispense street justice to local criminals by ambushing and beating them. The police weren't part of the equation. Without true popular support, the government only has the manpower to protect and serve itself, while its citizens get through daily life on their own. A symptom of the massive disconnect between politics and reality.
    Confused and disoriented, I start saying goodbyes. I hug my friend's cousin and then try to hug some random old woman in the crowd for some reason. She's having none of it, so I give up. I collect my bag and head down to the clearing in front of the hayloft, where my friend's brother-in-law and uncle are already on their motorcycles; ready to make the dark trek into town instead of eating dinner.
    Living in Myanmar, one of the hardest things for me was the culture of hospitality. Whether people were driving me around, watching me eat the food they cooked, serving as interpreters, or any of the countless little sacrifices they insisted on making; I could never escape feeling like a burden, one of my least favorite things in the world. It took me until I left to get used to it. Out in the country, of course, there is absolutely no choice. Without my friends to ferry me around, feed me, and show me how things work, I would have been completely helpless. 
    So I hopped on the back of the motorcycle, the cops waiting to escort us out of town. With that charmingly earnest nature so characteristic of many people I met there, my friend's cousin runs up and grabs my hand when I wave goodbye and she says, "I will never forget you." My eyes are misty. I won't get to drink wine and eat curry. And I already know how much I hate long motorcycle rides, especially at night. I grip the handle at the back of the seat as we speed out of the village. We won't beat the rain, but at least it waits until we're off the mud roads. When we get into town, we stop at the police station, they examine my passport again, and then we move on without them. We're still very far from the nearest hotel. The road is pitch black and not really wide enough for two cars. We speed through the rain in silence, not slowing down for the wet asphalt. The occasional night bus flashes out of the dark going the other way and taking up the entire road. When it does, my driver shuts off his lights, either balancing on the edge of the pavement, or cutting away into the mud and gravel to avoid the bus. At one point, we pass a man and his motorcycle laying right in the middle of the road. He sits up and watches us. We don't slow down, let alone stop for him.
    Most places are closed when we get into town, but we stop somewhere for a Myanmar beer and a salad. A large porch area of wooden tables and plastic chairs, only a few patrons watching soccer. The mood is somber. Our drivers will find somewhere to stay in town instead of making the long trip back home tonight. Back onto the motorcycles and we finally reach a hotel. But my hopes of a soft bed and a hot shower are dashed. They see my expired visa and turn me away. Ironically, the only solution is to stay at my friend's cousin's house instead [My friend refers to her as her sister-cousin. I've only just learned that this is how they teach it in Burmese high school English classes, which explains why I've been so confused.]. Staying there probably breaks the exact same law those cops were enforcing. As we sit in the concrete front room, I immediately notice all of the mosquitoes that were absent from the village.

first day in the village

    I'm getting better at flying. The landing gear bouncing off the Indianapolis tarmac jolt me out of a stupor. I don't sleep on flights, but I had managed a drooling trance for the past half hour. I'm home now but my mind is still two weeks ago.
    Early morning came just after the night bus from Yangon, with its overzealous AC and blaring TV into the smallest hours. The only thing that had let me sleep at all was my friend lending me her blanket, without which I probably would have frozen to death. My friend's relatives picked us up from a restaurant by the stop where I'd perked myself up with a bowl of mohinga and an instant coffee while the sun rose.
    Our motorcycle fishtailed its way along through tracks and furrows, trying to stay in the tire-wide path cut by others that zig-zagged back and forth across the road. It had been raining for days before, and the dirt road had become a mud, Motocross deathtrap. I held on to the seat at the rear while my friend's brother-in-law braved the trenches, steering with his feet as much as the wheels to keep us from tipping over. We dipped through pits of rock and puddle. We crossed bridges and took trails through the grass when the road became impassable.
    My hair had grown long in the past year. The sweat and the heat put the frizz in it, so it shot out in all directions in the wind, sloped up and out like a ski jump in the back. As we putted and struggled along, flatbeds passed full of tanned laborers and their flat stares; making me more conscious than usual of the flabby and maggot-pale Westernness of my skin. I was still exhausted from the bus ride, but it was impossible to feel tired on such a bright, dynamic road as this.
    As we ramped over a puddle, he spat out a wad of betel nut, then spoke. "Ryan: uhhh.. you know if you stay at my house, we have three rooms to choose."
    "Okay." I clenched my teeth as we sailed over a wooden bridge, balanced on a few planks placed longways to one side, to give bikes a smooth enough path to keep them from flipping over.
    "Barn is $20. Bottom floor, $30. Top floor, $50!"
    "Excuse me?" I said.
    "Hahahahahaaa!" He laughed while narrowly avoiding a bus fender with his left hand and packing another wad of betel with his right.
    "Oh…ha ha." It would take me most of that first day to catch up with his sense of humor.  
    "You can pay in whiskey!"
    "Oh, all right then." Was he joking, still?
    The landscape in this area of the country is described as tropical savannah. An ironed-out jungle exploding with pale green and a sense of scorch and dust in the air, even after the rains. Tall grass, lone palm trees, lively foliage that seems to be fighting for its life against the heat of the sun. We pulled off the road to a walled building from which a woman with a plastic bottle of gasoline emerged. I stood idle as she filled the tank. Another flatbed passed, this one escorted by motorcycles, the entire cavalcade sporting the flags and red headbands of the National League for Democracy, the country's main opposition party. It was about a month until the election. The government could admittedly only guarantee a 30% accuracy in the results. Census data is no doubt abysmal nationwide. Records haven't been updated in my friend's village when people die. I wonder how many of the deceased will be voting.
    On an easier stretch of the path, a fellow with a pot-belly and violent wave of black hair at the front pulls alongside us, looking jovial. The two drivers shout back and forth a bit, then he speeds off ahead of us. My driver turns his head to me. "He is police officer," he says.
    "Oh."
   
    It turns out I had the upper floor all to myself. No wonder it's so expensive. My own little mosquito net tent, a reed mat on the floor, and a sunlit view of the village out the many unshuttered windows. Massive, noisy flies and bees (horse bees?) commuted through the room, but I didn't see a single mosquito during my whole stay. Which made it heaven compared to Yangon, as far as I was concerned. It's incredible what a lack of stagnant water can accomplish. One fly crawled into the dark of a grate in the ceiling, but immediately reappeared through the same hole, only this time covered in a cocoon of spider silk. It hung there for a moment before being tugged back up into the darkness.
    My time in the tropics has been a crucible for my spider tolerance (which is normally very low). The bathroom is a hotbox across the yard from the house, wood with a tin roof, raised off the ground and only tall enough to squat in. As in most bathrooms, each corner is home to a spider and the various cadavers he keeps on file. I crouched low, kept my elbows in, and tried to reassure myself that the spiders would mind their own business while I did mine.

    Most of our time the first day, and the second for that matter, is taken up visiting family members, which seems to be everyone in the village. They all feed us. Curried meats, lahpet (a snack of dried tea leaves, often with nuts), bamboo shoots, chick peas, sticky rice candy, Shark energy drinks, and enough tea to drown in. My friend introduces me to everyone. "This is my niece. This is my uncle's brother. This is my cousin-sister. This is my father-brother." My head is spinning. I listen to them converse and chime in with my embarrassingly small vocabulary. They're all very nice, many ask questions, but very few seem to look me in the eyes, and greet me in the way that I'm used to on meeting new people. They stay in their chairs, they say what they wish, their mannerisms express a sense that my presence is business as usual. They ask what I think about their village.
    My friend's cousin comes with us from Yangon, to visit the village again before heading off to college in the nearby city. She speaks very little English, but manages to explain to me that she is eager to learn more. She's my second translator on the trip, telling me which way to go with a couple words, or trying out a new sentence on me to see if I can tell what she's talking about. I do the same to her with my few words of Burmese, and we laugh about the horrible results. She's so dainty that I find it funny to see her eating in the typical Burmese fashion, scooping up rice and curry with the fingers of one hand. Her father is one of the motorcyclists that drives us around. He isn't much taller than she is, but looks solid. He has the dark skin of village life, spiky hair, and a facial structure which reminds me of some Western actor that I can't place.  

    In the afternoon, we have to go visit the police, to show them my passport. The one spotted me on the way in (as anyone around here could), and now they want to figure out what to do about me. We go to the village chairman's house, where he and an officer - in uniform this time - lounge around drinking whiskey [Along with Myanmar beer, whiskey seems to be the national drink. And those who do drink it don't mess around.] and smoking the cigars that are stacked on the table. I hand over my passport and sit uncomfortably while he flips through it. As everywhere, there are snacks on the table, packaged candy bars and rice cakes. I nibble on one a bit. My friend speaks with them in friendly, familiar tones. In a place like this, everything must be familiar.
    Except me. Everywhere we went, there was the distinct sense of being a stranger. Adults watched me, children grew silent and stared as I passed, dogs growled at me, even babies cried when I got close. On the porch of my friend's house, her little niece teared up every time she looked at me. By the second day, she had perhaps realized that I wasn't actually a monster; and even called me 'coco', which means big brother. In any case, the frequent passport examinations certainly reinforce the feeling that you are not where you belong in the world. So people want to know why you're there. Why you didn't just stay put. It wasn't an infrequent question from any stranger I met in my travels. Why did you come to Myanmar? Why did you visit our village? What is your business here? Questions I was never good at answering. If I ever let myself, I'd be as likely to preface a response with, "Well now, that's a very philosophical question isn't it? Why _am_ I here?" Furthermore, did these cops so carefully flipping through my documents – making lengthy phone calls on my behalf in the one spot of the village that got cell service – really think I was a spy, or an agitator, or anything but a drifter? Probably not, actually. All they were really looking for was an excuse…

my neighborhood

I thought it might be useful to give a better impression of my neighborhood by describing a mundane trip to the mall.

    I pass the turtle's bathtub in the afternoon as I walk through the playground, then around the back of the school, lined with ferns, bamboo, and smells. The brick walkway is crowded with snails and the occasional frog, that I only notice as it hops out of the way. The school cook is laying on a desk behind the kitchen, sleeping. In the new building across the courtyard, the construction workers sleep each night in the rooms they build during the day. Something darts below the grate of the open sewer. Whether cat or rat, I'm not sure. As one of the few places in the neighborhood not overrun with stray dogs, the school is a haven for cats. A one-eyed calico kitten has joined the cloister recently. Out the front gate, the neighbors live in one or two room shacks, more or less. Fences of woven reeds and jumbled sticks mark their spaces, which can be hard to distinguish from one another. Their houses are doorless, made of boards, rusted sheet metal, things like that, and roofed with plastic tarps that hang down over the sides. One hut has the front end of a rusted truck incorporated into the wall, as if it were cut off for that purpose. Out on the little road sits the roof of possibly the same truck. Two girls lean against the wall nearby while their brother kicks a soccerball at them. A toddler tools around the street in what appears to be a powerless Power Wheels hot rod. Plastic bags full of gravel are stacked up to the top of the wall. The largest building beyond the monastery wall I had long thought an abandoned shell, but it now appears to be under construction again.
    It's the rainy season now, which means the temperature has gone down, the humidity has gone up, and our modest sewers are overflowing into the streets. Grey water slides across my sandals.
    Several cabbies lounge on their giant tricycles at the corner, waiting for fares. A small hut is dark inside but for the fire lit on the ground. Two oversized speakers blast dance music out into the street. Stray dogs lounge everywhere, panting in the mud. Late in the afternoon, the air is pale and hazy, probably from fires burning. Last month, during a holiday, the telephone pole was greased and a contest held to see who could climb to the top.
    Beyond a moldy stone wall, the pagoda is visible through the treetops and greenery which encroaches on every manmade structure. Aside from our school, probably the nicest buildings in the area are the monasteries across from the pagoda. Colorful, clean, and recently painted. Monks in crimson robes stand out by the gates and stare up and down the street, or toss water from buckets onto the roadside. A ditch runs along to the right, filled with ferns and trash (a blue umbrella, plastic bags, rotting food, old furniture, burnt paper, and just about anything that someone might throw away). There is trash everywhere, in fact. Next to an ancient, spreading tree on the pagoda grounds, a whole field of it is packed into the dirt like a budding landfill. 
    The traffic gets thicker down the street. Of the cars on the road, about 80% are cabs. Also of the cars on the road, I've been told that almost all of them are less than three years old. There were no imports allowed before that, so any car had probably been running for a few decades or more. The change has likely brought in a lot of business, and also a huge increase in traffic. And honking. Dear lord, the honking...

    Where two streets merge, the traffic thickens, both cars and people. A fenced off old hospital is to the right. The monasteries give way to old apartment buildings. Actually, they probably aren't that old, but the mold that grows on everything makes them look it. By sundown, the right side of the street is crowded with market stalls and blankets covered in merchandise. Jewelry, fried foods, childrens' clothing sporting the Union Jack.
    At the first cross-street, one of the tricycle taxi drivers squeezes his left nostril with a finger and blows snot into the gutter. The pedestrians run the gamut of styles and tax brackets. To some degree, I feel the latter can be determined by the smoothness of their skin. Most people wear longyi, though the younger ones are that much more likely to be wearing Western clothes. The shops begin. A vitamin counter (they seem to be everywhere), Mr. Boy's hair salon, internet cafés tucked in under mottled drywall and balconies draped with laundry. A counter of flowers in the street and a man chanting through a megaphone while rattling his bucket of change. Instead of a sign with their name on it, every restaurant seems to sport the same billboard, the green and red logo for Myanmar beer.
    At the next corner, I pass another school, a large courtyard behind a stone fence, the sidewalk lined with covered pickup trucks to take the students home. A young man with frosted, spiky hair and skinny jeans kicks a passing dog in the rib cage between struts. Beyond the school is a woman whose entire store is made of bananas, in all sorts of colors. Next to it, the yard of a small house is crowded with debris, as if part of the roof had been blown off in a storm.
    The mall dwarfs its surroundings, a mass of neon lights and air conditioning which must use more power than the rest of the neighborhood combined. The doors stand open on the metal detector and uniformed security guards who never check my satchel for some reason. Other than that, the whole building feels like it's been cut out of a neighborhood in Seoul and airlifted here.

why are you honking at me?

    I should take a moment to talk about Christmas vacation at Setse Beach. A wide, flat, peopleless expanse like its own little desert when the tide goes out, leaving broad puddles of algae in the dips, and plateaus covered in tiny spheres of sand arranged in starburst patterns around the burrows of crabs. Strange creatures darted in the rivulets, hidden by clouds of sand; only once revealed to be thin, white, featureless, electric tilapia fillets pumped with amphetamines and too fast to see clearly. To the North, near where the locals spun donuts in their pickup trucks and ATVs while blasting dance music and burning things, one man rode a pony past the restaurant where I ate every day. The waitress with sunscreen smeared on her cheeks and pigtails like twin fountains of oil spurting from her skull had eyes that became dark crescents when she smiled and served a squid curry that made me never want to leave.
    On the other hand, the chief occupants of the motel (described as 'rustic' in the guidebook) were spiders, coating the high ceilings, getting fat in the light fixtures, lying in wait under the bed's canopy when I unrolled the mosquito net. Taken together with the LMFAO that pounded against the walls at night, the everpresent mosquitos, and the unceasing heat, they were more than enough reason to want to promptly make my exit.
    A feat, given the remote location. I spoke to the man who seemed to be the motel's caretaker, an emaciated fellow of about my height, focusing on his good eye and not the one that appeared to be filled with milk when I spoke. I wanted a taxi to the bus station at 6 pm the next day. I could eat at my favorite restaurant and visit the hermit crabs reclining in the mud around the pagoda to the North, without having to stay an extra night in my own personal purgatory. He seemed to understand, and at 6 am, woke me to tell me the taxi was ready. We quickly worked out the misunderstanding and laughed about it. I went to sleep again, and then at 6 pm, walked to the office with my luggage to find it empty except for a local woman nursing. By full dark, I tracked down my contact, reminded him about the taxi, then followed him around the neighborhood as he recruited another local and tracked down a motorcycle. What he had meant by taxi, of course, was just that he would drive me there himself. The three of us packed onto his motorcycle and sped off away from the spiders and into the dark.
    Now we come to the point of it all, I guess, which is a deeper understanding of what honking means in this part of the world, compared to back home. At home, when you honk at someone, you probably mean something like this:
   
    "Hey, you're breaking the law!"
    - or -
    "Hey, you're in my way!"
    - or maybe just -
    "Hey, you're a jerk!"

    It didn't take me too long to notice that, here, honking means this:
   
    "Hey, I'm driving!"

    This was an important step for me to cease being constantly offended as a pedestrian. The occasion doesn't matter, honking is just a thing people do to indicate they're in a car, or perhaps riding a bike. Is the honk directed at an object? Sometimes, maybe? It can be difficult to tell. Given the lack of enforced traffic laws, stop signs, lights, etc, it's only prudent, I suppose, to honk at every single person, animal, or plant that you see. And it was our little motorcycle trip that really drove this home for me.

    The three of us zipped down the road at what must've been top speed, around blind curves through the darkness. Insects cut at my cheeks like hundreds of invisible razors. It occurred to me that our driver was clearly blind in one eye, and I imagined the first mosquito to light in his good one would send the three of us sailing off into the trees, bones cracking and popping out this way and that. For that matter, a single pothole in the darkness would turn the scooter into a catapult, and our headlight was almost useless. Worst of all, the road was thin, curving, and overgrown. In our haphazard path, we took up every part of it at all times. The first car or truck on a curve couldn't fail to turn out the contents of my skull across its windshield.
    It was for this that our driver laid on his little horn for the entire trip into town, despite the empty road looking as if there might be no one to hear us for miles in any direction. It was simply his duty, or perhaps desire to avoid being mushed into a fine paste, that made him announce to the world, "I'm driving!" as he indeed drove, an act of intense presence and concentration, not to mention velocity.
    Being who I am, I was quite surprised when we arrived at the bus station alive. I was feeling stressed, windblown, and crusty (the ocean had been my only shower for days), but quite thankful to have my bones safely contained in my skin.

a couple months in

    People are friendly here. Though most of the unsolicited conversations I have go something like one of these:

    Man: Hello!
    Me: Hi.
    Man: Where are you from?
    Me: Uh, America.
    Man: Obama!
    Me: Yesyes, Obama.

    -or-

    Child: Hello!
    Me: Hello.
    Child: Helloo!
    Me: Hi.
    Child: Minguhlaba! [Hello]
    Me: Yeah, hi.
    Child: [Burmese]
    Me: What?
    Child: What?
    Me: Yeah.
    Child: Hello!
    Me: Hello there.
    Child: Hello, hello, hello!


    Music is passing slowly by on the street, and it sounds like a haunted carnival. Various loudspeaker announcements, probably ads, echoing through the neighborhood are something I'm used to in Asia, but they still make me feel like I'm having some bizarre Orwellian hallucination. Or that I'm dreaming while asleep in a hospital bed.
    The top of the pagoda is visible from the balcony outside my room, encased in bamboo scaffolding to touch up the gold paint. Below is the school playground with its newly laid brick walkway and rusted monkey bars, and an old bathtub filled with stagnant water and turtles. And the sandbox where the cats hide their business. Next is the main building, with walls that are not walls and the kitchen at the back, behind which the staff bathe from a concrete tub of water.
    The ants march dauntless across the tile of my bathroom wall, while I sit on my bed under the mosquito net and type the weekend away. When night falls, the packs of dogs outside will set to howling.

    On the long trip to Myanmar, panic lasted until I reached the international terminal at LAX. That's when that familiar feeling of being lost and homeless hit me, and I realized I'd been there before.

    My first week was a blur of unbearable heat and mosquitoes. A fever wracked me at the start of the second. I lay in my bed in the heat from inside and out, and imagined I must be dying.
    I took a field trip to Bagan at the end of the first week with the students. After an 11-hour drive filled with laughing, shouting children, we arrived at the motel at 4 am. There weren't enough rooms. I was stuck in a room with another teacher and two students, who invited their friends over. At 5 am, there was enough room for me to lay down on the bed. At 6 am, they called us for breakfast. We saw countless pagodas that day, each more impressive than the last. At the national museum, as a foreigner, I was asked to relinquish my phone to them before entering. I suppose because of the camera.
    That night, there was enough space to move me to a room by myself, though it had no bathroom. What it did have was air-conditioning, which I had not experienced outside of the tour bus since arriving in the country. In addition, Bagan was cool and rainy compared to Yangon. The edge of Heaven, really.
   

    I was invited to use an extra invitation to the Thai king's birthday party at the embassy. I showed up ready to go in my jeans and sneakers. "You're going like that?" asked the head of the Precollegiate Program. I was talked into wearing a longyi, the traditional Burmese dress, which I was incapable of tying by myself. "You won't see anyone there wearing jeans."
    As happens anytime someone has said these words, within 5 seconds of entering, I had spotted 5 people wearing jeans.
    Flowers from the other embassies lined the walkway. Corporate snack stands lined the courtyard, giving out free food. I made the rounds. I found an empty pocket of grass in which to sip my wine and watch the smooth jazz band on the stage.
    "Which type of curry would you like, sir?"
    "Just mix them all together."
    Amidst the elegantly dressed ladies and diplomats.
    All sorts of people were there, really. One fat, ginger kid strolled the crowds, and I wondered where he came from, wondered where everyone came from.
    The band evaporated, still shots of a palace on the screen, a man in what I assumed would be the clothes of a farmer from several hundred years ago wandered out on stage, miming playing a pipe to a recorded track. Next, several ladies stepped out in slippered feet, golden cones on their heads, arms like drugged serpents; and several not-ladies, round-faced men dressed in identical clothes and makeup mixed among them. I called on the cultural relativist portions of my brain to keep the more judgemental parts in line.
    It was hot. Boy, was it hot. But then again, it's always hot. I tugged at my collar and regretted the spicier foods I'd eaten.

Fast Forward To Rhodes

    The sun is low enough over the ocean that it falls across the shaded terrace and over the bar, but still high above the castle walls of Old Town; the same walls which held off the fleets of Egypt and the Ottomans nearly 600 years ago, before the Knights of St. John finally gave in to Suleiman the Magnificent nearly a century later. To the Southwest is the bastion of England, where the wall was blown apart by gunpowder mines, and English and German knights clashed with Suleiman’s foot soldiers throughout the siege.
    On a balcony across the street, a tanned and dark-haired Greek girl in her underwear takes down the laundry from her clothesline. She disappears inside, but the sun is still there, shining across the densely packed, ancient rooftops adorned with solar panels, while Van Morrison cries to himself on the radio, his tin guitar and wooden saxophone infecting me with a desire to spend the afternoon staring at clouds.
    Minarets, Byzantine churches, and medieval castles crowd together with palm trees and peeling plaster, all of it ringed with the crow’s nests and radio towers of nearby ships. The heat of the cobbled streets is tempered by a sea breeze, and the only thing spoiling the moment is a moderate case of traveller’s diarrhea.

random effluvia Istanbul

    A tram flashed by, ringing its bell whenever pedestrians hopped in front of it to cross the street. On the sidewalk were two ragged bunnies, perhaps mother and child, set atop a wooden crate. A laminated sign on A4 paper said: “Rabbit will tell your fortune.” Their owner eyed me as I passed by.

    The word ‘fly’ conjures images of soaring through the air with the sun and wind on my face and little fragments of damp cloud clinging to my hair, and a sense of complete freedom, power, and agency. Of course, the reality is the complete opposite. I pay hundreds of dollars to stand in queues and be felt up by surly, dead-eyed airport employees in between probing personal questions so I can be hurled into the air for 17 hours in a metal can packed with strangers, next to a long-elbowed old man with halitosis and severe respiratory problems. As consolation, there is a tiny window which I am commanded to keep open through which I can see a glimpse of what the world might look like if I really could fly. Now I remember why I wanted to take a 6-day train across Asia instead. It’s beginning to seem like all of my vacations will open with complaints about airports and airplanes. Here’s a tip: avoid layovers in China, because they will make you go through immigration, customs, and baggage claim, just to get back on the same flight. I must have gone through immigration 5 times in one trip.

    One of the first things that struck me out of the airport, and seemed to fit some preconception of mine, were the exaggerated movements, the unabashed, almost lazy self-assurance of Turkish men. As he gathered his passengers, our driver leaned on the railing with his hips thrust forward and belly pushed out over his belt, his watch gleaming on a hairy wrist, looking as if he had never nor could ever care about anything. His younger assistant spoke to him in short, popping phrases, gesturing with his fingers together as if holding a very important grain of sand. Whatever he was saying, the driver waved his knuckles in disdain: “I don’t care about your sand!” There is something different in the way they move here from my time in Korea that speaks of a confidence of corporeal form.
   
    Topkapi palace is sprawling. Even looking on a map, it engulfs a significant portion of the city. The rooms quickly become similar, but the grounds themselves are beautiful, and must have been so peaceful before tourism. Some of the trees outside the entrance are massive, and I wonder if they might be older than the palace itself, and what moments in history they have witnessed.
    Aside from its many other treasures, the palace museum contains some suspiciously incredible things, all in a single room. The sword of David. The staff of Moses. Several personal effects of Muhammad, which have survived the ravages of time for 13,000 years in surprisingly good condition.
    Walking through the Sultan’s old harem, I realized how much sense it made that only eunuchs were allowed to guard his concubines. There is a brutal and infantile efficiency to the problem-solving methods of tyrants that commands respect (at least from a distance). I find it fascinating, because as long as I live, I will never be able to understand those men through history who were content to dream and construct a morality to serve them. Much as I might find myself capable of analyzing the origins behind such thoughts, I can never replicate them in my own mind. Thus their otherness and consequent ability to transfix me; the flawless and frightening logic behind it:
    ‘Worried that my guards might consort with my women? --> Chop off their dicks in advance.’
Like a child’s math problem, it almost solves itself.

    Solicitors can be subtle here. It starts as a seeming interest in you, in where you come from, what you do, and ends in a proposition. They are not persistent, like in East Asia. The moment I say no, I have simply vanished as far as they are concerned. Though one man outside the palace was subtle enough that I am still not sure. He seemed eager to practice English, said he was going to visit a friend in Toronto, but kept mentioning his family’s shop, which was near the Hippodrome. The conversation appeared to have no end or goal in sight, and as we walked toward the entrance, it became clear that he thought we should see the sights together. No particular mention of telling me about their history, like the others I’ve met. Was he a tour guide like them? Probably, but he certainly kept me guessing.

leaving again

     I don’t know that my life in Korea has had anything in particular going for it, or even if I ever really clicked with this country. But after more than two years, it’s become comfortably familiar to me, the main result being that, on the eve of my departure, I now feel like I am leaving my home without planning to ever return.
    Perhaps this is a sense that might be mitigated when I’ve finalized more of my travel plans, but as of now I have only one plane ticket to Istanbul to convince me that I’m not about to fall off the face of the Earth and into a black hole. My address and most of my possessions are passed on, and even my computer (the single possession which defines my living space for me) will be left behind (temporarily), as I drift across the landscape and cling tightly to my passport and credit card, probably with a lost look on my face.

    It’s hardest when I think about my students, many of which have driven me to drink the week away on any Friday night, but some of which seem like incredible people to me; amazing me every day with their intelligence, humor, and even their maturity on occasion - even me, a curmudgeon who is so often disappointed with actual adults.
    One of the great things about the modern age is that I never feel the need to say goodbye to anyone when we part. I’ll see them on the internet. Or in a year or two, maybe, in the case of most friends, since it’s so easy to stay in contact. The time doesn’t strike me as significant. Unless it’s forever, which it is for these kids. I could even come back in a year, and they’d be gone, or perhaps different people by then, since they change so fast at that age.
    On my last day, one of my fourth graders, that I only taught for a few months (but one of the smartest kids I’ve had) cried quietly for most of class, and then afterwards hugged me and wouldn’t let go, and then she just started sobbing, while the other students crowded around and asked why she was crying, and I stood there feeling extremely guilty and unable to say anything.
    A second grader made me a bracelet which I will wear when I travel. One second grade boy threw his note at me and ran away, which said inside: “I will never ever miss you,” but I think he meant the opposite judging by the rest of his note. Another girl made me a little book filled with drawings of basic English words, like Snack, Fruit, Street, Instrument, Kitchen, and Weather, as if she thought I might forget what they mean now that I’m not teaching. In the middle of the book, is her letter, part of which goes like this:

    “If you go to U.S.A. I will miss you. and when you get on to airplane, It will be long, long time. If you are boring, please see my note. I feel very thank you to you. please don’t forget me. today is last day Friday I think Friday is Fry day :D I think you have to think you are very proud of your self.”

---
At times, I don't know what has compelled me to live like this, but I just remembered my vacation last year, when I lost my shoes somewhere on a beach, and spent several days walking across Southern Thailand barefoot. I wonder what this time will be like. And I wonder if I will go back to Korea.







   

The morning is a unique experience. It’s not often that I see these first rays pierce the Officetels as if they could be made of something other than concrete. Till this point, they’ve reminded me of nothing more than the eventual tombstones of civilization. But today there’s something hopeful in the empty windows. The ultimate feeling, I suppose, is a sense of complete helplessness with regard to the monumental task of parsing reality -- frantically, hilariously overbearing reality -- into manageable morsels.

Uncharacteristic excitement precludes my usual curmudgeonly disposition towards all, and if I can attribute it to anything, it is only the alien weight choking my wrist, a reminder of the girl i had a non-conversation with before she promptly evaporated, leaving only her bracelet and an unhealthy fascination which is bound to be frustrated in the standard course of living.

There’s a deep golden light, and a healthy happy sort of drunk that only manifests after the second night. I can see the emerald mountains just framed by the infant sun, and its a sight which is exclusively available on rare and hallowed occasions. Would I could find myself awake and free at this time more often. Like all wonderful things, the feeling passes into obscurity, and might never have been but for these words.

retrospecticus I

It's only my fourth day on the beach at Koh Phangan, but it feels much longer. I walked into town, to the 7-11, just to feel air conditioning for a few minutes.
The dogs are chasing a calf that has wandered onto the beach. Next door, locals are burning a pile of trash. Rain falls on the thatched roof sometimes, punctuated by the occasional coconut. This afternoon, the tide will go out, and children will string a huge net along the sandbar to catch crabs.
---
A week ago, I was still stuck in Bangkok, at a hotel I could never afford, listening to a jazz trio. The older gentleman at the next table has a fifth of Jack to himself, which he will finish by the end of the show. The trio is improvising to the changes of the M.A.S.H. theme song.
At intermission, I approach the pianist and ask if they take requests. "Well, that all depends, now doesn't it," he says. "On what the request is?"
I ask if they play any Mingus.
"Y'know, I never got into him myself, and half these people wouldn't understand that kinda shit. Some things are just out there. Why, I remember this one time, we'd had no rehearsal, and the band leader says to us: 'I don't wanna hear any chords tonight!'"
The pianist is from California. He appears to be in his 50s. "But I wouldn't go back there if my life depended on it! 12 years gone?! My crone of a mother would kill me! And the women here...so many gorgeous women here," he says.
At the next intermission, he disappears into the bathroom behind the bar, and I can faintly hear people shouting inside, a man yelling for them to get out. Is it him? What's the deal with that? Should I be leaving? There's a feeling in the air that something is wrong. I feel disoriented, but strangely like a beacon of stability, despite the sense that I will knock over the next glass I try to pick up, or trip over my own feet as soon as I stand. What goes on behind the scenes at places like this, where everything appears perfect on the surface?
By the time they are back on stage, there are only four of us left in the audience. "Boy, they really cleared out, didn't they?" he says. "Was it something I said? It must've been something I said, because it's aaalways Randy's fault." He paws at a few keys on the piano and turns back to the mic. "So whaddaya wanna hear? Huh?" The audience is silent. I imagine him flying into a rage if I try and tell him what to play next.
The drummer says, "Let's play Piano Man, Randy." They close with Piano Man.

Outside, the city is still writhing, in a friendly sort of way. An elevated crosswalk sports a filthy older woman and a baby on a mat, who I can only hope are not trying to sleep to the noises of the torrential traffic below. A gauntlet of at least twenty girls in miniskirts are sat on the curb when I cross the street, calling out to me. Further on, are the motorcycle taxi drivers, busy at a card game, until I approach. "Hey, you! Where you going?"

The next day, I take a boat up the river, to Taling Chan floating market. The boat is called a long tail, reminiscent of a gondola, but with a big noisy motor on the back in place of an oar. It could seat about twenty tourists, but it's only me and the driver. The ride takes over an hour, headed West of the city along a narrow canal lined with houses cobbled together from rotting wood and rusty metal sheets, the stilts at the base seeming ready to collapse at any moment.
We idle up to the market docks, and a large woman cackles in her tiny boat as she passes in front of us, narrowly avoiding a collision. The market itself isn't exactly floating, but the vendors are. They sidle up to the docks in their little boats filled with all sorts of food. Fat, fried fish on wooden skewers; a pot of adorable little turtles; the largest mixing bowl I've ever seen, filled with mountains of tiny shrimp being stirred with two paddles by a squat, wrinkly woman. Several mangy dogs wander the tables, wagging tails, panting, drooling at the food. A volunteer band playing all sorts of wooden instruments with no coordination, though somehow all in the same key. A girl feeds an entire school of fish at the dock, and I imagine I could catch hundreds of them with one scoop of a net.
I am paralyzed by all of the choices before me, and only twenty minutes before the boatman picks me up. I settle on something that looks vaguely like a taco, except that it is the greasiest thing ever conceived by Man.

That night, two overpriced beers with dinner convince me to hit the town. My little green notebook goes with me, and here's the resulting prose:
[I sit at a nearby bar, eat skewered crocodile, and watch two whole soccer games on the TV.] Do they have cheerleaders at soccer games? I've never seen any. It seems obvious, but where did the term 'shanghaied' come from? Cryptic text on the newscast about the soccer game: "Love man, love ghost!" "Man city, best!" "Man u champion alone!" Deep South Americans? No, Australian women floated in like blimps and began expelling various unintelligible noises with hearty twangs, the willowy Thai bartender's limbs quiver in fear of them. In the bathroom, a sign: "No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit." Thanks, green sign! I'm not certain what emotion it's meant to inspire...  Met two girls from Cairo who seemed exactly like two girls from the US. Welcome to globalization. Big old Aussie women are dancing to Daft Punk. [The prose ends, but the night continued...]

Before my flight to the South islands, the cab driver takes a wrong turn and becomes lost in a warren of what appear to be abandoned factories, except for the occasional armed guard posted along a barbed wire fence. I brush off the driver's apologies with relief, as his confusion reassures me that I'm not being kidnapped, and also that the piles of rubble around me are not considered an airport. At the real airport, I eat two whole meals in succession, in an attempt to crush the hangover I acquired the night before, when I drifted in a haze of decidedly poor decisions.
---
In the present, the wind is picking up. The island of Ko Samui looms in the distance, its low mountains capped with rainclouds. The restaurant's skinny, shirtless waiter is sprawled on the floor in his sunglasses and jeans, his long limbs flung out in every direction. Presently, he jumps to his feet and paces back and forth, chanting: "Oohh. Fuck. Fuck...Oh Fuck." Sometimes, when I talk to him, he seems to be looking at something just beyond the back of my head, his eyes wide, and a toothy carefree smile on his face. I wonder what he's on. The question is answered for me later in the day, when an Englishman tries to order a Red Bull. The waiter says, "Hey, sorry man. All gone. I drink them all." Red Bull's a little different here than back home. It supposedly contains amphetamines. He sleeps half the day, and sprints the other half. Later, he explains that in the afternoon, he woke from a dream of a snake eating him.
This beach has instilled an unfamiliar brand of lethargy in me which I feel increasingly desperate to escape from. The air is filled with a disturbing lack of obligations, even to myself. I can understand why the dogs here rarely seem to move.

3rd day

I stopped for a man in a turban and beard because he said he wasn't selling anything, which was true, in a way. I expected something of a religious nature, and a combination of politeness and curiosity made me stop. There was a spiritual aspect, but a very vague, nonspecific one. He used the word 'believe' a good bit. Mostly, it was a magic trick. He handed me a crumpled piece of paper and said, "You will believe!" He pulled out a notepad and asked me to tell him my favorite flower. I thought, "I don't care enough about flowers to have a favorite," and I said, "Okay, a rose." I should have said rhododendron, or something obscure.

He wrote down rose, and then the numbers 6, 7, and 8, and asked me to choose one. I chose 7, because it's a good number, and it was right in the middle. He said, "Okay, sir, now you will believe, and you will listen to me. Unfold your paper." On it was written the word rose and the number 7. I said, "Oh, good job." He quickly wrote down the numbers 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000, and said, "Now choose your price, and I will tell you your mother's name, and then you cannot deny me." [1,000 baht is about 30 dollars.] "You are a rich man, sir," he said. "No, I'm not. It's too much," I said. I wished him luck, and gave him 40 baht, because I felt bad that he should have to expend so much effort for nothing. As I walked off, I was curious as to whether he could actually have told me my mother's name.

So many people here speak English. The neighborhood must be half Westerners, too many. And so many locals want my money.

One day in Korea, I met a Pakistani about my age or younger on the train. He wanted me to know that not all Muslims were violent. He talked about his factory jobs in Korea. Some of them paid as much as I made as a teacher, but those ones sounded extremely dangerous. He hadn't been home to see his family in a long time. Sometimes I couldn't understand him, so I simply nodded my head in agreement, or said, "Oh wow," when it seemed appropriate. But he could speak 2 or 3 languages well, made less than me, and had no job security. Why wasn't he working as a translator somewhere? His position, and the position of others like him, seems similar to that of Mexican laborers in the U.S. When I stepped off that train, I wondered why I deserved to be who I was.

to Bangkok

When I was a kid, I just trusted that everything would work as it was supposed to, but that faith has not lasted as I've gotten older. Flying makes me nervous, especially when the engine outside my window sounds like a lawnmower. The clouds outside are in stark contrast to the skies over Korea. Layers and layers of thick, solid cumulus stacked on top of each other. One looks like a giant, bearded face; and when I look back again, it has opened its mouth, and a spray of mist arcs out of it, growing darker until it falls to the land below.

When we clear the bottom layer, the sky darkens, and we're passing over houses next to brown lakes, a shining gold temple, and the dregs of the city. I look down at the palm trees, the warm weather, the unique architecture and I think, "What the hell am I doing here?" The plane drops toward the runway. Landings are my least favorite part. I can see the wing rocking back and forth, we're more level than some landings I've had. Inside, I'm telling myself, "It's okay, he knows what he's doing, he's landed a plane before, we're going to be fine." And we are.

The last day of work affected me more than I expected. I called some of my favorite students and asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, and heard my own voice cracking a few times. One student said she wanted to be a designer, and in one of her essays, she wrote that she would make me some shoes, because I 'liked to go places.' So I asked her if she would make me my shoes, and she said no. I said why not, and she said "Because you're leaving." The next day, I walked by the school, saw students whose teacher I no longer was, and I wondered why I was leaving. 

The taxi driver is very friendly, but she doesn't know where my hotel is. She tries to call them, but the number isn't working. Her cab is bright pink. She asks me, "Why didn't you go to Phuket? Don't you like beaches?" I said, "Yes, I do. I'm not sure why." About halfway there, we come to a better understanding of the address I hastily scribbled down this morning, when I made my reservation. She knows the street, and when we get there, the sign is thankfully prominent. Federal Hotel.

Right now, I'm drinking Fanta from the fridge in my room, finally showered, wondering what I'm going to do in Bangkok.

Burma

Leaving Korea in three weeks, and I'm trying to work out my travel itinerary. Will be mostly in Thailand, but I'm reading up on Burma at the moment. 

Interesting to note that, to gain independence from Britain, Aung San and the "Thirty Comrades" received training from the Japanese, and returned to their country when the Japanese invaded it in WWII. However, after driving out the British and Chinese, their treatment at the hands of the Japanese persuaded the Burmese army to switch sides in 1945. They then helped the British retake what they had lost, and Britain agreed to independence after the war, in 1947. Aung San was set to lead the country, but of course the leader of a rival party had him murdered. A year later, the British had that rival hanged. Independence came the same year, and the entire country fell apart into a collection of various factions fighting each other and the existing government.

Some excerpts from the 'Safe Travel' section of my guidebook:

"Considering all the bad news that trickles out of Myanmar, it may sound like a rather unsafe country to visit. For the vast majority of visitors, the reality is quite the opposite."

then shortly after that:

"...Myanmar has one of the highest incidences of death from snake bite in the world."
"If you...stay in local accomodation, you may hear little footsteps at night."
"...there have been a handful of bombings, usually linked with insurgent groups, in Yangon and elsewhere."
"In the past, there have been reports of bandits holding up vehicles at night..."
"At some point on your trip (and you'll probably never know when), the authorities will be watching you."
"In a few sites...you'll have monkeys begging for snacks. Take care, as bites are possible."

other things to stress me out a bit:

Some places will only take local currency and some places will only take US dollars. There is no standard exchange rate, and many normal places for exchanging currency will drastically undervalue the dollar. By a lot. Credit cards are useless, and there aren't really ATMs. Bills are only accepted if they are in pristine condition, and some businesses will try to unload their worn bills to you, which are worthless pretty much any place in the country.

Travel schedules, bus routes, etc, sound mercurial, and sometimes which parts of the country are off limits to foreigners can change. A couple of the local airlines sound as if they have lackluster safety standards. Many places only have power for part of the day, and staying in more upscale accommodations is likely to mean a larger portion of your money going to the government instead of locals.

2nd day [lost (first time)]

The next day saw me waking up late and taking a half hour bus ride to the station to meet Tara, who had been in the country a month longer than me. Though my neighborhood is considered part of Suwon, it's actually relatively separated from it (cities just seem to endlessly sprawl and mix together here, at least anywhere near Seoul). This was my first time seeing downtown in the day. In Chicago, I felt that I always had a clear sense of when I was in the city and when I was outside it, or on the edges. That hasn't been my experience here. My own apartment complex feels like it could be on the edge of a random highway just about anywhere, but only a short walk, and I feel like I'm downtown again. I suppose it's a symptom of modern city planning, when all of the development has taken place with cars in mind. But it feels like some sort of hybrid of the urban and suburban environments back home.

We ate at a quaint Indian restaurant. The owner's children played on the computer that doubled as the cash register. Jars of spices and bags of rice crowded the shelves near our table.

Other things happened that I've forgotten. I believe I shopped for clothes (since I had none but the ones I wore until my luggage was found) and food. Then we headed to Hwaseong fortress, an old stone wall enclosing a portion of the city, which used to be all of Suwon back in the day. We walked around the outside of the wall just after nightfall. A concert was ongoing somewhere close by, though the music was hard to distinguish. The wall is on a hilltop, so we were able to see for a fair distance in some places. Neon crucifixes shone atop buildings in any direction I looked. At intervals along the wall sat little clusters of exercise equipment. After a while, we found a random set of steps headed downwards, and walked through a sleeping Buddhist monastery. The white swastikas over doorways still threw me off despite knowing what they meant, or rather didn't mean. Just knowing it was a monastery made the night's silence seem even more peaceful. Bags of trash in the alleyway were covered with stray cats.

The directions for taking the bus home were pretty simple. I got on the right bus, and after half an hour, the bus turned right. This was my cue to exit, at the same stop where I had boarded the bus earlier that day. I stepped off, and did not recognize anything in my sight. A small playground of plastic dinosaurs, an odd glass wall, a street curving downward, none of it looked at all familiar. Somehow, I thought, I had gotten the directions wrong, or gotten off at the wrong stop. I walked down the hill. A major intersection, lots of construction, a strip of shoe stores on one side, glowing signs, a hospital. Still nothing familiar. I remembered an address my coworker had given me the night before. I hailed a cab, and gave him the address. He talked at me in Korean for a while, pointing at the paper, shaking his head, until I finally left the cab.

I wandered around for a while longer, feeling that each step took me further and further away. I didn't realize until later how true that was. I hailed another cab and tried the address of my school. It was a short ride, which told me that I might be in the right area. But at this point, I had little conception of how close my apartment was to the school. Eventually, I found my way back to the bus stop. With no idea what to do next, I got on the bus hoping that I was just a stop away, or that I could get back to the station somehow and start over. Not sure where it took me, except that it wasn't where I needed to go.

After several buses, each one more empty than the one before, and several attempts to communicate with my bus driver, I found myself next to a convenience store by a highway, in a place that appeared to be miles from any city. I finally remembered having written down a coworker's cell phone number, so I stepped inside the convenience store. I asked the clerk for a phone, gave him the universal hand signal for phone, even used the Korean word for phone, but his face betrayed no hint of recognition. He stood at the counter staring at me until I left.

Outside, the few other buildings were all dark. The occasional car passed by, but it was late. I was tired, and I was still carrying my plastic bag full of groceries from earlier that day. I had to pee. I began to wonder where I was going to sleep that night. Then I began to wonder if there were homeless people out there who had a home, but just couldn't find it anymore. I've been lost in a city more than once, but I could always ask for directions, or even just pull up a map on my phone. But my cell phone had no service on the opposite side of the planet, and no one spoke my language.

Having worn the same clothes for three days didn't help me feel less like a future drifter. After navigating several miles down one highway after another, headed towards impossibly distant skyscrapers, and cursing my choices countless times, I was able to flag down a cab. I seized on the only thing I was certain about, which was the address of my school that I had written down. The length of the cab ride made it obvious how far away I had gotten. I had no money at all, so I was lucky that the cabs here take credit cards.

I finally got back to the school and to a street that I recognized, where things were still open, lights were still on, and there were other people, which was momentarily comforting even if they couldn't understand me. I was able to coax a phone from someone standing nearby, and call my coworker. He wasn't able to describe the route home, so he walked over to meet me, and guide me back to the apartment, which I had been tragically close to when I first got off the bus. It turned out that if I had walked up the street instead of down, I would have seen the bus stop where I boarded the bus, which was right next to my apartment.

I stepped into my room, which still had no heat, and still didn't feel a bit like home, but was comforting in a relative sense. The bed sheets they had provided me with were bright pink. I laid down to sleep contemplating my first work day, and resolving not to take any more buses.

first day

Several days later, I would use my stove to dry my only pair of socks. I arrived at the Incheon airport to find that my luggage was missing. I stepped out of the terminal feeling a bit like a lost dog, searching through the people holding signs for the one that was to take me to my new home. A solid wall of Hangeul and Chinese script greeted me. I had been assured by a stewardess, mostly through hand gestures, that I could have my bags delivered to me once I knew my address.

Eventually, the driver showed up. He gathered me in with a word or two, along with another new teacher from the States. It was a relief to have someone I could talk to.

This was going on 28 hours awake for me. I had decided to cram in as many activities the night before as possible, with the result that I did not sleep. Sleep on the long flight was spectral if it occurred at all.

The drive to Suwon took about an hour, past misty, forested hills and crops of industrial high-rises. The varied landscape afforded some good views. Miniature down-towns seemed to spring up out of the forest. I suppose we were passing the outskirts of Seoul. It was dark when we reached Suwon, flashing signs and sparkling lights everywhere, and our driver's car broke down. I don't know how long we waited while he came back and forth with cups of water to pour into the engine, trying to cool it down. In between trying to fix the car, he spoke fast and long on his cellphone with someone, presumably trying to solve our problem. After a while, other employees showed up, including the American who had initially hired me. The conversations between the driver and a Korean coworker were lengthy and mysterious. The car was still busted, so we decided to push it out of the way. We gave it a little shove, and it started rolling downhill. As it careened toward a nearby parked car, I could hear the driver shouting, "Stop! Stop!" We had all stopped pushing, and the car was rolling on its own. My future coworker yelled back, "You've got the brakes, buddy!" He managed to figure it out just before he crashed into the front of the other car. My coworker confided to me: "They're a smart people, but they don't have a lot of common sense."

I got a cab to my new apartment, and another coworker showed me around the immediate neighborhood. At that point, I ran into another American coworker and her friends who were getting ready to head into town for the night. It was Saturday. By this point, I had been up for more than 30 hours, but I agreed to meet them and take the bus into town that night. After losing my luggage, and not having seen my apartment, I felt devoid of any possessions or obligations. One location or activity seemed about as good as any other.

Our first stop was a galbi (barbecue) restaurant downtown. At this point, I was still holding a little more to my vegetarianism, so I mostly had soup while others were eating pork cooked at the table. Tried Soju for the first time, which is a weak and fairly tasteless liquor. We met four male Korean college students, none of whom spoke much English, other than a few meaningless phrases. One of the students would point at his friend and yell one of these phrases repeatedly, which was: "I hate you! I hate you!" When another student found out that we were teachers at Sejong Academy, he said (speaking of the past), "I go to Sejong! Teacher beat me and beat me and I bleed!" Later, we found ourselves at a bar serving makgeoli, a cloudy rice wine that we drank out of little bowls, and each time the Koreans would shout "Korean Culture!"

The night ended at a foreigner bar closer to home, with so many lights on the street outside that I could have sworn it was the middle of the day. After that, I finally saw my new apartment for the first time, looking white and sterile, before passing out.