It just started pouring. I'm going to miss this weather.
Moments like these, when I feel truly aware of what's going on around me, are really the only souvenirs I take from places, times, and people. It's become a matter of some concern for me - memories fade, and in my crusade against sentimentalism I may not be holding onto enough important things in my life. These moments pass, and I fear I don't carve enough nicks and crevices into my life to really get my hands around it and hold on. Everything I hold dear is so insubstantial, my connection with my own life and experience so tenuous. Ideas and perceptions, every moment just passing through. A contemplative life like this, with few attachments, can have its uses, I suppose. Sometimes I think shedding as much human artifice as possible and completely immersing oneself in the sensation of being is as sincere and noble a life as anyone could possibly hope for - an experience closest to the truth of our human condition. Life is an exercise in being, but we can easily forget this and have our lives, our existence, be a means to some other end. It's all a means of comfort I suppose, since dwelling on the abyss too long is dangerous. But too often I have to ask myself "How did I get here? Where did the time go", and sometimes simple recollection isn't enough to make it feel substantial, like it had actually happened.
It's really raining now, and the thunder's started.
I'd like someone to hold on to.
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
China, Part 1
Hey friends, I want to write something. Probably should be sleeping, but what the hell - can't always do the smart thing. Shouldn't always do the smart thing. That's strangely reassuring.
I've once again run into the problem of having a lot to say and not knowing where to start. It's too bad my last post was so hastily written and posted, despite how genuine it was at the time. The truth is that there are glaring similarities between this big city and the other big cities I've been to in the West. I think we can chalk that one up to globalization and "modernity". But the truth is that there are a multitude of differences, and I've found many of them to be extremely endearing. There's a kind of energy here I don't come across often in other places, the willingness to simply be out in the street and bustling around without necessarily having a place to go. Even more than New York or especially Los Angeles, there are always people out on the street. Morning, noon, and night I hear voices coming up from the street, and, every once in a while, music played by a passing vendor. Of course, the sounds of car horns reach me just as easily, and from what I can tell Beijingers all love their car horns. I suppose it goes in tandem with the fact that cars, bikes, and pedestrians do whatever they want on the road whenenever they feel like it, damn the torpedos. It's a kind of sincere self interest which has been at times both endearing and irritating: people generally handle their business with not a whole lot of concern for what else is going on, possibly as a result of having to constantly contend with many many other people. It could be taken as impolite, but even since I've been here I've come to appreciate the necessity of being able to drown other people out for a while. And their car horns. Seriously, at least in the case of traffic everyone simultaneously tries to go where they want to go - only to find everyone else doing the same thing. Cue the horns. I'm not sure if they are surprised to be constantly confronted by this situation, or if they just like honking the horns.
Anyways.
Every few days there are thunderstorms. I'm writing this in the dark, and about once every minute a flash lights up the room. Sometimes it rains too, and I can hear it blown against the windows of my tenth floor room.
Last week was vacation week. The few plans I started to make up in my head were all unsatisfactory - nothing short of completely unscheduled travel alone would suffice, and as a result I ended up staying in Beijing for lack of train tickets and a nod toward my safety. It certainly wasn't a waste, since I got to see many different parts of the city on my own, which I find to be the most fulfilling part of traveling anyways. I would much rather try to experience some approximation of ordinary life in a place rather than seeing all the famous sites. Maybe I simply lack the imagination, but I'm hard pressed to find a lot of meaning from monuments or ruins, or at least not when I can't see them for all the teeming crowds in the way. I hear the Summer Palace is gorgeous, but I wouldn't really know for all the tour groups between me and the scenery. Made Disneyland look empty. But another interesting aspect of the break was that everyone else who I've been spending my time with here had left to travel, either to other parts of China or to other countries, leaving me absolutely alone for about 6 days. In that time, I did not see or speak to a single person who's name I knew, at least not in the flesh. I've never really known what that was like.
I wrote this on the tail end of it:
--
Why do I write? And what do I write? And, while I’m thinking about it, who’s even writing? Who’s the author here? Who’s the me inside all the flesh and appendages, wiggly fingers in the wind? I can’t see with bad eyes, but my mind seems so clear. My. Me. Reduce reduce reduce, looks like reproduce. How clever.
So where is the me? Oh please don’t say we’re one and the same, I would hate to agree with you, this time. You can be so obtuse.
--
Well, it's getting late. I've got more to say, so I'll write it out tomorrow.
I've once again run into the problem of having a lot to say and not knowing where to start. It's too bad my last post was so hastily written and posted, despite how genuine it was at the time. The truth is that there are glaring similarities between this big city and the other big cities I've been to in the West. I think we can chalk that one up to globalization and "modernity". But the truth is that there are a multitude of differences, and I've found many of them to be extremely endearing. There's a kind of energy here I don't come across often in other places, the willingness to simply be out in the street and bustling around without necessarily having a place to go. Even more than New York or especially Los Angeles, there are always people out on the street. Morning, noon, and night I hear voices coming up from the street, and, every once in a while, music played by a passing vendor. Of course, the sounds of car horns reach me just as easily, and from what I can tell Beijingers all love their car horns. I suppose it goes in tandem with the fact that cars, bikes, and pedestrians do whatever they want on the road whenenever they feel like it, damn the torpedos. It's a kind of sincere self interest which has been at times both endearing and irritating: people generally handle their business with not a whole lot of concern for what else is going on, possibly as a result of having to constantly contend with many many other people. It could be taken as impolite, but even since I've been here I've come to appreciate the necessity of being able to drown other people out for a while. And their car horns. Seriously, at least in the case of traffic everyone simultaneously tries to go where they want to go - only to find everyone else doing the same thing. Cue the horns. I'm not sure if they are surprised to be constantly confronted by this situation, or if they just like honking the horns.
Anyways.
Every few days there are thunderstorms. I'm writing this in the dark, and about once every minute a flash lights up the room. Sometimes it rains too, and I can hear it blown against the windows of my tenth floor room.
Last week was vacation week. The few plans I started to make up in my head were all unsatisfactory - nothing short of completely unscheduled travel alone would suffice, and as a result I ended up staying in Beijing for lack of train tickets and a nod toward my safety. It certainly wasn't a waste, since I got to see many different parts of the city on my own, which I find to be the most fulfilling part of traveling anyways. I would much rather try to experience some approximation of ordinary life in a place rather than seeing all the famous sites. Maybe I simply lack the imagination, but I'm hard pressed to find a lot of meaning from monuments or ruins, or at least not when I can't see them for all the teeming crowds in the way. I hear the Summer Palace is gorgeous, but I wouldn't really know for all the tour groups between me and the scenery. Made Disneyland look empty. But another interesting aspect of the break was that everyone else who I've been spending my time with here had left to travel, either to other parts of China or to other countries, leaving me absolutely alone for about 6 days. In that time, I did not see or speak to a single person who's name I knew, at least not in the flesh. I've never really known what that was like.
I wrote this on the tail end of it:
--
Why do I write? And what do I write? And, while I’m thinking about it, who’s even writing? Who’s the author here? Who’s the me inside all the flesh and appendages, wiggly fingers in the wind? I can’t see with bad eyes, but my mind seems so clear. My. Me. Reduce reduce reduce, looks like reproduce. How clever.
So where is the me? Oh please don’t say we’re one and the same, I would hate to agree with you, this time. You can be so obtuse.
--
Well, it's getting late. I've got more to say, so I'll write it out tomorrow.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Trains, first attempt
I like riding on trains. It reminds me of how much I will never know and never see. I stare out the windows at the places in between, all the places I'll never call home, and wonder at the strange fortune of ending up in my own skin. On the train, I smile at everyone, and I love them in a way I couldn't love them if we were to pass on the street. We're all on our way somewhere I think, and I smile. We're only together for a short time, in a small place, with the whole world outside the window waiting for us to turn our heads, to look out at places never given to us to love but for a fleeting second until they pass beyond our vision. And maybe we look at each other, weightless in the void, to see ourselves - small things adrift in infinity.
How much like life it is.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Vignettes
This summer has been a story composed of vignettes.
Over the course of three months, I've woken up in 14 different places across 9 cities in 4 countries, and as a result my memory of this time is a patchwork of wildly different places and people - the familiar juxtaposed against the new and strange. Trying to remember all the places I've been and things I've done is like trying to remember all the elements of a dream I've recently awoken from.
Yesterday morning I woke up on my futon in Los Angeles, and my mom told me that I would have to drive us to Phoenix. This morning, I woke up on a couch in Phoenix, visited my dying grandfather, and spent the afternoon and early evening watching lightning strike across the horizon. Then dinner. Then more lightning. At about midnight, lightning began to strike every several seconds for an hour. I have never seen anything like it. I also saw my grandfather burst into tears at the mention of a name the significance of which is unknown to me, but even though I have never seen that before either, I prefer to remember the lightning.
I watched it for hours.
Over the course of three months, I've woken up in 14 different places across 9 cities in 4 countries, and as a result my memory of this time is a patchwork of wildly different places and people - the familiar juxtaposed against the new and strange. Trying to remember all the places I've been and things I've done is like trying to remember all the elements of a dream I've recently awoken from.
Yesterday morning I woke up on my futon in Los Angeles, and my mom told me that I would have to drive us to Phoenix. This morning, I woke up on a couch in Phoenix, visited my dying grandfather, and spent the afternoon and early evening watching lightning strike across the horizon. Then dinner. Then more lightning. At about midnight, lightning began to strike every several seconds for an hour. I have never seen anything like it. I also saw my grandfather burst into tears at the mention of a name the significance of which is unknown to me, but even though I have never seen that before either, I prefer to remember the lightning.
I watched it for hours.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Between
When I open my eyes, I’m greeted by the breaking dawn over fields rushing by my window. Orange and red reflects off of last night’s rain, which has pooled among the various open spaces, and glints into my bleary eyes. Totally confused, I don’t know the time, or even where I am anymore. Seeking a quick answer to one of those, I reach for my phone. 6:21am. For some reason it’s burned into my mind, like when you happen to glimpse something with more reality than its surroundings, like when you encounter destiny. “Maybe the train’s about to crash, and this’ll be the time at the heading of all the newspaper articles”, I think to myself. I quickly dismiss my strange and morbid pretensions at clairvoyance and begin beating my brain into coming up with a plan, as staring blankly at my passing surroundings didn’t seem to be cutting it for some reason. Get food, I think, that’s always a good first call. Getting food leads to getting up leads to the possibility of finding something worth doing once you’re out of bed. But I’m not in a bed. I’m sitting on a train bound for Chicago, and then to Los Angeles some two days after that, but for all that I have no idea what patch of flatland nowhere is playing across my window at this moment. “I am nowhere”, I think, before noting that all flatland nowheres seem to resemble central California, though the latter may not be as flat. With a shrug at my own obtuse musings, I stride down the middle of the sleeping car (it’s the only movement one can perform down the middle of a sleeping car), moving confidently toward food.
Relishing the prospect of an anonymous meal followed by more outward staring, I move into the dining car and wait to be acknowledged. It strikes me that it is in fact the anonymity of travel that appeals to me so much - the outward smile and the nonstop inner monologue crouching just behind. Perhaps my judgment of others stems from my desire to understand everyone around me, but at the same time I would not allow anyone the same chance willingly. No, I’m here to be an enigma, the nameless traveler. I’m here to be a ronin. Oh, how fucking cool. “Orange juice, please”. I’m soon joined by a middle-aged white couple, which, though it initially displeased me (all I had planned on up until this point was a quiet meal and some staring, so dealing with people at 6:30 in the morning was a drastic and dangerous deviation from what I had originally hoped to spend my morning doing), presented my first opportunity to delve into the opinions of others and try to fit them into my own worldview, like jigsaw pieces. This one might be “people on trains talk like this: ”. They seem like nice people, even if the women seems to be rather loudly unhappy about this or that, and they seem interested in my story. I enjoy speaking to them, and we hit quite a few topics of interest. Inquisitions into my major inevitably lead to a discussion of China, and I am more than happy to have that conversation with them. Then comes, equally inevitably, the discussion of America’s economic woes, and it’s here that I begin to pay very close attention. The women, whose name I have forgotten (Susan, maybe?) is wearing a shirt that depicts an eagle swooping down, talons first, with the words “Freedom Reigns” across the top. This shirt, and the notions it represents, have obviously made more of an impression on me than her name, and will likely endure in my memory as the strongest reminder of this breakfast encounter. Back to American economic woes - she says “God help us” a few times, because we don’t make anything in this country anymore. She says, “God help us, it’s one of the few things we can count on”, and the man nods. My turn. “What do you think we should do?”. “Cut everyone loose. Cut back the government and leave everything up to American ingenuity again. It’s worked before”. The food arrives, and they bow their heads.
Minutes later, I watch Bryan, Ohio pass beside my window.
Relishing the prospect of an anonymous meal followed by more outward staring, I move into the dining car and wait to be acknowledged. It strikes me that it is in fact the anonymity of travel that appeals to me so much - the outward smile and the nonstop inner monologue crouching just behind. Perhaps my judgment of others stems from my desire to understand everyone around me, but at the same time I would not allow anyone the same chance willingly. No, I’m here to be an enigma, the nameless traveler. I’m here to be a ronin. Oh, how fucking cool. “Orange juice, please”. I’m soon joined by a middle-aged white couple, which, though it initially displeased me (all I had planned on up until this point was a quiet meal and some staring, so dealing with people at 6:30 in the morning was a drastic and dangerous deviation from what I had originally hoped to spend my morning doing), presented my first opportunity to delve into the opinions of others and try to fit them into my own worldview, like jigsaw pieces. This one might be “people on trains talk like this: ”. They seem like nice people, even if the women seems to be rather loudly unhappy about this or that, and they seem interested in my story. I enjoy speaking to them, and we hit quite a few topics of interest. Inquisitions into my major inevitably lead to a discussion of China, and I am more than happy to have that conversation with them. Then comes, equally inevitably, the discussion of America’s economic woes, and it’s here that I begin to pay very close attention. The women, whose name I have forgotten (Susan, maybe?) is wearing a shirt that depicts an eagle swooping down, talons first, with the words “Freedom Reigns” across the top. This shirt, and the notions it represents, have obviously made more of an impression on me than her name, and will likely endure in my memory as the strongest reminder of this breakfast encounter. Back to American economic woes - she says “God help us” a few times, because we don’t make anything in this country anymore. She says, “God help us, it’s one of the few things we can count on”, and the man nods. My turn. “What do you think we should do?”. “Cut everyone loose. Cut back the government and leave everything up to American ingenuity again. It’s worked before”. The food arrives, and they bow their heads.
Minutes later, I watch Bryan, Ohio pass beside my window.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
