There is something beautiful about feeling displaced. The senses of fear and exhilaration, of being free to be whoever you want and just wanting to be whoever it is that people will like, they war within me, pushing and pulling me, stretching me taut, and in the discomfort I find a place of null value, a place of stillness.
I am in the living room of the largest house I have ever been in, owned by a man I have just met in order to interview with him for a job that I don’t know whether or not I got. All around me are question marks, shaped like couches and lamps and end tables and one in the shape of a decorative vase the size of a particularly tall midget, but question marks nevertheless. I am waiting for the others to come downstairs, and in the stillness I am still. As I purge my being of being active, there is a momentary void, and the space invites some long lost friends.
As my muscles relax and my mind clears, I shake hands with Random Observation, give a hug to Musing, maybe a peck on the cheek for Introspection. These are my oldest of friends, and I have missed them. Their quiet voices and gentle demeanor clash with my new crowd, the loud and assertive likes of Entertainment, Productivity, and the particularly pushy What Comes Next. I thought I would be a better person with my new friends, thought that they would spur me towards a happier and more meaningful existence. They haven’t.
So I sit here in my high backed chair like King David before Samuel, wishing I could take a few things back. I missed my old friends, but typical of true friends, the only condemnation came from myself. Eventually I got over myself and started thinking, about the size of the house, about how much I already respected its owner, about how my interview went and about how I would move the piano four inches to the left in order to center it in the arc of light from the recessed light. I thought about how I wish I could play piano like House, all sad and profound like, and I thought about Jamie, not because she is sad or profound, but because I’m always thinking about her. It’s embarrassing. Thankfully Sappiness fits in better with the old crowd than the new one.
I listened to the silence, filled myself with the emptiness, and tried as hard as I could to become a part of the stillness. I thought about a Winnie the Pooh quote that I couldn’t remember, but that seemed fitting, so it was all good. I missed this. I would never be able to do this in Beibei, I was too comfortable. There is always so much nothingness to do, but the bad kind, the kind of nothingness that makes you think it is somethingness. I was like this all the time in high school, but back then I carried the displacement with me, all angsty and misunderstood and all, and I don’t think that’s good either. But this, this is good. I listened to the silence, filled myself with the emptiness, and tried as hard as I could to become a part of the stillness.
Then they came downstairs, and I left my silence in order to eat Moroccan food, drink beer, and to lose at pool. But it’s OK. Stillness is transitory. The only time that it isn’t is when you’re dead. I wonder if there will be stillness in heaven? I hope so.
--------
Later on I went to find that Winnie the Pooh quote. “Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.” I like Winnie the Pooh. There is something humbly profound about him, and I admire that. He is deep, but not like the Grand Canyon, because that is scary. He’s more deep like a mother’s love, or James Earl Jones’ voice. I want to be deep like that. But I don’t want my name to be Winnie.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Somewhere I Should Never Be
I am baffled. I am in deep baffle. Women’s fashion has always reminded me a bit of pharmacology: I am very glad it exists and personally benefit greatly from it, but couldn’t begin to explain how they pack all the good feelings into those tiny pills. Fashion is wonderful, mysterious, but ultimately, other. And in this pantheon (1), shoes remain the most mysterious and distant.
Which is why it is ludicrous that I am now sitting in my Auntie Caroline’s apartment, surrounded by women’s shoes, trying to decide which ones my girlfriend would like, trying not to get bogged down in how utterly confused I am.
My first reaction to the boots with all the zippers was to try to unzip them. They didn’t work. I have now exhausted my investigative possibilities. I have established that the only defining features of these shoes do not, in fact, function. But were non-functional zippers a good or bad thing?
Then there are the flats. You know, the kind that people are wearing these days that look like princess shoes. But these have large buckles on them. That don’t buckle anything. How about buckles? Were they good? The Puritans thought so…
And so it goes. I’m learning a lot about non-functionality, zippers that don’t zip, buckles that don’t buckle, tie straps that stay tied… I wonder how far away we are from shoes that don’t get worn. Actually, after I saw some of the heels, we might be a lot closer to that eventuality than I had previously thought.
The greatest irony is that in my most recent English lesson (body image), I played devil’s advocate and defended the similarities between high heels and foot binding. So, with that image fresh in my mind, I am now contemplating some 3 inch spikes that my Auntie Caroline described as “sexy dancing shoes.” It is a strange thing when one realizes that they are more of a feminist than their girlfriend. Hmm. So that’s a ‘no’ to the sexy dancing shoes then.
I feel much the same way that an electrician’s 5 year old child would feel, whose father sent him to the store to buy wiring. And so I will do what I think my fictitious counterpart might have: I chose the shiny ones (my budding feminist be damned). I figure that if people want to wear princess shoes, these were the most princess-y. Actually, in my defense, I have no delusions that she would actually wear them, but I do have absolute confidence in my ability mock her with them later.
(1) Along with:
- Armani, the Prophet god of clothing, whose power can reveal great mysteries or shroud all in obscurity
- L ‘Orial, the Trickster god of makeup, who oversees the realms of persona, theatre, and oddly enough, transvestitism.
- Prada, the Warrior god of shoes, whose vindictive nature exacts suffering from his followers in measure to their devotion.
- Denaros, the Allfather, who brought all lesser gods into existence
Which is why it is ludicrous that I am now sitting in my Auntie Caroline’s apartment, surrounded by women’s shoes, trying to decide which ones my girlfriend would like, trying not to get bogged down in how utterly confused I am.
My first reaction to the boots with all the zippers was to try to unzip them. They didn’t work. I have now exhausted my investigative possibilities. I have established that the only defining features of these shoes do not, in fact, function. But were non-functional zippers a good or bad thing?
Then there are the flats. You know, the kind that people are wearing these days that look like princess shoes. But these have large buckles on them. That don’t buckle anything. How about buckles? Were they good? The Puritans thought so…
And so it goes. I’m learning a lot about non-functionality, zippers that don’t zip, buckles that don’t buckle, tie straps that stay tied… I wonder how far away we are from shoes that don’t get worn. Actually, after I saw some of the heels, we might be a lot closer to that eventuality than I had previously thought.
The greatest irony is that in my most recent English lesson (body image), I played devil’s advocate and defended the similarities between high heels and foot binding. So, with that image fresh in my mind, I am now contemplating some 3 inch spikes that my Auntie Caroline described as “sexy dancing shoes.” It is a strange thing when one realizes that they are more of a feminist than their girlfriend. Hmm. So that’s a ‘no’ to the sexy dancing shoes then.
I feel much the same way that an electrician’s 5 year old child would feel, whose father sent him to the store to buy wiring. And so I will do what I think my fictitious counterpart might have: I chose the shiny ones (my budding feminist be damned). I figure that if people want to wear princess shoes, these were the most princess-y. Actually, in my defense, I have no delusions that she would actually wear them, but I do have absolute confidence in my ability mock her with them later.
(1) Along with:
- Armani, the Prophet god of clothing, whose power can reveal great mysteries or shroud all in obscurity
- L ‘Orial, the Trickster god of makeup, who oversees the realms of persona, theatre, and oddly enough, transvestitism.
- Prada, the Warrior god of shoes, whose vindictive nature exacts suffering from his followers in measure to their devotion.
- Denaros, the Allfather, who brought all lesser gods into existence
Flashback: Fire in the Hole
It was one of those times, the ones you fear but know are inevitable. No warning, no lead-up, just the immediate need for a restroom, RIGHT NOW. The worst thing? I was a long, long way from the nearest sitter. Some day, I am going to have to accept that squatters are as unavoidable as they are unfortunate, and embracing China means embracing the squatter (1).
The Chinese have a very pragmatic approach to bodily waste management, an approach founded on a negative answer to the most basic of hygiene questions, ‘Should a bathroom experience be a pleasant experience?’ (2) They tend to be cramped, poorly lit, infrequently cleaned, and most pertinent to this story, BYOTP (3). Unfortunately, while the first three characteristics are immediately and immanently clear upon entry, the final fact is something you all too often don’t find out until it is too late. As was the case with me.
And so it was that I found myself in a bit of a predicament, as it were. I have always been amazed at the clarity with which and the speed at which one’s mind can operate when in times of crises. Unfortunately, no amount of clear, fast thinking would conjure up any toilet paper. There was, however, a hose.
I’m doing my best to keep this PG, so you’ll just have to fill in the blanks. Suffice to say that there are all kinds of crazy angles and vectors to consider. In some ways it was like a strange game of air hockey, with very serious consequences. Never before in my life had I been forced to ponder the refractory angle of a buttcheek. My sincere hope is that never again would I need to repeat my calculations.
My personal trauma behind (4) me, life went on, as it so often does. Though time may have dulled the memory, one thing will always remain with me: My toilet paper.
(1) Disturbing imagery, I know. But it’s a disturbing thought. The plan was to compensate by having a virtual map of Beibei in my head, with little mental markers of every single sitter in Beibei. The reality was that my mental markers consisted of the international student dorms at the north end of campus, and the teacher apartments at the south end.
(2) I have heard that our society ladies powder their noses in luxury, surrounded by frills and couches and fragrant perfumes. Taking inspiration from the Chinese ideas about cosmic balance, one might say that the Chinese bathrooms are the yin to the aforementioned yang.
(3) Bring Your Own Toilet Paper. Really? You can’t figure that one out?
(4) Te he he.
The Chinese have a very pragmatic approach to bodily waste management, an approach founded on a negative answer to the most basic of hygiene questions, ‘Should a bathroom experience be a pleasant experience?’ (2) They tend to be cramped, poorly lit, infrequently cleaned, and most pertinent to this story, BYOTP (3). Unfortunately, while the first three characteristics are immediately and immanently clear upon entry, the final fact is something you all too often don’t find out until it is too late. As was the case with me.
And so it was that I found myself in a bit of a predicament, as it were. I have always been amazed at the clarity with which and the speed at which one’s mind can operate when in times of crises. Unfortunately, no amount of clear, fast thinking would conjure up any toilet paper. There was, however, a hose.
I’m doing my best to keep this PG, so you’ll just have to fill in the blanks. Suffice to say that there are all kinds of crazy angles and vectors to consider. In some ways it was like a strange game of air hockey, with very serious consequences. Never before in my life had I been forced to ponder the refractory angle of a buttcheek. My sincere hope is that never again would I need to repeat my calculations.
My personal trauma behind (4) me, life went on, as it so often does. Though time may have dulled the memory, one thing will always remain with me: My toilet paper.
(1) Disturbing imagery, I know. But it’s a disturbing thought. The plan was to compensate by having a virtual map of Beibei in my head, with little mental markers of every single sitter in Beibei. The reality was that my mental markers consisted of the international student dorms at the north end of campus, and the teacher apartments at the south end.
(2) I have heard that our society ladies powder their noses in luxury, surrounded by frills and couches and fragrant perfumes. Taking inspiration from the Chinese ideas about cosmic balance, one might say that the Chinese bathrooms are the yin to the aforementioned yang.
(3) Bring Your Own Toilet Paper. Really? You can’t figure that one out?
(4) Te he he.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Statues in a Classroom
Rifling through my phonebook, this somehow seems wrong. SPU has been gone for months, yet their names and numbers still clutter up my SIM card like statues in a classroom, bringing back memories … … … but ultimately wasting space. Still though, when you destroy a statue aren’t you, in some way, destroying the memory? I think I was standing behind the door when God was handing out sentimentality, and so I don’t feel remorse as much as I feel that I should feel remorse. It’s the eery disquiet that you hear when someone’s very carefully not making noise. Nicole Myr … delete… silence. Brice Budke … delete … silence. David Steinke … delete … silence. Tabitha Trosen… delete … silence. Lacey Keiser … delete …
and then all there was was silence.
and then all there was was silence.
Monday, March 16, 2009
iChina
I know I’m not the first person who has ever thrown an ‘i’ in front of something in order to make it feel more techy. I may be a bandwagoning stooge, but at least I’m a self-aware bandwagoning stooge.
I realized today my amazing capacity to remove myself from my environment. My experience of China is so far removed from anything Chinese that I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry. The China that I experience is as dramatic as a love story, as quixotic as an indie film, but only as real as a music video. Every street would run with the rhythm of the Arcade Fire (1), every stone wall be cut with the precision of Ghostland Observatory, every building ascend to the crescendo of Sigur Ros. This is the Beibei of my fashioning, a town that that I, and only I, inhabit. My music gives new meaning to the farmers whose contented routines are transformed to angst-filled toil by Metallica, to the daily commuters whose sleepy bus rides are subsumed by the frenzy of my “Irish Punk Drinking Songs Mix (2).” It is in this way that my iPod scores the very people of Beibei, robbing them of their own meaning and replacing it with my own.
In all honesty, some of the sounds of Beibei could do with replacing. I don’t miss the horn honks and traffic sounds that are muted by my white earbuds. I fear, though, that in my effort to sequester myself away from the cacophony of unmuffler-ed urban living, I might have also thrown out the more peaceful tones of the rural living that I claim to value. I can’t remember how long it has been since I have heard the sound of a hoe turning the soil, even though I see the sight almost daily. Now that I think of it, I kindof miss the hustle of hundreds of people moving and bartering in the same closed space, admittedly not your traditionally pleasant sound, but very typical of the China that I thought I enjoyed but now seem to be ardently avoiding.
The beauty of China comes from its unpredictability, the ever-present potential for something random to happen that transcends any rational expectation. Unfortunately I find myself sacrificing that chaotic potential for a China that is filtered through imitation Ray-bans and scored by an iPod. The ever-present battle between comfort and possibility has taken on a new form. The more self-reliant my gadgetry makes me, the less connected I become with my environment; as the local colors become muted, locations will begin to look the same, sound the same, feel the same, until they might as well be a green-screened photobooth backdrop for all the effect they have on me.
I want to change. I fear I cannot. I can leave my iPod behind, but am I willing to forgo my Skype conversations? No. Am I willing to drop the lines of connection that I am constantly cultivating with those back in the States? No. Am I even strong enough to contemplate building a life that is locally sustainable? I don’t do it with my food, there isn’t a chance that I’ll do it with my friends.
As I’ve traveled around, I’ve built up a network of support that, by necessity, transcends location, that exists and functions irrespective of wherever it is that I happen to be. As such, I move easily, but the list is pretty set, and those that can’t keep up get left behind. I don’t like any of this. Thinking about it makes me feel weak, powerless, and like a bit of a jackass. And yet I am surviving. I’m just not sure at what cost, and to whom.
(1) Stuff White People Like - Indie Music
(2) Great Big Sea, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys
I realized today my amazing capacity to remove myself from my environment. My experience of China is so far removed from anything Chinese that I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry. The China that I experience is as dramatic as a love story, as quixotic as an indie film, but only as real as a music video. Every street would run with the rhythm of the Arcade Fire (1), every stone wall be cut with the precision of Ghostland Observatory, every building ascend to the crescendo of Sigur Ros. This is the Beibei of my fashioning, a town that that I, and only I, inhabit. My music gives new meaning to the farmers whose contented routines are transformed to angst-filled toil by Metallica, to the daily commuters whose sleepy bus rides are subsumed by the frenzy of my “Irish Punk Drinking Songs Mix (2).” It is in this way that my iPod scores the very people of Beibei, robbing them of their own meaning and replacing it with my own.
In all honesty, some of the sounds of Beibei could do with replacing. I don’t miss the horn honks and traffic sounds that are muted by my white earbuds. I fear, though, that in my effort to sequester myself away from the cacophony of unmuffler-ed urban living, I might have also thrown out the more peaceful tones of the rural living that I claim to value. I can’t remember how long it has been since I have heard the sound of a hoe turning the soil, even though I see the sight almost daily. Now that I think of it, I kindof miss the hustle of hundreds of people moving and bartering in the same closed space, admittedly not your traditionally pleasant sound, but very typical of the China that I thought I enjoyed but now seem to be ardently avoiding.
The beauty of China comes from its unpredictability, the ever-present potential for something random to happen that transcends any rational expectation. Unfortunately I find myself sacrificing that chaotic potential for a China that is filtered through imitation Ray-bans and scored by an iPod. The ever-present battle between comfort and possibility has taken on a new form. The more self-reliant my gadgetry makes me, the less connected I become with my environment; as the local colors become muted, locations will begin to look the same, sound the same, feel the same, until they might as well be a green-screened photobooth backdrop for all the effect they have on me.
I want to change. I fear I cannot. I can leave my iPod behind, but am I willing to forgo my Skype conversations? No. Am I willing to drop the lines of connection that I am constantly cultivating with those back in the States? No. Am I even strong enough to contemplate building a life that is locally sustainable? I don’t do it with my food, there isn’t a chance that I’ll do it with my friends.
As I’ve traveled around, I’ve built up a network of support that, by necessity, transcends location, that exists and functions irrespective of wherever it is that I happen to be. As such, I move easily, but the list is pretty set, and those that can’t keep up get left behind. I don’t like any of this. Thinking about it makes me feel weak, powerless, and like a bit of a jackass. And yet I am surviving. I’m just not sure at what cost, and to whom.
(1) Stuff White People Like - Indie Music
(2) Great Big Sea, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys
Friday, March 13, 2009
FLASHBACK - Travel Sagas
Somehow I never posted this...
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be on top of the ball, all of the time. To be at home, calmly sitting next to my matching luggage, peacefully whiling away the last 30 minutes before I need to leave the house. To arrive at the airport two, maybe two-and-a-half hours early, a rock of serenity in the swirling eddies of airport traffic, content to placidly inch your way up even the most listless line. That is not my life.
This has not been the most sterling of travel weeks for me. I missed a flight out of Taiwan on Thursday, and then on Friday I missed my bus because I couldn’t figure out how to open the front door. I kid you not. Bear with me.
The flight story is depressingly anticlimactic. I have a tendency to fill my plate too full, to exchange too little cash, to cut things too close. Suffice it to say that I’m not “down” with margins of error. Stephanie, I think, enjoys life more than I do. She is one of life’s amblers, an appreciator of beauty and a smeller of flowers. Unfortunately, our two personalities combined to catastrophic effect.
I sat in the back seat, watching the cars, inexplicable in their abundance, and cursed… everything. As if some sort of malicious hive beast, the traffic devoured the few seconds of buffer time that I had allotted, and I just sat there, helpless to catch my 10:00 flight.
9:10
9:20
My dark silence was broken by Stephanie talking to Jeff in the front seat:
“Man, Robb must just be praying SO hard right now.”
I was not praying. I was late.
“Mm Hmm”
Then I prayed.
9:30
“Don’t worry Robb, we’ll make it!”
“Mm Hmm”
9:35
9:40
9:45
“See? We made it! Pleeenty of time!”
“Mm Hmm”
Apparently 15 minutes is not sufficient time to get checked in, go through security, and board the plane for my international flight. Who knew?
It ended fine, I was booked on a later flight without incident or charge, and the world was a better place. Still, more excitement than I would like.
Fast forward one day. I was in Hong Kong, on my way down the elevator to catch a bus right outside the building. I pushed the right door. Nothing. I pulled the right door. Nothing. Pushed the left door. Pulled the left door. I calmly looked around for some sort of a latch or lever. Push. Pause. Pull. Pause. Push. Pause. Pull. Pause. As I stood there, a grown man playing silly buggers with a glass door, I saw my bus drive by. Pushpullpushpullpushpushpushpush. Damn.
Only then did I notice the (only) small black button, hidden on the door at eye level. Sneaky Hongkanese devils.
And now, this morning. After a leisurely morning of packing and chatting with my hosts, I made the first leg of my four-part journey to Chongqing. I would bus to the MTR (subway) station, catch the MTR, then catch a bus from mainland Hong Kong to the Shenzhen airport (just on the other side of the Chinese border), and finally catch a flight to Chongqing. Unfortunately I had about 150 lbs of luggage packed into duffel bags, and had no idea how I would get them to the elevator, much less navigate the MTR with them. Yet another instance of brilliant planning. But I figured out how to transform one bag into a backpack, and it was fine. The bus and the MTR went without incident, as did getting on the bus to Shenzhen. Keep in mind here that at this point I was more a moving mountain of luggage than a man, and was shooting from the hip. Had things not worked out as planned, I had no plan B. So the stress level was fairly high.
45 minutes into the 90-minute bus trip, we pulled over and everyone got off the bus. Not seeing any other option, I followed the crowd, which led me to once again pick up my luggage (dangit) and blindly walk into the building directly ahead of us. It turns out that it was immigration, and it all went relatively smoothly, but when traveling as heavily as I do, all surprises are unwelcome surprises.
Skipping forward to the airport. As a warning, if this sounds tedious, that’s because it was. Domestic Asian flights only allow about 45 lbs of luggage, and so I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding paying for the extra poundage. What I didn’t expect was for both of my pieces of luggage (both of which went Portland-LA-Taipei-HK without any problems) to set off the scanners. One had a lighter in it which I neither knew was there nor cared about keeping, and the other had a largish military knife that I very much cared about keeping. After the fifth time the guard unsheathed the knife, I figured that he just enjoyed playing with knives, but did not think it prudent to tell the airport security guard to stop messing around and get on with it. So I stood there, as the time counted down to my flight. Which I was NOT going to miss. Finally he cleared my luggage, then I had to run to the overweight luggage counter, calculate my fee, then get that amount changed into Chinese Yuan, then go back and get my receipt, then finally go back to the ticket counter and get my boarding pass. Phew. Then came the security checkpoint, where my carry-on was “too dense” for the scanners, which I took as something of a complement to my packing prowess. It made me feel good until I realized that I had to completely unpack my very meticulously packed carry-on, then try and put it all back together again. I stopped laughing pretty quickly.
In the end, I got from Seattle to Chongqing on time, and I even arrived at each destination on the day that I was scheduled to, if not on the flight. Ultimately, though, I’ve pretty much lost interest in this story, and only finished it for the sake of my beloved mother, who likes to know these kinds of things. But now I’m done.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be on top of the ball, all of the time. To be at home, calmly sitting next to my matching luggage, peacefully whiling away the last 30 minutes before I need to leave the house. To arrive at the airport two, maybe two-and-a-half hours early, a rock of serenity in the swirling eddies of airport traffic, content to placidly inch your way up even the most listless line. That is not my life.
This has not been the most sterling of travel weeks for me. I missed a flight out of Taiwan on Thursday, and then on Friday I missed my bus because I couldn’t figure out how to open the front door. I kid you not. Bear with me.
The flight story is depressingly anticlimactic. I have a tendency to fill my plate too full, to exchange too little cash, to cut things too close. Suffice it to say that I’m not “down” with margins of error. Stephanie, I think, enjoys life more than I do. She is one of life’s amblers, an appreciator of beauty and a smeller of flowers. Unfortunately, our two personalities combined to catastrophic effect.
I sat in the back seat, watching the cars, inexplicable in their abundance, and cursed… everything. As if some sort of malicious hive beast, the traffic devoured the few seconds of buffer time that I had allotted, and I just sat there, helpless to catch my 10:00 flight.
9:10
9:20
My dark silence was broken by Stephanie talking to Jeff in the front seat:
“Man, Robb must just be praying SO hard right now.”
I was not praying. I was late.
“Mm Hmm”
Then I prayed.
9:30
“Don’t worry Robb, we’ll make it!”
“Mm Hmm”
9:35
9:40
9:45
“See? We made it! Pleeenty of time!”
“Mm Hmm”
Apparently 15 minutes is not sufficient time to get checked in, go through security, and board the plane for my international flight. Who knew?
It ended fine, I was booked on a later flight without incident or charge, and the world was a better place. Still, more excitement than I would like.
Fast forward one day. I was in Hong Kong, on my way down the elevator to catch a bus right outside the building. I pushed the right door. Nothing. I pulled the right door. Nothing. Pushed the left door. Pulled the left door. I calmly looked around for some sort of a latch or lever. Push. Pause. Pull. Pause. Push. Pause. Pull. Pause. As I stood there, a grown man playing silly buggers with a glass door, I saw my bus drive by. Pushpullpushpullpushpushpushpush. Damn.
Only then did I notice the (only) small black button, hidden on the door at eye level. Sneaky Hongkanese devils.
And now, this morning. After a leisurely morning of packing and chatting with my hosts, I made the first leg of my four-part journey to Chongqing. I would bus to the MTR (subway) station, catch the MTR, then catch a bus from mainland Hong Kong to the Shenzhen airport (just on the other side of the Chinese border), and finally catch a flight to Chongqing. Unfortunately I had about 150 lbs of luggage packed into duffel bags, and had no idea how I would get them to the elevator, much less navigate the MTR with them. Yet another instance of brilliant planning. But I figured out how to transform one bag into a backpack, and it was fine. The bus and the MTR went without incident, as did getting on the bus to Shenzhen. Keep in mind here that at this point I was more a moving mountain of luggage than a man, and was shooting from the hip. Had things not worked out as planned, I had no plan B. So the stress level was fairly high.
45 minutes into the 90-minute bus trip, we pulled over and everyone got off the bus. Not seeing any other option, I followed the crowd, which led me to once again pick up my luggage (dangit) and blindly walk into the building directly ahead of us. It turns out that it was immigration, and it all went relatively smoothly, but when traveling as heavily as I do, all surprises are unwelcome surprises.
Skipping forward to the airport. As a warning, if this sounds tedious, that’s because it was. Domestic Asian flights only allow about 45 lbs of luggage, and so I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding paying for the extra poundage. What I didn’t expect was for both of my pieces of luggage (both of which went Portland-LA-Taipei-HK without any problems) to set off the scanners. One had a lighter in it which I neither knew was there nor cared about keeping, and the other had a largish military knife that I very much cared about keeping. After the fifth time the guard unsheathed the knife, I figured that he just enjoyed playing with knives, but did not think it prudent to tell the airport security guard to stop messing around and get on with it. So I stood there, as the time counted down to my flight. Which I was NOT going to miss. Finally he cleared my luggage, then I had to run to the overweight luggage counter, calculate my fee, then get that amount changed into Chinese Yuan, then go back and get my receipt, then finally go back to the ticket counter and get my boarding pass. Phew. Then came the security checkpoint, where my carry-on was “too dense” for the scanners, which I took as something of a complement to my packing prowess. It made me feel good until I realized that I had to completely unpack my very meticulously packed carry-on, then try and put it all back together again. I stopped laughing pretty quickly.
In the end, I got from Seattle to Chongqing on time, and I even arrived at each destination on the day that I was scheduled to, if not on the flight. Ultimately, though, I’ve pretty much lost interest in this story, and only finished it for the sake of my beloved mother, who likes to know these kinds of things. But now I’m done.
FLASHBACK - The Biggest Ant
I was in the shower and I saw a big ant chasing the little ant across the wall. It made me laugh, because I wondered if the little ant always knew that he was a little ant, or whether he thought he was a big ant, right up until the bigger ant came along. And I bet the big ant felt pretty big, chasing down the little one. Top of the food chain, master of the universe, all that. He probably felt pretty important, because he was the biggest thing around. I never saw what happened, because I lost interest and started shampooing my hair. They were only ants, after all. Much too small to be important at all.
Stupid Morals...
I walked into my apartment, and my motorcycle helmet was out on the couch, mocking me. I endured its eyeless gaze as I as I bagged it up and hid it and it’s accusatory visor away. But I couldn’t hate it. I could only agree.
It seems that Beibei is filled with motorcycles. More poignantly, filled with people whose constant quest for a cheap and crappy second-hand motorcycle haven’t been frustrated at every turn. Beibei seems filled with the very objects of my obsession, but they have remained resolutely just beyond my grasp. It’s like craving a twinkie at fat camp. You know they’re there, but you just can’t find the stash.
About a week ago, I thought that Lady Luck might have looked upon me with her green-eyed gaze. I passed a motorcycle repair shop while walking around the city and, as has become my custom, I went and inquired if they knew of any second-handers. In fact, they themselves had three (1). One of them was perfect. It was beautiful. It was a 125cc Honda sportbike that was classically styled with a round headlight. Exactly what I wanted. It was also only 3 years old. They quoted the price to at 3,000 RMB, which I figured could be bargained down into the 2,000 – 2,500 range (between 300 and 400 USD). I got in contact with a student who knew about motorcycles, who came to check it out and help me bargain. Skipping a lot of painful deals, the owner wouldn’t come below 3,800 RMB, and the bike was actually 7 years old. I was heartbroken, but wasn’t going to even attempt to do business with a liar and a cheat.
Tragedy two: The very next day, my student found a motorcycle on the school’s Craigslist, and said he would scout it out ahead of time to avoid the waiguoren markup. He found something, and we arranged a meet. It would be 2,200 RMB, but only a year old, and beautiful. It was. As soon as I saw it, I lusted after it, after the picture of myself proudly zipping through the Beibei traffic, but mostly after the idea of not having to spend 30 minutes just to get a meal. I was tired of being thwarted, and here it was, the shiny red James Dean-esque reward for my patience.
There was a catch. It didn’t have a license plate. I wasn’t worried because most of the motorcycles on campus don’t have them (private property, I guess), and that’s where I’d be doing 90% of my driving. The other 10%, well, I know the police. I wasn’t worried about it. But. It also meant that it might be (2) stolen.
I tried so many mental gymnastics to rationalize that motorcycle. The thing is, I’ve always said that I would never buy something ‘hot,’ but what I meant was that I would just avoid purchasing things in back alleys or clandestinely handing someone money in a bathroom stall. This was… open, and accepted. I knew that I could buy it without repercussion, because, let’s be honest, who’s going to stop a waiguoren? I could probably stack dead bodies on the back of my stolen motorcycle and drive through downtown Beibei, and people would just chalk it up to another waiguoren oddity (3).
‘How is this different from the pirated DVDs you buy,’ I asked myself. DVDs are something I’ve just become uncomfortably comfortable with, especially after I found them sold at WalMart (4), putting another arrow into a quiver already bursting with rationalization. But the motorcycle is different, because there might be someone out there who was looking for their motorcycle, and I didn’t want to be the person to take it from them.
So I turned it down. I’m ashamed to say how hard it was, but I said no and walked past the motorcycle, walked past the realization of one of my dreams, walked past the possibility of not having to walk all the way home. Also, depending on who you talk to, possibly walking past eternal damnation, as well. Either way, I walked home.
I wish I could say that I was buoyed home on wings of angels, or that I began to notice the small things along my walk that had long since become mundane. But the only thing that buoyed me home were my legs, and all I noticed when I got there was how sore they were.
(1) This was groundbreaking. A quirk that I have discovered is that most people in China have a pretty narrow focus. While on a previous quest for bamboo (maybe another story all together), I walked all over our fair city to no avail. Please remember, this is China. Bamboo is EVERYWHERE, and EVERYONE has it. But apparently no one knows where to buy it. Not even the storeowner around the corner from the shop whose sole product was … bamboo. Back to the topic, every other motorcycle mechanic, who spends his entire life up to his elbows in dilapidated motorcycles, doesn’t know where you can buy one. How they ever invented gunpowder, I don’t know…
(2) Definitely was
(3) I’ve been watching way too much ‘Dexter.’ Although, this is old hat. I already figured that out when my first desire towards the lying cheat mechanic was to burn down his workshop. No more ‘Dexter’ for a while.
(4) Admittedly, not a paragon of business ethics, but something that I would assume is strictly regulated.
It seems that Beibei is filled with motorcycles. More poignantly, filled with people whose constant quest for a cheap and crappy second-hand motorcycle haven’t been frustrated at every turn. Beibei seems filled with the very objects of my obsession, but they have remained resolutely just beyond my grasp. It’s like craving a twinkie at fat camp. You know they’re there, but you just can’t find the stash.
About a week ago, I thought that Lady Luck might have looked upon me with her green-eyed gaze. I passed a motorcycle repair shop while walking around the city and, as has become my custom, I went and inquired if they knew of any second-handers. In fact, they themselves had three (1). One of them was perfect. It was beautiful. It was a 125cc Honda sportbike that was classically styled with a round headlight. Exactly what I wanted. It was also only 3 years old. They quoted the price to at 3,000 RMB, which I figured could be bargained down into the 2,000 – 2,500 range (between 300 and 400 USD). I got in contact with a student who knew about motorcycles, who came to check it out and help me bargain. Skipping a lot of painful deals, the owner wouldn’t come below 3,800 RMB, and the bike was actually 7 years old. I was heartbroken, but wasn’t going to even attempt to do business with a liar and a cheat.
Tragedy two: The very next day, my student found a motorcycle on the school’s Craigslist, and said he would scout it out ahead of time to avoid the waiguoren markup. He found something, and we arranged a meet. It would be 2,200 RMB, but only a year old, and beautiful. It was. As soon as I saw it, I lusted after it, after the picture of myself proudly zipping through the Beibei traffic, but mostly after the idea of not having to spend 30 minutes just to get a meal. I was tired of being thwarted, and here it was, the shiny red James Dean-esque reward for my patience.
There was a catch. It didn’t have a license plate. I wasn’t worried because most of the motorcycles on campus don’t have them (private property, I guess), and that’s where I’d be doing 90% of my driving. The other 10%, well, I know the police. I wasn’t worried about it. But. It also meant that it might be (2) stolen.
I tried so many mental gymnastics to rationalize that motorcycle. The thing is, I’ve always said that I would never buy something ‘hot,’ but what I meant was that I would just avoid purchasing things in back alleys or clandestinely handing someone money in a bathroom stall. This was… open, and accepted. I knew that I could buy it without repercussion, because, let’s be honest, who’s going to stop a waiguoren? I could probably stack dead bodies on the back of my stolen motorcycle and drive through downtown Beibei, and people would just chalk it up to another waiguoren oddity (3).
‘How is this different from the pirated DVDs you buy,’ I asked myself. DVDs are something I’ve just become uncomfortably comfortable with, especially after I found them sold at WalMart (4), putting another arrow into a quiver already bursting with rationalization. But the motorcycle is different, because there might be someone out there who was looking for their motorcycle, and I didn’t want to be the person to take it from them.
So I turned it down. I’m ashamed to say how hard it was, but I said no and walked past the motorcycle, walked past the realization of one of my dreams, walked past the possibility of not having to walk all the way home. Also, depending on who you talk to, possibly walking past eternal damnation, as well. Either way, I walked home.
I wish I could say that I was buoyed home on wings of angels, or that I began to notice the small things along my walk that had long since become mundane. But the only thing that buoyed me home were my legs, and all I noticed when I got there was how sore they were.
(1) This was groundbreaking. A quirk that I have discovered is that most people in China have a pretty narrow focus. While on a previous quest for bamboo (maybe another story all together), I walked all over our fair city to no avail. Please remember, this is China. Bamboo is EVERYWHERE, and EVERYONE has it. But apparently no one knows where to buy it. Not even the storeowner around the corner from the shop whose sole product was … bamboo. Back to the topic, every other motorcycle mechanic, who spends his entire life up to his elbows in dilapidated motorcycles, doesn’t know where you can buy one. How they ever invented gunpowder, I don’t know…
(2) Definitely was
(3) I’ve been watching way too much ‘Dexter.’ Although, this is old hat. I already figured that out when my first desire towards the lying cheat mechanic was to burn down his workshop. No more ‘Dexter’ for a while.
(4) Admittedly, not a paragon of business ethics, but something that I would assume is strictly regulated.
FLASHBACK - Scan the Sky for Pterodactyls
Landing at the Sentani airport put right all that my 12 hours in Bali had made wrong. The mountains were mossy green and the sky was a brilliant blue; the airport buildings were hut-looking; I think I saw a cow, but I can’t remember. It was beautiful, and natural, and so different from any place that I had ever been that I really didn’t have a frame of reference within which to place it. It was disconcerting, but gloriously so.
In order to avoid confusion, I’m going to go ahead and give a quick synopsis of everywhere I went on Papua.
Sentani: the city where the Wileys live, and where I spent the majority of my time.
Wamena: The largest city in the world solely supported by air, it’s up in the mountains in the interior of Papua.
Ibole: A small village outside of Wamena.
Back to the story. After a few hours’ delay, I caught the 30-minute flight from Sentani to Wamena, and was met on the Tarmac by Wally Wiley, the father of my college friend Jared, who would be coming in a few days. Before even going into the airport, Wally ushered me over to the MAF hanger, and we got onto a small 5-man plane for a 15 minute flight into Ibole.
This plane, though, was unlike anything I had ever been on. First off, it was small. It was the kind of plane that you see Pterodactyls attacking in those low-budget Sci-Fi specials, or falling in love with in those equally low-budget late-night Cinemax specials. Most disturbing, though, was that if some prehistoric monster were to show up, it would probably do so in some place like Papua. It didn’t help matters that there was a machete stored in the pilot-side door. I never told anyone, but I definitely saw it. Sure, it’s there for jungle survival in the case of emergency landing, but I couldn’t shake the image of me trying to fend off a flying dinosaur with a glorified bread knife. Not even my over-inflated ego could conjure up a good ending to that one.
When we landed, I was met by Jacinda, who was Jared’s older sister, and a friend that I had not seen in several years. Again, by this time, the past 96 hours had been virtually bed-less. Airplane sleep doesn’t count for much, and I wasn’t completely sure that I wasn’t hallucinating. It was already so unbelievable, what would the difference be? Old friends showing up from nowhere? Check. I couldn’t believe it. Turns out that she and her husband were there for another week, and no one (ahem… Jared) told me.
We stayed with the Adams, a second-generation missionary family who lived in a beautiful wooden house on the side of the mountain. Todd Adams had just built a hydroelectric turbine for the nearby stream, so they were no longer dependent on a generator. They had an ingenious bucket shower system that used water from a nearby spring. It was that kind of a missionary family. The real kind. I was in awe, and felt the need to constantly qualify my own missionary experience. “Yes, we were missionaries, but … we had electricity. Yeah, my parents started a church, but … no one ever axed any of our congregants in the back of neck because they were Christians.” You know, those kinds of qualifications.
Even dinner was something out of a Spaghetti Western. 15 of us, from 2 year old Bo Adams to the more venerable Virgil Adams, were all crowded around a single long wooden table laden with that hearty American fare that could clog an artery by just being glanced at. I’ve never had a big family, but this is what I would imagine it should be like; the jostling, the multiple conversations, “Drink the orange juice, Bo, it’s delicious! -- But I don’t want delicious!”, the elbows, the passing, the empty baskets of bread, the strong coffee, the way our held hands and bowed heads created a solid ring of reverence for the food that seemed even more miraculous for being eaten on a mountainside, all these things seemed right and made me nostalgic for something I’d never known before.
In order to avoid confusion, I’m going to go ahead and give a quick synopsis of everywhere I went on Papua.
Sentani: the city where the Wileys live, and where I spent the majority of my time.
Wamena: The largest city in the world solely supported by air, it’s up in the mountains in the interior of Papua.
Ibole: A small village outside of Wamena.
Back to the story. After a few hours’ delay, I caught the 30-minute flight from Sentani to Wamena, and was met on the Tarmac by Wally Wiley, the father of my college friend Jared, who would be coming in a few days. Before even going into the airport, Wally ushered me over to the MAF hanger, and we got onto a small 5-man plane for a 15 minute flight into Ibole.
This plane, though, was unlike anything I had ever been on. First off, it was small. It was the kind of plane that you see Pterodactyls attacking in those low-budget Sci-Fi specials, or falling in love with in those equally low-budget late-night Cinemax specials. Most disturbing, though, was that if some prehistoric monster were to show up, it would probably do so in some place like Papua. It didn’t help matters that there was a machete stored in the pilot-side door. I never told anyone, but I definitely saw it. Sure, it’s there for jungle survival in the case of emergency landing, but I couldn’t shake the image of me trying to fend off a flying dinosaur with a glorified bread knife. Not even my over-inflated ego could conjure up a good ending to that one.
When we landed, I was met by Jacinda, who was Jared’s older sister, and a friend that I had not seen in several years. Again, by this time, the past 96 hours had been virtually bed-less. Airplane sleep doesn’t count for much, and I wasn’t completely sure that I wasn’t hallucinating. It was already so unbelievable, what would the difference be? Old friends showing up from nowhere? Check. I couldn’t believe it. Turns out that she and her husband were there for another week, and no one (ahem… Jared) told me.
We stayed with the Adams, a second-generation missionary family who lived in a beautiful wooden house on the side of the mountain. Todd Adams had just built a hydroelectric turbine for the nearby stream, so they were no longer dependent on a generator. They had an ingenious bucket shower system that used water from a nearby spring. It was that kind of a missionary family. The real kind. I was in awe, and felt the need to constantly qualify my own missionary experience. “Yes, we were missionaries, but … we had electricity. Yeah, my parents started a church, but … no one ever axed any of our congregants in the back of neck because they were Christians.” You know, those kinds of qualifications.
Even dinner was something out of a Spaghetti Western. 15 of us, from 2 year old Bo Adams to the more venerable Virgil Adams, were all crowded around a single long wooden table laden with that hearty American fare that could clog an artery by just being glanced at. I’ve never had a big family, but this is what I would imagine it should be like; the jostling, the multiple conversations, “Drink the orange juice, Bo, it’s delicious! -- But I don’t want delicious!”, the elbows, the passing, the empty baskets of bread, the strong coffee, the way our held hands and bowed heads created a solid ring of reverence for the food that seemed even more miraculous for being eaten on a mountainside, all these things seemed right and made me nostalgic for something I’d never known before.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Oh Jodie
She was stern, but her hands were strong. As the robe slipped off my shoulders and fell lightly around my arms, I realized that, though public nudity probably plays a larger roll in my life than it should, I have never been so publicly undressed (verb). It was a strange thing to feel so helpless, to feel the next thirty minutes were entirely up to those tiny, firm hands. In my state of heightened awareness, the lotion was ice on my back, an uncomfortably effeminate affront to my already fragile masculine nature. And then, all of a sudden, it didn’t matter any more. There was pain, but it was oddly euphoric, a strange dichotomy that my mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around, but that my body was very convinced of.
I was getting a Creme Bath at Jodi’s Salon, the decadence of which was in stark contrast to the rest of my time in Papua. But maybe I should start from the beginning.
I crossed the threshold into a world of curling irons and steamers, a world so foreign that it might as well have been populated by bobble-headed aliens. In fact, I actually thought it might have been, until I realized the steaming-headed extraterrestrial was actually a woman getting her hair … something’d. And so I was a bit discombobulated when they handed me a folded up robe and ushered me into a changing room. Why did I have a robe? What should I take off? The shirt seemed a foregone conclusion, but what about the pants? I thought they were only going to work the shoulders, but then why the robe? Would I look sillier if I were to be wearing pants when I wasn’t supposed to, or if I wasn’t wearing them when I was supposed to be? The pants stay on, for sure. The tough decisions made, I unfolded the robe and put it on. It only came about three inches past my waist; the pants were a good choice. So far so good.
Then came the shampooing and the head massage, followed by the shoulder massage, which was where I lost all inhibitions about checking my masculinity at the door. As I sat there in a blissful stupor, she kneaded the tension out of my shoulders, alternating between deep pressure and lighter swoops. And oh the swooping. I was a fan of the swooping.
When the swooping stopped, my mind kicked back in, and I began to wonder about the other clientele in the adjacent chairs. They obviously had money (at $7 US or 70,000 rupiah, Creme Baths didn’t come cheap), but what was their life like? Papua, to me, was a hodgepodge of beaches, jungles and rivers; it was a series of ‘outsides,’ where ‘inside’ served only as a quiet, cool reprieve before one again returning to the Papuan outdoors. But a lot of the hair that I was seeing emerge from the steamers was sculpted, crafted, sometimes seemingly cajoled and magic’d into place. It was inside hair. What would it be like to experience Papua from the confines of a room? Would they be content in their air conditioning and Creme Baths, content to reduce the Papuan beauty to scenery?
I have to admit that I got on a bit of a high horse, smugly condescending on my ivory pedestal as I viewed those who have lost an appreciation for what was just on the other side of the door. The masseuse might have been a bit clairvoyant, because it was at that moment that the swoop became a decided jab, and the change in pace interrupted my thinking a bit.
When the pain subsided, I forgot that I was thinking about them, and started thinking about me. Had Beibei become nothing but scenery? How much of my time was in closed restaurants and coffee shops, or in massage parlors or living rooms? How much of my time was spent trying to manage my surroundings instead of finding ways to enjoy them? How much was I trying to be comfortable in spite of Beibei and how much time was spent appreciating Beibei itself? I feared that in some ways, I had lost touch with the very things that drew me to Beibei.
I loved the CrËme Bath, but it was more Vidal Sassoon than Sentani. If that was all that I know of Papua, had I ever even been there? Had I left Beibei long before ever getting on a plane? The questions got to be very ponderous and kindof a drag, so I avoided them by opening an Indonesian Cosmo, taking the love quiz by randomly choosing answers, and then having Jared translate my results. Apparently I’m a “handle player,” whatever that is. Either way, it was a pleasant distraction from the unpleasant questions.
I was getting a Creme Bath at Jodi’s Salon, the decadence of which was in stark contrast to the rest of my time in Papua. But maybe I should start from the beginning.
I crossed the threshold into a world of curling irons and steamers, a world so foreign that it might as well have been populated by bobble-headed aliens. In fact, I actually thought it might have been, until I realized the steaming-headed extraterrestrial was actually a woman getting her hair … something’d. And so I was a bit discombobulated when they handed me a folded up robe and ushered me into a changing room. Why did I have a robe? What should I take off? The shirt seemed a foregone conclusion, but what about the pants? I thought they were only going to work the shoulders, but then why the robe? Would I look sillier if I were to be wearing pants when I wasn’t supposed to, or if I wasn’t wearing them when I was supposed to be? The pants stay on, for sure. The tough decisions made, I unfolded the robe and put it on. It only came about three inches past my waist; the pants were a good choice. So far so good.
Then came the shampooing and the head massage, followed by the shoulder massage, which was where I lost all inhibitions about checking my masculinity at the door. As I sat there in a blissful stupor, she kneaded the tension out of my shoulders, alternating between deep pressure and lighter swoops. And oh the swooping. I was a fan of the swooping.
When the swooping stopped, my mind kicked back in, and I began to wonder about the other clientele in the adjacent chairs. They obviously had money (at $7 US or 70,000 rupiah, Creme Baths didn’t come cheap), but what was their life like? Papua, to me, was a hodgepodge of beaches, jungles and rivers; it was a series of ‘outsides,’ where ‘inside’ served only as a quiet, cool reprieve before one again returning to the Papuan outdoors. But a lot of the hair that I was seeing emerge from the steamers was sculpted, crafted, sometimes seemingly cajoled and magic’d into place. It was inside hair. What would it be like to experience Papua from the confines of a room? Would they be content in their air conditioning and Creme Baths, content to reduce the Papuan beauty to scenery?
I have to admit that I got on a bit of a high horse, smugly condescending on my ivory pedestal as I viewed those who have lost an appreciation for what was just on the other side of the door. The masseuse might have been a bit clairvoyant, because it was at that moment that the swoop became a decided jab, and the change in pace interrupted my thinking a bit.
When the pain subsided, I forgot that I was thinking about them, and started thinking about me. Had Beibei become nothing but scenery? How much of my time was in closed restaurants and coffee shops, or in massage parlors or living rooms? How much of my time was spent trying to manage my surroundings instead of finding ways to enjoy them? How much was I trying to be comfortable in spite of Beibei and how much time was spent appreciating Beibei itself? I feared that in some ways, I had lost touch with the very things that drew me to Beibei.
I loved the CrËme Bath, but it was more Vidal Sassoon than Sentani. If that was all that I know of Papua, had I ever even been there? Had I left Beibei long before ever getting on a plane? The questions got to be very ponderous and kindof a drag, so I avoided them by opening an Indonesian Cosmo, taking the love quiz by randomly choosing answers, and then having Jared translate my results. Apparently I’m a “handle player,” whatever that is. Either way, it was a pleasant distraction from the unpleasant questions.
Dollarsigns and Nothingness
Of the past 72 hours, I had only spend 5 in a bed. It would be another full 24 hours before I finally laid down to blissful rest on an airmattress on the floor of a missionary’s house nestled in the Papuan mountains. But now is not then. Now is hot, and now is crowded, and now is overwhelming, and now is … not good. Indonesia and I did not start off on a very good foot.
The arrival experience in five sentences: Customs was hot, sticky, and unairconditioned. Came out to find a porter holding my bag; he motioned, I followed (which was actually useful), he asked for either a $2 (20,000 rupiah) tip or a $20 (200,000 rupiah) one, I was so delusional and blinded by zeroes that I’m ashamed to say I honestly don’t know what I gave him. So he was either a divine guide or a dirty rotten bastard thief, I’m still on the fence. My taxi driver kept on calling me ‘boss,’ the enjoyment of which faded when I realized that I could get out and walk faster than our car was going. He let me off at Mastapa Gardens Hotel in Kuna beach, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to tip him (no), but I was still too confusedly bitter over the porter to care if I was being culturally sensitive.
It was then, 1 hour into my 12 hour layover, that I realized something. I didn’t like Bali. Or rather, more accurately, I loathed Bali (1). The beaches are amazing, the prices are low, and the people have the sort of petite exotic beauty that I’m sure made many WWII navymen love Bali. But maybe that’s the thing. Maybe it plucks the last chord of puritanical piety left within me. I… hate… tourism. I hope you are cozy, because I’m about to climb on my soapbox.
I love the free exchange of cultures, I think it’s great when people want to see new horizons, and I’m all for FDI. Spread the love, whatever. What turns my stomach is when a location becomes a ‘destination.’ And Bali is definitely a destination.
Kuna Beach is filled with people. The ones that moved were white, the ones that stood still and hawked were locals. “Rolex? DVD?” “Hey boss, you want to buy a shirt? How about a dress for a pretty lady?” “Massage?” Being a white male walking (relatively) alone, I got a lot of the latter. Young Balinese women littered the streets, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, every twenty feet or so, offering the same service. And while their lips said massage, their lingering gazes and soft touches suggested the possibility of a bit more.
Walking down the road, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, while everyone was crowded on the same streets, no one was actually seeing each other. I felt like a walking dollar sign. And who can blame them? People don’t go to Kuna Beach to find Balinese culture, they go there for cheap eats and mass-produced “I heart Bali” shirts. Walking past a shop named ‘Suicide Dreams,’ I wondered what it said about our culture that this is what was found to be most attractive to prospective shoppers (us). After glancing in a few stores, I tried to keep my eyes on the road ahead. It just hurt too much.
Is this what we do? Drive our Explorers from the suburbs to work, play at living out our ‘Leave it to Beaver’ lives until we make enough money to go someplace else and get our freak on? Find some place beautiful enough to be distracting and poor enough to be bought? It sounds like prostitution to me. Only a fool blames the bed of the whore, especially when he is the one making that bed. There is no free love, and cheap love only exists when there are people to buy it. We have created Bali, we have created the tee-shirts emblazoned with “Drop Pants, Not Bombs” and “Toughen the Fuck Up;” shirts that we would never allow on our street corners, but that, on a street corner far far away, we find clever and hilarious. Who can blame them for looking at me like that, because I have created them, and now I must sustain them.
And us? When we look at them, we see … nothing. I don’t think we see anything. The locals are part of the background, speakers that hawk goods and disembodied hands that exchange money. We are not there for them; they are there for us. We take what we want and give them enough money to make sure that they are there the next time we want something. No one cares who it is that is behind the counter, just that there is someone there. They are interchangeable people. Are interchangeable people really people at all?
What I hate about tourism, or definitive tourism at least, is that it dehumanizes people. Tourists set aside their humanity and become pure consumers, and the local industry sets aside its cultural distinctives in favor of whatever happens to be marketable. We become dollar signs and they become reflections of our hidden self-indulgence. Sometimes it manifests itself as perverse, sometimes garish, but in a twisted sense, I don’t know if either is worse than the other. Both the keychain phallus and the hibiscus-print shirt represent our willingness to throw money at whoever will allow us to be someone other than who we currently are. Maybe the point is that they both represent our dissatisfaction with ourselves. A dissatisfaction that we find so distasteful and taboo that we ship it off to some distant country - on call when we need it - but with no thought for the place and the people who we have reduced to indulging our own guilty insecurities.
(1) My trip back through Bali was completely different, and I think it’s quite nice. Ish.
The arrival experience in five sentences: Customs was hot, sticky, and unairconditioned. Came out to find a porter holding my bag; he motioned, I followed (which was actually useful), he asked for either a $2 (20,000 rupiah) tip or a $20 (200,000 rupiah) one, I was so delusional and blinded by zeroes that I’m ashamed to say I honestly don’t know what I gave him. So he was either a divine guide or a dirty rotten bastard thief, I’m still on the fence. My taxi driver kept on calling me ‘boss,’ the enjoyment of which faded when I realized that I could get out and walk faster than our car was going. He let me off at Mastapa Gardens Hotel in Kuna beach, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to tip him (no), but I was still too confusedly bitter over the porter to care if I was being culturally sensitive.
It was then, 1 hour into my 12 hour layover, that I realized something. I didn’t like Bali. Or rather, more accurately, I loathed Bali (1). The beaches are amazing, the prices are low, and the people have the sort of petite exotic beauty that I’m sure made many WWII navymen love Bali. But maybe that’s the thing. Maybe it plucks the last chord of puritanical piety left within me. I… hate… tourism. I hope you are cozy, because I’m about to climb on my soapbox.
I love the free exchange of cultures, I think it’s great when people want to see new horizons, and I’m all for FDI. Spread the love, whatever. What turns my stomach is when a location becomes a ‘destination.’ And Bali is definitely a destination.
Kuna Beach is filled with people. The ones that moved were white, the ones that stood still and hawked were locals. “Rolex? DVD?” “Hey boss, you want to buy a shirt? How about a dress for a pretty lady?” “Massage?” Being a white male walking (relatively) alone, I got a lot of the latter. Young Balinese women littered the streets, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, every twenty feet or so, offering the same service. And while their lips said massage, their lingering gazes and soft touches suggested the possibility of a bit more.
Walking down the road, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, while everyone was crowded on the same streets, no one was actually seeing each other. I felt like a walking dollar sign. And who can blame them? People don’t go to Kuna Beach to find Balinese culture, they go there for cheap eats and mass-produced “I heart Bali” shirts. Walking past a shop named ‘Suicide Dreams,’ I wondered what it said about our culture that this is what was found to be most attractive to prospective shoppers (us). After glancing in a few stores, I tried to keep my eyes on the road ahead. It just hurt too much.
Is this what we do? Drive our Explorers from the suburbs to work, play at living out our ‘Leave it to Beaver’ lives until we make enough money to go someplace else and get our freak on? Find some place beautiful enough to be distracting and poor enough to be bought? It sounds like prostitution to me. Only a fool blames the bed of the whore, especially when he is the one making that bed. There is no free love, and cheap love only exists when there are people to buy it. We have created Bali, we have created the tee-shirts emblazoned with “Drop Pants, Not Bombs” and “Toughen the Fuck Up;” shirts that we would never allow on our street corners, but that, on a street corner far far away, we find clever and hilarious. Who can blame them for looking at me like that, because I have created them, and now I must sustain them.
And us? When we look at them, we see … nothing. I don’t think we see anything. The locals are part of the background, speakers that hawk goods and disembodied hands that exchange money. We are not there for them; they are there for us. We take what we want and give them enough money to make sure that they are there the next time we want something. No one cares who it is that is behind the counter, just that there is someone there. They are interchangeable people. Are interchangeable people really people at all?
What I hate about tourism, or definitive tourism at least, is that it dehumanizes people. Tourists set aside their humanity and become pure consumers, and the local industry sets aside its cultural distinctives in favor of whatever happens to be marketable. We become dollar signs and they become reflections of our hidden self-indulgence. Sometimes it manifests itself as perverse, sometimes garish, but in a twisted sense, I don’t know if either is worse than the other. Both the keychain phallus and the hibiscus-print shirt represent our willingness to throw money at whoever will allow us to be someone other than who we currently are. Maybe the point is that they both represent our dissatisfaction with ourselves. A dissatisfaction that we find so distasteful and taboo that we ship it off to some distant country - on call when we need it - but with no thought for the place and the people who we have reduced to indulging our own guilty insecurities.
(1) My trip back through Bali was completely different, and I think it’s quite nice. Ish.
Papua Pictures
These are all old hat from Facebook, but there should be some new ones as soon as I can get my laptop hooked up to the internet. I know, there are already too many, but hey... it was awesome. And now that I've looked, I realize how neglected this blog has been. Whoops. Here are more pictures than anyone would ever want to at. Whee! The last three are from Papua.
Beibei
Earthquake
Terracotta Warriors
Halloween
Chengdu
Christmas
Papua Beach
Cliff Diving (Well, actually more of bridge diving)
Ibole (A village in the mountains of Papua)
Beibei
Earthquake
Terracotta Warriors
Halloween
Chengdu
Christmas
Papua Beach
Cliff Diving (Well, actually more of bridge diving)
Ibole (A village in the mountains of Papua)
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