July 29, 2010

Agra & Jaipur...

This morning after trying to sleep off a night of not sleeping on a train, I was out walking and turned down a street of this blue city Jodhpur. There was a line of people sitting along curbs, waiting for some school or some thing or some Thursday to get out. I heard two men loading spit from the back of their throats before they spit, before that spit landed right at the base of my foot, one, then another. I smiled and kept moving, thinking of what their expression meant for them, thinking of how it made them feel to demonstrate themselves like that before wondering if it was all a coincidence before wondering if I really do believe the entire world revolves around me.

July 25, 2010

New Delhi...

This town is Tom Hanks in Big, fresh man-child lying in bed in his city hotel room as people are yelling and screaming and he's wrapped up fetal style and sobbing times 8. No, really. Okay, I'm not exactly sobbing myself to sleep. Actually, I'm sleeping better here than I have anywhere in a long time. The rest is accurate. At certain times in my life, chaos suits me. I wear it like armor over my armor and then handle the world, any falling world or so I like to believe. Oh, how I like to believe.

July 22, 2010

Thank You, Leijay...

I said I was going to stay for 4 days. 4 days turned into 12. Me and Bandula were just darting through Galle city in his tuk-tuk, wrapping up what we needed to wrap up for me to get my passport back so that I can make it on a 3 AM flight out of Colombo this morning. The 5 day cricket match had just ended. Sri Lanka won. I don't know if Murali broke the all time mark of wickets broke but the city was buzzing. A magical haze was either floating in or out. I felt sentimental and attached to this place, then like we were men about town as we flew in and out of markets, in and out of shops, me and my boy. Whatever happened in Galle and Sri Lanka, I never expected. The comfort and pace I found here, at this place called Leijay in a literal corner of the world, I never expected. And now...now I'm leaving, always leaving.

July 19, 2010

Sri Lanka v. India

It's raining a lot here in Sri Lanka - so much that when it does, I feel like the world might be coming to an end. On wednesday, I finally get my visa to go into India. I don't know how much time I am going to be spending there, only that I recently decided I could not wait for another visa in another country anytime soon, could not allow anything in this world to be in control of when and where I am going but me...

July 17, 2010

Did You Know...


That it only costs 400 dollars to fly from New Delhi to Moscow, then 600 to take a 6 day train from Moscow, through Mongolia and into Beijing? 80 from Beijing to Hong Kong? Did you know this? Neither did I...

July 16, 2010

Akurala & Beyond...

How dare they try and ban me in America. How fucking dare...

July 14, 2010

Akurala & Kandy & Dambulla & Sigiriya...

I showed up to Akurala Beach, a small guest house right on the water that still looked like it had been bombed out from the inside, still, from years after the waves came, stayed there for a night with a family who cooked me a good dinner before we left to trek the country the next morning. I had the best terrible guide a guy could ever ask for. Atrocious. He'd say things as we were driving like "lumber yard" or "school children crossing bridge" or "forest." Then we'd pass giant golden buddhas and shrines on the side of the road and he would say nothing. Honestly, it was fine, since all I really wanted was someone to shut the fuck up and let me see the country as we passed it by.

We'd stop along the way at shitty massage parlors and herb gardens that sold miracle remedies to keep you hard or to stop your hair from falling out and somewhere in the process of crossing this land with these two vampires, Sri Lanka scarred me. I looked to the terrible of the two, Karu, and said something exactly like, if you take me to another one of these dumps trying to get a kickback I'm going to push your car until it tips and then I'm fucking walking do you understand?

On the last day, coming down from the top of Sigiriya - a man started walking with me to the car park. I was already almost there and had my headphones in for immunity and for my heart when he picked me up with the same old shit - which country...how long in Sri Lanka...girlfriend here??? When we got to the bottom, I shook his hand, thanking him with a smile, so kind, trying to beg something out of him, something I knew he wasn't going to be capable of before I left him behind before he whistled at me and stroked his fingers together...

My Then Conversation With The Man Who Walked Me Down A Path I Was Walking Down Anyway, Doing Everything I Could To Be Left Alone On The Side Of One Of Sri Lanka's Beautiful Historical Wonders...

My friend, hello American! Little Something...
Little something. Little something. You want a little something. Of course you do. Because you polluted my steps for 200 yards of course you do. I am going to tell you something can you listen close, do you understand? I know your country has been through a lot. I know. I have much respect for it or maybe I did. Are you still listening, do you understand? Your country is going to fail, fucking fail do you want to know why, do you understand? Not once since getting out into the blood of this country have I witnessed a single moment of genuine kindness. You don't understand the concept of it, do you understand? Are you still listening - oh, you don't want this anymore - oh, you want to walk away? That's okay, I'll follow you for a bit. Do you want to know what happened in Thailand when I was walking down a road 3 kilometers into town after running a marathon? Wait, I'll tell you. Don't you want your tip? I was picked up! I was taken to my hotel. When I tried to give him money, and generously, because that's what Americans do, he refused it, bowed his head to me and smiled. Now he's stuck in my heart forever, do you understand? No, of course you don't. And that's why you'll fail. That's why you'll never find your footing. Here, I'll leave it on the fucking ground.

July 11, 2010

Sinharaja Rainforest...

We hadn't gotten too deep before our guide stopped to pull a snail off one of the trees, calling it a doctor. He turned it upside down and told us to watch before tapping it before the shell filled up with a clear liquid. He poured some of it into his hand before he drank it, saying it was a pain killer and that he could feel his throat turning numb. Then he said give me your hand before emptying the frigid liquid into my palm before I drank. I said it was cold and bitter before asking which part of the snail produced such a remedy. He laughed, put the snail back on the tree and started walking again. I followed.

July 09, 2010

Unawatuna & Galle

I'm pretty sure I've started posts in the past with a line that goes something like let me tell you how precious I am...

And I'd use it again, but for fear of redundancy, I'll go in a more direct direction and not try so hard to sound cute - the last fucking thing I would ever try and sound like. I don't know why I am the way I am - I think we all have nuances that to others would seem petty and not exactly favorable and easy to break or reform...but in reality, make us exactly who we are - like we lag in some areas only to thrive in other, unidentifiable ones. I was standing in line for Sri Lankan customs, realizing I had done self check-in at the airport in KL, realizing no one had looked at my ticket and passport at the same time, realizing that there was a very real possibility that the visa restrictions I have been trying to ignore for the last 2 months would finally catch up to me. I walked up to the guy checking me out in Colombo with my fingers crossed from the yellow line, literally. If you were behind me in line, seeing me sweat, believing in voodoo...I'm certain you would have been certain a mule was slipping through before I slipped through.

Two days ago, sitting in my room, not sleeping, I had this feeling about the kingdoms I was about to enter, India and China, and that traveling like a cowboy, light and sexy as it may have been up until that point, was going to have me waiting for visas in two countries for at least 5 business days each...which turned out to be both true and then not as bad as it could have been. I am at a house away from town, in the middle of what fees like a jungle, staying with a group of people that feel like a family, entirely not worried about my own survival.

July 08, 2010

Sri Lanka...

Yvonne tells me to make sure that if I want to go swimming at night, to wear shoes walking across the grounds, that at night, the bird that eats the scorpions from the grass is gone or sleeping or can't see them. Then she said something about lemon and drawing the poison but not to worry too much because they're not the ones that will cause death. There are two dogs living at the house and they both growl at me. Monkeys, big black ones, are swinging in the trees 50 yards away. Their babies are everywhere. Bandula says that on Sundays, they surround the entire complex. I am comfortable here.

July 04, 2010

Tribe To Tribe Marathon...

Let it play out. That's all I could think as I was hopping on busses and off busses after the marathon, wandering streets looking for things I didn't know I was looking for, yawning to correct nausea and holding my pounding head, sweating and malnourished, sharing the back seat of a bus with 5 gracious Thais, all of us trying to make it back to Chang Mai for different reasons on a Sunday night...feeling like I was going to die, convinced that every moment I survived would only strengthen my lines in this life...

July 03, 2010

Chiang Mai & Mae Sariang...

Before I left Mozza to do the things I had to do with life, I was rapping with Nancy Silverton about the best meal I had ever had. I told her I was staying at this cheap place outside of Venice sometime in 2007. Italy. I remember being in the middle of this very lonely, yearning stretch. It was raining out and I left the grounds of my place and just started walking down a country road before I kept walking...and walking...and walking. Eventually, miles away and soaked, I stumbled into this place that looked like a farm house in the middle of Wisconsin. They gave me a table and I felt like they didn't really want me there before they served me the most extraordinary meal I had ever eaten. When this lead was presented to Ms. Silverton - the greatest meal I had ever eaten, and outside of Venice - she wanted to know everything: the tastes, the presentation, the style...bottom to top then back over again. I think she knew me as eloquence in a lot of ways but in those moments I was anything but. I told her I remembered being sad, and cold, and lonely and lost, and then that I felt like everyone hated me before my Nebbiolo came with a simple pasta course, home made with an easy and beautiful marinara before another glass of red with a pizza they folded into something that looked like a calzone before they practically kicked me out. It's possible I was being overdramatic, as usual, or not...and at some point she asked me fairly emphatically what I liked about it, as if I wasn't remembering my life correctly, before someone cut in to talk to her...

Today, after checking in, after all the connections and thought it took for me to be wandering through Mae Sariang, I was starving. There was a guy on the street one block down and one up from my hotel, cooking on the outside edge of the patio of this place with a TV and yellow and green checked tablecloth and some locals strewn about. He was plating for this woman a simple dish - chicken on rice with greens and a hard boiled egg. I walked up and he looked at me very suspiciously before I pointed to what he was plating and held up 2 fingers. He pointed to a table and I sat down. There were a lot of flies and jugs of water on the tables and a couple minutes later, he brought me exactly what I ordered - chicken on rice with some odd greens and a hard boiled then browned egg and a small bowl of chicken soup. The first bite of the chicken made me think back to Venice - that was my first thought, these two joints fighting for rank. It tasted like he had been soaking the chicken in whisky and caramel and black magic for weeks - unreal. I ordered the same thing again and it came and I ate it and when I asked for my bill, he asked for 50 baht or about 1.65 and then I went on my way, trying not to blink too fast or at all because I'm beginning to recognize my greatest fear -- missing any of this as it's happening, all that is happening...

July 01, 2010

Bangkok...

Because everyone deserves a second chance...