There are times to hold steady and brick-headed in this world and then there are times to let go. I don't know exactly what The Beatles longstanding fight with iTunes was all about, though I suspect if I started throwing around bloated words like pride, bastardization and expectation, someone would say something like say no more you got it right there.
I have never been a MONSTER Beatles fan - and yes, I'm using caps to explain. Once. There have always been about 20 songs lurking around my iTunes that I had swiped over the years, nowhere near the amount I should have had. My Old Man once told me you were either Beatles or Stones. He was Stones, so I became Stones. I always loved The Beatles, but they were more in my periphery. To so many people, they were and still are the be-all-end-all, and I can absolutely accept that.
Anyway, the reason I sat down and started writing this is because I've already plucked a few songs since they became available on iTunes yesterday, fucking remarkable songs, songs I feel like I should have always had on my journey or behind my pen...all of this time. I'm starting to see Beatles songs creep up and move across the iTunes top 200, handfuls and handfuls of them. I'm looking at some of the songs they're standing next to and for some reason, this morning, I'm breathing easier. Without getting too caught up in my perception of youth's narrow vision and emotion/how 75% of the songs we're buying and playing and #1'ing are disposable shit at best, made because people need to get drunk and get high and get fucking, yo, The Beatles are giving me breath.
I feel full, bursting even. I’m ready to give. Last night, I drove down to Redondo to listen to Chris McCormack recount what it’s like to be the champ he is - maybe the greatest triathlete ever, fresh off his second (remarkable) Kona win. There was a moment I was scanning the crowd, thinking about what people there were going to take for themselves, away from him and the night. I started thinking about what I was going to take away…
Macca is a true champ, made and then built and built. Off the course, he’s nothing but love, nothing but giving, nothing but heart. On it, when that gun fires, if you’re out there to take what he believes is rightfully his, he becomes something else…the kind of guy who would rip out your throat and then drag you to your children, make you watch as he force-fed it to them. Anything to win — because it’s what he sacrifices for, because it’s what he wakes up day after day to suffer and bleed for, because he knows that giving anything less than everything would be disrespectful to himself and the gift of a life. Because he is a true champ.
I am ready to race. I am full. I stole so much. Macca, you’re my hero. I’ll be chasing you forever, mate.
In bed, lights out. New maniac headphones wrapping my head. I can remember a couple albums that have gotten treatment like this before. Wishing I could let it drag fresh forever.
There's a movie out today called Skyline, a supposed VFX "masterpiece" starring people I'm not even going to mention because their names might soil this holy ground. Actually, I don't even know the names. There was and still is a lot of shit being tossed around town because the guys who did work on the movie trailered below ran off once wrapped - or while they were working - and shot this movie Skyline in their apartment complex. The one out today looks B-Team at best, and I guarantee, no, GUARANTEE it is absolutely going to suck. It steams me because I don't respect artistic hacks, believe smoke on disputes like these usually lead to fire, and because the below trailer...well, it's blowing my fucking mind.
Listening to The Night Last Night over and over. Rolling. Told someone today I was starting to feel crazy again - not for sake of credit or to give explanation but to mark myself, for myself, a little for them. I'll call it a seed. Separate - I was out to lunch with one of my down home girls this afternoon. She's going through some shit so I'm going through some shit because she's my down home girl. I'm telling myself I'm helping her, always telling myself I'm helping even though I believe myself to be the disconnect, that people listen to me and humor me and my thoughts on their lives and their troubles and either walk away from the conversation saying something like, fuck well at least I'm not that OR well at least he thinks he's helping. At some point, her shit actually did become my shit because the world is fucking small and because my long ago but wrecking-ball-ex happens to be inescapable, not that I'm trying to...escape...anything...anymore. 10 minutes after mentioning her name, far onto something else, I felt wrong, or off, brought it back, deemed it her, thought of certain people holding certain powers over me because of their movements across the world and my hard cock. I decide I have a problem letting go of people that I loved - decided a long, long time ago. Crossing over means I can never cross back. Or retract. No matter how vile or regrettable things get. I decide the only way to not feel thrown when speaking her name is to fuck her again, just once and well. I debate on how to make this happen while thinking back, sitting in front of down home, also a former lover, to a day I told her I loved her then left her, flew to New York, fucked another former like the one now who haunts me to protect myself from down home before she became down home from hurting me like New York had once done but over and over and over. Right now, I'm thinking about how either of them forgave me for that. Did they? Did I just push? I'm thinking of New York. Stuck with that all these years like I was with her? No. Not like me. She'll make excuses. For me, holding me up, better than me. I'll never forget those words from Munich -- I could hear you, on the phone when you went into the other fucking room, talking to her...I shipped your things away because I couldn't have them near me or in my apartment anymore. I feel sick. Sick. -- My absolution came with a hard price. Fucking vicious. I was a monster. That wasn't so long ago. What am I now? Sitting here writing about this girl I have to fuck for peace, thinking about whether or not she reads here anymore, how blown my cover would be if she did, and if she didn't, how destructive it would be after the fact, how plotted, how monstrous still.
There are certain words I'm very careful with, as I try to not be a whore to that which either sounds profound or sounds like it's attempting profound. How confusing and coded - sort of my style - like burying the lead...also mine. Tonight, Brandon Flowers is in town, playing his solo tour at the Wiltern. The word I've been holding back is hero. Brandon Flowers is one of my heroes. For that to happen, someone's behavior has to speak to me on a very special level. He's been speaking to me since he began speaking, so much that in my first novel, the two mains meet and befriend the actual Brandon Flowers on a romp to Sin City. Someday he'll read it and we'll have a drink and I'll say all this to him and he'll be like yeah I get you. Then he'll say it again and it'll be left at that - that two people from different worlds and breaths and beats can push art through wholly different venues and still share the same echo. I'm just saying. He came through the Troubador when I was in the Philippines and that left a mark on me, missing that. But that's not all. I am also an avid runner who is now becoming an avid triathlete. One of the first glimpses I had into the sport, years ago, was through a man by the name of Chris McCormack - Macca. I remember watching the Kona Ironman on TV - usually broadcast in December - and watching his packaged profile, hearing his competitors speaking of him as this brutally tough, arrogant little Australian spitfire. I liked that immediately. I remember watching him win Kona some years ago, knowing I would never forget it. I remember checking up on him from time to time, understanding he was probably the best to ever compete in the sport. In October, when this year's version of the Kona Ironman happened, Macca struck again, somehow seemingly out of nowhere to win one of the most amazing races I had ever seen. Watch it in December, even if you have no idea what I'm talking about. Chris McCormack is my hero. Sometimes, I see him running in the neighborhood. Next time I do, I'm parking and chasing. On Monday, 5 days after Mr. Flowers, I'm going to see Macca speak in Redondo about his win in Kona. I'm going to see how he does business - how he speaks, moves, answers what will certainly be at least a dozen of the most non-sensical and lunatic questions a man could be asked. Los Angeles, I love you.
TNT is rolling them back to back -- something comforting about letting them play out on TV, something non-committal that works on me. Coming from Japan, everything Tokyo/Okinawa felt like there was a soft hand reaching inside of me and pulling and pulling, come back come back. It's not like these films flew under any radar. I've probably written about them countless times on here over the years - in some arenas the films are the finest to ever occur. I thought it the moment they hit, I still think it now. People who don't love Tarantino probably don't love them...but I still have to imagine or hope that they respect the force behind it all.
Today, I'm thinking something else, thinking about how Uma Thurman will be looked back upon. She's certainly Tarantino's girl, there's little doubt about that...but as time passes, new generations arrive and the two entities separate, I hope people remember her alone, as the savage queen who killed, killed, killed this role and made my Sunday this Sunday...on many Sundays to come.
I was at a joint last night on Sunset, having dinner with a buddy of mine before seeing RDJ and Galafanakis in Due Date. Same joint, remarkable joint, at this point in time, even on a world scale, I'm not sure another rivals it. Dinner was great, and the movie made me laugh. At some point, it was around 11 and I was chasing some dame and floating around, trying to find my way out but also back upstairs at the top bar, completely content with my evening before Elton John and the droves that go along with someone like him began to trickle in and speak of a night that made me regret not keeping my ear to the places I needed to keep my ear to...to find out he was playing a somewhat hushed show at the Hollywood Palladium. It still sort of hurts...a lot.
I see Elton John the way I see Brandon Flowers in the sense that they both move me something incredible - and they're boys, brothers in arms...and I love that. But I'm sitting here trying to soften the blow, and listening to the roaring, singing crowd behind him in the video...and something about that makes everything better, knowing that Elton John wasn't exactly mine like he was for the generation ahead of me. I never would have forgotten the show, but maybe something about it would have felt borrowed...at least that's what I'm telling myself.
When Mr. Killer comes to the Wiltern next week, I'll just have to count on The One I Missed flying back between Louisiana and Oklahoma to duel heart and genius. Either way, I'll just have to survive. Or drive to Ontario, CA tomorrow. What the hell is Ontario, California?
While I still have enough cushion in my bank account to take a 600 dollar hit — yes, a 600 dollar hit — and sign up for next May’s St. George version of the Ironman.
This one works for me on multiple levels. First, I can get in a car and drive from Los Angeles to Utah. It’s self-sufficient. And have you ever driven through Utah? My, oh my. Also, the race has been given the distinction of being the toughest Ironman in the world (judged by an average finisher’s time of over 13 hours). Maybe most important - I don’t want this to stop at Cozumel - meaning I don’t want to treat Cozumel as my be all, end all. St. George is my insurance policy for Cozumel for Kona…just as every race until I make the qualifying time for Kona will likely also have an insurance policy because I want this bad and love the sport worse. That’s where I’m standing.
Today, a small weight has been released. Tomorrow, when I line up for another day of training, I’m going to see that true line, my first, waiting for me south of the border. I’ll feel for moments what electricity Cozumel has to give, and bottle it. I’ll work on my breath. I’ll wait for that gun to go before it goes, sending me off with every intention of taking with compassion and grace, everything I want from the world.
Fall is about adoration for me. I could go on and explain, but things are getting different these days, choosing to bottle and save, build myself into a secretive madness, trusting no one to guide my ship or even put their fucking hand on my wheel, not for one fucking second. That's what the game is doing to me and I love it. No, I adore it. But I didn't start this one out to be about me...
I adore the fall for its movies, their brains...their cool and ambition, and this one I'll tout about as highly as any. Colin Farrell moved to the top of my list after In Bruges. Keira Knightly after the first second I saw her on screen in anything. David Thewlis, Ray Winstone. One of the greatest television shows to ever come around, Pushing Daisies' heroine Anna Friel - and in her accent! I love Brits...I love their dames...one day I'll marry one.
Coming home from a rainy night trick or treating somewhere in my early teens - or whatever I was doing at that time in my life for Halloween, with a group of friends from junior high. Freezing. My parents making a fire, ordering Buffo's, picking it up, being heroes as we all sat around and warmed up and ate and watched this or something like it with Ackroyd or Sandler. Is it my wishful memory, or did SNL used to run its Halloween specials the night of? Maybe we rented it.
Is a number I'm starting to see a lot these days...in my sleep, in my head, on the faces of ninos and small animals. It's the number I think it's going to take to be allowed to compete at Kona next year. From what I understand, Cozumel is a slow and windy course. Last year, the last guy in my age group to make it through crossed with a 10:24. He's in Hawaii now, ready to go for this Sunday, the start of this year's Ironman World Championship. I want to be able to say that to myself a year from now...or to some friend when I can't make a sunday brunch - that I have to hop out of town to compete in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Sure, I'm about that a little bit...though a whole lot less than one might think.
It's daunting, not just the 2.4 swim, 112 bike, 26.2 run (yes, miles), but fighting for something that other somewhat talented and hungry 25-29 year old men are going to be fighting for...treating every second like they matter because they all do. Of the hundreds that will be lined up in our age group, I'll worry about roughly 6 of them. They're the 6 who I can see now, every morning and afternoon, before I go to bed at night. They're pushing me every day to find my fights and bleed my miles, knowing that somewhere else on the globe, they're doing the same thing...all of us convinced that we're the ones entitled to this thing, one of the three tickets Cozumel can give to Kona.
Today was a light day. I woke up and hit the road for two hard hours on the new Cervelo. The rain has stopped in Los Angeles, finally (one day and a half), and I was out in time to catch the morning glow before the sun came up. Everything felt right. From there, I dropped my bike off, changed shoes and hit the road again, one hour and fifteen on foot - some hills, mostly quick tempo, mostly with the intention of putting some break in my legs in preparation for friday - tomorrow. Everything felt right. Considering I could barely walk correctly 2 weeks ago because of my blown left calf, I have new and ultimate respect for this process. It's magic and it isn't. I've learned to love the pain of rolling my legs - because if I don't love it and don't do it, then my body has every right to rebel, and I deserve to have everything I work for and desire and dream of taken away.
So tomorrow...
I need to test a couple things - lot of body, mind, some new nutritional elements. For the last 2 weeks, I've been logging 5 hours of training per day for about 5 days a week. The longest singular interval has probably been about 4.5 hours. Tomorrow, I need to get past my body and into my head. So here's what we're going to do...
Wake up at 5:30, ride to Santa Monica and lap Santa Monica before putting a loving hurt on my 7-9 cycling class. When it's over, I'll lap San Vicente before riding home, before leaving my bike and changing my shoes sometime around 10, a 4.5 hour ride. Then, I'll hit the road, aiming for 18-20 miles on foot before running into Equinox on Sunset just before 1, leaving me 7 hours into the day. I'll be drained and pissed and sitting in front of my buddy Colin in a yoga class. He's going to ask me to do a lot of disciplined, difficult, obnoxious shit (amazing too), and I am going to handle it. When my body is destroyed and my mind is on the edge of oblivion, I am going to eat some salt tabs and take on whatever comes like an unstoppable bastard. 8.5 hours. I'll drag myself home, hopefully delusional, eat something, pull myself together enough to head back to the gym at 545 to teach what will likely be the worst spin class in the history of Equinox. 10 hours...
I was out to dinner with a friend last night, talking about the moment I begin to have ultimate respect for performers -- when they walk into SNL and just kill it. Dr. Timberlake did that a long time ago. Then he did it again, and again, and again. Jimmy Fallon is the best ever. This is magic...
Because my game is true, or at least so I like to think...
When it comes to doing things in this world that I deem absolutely necessary, money is not a concern. Meaning...I will gladly trade the stress of debt to travel or train for something I need, like an Ironman, like this promise I have made to myself that says I'm going to make it to Kona, and that Kona will be just the beginning.
But I'd rather not be drowning. I'd rather not carry that stress - I'm carrying enough as is. Last week, I wrote a letter to a friend, laying out my plans for the 2010-2011 racing season. I asked for help. We met for lunch. I said something like I know the last thing your juggernaut needs is help in advertising, but that I would still earn everything you give. He said something like you're a good egg and I like to be able to help people chase their dreams. Then he said yes. I asked if he said yes. He confirmed. I have a sponsor.
This morning, I woke up at 5, ate breakfast, listened to my body, and went back to sleep. Yesterday, I was up at 5, waited for the sun to come up before hitting Sunset for 50 miles on the bike before running for 10 before classes at 515 and 715. My body is coming back together. I can feel myself getting stronger. The worst thing I could do is not have ultimate respect for sleep. Sometimes, discipline means taking the easy route - at least in this situation. Understand though, unless you're training for an Ironman, that excuse is not an option. Sorry.
There's an ease to this morning, as my workouts aren't going to start for about another hour - another 50 on the bike before 2 in the pool before the shoes come on for another 10. I've been saying this a lot in my classes, to ride my bender, that I am as hungry as anyone in this city. Set something huge. Chase something huge. See what happens.
Welcome home, welcome home. I am going to speak openly because I know that’s what you both respect and deserve. I understand more than you know. There are blisters and splits on your knuckles, in your palms and on your feet. Your toenails are black – 2 of them. Your left calf is miserable and you haven’t been able to run right since the sixth day of Tokyo. You have traveled the globe, bled across it for the past 4 months. You have been bleeding forever. I know. I understand. You deserve rest, a break, solace. I know. I know. That’s sort of why I’m here. We need to talk…
In the Philippines, something new happened. 70.3 happened, a half Ironman. We stayed in that sun, near 100 degrees and battled for longer than we’ve ever battled before. When it was over, I wanted more. When it was over, I wanted to get out there the next day and do it again, again and again. Fight more. Bleed more. Grow more. Give more. Suffer more. So did you. Don’t forget, I know you too.
Now we’re back in California. Now we’re done slamming our feet across Asia. There’s beautiful and easy access to everything we could ever desire. The rabid dogs are gone…the heat…the kidnapping eyes…broken pedaled and rusted bikes from the 1970’s…posters of Andre Agassi when he had long hair. It’s all gone now. Everything we need is here. Everything we did and everything we saw over these last 4 months has raised us up. I want to draw on it, use it to pick a fight – the biggest one of them all. I want to see what we’re made of, need to see what we’re made of. Both of us.
In 9 weeks, we’re flying to Cozumel. In 9 weeks, on a Sunday, we’re going to wake up to become Ironmen. And I understand what you’re thinking, what you always think for the sake of self-preservation, that Cozumel should be enough. It should. But it’s not. You understand me too. Certainly you saw coming what’s now coming…
Next October, there is a race that happens on an island called Kona, in a state called Hawaii. It may be the world’s toughest. Titans travel from far and wide to line up self-destruction. Don’t play dumb – the Kona fire has been burning for a while now. To get to there, something special needs to happen. There is no disputing that. If what I am about to say seems disregarding, I can offer no apology. You need to ditch this nagging pain and allow me to deliver us. You need to allow my fight every day for the next 7 weeks, and you need to allow it harder than you have ever allowed it before. You need to allow me to break us harder than we’ve ever broken and then come out the next day and break again. You need to simply let go and survive. Be honest with me. Believe me when I say I’ll listen to you, and that I will take care of us. Understand that I aim to chase a beauty beyond capable description, and that great sacrifices must be made. Understand.
To get into Kona, the rules are simple. We have to line up in Cozumel and then finish first, second or third in the men’s 25-29 age group. We don’t stand a chance unless we stand together. I committed long ago. You did too, you just won't admit it. Please consider this - my beg, my plea. Know that I both love you and despise your hesitation, that I am doing this for both of us. Be wicked now, rest is for the defeated…
There's this thing I've grown accustomed to over the last 4 months, something I dub travel sickness. It's not exactly a sickness per se, but it's this feeling of moving on...something new approaching, a new country and new adventure on the horizon and spending the last hours and minutes somewhere about to be left behind. I find I see countries as people - all the people I've met and the things I've witnessed and felt as a collective. I also despise goodbyes because everyone else always gets so fucking worked up. So fucking worked up and that makes me kind of sick.
Today, I was riding the JR back from Shibuya, around two, and I actually fell asleep on a Japanese businessman's shoulder. It was probably only for a second but still...fucking still. I am a literal bastion of grace - shit like that does not happen to me. I was so fucking tired I had to force myself to stand, to ride the wave of that whipping train in hopes that it would somehow sharpen me. I came home and I slept. I took a shower. I feel better now but won't sleep tonight. Tomorrow, this thing ends...or really just begins depending on your angle of approach. Me, I'm looking at it from somewhere in between the two extremes...but closer to the latter. Much closer to the latter.
I want to feel the sun set in my home town again. I want Los Angeles, want her like a faithful, shore-lorn sailor. That's what I am. That's what I'm thinking right now.
I was blasting through the Japanese countryside today after a more leisurely stretch and I was seeing the greens roll beside the parks, full and moving...and I felt it all. I felt the country. Or more particularly, I felt the late summer Japanese weekend. I felt for them what these weekends meant for me back home, growing up or even recently...something rich, something that's quite difficult to put words to, something I believe you can only get out of a country once you've earned it. I'm beginning to believe I have.
I'm not sure exactly when I got here, in Tokyo. I was supposed to leave last night or yesterday and then extended a few more days. All I know -- I've been here now for a substantial amount of time and I don't want to leave. I've seen so much. I've seen nothing. A couple days ago, I started leaving the maps at home, finding my own way, following lights or people, sounds or smells or instinct. Tokyo has turned into a feeling, one I already miss. At some point I'll go somewhere. Maybe. I feel like I should. I want to. Or maybe not. This is me confused.
Is a couple of things to me. It's a suburban playground in a town with a lot of money, enough so they can cover everything with colored foam padding, so that if there's a fall, no one ever really gets hurt. Not really...
It's that dream where you're running from something, in a race but your legs won't work. Not really. Like you're treading water on the ground or floating just above it. Why? Well, there are certain things in this world that speak to me. Haribos on the streets of Berlin, running down the winding coastline of Victoria Drive, the way Brandon Flowers writes a song, the way Matthew Bellamy plays one, driving through empty red Utah, the smell of snow. Because I've lived with myself for as long as I have, I always suspected Japanese girls might one day prove to be one of those things. But I never thought it would be like this. They're fit and fashionable and beautiful and every one of them looks like they're capable of bare-handed murder. I've been struck more times in the past 3 days than I have been in the past 3 months. So then why the dream? Secret of Japan, no one speaks English. They also don't realize that no one speaks Japanese - which I sort of admire. I can't communicate with words and I'm worried about my understanding of the way they play, about coming across a situation where I need something from someone and that my eyes might not be enough...
It was hot, really, really hot. I crossed the finish line and stumbled into the medical tent where the volunteers bathed me in frozen blue sponges. I couldn't say much, just sitting there, trying to come to grips with who I was and where I came from. It was the most unnatural experience...so much heat and then so much cold...so much fight and then so much stillness. Absolutely the most incredible feeling I can ever remember. Apologies to all my former lovers. Yes, even you.
I'm so tired of telling the story as to why I was in the Philippines for an Ironman without a bike that this post gets no preface...
So I'm wandering the expo at the CamSur Watersports Complex and it's 530, after wandering since 1 and asking everyone to help me. Bike drop off ended at 5 but they extended it to 7. A girl I met named Karen has sent me to another girl Che Che, both extraordinary, who is stationed at the Bike King tent. I tell her my story. She laughs. She gets on the phone, calls someone, who never calls back. I sit at the tent, chat up the Nature Valley team. Che Che calls someone new, some priest who might have a friend who might have a bike. The sun is setting and I feel like I don't belong. Two guys walk up, a priest and another guy Erick, a bike mechanic from Naga City. He tells me he can build a bike for me. He gives me his number and tells me to call him at 7. I see him on the way out, at bike and bag check in. I talk to the people in charge. They panic. Erick walks up, tells them that he is taking me to his shop in Naga, that he is going to build me a bike and have me back by 9. The people in charge tell us that we will be making everyone wait. Afterwards, a girl tells me not to feel bad - they are going to be there all night.
Me and Eric get in a jeep he built, drive to Naga against the dimming sky and setting sun - the minutes so incredible to me. We pull up to his bike shop on the river, tucked back and away from the main drag - impossible to find so I didn't feel bad about not finding it originally. Erick pulls a frame from the ceiling, a good one and somewhat my size, racks it up, and goes to work. I'm hanging in an alley of the best bike joint in town, chatting up Philippine champions. I go to buy oatmeal and almonds, come back an hour later. My bike is built. I pay 60 bucks and hand over my California ID, ride to a mall, grab a cab to CWC, check in my bike at 840, leave then feeling much, wondering now if all of this actually just happened.
It did. Half Ironman tomorrow morning. Sleep well.
Tomorrow morning, I'm waking up at 4 to eat oatmeal and almonds before spitting a few thousand words of what will one day become the second novel in a series of three that will define my generation before heading off to CWC with something like 5000 Philippine pesos in my pocket. Along the 7 or so miles it takes to run between my hotel in Naga and this joint in Pili, I'm going to try and find a place that'll let me pay to stay for 4 nights because the place I'm staying now is throwing me out after 11 days because I didn't do something ludicrous like "book in advance with the race organizers." Everything in town is sold out through the gestapo I'm going to refer to as the Philippine 70.3. They wrote me an e-mail yesterday in response to my e-mail thanking them for letting me extend my stay, which they earlier said they would do, saying something like ooh...sorry...we were mistaken...you're shit out...regards...and by the way we are just going to leave it like that...without even the slightest suggestion as what to do...because we care...the Philippine 70.3. I can tell you that my initial reaction was to write a quite colorful e-mail, which by the end, I deleted, knowing I would have to face these people at some point, not wanting to worry, again, about the possibility of my own prosecution in a foreign country.
I'm starting to wonder why I titled this post the way I did, considering everything I have now written serves as an exact contradiction to my self-promotion. I think I started on the theme of growth because I knew the eventual direction of the post, which was going to steer towards a chance encounter I had with some guy named Rallay who told me he had a friend from Manila who was going to be driving down on the 19th in a pickup truck with another friend and their two bikes, and that he might have a smaller size bike I could use for the race, and that maybe he could fit it into the truck. I gave Rallay my e-mail and heard nothing for 2 days until I saw him running laps at CWC. He flagged me down, calling me Mr. Reilly and enthusiastically before telling me he didn't have any more updates but that he would know by the 19th or 20th and that he would send me an e-mail to either confirm or deny. In the meantime, I let all my other hopefuls fall away because they either involved a drive up to Manila or a purchase from some guy trying to make a buck through unloading some dead steel.
So I'm sitting here on wednesday night, about to pretend like I am going to be able to go to sleep early in prep for tomorrow's trying morning. I'm running a half-Ironman in 3 days. I don't have a place to stay. And I don't have a bike. But you know what, If there were a mirror in front of me, I think I would look at myself and think something like, that guy's got it all under control...that guy can handle anything. In the past, I'm pretty sure that entire last sentence would have been my punchline...and it sort of still is. But inside of me, it's not, and I'm really not trying to be that funny. Everything was starting to feel pretty clean around here, comfortable around here. Tomorrow, my life turns to chaos and I can feel it and the potential approaching disaster coming, and hard, really fucking hard. I want it to try and find me. I want hotels to refuse me at every turn. I want everyone to fall through. I want to have to sleep in some poor Philippine family's creekside tent in the country. I want them to make me work their land in exchange for my stay. I want them to send me off before supper on the last night with a live chicken I became friendly with, the patriarch of the family handing me a butcher knife and saying something like now you become a man. I want to wake up the morning of race day and eat oatmeal and almonds with the family, borrow the youngest boy's tireless BMX and his plastic army helmet. I want them to see me off with no understanding as to why I came to the Philippines in the first place. I want to ride up to that starting line, sparks kicking off my rims, fuck you all in my eyes, before I drop blood across the lengths of CamSur.
Raining here. Usually rains here at the same time every day, and hard, so predictable, the organizers of an international event like the half-Ironman can pick a date in the middle of the rainy season and not think twice about it...although I bet they do sometimes. I'm taking the day off today, which today meant getting up, eating, working, sleeping, working, eating, working, sleeping, working, working, eating and sleeping. My body needs all of it, I can feel it, so I'm letting it be okay, before tomorrow, Sunday, a big Sunday to tear back through it all. Such is the life.
I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel, a fine place on Magsaysay called Caceres. There are two gentlemen sitting across from me holding shotguns. I think they're hotel security. There are a lot of guns in this country and I don't understand why. Everything about this place seems warm and friendly and compassionate. They gave me a room without a window in the corner and I'm finding truth here, if I may rob from geniuses come and gone.
Somehow, there's a gym here, state of the art, with bikes like the ones I teach on at home. In the mornings, I go out running on the roads. The traffic is careful and I can be in the country after 4 minutes. People smile and cheer at me like I'm Rocky. Of course I love this. I'm here for the next two weeks and I am settling and bleeding beautifully, several times over the course of the day. I feel like life is charging forward again. I am writing e-mails all over the Philippines, begging for help in getting a bike, noting "I am strong enough that I will be able to compete in my age group and would be happy to be a part of team (insert their variable) in exchange for a little help."
I am very much looking forward to finding out if anyone gives a shit about me, my plight, my desperate self-promotion. I am very much looking forward to my fully-realized existence in this country.
Sometimes, when I put words to these posts, they're split between the place I've been and the place I'm staying. I usually try to get one out and off before moving on to avoid confusion or schizophrenia. Tonight, I'm in Manila, waiting for a flight early tomorrow morning to me get out of the city and south, closer to ground zero of the half Ironman that's happening in a couple of weeks. I spent 30 bucks on a hotel close to the airport. It's a nice joint right in the middle of Manila's cockfighting district. Okay, that's not true. The whole of Philippines is a cockfighting district. Outside of my sixth floor window, there's a massive, hollowed factory or once upon a time lumber yard where a young girl, no older than 12, looks after prize cocks and a mangy dog, always alone. I can't help watching her.
This is my second to last country before I go home to Los Angeles. I've been thinking about that a lot lately...
My bed here is perfect, large and white and stainless and everything on it is soft and comfortable and slipping into it is like the realization of an ideal long forgotten. It's so good that when I try to sleep at night, I can't. I love Hong Kong, love it from head to toe, and not only because of what came before it. I want to get a place I can't afford on some steep slope in Soho, fall in love with some girl for a month and then leave before she realizes just how problematic I am.
Now, if you'll excuse me one moment while I remove these gloves...
And if you want to avoid my poison please, please go. Go now. Forget this place and go back about your day.
That's what I thought. You carnage sluts...
I've been worried about myself lately, that in leaving all of these countries behind, all of these countries and emotions behind, that my nostalgia, fleeting but instant nostalgia will paint every place I abandon in nothing but beautiful colors, even if it's not warranted. I think I was trying to think back to instances recently where that exact thing might have happened and couldn't because I'm both optimistic and choose to see light because seeing darkness is just too fucking easy for me. But now I'm not worried about that anymore, about the objective part of my lens through which I view the world. Because now I've been to India. Because now I'm so lost for a beginning I must so simply just begin.
My only hope in writing this is that I one day blow up big enough so that someone important enough in India will read my words from this day and hence ban me from ever visiting their country again...so that if for some ridiculous reason someone gives me some ridiculous reason for having to go back, I will be able to tell them quite unapologetically (and hopefully with a written certificate) that the Indian Consulate has officially stricken me from their borders.
I was ready for anything here. I've been around. I've been prepped. I didn't care that it's dirty - absolutely disgusting. I didn't care that it's overcrowded - can't tell you how many proclaimed "poor" fathers I met who were also "proud" fathers of 8-13 children. I didn't care that everyone was a snake or a swindler - wait, no, one of them wasn't - a beautiful hostess in the lobby of Agra's Howard Park Plaza. She was magnificent - made me feel wrong for trying to tip her, like I didn't understand the world she was occupying, a world unto herself -- magnificent the way she pranced about that elegant lobby. I should have remembered her name. One. I maybe met or came across enough of 300 people to form an impression of their character. Not a strong ratio. I didn't care that the beacon of this country, Delhi, is set to host the world Goodwill Games in less than 2 months and as a city, was an embarrassment of shambles and responsibility. I didn't care that people don't wait for passing trains of hundreds to pass before pissing or shitting in the open. I didn't care about the smell. I didn't care about the ignorance and faith in their progression as a country on a global scale. I didn't care that every day I had to ferociously watch my back...or that every night, my soul felt like it had been blackened by the world I witnessed. I didn't care that when people asked me to describe it, India, I'd combine words like inescapable death or hell on earth. I didn't care about the constant scroll of beaming words, red, running through my mind, forever on repeat: hopeless, beyond repair, run...fucking run! I didn't care about the ridiculous way Indians waddle their heads when they talk. I didn't care that they struck me as a lazy, inconsiderate, graceless and ambitionless people. I didn't care about any of that...
I knew what I went to india for and I did exactly that - to dip my toe and rape the place for my own growth and self service before abandoning it forever. Actually, that's not true at all. Nothing was pre-conceived. In my mind, laying in bed in Sri Lanka, I most certainly had hopes of the surprise enchantment India might hold for me. I absolutely did. I couldn't wait to get there and take it in. Then, I took it in. But the real clincher for me came the morning of my 16 hour train ride from Jaislamer back to New Delhi...
My Then Conversation With Some Guy Who Didn't Care That I Was Listening To My Headphones And Making It Abundantly Clear I Didn't Want To Nurse His Ridiculous Attempts At English...
America? Yes, America. Where are you from? (his confusion) Where going? New Delhi! Me too. Very good city! You think so. Your English is very good. Thankyouverymuch! You like India! Sure. Beautiful. Different. America far. Too far...too... Believe me buddy, I know. Culture no. No good! Too fast. India culture. Better. India culture better than American? Really? So you've been? You've seen? Done what I've done? India culture better!
Shortly after, he got up and walked to the sink to brush his teeth, which surprised me before he returned with toothpaste and slobber covering his chin, which didn't. That's the moment I started caring...
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
I was pulling into the city on the subway, looking around the neighborhoods, hearing the beeps and bells from the moving train and remember thinking it felt somewhat European. When I left, I remember thinking of how I missed the depth of the good European cities. These new monsters in Southeast Asia have their charm, and it's not fair to mark them after such brief, brief visits, but I can't help it. Last time I left Italy, I left thinking everyone in the country was a complete fucker - and somehow I want to go back so much it hurts. What can I say, I love fuckers! Didn't meet enough of them in Singapore. How can you in a country that executes its drug dealers? No, seriously...I'm being serious.
I can feel it all collecting, building now. I'll look back someday and tell myself that's what Gili Air was good for - a place so slow it gave me a chance to over-collect and see what is actually happening here. It's 530 and the sun is setting over my bathroom window and I'm getting ready to escape, as I had to hire a tomorrow boat for 4 in the morning to get me back to Lombok before getting me back to the airport for a flight at 7. Over the course of the next week, a lot of things are going to come at me. Many of them will likely come hard...and I'm ready for that. Someday next December, it'll all be over, and I'll have this...piles and piles of this. I'll be looking down onto Victoria Drive from high, high above and I'll be cradling it all together, and I'll be telling myself this is mine, convincing myself all of this is mine, hoping to be true, hoping to so simply lend a hand in the burden of turning this wheel...
The second night after dinner, we started talking with the more senior of our two porters, Jalan, who is a champion stickfighter come stickfighting season during Lombok's August. I'm going to be very stingy with my words right now, again, because I'm sure one day I won't be...but when you're standing by the fire, 6 people sharing rice wine out of the same cup, struggling to stay warm, and your guide is talking about black magic and a sport where two guys lash hell from each other until one of them cowers and retreats, the only thing I could think...there is no other existence on this entire living planet but ours...
Tomorrow morning, someone is coming to my hotel in Lombok to start me on my way to climbing Mt. Rinjani. The route we're taking is going to run 3 days and 2 nights camping. It's supposed to be something - active volcanos should be as far as I'm concerned. So I'm open, don't really know what to expect.
Once I checked in here, today was near perfect for something inside of me, though I usually never know what that something is until days that are far, far away.
I came to the bottom of Bali with plans to post a good time in the race - to deal with obstacles of living like a vagabond and putting myself together enough to run well. That happened yesterday (video below is all pre-race). The actual race felt like business, good business, getting caught in a current and then taking on and handling madness. I adore madness. Feels like it's growing fond of me too.
Last night, I was talking about something with a few of the fine friends I picked up over the weekend - that what I was hoping before I came into Jimbaran was that there would be a batch of people coming together who were like me - craving some kind of fight like me, because all I've been so far in my training is an outcast. And I like that, make no mistake. It absolutely suits me, but I guess I wanted to mix things up for a weekend, welcome change. I painted all that in my head, these ideas that I would meet great people and forge great bonds and then we would all go back out into our worlds but somehow always stay connected. Though, I didn't actually think all those things would happen, not the way I am...not the way I behave...
But they did.
Towards the end of the night, my friend Kyle and I and two beautiful, beautiful dames were sitting on cushioned recliners looking out at the water and waves, a handful of dazzling mojitos down and he says to me something like, you're going to leave this place and go on about your travels through the world and see everything and do everything...but once that's over and you're sitting back at home, looking back, you're going to think of this place, Bali...and you'll never forget the feeling. I remember thinking I'll look forward to that...
Also...even though this absolutely deserves its own post...
My Conversation With The "Am I Taking A Movie? I So Am..." Girl Who I Met Through Kyle And Corrie Who Lives In Jakarta With Her Husband And Three Boys, Has Always Lived Internationally And Decided To Pop-In To Bali For A Couple Days To Meet Them And Happen Upon Me, Towards The End Of The Night...After Weighing Me For Most Of It...
*Key - AUGUST = The girl who beat me up bad, bad from late summer through most of the fall in 2008...and I have the posts to prove it.
I think I know someone I should set you up with. That's what they all say. No, really. I've known her since I was 14. Okay go. Where? Los Angeles. Oh, my city. Yeah, I've got a feeling here. What's her name, I probably already know her. Yeah, right. AUGUST. Excuse me? AUGUST. Her name is AUGUST. That's not a very common name. Why are you looking at me like that? No reason... Why are you looking at me like that? It's just...I think you're about to tell me about a friend of yours in Los Angeles who is the same girl that I dated, briefly, the same girl who cut me good, really fucking good when she dropped me, and I'm just trying to wrap my head around it all. You're fucking with me? No. You're fucking with me? No. AUGUST SEPTEMBER. LIVED IN THESE PLACES, DID THESE THINGS... That's her. You're... Absolutely not. Wow. Nailed it! Her look seemed like your type. Well, it was. That's insane, I almost don't believe you. Ask her about me sometime. Maybe she'll tell you that - that I was insane - that was popular for a little while. Are you? What do you think?
It's 830 at night here right now. At 5 tomorrow morning, I wake up for a race. It doesn't feel like the rest. I think I'll sleep well tonight...just a feeling. I don't know what that means exactly, not yet. I'm just drifting now...like I'm not really in control of the world I'm living in, but a very unimportant cog in it all. Feels good. I like it.
I get stressed out sometimes when I have a lot of things stacked up to do in a single day. Yes, even here. Maybe stressed is a bad word. I become...very aware. Today, I was very aware of all the shit that would have to take place for me to be sitting on this southern tip of the island and feel like I could just put my feet up. I'll usually tell myself to stop worrying before asking myself to recollect the last time was that I failed...myself. It doesn't happen often, and that understanding usually gives me some calm.
Been a good week. Seen a lot, worked my ass off, most days 3 times per. Tomorrow, I'm leaving for Jimbaran Bay, to settle in for the race that's happening on Sunday. After finding my hotel, I'm going into Denpasar, the biggest town in Bali, where there's supposed to be a great bike shop. If I can convince them to rent me a road bike, I'll be forced to do something like compete with the best on the island on Sunday. But that could be a bit of a reach. At this point, I just need something where the gears don't shift without me. But I have a feeling it'll all work out...because even if it doesn't, it'll all work out.
For 2 dollars, you can put enough gas in a rented bike (4 per day) and see vast stretches of the island. Today I went East, the only thing stopping me was the ocean and some cops I had to bribe in order to not "go to justice!" for not having an Indonesian permit. Right. After that, all I had to do was stay upright.
Yesterday, I went out for a run around 6...maybe sometime after. I took a left on my quaint street and headed north maybe. There were houses and homestays and then the road got significantly tighter before it got tighter. Then there was a steep hill that rode up along a dirt cliff. Then it ended and I was running through the jungle or what looked and felt and sounded like it. I thought I was getting myself lost, excited by the possibility of it, following a stream and narrow footpath. I saw no one before I came across some naked Balians (?) bathing in the stream before I climbed another cliff before I popped out into the colors of setting sun and endless tiered rice fields. I was sweating and thought of crying before I took a deep breath, thankful that someone like me was going to someday paint it in truer and better words than this. It was a moment I wished I could give to everyone. Someday, I'll try.
I think it's starting to sink in, where I am, what I'm doing. And by sink in I mean I'm losing track of the days. Everything here just...there are certainly words for it but I'm certainly not going to spend the effort coming up with one or many more than this. I'm in a cafe in the middle of the day, uploading this video and everyone is eating pie and waiting for it to rain. That's about it. I ran in the morning and found an incredible gym just up the street of a street that's close to me. It has bikes that allow me to beat myself up real nice. Real nice. I'll go running again tonight and then sleep well, do something like this again tomorrow, all along allowing myself to comprehend and then simply accept that all of this is quite incredible.
What my parents think of what I do, of my crossing the world believing the words I write and the things I experience will someday be important. I say they're on board, or that they learned at some point that the train was going to keep rolling regardless of what they thought of me...so better to be on it. Then I correct myself and say what I just said wasn't meant to be cold before I offer something in English like I have the best parents in the world, supportive and inspiring and so many other things I could get into in a long spat...but I'd rather just post this and let it speak for itself...
Koooala Lumfuckingpur! What you are doing is just so, so, so amazing. I contemplate in thoughtful moments like these and can hardly imagine. Those loose screws in your head are what make you who you are and what you do but thank God for those loose screws and who you are. Hope to see you sometime in the not too distant future but in the mean time suck up as much of this as you can. And of course always watch where you're going but at the same time watch your back. Go Celtics and fuck k0be and Phil Jackson.
Tonight, I was wandering town, plans set on crashing a couple of the swank hotel bars for cocktails and something to eat. I ended up at this place I read about online instead called Hakka Republic. It was across from the Shangri La, where I was planning on going eventually. Hakka was right down the street from some of the more obnoxious bars in KL, where women stand out front asking me if I want "young girl cheap price." I didn't. I don't.
When I walked into Hakka, it was empty. It was sunday night and that was about the only reason. From what I hear, the place does well...and from the food and service and style, it better. The guy who greeted me at the door said they were doing a sunday buffet, and for an extra 30 MR, it was all you could drink Tiger draft. I hadn't been eating much since showing up in Malaysia and went for a long run in the morning...tomorrow is going to be a killer, so all day I was thinking about eating a big plate of good food. Though I never expected it to be as good as it turned out to be. In truth, the entire buffet was all for me - everything someone could dream of - tiger prawns to filet, short rib to pumpkin soup, handmade pasta to bread pudding. Knocked me out. Knocked me out.
At some point, the exec chef came out to talk to me. Then, the sous chef. They changed clothes and closed the kitchen and the exec chef came out and took some pictures of me loving his restaurant. They told me to finish my drink and took me to the parking lot. I got into one of the cook's cars and we drove to Chinatown because the sous chef didn't want me to get caught in any of the Skybar and Luna Bar traps that most foreigners get caught into. There, we wandered the streets looking for the perfect Durian - "corpse fruit" - banned in public places because it fucking stinks - but is also like nothing you or I have ever tasted - think cross between a mango and avocado. When we found a stand, we four sat down at a table on the street and ate this thing - three chefs and one fucking tourist. They wouldn't let me pay for a thing. Not the Durian, not the water it took to cleanse us from the smell of a "corpse," not anything. We walked for a bit and talked for a bit and then got back in the car. We talked about all the shit in the world before they dropped me off at my hotel, wanting nothing from me but company. Nothing. I told them there's a marathon in KL on June 27th that might bring me back and they said they hoped to see me. Then they smiled and drove off. And I...
I still don't know what to say. Thailand turned me so cynical, so cynical, everyone working something. Loved it, beautiful, but still. And walking away from this, tonight made me want to weep, made me want to give thanks to a thousand ears and not one of them gave a shit about hearing it. They just were what they were...are what they are...
It's been a long day that started at 630 with girl crying for me on the streets of Chaweng. That's a fucking lot to handle and I can't say I've ever handled the understanding of it well. The moment just came, and there was nothing we could really say about it...today, last night, the week approaching. At some point, feelings happened we could never talk through because of the barriers between us. The way we did speak had to be all too simple...for me, for once...through glances or touches or a thousand other things I can't really explain to someone until they've been in something like it. I thought about her all day after I left, about the things in life I'm capable of giving and the things I'm not...why the weight of the latter is so heavy and at what point things became that way. Tonight, I went out wandering, looking for something like a super market then a place for dinner. First point of order was to prepare a double fist of Gatorade for tomorrow morning's run - my word, the heat here is supposed to beat Thailand - and fought hard for a while trying to place myself. Big town. Fast town. Crazy town. It's a lot less Asian and a lot more Indian than I expected. People are praying everywhere, all the time. The supermarket never really happened. Dinner happened at a street restaurant at the end of an alley in Little India - rice with a side of chicken stew, side of chickpea stew, Coke. Very cheap. I tipped the guy and felt like I made him worry he was ripping me off. So I can't do that again. Every now and again, I catch someone looking at me who is either fascinated or wants to see my head on a stick. If anyone asks, I'll tell them that I'm a Canadian and that yes, I love their God and pray to it 5 times a day...
No, no. It's not really like that. Everyone on this side of the world has given me nothing but warmth so far. That's the truth. Tomorrow, I'll see what this place is like during the day, continue to enjoy my hot shower, sandless bed for a couple nights.
There's a building sitting behind me called the Petronas Towers - tallest in the world. The cabbie who took me from the bus station made me make him a promise that I would go to the top - free tickets. I told him I was incredibly afraid of heights and he made me promise again, which I did. I said, alright dude...but it's gonna fuck with me something terrible and I might make a scene in front of a lot of people. Then he said deal, and smiled, and I guess that settled things.
Tomorrow morning I'm getting up at 630, heading to the airport in Samui. Can't believe it's already been 20 days. After living on an island for most of it, I need some big city jolt before heading to another island. Everything here is so close. I used to have this dark spot in my mind - what cultures were like on this side of the world - like I didn't understand the world completely and how all of it worked together. Now that plans are starting to form in my mind, I'm beginning to think of the world as a very small place - or at least I will fully when this is all said and done.
I thought I was going to stay in Thailand for a long, long time. It's such a big country - so many places to go, so many different flavors to taste and see. I got it, at least as well as I'll ever need to right now. Something is taking me elsewhere, and it's the kind of something I'd be best not to question, the kind of something I'd be better off just following. So that's what I'm doing. I feel detached and exhausted, wonderfully exhausted, like there are things inside of me that needed to get pulled out and got pulled out.
There's a Girl here that's been treating me real good, a Girl I have to say goodbye to tomorrow morning, who I will see again and not forget. She caught it nicely... Reset... Reload... Repeat and onward.
