Bon Odori...

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.

Tokyo...

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...

Ironman 70.3 Philippines...

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.

A Bike In Naga City...

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.

I've Grown...

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.

Naga & Pili...

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.

Philippines...

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.

Macau...

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...

Hong Kong...

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.

Jodhpur & Jaislamer...

...
...
...

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...

No, fuck that. I cared the whole time.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

Akurala & Beyond...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.