Leatherman multi-tool
tumbled from pocket in Taghazout
one night on Moroccan hash.
Lonely Planet India in the ticket office
of a train three days coming
I packed my motorcycle with such focus
I forgot the book
nail clippers
what the hell happened to you yesterday morning?
nylon quick-dry travel pants fell carelessly
from me to a mosqito coil
your hidden zippered pockets melted
They were genius.
Waterproof sandals
four [...]
After ascending and descending the tower of the Jama Masjid (attendant wanted backsheesh as I was 5 minutes after closing, damn him) I wandered into the Muslim quarter of the city, tight noisy always as usual, and here I was rewarded.
Because it was a neighborhood. People sitting in their shops cross legged. Kids lounging against [...]
We made the world. Humans did. We abandoned the wilderness, left the forest or the savannah or whatever it used to be– I don’t even know. I can recognize more types of shoes than trees. There is another ecosystem now, of man-made things.
I began to realize this when I flew overseas. I found myself in a brand new jungle, with Moorish walled compounds sprouting from the ground and entirely new species of cars. For a month I rented a room in the seaside town of Taghazout, Morocco. It had a small sink in one corner, and opened onto the central courtyard of the second story. By day, light came from the sky. By night, fluorescent tubes cast muddy shadows on the faces of my hosts. And every door in town was blue.
No one could tell me why the doors were blue; the doors were invisible to the Moroccans, just there, just doors. After an hour walking through town and puzzling, I realized I was blind: I didn’t know what color the doors were at home.
I’m writing this from a cave. There is wifi in the cave. I am sitting on a pink Hannah Montana bedspread. All of the beds are pink. This is a dorm in a cave. That’s Capadocia tourism for you.
The view out the little front lounge of this “pensian” is a landscape of huge limestone [...]
If I got the offer I would go instantly. I’d pack up everything and nothing and leave next week, or probably tomorrow. Even if I could never come back. Maybe especially if I couldn’t. I want to see the Solar System that badly.
Yeah, the technology, the adventure, the leap into the unknown is exciting. But I’ve always imagined turning off my radio at the end of the day, unplugging from Earth and having the cold planet all to myself for a little while in the dusk light. Boots crunching on the dry-ice frost, I’d sit down a rock and look at the sky.
And probably see something like this NASA video of drifting dust in the night-time Martian sky.
These images make me suddenly lonely, happy, and hopelessly yearning all at once.
Varanasi is perhaps what I thought I might find in India. The ghats (wharves) are all painted faces and temples and cows and signs painted on the narrow alleyways, and elaborate lacy architecture, and stone streets, and everywhere filth and garbage and exuberance. Walking along the ghats in the evening, reveling in the busy and [...]
My god, it’s like lace reaching into the sky! I mean, I’d seen pictures, but this, actually standing here in Durbar Square, Katmandu, watching the pagodas silhouette the dawn– it’s a fairy tale. This place can’t be real. Here, let’s climb the steps. Oh. There’s graffiti at the top. The sun rises, shadows form. The traffic arrives with first light. Suddenly the square is filled with belching diesels and kids on scooters, and vendors selling cotton candy and mobile phones. Also illuminated is every other building, the surrounding sprawl of hideous brick boxes. Katmandu, 21st Century. The pagodas cower before the hot, flat, smoggy light of the present time.
Calcutta you are motion! Calcutta you are noise and smoke and all the impolite truths of humanity stacked on top of each other in one place. You are sound and light and fresh fruit juice, a man yelling mango juice mangojuice mangojuice! into the crowd on the corner. Step right up and get your slice of life! There’s nowhere to run anyway. The streets are packed with cars and carts and bicycles and rickshaws and pedestrians, and usually no sidewalks. The sidewalks are for sleeping on.
The Inheritance of Loss is magnificent. The writing is lovely, but what makes the book great is the fearlessness with which the author addresses the strange and difficult intermixing of rich and poor, white and brown and black, husband and wife, Hindu and Muslim, tribe versus tribe, not just in India but internationally, through the experience of foreign students and illegal immigrants. This book is fundamentally about the way people see each other through their differences, and like any truly good book it’s full of moments where you go, "yes, it’s like that." The difference here is that these moments make you cringe a little to see something ugly so revealed, both in others and yourself.
We were halfway down the beach when K. started coming up. Past Dreamcatcher, before that next big one with the unfortunate name – what was it? Cock’s Town? Sometimes the Indians miss the mark, and you have to admit, it’s pretty funny. It was New Year’s Eve in Goa, and we could do anything.
