Shanghai

I miss the quiet of my dungeon and the wind through Oregon's trees. Its sunny here and i am about to be in the Du with all my friends again and its gonna be hard to leave. I am trying to stay for one month but i can feel the pull of oblivion on the road. Its going to be hard not to just disappear again. but i won't. don't worry nico ...

i love shanghai, the city usually treats me very well, but i am reminded every time I come here why i could never live here. my best times here are either drunken madness or yapping with old shanghainese ... i love making old people laugh here. they don't really get my Sichuan hua ... and the cabbies aren't pimps like in the Du ... so many damn buildings.

I am reading Wendell Berry's book, Sex, Economy, Community and Freedom. i highly recommend this book. It is right up our US alley (me and the Tribe) and it informs my summer project that I am doing with ole Lace-dawg.

Go out and get it. (mad love to Jen for the hook-up)

One Second Encounters

I left the Council of the Monkey in Pai and headed north through Laos to China. The other council members headed south to bangkok for school and such ... I ran out of money in Chiang Rai on the Laos border and had to trade a bottle of Sambuca for a broken bike.

I strapped my big pickle bag to the back of this bike with bungee cords and went off on a hilly ride across Laos to the border with China at the town of Mengla. I think it was about 100km or so to get there. In my bag i had two hookahs, three bottles of Sambuca, leather supplies and oils, clothes and books and a collection of teas, herbs and other junk collected over the past three months on the road.

There are no well-off areas in Laos and the hills I was biking through are poorer than most. I had a one second encounter there ...

As I rode through one road side village, the old women mobilized and rose up on skinny legs, yelling to the huts in the back and waving their arms in excitement when they saw me. At first i too was excited and slowed to see what kind of welcome they had for me ...

then a beautiful young girl, maybe 14 or so, came rushing out of the back huts holding up her skirts. She was surrounded by yelling and gesturing young boys and old women urging her on to the road. to me. I looked at her and her face was flushed red, beautiful against her brown perfect skin and her eyes held the young bride's combination of fear and anxious excitement ...

I was shocked and attracted at the same time. I felt obligated to stop and love her even as my soul screamed "PEDAL fool!"

Who knows how many men stopped here and paid for a month's worth of food for this village with just an afternoon or two with this young girl?

I caught her eye as i pedaled away and in her eyes she showed me that she was not only dismayed but hurt.

tell me about your One Second Encounters if you can remember them ...

Peep This

Here are a couple stories I have been writing for Matador.com:

This is my list of cities for singles and here is the "companion piece" about making love to natives in order to learn their language.

Here's what I have to say about late night food out there. Feel free to drop comments and enlarge my list of pimpin ass cities to be gremlins in ... you can't write them all down ...

Rage against the dying of the light

or just post some love on yer blog and send it through the underground.

i remember telling some young Chinese friends about the Tank Man in Tiananmen and they all laughed at me and said it was a piece of CIA propaganda. I think for everybody who does not live in China, the image of the lone bespectacled middle manager forcing the tanks to swerve around him was probably one of the most moving images of our lives. I will never forget it. It is sad and horrible that his sacrifice is meaningless in the land he loves.

And it is one of the largest jumps across the chasm of mis-communication between us. How can young Chinese understand us if they lack the essential info that we take for granted? How can we understand them if we speak to them in a language of images that they have never seen?

everyone of these links are blocked in China.

this one some how made it through.

如果有中国朋友在看这个blog，我希望你们也有办法看到这个中国英雄。这样，也可以明白为什么外国人必需说哪么多。对我们来说,“他们”的目标是让我们变傻，不了解自己，无法勾通。

And in parting, i would like to say i am proud to be a broke ass member of the "Right but Poor" club.

The death of traditions

It is so hot and humid in Chengdu right now that my brain is bathing in its own liquid, humming strange tunes to itself and sending me images of massive artillery guns firing into the distance.

Spengler is a columnist for Asia Times who has derided the Europeans for lacking the courage to face the modern world, upholds the Christian belief in salvation through God's grace as the answer to the world's crisis of faith and who is certain that traditional societies must change in the face of today, or perish.

And many other themes, some of which he touches on in this latest column about America's special place in the world and what he believes is Obama's deepest desire: to rid the US of that which grants us this special place, modernity.

*********************

I lament the demise of funk streets the world over. I have been actively seeking out the jabbering markets where chickens are held up for inspection, approved, beheaded and plucked before your very eyes; the courtyards of stone and their rickety wooden enclosure, with door gods and drying tobacco leaf; the delicate dance of a family-supported courtship and marriage; the one stringed wailing and the gourd flutes; family charts, bamboo weaves and dog-hair sandbags.

But they are dying the world over. In some places quicker than others and a few places not at all, but their fate is sealed by the progress of the modern world.

In my own neighborhood, the old Hakka traditions are resting in the cataracts of an 80 year old as he sips tea and fingers his mahjiong pieces.

Every time I meet my man Zhuang Jian for tea, we trade bitter reports of this and that place lost forever to the modern hordes and whisper of the few that still survive. These conversations always end in silence, whereupon we turn to money issues and quote Candide:

"... one's own garden ..."

My heart aches when i read of this prognosis for the world: Modernity and the lonely quest of the individual for solace on earth and grace from heaven. Is it said any differently in Eccliastes or the Dao De Jing? I think tribalism is immortal in us and community is our last gasp to ward off death, but in the end i am my only keeper -- I suppose i lament what is gone until i am a part of what will endure.

Dammit, Spengler is right. Wherever I have gone in the world, people are choosing, being forced to choose and just plain drifting into the real world. The only way to reconcile the two worlds is to create things which cause others to dream. Make wishes and see them come true ... Aha! i finally know what the Auryn means!

And so the lamenting pray and hope for God's retribution before his grace. Only the ghosts of the dream world actually spout Mayan prophecies of 2012 to each other, discuss the civilizations that existed 10,000 years ago and that we are doomed to meet their fate.

2012 allows us to be there for it and have the last laugh on guys like Spengler when God's grace falls on those who longed for what's lost, instead of those who embraced what is. It is the Great Dream of all dreamers.

Might as well face it

"Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it ..."

I always loved that line. So much power and confidence. A calm declaration laced with pride. An intimation of secret channels, open only to the few, that bring the blissful touch of the Divine.

I enjoy the way it rolls out of my mouth when i say it. the double long "e" ... anyway. I sit and dream a lot, and usually i dream of the possible future, but also the possible past, the possible present. I set my daunting intellect against the legions of possibilities and intone to myself, mid dream: "Everything is proceeding ..."

I nod and make a face of inscrutable wisdom, don my dunce cap and stumble into the sunlight. A few friends might be thinking that all of the interesting things that have happened in the past few months here might be getting me down. But I am actually in the most perfect place, in a time of perfection. Everything is proceeding.

Allow me to elaborate on what "everything" actually is:

I arrived in China 8 years ago on August 25th, 2000. My current visa expires on the 25th of August, 2008. The number 8 ... well I like it and so do the Chinese. The Olympics end on the 25th of August. The Beijing Olympics were sought after in 2000, announced a year later.

So I am leaving to Portland and such, and just in case I couldn't get out of my house on my own, China has decided to help me out by tearing it down, sometime in the next two months.

When I first arrived in China, I was living out of a bag, writing random stuff about everything. Seems like I'll be leaving that way. I figured 2008 would be a crazy year, personally as well as in general. And it is. Obama, Tibet, earthquakes and volcanoes, floods and the dollar sinking ... I'll be headed to Portland basically when the shit hits the fan concerning Obama vs. McCain. The Celtics gonna take the title ... it seems to me to be a perfect circle, and of course my perspective is the only one that counts.

I knew all along that it (this first stint in China) would end like this. It only ends like this. In my daydreams of possibilities spanning time, i foresaw all of this. Still I stumble and shield my eyes. I find staring at my cats, plants or wandering butterflies helps.

(I am a child of the 80s and 90s .... my deep thoughts are gleaned from shallow puddles in the pitted asphalt -- and i dare to say that puddles reflect sunlight as well, my friends, as true as bell peals, cricket hums and reflections of stained glass in the holy water.)

What is actually happening is the observer and the actor are wrestling again.

I had dreams of rage last night, righteous and impotent. My friends say I have a pit of rage in my belly. I think its just fire. I am too dim to comprehend all of the layers of reality that make my belly burn.

I just know that everything is proceeding (as I have foreseen it), but if i were to constantly rely on that statement, well I might meet the same fate as the one who uttered it ...

THEREFORE:

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it, Inshallah.

She's just a young girl ...

I met a woman a few months back in the city of Yaan, renowned for rain, fish and beauties. She's a young music teacher at a high school in town. She took me and Oliver around and we talked till 2am. She is married, has a child and is irrepressibly curious about the world outside her world.

She carries herself like a lady at all times. She knows what to say when, and how to inflect properly. Her skin is porcelain white and her make-up is immaculate. She dresses in the fashion of her day, which would not go over in the States, but is resplendent in reserved elegance here in Sichuan. Her dimple flashes when she laughs and her eyes betray suppressed emotions. She never mentions the word "marriage" and i have yet to see a photo of her son.

She's just a young girl doing grown woman stuff. Like raising her kid. And dreamin those dreams -- the ones half-men dont know what to do with. I have done nothing but look at her, smile at her and put my finger on her wrist. Her reaction is what i love about all women. No matter how long she has been keeping her self pent up, singing karaoke with her friends and smiling demurely at admirers, a brazen touch will bring a flush to her face and make the stiff doll soften. She laughs with abandon and widens her eyes. The porcelain cracks like an eggshell and reveals a throbbing heart. There are so many women like her in China, in the world. They live with Dilbert, dream of the Marlboro Man.

I know some of you are thinking "you dirty bastard."

I refute you all utterly.

If i possess the key, who am i to deny her the unlocking?

who's the cracker?

On Brainwashing

In China, indoctrination of the youth begins very early. At age 6, young kids are given their first Chinese Reader to learn the vast collection of characters, poems and proverbs that make up the Chinese language. The book begins with a small rhyme about flowers and their need for the sunshine, then goes into the people and their need to deeply love the Communist Party as an analogous sentence. Important vocab includes:

Re Ai: literally Hot Love
Gong Chan Dang: Communist Party
Hua: Flower
Yang Guang: Sunshine

Later, most children read the story of San Mao, one of the hundreds of thousands of street urchins and orphans that crowded the streets of many a Chinese city right after Japan's surrender and before the final victory of the Communist Party over the Nationalist Party in 1949.

In the first chapter of this book, published in 1959, the trials and struggles of San Mao and his street brothers are listed: starvation, freezing, no shelter, no family, short-hard lives ahead of them.

The landlords scorned them. The Nationalists, described as Guo Ming Dang Fan Dong Pai -- which means "the Nationalist Reactionary Group" (students of Communism will recognize the belief in the inevitability of the Socialist Utopia) -- are primarily to blame for their plight, through mismanagement, corruption and callous disregard for the People in general.

And the American Devils "wu yuan wu gu da si tamen" which means beat them (the orphans) to death without rhyme or reason.

The book is actually a collection of comic-book style depictions of the orphans and the capitalist pigs, foreign devils and anti-Revolution traitors who torment them. The Communist Party and Mao Zi Dong are the saviors of the orphans ...

It goes on. In Middle school there is Si Xiang Ping De class, which translates into Philosophical Tenets or Moral and Philosophical Laws ... Students love this class because it does not count toward their final grade and there is no homework. Its only purpose is to indoctrinate the children in Communist Party Thought. There is little mention of the great Chinese philosophers, unless something they wrote blends well with the Communist Party Rhetoric.

In high school and university, there are the Deng Xiao Ping Theory and Mao Zi Dong Important Thought classes. Similar to Si Xiang Ping De except more focused on the individuals who exemplify the Communist Rhetoric.

At work, most Dan Wei (work units) are ruled over by the Party Secretary of that particular company, area or office. There are regular meetings that deal with what is and is not correct according to the Party and what Important Campaigns are currently underway.

In the Tibetan regions for example and in those regions that border them, like Chengdu, Party members were instructed to go into every monastery, every Tibetan area and begin wholesale, hardcore re-education. This involves having Tibetans break, spit on and denounce pictures of the Dalai Lama, mass arrests, beatings and criticism sessions and, most horrifying, a call for all of the People to keep their eyes open for suspicious characters and report them to the relevant authorities.

It is the Cultural Revolution of the New Millenium. The Party is so terrified of the future ... it truly is fitting that in China, the land with the most amazing and glaring contradictions I have ever witnessed, the Ruling Elite will be most terrified during their most dramatic moment of triumph.

noone can f*ck with my tribe

just got off the horn with a one of my tribe's elders (hahaha) and it feels damn good. crazy shit is in the mix ... seems like we might all be on the west coast of the USA at some point. or Colombia. or maybe we'll have a powwow in South Africa with the Peer Brothers and Doc Possible. It could all happen. The connections between us used to surprise me when i was younger, now i know them for what they are: the fabric of livin.

or as the elder put it:

"souls in the cabinet"

spell yur name out foolz!

Flode aka Superboy aka Fat Kim aka aka aka

I can't say enough about this man. Love him. Here is a short description of him on the road in Colombia. Peace to Fat Kim!

They told (me) the car to Cabo would be here soon. A pick-up truck, stuffed with people stops shortly after. Probably 12 in the back, four in the front seat, all kinds of goods and luggage on the roof and three people sitting on top of all of it, one guy standing on the back , holding on . And styrofoam boxes with cold drink, cement, and more stuff amongst the people in the back.
I laugh (to) my self. " FULL" thinking I will just wait for next one. ¡ VENGA ! ( come on) shouts a man, jumps of and throws my bag on top of the car. I take his place, standing in the back, he climbs up on the roof , and sits down on my bag, so it will not fly of. Almost like Asia I think to myself.
The way there is not too bumpy, dry, not much vegetation, and the little that exists is short and spiky, sharp. ochre yellow dust covers my feet and body, I try to cover my face with my t shirt. We stop several times and do " deliveries" It was obvious that when people had the chance to get supplies, they shopped for a while. I help at every stop, carrying, soda, cooking oil, cement, luggage and more. This area is close to Venezuela and they sell polar cerveza at small shops instead of colombian beer. I find it a little bit ironic, coming from the cold north and all that they would call their beer Polar, and have a polar beer as a logo. Here in some of the dryest and hottest place I have ever been.
We finally arrive to Cabo de la vela. It is a interesting scene with ocean, beach, small wooden houses and shelters for tourist who wanna sleep in Hammocks. , desert behind " el puoblo" Indians living in Rancherias before the landscape becomes mountains. We have dropped almost all people and deliveries of, "¿ a donde vas ?" ( where do you go?)asks the driver.

" mas lejos" I respond, waving with my hand signalising I want to go as far as possible.
He takes me as far as the road goes, I put my back pack on and starts walking. I feels great. I had earlier lived almost a week very cheap in my tent farther south in la Guijira provins. Eating fish for free every day, because I helped the fishers pulling in their nets, and beat boxing for the young ones.
" I am a nomaaad " I sing to myself, very content."

Superboy-FMS Style

My man ....

Superboy

my man on the road.

we are all whores

Essence Jackers are the people I deal with on the daily. They jack my essence, corrupt it, as they themselves are unsure of what they are jacking, then they sell it. I am left holding an empty bag.

At the same time, i find myself sabotaging lucrative schemes, because the fake nature of most of them repulses me. The essence jackers are insulted. i got friends who tell me: all artists are broke till they die.

easy for them to say.

I will be heading back to the USA very soon. I need the fresh air, the trees and blue skies. i need my people. i need appliances that work, water that's drinkable and a wide variety of choices. I need different lies. I need conversations that do not revolve around how good I speak chinese for an outsider ...

I need to build up a base and bring my chinese homies to the states, so they can breath my air, eat my food, drink my water and look at me with new and glowing, knowing eyes. I have done this in their land. I want to repay them. So we can all be multi-faceted crystals, copied by glassmakers, sold in baskets at a trinket market in "foreigner street."

My membership in the river lake crew keeps me breathing. We struggle together. Without you, my people, I would have doused my head in ashes and worn sackcloth a long long time ago.

Mayhap I still will.

The other view:

A pirate with no boat, a hippy with no cause, a rebel out of laziness. In your own mind, you have built up a tribe with no land, no blood, no moorings ... a creation of dreamscapes and might-have-beens. With which you console yourself, hating those who live in the real world, because its not your world. It requires such things as responsibility, effort, determination and a slick eye and tongue. You sulk in a corner and justify failure with your pithy art. You wrap yourself in darkness and unconsciously retreat into the role of a victim every time hardship comes knocking.

You are a fake man, screaming "REAL" to all that pass, holding out a battered cup, resenting the quarters that jingle hollow in your brain. You are building your own fate: dying in a dream, leaving behind whispers of what might have been.

*****************************************************

i think this blog needs some pictures. Soon, I will replace Blogger with Wordpress. Blogger is WAK. Can't upload and format pics, can't format articles and any of that and its blocked in China, weak everywhere else. When i make the change, I will holler.

Zobel

As told by Markus Tong:

"I was guiding a group of people through the Tibetan highlands near Lhasa. we stopped at a village and walked around. We met a young boy, who was selling a piece of paper with Buddhist script and paintings on it. He asked for Y20, I got him down to Y14. We gave him the only bill we had, a Y100. He said he had to roll out to get change. We said ok, and hung out in the village. Half an hour later, we figured he had ditched us, so we got in the bus and prepared to leave. As we were about to pull away, another young boy ran up and stopped us. He gave us Y86. Then he said his friend had been hit by a car crossing the road and had begged him to take the money back us."

Markus got emotional toward the end and almost broke down and cried. The group of German tour operators he had been guiding through Chengdu were moved. All but two, who basically ignored the story, their minds on the logistics of the next day. In case you're wondering, Markus is as Han Chinese as they get.

Who knows?

Earlier, Tibetans from Kham and Aba were trading golden Buddhas and daggers for cash-money and other needful things in the antique market. Their customers are gringos and chinese. All was good. In the Tibetan district there are still popo on the block, but monks stroll by in red robes, fingerin beads, checkin out monk gear. On the ride home tonight, the cabbie went off on the government. Diggin into his pocket, pissin him off. Wants a multiparty system. The tv spits out lies all day.

*****************************************************************************

Finally headed home after eight days of "power tourism." Yeah i had dreams of leading people through the wilds for a second there, but the experience singed me. I am down to take my peoples, don't get me wrong. And even absolute strangers if they exhibit hobo sensibilities, craftsmanship, ingenuity or any other sort of clever behavior. Radiant behaviour. Warming and above all a curious nature. all comedians are allowed. Bards get a free pass, as do those with bottomless pouches.

But failing to display characteristics of the above persuasions or failing to introduce to me new and exciting ones ... and ... you know, sorry. naw. can't do it. Not long term anyway.


Its just draining. But it is interesting how close people get when they travel together for a while, even if they come from very different parts of the social web. I made good friends on this trip. At least when we left each other at the airport, the feelings and emotions were sincere. We had "did it together." I felt the same thing when i left the cannery, football team and those brothers who shivered with me in Thailand ... my main men, johnny and ryan ... aka blacktoe and the doc. Repeatedly burning at the stake with people ... burn once yer connected, burn twice your bound, burn thrice your brothers, burn again your immortal.

childhood trauma

there are two songs which i feel may have traumatized me for life:

a lil jingle sung by good ole Goofy in the one about the ship they had just built, that falls apart when they smack a bottle over the hull. Goofy sings:

"Ohhhh, the world owes me a livin"

Shit stuck with me. Incidentally, when i was small, the whole bottle across the hull and Daisy Duck's aggressive sexuality scared me. The other jingle, well I am not the only one to suffer repeated intrusions into my psyche from this one here:

"I dont wanna grow up, I'm a toys'r'us kid, there's a million toys at toys'r'us that I can play with"

I still sing these jingles to myself softly when taking a shower, walking down the street or waiting in line for something.

late bloomers

i think i represent the peter pan element in all generations. there are many of us. and we are generally smiled upon from on high by those who have escaped never never land and found the path that leads them toward fulfillment.

Was peter fulfilled? He had an enemy, his crew, a fairy mistress and he was a prince with no king in a land of eternal adventure. There was no reason for Peter to grow up. He was a prince, much more than a mere man, and he was exultant and impetuous, yet reasoned enough to provide for his and keep the pirates at bay.

We will not mention the freak invasion of humanity into his world and the consequences -- let us just remember that Peter was pleased with himself and loved by his people for many eons, before mortality stole him away.

Although my choices were supposedly made long ago, it annoys me to realize that each day is a new and clean slate to make choices that radically change life and ultimately, memories are ours to do with as we wish. Old choices are playthings for our imagination, with no mooring in reality, but that which we give them. Choice rejoices, sending her people door to door, daily, flooding my mailbox with brochures and coupons.

So i find myself under siege, a soft siege, like monks with rose petals. This siege never breaks. The besiegers have no standard. It flutters for each wind, rises anew and mysterious with each sun. Perhaps my greatest mistake is to actually place put defenders on the walls. If i notice the monks, well then I am noticing the monks and something must be done about these monks! and their roses? where should they go?

Those that smile down upon me offer cohorts of ridalin, like US military and UN mercenary peacekeepers and the carpetbaggers that follow them. I naturally refuse. This is a domestic affair and I will tolerate no infringement upon my sovereignty. Besides, I have my own mercenaries that I employ.

I have only one true weapon. An electromagnetic pulse that eases the pressure for a moment, until the fluid builds up and i have to pop my knuckles again. It has taken me so long to develop this weapon. It is even now in its infancy and the scientists are unsure of themselves, checking and re-checking, seeking the advice of foreign experts who have developed the technology on their own -- to the eternal chagrin of the pols that sit in the back of my mind, runnin shit.

I bloom late like China, which has bloomed before.

How many times did peter escape back to never never land? after a tedious sojourn into a world with gravity but no Hook, smog but no fairies.

I refuse their mercenaries and i stubbornly persist in my belief in pirates (i've seen em) and fairies (i've chased em)!

its getting weird

Maybe I am bitter about China. Or just bitter about what I did and did not do and I blame it on China. Thats possible. I sway like wheat in the winds of perspective, words fly off like floating chaff. All seeds take plant and have as much right to live as any other. The first poem to affect me resolved: "I contradict myself? Very well then. I contradict myself."

And resignation is my greatest defense when my life is put into question. Kids broke into my house again and spray painted the walls. The landlord's wife wants more money. My roommate is looking for a way out where his wallet remains fat. When all i want is a cave with a fire, people ... those clingy, social creatures, cling and socialize and i find i need them. I feel ready to dissipate into dandelion fluff and float until i starve to death or land on a fertile patch of mud, or the back of a wandering dog. i sympathize with madness, shrink away from cowardly retreat into oneself. I want to wear sackcloth and wipe ashes on my head, i want to have flowers spring up where i walk.

Resignation is my cozy alcove when brainwaves collide in some gray wrinkle. I grabbed an Italian girl's arm and squeezed till she winced. She said, "its getting weird" and walked away, conspicuously ignoring me as i stood nearby. Another line that affect me, "Dream on, dreamer, life gets in your way."

I am alone in a sea of family. Contradictory dreams send us wavering past each other in unfulfilled quests, never-ending stories, frayed lines dangling.

I love this forum where i can type it all out anytime i want. I despise this forum: public nudity demanding polite praise.

I am disappeared, but in contact with whomever reads -- its a trip into semi-darkness with a safety line. But i know its deep sea silence that i seek. Cowardice ... saying the word with a hiss at the end is like casting a spell. Watch where you aim it.

The Ends Meet

This one is for my man Flesh if he ever reads this.

I have been in China for eight years. Eight, written as we write it, is formed of two circles, or a Moebius Continuum .. Infinity. As the Chinese write it .. it looks like nothing of the sort. But eight is auspicious.

When i first came to China, I was a blank space ... a whiteboard for this nation to scrawl upon. I lived in obscurity surrounded by a life i molded and melted into. i wrote. i learned. i grew. Then i escaped my life of obscurity and entered the fray. I watched river town convulse beneath itself, sprout concrete to cover up its wounds, drip slime and blackness into its hidden alleys. i sunk neck deep into the muck and committed the first of many sins. I spiraled until i had to leave. But i returned, more determined than ever.

Because now, thought i , I know the game. I can play. So i played and played, becoming a reflection of myself. Like Bastian in the Many-Colored Desert ... when he chased himself through the city of ghosts and betrayed his one true friend and the world he had helped save. At the apex of my self-denial, i met my blood father for the second time and resolved to never be like him. To crush all within that resembled him.

My best friend labeled me a snake. He commanded enough respect to convince half of our crew -- and even me. Cuz i knew my blood father to be a snake ... it stood to reason. I wilted and fell.

Then came the days of remembrance, leading slowly over time to redemption ... i was gathered up and taken on a cruise through jungles and mountains and islands and fell into a pool of rosewater, and given my name back. I remembered my life in obscurity, my obscured life remembered me. I shed my snake skin and flashed my brilliant scales. I accepted that balding Turkish bastard.

I was coming full circle, and i knew it. Being able to see it meet over the past two years has given me great pleasure and immeasurable confidence. I still suffer from cringe literature tendencies ... but yesterday i met three people i haven't seen since those years in obscurity. I have never forgotten them, they never forgot me. We spoke last night as if we had been neighbors not memories. I was myself, dazzling and in love.

And i knew, calm and pleased, that the ends are meeting. An eight has been formed and when they finally meet, they nod and twirl and carry on. I have another large circuitous route ahead of me. I face the north wind and raise my cup.

its a high price to pay

It is now the second day of Chinese New Year here in Dali and the fireworks have subsided somewhat. On the sixth, we gathered at the bad monkey and blew stuff up all evening. There are some M80 types that we would throw into the small sewage-rivers that flow along the stone paths through Dali Old Town. They float a bit, then blow up -- sending water splashing innocent bystanders. we tied fireworks together, sent em hurtling into the air, then screamed as they all blew up at once. Here in Dali, cedar boughs were a hot commodity, they are placed in front of doors as blessed doormats. Eventually we ran out of fireworks and started hitting the bottle. Me and Tenz drank about three bottles of Jameson between us. Plus various other party favors. I began headbutting people and such. I guess i tried to start mock-fights with everyone, at least with my buddies. i puked all over the place. Sammy, for the first time in his life, held someone else up and cleaned the sickness off of me. He brought my ass home. That was two days ago. The price for all that fun, all the screaming and yelling and laughter and such, is two days of agony and suffering. For two days i groaned and moaned my way from one lie-down spot to another ... finally, today, i can move. my tummy has forgiven me.

The price is so high ... for the most part I try not to touch that much liquor and on this trip it has been me carrying sammy ... but sometimes a brother just has to let it all hang out. and lord ... it aint worth it in the end.