Machina
A trip up to Mugecuo (æœ¨æ ¼æŽª) lake today. Reading a smattering of news, an interview with John Gilmore on groklaw, increasing engagement between North Korea and many countries in spite of hard line isolation from the US, thinking about online security and the possible compromises existing in message digest algorithms, one time pads (OTP), IBM leveraging its copyrights in kernel code against SCO, hypothesizing fusion projects creating micro-singularities, and other geeky news. No desire to write emails right now … only to absorb, absorb, absorb, and feel in touch with the outside world. A result of today’s journey to the wide open spaces?
150 yuan hired us a jolly taxi driver who took us down the road to the elevated lake, which petered-out into dirt tracks, bumpy hodge-podges that remotely resemble cobblestone, only to return to paved paths, sooner or later. Found it a little difficult to breathe at the final elevation, which the LP reports at 3700 meters. The horse trek was disappointing, due to the simple avarice of our guides, who successfully wrestled money from us for ostensibly performing a silly prayer ritual around a makeshift stupa on a grassy clearing called Honghai Caoping (红海è‰åª). I’m sorry, there is nothing sacred or spiritual or even interesting about pay-to-perform religious acts. Speaking cynically, those saps have sold their souls to Mammon.
Yesterday I visited the lamasery here in Kangding (康定). I entered the prayer hall and found three rows of crimson-robed, youngish looking monks chanting scriptures, a wonderous polyphony that took me through realms of fantasy when I closed my eyes, reflecting on the agelessness of such confluences of speech and song. Other smiling monks shuffled barefoot from chanting monk to chanting monk, offering to refill their bowls with some mysterious liquid substance (water?). Joking and distraction were not uncommon; eyes flicked to me, to the doorway, all around. How many of them will see their bonds of worship to the end? What will those who leave to brave the uncertain edges of the outside world go on to accomplish? I could not settle for a life of such restriction; perhaps simplicity is something I have been engineered to avoid. When the car careens off the cliff, I will not pray; I will be completely occupied with how to secure or brace my head and neck so as to maximize my chance for survival.
I was thinking about the old Ford Tempo a few days ago. It was a rather hefty car endowed with an engine I found non-too-powerful, especially when climbing hills. But the moment of ecstasy came after the pinnacle, when the iron weight of the vehicle would nearly make it lurch forward, eager to conquer the downhill like a predator on the hunt for fresh game. The axles never felt as well-oiled, gliding greased lightning, like one of those matchbox cars set loose down the death-defying slope of a bathtub. I finally realized what the draw of those steel replicas was in a lucid instant, playing with a fire red Skyline at Hofan’s place. The magic starts under the belly of the car, where the axles, engine, muffler, brakes, and other guts are faithfully reproduced. Then there’s the paint job, detailed yet vivid. The driver’s accoutrements are all visible inside the cockpit too – stick shift, seat design, seatbelt, instrument panel on the dash. The cars feel substantial in one’s hand, not cheap and plasticky and eminently breakable like all of the economical toys being mass-produced today, but tough and commanding finesse, just like their life-sized counterparts. I’m sure the Ford Tempo never made it as a Hotwheels matchbox car – not even close. But despite its lack of power and homely exterior, its penchant for zoom down down down, conquering the hill after Exit 22, leading up to Exit 23 and always driving the speedometer dangerously close to the maximum recordable 85 mph, has left a glowing impression and memory on me. As I continue to experience the amazing feats performed by meek little vehicles, mere husks of chattering steel bones, in China.