Taking the bike out on its maiden voyage this year. The sun creeping behind the mountains, less hastily than usual as we’ve become friends, and it would be impolite to leave without saying goodbye. Just a short little ride, jot of jaunt. Not what course to chart, directions spin through my brain and scenes of spring revival curl through my glasses. My mind seizes upon a promising destination, my pedal strokes gain meaning. Turning up Aviation Road, I remember the wind. It throws a playful breeze against my normal rhythm.

I stop for a breather. Bird calls wash over me, engulf me from nowhere, someone pressed unmute, my ears begin to hear. They call for loneliness, they call for love. All the things they’ve dreamed of nestled deeply into their down through the bleaker season. Their calls are strong this year, maybe winter has been forgiving for a change. A drowsy mosquito is wheeling about, to my chagrin and amusement. Shaken out of bed too early, it can’t decide whether to chase me or turn in for the day. All this part of this world where we grew up. The crunchiness of autumn decay, buried under timeless drifts of snow, only to reveal itself again, transfigured like man resurrected.

This moment I am aware of standing still. I am gazing at wind borne caves pecked into sandstone cities under the vast flag of the Jomsom trek. We are clambering like soldiers on campaign onto the wooden benches of a quiet mess hall. Ordering dal baht, our stomachs ask no other questions. Moments of sudden stillness come and go.

60 in a 65

It seems like something Gurdjieff would say. Or even Osho. That we should move through life at a different speed than those around us. We become aware of the car when we shift gears, smoothness interrupted. Stopped in front of a red light at a deserted intersection, for once we hear the car engine idling louder than distraction.

If I drive to Albany at 60 mph as opposed to 70 mph, I spend an extra eight or nine minutes doing so. In the absolute terms of time, why wouldn’t I drive faster?

To taste the food.

A molecule of water is dancing in a stream. The stream narrows, flows fast and deep, clear. Is it possible that this molecule will not travel in the single-minded direction and force of the entire mass of water? Can you imagine the far-flung arms of a galaxy spinning in time to a symphony played over the course of billions of years, and a single star floating in its midst, carefree, unbound by the rules of the great system? In time-lapse photography of the cosmos, a pin of light weaves to and fro as if in a dream, with a mind of its own.

At a different speed, I am passed, passed again. Somehow, I see a little better, I feel a little more awake. Gangly, nameless trees whiz by, each with its secret of a thousand tender buds. I feel more at ease. I am driving of leisure, not of necessity. As I fall further behind the pack, I notice I am not the only one. There are always followers, ready and willing to move to another kind of music. I am lighting this path, old man who drives so slow.

Quick-froze Quiznos

When I think about the waste, I get angry. Tin cans of tuna, plastic jugs of pickled condiments, glass bottles emptied of artificially flavored contents, all thrown directly into the trash, to be collected, and collectively forgotten. Expired product, poof. Bread ends, poof. A magic trick this disappearing act, I know it to be sleight of hand. But it’s okay because, in the end and all things considered, we turn a profit.

Besides, who has the time to think, let alone the luxury to be angry about something ordained from above? My hands are already flying to the chicken, to the scale, to the marinade basket. My head is already craning to peer through the wormhole oven to prognosticate future sandwiches. Without my issuing the directive, still my body does.

“I believe in you.”
“I do it for you.”
“Without the shade it’s a lonely view.”

Kitsch served up by the 1984 machine plays in a brain-numbing broken-record loop. It is not enough for us to occupy your body. We must completely possess your mind-space. You are more productive this way, research proves. You cannot sing, you cannot whistle, you cannot rebel against our background music. It is agonizing and relentless. Myles and I take turns voicing the depths of our loathing as each song comes on … again. Of course, in endurance of will, we are bound to lose to the machine.

At home, I remember a term Lucie coined: gray people. In my mind’s eye, a sea of people are flattened onto the anime page. Slowly, vampirically, they are drained of color, until all that is left is a mere outline of their existence. There is no depth, texture, or detail. Their color has been swallowed by the force of habit. They are the shell without the ghost; repetition has made them automatons who lack even the power of judgment. Certainly they do not have the ability to reflect on the reality that they are subject to and actually become angry over it.

The gray paint is smeared on thick and suffocates, when you’re not looking. Wash it off, wash it off.

The inertial me, a blot of dew hugging skin of earth, how great am I? I think I am nothing. Upheave the earth, then, and I am spirited downhill towards these jewels of power, gobbling into monstrous dimension. The voices that change me set me on different paths, I am sucked away into such thought spaces that sprout goals and ambitions, or fearful wishes at least. A blurry arc of transient splash becomes more than itself, greater than the outline of its midday shadow, not blot but bolt that is more than myself.

Raindrop accelerating and collecting, pooling gathering strength becoming bigger. There is some gravity between me and the drops sitting there patiently waiting to become absorbed, touched and transmuted, rolling into some greater watery snowball, enveloped into a single identity, mass of energy. What is the end? Does it speed off to indeterminate ends, the cliff or sill of life, nomenclature, acknowledgement? or will it come to rest, a standstill with no further hills to leap, sleek surfaces to skim?

Do I sit to evaporate, or is misting away the relentless myth of ethical proselytes? Will I tumble in a scream to a dead halt, or sizzle in my conservation? If I shrink, is it for naught? Tell me, how should this drop of drip move from here?

Little but I Noticed.

No rain now, just a light fog taking hold of the lights and dragging me along the dotted lines tracing a single vanishing point. A white car is following me, not too close for comfort. Surely the car is gendered. Is he following me? Or is she? Through these paths and beyond.

We cut a swath through the stillness of America. I think about shared frames of reference. In a vacuum I could toss something back to her, and she could catch it, wouldn’t zoom by her at close to the speed of sound. Something to throw … a magazine? Flutters even in a vacuum, no good. What else is easily accessible to me … straw dripping with lukewarm tap water from lunch? The cigarette lighter. Passing on the torch to a kindred flame. How our minds wander while our buckled bodies fly.

A yellow signal filters through the rising haze. She’s speeding up, fed up, leaving me in the dust outside the passing lane. Those minutes run off on spindly legs and hide under the kitchen sink, the very dusty spots you could reach but wouldn’t, don’t they? Nab them on the sprint while you’ve got nothing better to do, nobody to blame for that. She’s lifting off from our world, now my world as the rocket pulls level, large as life, then shrinks again red shifted. I dare not even suggest attachment. The speedometer holds steady, not a flicker.

Was she? Even a girl? Speculation on moot issues not barred from activities of the driven. But there is an empty space, a big hollow space that extends to where the lights touch darkness, maybe even further than that, the white car leaves me with. Were we even traversing the same plane? I feel like it could have gone straight through me, sentimental apparition, pushing ahead with conviction while I melt into the mists behind, behind, behind.

Plot Thinner.

Is it a happy ending if the happiness doesn’t last? Or if the happiness is delusional? Or if instead of exuberant joy it is contentment? Or distraction? Is a happy ending just the prologue of another sad ending?

Forgetfulness or masquerading repression swept thoughts from my mind before and after those weekly meetings, but her music was sweeter and I could not play it, I knew, between befores and afters. But somebody killed the adventurer and replaced him with a knower, that’s why I knew even though the knowing was full of awe for the unknown. And her, the dancing sprite flushed with inner knowledge of her own, the secrets which kept her powerful too, painted warmth into breath, a tinkling mystery.

How many notes have I been a miser to play?

The setup: 12 hour China Eastern flight across the Pacific to the Los Angeles International Airport. Haw-Wen and I sit aisle-side.

A beefy guy in a light blue tank top speaks with a deep voice one that suggests wisdom, but is instead spiked with sarcasm. He’s sitting in the central row of seats. The plane hasn’t even taken off yet when it starts. The flight attendant, a cute albeit heavily made-up Chinese girl (they all are), stops by and reminds beefman to buckle-up his son, warbling toddler, in preparation for takeoff.

“He doesn’t want to,” beefbuster replies. The attendant thinks that perhaps he has misunderstood and reiterates her request, but beefmutha does not capitulate. “If he doesn’t want to, I can’t force him. He’ll scream and cry.” The attendant is polite but firm: as a rule all passengers must buckle their safety belts at this time, for their own safety. (Especially young children, for crying out loud!)

Beefbrotha heaves an exaggerated sigh of resignation. “Okay, well then don’t come looking for me when he starts screaming and hollering. Everybody will look at you, it was your fault.” Then he proceeds to call her stupid to her face. Stupid for forcing him to consider the safety of his son, for bringing about the imminent ire of passengers near and far. For controlling his son. She does not pick up on the daggers veiled in his ironic inflection, moves on.

He’s apologizing to the kid even before the seatbelt goes click.

The screams begin. The child skips the whimpering stage outright, proceeding directly to open-throated wails thick with hysteria-inducing tremors, they reverberate in my ears, everyone’s ears, although for the moment we are all being civil, polite, patient, pretenders. Do you hear anything? No, nothing, you? The prima donna climbs octaves heavenward despite the grounded plane, I swear the shrill cries have pierced the roof of our tin can, making a beeline for the ISS miles above, already taking evasive maneuvers. Sheeeeow! Tense faces convulsed in horror plastered against its triple-paned window on earth watch the siren’s missile blow past; a banshee shriek stings the tympanic membranes of the poor folk monitoring at mission control.

The child is no baby. Just moments ago he was prancing around on his seat on his own two feet. I estimate he is around two years old. Beefbuddy says something to him in a muted speech which only causes the disturbance to escalate. Something to the effect of, “Sorry buddy, they said I had to do this. Don’t worry, everything’s gonna be okay.” Words voiced merely to ease his own conscience, ease out of responsibility for the scene. The subtext: It’s Not My Fault. More afraid of being honest to his son than abusing the rest of the world. The child himself does not understand the words, but the tone of the message is clear: his father does not stand in his way, a mandate to continue the screeching sideshow.

Those fleeting, manipulative glances … are you watching? At least I have you by your ears. These are not real cries. It is decided: he will not be consoled.

Yet nobody dares interfere. Nobody complains, offers a sharp word of criticism, even exchanges disapproval with neighbors. Even though the earsplitting screams are hammering our mental states into psychoses it seems we are helpless, utterly powerless, unarmed, unable to defend, turtles flipped and flailing while pecked away alive. Why? What is this pact of nonintervention, silent suffering? Pacifism? What, you want me to say something? Everyone must be imagining the hot retort: “Don’t you tell me how to raise my son!” And how to reply to this assertion of parental prerogative? “I wouldn’t presume to, seeing that you’re doing such a good job of it!” Everyone looks like they are going to snap, but nobody does, dares to. This is precisely the problem-solving approach that gets us in deep shit every time: ignore the problem, and it will go away. Ignorance – not rejection – is the antithesis of acceptance, for to reject something we must at least face it, acknowledge its existence, while to ignore it never requires such acknowledgment. And active ignorance is just another kind of repression, repression being the source of all manners of mental imbalance, including obsession. As Osho would say, comma.

Finally, I turn around, lock eyes with the kid, and shovel out an unblinking eyeful of reproval while I’ve got his attention. Quite quickly the little creature pipes down, looking a little self-conscious; he knows what he’s doing is wrong, he knows it. He knows censure when he sees it, and is willing to appease the wronged. In fact, it must seem intensely strange to him that it took so long for anyone to notice his cries; how odd that I have to wail for an hour before anyone hears me! Guided by some unverbalized principle, we suppressed our natural responses to the cries: concern, irritation, anger. The child does not understand our behavior; when others around him cry he does not pretend not to care, because it is instinctive for him to care, and because he is a fearlessly curious being. Why, then, is it that the adults he finds himself surrounded by today provide no indication at all that they hear his own cries? Are they all deaf? Is he invisible, trapped in another dimension of reality?

But we are all trapped in our own dimensions, here.

Later on, Beefjerky is fooling around with the headphone cable. The same flight attendant passes by and asks if he needs some assistance. He indicates that the sound isn’t working. She bends over to try the audio jack herself, finds that it is as the he says. She suggests that he use his the connection on his son’s seat. He says he’s already tried that. She offers to find him a new seat.

His voice dripping with sarcasm, “Oh great, let’s wake up my son so I can watch a movie.”

Chinese really have a hard time understanding sarcasm. Perhaps they have always considered attacks through sarcasm as immature, too insubstantial to constitute critique worthy of rebuttal. At any rate, it is wasted on her; she wants to know if the seat change really is okay.

“Yeah, sure, sure, just great.”

I think to myself, nobody is forcing you to watch the movie. If you really cared about the sound sleep of your peacefully dozing son, you could sacrifice watching the movie. It’s probably a piece of shite anyway.

The woman says something, then indicates that the man should move to the front. “Well you said it was in the back. Are you speaking English, or … Chinglish?”

To which the reply could only be, “That depends, are you speaking English, or … American?”

How Ptolemaic is this country I am returning to, my home? Are we just a bunch of whiners? As globalization causes the bubble to shrink, do we retreat further into the depths of familiarity, away from the light of engagement? Are we cursed to remain in fear of each other and of ourselves for being what we are? I ride home on the wings of these questions.

All I want to do now is write. I know what is coming – the feeling of rapidly being sucked into another world, a familiar one, yet one that causes so many inspirations, real and extant now, to fade away into the recesses of time like a morning dream. I know what the words spoken will be. I Can’t Believe I’m Back. And as beliefs remelt reshape reharden the interior meanings will be locked deeper. Now I want to release them, now before time is overripe; they will erupt through the surface like a float released, buoyant on a sea of clarity.

Osho says that all beautiful states are paradoxical. He gives the example of love – that state so often described, encircled with verbiage crowding around the Kohinoor at a guarded distance; the words try to extend to meet it, physically touch it, but are gently held back by some mysterious force, the denial of contact. Love as experienced – not as talked about, not as imagined – conflicts unfailingly with rational thought. It seems impossible; it fits into no plans; its arrival or departure guarantee no warning. It operates completely contrary to the established rules. We can deny that it exists, and thereby kill it in ourselves. But even this is an affirmation of its reality, for what other realities can we erase simply by believing so?

Walking down a back street of Mengla I think about the separation of time and space between creative thought and the expression of it. The beautiful state of inspiration is a sudden free fall, a slippery misstep that sends us careening out of control, no chance to put up our defenses, very little to reach back through the envelope of reason and grab a pen, a brush, a tape recorder and we are swept away! The conflict arises for me because I want to savor the moment, but then save it for later. Maybe it will be useful for me. Or I could share it with others. I would like to admire it. The paradox is that if we are not creating at the moment of inspiration, if we try to bottle instead of channel, when we do create the inspiration will be gone and our works lifeless.

In the Royal Palace Museum in Luang Prabang, Laos, the gifts of various countries to the state are on exhibit. Of unflattering note is the cabinet in the northeastern corner of the display hall. Contained within are the gifts of the United States of America. Wooden plaques commemorating this or that diplomatic event. The key to the city of Knoxville Tennessee. A plain pen holder that manifestly has never been used (are they ever?). A plastic model of the moon lander. And a special gift, the grandest of them all, presented with a written note from Nixon: encased in a bubble of epoxy, a tiny black rock hangs suspended and suffocated. The note indicates that the imprisoned object is of nearly incalculable value. It is a Moon Rock, retrieved, hand picked from that smiling sphere a quarter million miles away – an amazing feat possible only thanks to the dedication and determination of a generation of extraordinary engineers, scientists, and fervent masses. But if so, is this really a heartfelt gift? Or simply a laughably immodest demonstration of a country’s ego, the enormity of which warps sense with such gravity that this sad stone, this pinnacle of modern achievement, this victory of political ideology is perceived to be beautiful? It is nothing so profound. Compared to the delicately embroidered gowns from India, capriciously carved ivory caricature of Confucius from China, ethereal painted pottery from Japan, meticulously ornamented goblets and silverware from Thailand, it is a stupefying tribute to ugliness and thoughtlessness. For even a two line aside scribbled on a napkin by the president in a moment of reflection would have had more life and beauty. The overall impression is that the United States is a country that has forgotten all that is beautiful. Insincere flattery is its art and craft.

Like the black rock I freeze the dream in place. It is on display, to be marveled and ogled, praised and appraised. But it is just the corpse of a dream, locked between It Was and It Will Be to eternity. The Uncertainty Principle prevails; I have completely lost the sense of its direction. Where was the dream moving to? Into which spaces was it extending? It goes nowhere now. I have seen it; to view it a second time is not necessary. I have severed its ties with the past; now it does not float in a stream but stands in a dour puddle. No future is possible. The knowledge that inspiration was once alive, but then was slain by me, collapses upon my worthless pen like a millstone. (I must write nownownow.)

Down a bumpy dirt road past the teacher’s college in Luang Prabang, a peaceful field of green nurses the bones of Chinese immigrants from Red River County in Yunnan province (红河县). Weathered tablets chiseled with amateurish characters tell of their living to a ripe old age in the new land; born during the first world war, recently deceased. These are the ones who spoke Chinese no longer, who took Lao, sticky rice, That Chomsi gleaming down from the apex of Phusi Hill to be emblems of their home. Flanking this humble patch of graves is the Vietnamese contingent. Black and white photographs slotted into the tomb markers, some recumbently rectangular, others shaped like stupas, testify to the premortem forms commemorated. And just a bit further down the chirping path blossoming with butterflies, there is a small whitewashed temple where young novices, monks in training, are having their last meal of the day, before the high azimuth sun.

Their slender, wispy forms belie the number of their years; they are 15, 16, 17, and look scarcely ten. The more I observe, the more I feel they are not at all the sage aspiring lamas of Tibet. They are simply children. The oldest, Somsanouk, is eager to try his self-taught English with me. The other boys are curious and helpless; they cannot understand our simple conversation, and my conscientious Lao is still hopelessly limited. I can only smile and laugh with them, which is enough! They are not bored. Somsanouk asks me if I can buy a book for him, “New Interchange: English for International Communication.” He has nothing to study from now, and he really wants to learn.

I ride Chetak to the Phusi Market. The first volume of “New Interchange” is 22,000 kip. Of course it is photocopied, the textbook and workbook cleverly bound into a single volume of thin darkly-inked pages. There are accompanying tapes; they are another 38,000 kip. I bargain givingly and pay just shy of six dollars for the lot. (Seventy for the real deal.) Does she wonder why a foreigner buys an English book? Her quizzical smile.

It’s past seven when I return to the temple. The novices have just finished their evening prayers and gather around me as I extract the prize from my backpack. Gingerly, reverently, breathlessly, Somsanouk receives the book from my hands. His faces glows with a flushed radiance. He opens it as if it were a thousand-year old manuscript that might disintegrate from a single negligent touch. He is completely absorbed for a moment. Then he beams at me, “Thank you very much. You really are a good friend.” It is the incomparable smile of a child who receives with awe the Christmas toy of his dreams, who never expected anything more than another anonymous day of hardship, whose dream was nothing more extravagant than a small wooden airplane, a pencil, or a pair of warm shoes. The expression of boundless joy I have rarely experienced. For having shared his beautiful smile, I feel a gratitude perhaps surpassing his own.

Richard and I meet an older man from Zürich, Switzerland who tells us he is sponsoring the university education of two brothers, the first of whom he met as a novice. We get to talking about accommodation in Luang Prabang. “When you get to be my age,” he explains, “you need a bit of comfort.” He pays 120 dollars a night for the comfort he needs and the swimming pool. Richard and I hide our shock and incredulity bordering on bitterness and outrage, until he leaves us at least. How can reality have such a quality of absurdity? Our rooms are 2 dollars a night. Yet we are all the rich foreigners.

I take a bus to a city near the Lao-China border. The sawngthaew for the rest of the way barely manages to avoid becoming mired in the sinking wet mud. Is this really the main overland transport corridor linking Laos with the red giant? It is more believable on the other side, where a tidy row of sparkling Chinese storefronts springs from the good earth like a moist mushroom grove after tender rains. As I step towards the line of demarcation, familiar shouts erupt from minibus drivers, hailing me to come with them into their cars; a gaggle of money changing women prepare to swamp me with generous (according to them) offers for my remaining kip. According to them. According to. Ecstasy Of Chinese! Immediately I elevate to a height towering over the linguistically bewildered foreigners in tow. My potently pumped muscles inflate and bulge under sweat-stained T-shirt, sinews bristling with raw willenergy, the backpack a mere fiber-strapped raisin on my hulkish deltoids. I HAVE THE POWERRRRR!!! Stepping across that line, through that portal, I transmogrify from meekish wayfaring ant to chest-pounding superbeing. The minivan barely has enough room for me! My chi-filled corpuscles sprawl out over three rows of seats and my skull leaves a lasting impression on the roof.

Wait a moment. One paved moment. Unzip and reveal the cellphone from protected pocket. Reality wavers and scintillates in superpositions of states. I could collapse to a singularity like that dewdrop I once was in a shrew’s instant, if. If. Nokia wake up.

Deet deet.

欢迎您来到美丽
的“孔雀之乡”西
双版纳，中国移
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向家人报平安！
版纳雷阵雨，30
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句号。 A circle completed.

I sit unsatisfied in front of this word. This and the next. In Lesley’s apartment embattled with afternoon air flushed with squealing children’s footfalls, ungraciously honking motorcycles and taxis sweeping them to the sides of the road, pop music brazenly saturating the would-be silences in between. I fight with my pen, but they have me by the ears. Already I yearn for the expansive spaces of hills rustled by Tibetan winds, crackling wood stove reveries, crab-crawled sands. Give me this space. For no reason do I leave but to save myself.

Beloved friend, this chapter is ended. An era unto itself. I am grateful for our bonds, whether new or old, near or far, by blood bread or breath. May they transcend the trials of psychology and geography and grow into trees reaching into the sublime, branching to infinitude. Please accept my warmest thanks for accompanying me on this most mystical and improbable of journeys. A journey into the selves of the world and the self of my self. I am eager to share so much more with you. For the journey, unlike the chapter, is never ended.

Drying the ink this page
Dipping deep into the well again
With love

Haw-Bin / Bino / 皓斌

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