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| author | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-07-28 13:43:36 -0500 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-07-28 13:43:36 -0500 |
| commit | a30c790edea652494e7481f6798047a3bc1fd4ea (patch) | |
| tree | b0936860abd6767716f56c68e305d8f5e0e38bd4 /bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006 | |
| parent | 9a620cf42bf1fe6977e378bd834b41ff4a593dde (diff) | |
added a backup of old pages that are no longer live
Diffstat (limited to 'bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006')
122 files changed, 23507 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cd1689 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock.amp @@ -0,0 +1,173 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Are You Amplified to Rock?</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Are You Amplified to Rock?"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/bangkokriver.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Bangkok, Thailand"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="TH-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Are You Amplified to Rock?" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf" /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-01T18:37:48" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/bangkokriver.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Are You Amplified to Rock?", + "description": "Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf", + "datePublished": "2006-01-01T18:37:48", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; + line-height: 1.73; + font-family: Georgia, serif; + background-color: #fff; + color: #333; + padding: 1em; +} +nav { + font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; + max-width: 60em; + margin: 0 auto; +} +main { + max-width: 60em; + margin: 0 auto; +} +main footer { + text-align: right; +} +a { + text-decoration: underline; + color: #c63; +} +nav a { + text-decoration: none; + text-transform: uppercase; + color: #222; +} +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5 { + line-height: 1; + font-weight: bold; +} +h1 { + font-size: 1.5rem; + color: #666; +} +h2 { + font-size: 1.125rem; + color: #555; +} +h3 { + font-size: 1rem; + color: #444; +} +h4 { + font-size: 0.875rem; +} +h5 { + font-size: 0.75rem; +} +h1 a, h1 a *, +h2 a, h2 a *, +h3 a, h3 a *, +h4 a, h4 a * { + text-decoration: none; + font-weight: bold +} +code { + font-size: 0.875rem; + font-family: "Courier New",monospace; +} +pre { + white-space: pre-wrap; + word-wrap: break-word; +} +blockquote { + font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; + font-size: 0.875rem; +} +blockquote * { + font-style: italic; +} +blockquote * em { + font-weight: bold; +} +blockquote * strong { + font-style: normal; +} +hr { + border: none; + border-bottom: 0.0625rem dotted #ccc; +} +.hide {display: none;} +</style> +<style>body {opacity: 0}</style><noscript><style>body {opacity: 1}</style></noscript> +<script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> +</head> +<body> + +<nav> +<a href="https://luxagraf.net/"> +luxagraf</a> +</nav> + +<main class="h-entry"> + <article class="h-entry hentry post--article" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/Article"> + <header id="header" class="post--header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post--title" itemprop="headline">Are You Amplified to Rock?</h1> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2006-01-01T18:37:48" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>1, 2006</span></time> + <p class="p-author author hide" itemprop="author"><span class="byline-author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></span></p> + <aside class="p-location h-adr adr post--location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <span class="p-region">Bangkok</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/thailand/" title="travel writing from Thailand">Thailand</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p class="pull-quote">"Are you amplified to rock?<br/>Are you hoping for a contact?<br/>I’ll be with you<br/>without you<br/>again"<br/>- <cite>Robert Pollard</cite></p> +<p><break> +<span class="drop">H</span>appy New Year from luxagraf. I hope everyone had a wonderful and semi-safe New Years Eve. I will be back to traveling and doing my usual, once-a-week-or-so postings again in the very near future, stay tuned.</break></p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..17c49f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock.html @@ -0,0 +1,331 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Are You Amplified To Rock? - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf"> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="13.761790973148347, 100.4934453824343" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="13.761790973148347; 100.4934453824343" /> + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Bangkok, Thailand"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="-"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Are You Amplified to Rock?" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf" /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-01T18:37:48" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Scott Gilbertson" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="/media/images/post-images/2008/bangkokriver.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Are You Amplified to Rock?"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="/media/images/post-images/2008/bangkokriver.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "https://schema.org", + "@type": "Article", + "mainEntityOfPage": { + "@type": "WebPage", + "@id": "https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock" + }, + "headline": "Are You Amplified to Rock?", + "datePublished": "2006-01-01T18:37:48+04:00", + "dateModified": "2006-01-01T18:37:48+04:00", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Organization", + "name": "Luxagraf", + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "https://luxagraf.net/media/img/logo-white.jpg" + } + }, + "description": "Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf" +} +</script> + +</head> +<body > + <div class="wrapper" id="wrapper"> + <div class="header-wrapper"> + <header class="site-banner"> + <div id="logo"> + <a href="/" title="Home">Luxagraf</a> + <span class="sitesubtitle">Walk Slowly</span> + </div> + <nav> + <ul> + <li><a href="/jrnl/" title="Stories of life on the road.">Jrnl</a> & <a href="/field-notes/" title="Short stories, snapshots of daily life on the road.">Field Notes</a></li> + <li><a href="/guide/" title="Advice, Tools, Tips and Tricks for Full Time Van or RV Life.">Guides</a></li> + <li><a href="/newsletter/" title="The 'friends of a long year' newsletter">newsletter</a></li> + <li><a href="/about" title="About Scott">About</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + </header> + </div> + <ol class="bl" id="breadcrumbs" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BreadcrumbList"> + <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem"><a itemprop="item" href="/"><span itemprop="name">Home</span></a> → + <meta itemprop="position" content="1" /> + </li> + <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem"> + + <a href="/jrnl/" itemprop="item"><span itemprop="name">jrnl</span></a> + <meta itemprop="position" content="2" /> + <meta itemprop="position" content="2" /> + </li> + </ol> + + + <main> + <article class="h-entry hentry entry-content content" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/BlogPosting"> + <header id="header" class="post-header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post-title" itemprop="headline">Are You Amplified to Rock?</h1> + + <div class="post-linewrapper"> + <div class="p-location h-adr adr post-location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <h3 class="h-adr" itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"><span class="p-region" itemprop="addressRegion">Bangkok</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/thailand/" title="travel writing from Thailand"><span itemprop="addressCountry">Thailand</span></a></h3> + – <a href="" onclick="showMap(13.761790973148347, 100.4934453824343, { type:'point', lat:'13.761790973148347', lon:'100.4934453824343'}); return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-01T18:37:48" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>1, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p class="pull-quote">“Are you amplified to rock?<br />Are you hoping for a contact?<br />I’ll be with you<br />without you<br />again”<br />- <cite>Robert Pollard</cite></p> + +<p><break> +<span class="drop">H</span>appy New Year from luxagraf. I hope everyone had a wonderful and semi-safe New Years Eve. I will be back to traveling and doing my usual, once-a-week-or-so postings again in the very near future, stay tuned.</p></p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005" rel="prev" title=" Merry Christmas 2005">Merry Christmas 2005</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/brink-clouds" rel="next" title=" Brink of the Clouds">Brink of the Clouds</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="32" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833483" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="52a6b2244dece2a60b45cbd26980d303eb0306ef" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+<break>
+<span class="drop">H</span>appy New Year from luxagraf. I hope everyone had a wonderful and semi-safe New Years Eve. I will be back to traveling and doing my usual, once-a-week-or-so postings again in the very near future, stay tuned.</p> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/brink-clouds.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/brink-clouds.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..682859c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/brink-clouds.amp @@ -0,0 +1,183 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Brink of the Clouds</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/brink-clouds"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/01/brink-clouds"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter and nowhere in Bangkok is it more so than in the view from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel"/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Brink of the Clouds"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/bangkokfrombaiyoke.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Bangkok, Thailand"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="TH-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Brink of the Clouds" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/brink-clouds" /> + <meta property="og:description" content=""The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter and nowhere in Bangkok is it more so than in the view from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel" /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-03T20:38:27" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/bangkokfrombaiyoke.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bangkoknightscape.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/baiyokepillar.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Brink of the Clouds", + "description": ""The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter and nowhere in Bangkok is it more so than in the view from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel", + "datePublished": "2006-01-03T20:38:27", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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It stands a singularly massive, circular structure jutting up into the Bangkok sky and looking up at it from the bridge over the canal gave me a mild feeling of vertigo, something that has always happened to me when gazing up at some great height. Strange but I have always experienced vertigo looking up at heights, never looking down from them. </p> +<p><break> +The Baiyoke Sky Hotel is circular and the revolving observation deck on the eighty-seventh floor slowly swivels around at a soaring height of three hundred meters and, though the Empire State building is taller than the Baiyoke (by eighty one meters), is not as dramatic from the top. The Baiyoke has sheer, architecturally unbroken sides, when you lean out you look straight down and, unlike the Empire State building which is surrounded by other high rises, the Baiyoke massively dwarfs everything else in the area, which makes it seem much higher than the Empire State Building. </break></p> +<p>However, for me, the most amazing thing about the Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the elevator. Somehow, seemingly by bending the rules of physics, LG has managed to construct an elevator that ascends nearly three hundred meters in forty seconds and produces almost no discernible sense of motion. Not only is that faster than any elevator I've ever ridden in, but even while watching the city lights shrink toward my feet, I still could not convince myself that I was moving. The sensation was almost creepy as if the movement were staged; the elevator motionless and a fake background rolling by; my ears popping at the rapid change in height were the only tangible sense of motion I could feel. It was such an extraordinary experience that before I left I rode it twice more up and down, just to make sure that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Bangkok Thailand Nightscape" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bangkoknightscape.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>The physics defying ride exited on the eighty fifth floor and from there I made my way up two flights of stairs to the observation deck. The Bangkok nightscape stretched out beneath me like radioactive paint flung on a black felt canvas. From such heights it is difficult to pick out individual people and even cars on the highways and overpasses, the streaking red taillights and the dirty, yellow-white headlights, the color of angel wings too long in the smoggy air, become one continuous river of light flowing amongst the glittering black rock of buildings. The deck creaked as it turned and the occasional thumps and bumps of the mismatched joints beneath the steel top were the only sounds as I glided around the hotel, which gave me the sensation of standing on a ballerina's shoulder as she turned a slow, continuous pirouette round the clouds. </p> +<p>In those moments when the mechanisms of turning fell silent, the faint sounds of the city could be heard rising from below, nothing distinct, more like the hum of a computer when you walk in the room, or the white noise of your refrigerator droning that you don't notice until you're sitting there late at night in the silence of an empty and sleeping house where suddenly the sound of the coils and Freon become an almost deafening noise. So with the sound of Bangkok from a great height, a height from which even Celine could not piss, though apparently the metal grating, which makes a nice brace for long exposure night shots, is the result of a team of Norwegians who base jumped from the deck in 2000. I tried to find out if anyone had ever committed suicide from the deck, but no one would give me an answer. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/baiyokepillar.jpg" width="143"></amp-img>After having my fill of the heights I wandered down to the bar area two floors below the deck where supposedly the elevator ticket was good for a free drink, descending as I did into a candlelit darkness. Everyone seemed to be clearly out just as I arrived, but isn't that the way it always seems? I took a seat in one of the red vinyl chairs near the entrance just in front of a baluster that seemed to be imitating a telescope, starting small at the base and progressively growing out toward the ceiling, little circular shelves, a perfect matchbox race track complete with tubular florescent road lights that wound around, beads of blue light driving up the tiny path toward the ceiling. The tiny blue lights and a few candles were the only light in the bar. The darkness was occasionally punctuated by the lightning flashes of snap happy tourists at the window in front of the elevator apparently unaware of the limited range of such bulbs, but, sitting next to the window staring out at the city below the combined effect of the height and flashes of light gave me the feeling of sitting in some great stationary thunderhead, as if at any moment the wind might kick up and carry us westward dumping torrents of rain over the neighborhoods until finally we would dissipate over the South China Sea.</p> +<p>As I sat in the lounge sipping whiskey from a crystal cordial glass which somewhat contrasted with the otherwise futuristic decor, I tried to calculate how long you would fall from this height. I'm not real great at math, but think you have about 12 seconds to regret your choice, or if you're Norwegian, to open your chute.</p> +<p>"The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter, "its scent is dreams," and though he may have been referring to New York, his words ring true, perhaps to a lesser degree but true nevertheless, in every large city. Or maybe you just have to be a lover of cities to feel it. We seem to embrace the hive replicas built perhaps from memories embedded in our DNA; we feel safety in numbers, a desire to be close to one another, yet seek to find our own honey in the comb as it were. And so cities become our greatest cathedrals, redolent with our most venerable dreams reflected out of the darkness of our fears and nightmares. Perhaps this is why night in the city is so compelling—this mixture of dualities, the one place where we can see everything together and mingling. </p> +<p>I always feel younger in cities, something about the city at night makes everything seem possible, the sound of the wheels on the concrete, the determined and purposeful stride of strangers around you on the sidewalks, everything seems to have its place in the city, it grows out of the darkness of night to bring light. Even in Bangkok as I walked to the Baiyoke Hotel I found myself thinking of New York and how much I miss it, particularly the sound of the wheels on sixth avenue in the rain, that wet hiss punctuated with splashes and the rain muted sound of horns; in October when it starts to turn cold and all you want to do is get off the street into somewhere warm with friends, but something makes you linger there on the street watching the endless glitter of lights and windows reflecting and refracting in some perpetual bouncing circle so that you can feel earth turning, as if the energy of its core were right beneath you.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/brink-clouds.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/brink-clouds.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3de2b47 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/brink-clouds.html @@ -0,0 +1,338 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Brink Of The Clouds - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content=""The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter and nowhere in Bangkok is it more so than in the view from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel"> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/brink-clouds" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="13.750921779579318, 100.54314135105552" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="13.750921779579318; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-03T20:38:27" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>3, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">T</span>wo days after Christmas, I had just finished some internet business at the McBen Coffeehouse on Sukhumvit Soi 8, but I didn’t yet feel like heading back to Khoasan Rd, so I took the sky train to Siam Square and walked over the Khlong Saen Saep canal to the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, which, as it proudly proclaims to anyone who will listen, is the tallest hotel in the world—not building mind you, I believe that honor goes to the Taipei 101 in Taiwan—the Baiyoke Sky is the tallest <em>hotel</em>. </p> +<p>It can claim the tallest building in Bangkok though and indeed all of Thailand. It stands a singularly massive, circular structure jutting up into the Bangkok sky and looking up at it from the bridge over the canal gave me a mild feeling of vertigo, something that has always happened to me when gazing up at some great height. Strange but I have always experienced vertigo looking up at heights, never looking down from them. </p> +<p><break> +The Baiyoke Sky Hotel is circular and the revolving observation deck on the eighty-seventh floor slowly swivels around at a soaring height of three hundred meters and, though the Empire State building is taller than the Baiyoke (by eighty one meters), is not as dramatic from the top. The Baiyoke has sheer, architecturally unbroken sides, when you lean out you look straight down and, unlike the Empire State building which is surrounded by other high rises, the Baiyoke massively dwarfs everything else in the area, which makes it seem much higher than the Empire State Building. </p> +<p>However, for me, the most amazing thing about the Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the elevator. Somehow, seemingly by bending the rules of physics, LG has managed to construct an elevator that ascends nearly three hundred meters in forty seconds and produces almost no discernible sense of motion. Not only is that faster than any elevator I’ve ever ridden in, but even while watching the city lights shrink toward my feet, I still could not convince myself that I was moving. The sensation was almost creepy as if the movement were staged; the elevator motionless and a fake background rolling by; my ears popping at the rapid change in height were the only tangible sense of motion I could feel. It was such an extraordinary experience that before I left I rode it twice more up and down, just to make sure that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.</p> +<p><img alt="Bangkok Thailand Nightscape" class="postpicright" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bangkoknightscape.jpg" width="200"/>The physics defying ride exited on the eighty fifth floor and from there I made my way up two flights of stairs to the observation deck. The Bangkok nightscape stretched out beneath me like radioactive paint flung on a black felt canvas. From such heights it is difficult to pick out individual people and even cars on the highways and overpasses, the streaking red taillights and the dirty, yellow-white headlights, the color of angel wings too long in the smoggy air, become one continuous river of light flowing amongst the glittering black rock of buildings. The deck creaked as it turned and the occasional thumps and bumps of the mismatched joints beneath the steel top were the only sounds as I glided around the hotel, which gave me the sensation of standing on a ballerina’s shoulder as she turned a slow, continuous pirouette round the clouds. </p> +<p>In those moments when the mechanisms of turning fell silent, the faint sounds of the city could be heard rising from below, nothing distinct, more like the hum of a computer when you walk in the room, or the white noise of your refrigerator droning that you don’t notice until you’re sitting there late at night in the silence of an empty and sleeping house where suddenly the sound of the coils and Freon become an almost deafening noise. So with the sound of Bangkok from a great height, a height from which even Celine could not piss, though apparently the metal grating, which makes a nice brace for long exposure night shots, is the result of a team of Norwegians who base jumped from the deck in 2000. I tried to find out if anyone had ever committed suicide from the deck, but no one would give me an answer. </p> +<p><img alt="" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/baiyokepillar.jpg" width="143"/>After having my fill of the heights I wandered down to the bar area two floors below the deck where supposedly the elevator ticket was good for a free drink, descending as I did into a candlelit darkness. Everyone seemed to be clearly out just as I arrived, but isn’t that the way it always seems? I took a seat in one of the red vinyl chairs near the entrance just in front of a baluster that seemed to be imitating a telescope, starting small at the base and progressively growing out toward the ceiling, little circular shelves, a perfect matchbox race track complete with tubular florescent road lights that wound around, beads of blue light driving up the tiny path toward the ceiling. The tiny blue lights and a few candles were the only light in the bar. The darkness was occasionally punctuated by the lightning flashes of snap happy tourists at the window in front of the elevator apparently unaware of the limited range of such bulbs, but, sitting next to the window staring out at the city below the combined effect of the height and flashes of light gave me the feeling of sitting in some great stationary thunderhead, as if at any moment the wind might kick up and carry us westward dumping torrents of rain over the neighborhoods until finally we would dissipate over the South China Sea.</p> +<p>As I sat in the lounge sipping whiskey from a crystal cordial glass which somewhat contrasted with the otherwise futuristic decor, I tried to calculate how long you would fall from this height. I’m not real great at math, but think you have about 12 seconds to regret your choice, or if you’re Norwegian, to open your chute.</p> +<p>“The city is a cathedral” writes James Salter, “its scent is dreams,” and though he may have been referring to New York, his words ring true, perhaps to a lesser degree but true nevertheless, in every large city. Or maybe you just have to be a lover of cities to feel it. We seem to embrace the hive replicas built perhaps from memories embedded in our DNA; we feel safety in numbers, a desire to be close to one another, yet seek to find our own honey in the comb as it were. And so cities become our greatest cathedrals, redolent with our most venerable dreams reflected out of the darkness of our fears and nightmares. Perhaps this is why night in the city is so compelling—this mixture of dualities, the one place where we can see everything together and mingling. </p> +<p>I always feel younger in cities, something about the city at night makes everything seem possible, the sound of the wheels on the concrete, the determined and purposeful stride of strangers around you on the sidewalks, everything seems to have its place in the city, it grows out of the darkness of night to bring light. Even in Bangkok as I walked to the Baiyoke Hotel I found myself thinking of New York and how much I miss it, particularly the sound of the wheels on sixth avenue in the rain, that wet hiss punctuated with splashes and the rain muted sound of horns; in October when it starts to turn cold and all you want to do is get off the street into somewhere warm with friends, but something makes you linger there on the street watching the endless glitter of lights and windows reflecting and refracting in some perpetual bouncing circle so that you can feel earth turning, as if the energy of its core were right beneath you.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock" rel="prev" title=" Are You Amplified to Rock?">Are You Amplified to Rock?</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/buddha-bounty" rel="next" title=" Buddha on the Bounty">Buddha on the Bounty</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="33" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833483" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="1abb780760bec7062f79334c35fcc8b17e9b5b86" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+It can claim the tallest building in Bangkok though and indeed all of Thailand. It stands a singularly massive, circular structure jutting up into the Bangkok sky and looking up at it from the bridge over the canal gave me a mild feeling of vertigo, something that has always happened to me when gazing up at some great height. Strange but I have always experienced vertigo looking up at heights, never looking down from them.
+
+<break>
+The Baiyoke Sky Hotel is circular and the revolving observation deck on the eighty-seventh floor slowly swivels around at a soaring height of three hundred meters and, though the Empire State building is taller than the Baiyoke (by eighty one meters), is not as dramatic from the top. The Baiyoke has sheer, architecturally unbroken sides, when you lean out you look straight down and, unlike the Empire State building which is surrounded by other high rises, the Baiyoke massively dwarfs everything else in the area, which makes it seem much higher than the Empire State Building.
+
+However, for me, the most amazing thing about the Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the elevator. Somehow, seemingly by bending the rules of physics, LG has managed to construct an elevator that ascends nearly three hundred meters in forty seconds and produces almost no discernible sense of motion. Not only is that faster than any elevator I've ever ridden in, but even while watching the city lights shrink toward my feet, I still could not convince myself that I was moving. The sensation was almost creepy as if the movement were staged; the elevator motionless and a fake background rolling by; my ears popping at the rapid change in height were the only tangible sense of motion I could feel. It was such an extraordinary experience that before I left I rode it twice more up and down, just to make sure that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bangkoknightscape.jpg" width="200" height="150" class="postpicright" alt="Bangkok Thailand Nightscape" />The physics defying ride exited on the eighty fifth floor and from there I made my way up two flights of stairs to the observation deck. The Bangkok nightscape stretched out beneath me like radioactive paint flung on a black felt canvas. From such heights it is difficult to pick out individual people and even cars on the highways and overpasses, the streaking red taillights and the dirty, yellow-white headlights, the color of angel wings too long in the smoggy air, become one continuous river of light flowing amongst the glittering black rock of buildings. The deck creaked as it turned and the occasional thumps and bumps of the mismatched joints beneath the steel top were the only sounds as I glided around the hotel, which gave me the sensation of standing on a ballerina's shoulder as she turned a slow, continuous pirouette round the clouds.
+
+In those moments when the mechanisms of turning fell silent, the faint sounds of the city could be heard rising from below, nothing distinct, more like the hum of a computer when you walk in the room, or the white noise of your refrigerator droning that you don't notice until you're sitting there late at night in the silence of an empty and sleeping house where suddenly the sound of the coils and Freon become an almost deafening noise. So with the sound of Bangkok from a great height, a height from which even Celine could not piss, though apparently the metal grating, which makes a nice brace for long exposure night shots, is the result of a team of Norwegians who base jumped from the deck in 2000. I tried to find out if anyone had ever committed suicide from the deck, but no one would give me an answer.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/baiyokepillar.jpg" width="143" height="200" class="postpic" alt="" />After having my fill of the heights I wandered down to the bar area two floors below the deck where supposedly the elevator ticket was good for a free drink, descending as I did into a candlelit darkness. Everyone seemed to be clearly out just as I arrived, but isn't that the way it always seems? I took a seat in one of the red vinyl chairs near the entrance just in front of a baluster that seemed to be imitating a telescope, starting small at the base and progressively growing out toward the ceiling, little circular shelves, a perfect matchbox race track complete with tubular florescent road lights that wound around, beads of blue light driving up the tiny path toward the ceiling. The tiny blue lights and a few candles were the only light in the bar. The darkness was occasionally punctuated by the lightning flashes of snap happy tourists at the window in front of the elevator apparently unaware of the limited range of such bulbs, but, sitting next to the window staring out at the city below the combined effect of the height and flashes of light gave me the feeling of sitting in some great stationary thunderhead, as if at any moment the wind might kick up and carry us westward dumping torrents of rain over the neighborhoods until finally we would dissipate over the South China Sea.
+
+As I sat in the lounge sipping whiskey from a crystal cordial glass which somewhat contrasted with the otherwise futuristic decor, I tried to calculate how long you would fall from this height. I'm not real great at math, but think you have about 12 seconds to regret your choice, or if you're Norwegian, to open your chute.
+
+"The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter, "its scent is dreams," and though he may have been referring to New York, his words ring true, perhaps to a lesser degree but true nevertheless, in every large city. Or maybe you just have to be a lover of cities to feel it. We seem to embrace the hive replicas built perhaps from memories embedded in our DNA; we feel safety in numbers, a desire to be close to one another, yet seek to find our own honey in the comb as it were. And so cities become our greatest cathedrals, redolent with our most venerable dreams reflected out of the darkness of our fears and nightmares. Perhaps this is why night in the city is so compelling—this mixture of dualities, the one place where we can see everything together and mingling.
+
+I always feel younger in cities, something about the city at night makes everything seem possible, the sound of the wheels on the concrete, the determined and purposeful stride of strangers around you on the sidewalks, everything seems to have its place in the city, it grows out of the darkness of night to bring light. Even in Bangkok as I walked to the Baiyoke Hotel I found myself thinking of New York and how much I miss it, particularly the sound of the wheels on sixth avenue in the rain, that wet hiss punctuated with splashes and the rain muted sound of horns; in October when it starts to turn cold and all you want to do is get off the street into somewhere warm with friends, but something makes you linger there on the street watching the endless glitter of lights and windows reflecting and refracting in some perpetual bouncing circle so that you can feel earth turning, as if the energy of its core were right beneath you. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/buddha-bounty.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/buddha-bounty.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0b3a54 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/buddha-bounty.amp @@ -0,0 +1,189 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Buddha on the Bounty</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/buddha-bounty"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/01/buddha-bounty"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Exploring Jim Thompson's house and orchid gardens in Bangkok Thailand."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Buddha on the Bounty"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/jimthompsonhouse.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Bangkok, Thailand"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="TH-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Buddha on the Bounty" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/buddha-bounty" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Exploring Jim Thompson's house and orchid gardens in Bangkok Thailand." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-05T18:43:03" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/jimthompsonhouse.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chaophrayasunset.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/thompsonorchids.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/headlessbuddha.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phrasumenfort.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Buddha on the Bounty", + "description": "Exploring Jim Thompson's house and orchid gardens in Bangkok Thailand.", + "datePublished": "2006-01-05T18:43:03", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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I find that walking tends to work these sorts of things out; either that or they simply float away like butterflies in search of a different orchid. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunset Chao Phraya River Bangkok, Thailand" height="172" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chaophrayasunset.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>I was walking toward the park where the last Tai Chi class was finishing up and the lights had just come on at the Phra Sumen Fort; it was just after sundown, the sky still glowed with the hazy goodbye that lingers for about half an hour as a red glow in the west. The park and the fort are familiar to me now in an odd way as I have walked by them nearly every evening for the past two weeks. It's strange how fast you can leave your familiar only to recreate it again wherever you go.</p> +<p><break> +For some reason a story <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html" title="Murakami interview in Salon">Haruki Murakami</a> recounts in his novel <em>South of the Border, West of the Sun</em> about something called Siberia Hysteria, popped into my head. I have no real way of knowing if this is true or not, but it is a good story and like most things probably gets closer to the truth if it isn't true. Murikami's narrative of Siberia Hysteria tells us to imagine that we are farmers in Siberia. Difficult at first, it works better if maybe you picture Barstow or Amarillo, someplace desolate, and everyday before dawn you get up and work the fields until sundown. Your life as a Siberian farmer is essentially, as Hobbes said, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." [In context this remark of Hobbes' comes from refuting the then popular notion, which still carries some currency today (especially among western travelers in the east), that "natural man," which is Rousseau's enlightened pre-civilized conception of utopia, somehow lived a life of great spiritual enlightenment etc.] But this life of farming in the tundra is your life and you have no other and so you live it day in and day out, excepting of course the wintertime. But then one day you wake up and find that you can no longer do what you have always done. Instead of heading to the fields to work that day like you did the day before, you throw down the plough and begin to walk west to the mythical land beyond the sun. You walk day and night, never stopping to eat or rest. </break></p> +<p>The idea that one day something in you snaps and you are simply unable to do what it was you did the day before seems a common thread in the lives of my fellow travelers. Sometimes it is not you that snaps but the world around you, however, usually if the world around you has snapped chances are you were close to snapping too. And by snapping I don't mean anything necessarily bad. Though the word "snap" perhaps carries a negative connotation in this context, I do not mean it that way, this is not the sort of snap that postal workers were historically prone to (no offense to Andy's dad or my mother's cousin Dick), but a snap that is simply a hairpin turn of capacity. </p> +<p>The Siberian Farmer story was in my mind as I walked along the river though in truth I was wondering about Jim Thompson more than the possibly mythic Siberian farmer. For those that have never heard of him, Jim Thompson was an American born expat, who came to Thailand toward the end of WWII. He was sent as a military attache to help organize a Thai resistance and drive out the Japanese. But by the time Thompson got to Thailand the Japanese had already surrendered. He returned to Thailand shortly thereafter under the auspices of Allen Dulles' OSS, the precursor to the CIA. </p> +<p>I haven't been able to dig up much information on what it was that Thompson did for the OSS, but clearly he liked Thailand. Thompson stayed around for a while before returning to New York where he had been an architect. But something in him must have snapped because he returned to Thailand two years later with an interest in the then cottage industry of silk weaving. He proceeded to single handedly created the modern silk industry in Thailand and in the process became fantastically wealthy. He built, or rather collected, a beautiful traditional Thai home, gathering buildings from around the country and bringing them together in Bangkok. Today his house is a museum open to the public and I had recently visited the area, which was why Jim Thompson was on my mind.</p> +<p>But it wasn't the house I was thinking of exactly, I was wondering what happened to Jim Thompson. In 1967 Thompson went on vacation with some friends in the Cameroon highlands in Malaysia. On the afternoon of March 27th his friends lay down to take a nap and Thompson said he was going for a walk. He was never seen again. What's more there has never been a single shred of evidence of him ever found. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Malaysia sent four hundred soldiers into the jungle to look for him. They found nothing. No evidence of foul play, whether it have been human or tiger playing the foul, and no evidence of, well, just no evidence at all. </p> +<p>It seems unlikely at this point that we will ever get to know what became of Thompson. It's possible he was kidnapped. It's possible a very thorough and hungry tiger ate him. It's possible he willfully disappeared. His brief employment with the fledging CIA naturally leads to speculation about these things since any sort of legitimate trading operation would be just the thing the CIA loves to use as a cover, but the truth is no one knows and know one ever will, it's as if Thompson simply slipped through a worm hole into that land beyond the sun.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Orchids Jim Thompson's House Bangkok, Thailand" height="260" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/thompsonorchids.jpg" width="203"></amp-img>The house he left behind is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. Of course in the west were most familiar with the ones on corsages, but Orchidaceae is one of the largest families in the plant kingdom and ranges in flower from tiny little ones the size of a mosquito to others the size of dinner plate. But the thing that struck me about them, which I had never noticed before is that the flowers of orchids are almost perfectly bilateral, just like the human body. Perhaps we are drawn to orchids because they reflect our symmetry and the symmetry we try to find in our lives. </p> +<p>Symmetry implies a kind of duality, but dualities are out of vogue I suppose, Einsteinian notions being more cutting edge these days, and yet dualities still seem to pop up where ever you look. After staring for a while at the various red and yellow and purple orchids dropping gently at the end of their stalks, I started to think that maybe an Einsteinian world and a world of dualities are not so much at odds as we might think. Take the orchid for instance; on one hand its flower is bilateral, symmetrical, dual sides built around the tongue where insects land, and yet within this seeming constraint, the diversity of the flower size and color is relative to the species producing it.</p> +<p>Eventually I pulled myself away from the orchids and went to see the collections of Thai silk and artwork that the tour mentioned, but skipped over. Thompson, while not a Buddhist, was a great collector of Buddhist art. Thailand is saturated with images of the Buddha, saturated and venerated to the point that sometimes it seems like perhaps the message of Buddha has been overlooked in favor of his iconography. <amp-img alt="7th Century Buddha, Bangkok, Thailand" height="239" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/headlessbuddha.jpg" width="133"></amp-img>Like most religious inspirers I believe it's likely that Buddha would quietly shake his head at the things people do in his name, but some of the pieces at Thompson's house were old enough and humble enough that they seemed like something the Buddha himself might have collected, were he a collector of art, which he most certainly was not. The one piece that particularly fascinated me was a headless, armless Buddha which the tour guide claimed was from the 7th century. After making my way through the various displays of very old silk, I returned to the headless statue of Buddha.</p> +<p>I know I shouldn't have and I never have in a museum, but something about the stone, the ragged edge where the head had once been contrasted with the smooth, worn surface the builder intended, I couldn't help myself. After making sure no one was around, I ran my hands down the side of the statue along the broken edge and then across the polished carved portion. It was cool to the touch and though it may have been my overactive imagination, the stone felt somehow alive. It was then that I realized I don't want to see any more images of the Buddha, that stone was as close to Buddha as we will ever get.</p> +<p>What made this Buddha different was its humility; it was broken, cracked, worn and somehow human. Perhaps that's our ultimate fantasy of art, that our Pygmalion wishes be granted, that art might literally become alive to us. But it already is alive, the stone is living, living so slowly and quietly that it's imperceptible, but living nonetheless. I've always found the duality in the question, ‘does life reflect art or art reflect life' to be the most irritating of dualities. Clearly both happen. True the statue that stood before me was not as it had been designed, its head had come off by accident not purpose, but isn't that why we make art, too see it interact with history? Without history, art becomes airless and stale, it's for sale at the side of the street—a ten dollar trinket. Isn't that the two way street, art does not reflect life it molds itself in life's reflection and life does not reflect art, but recasts art with the passage of time. This headless Buddha is both a reflection of life, of Buddha and yet life has added its own truth, taken away the head, as if to say, be honest, you have no idea what the Buddha looked like, better that you should not even try.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Phra Sumen Fort, Bangkok, Thailand" height="270" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phrasumenfort.jpg" width="203"></amp-img>I sat down on a bench beside the fort to rest for a little while with thoughts of orchids, Jim Thompson, headless Buddha and Siberian Hysteria whirling round my head in an endless dialogue with one another when a headline from the morning's paper jumped out at me, it had said that a team of researchers using some advanced facial recognition algorithm to calculate that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. I don't know much about algorithms except that there seems to be newer and shinier ones everyday. Arthur C. Clarke once said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Algorithms are, to lay-people like me, sufficiently advanced as to appear magical. So I reworded the news in my head: a team of researchers used magic to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. What a poor use of magic. Better to have lopped the head of Michelangelo's' David so that in fourteen centuries we will remember what we don't know.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/buddha-bounty.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/buddha-bounty.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c6f1be2 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/buddha-bounty.html @@ -0,0 +1,342 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Buddha On The Bounty - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Exploring Jim Thompson's house and orchid gardens in Bangkok Thailand."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/buddha-bounty" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="13.726128126466529, 100.547304139446" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="13.726128126466529; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-05T18:43:03" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>5, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> went for a walk one evening along the concrete pathways that line the Chao Phraya river trying to work out a the solution to a broken bit of code that had gotten tangled up in my mind and in the project I was working on. I find that walking tends to work these sorts of things out; either that or they simply float away like butterflies in search of a different orchid. </p> +<p><img alt="Sunset Chao Phraya River Bangkok, Thailand" class="postpicright" height="172" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chaophrayasunset.jpg" width="250"/>I was walking toward the park where the last Tai Chi class was finishing up and the lights had just come on at the Phra Sumen Fort; it was just after sundown, the sky still glowed with the hazy goodbye that lingers for about half an hour as a red glow in the west. The park and the fort are familiar to me now in an odd way as I have walked by them nearly every evening for the past two weeks. It’s strange how fast you can leave your familiar only to recreate it again wherever you go.</p> +<p><break> +For some reason a story <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html" title="Murakami interview in Salon">Haruki Murakami</a> recounts in his novel <em>South of the Border, West of the Sun</em> about something called Siberia Hysteria, popped into my head. I have no real way of knowing if this is true or not, but it is a good story and like most things probably gets closer to the truth if it isn’t true. Murikami’s narrative of Siberia Hysteria tells us to imagine that we are farmers in Siberia. Difficult at first, it works better if maybe you picture Barstow or Amarillo, someplace desolate, and everyday before dawn you get up and work the fields until sundown. Your life as a Siberian farmer is essentially, as Hobbes said, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” [In context this remark of Hobbes’ comes from refuting the then popular notion, which still carries some currency today (especially among western travelers in the east), that “natural man,” which is Rousseau’s enlightened pre-civilized conception of utopia, somehow lived a life of great spiritual enlightenment etc.] But this life of farming in the tundra is your life and you have no other and so you live it day in and day out, excepting of course the wintertime. But then one day you wake up and find that you can no longer do what you have always done. Instead of heading to the fields to work that day like you did the day before, you throw down the plough and begin to walk west to the mythical land beyond the sun. You walk day and night, never stopping to eat or rest. </p> +<p>The idea that one day something in you snaps and you are simply unable to do what it was you did the day before seems a common thread in the lives of my fellow travelers. Sometimes it is not you that snaps but the world around you, however, usually if the world around you has snapped chances are you were close to snapping too. And by snapping I don’t mean anything necessarily bad. Though the word “snap” perhaps carries a negative connotation in this context, I do not mean it that way, this is not the sort of snap that postal workers were historically prone to (no offense to Andy’s dad or my mother’s cousin Dick), but a snap that is simply a hairpin turn of capacity. </p> +<p>The Siberian Farmer story was in my mind as I walked along the river though in truth I was wondering about Jim Thompson more than the possibly mythic Siberian farmer. For those that have never heard of him, Jim Thompson was an American born expat, who came to Thailand toward the end of WWII. He was sent as a military attache to help organize a Thai resistance and drive out the Japanese. But by the time Thompson got to Thailand the Japanese had already surrendered. He returned to Thailand shortly thereafter under the auspices of Allen Dulles’ OSS, the precursor to the CIA. </p> +<p>I haven’t been able to dig up much information on what it was that Thompson did for the OSS, but clearly he liked Thailand. Thompson stayed around for a while before returning to New York where he had been an architect. But something in him must have snapped because he returned to Thailand two years later with an interest in the then cottage industry of silk weaving. He proceeded to single handedly created the modern silk industry in Thailand and in the process became fantastically wealthy. He built, or rather collected, a beautiful traditional Thai home, gathering buildings from around the country and bringing them together in Bangkok. Today his house is a museum open to the public and I had recently visited the area, which was why Jim Thompson was on my mind.</p> +<p>But it wasn’t the house I was thinking of exactly, I was wondering what happened to Jim Thompson. In 1967 Thompson went on vacation with some friends in the Cameroon highlands in Malaysia. On the afternoon of March 27th his friends lay down to take a nap and Thompson said he was going for a walk. He was never seen again. What’s more there has never been a single shred of evidence of him ever found. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. Malaysia sent four hundred soldiers into the jungle to look for him. They found nothing. No evidence of foul play, whether it have been human or tiger playing the foul, and no evidence of, well, just no evidence at all. </p> +<p>It seems unlikely at this point that we will ever get to know what became of Thompson. It’s possible he was kidnapped. It’s possible a very thorough and hungry tiger ate him. It’s possible he willfully disappeared. His brief employment with the fledging CIA naturally leads to speculation about these things since any sort of legitimate trading operation would be just the thing the CIA loves to use as a cover, but the truth is no one knows and know one ever will, it’s as if Thompson simply slipped through a worm hole into that land beyond the sun.</p> +<p><img alt="Orchids Jim Thompson's House Bangkok, Thailand" class="postpic" height="260" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/thompsonorchids.jpg" width="203"/>The house he left behind is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren’t that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. Of course in the west were most familiar with the ones on corsages, but Orchidaceae is one of the largest families in the plant kingdom and ranges in flower from tiny little ones the size of a mosquito to others the size of dinner plate. But the thing that struck me about them, which I had never noticed before is that the flowers of orchids are almost perfectly bilateral, just like the human body. Perhaps we are drawn to orchids because they reflect our symmetry and the symmetry we try to find in our lives. </p> +<p>Symmetry implies a kind of duality, but dualities are out of vogue I suppose, Einsteinian notions being more cutting edge these days, and yet dualities still seem to pop up where ever you look. After staring for a while at the various red and yellow and purple orchids dropping gently at the end of their stalks, I started to think that maybe an Einsteinian world and a world of dualities are not so much at odds as we might think. Take the orchid for instance; on one hand its flower is bilateral, symmetrical, dual sides built around the tongue where insects land, and yet within this seeming constraint, the diversity of the flower size and color is relative to the species producing it.</p> +<p>Eventually I pulled myself away from the orchids and went to see the collections of Thai silk and artwork that the tour mentioned, but skipped over. Thompson, while not a Buddhist, was a great collector of Buddhist art. Thailand is saturated with images of the Buddha, saturated and venerated to the point that sometimes it seems like perhaps the message of Buddha has been overlooked in favor of his iconography. <img alt="7th Century Buddha, Bangkok, Thailand" class="postpicright" height="239" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/headlessbuddha.jpg" width="133"/>Like most religious inspirers I believe it’s likely that Buddha would quietly shake his head at the things people do in his name, but some of the pieces at Thompson’s house were old enough and humble enough that they seemed like something the Buddha himself might have collected, were he a collector of art, which he most certainly was not. The one piece that particularly fascinated me was a headless, armless Buddha which the tour guide claimed was from the 7th century. After making my way through the various displays of very old silk, I returned to the headless statue of Buddha.</p> +<p>I know I shouldn’t have and I never have in a museum, but something about the stone, the ragged edge where the head had once been contrasted with the smooth, worn surface the builder intended, I couldn’t help myself. After making sure no one was around, I ran my hands down the side of the statue along the broken edge and then across the polished carved portion. It was cool to the touch and though it may have been my overactive imagination, the stone felt somehow alive. It was then that I realized I don’t want to see any more images of the Buddha, that stone was as close to Buddha as we will ever get.</p> +<p>What made this Buddha different was its humility; it was broken, cracked, worn and somehow human. Perhaps that’s our ultimate fantasy of art, that our Pygmalion wishes be granted, that art might literally become alive to us. But it already is alive, the stone is living, living so slowly and quietly that it’s imperceptible, but living nonetheless. I’ve always found the duality in the question, ‘does life reflect art or art reflect life’ to be the most irritating of dualities. Clearly both happen. True the statue that stood before me was not as it had been designed, its head had come off by accident not purpose, but isn’t that why we make art, too see it interact with history? Without history, art becomes airless and stale, it’s for sale at the side of the street—a ten dollar trinket. Isn’t that the two way street, art does not reflect life it molds itself in life’s reflection and life does not reflect art, but recasts art with the passage of time. This headless Buddha is both a reflection of life, of Buddha and yet life has added its own truth, taken away the head, as if to say, be honest, you have no idea what the Buddha looked like, better that you should not even try.</p> +<p><img alt="Phra Sumen Fort, Bangkok, Thailand" class="postpic" height="270" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phrasumenfort.jpg" width="203"/>I sat down on a bench beside the fort to rest for a little while with thoughts of orchids, Jim Thompson, headless Buddha and Siberian Hysteria whirling round my head in an endless dialogue with one another when a headline from the morning’s paper jumped out at me, it had said that a team of researchers using some advanced facial recognition algorithm to calculate that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. I don’t know much about algorithms except that there seems to be newer and shinier ones everyday. Arthur C. Clarke once said, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Algorithms are, to lay-people like me, sufficiently advanced as to appear magical. So I reworded the news in my head: a team of researchers used magic to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. What a poor use of magic. Better to have lopped the head of Michelangelo’s‘ David so that in fourteen centuries we will remember what we don’t know.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/brink-clouds" rel="prev" title=" Brink of the Clouds">Brink of the Clouds</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing" rel="next" title=" You and I Are Disappearing">You and I Are Disappearing</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="34" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833483" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="960a474b4250f690ac3649c2586681a251b21ece" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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I find that walking tends to work these sorts of things out; either that or they simply float away like butterflies in search of a different orchid.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/chaophrayasunset.jpg" width="250" height="172" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset Chao Phraya River Bangkok, Thailand" />I was walking toward the park where the last Tai Chi class was finishing up and the lights had just come on at the Phra Sumen Fort; it was just after sundown, the sky still glowed with the hazy goodbye that lingers for about half an hour as a red glow in the west. The park and the fort are familiar to me now in an odd way as I have walked by them nearly every evening for the past two weeks. It's strange how fast you can leave your familiar only to recreate it again wherever you go.
+
+<break>
+For some reason a story <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html" title="Murakami interview in Salon">Haruki Murakami</a> recounts in his novel *South of the Border, West of the Sun* about something called Siberia Hysteria, popped into my head. I have no real way of knowing if this is true or not, but it is a good story and like most things probably gets closer to the truth if it isn't true. Murikami's narrative of Siberia Hysteria tells us to imagine that we are farmers in Siberia. Difficult at first, it works better if maybe you picture Barstow or Amarillo, someplace desolate, and everyday before dawn you get up and work the fields until sundown. Your life as a Siberian farmer is essentially, as Hobbes said, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." [In context this remark of Hobbes' comes from refuting the then popular notion, which still carries some currency today (especially among western travelers in the east), that "natural man," which is Rousseau's enlightened pre-civilized conception of utopia, somehow lived a life of great spiritual enlightenment etc.] But this life of farming in the tundra is your life and you have no other and so you live it day in and day out, excepting of course the wintertime. But then one day you wake up and find that you can no longer do what you have always done. Instead of heading to the fields to work that day like you did the day before, you throw down the plough and begin to walk west to the mythical land beyond the sun. You walk day and night, never stopping to eat or rest.
+
+The idea that one day something in you snaps and you are simply unable to do what it was you did the day before seems a common thread in the lives of my fellow travelers. Sometimes it is not you that snaps but the world around you, however, usually if the world around you has snapped chances are you were close to snapping too. And by snapping I don't mean anything necessarily bad. Though the word "snap" perhaps carries a negative connotation in this context, I do not mean it that way, this is not the sort of snap that postal workers were historically prone to (no offense to Andy's dad or my mother's cousin Dick), but a snap that is simply a hairpin turn of capacity.
+
+The Siberian Farmer story was in my mind as I walked along the river though in truth I was wondering about Jim Thompson more than the possibly mythic Siberian farmer. For those that have never heard of him, Jim Thompson was an American born expat, who came to Thailand toward the end of WWII. He was sent as a military attache to help organize a Thai resistance and drive out the Japanese. But by the time Thompson got to Thailand the Japanese had already surrendered. He returned to Thailand shortly thereafter under the auspices of Allen Dulles' OSS, the precursor to the CIA.
+
+I haven't been able to dig up much information on what it was that Thompson did for the OSS, but clearly he liked Thailand. Thompson stayed around for a while before returning to New York where he had been an architect. But something in him must have snapped because he returned to Thailand two years later with an interest in the then cottage industry of silk weaving. He proceeded to single handedly created the modern silk industry in Thailand and in the process became fantastically wealthy. He built, or rather collected, a beautiful traditional Thai home, gathering buildings from around the country and bringing them together in Bangkok. Today his house is a museum open to the public and I had recently visited the area, which was why Jim Thompson was on my mind.
+
+But it wasn't the house I was thinking of exactly, I was wondering what happened to Jim Thompson. In 1967 Thompson went on vacation with some friends in the Cameroon highlands in Malaysia. On the afternoon of March 27th his friends lay down to take a nap and Thompson said he was going for a walk. He was never seen again. What's more there has never been a single shred of evidence of him ever found. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Malaysia sent four hundred soldiers into the jungle to look for him. They found nothing. No evidence of foul play, whether it have been human or tiger playing the foul, and no evidence of, well, just no evidence at all.
+
+It seems unlikely at this point that we will ever get to know what became of Thompson. It's possible he was kidnapped. It's possible a very thorough and hungry tiger ate him. It's possible he willfully disappeared. His brief employment with the fledging CIA naturally leads to speculation about these things since any sort of legitimate trading operation would be just the thing the CIA loves to use as a cover, but the truth is no one knows and know one ever will, it's as if Thompson simply slipped through a worm hole into that land beyond the sun.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/thompsonorchids.jpg" width="203" height="260" class="postpic" alt="Orchids Jim Thompson's House Bangkok, Thailand" />The house he left behind is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. Of course in the west were most familiar with the ones on corsages, but Orchidaceae is one of the largest families in the plant kingdom and ranges in flower from tiny little ones the size of a mosquito to others the size of dinner plate. But the thing that struck me about them, which I had never noticed before is that the flowers of orchids are almost perfectly bilateral, just like the human body. Perhaps we are drawn to orchids because they reflect our symmetry and the symmetry we try to find in our lives.
+
+Symmetry implies a kind of duality, but dualities are out of vogue I suppose, Einsteinian notions being more cutting edge these days, and yet dualities still seem to pop up where ever you look. After staring for a while at the various red and yellow and purple orchids dropping gently at the end of their stalks, I started to think that maybe an Einsteinian world and a world of dualities are not so much at odds as we might think. Take the orchid for instance; on one hand its flower is bilateral, symmetrical, dual sides built around the tongue where insects land, and yet within this seeming constraint, the diversity of the flower size and color is relative to the species producing it.
+
+Eventually I pulled myself away from the orchids and went to see the collections of Thai silk and artwork that the tour mentioned, but skipped over. Thompson, while not a Buddhist, was a great collector of Buddhist art. Thailand is saturated with images of the Buddha, saturated and venerated to the point that sometimes it seems like perhaps the message of Buddha has been overlooked in favor of his iconography. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/headlessbuddha.jpg" width="133" height="239" class="postpicright" alt="7th Century Buddha, Bangkok, Thailand" />Like most religious inspirers I believe it's likely that Buddha would quietly shake his head at the things people do in his name, but some of the pieces at Thompson's house were old enough and humble enough that they seemed like something the Buddha himself might have collected, were he a collector of art, which he most certainly was not. The one piece that particularly fascinated me was a headless, armless Buddha which the tour guide claimed was from the 7th century. After making my way through the various displays of very old silk, I returned to the headless statue of Buddha.
+
+I know I shouldn't have and I never have in a museum, but something about the stone, the ragged edge where the head had once been contrasted with the smooth, worn surface the builder intended, I couldn't help myself. After making sure no one was around, I ran my hands down the side of the statue along the broken edge and then across the polished carved portion. It was cool to the touch and though it may have been my overactive imagination, the stone felt somehow alive. It was then that I realized I don't want to see any more images of the Buddha, that stone was as close to Buddha as we will ever get.
+
+What made this Buddha different was its humility; it was broken, cracked, worn and somehow human. Perhaps that's our ultimate fantasy of art, that our Pygmalion wishes be granted, that art might literally become alive to us. But it already is alive, the stone is living, living so slowly and quietly that it's imperceptible, but living nonetheless. I've always found the duality in the question, ‘does life reflect art or art reflect life' to be the most irritating of dualities. Clearly both happen. True the statue that stood before me was not as it had been designed, its head had come off by accident not purpose, but isn't that why we make art, too see it interact with history? Without history, art becomes airless and stale, it's for sale at the side of the street—a ten dollar trinket. Isn't that the two way street, art does not reflect life it molds itself in life's reflection and life does not reflect art, but recasts art with the passage of time. This headless Buddha is both a reflection of life, of Buddha and yet life has added its own truth, taken away the head, as if to say, be honest, you have no idea what the Buddha looked like, better that you should not even try.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/phrasumenfort.jpg" width="203" height="270" class="postpic" alt="Phra Sumen Fort, Bangkok, Thailand" />I sat down on a bench beside the fort to rest for a little while with thoughts of orchids, Jim Thompson, headless Buddha and Siberian Hysteria whirling round my head in an endless dialogue with one another when a headline from the morning's paper jumped out at me, it had said that a team of researchers using some advanced facial recognition algorithm to calculate that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. I don't know much about algorithms except that there seems to be newer and shinier ones everyday. Arthur C. Clarke once said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Algorithms are, to lay-people like me, sufficiently advanced as to appear magical. So I reworded the news in my head: a team of researchers used magic to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. What a poor use of magic. Better to have lopped the head of Michelangelo's' David so that in fourteen centuries we will remember what we don't know. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/down-river.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/down-river.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9b2daf --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/down-river.amp @@ -0,0 +1,184 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Down the River</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/down-river"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/01/down-river"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Traveling the Mekong River by slow boat from Huey Xui to Laung Prabang."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Down the River"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/mekongslowboat.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Luang Prabang, Lao (PDR)"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="LA-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Down the River" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/down-river" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Traveling the Mekong River by slow boat from Huey Xui to Laung Prabang." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-17T20:13:26" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/mekongslowboat.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongfog.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongsunset.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Down the River", + "description": "Traveling the Mekong River by slow boat from Huey Xui to Laung Prabang.", + "datePublished": "2006-01-17T20:13:26", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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The first ferry crossed at eight and not wanting to get caught in the mess of tourists crossing that day, I made sure to be on the first ferry.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Morning Mist Mekong River Laos" height="139" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongfog.jpg" width="239"></amp-img>After crossing through the respective borders and getting my passport stamped, I made my way up the road to the docks where I was to catch a slow boat to Luang Prabang. My head was full of statistics as I walked through the bustling border town of Huey Xui, Laos. I half expected to see a sign that said welcome to the Mekong Valley where the U.S. led troops of Laos and Thailand never fought a secret war, where there were not one and a half more bombing sorties flown than in all of Vietnam, where the total metric tonnage of bombs dropped was not 450,000 which of course, was not a whooping half ton per man, woman and child in Laos, because if it is not written down, it did not happen. But there was no commemoration of the terrible legacy that still haunts Laos.</p> +<p>You would never even realize a war had been fought here from aboard the slow boat where I and roughly sixty other passengers sat in cramped quarters watching the green jungle covered hills slide past. Indeed it was hard to imagine that anyone would want to invest the staggering $2 million dollars a day every day for nine years that the U.S. invested into the war in Laos. And yet the fact remains, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare.</p> +<p>The slow boat, which is not necessary slow, it just isn't a speedboat several of which passed us in the course of our two day journey and without exception the passengers looked, cold, windblown, probably near deaf and generally miserable; the slow boat was meant for perhaps forty passengers, could actually seat about thirty and yet as with any transportation in the east, was packed to the gills. But the tight quarters often turn out to be fun in perverse ways; there is a certain bond that forms among those that suffer together. One of the best things about traveling is the people you meet, whether they are fellow travelers or indigenous locals. I had met up with a Swedish man named Robin and an Israeli lad, Ofir on the bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong and since we were all headed into Laos and down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, we just sort of fell in together. On the boat I found myself seated next to an Irish girl, Siobhan, who later tagged along with our multi-national travel party for a few days. </p> +<p>Edward Abbey, the source of today's title, once wrote, "everyone must at some point go down the river." No stranger to rivers, Abbey went down a few, both the metaphorical and literal sort and my journey down the Mekong was similarly filled with both the metaphorical and literal journeys. It took two eight hour days in cramped conditions to get from Huey Xui where we crossed into Laos, to Luang Prabang, which was to be my first stop. I was glad for the company of Robin, Ofir and Siobhan, but still there were long periods of near silence in which everyone's face seemed to me lost in some private mental journey, as if it were not possible to simply go down a river, but that the action necessary required an equal action on the part of the mind.</p> +<p>I do not know what absorbed my fellow passengers between reading and talking, those relatively quite moments (save for the continuous roaring white noise of the smoking diesel engine) where we simply stared at the limestone cliffs or the sandbars along the shore, but for me the mental journey became a process of abandonment. To say that traveling changes you would be a gross misstatement, but it does bring into focus any number of things that may have previously only lingered on the peripherals of your mind. My journey has been a slow process of letting go; I would not say I am different than when I left, but nevertheless I suppose I somehow am. At the end of the day, when the sun sets over whatever river you happen to be headed down, there is inevitably some change from that foggy morning that saw you off. You must let go of things to travel down a river.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Mekong Sunset, Laos" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongsunset.jpg" width="286"></amp-img>And while a voice in the back of my head said just before I stepped off the boat in Luang Prabang, you cannot let go completely of anything, you will always have this thin strand of cotton wrapped about your smallest finger if for no other reason than to let it fall aside is to abandon hope entirely, I did, somewhere in the muddy waters of the Mekong, cast off huge chunks of myself, chunks that had been falling away for some time, but now perhaps because of the river, perhaps only the free and empty time, those chunks seemed to slough off at last. Most of these things that fell off me were too nebulous or vague to understand, I could not for instance say what I was letting go of or whether or not I would miss it, rather that the process of letting go was what was difficult. The thing or idea or dream was inevitably a product of my imagination, it had never been real to begin with, so letting go of <strong>it</strong> was natural, even if the process perhaps was not. </p> +<p>On the second day, after talking for a while with Siobhan about how dreams and traveling intermingle, I was in the ensuing silence suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps our dreams are ultimately acts of arrogance, or at least become so when we cling to them too tightly, cling to them until they do not guide us, but imprison us. Dreams must be cast off before reality is allowed to happen.</p> +<p>Which is not to say my friends that a dream can not merge with reality, that they can not be one and same, but merely that they must be let go of in the mind before they will take shape in the world. It is perhaps the act of letting go that eliminates the certainties of cannot or will not, and replaces them with might, could and have; or, to put it in the vernacular of James Bond film titles, never say never.</p> +<p>This feeling grew stronger and more disorienting when I fell ill with a bout of food poisoning. I lay on the floor of the guest house bathroom for the better part of two days vomiting horrible liquids out both ends of my digestive system, not a pleasant experience I can assure you, but somewhere in those tortured early morning hours, as I hugged the porcelain toilet that had become to sum total of my universe, it occurred to me how quickly our worlds can be reduced. Not just dreams we may try to let go of, but also our physical worlds and not only are we incapable of ever saying anything with certainty, we are incapable of even saying that. In other words, to say there is no certainty is itself a statement of certainty and therefore we find ourselves right where Joseph Heller so aptly described in <em>Catch-22</em>. </p> +<p><break> +Did I travel for two days down the Mekong River here to Luang Prabang? Is there a place where you still are, that I am not? Is there a place here that I am and you are not? Uncertainties I cannot wrap my still fevered brain around except to say that however the words might twist and turn like the Mekong, in the end they are the only things that make it real to me. </break></p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/down-river.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/down-river.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..28f8ad1 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/down-river.html @@ -0,0 +1,339 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Down The River - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Traveling the Mekong River by slow boat from Huey Xui to Laung Prabang."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/down-river" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="19.875064447947235, 102.13199614056808" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="19.875064447947235; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-17T20:13:26" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>17, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">M</span>orning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and not wanting to get caught in the mess of tourists crossing that day, I made sure to be on the first ferry.</p> +<p><img alt="Morning Mist Mekong River Laos" class="postpic" height="139" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongfog.jpg" width="239"/>After crossing through the respective borders and getting my passport stamped, I made my way up the road to the docks where I was to catch a slow boat to Luang Prabang. My head was full of statistics as I walked through the bustling border town of Huey Xui, Laos. I half expected to see a sign that said welcome to the Mekong Valley where the U.S. led troops of Laos and Thailand never fought a secret war, where there were not one and a half more bombing sorties flown than in all of Vietnam, where the total metric tonnage of bombs dropped was not 450,000 which of course, was not a whooping half ton per man, woman and child in Laos, because if it is not written down, it did not happen. But there was no commemoration of the terrible legacy that still haunts Laos.</p> +<p>You would never even realize a war had been fought here from aboard the slow boat where I and roughly sixty other passengers sat in cramped quarters watching the green jungle covered hills slide past. Indeed it was hard to imagine that anyone would want to invest the staggering $2 million dollars a day every day for nine years that the U.S. invested into the war in Laos. And yet the fact remains, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare.</p> +<p>The slow boat, which is not necessary slow, it just isn’t a speedboat several of which passed us in the course of our two day journey and without exception the passengers looked, cold, windblown, probably near deaf and generally miserable; the slow boat was meant for perhaps forty passengers, could actually seat about thirty and yet as with any transportation in the east, was packed to the gills. But the tight quarters often turn out to be fun in perverse ways; there is a certain bond that forms among those that suffer together. One of the best things about traveling is the people you meet, whether they are fellow travelers or indigenous locals. I had met up with a Swedish man named Robin and an Israeli lad, Ofir on the bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong and since we were all headed into Laos and down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, we just sort of fell in together. On the boat I found myself seated next to an Irish girl, Siobhan, who later tagged along with our multi-national travel party for a few days. </p> +<p>Edward Abbey, the source of today’s title, once wrote, “everyone must at some point go down the river.” No stranger to rivers, Abbey went down a few, both the metaphorical and literal sort and my journey down the Mekong was similarly filled with both the metaphorical and literal journeys. It took two eight hour days in cramped conditions to get from Huey Xui where we crossed into Laos, to Luang Prabang, which was to be my first stop. I was glad for the company of Robin, Ofir and Siobhan, but still there were long periods of near silence in which everyone’s face seemed to me lost in some private mental journey, as if it were not possible to simply go down a river, but that the action necessary required an equal action on the part of the mind.</p> +<p>I do not know what absorbed my fellow passengers between reading and talking, those relatively quite moments (save for the continuous roaring white noise of the smoking diesel engine) where we simply stared at the limestone cliffs or the sandbars along the shore, but for me the mental journey became a process of abandonment. To say that traveling changes you would be a gross misstatement, but it does bring into focus any number of things that may have previously only lingered on the peripherals of your mind. My journey has been a slow process of letting go; I would not say I am different than when I left, but nevertheless I suppose I somehow am. At the end of the day, when the sun sets over whatever river you happen to be headed down, there is inevitably some change from that foggy morning that saw you off. You must let go of things to travel down a river.</p> +<p><img alt="Mekong Sunset, Laos" class="postpicright" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongsunset.jpg" width="286"/>And while a voice in the back of my head said just before I stepped off the boat in Luang Prabang, you cannot let go completely of anything, you will always have this thin strand of cotton wrapped about your smallest finger if for no other reason than to let it fall aside is to abandon hope entirely, I did, somewhere in the muddy waters of the Mekong, cast off huge chunks of myself, chunks that had been falling away for some time, but now perhaps because of the river, perhaps only the free and empty time, those chunks seemed to slough off at last. Most of these things that fell off me were too nebulous or vague to understand, I could not for instance say what I was letting go of or whether or not I would miss it, rather that the process of letting go was what was difficult. The thing or idea or dream was inevitably a product of my imagination, it had never been real to begin with, so letting go of <strong>it</strong> was natural, even if the process perhaps was not. </p> +<p>On the second day, after talking for a while with Siobhan about how dreams and traveling intermingle, I was in the ensuing silence suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps our dreams are ultimately acts of arrogance, or at least become so when we cling to them too tightly, cling to them until they do not guide us, but imprison us. Dreams must be cast off before reality is allowed to happen.</p> +<p>Which is not to say my friends that a dream can not merge with reality, that they can not be one and same, but merely that they must be let go of in the mind before they will take shape in the world. It is perhaps the act of letting go that eliminates the certainties of cannot or will not, and replaces them with might, could and have; or, to put it in the vernacular of James Bond film titles, never say never.</p> +<p>This feeling grew stronger and more disorienting when I fell ill with a bout of food poisoning. I lay on the floor of the guest house bathroom for the better part of two days vomiting horrible liquids out both ends of my digestive system, not a pleasant experience I can assure you, but somewhere in those tortured early morning hours, as I hugged the porcelain toilet that had become to sum total of my universe, it occurred to me how quickly our worlds can be reduced. Not just dreams we may try to let go of, but also our physical worlds and not only are we incapable of ever saying anything with certainty, we are incapable of even saying that. In other words, to say there is no certainty is itself a statement of certainty and therefore we find ourselves right where Joseph Heller so aptly described in <em>Catch-22</em>. </p> +<p><break> +Did I travel for two days down the Mekong River here to Luang Prabang? Is there a place where you still are, that I am not? Is there a place here that I am and you are not? Uncertainties I cannot wrap my still fevered brain around except to say that however the words might twist and turn like the Mekong, in the end they are the only things that make it real to me. </p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers" rel="prev" title=" The King of Carrot Flowers">The King of Carrot Flowers</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel" rel="next" title=" Hymn of the Big Wheel">Hymn of the Big Wheel</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="37" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833482" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="10e8165b798b702dcc0c1e0405a8e2a6462f92c3" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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The first ferry crossed at eight and not wanting to get caught in the mess of tourists crossing that day, I made sure to be on the first ferry.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/mekongfog.jpg" width="239" height="139" class="postpic" alt="Morning Mist Mekong River Laos" />After crossing through the respective borders and getting my passport stamped, I made my way up the road to the docks where I was to catch a slow boat to Luang Prabang. My head was full of statistics as I walked through the bustling border town of Huey Xui, Laos. I half expected to see a sign that said welcome to the Mekong Valley where the U.S. led troops of Laos and Thailand never fought a secret war, where there were not one and a half more bombing sorties flown than in all of Vietnam, where the total metric tonnage of bombs dropped was not 450,000 which of course, was not a whooping half ton per man, woman and child in Laos, because if it is not written down, it did not happen. But there was no commemoration of the terrible legacy that still haunts Laos.
+
+You would never even realize a war had been fought here from aboard the slow boat where I and roughly sixty other passengers sat in cramped quarters watching the green jungle covered hills slide past. Indeed it was hard to imagine that anyone would want to invest the staggering $2 million dollars a day every day for nine years that the U.S. invested into the war in Laos. And yet the fact remains, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare.
+
+The slow boat, which is not necessary slow, it just isn't a speedboat several of which passed us in the course of our two day journey and without exception the passengers looked, cold, windblown, probably near deaf and generally miserable; the slow boat was meant for perhaps forty passengers, could actually seat about thirty and yet as with any transportation in the east, was packed to the gills. But the tight quarters often turn out to be fun in perverse ways; there is a certain bond that forms among those that suffer together. One of the best things about traveling is the people you meet, whether they are fellow travelers or indigenous locals. I had met up with a Swedish man named Robin and an Israeli lad, Ofir on the bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong and since we were all headed into Laos and down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, we just sort of fell in together. On the boat I found myself seated next to an Irish girl, Siobhan, who later tagged along with our multi-national travel party for a few days.
+
+Edward Abbey, the source of today's title, once wrote, "everyone must at some point go down the river." No stranger to rivers, Abbey went down a few, both the metaphorical and literal sort and my journey down the Mekong was similarly filled with both the metaphorical and literal journeys. It took two eight hour days in cramped conditions to get from Huey Xui where we crossed into Laos, to Luang Prabang, which was to be my first stop. I was glad for the company of Robin, Ofir and Siobhan, but still there were long periods of near silence in which everyone's face seemed to me lost in some private mental journey, as if it were not possible to simply go down a river, but that the action necessary required an equal action on the part of the mind.
+
+I do not know what absorbed my fellow passengers between reading and talking, those relatively quite moments (save for the continuous roaring white noise of the smoking diesel engine) where we simply stared at the limestone cliffs or the sandbars along the shore, but for me the mental journey became a process of abandonment. To say that traveling changes you would be a gross misstatement, but it does bring into focus any number of things that may have previously only lingered on the peripherals of your mind. My journey has been a slow process of letting go; I would not say I am different than when I left, but nevertheless I suppose I somehow am. At the end of the day, when the sun sets over whatever river you happen to be headed down, there is inevitably some change from that foggy morning that saw you off. You must let go of things to travel down a river.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/mekongsunset.jpg" width="286" height="200" class="postpicright" alt="Mekong Sunset, Laos" />And while a voice in the back of my head said just before I stepped off the boat in Luang Prabang, you cannot let go completely of anything, you will always have this thin strand of cotton wrapped about your smallest finger if for no other reason than to let it fall aside is to abandon hope entirely, I did, somewhere in the muddy waters of the Mekong, cast off huge chunks of myself, chunks that had been falling away for some time, but now perhaps because of the river, perhaps only the free and empty time, those chunks seemed to slough off at last. Most of these things that fell off me were too nebulous or vague to understand, I could not for instance say what I was letting go of or whether or not I would miss it, rather that the process of letting go was what was difficult. The thing or idea or dream was inevitably a product of my imagination, it had never been real to begin with, so letting go of **it** was natural, even if the process perhaps was not.
+
+On the second day, after talking for a while with Siobhan about how dreams and traveling intermingle, I was in the ensuing silence suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps our dreams are ultimately acts of arrogance, or at least become so when we cling to them too tightly, cling to them until they do not guide us, but imprison us. Dreams must be cast off before reality is allowed to happen.
+
+Which is not to say my friends that a dream can not merge with reality, that they can not be one and same, but merely that they must be let go of in the mind before they will take shape in the world. It is perhaps the act of letting go that eliminates the certainties of cannot or will not, and replaces them with might, could and have; or, to put it in the vernacular of James Bond film titles, never say never.
+
+This feeling grew stronger and more disorienting when I fell ill with a bout of food poisoning. I lay on the floor of the guest house bathroom for the better part of two days vomiting horrible liquids out both ends of my digestive system, not a pleasant experience I can assure you, but somewhere in those tortured early morning hours, as I hugged the porcelain toilet that had become to sum total of my universe, it occurred to me how quickly our worlds can be reduced. Not just dreams we may try to let go of, but also our physical worlds and not only are we incapable of ever saying anything with certainty, we are incapable of even saying that. In other words, to say there is no certainty is itself a statement of certainty and therefore we find ourselves right where Joseph Heller so aptly described in *Catch-22*.
+
+<break>
+Did I travel for two days down the Mekong River here to Luang Prabang? Is there a place where you still are, that I am not? Is there a place here that I am and you are not? Uncertainties I cannot wrap my still fevered brain around except to say that however the words might twist and turn like the Mekong, in the end they are the only things that make it real to me. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c63c269 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel.amp @@ -0,0 +1,187 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Hymn of the Big Wheel</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses "/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Hymn of the Big Wheel"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/bluemilkwaterfall.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Luang Prabang, Lao (PDR)"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="LA-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Hymn of the Big Wheel" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses " /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-19T19:37:46" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/bluemilkwaterfall.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/luangprabangtemple.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatkungsifalls.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/laosriver.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Hymn of the Big Wheel", + "description": "Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses ", + "datePublished": "2006-01-19T19:37:46", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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it begins to gather as an almost imperceptible smoke around sundown, the mountains begin to look farther away, less distinct and then it builds through the night reaching its apex somewhere in the "Bible black predawn" as Jeff Tweedy put it. </p> +<p>The fog burns off by midmorning, noon at the latest, but for those of us already stirring, perhaps seated at breakfast, bundled in sweaters, the mist has a chill that seems to work its way through any number of carefully layered clothing. When the midday sun finally breaks through the last of the fog and is replaced by a shockingly sudden and intense heat, the sweaters and jackets are quickly shed in favor of short sleeves.</p> +<p>I have been traveling with, as mentioned previously, Robin and Ofir, as well as a Scottish couple Phill and Lorraine, and an Austrian man named Harry, none of whom have left any inclination toward temples and stuppas, which I sympathize with and understand, once you have seen a couple of temples you have essentially seen them all, and yet I feel compelled to see them still.</p> +<p><break> +<amp-img alt="Temple, Luang Prabang, Laos" height="260" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/luangprabangtemple.jpg" width="195"></amp-img>So I set out alone to see some of the many temples dotted throughout Luang Prabang. As I could have predicted, the temples of Luang Prabang are more or less the same as the others I have seen in Chang Mai or Bangkok or Nepal or India or, well, visit enough temples, shrines, synagogues, churches or any other place a culture calls holy, and you'll quickly realize there is only one thing, call it what you will, only one thing, that dwarfs our existence. For some it may be god by any number of names, but for me it simply wonder, wonder that any of this could have happened, wonder that anything exists, let alone me and wonder that I and the rest of it continue to exist. </break></p> +<p>After spending the better part of the morning at a few temples basking in this sense of wonder it seemed only natural to set aside the manmade and head to the natural, the source as it were.</p> +<p>Robin and I teamed up with a fellow American, Ed, to rent a songthaew out to Tat Kung Si waterfall. The limestone riverbed below the main falls creates series of smaller cascades and the river lacks much in the way of banks; instead it spreads out and flows almost arbitrarily over the whole area wrapping around the trunks of trees and dodging obstructions on its way down to the Mekong. I don't know if it's the stone in the area or some mineral in the water, but the deeper pools that form beneath the falls were a brilliant turquoise color and perfect for swimming.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Tat Kung Si Falls, Laos" height="193" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatkungsifalls.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>After a very steep, abrupt and very pointless climb to the top of the highest falls which in the midday heat quickly reduced Robin and I to panting, sweat-soaked misery, we returned to the crystalline waters which had never looked so inviting. We swam for a while in the lower pools and I chatted with Ed, a semi professional photographer, about various photographic geekery which I hadn't thought about since I dropped my art major ten years ago.</p> +<p>As luck would have it the pool we swam in had a nice tree extending out over it which allowed for excellent jumping and being the sort that still finds infinite pleasure in the simple act of hurling my body out into space, I made several jumps off the tree into the pool which did nothing to help the headache I already had.</p> +<p>Later, after drying off, I sat at a picnic bench and ate lunch while the package tourists wandered by cameras dangling and with much pointing enthusiasm. I had heard so much about Luang Prabang before coming, everyone raved about it, but I have been somewhat disappointed. I imagine five years ago Luang Prabang was probably alright, but with the paving of highway 13 and the advent of an airport capable of international flights Luang Prabang has turned to yet another touristy trap, which is unfortunate, but seemingly unavoidable.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="River, Laos" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/laosriver.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>I decided to take an amphibious walk through the trees to see if perhaps I could clear such negative thoughts from my already overworked brain. It was slow going because of slickness of the limestone, but I managed to work my way downstream to an old water wheel now in a state of disrepair and obviously not used in ages. What struck me most though was that the water no longer flowed beneath the wheel so that even if it weren't falling apart it still wouldn't be able to turn. Lower down the stream I had taken a picture of another wheel, also not working, but still surrounded by water. I started to take a second picture of this wheel but for some reason I stopped. Instead I sat down on a small stone and watched the water swirl past me on either side, still thinking about the sense of wonder that arises whenever I stop to think about anything really.</p> +<p>But this word wonder is not really what we're after is it? Too nebulous and vague, it could even be something like nostalgia, a failure of feeling, Wallace Stevens called it. No, what we are after is more specific than wonder, perhaps awe or amazement would be closer, perhaps it's a word that doesn't exist, perhaps Jewish mysticism is right after all, we have forgotten the true name of god, or possibly we never knew it. It may well be something that exists before language or beyond language or outside and removed from language altogether. And of course we know language has is shortcomings, the cynical like to remind us that the words are not the things, that words cannot express anything really, that they are a delicate web fabricated and sustained by nothing other than more words, but what else have we got?</p> +<p>It could also be that the language is in fact that very thing that severed us from this lost word, perhaps language was once something other, not words that conveyed meaning, but sounds that made objects, a language not a reflection, but creation. Jose Saramago writes in <em>The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis</em> that the gods "journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them."</p> +<p>Sitting there in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, perhaps this is the sounds of what we feel, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9bb366 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel.html @@ -0,0 +1,341 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Hymn Of The Big Wheel - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses "> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="19.827433510057354, 102.42279051308633" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="19.827433510057354; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-19T19:37:46" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>19, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">A</span> misty haze settles over the Mekong River Valley every evening; it begins to gather as an almost imperceptible smoke around sundown, the mountains begin to look farther away, less distinct and then it builds through the night reaching its apex somewhere in the “Bible black predawn” as Jeff Tweedy put it. </p> +<p>The fog burns off by midmorning, noon at the latest, but for those of us already stirring, perhaps seated at breakfast, bundled in sweaters, the mist has a chill that seems to work its way through any number of carefully layered clothing. When the midday sun finally breaks through the last of the fog and is replaced by a shockingly sudden and intense heat, the sweaters and jackets are quickly shed in favor of short sleeves.</p> +<p>I have been traveling with, as mentioned previously, Robin and Ofir, as well as a Scottish couple Phill and Lorraine, and an Austrian man named Harry, none of whom have left any inclination toward temples and stuppas, which I sympathize with and understand, once you have seen a couple of temples you have essentially seen them all, and yet I feel compelled to see them still.</p> +<p><break> +<img alt="Temple, Luang Prabang, Laos" class="postpicright" height="260" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/luangprabangtemple.jpg" width="195"/>So I set out alone to see some of the many temples dotted throughout Luang Prabang. As I could have predicted, the temples of Luang Prabang are more or less the same as the others I have seen in Chang Mai or Bangkok or Nepal or India or, well, visit enough temples, shrines, synagogues, churches or any other place a culture calls holy, and you’ll quickly realize there is only one thing, call it what you will, only one thing, that dwarfs our existence. For some it may be god by any number of names, but for me it simply wonder, wonder that any of this could have happened, wonder that anything exists, let alone me and wonder that I and the rest of it continue to exist. </p> +<p>After spending the better part of the morning at a few temples basking in this sense of wonder it seemed only natural to set aside the manmade and head to the natural, the source as it were.</p> +<p>Robin and I teamed up with a fellow American, Ed, to rent a songthaew out to Tat Kung Si waterfall. The limestone riverbed below the main falls creates series of smaller cascades and the river lacks much in the way of banks; instead it spreads out and flows almost arbitrarily over the whole area wrapping around the trunks of trees and dodging obstructions on its way down to the Mekong. I don’t know if it’s the stone in the area or some mineral in the water, but the deeper pools that form beneath the falls were a brilliant turquoise color and perfect for swimming.</p> +<p><img alt="Tat Kung Si Falls, Laos" class="postpic" height="193" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatkungsifalls.jpg" width="250"/>After a very steep, abrupt and very pointless climb to the top of the highest falls which in the midday heat quickly reduced Robin and I to panting, sweat-soaked misery, we returned to the crystalline waters which had never looked so inviting. We swam for a while in the lower pools and I chatted with Ed, a semi professional photographer, about various photographic geekery which I hadn’t thought about since I dropped my art major ten years ago.</p> +<p>As luck would have it the pool we swam in had a nice tree extending out over it which allowed for excellent jumping and being the sort that still finds infinite pleasure in the simple act of hurling my body out into space, I made several jumps off the tree into the pool which did nothing to help the headache I already had.</p> +<p>Later, after drying off, I sat at a picnic bench and ate lunch while the package tourists wandered by cameras dangling and with much pointing enthusiasm. I had heard so much about Luang Prabang before coming, everyone raved about it, but I have been somewhat disappointed. I imagine five years ago Luang Prabang was probably alright, but with the paving of highway 13 and the advent of an airport capable of international flights Luang Prabang has turned to yet another touristy trap, which is unfortunate, but seemingly unavoidable.</p> +<p><img alt="River, Laos" class="postpicright" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/laosriver.jpg" width="180"/>I decided to take an amphibious walk through the trees to see if perhaps I could clear such negative thoughts from my already overworked brain. It was slow going because of slickness of the limestone, but I managed to work my way downstream to an old water wheel now in a state of disrepair and obviously not used in ages. What struck me most though was that the water no longer flowed beneath the wheel so that even if it weren’t falling apart it still wouldn’t be able to turn. Lower down the stream I had taken a picture of another wheel, also not working, but still surrounded by water. I started to take a second picture of this wheel but for some reason I stopped. Instead I sat down on a small stone and watched the water swirl past me on either side, still thinking about the sense of wonder that arises whenever I stop to think about anything really.</p> +<p>But this word wonder is not really what we’re after is it? Too nebulous and vague, it could even be something like nostalgia, a failure of feeling, Wallace Stevens called it. No, what we are after is more specific than wonder, perhaps awe or amazement would be closer, perhaps it’s a word that doesn’t exist, perhaps Jewish mysticism is right after all, we have forgotten the true name of god, or possibly we never knew it. It may well be something that exists before language or beyond language or outside and removed from language altogether. And of course we know language has is shortcomings, the cynical like to remind us that the words are not the things, that words cannot express anything really, that they are a delicate web fabricated and sustained by nothing other than more words, but what else have we got?</p> +<p>It could also be that the language is in fact that very thing that severed us from this lost word, perhaps language was once something other, not words that conveyed meaning, but sounds that made objects, a language not a reflection, but creation. Jose Saramago writes in <em>The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis</em> that the gods “journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them.”</p> +<p>Sitting there in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, perhaps this is the sounds of what we feel, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/down-river" rel="prev" title=" Down the River">Down the River</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan" rel="next" title=" I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan">I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="38" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833481" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="d42c5ab8100320eafc89906a6b2a8ffca73a009d" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+The fog burns off by midmorning, noon at the latest, but for those of us already stirring, perhaps seated at breakfast, bundled in sweaters, the mist has a chill that seems to work its way through any number of carefully layered clothing. When the midday sun finally breaks through the last of the fog and is replaced by a shockingly sudden and intense heat, the sweaters and jackets are quickly shed in favor of short sleeves.
+
+I have been traveling with, as mentioned previously, Robin and Ofir, as well as a Scottish couple Phill and Lorraine, and an Austrian man named Harry, none of whom have left any inclination toward temples and stuppas, which I sympathize with and understand, once you have seen a couple of temples you have essentially seen them all, and yet I feel compelled to see them still.
+
+<break>
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/luangprabangtemple.jpg" width="195" height="260" class="postpicright" alt="Temple, Luang Prabang, Laos" />So I set out alone to see some of the many temples dotted throughout Luang Prabang. As I could have predicted, the temples of Luang Prabang are more or less the same as the others I have seen in Chang Mai or Bangkok or Nepal or India or, well, visit enough temples, shrines, synagogues, churches or any other place a culture calls holy, and you'll quickly realize there is only one thing, call it what you will, only one thing, that dwarfs our existence. For some it may be god by any number of names, but for me it simply wonder, wonder that any of this could have happened, wonder that anything exists, let alone me and wonder that I and the rest of it continue to exist.
+
+After spending the better part of the morning at a few temples basking in this sense of wonder it seemed only natural to set aside the manmade and head to the natural, the source as it were.
+
+Robin and I teamed up with a fellow American, Ed, to rent a songthaew out to Tat Kung Si waterfall. The limestone riverbed below the main falls creates series of smaller cascades and the river lacks much in the way of banks; instead it spreads out and flows almost arbitrarily over the whole area wrapping around the trunks of trees and dodging obstructions on its way down to the Mekong. I don't know if it's the stone in the area or some mineral in the water, but the deeper pools that form beneath the falls were a brilliant turquoise color and perfect for swimming.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/tatkungsifalls.jpg" width="250" height="193" class="postpic" alt="Tat Kung Si Falls, Laos" />After a very steep, abrupt and very pointless climb to the top of the highest falls which in the midday heat quickly reduced Robin and I to panting, sweat-soaked misery, we returned to the crystalline waters which had never looked so inviting. We swam for a while in the lower pools and I chatted with Ed, a semi professional photographer, about various photographic geekery which I hadn't thought about since I dropped my art major ten years ago.
+
+As luck would have it the pool we swam in had a nice tree extending out over it which allowed for excellent jumping and being the sort that still finds infinite pleasure in the simple act of hurling my body out into space, I made several jumps off the tree into the pool which did nothing to help the headache I already had.
+
+Later, after drying off, I sat at a picnic bench and ate lunch while the package tourists wandered by cameras dangling and with much pointing enthusiasm. I had heard so much about Luang Prabang before coming, everyone raved about it, but I have been somewhat disappointed. I imagine five years ago Luang Prabang was probably alright, but with the paving of highway 13 and the advent of an airport capable of international flights Luang Prabang has turned to yet another touristy trap, which is unfortunate, but seemingly unavoidable.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/laosriver.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="River, Laos" />I decided to take an amphibious walk through the trees to see if perhaps I could clear such negative thoughts from my already overworked brain. It was slow going because of slickness of the limestone, but I managed to work my way downstream to an old water wheel now in a state of disrepair and obviously not used in ages. What struck me most though was that the water no longer flowed beneath the wheel so that even if it weren't falling apart it still wouldn't be able to turn. Lower down the stream I had taken a picture of another wheel, also not working, but still surrounded by water. I started to take a second picture of this wheel but for some reason I stopped. Instead I sat down on a small stone and watched the water swirl past me on either side, still thinking about the sense of wonder that arises whenever I stop to think about anything really.
+
+But this word wonder is not really what we're after is it? Too nebulous and vague, it could even be something like nostalgia, a failure of feeling, Wallace Stevens called it. No, what we are after is more specific than wonder, perhaps awe or amazement would be closer, perhaps it's a word that doesn't exist, perhaps Jewish mysticism is right after all, we have forgotten the true name of god, or possibly we never knew it. It may well be something that exists before language or beyond language or outside and removed from language altogether. And of course we know language has is shortcomings, the cynical like to remind us that the words are not the things, that words cannot express anything really, that they are a delicate web fabricated and sustained by nothing other than more words, but what else have we got?
+
+It could also be that the language is in fact that very thing that severed us from this lost word, perhaps language was once something other, not words that conveyed meaning, but sounds that made objects, a language not a reflection, but creation. Jose Saramago writes in *The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis* that the gods "journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them."
+
+Sitting there in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, perhaps this is the sounds of what we feel, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c89392e --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan.amp @@ -0,0 +1,187 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="The Gibbon Experience: sailing high above the jungles of Laos on ziplines."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/gibbonexperience.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Luang Nam Tha, Lao (PDR)"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="LA-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="The Gibbon Experience: sailing high above the jungles of Laos on ziplines." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-21T19:42:47" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/gibbonexperience.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonvillage.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontree.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontreehouse1.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibboncreature.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonzip.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan", + "description": "The Gibbon Experience: sailing high above the jungles of Laos on ziplines.", + "datePublished": "2006-01-21T19:42:47", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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One assumes that the contact form on their site is working...]</p> +<p class="update">[Update (7/31/06): For those of you wanting to do this trek... We arranged things from Luang Prabang via email (<a href="http://www.gibbonx.org/gibbon_contact.php" title="contact the gibbon experience">they have several addresses on this page</a>). Some people have reported that the gibbon experience email address is not working... your mileage may vary. They do actually have an office in Huay Xai, Laos on the main street near the ferry to Thailand. If you're crossing over from Thailand walk up the sloped driveway and hang a left. It's about three doors down on the left (by the way all those people selling you boat tickets along the way are generally a rip off, hitch a ride over to the actual dock and you'll pay less). Sorry that's all the information I have. If you know something more I left to comments open below, feel free to add knowledge.]</p> +<p><span class="drop">T</span>he next time someone asks you, "would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?" I highly suggest you say, "yes, where do a I sign up?"</p> +<p>In my case the signing up happened via email over the internet with a semi-mysterious word-of-mouth-only outfit known as The Gibbon Experience. Luckily Robin was familiar with the Gibbon Experience and insisted that we go and check it out. The journey into the northern part of Laos began inauspiciously at the Luang Prabang bus station where, after waiting three hours, we discovered we had been sold tickets to a bus that was already full. Owing to a lack of time (we needed to be in specific place at a specific time in order to be picked up by the Gibbon Experience truck), we were forced to charter a mini bus from Luang Prabang to Laung Nam Tha. Although not cheap, the mini bus did have one nice part, we got to travel at night and have the next day free to explore Laung Nam Tha. Regrettably there isn't much to see in Luang Nam Tha, it's a rather small town on the banks of the Nam Tha River and not much seems to happen there except for the occasional wedding. </p> +<p><break> +With the exception of route 13, which runs from the far south up to Pak Mong in the North, there are no paved roads in Laos. Thus travel beyond Laung Nam Tha is a fairly arduous, and in the dry season, dusty journey, which is better than the wet season when the roads are impassible. We could have chartered another mini bus, but we decided it would be more fun to take the local bus the rest of the way. The next morning at about six AM Robin and I bought tickets for the bus to Huay Xai and had a woman at our guest house write the name of the small village where we would get off in Lao. After packing up and catching a quick breakfast, we hoped on the bus and handed the sheet of paper to the driver who kind of nodded vaguely. The bus rarely got above 30km/hr, which, having since then ridden on many a local bus in Laos, I can now say is normal. At some point, coming down a fairly steep incline, I turned around to see how my travel companions were fairing and found the visibility inside the bus was limited to about 1 meter, after which everything vanished in an impenetrable mustard yellow cloud of dust. </break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="unknown village Laos" height="119" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonvillage.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>When we finally disembarked at the small village the three of us looked like old men, hair and skin silvered with dust and clothes decided more brown than not. After we straightened out some accommodations with a local family, we deposited our backpacks in their living room and, with the help of the local children, made down to the river where we swam for a while, trying in vain to get the dust off our bodies. Later, after watching the sunset over the hills opposite the river, we had dinner on the porch with the Lao family hosting us. The most common food in Laos is sticky rice and though we did not know it then, that meal marked the beginning an eight-day stretch in which we would eat sticky rice (along with a variety of vegetables) for every meal. Luckily I like sticky rice; Ofir and Robin were decidedly less thrilled with the food. </p> +<p>The next morning after breakfast, a slightly disconcerting meal that was suspiciously similar to dinner and since it was served cold, I could only assume it was in fact dinner; two trucks pulled into the village with the rest of the people for the trek.<amp-img alt="Strangler Fig Treehouse, Laos" height="252" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontree.jpg" width="189"></amp-img> Because the tree houses have a limited amount of space, the Gibbon Experience takes only twelve people at a time into the jungle. After meeting the rest of the group (who were traveling from Huay Xui at the other end of the long dusty road), we traveled about two hours up a smaller and even worse road to another village. From there we hiked for roughly two hours to reach the first zip line and tree house. The next tree house was connected to the first by a series of zip lines running through and over the jungle canopy; the highest ran about one hundred fifty meters (500 ft) above the ground. Luckily heights don't bother me, but some people in our group were clearly nervous the first day. As time went on most people adjusted or just learned to not look down and by the third day we were all zipping around for fun.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Treehouse One Gibbon experience, Laos" height="211" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontreehouse1.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>The first night Ofir, Robin and I stayed in the main tree house along with three people from England, and a Scottish man, Donald. After watching the misty clouds form in the valleys below us and eating morning glory leaves with sticky rice, one of the volunteer guides from the Gibbon Experience came up to the tree house and we passed around a bottle of lao lao, which is a local rice whiskey. At some point one of the English lads came up with the idea of slowly cabling out to look at the stars. A few of us clipped onto the zip lines and slowly pulled ourselves out into the pitch black jungle to look up with the stars. As with the camel safari back in India, there were more stars than I have ever seen, and again the giant clouds of the Milky Way were visible with the naked eye, but this time I was seeing it suspended from a wire forty meters in the air. I actually pulled myself all the way over to the hillside opposite the tree house and stood for a while in the darkness of the forest listening to various animals rustling about in the leaves and thinking about the now endangered tigers that may or may not have been lurking close by. Eventually when the mosquitoes found me I took a running leap off the platform and into the complete darkness of the jungle, zipping back toward the warm orange glow of the tree house.</p> +<p>The next day a few people decided to go for a hike to the unfinished fourth tree house which overlooks a waterfall. Having had my fill of waterfalls in Luang Prabang, I decided to lounge around the tree house and get a little writing done. Ofir, one of the girls that works for the Gibbon Experience, and I sat around the tree house most of the morning sharing travel stories and recommendations until a curious creature showed up on one of the extending limbs of the tree. The animal was about the size of a large raccoon with the body and movements of squirrel. According to the girl, who had been there for six months, even the folks at the Gibbon Experience aren't sure what this animal is called. <amp-img alt="Unknown Creature, Laos" height="143" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibboncreature.jpg" width="190"></amp-img>The Lao have a word for it, which I can neither pronounce nor spell, but no one seems to know the species name or any English common name for it. If anyone out there recognizes this animal or knows someone who might, <a href="http://www.luxagraf.com/travel/contact/" title="Contact Form">contact me</a> since the folks at the Gibbon Experience would like to know what it's called as well. And just for the record, no it wasn't <strong>that</strong> close to me, the close up photograph was taken by pointing my camera lens into the eyepiece of a 75X spotting scope.</p> +<p>For the second night Robin, Ofir and I moved to the smaller and more isolated tree house two. Located about halfway down a long ridge, tree house two has a more commanding view of the surrounding wilderness. It's also only a twenty-minute walk from tree house three where everybody went to watch the sunset. Walking back in the rapidly approaching darkness was a bit eerie since we all knew from talking to the guides that dusk is the tigers' favorite hunting time. We never saw any tigers nor any signs of them, but something attacked the pig which lives under tree house one, though it didn't manage to kill it. The other thing was never saw were the namesake black gibbons, though we did hear them singing in the mornings and evenings. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Zip Lines, Jungle, Laos" height="224" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonzip.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>The Gibbon Experience was by far the best thing I've done so far in my travels and if you ever happen to pass through Huay Xai, Laos I highly recommend it (the office is just up the hill from immigration on your left). So far the project exists solely by word of mouth and even somehow managed to stay out of the Lonely Planet Guidebook. At some point in the next two years the Gibbon Experience will be turned over to the local people who are being trained and supported for now by three volunteers and the French man who started the whole thing. Hopefully it will, as it was intended to do, help show the local villages that sustainable long-term use of the forest is in end more beneficial than the logging and poaching on which much of the local economy currently depends.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6506d2f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan.html @@ -0,0 +1,341 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>I Used To Fly Like Peter Pan - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="The Gibbon Experience: sailing high above the jungles of Laos on ziplines."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="20.853678554651314, 101.19094847224211" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="20.853678554651314; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-21T19:42:47" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>21, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p class="update">[Update (09/26/06): Many thanks to Ray who left the current link to <a href="http://www.gibbonx.org/index.php" title="The Gibbon Experience">The Gibbon Experience Website</a> in the comments below. One assumes that the contact form on their site is working…]</p> + +<p class="update">[Update (7/31/06): For those of you wanting to do this trek… We arranged things from Luang Prabang via email (<a href="http://www.gibbonx.org/gibbon_contact.php" title="contact the gibbon experience">they have several addresses on this page</a>). Some people have reported that the gibbon experience email address is not working… your mileage may vary. They do actually have an office in Huay Xai, Laos on the main street near the ferry to Thailand. If you’re crossing over from Thailand walk up the sloped driveway and hang a left. It’s about three doors down on the left (by the way all those people selling you boat tickets along the way are generally a rip off, hitch a ride over to the actual dock and you’ll pay less). Sorry that’s all the information I have. If you know something more I left to comments open below, feel free to add knowledge.]</p> + +<p><span class="drop">T</span>he next time someone asks you, “would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?” I highly suggest you say, “yes, where do a I sign up?”</p> +<p>In my case the signing up happened via email over the internet with a semi-mysterious word-of-mouth-only outfit known as The Gibbon Experience. Luckily Robin was familiar with the Gibbon Experience and insisted that we go and check it out. The journey into the northern part of Laos began inauspiciously at the Luang Prabang bus station where, after waiting three hours, we discovered we had been sold tickets to a bus that was already full. Owing to a lack of time (we needed to be in specific place at a specific time in order to be picked up by the Gibbon Experience truck), we were forced to charter a mini bus from Luang Prabang to Laung Nam Tha. Although not cheap, the mini bus did have one nice part, we got to travel at night and have the next day free to explore Laung Nam Tha. Regrettably there isn’t much to see in Luang Nam Tha, it’s a rather small town on the banks of the Nam Tha River and not much seems to happen there except for the occasional wedding. </p> +<p><break> +With the exception of route 13, which runs from the far south up to Pak Mong in the North, there are no paved roads in Laos. Thus travel beyond Laung Nam Tha is a fairly arduous, and in the dry season, dusty journey, which is better than the wet season when the roads are impassible. We could have chartered another mini bus, but we decided it would be more fun to take the local bus the rest of the way. The next morning at about six AM Robin and I bought tickets for the bus to Huay Xai and had a woman at our guest house write the name of the small village where we would get off in Lao. After packing up and catching a quick breakfast, we hoped on the bus and handed the sheet of paper to the driver who kind of nodded vaguely. The bus rarely got above 30km/hr, which, having since then ridden on many a local bus in Laos, I can now say is normal. At some point, coming down a fairly steep incline, I turned around to see how my travel companions were fairing and found the visibility inside the bus was limited to about 1 meter, after which everything vanished in an impenetrable mustard yellow cloud of dust. </p> +<p><img alt="unknown village Laos" class="postpic" height="119" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonvillage.jpg" width="200"/>When we finally disembarked at the small village the three of us looked like old men, hair and skin silvered with dust and clothes decided more brown than not. After we straightened out some accommodations with a local family, we deposited our backpacks in their living room and, with the help of the local children, made down to the river where we swam for a while, trying in vain to get the dust off our bodies. Later, after watching the sunset over the hills opposite the river, we had dinner on the porch with the Lao family hosting us. The most common food in Laos is sticky rice and though we did not know it then, that meal marked the beginning an eight-day stretch in which we would eat sticky rice (along with a variety of vegetables) for every meal. Luckily I like sticky rice; Ofir and Robin were decidedly less thrilled with the food. </p> +<p>The next morning after breakfast, a slightly disconcerting meal that was suspiciously similar to dinner and since it was served cold, I could only assume it was in fact dinner; two trucks pulled into the village with the rest of the people for the trek.<img alt="Strangler Fig Treehouse, Laos" class="postpicright" height="252" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontree.jpg" width="189"/> Because the tree houses have a limited amount of space, the Gibbon Experience takes only twelve people at a time into the jungle. After meeting the rest of the group (who were traveling from Huay Xui at the other end of the long dusty road), we traveled about two hours up a smaller and even worse road to another village. From there we hiked for roughly two hours to reach the first zip line and tree house. The next tree house was connected to the first by a series of zip lines running through and over the jungle canopy; the highest ran about one hundred fifty meters (500 ft) above the ground. Luckily heights don’t bother me, but some people in our group were clearly nervous the first day. As time went on most people adjusted or just learned to not look down and by the third day we were all zipping around for fun.</p> +<p><img alt="Treehouse One Gibbon experience, Laos" class="postpic" height="211" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontreehouse1.jpg" width="200"/>The first night Ofir, Robin and I stayed in the main tree house along with three people from England, and a Scottish man, Donald. After watching the misty clouds form in the valleys below us and eating morning glory leaves with sticky rice, one of the volunteer guides from the Gibbon Experience came up to the tree house and we passed around a bottle of lao lao, which is a local rice whiskey. At some point one of the English lads came up with the idea of slowly cabling out to look at the stars. A few of us clipped onto the zip lines and slowly pulled ourselves out into the pitch black jungle to look up with the stars. As with the camel safari back in India, there were more stars than I have ever seen, and again the giant clouds of the Milky Way were visible with the naked eye, but this time I was seeing it suspended from a wire forty meters in the air. I actually pulled myself all the way over to the hillside opposite the tree house and stood for a while in the darkness of the forest listening to various animals rustling about in the leaves and thinking about the now endangered tigers that may or may not have been lurking close by. Eventually when the mosquitoes found me I took a running leap off the platform and into the complete darkness of the jungle, zipping back toward the warm orange glow of the tree house.</p> +<p>The next day a few people decided to go for a hike to the unfinished fourth tree house which overlooks a waterfall. Having had my fill of waterfalls in Luang Prabang, I decided to lounge around the tree house and get a little writing done. Ofir, one of the girls that works for the Gibbon Experience, and I sat around the tree house most of the morning sharing travel stories and recommendations until a curious creature showed up on one of the extending limbs of the tree. The animal was about the size of a large raccoon with the body and movements of squirrel. According to the girl, who had been there for six months, even the folks at the Gibbon Experience aren’t sure what this animal is called. <img alt="Unknown Creature, Laos" class="postpicright" height="143" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibboncreature.jpg" width="190"/>The Lao have a word for it, which I can neither pronounce nor spell, but no one seems to know the species name or any English common name for it. If anyone out there recognizes this animal or knows someone who might, <a href="http://www.luxagraf.com/travel/contact/" title="Contact Form">contact me</a> since the folks at the Gibbon Experience would like to know what it’s called as well. And just for the record, no it wasn’t <strong>that</strong> close to me, the close up photograph was taken by pointing my camera lens into the eyepiece of a 75X spotting scope.</p> +<p>For the second night Robin, Ofir and I moved to the smaller and more isolated tree house two. Located about halfway down a long ridge, tree house two has a more commanding view of the surrounding wilderness. It’s also only a twenty-minute walk from tree house three where everybody went to watch the sunset. Walking back in the rapidly approaching darkness was a bit eerie since we all knew from talking to the guides that dusk is the tigers’ favorite hunting time. We never saw any tigers nor any signs of them, but something attacked the pig which lives under tree house one, though it didn’t manage to kill it. The other thing was never saw were the namesake black gibbons, though we did hear them singing in the mornings and evenings. </p> +<p><img alt="Zip Lines, Jungle, Laos" class="postpic" height="224" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonzip.jpg" width="180"/>The Gibbon Experience was by far the best thing I’ve done so far in my travels and if you ever happen to pass through Huay Xai, Laos I highly recommend it (the office is just up the hill from immigration on your left). So far the project exists solely by word of mouth and even somehow managed to stay out of the Lonely Planet Guidebook. At some point in the next two years the Gibbon Experience will be turned over to the local people who are being trained and supported for now by three volunteers and the French man who started the whole thing. Hopefully it will, as it was intended to do, help show the local villages that sustainable long-term use of the forest is in end more beneficial than the logging and poaching on which much of the local economy currently depends.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel" rel="prev" title=" Hymn of the Big Wheel">Hymn of the Big Wheel</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe" rel="next" title=" The Lovely Universe">The Lovely Universe</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="39" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833481" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="136a897079e93d22cbecc8a1cd7ed683a4f8d697" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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One assumes that the contact form on their site is working...]</p>
+
+<p class="update">[Update (7/31/06): For those of you wanting to do this trek... We arranged things from Luang Prabang via email (<a href="http://www.gibbonx.org/gibbon_contact.php" title="contact the gibbon experience">they have several addresses on this page</a>). Some people have reported that the gibbon experience email address is not working... your mileage may vary. They do actually have an office in Huay Xai, Laos on the main street near the ferry to Thailand. If you're crossing over from Thailand walk up the sloped driveway and hang a left. It's about three doors down on the left (by the way all those people selling you boat tickets along the way are generally a rip off, hitch a ride over to the actual dock and you'll pay less). Sorry that's all the information I have. If you know something more I left to comments open below, feel free to add knowledge.]</p>
+
+
+
+<span class="drop">T</span>he next time someone asks you, "would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?" I highly suggest you say, "yes, where do a I sign up?"
+
+In my case the signing up happened via email over the internet with a semi-mysterious word-of-mouth-only outfit known as The Gibbon Experience. Luckily Robin was familiar with the Gibbon Experience and insisted that we go and check it out. The journey into the northern part of Laos began inauspiciously at the Luang Prabang bus station where, after waiting three hours, we discovered we had been sold tickets to a bus that was already full. Owing to a lack of time (we needed to be in specific place at a specific time in order to be picked up by the Gibbon Experience truck), we were forced to charter a mini bus from Luang Prabang to Laung Nam Tha. Although not cheap, the mini bus did have one nice part, we got to travel at night and have the next day free to explore Laung Nam Tha. Regrettably there isn't much to see in Luang Nam Tha, it's a rather small town on the banks of the Nam Tha River and not much seems to happen there except for the occasional wedding.
+
+<break>
+With the exception of route 13, which runs from the far south up to Pak Mong in the North, there are no paved roads in Laos. Thus travel beyond Laung Nam Tha is a fairly arduous, and in the dry season, dusty journey, which is better than the wet season when the roads are impassible. We could have chartered another mini bus, but we decided it would be more fun to take the local bus the rest of the way. The next morning at about six AM Robin and I bought tickets for the bus to Huay Xai and had a woman at our guest house write the name of the small village where we would get off in Lao. After packing up and catching a quick breakfast, we hoped on the bus and handed the sheet of paper to the driver who kind of nodded vaguely. The bus rarely got above 30km/hr, which, having since then ridden on many a local bus in Laos, I can now say is normal. At some point, coming down a fairly steep incline, I turned around to see how my travel companions were fairing and found the visibility inside the bus was limited to about 1 meter, after which everything vanished in an impenetrable mustard yellow cloud of dust.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/gibbonvillage.jpg" width="200" height="119" class="postpic" alt="unknown village Laos" />When we finally disembarked at the small village the three of us looked like old men, hair and skin silvered with dust and clothes decided more brown than not. After we straightened out some accommodations with a local family, we deposited our backpacks in their living room and, with the help of the local children, made down to the river where we swam for a while, trying in vain to get the dust off our bodies. Later, after watching the sunset over the hills opposite the river, we had dinner on the porch with the Lao family hosting us. The most common food in Laos is sticky rice and though we did not know it then, that meal marked the beginning an eight-day stretch in which we would eat sticky rice (along with a variety of vegetables) for every meal. Luckily I like sticky rice; Ofir and Robin were decidedly less thrilled with the food.
+
+The next morning after breakfast, a slightly disconcerting meal that was suspiciously similar to dinner and since it was served cold, I could only assume it was in fact dinner; two trucks pulled into the village with the rest of the people for the trek.<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/gibbontree.jpg" width="189" height="252" class="postpicright" alt="Strangler Fig Treehouse, Laos" /> Because the tree houses have a limited amount of space, the Gibbon Experience takes only twelve people at a time into the jungle. After meeting the rest of the group (who were traveling from Huay Xui at the other end of the long dusty road), we traveled about two hours up a smaller and even worse road to another village. From there we hiked for roughly two hours to reach the first zip line and tree house. The next tree house was connected to the first by a series of zip lines running through and over the jungle canopy; the highest ran about one hundred fifty meters (500 ft) above the ground. Luckily heights don't bother me, but some people in our group were clearly nervous the first day. As time went on most people adjusted or just learned to not look down and by the third day we were all zipping around for fun.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/gibbontreehouse1.jpg" width="200" height="211" class="postpic" alt="Treehouse One Gibbon experience, Laos" />The first night Ofir, Robin and I stayed in the main tree house along with three people from England, and a Scottish man, Donald. After watching the misty clouds form in the valleys below us and eating morning glory leaves with sticky rice, one of the volunteer guides from the Gibbon Experience came up to the tree house and we passed around a bottle of lao lao, which is a local rice whiskey. At some point one of the English lads came up with the idea of slowly cabling out to look at the stars. A few of us clipped onto the zip lines and slowly pulled ourselves out into the pitch black jungle to look up with the stars. As with the camel safari back in India, there were more stars than I have ever seen, and again the giant clouds of the Milky Way were visible with the naked eye, but this time I was seeing it suspended from a wire forty meters in the air. I actually pulled myself all the way over to the hillside opposite the tree house and stood for a while in the darkness of the forest listening to various animals rustling about in the leaves and thinking about the now endangered tigers that may or may not have been lurking close by. Eventually when the mosquitoes found me I took a running leap off the platform and into the complete darkness of the jungle, zipping back toward the warm orange glow of the tree house.
+
+The next day a few people decided to go for a hike to the unfinished fourth tree house which overlooks a waterfall. Having had my fill of waterfalls in Luang Prabang, I decided to lounge around the tree house and get a little writing done. Ofir, one of the girls that works for the Gibbon Experience, and I sat around the tree house most of the morning sharing travel stories and recommendations until a curious creature showed up on one of the extending limbs of the tree. The animal was about the size of a large raccoon with the body and movements of squirrel. According to the girl, who had been there for six months, even the folks at the Gibbon Experience aren't sure what this animal is called. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/gibboncreature.jpg" width="190" height="143" class="postpicright" alt="Unknown Creature, Laos" />The Lao have a word for it, which I can neither pronounce nor spell, but no one seems to know the species name or any English common name for it. If anyone out there recognizes this animal or knows someone who might, <a href="http://www.luxagraf.com/travel/contact/" title="Contact Form">contact me</a> since the folks at the Gibbon Experience would like to know what it's called as well. And just for the record, no it wasn't **that** close to me, the close up photograph was taken by pointing my camera lens into the eyepiece of a 75X spotting scope.
+
+For the second night Robin, Ofir and I moved to the smaller and more isolated tree house two. Located about halfway down a long ridge, tree house two has a more commanding view of the surrounding wilderness. It's also only a twenty-minute walk from tree house three where everybody went to watch the sunset. Walking back in the rapidly approaching darkness was a bit eerie since we all knew from talking to the guides that dusk is the tigers' favorite hunting time. We never saw any tigers nor any signs of them, but something attacked the pig which lives under tree house one, though it didn't manage to kill it. The other thing was never saw were the namesake black gibbons, though we did hear them singing in the mornings and evenings.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/gibbonzip.jpg" width="180" height="224" class="postpic" alt="Zip Lines, Jungle, Laos" />The Gibbon Experience was by far the best thing I've done so far in my travels and if you ever happen to pass through Huay Xai, Laos I highly recommend it (the office is just up the hill from immigration on your left). So far the project exists solely by word of mouth and even somehow managed to stay out of the Lonely Planet Guidebook. At some point in the next two years the Gibbon Experience will be turned over to the local people who are being trained and supported for now by three volunteers and the French man who started the whole thing. 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class="h-entry"> + <article class="h-entry hentry post--article" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/Article"> + <header id="header" class="post--header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post--title" itemprop="headline">The King of Carrot Flowers</h1> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2006-01-17T18:53:17" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>17, 2006</span></time> + <p class="p-author author hide" itemprop="author"><span class="byline-author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></span></p> + <aside class="p-location h-adr adr post--location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <span class="p-region">Doi Inthanan National Park</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/thailand/" title="travel writing from Thailand">Thailand</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">T</span>he light outside the windows was still a pre-dawn inky blue when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful, albeit not at long lasting, as a cup of coffee. After dropping my body temperature a few degrees and having no towel to dry off with, just a dirty shirt and ceaseless ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, I climbed on my rental motorbike and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park. +<break></break></p> +<p>Normally such early morning antics are not part of my travel routine but it had already been made clear to me that if I hoped to make the 200 km journey to the highest point in Thailand in a single day, I had better start moving early. I rode out of Chiang Mai with painfully clenched fists and teeth that chattered uncontrollably at times, but the freedom of having my own transportation paled any discomforts the cold brought about. I had forgotten what freedom a vehicle of one's own can provide and I had never known the freedom that a motorbike provides. A motorbike, whether it be a clumsy scooter like mine or a more powerful, faster motorcycle, is to driving a car as body surfing is to using a board, without the board or the car there is in both case a kind intimacy with ones environment, the pavement, the curbs and lines of paint, the wind and the whip of passing cars and trucks, the grass growing in the cracks whizzing past below your feet, all of these things and a million other details you don't have the time to absorb become a symphony of movement not unlike the breaking of a wave or the rolling of distant thunder, a singular sensation which absorbs and is absorbed by your body whole and instantaneously and yet seems to stretch on forever.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Waterfall Doi Inthanan National Park Thailand" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/doifirstwaterfall.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>After a 60 or so kilometer ride on the main highway south of Chiang Mai I turned off onto the national park road and began to ascend through the dry grassy chaparral foothills and into the forest proper. My first stop was a small but peaceful waterfall. In fact nearly all my stops on the way to the summit were waterfalls except for one Karin village where I had lunch.</p> +<p>My chief reason for coming to the park was the lady slipper orchid. There are many kinds of lady slipper orchids, which as you might imagine has a flower that resembled a lady's slipper, but the particular variety found here is only found here and nowhere else in the world (in the wild anyway).</p> +<p>I don't know why I have become obsessed with orchids, but every since sitting at Jim Thompson's house staring at the that orchid, I have been studying up on them and wanting to see more of them. The previous day I rode the motorbike up to the Mae Sa Valley where there were a number of orchid farms and a very large botanical garden. It was at the Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden that I first read of the Lady Slipper Orchid that resides solely in Doi Inthanan National Park, and the specificity of such an ecological niche fascinated me. While wandering slowly through various greenhouses full of the same purple and orange and yellow orchids I had seen in Bangkok and elsewhere, I began to wonder why it was that some are right here, right everywhere, while others can require searches that lead to the far ends of the earth whether that be deep in the jungles of Thailand or the keys of Florida. What precisely is that drives evolution in such narrow back alleys that it can produce a plant on one mountain or one corner of a swamp and no other? Do all the pieces ultimately fit that tightly, and if they do then what does it mean when it turns out that the piece does not fit? What if the mountain changes, the icy northern glaciers begin to grow, the temperature drops and the orchid finds itself alone, stranded atop a mountain it never intended to climb?</p> +<p>The basic orchid flower is composed of three sepals which make up the outer whorl, that region which we would generally think of as the flower, but then within this, if one studies the structure closer, that are three additional petals which form an inner whorl. The "medial" petal, which I have come to think of as the axis around which the rest of the petals turn, that lateral line which must be split, if only in the imagination, to arrival at the bilateral structure which I have previously written of, is usually modified and enlarged forming a tongue or lip-like platform for pollinators. The lady slipper belongs the family Pathiopedilum, in which the two lower sepals of the flower become fused together and the lip, instead of being flat, takes the form of a slipper. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Polished Rock Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand" height="170" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/doirock.jpg" width="227"></amp-img>From the first waterfall where I lingered maybe an hour studying the water polished rocks along the shore of the river above the falls, I continued upward pausing at the Wachiratan waterfall. The Wachiratan falls were larger and generated a misty shroud of white around there base with rainbows arcing out through the white spray moving and receding as I walked about changing my angle from the sun. To escape from the chill of the spray I wandered down the riverbed among oaks and cashew trees with Tamarind trees reaching high into the sky and massive impenetrable stands of bamboo dark and foreboding in the growing afternoon shadows of the forest floor.</p> +<p>I had the rather optimistic idea that perhaps I could find a Lady Slipper Orchid just clinging to a tree or sprouting out of a rock, but with a flower that rare, one does not just stumble across it. I tried without success to figure out why I even cared, there are after all billion and billions of flowers in the world, why did I care for this one? Perhaps the fascination in some way comes from the simple word slipper; it would not be the first time I had gone out of my way simply because of a well-chosen word. "Slipper" has a number of childhood connotations but perhaps the most obvious is Cinderella. And this connection is perhaps not entirely accidental since as we all know there was only one Cinderella, only one slipper, and so here, only one flower, only one mountain.</p> +<p>Near the summit I paused to let some trucks pass and then waited a while not wanting to ride in the trail of exhaust they left behind. I sat on the bike staring at a pinkish leafed tree which stood out against the otherwise green hillsides. Behind the pink tree an afternoon thunder cloud drifted slowly by. The appeal I realized of Cinderella is the singularity of her existence. Just as this tree caught my eye because of its rarity, so to Cinderella captures our imagination because she is markedly different, rare we might say. And I understand the prince's obsession for once one has seen the rarist of flowers, the rest no longer hold sway. <amp-img alt="Pink Tree Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/doipinktree.jpg" width="159"></amp-img>We, like the prince, will move heaven and earth to find that which is rare and we cling to it, not unlike an orchid clings to a rock, once we have found it. And if we lose the rare things we seek it is not simply a brokenheartedness that follows, but a dissolution of life itself, as if, were the Lady Slipper to go extinct, what would be lost is not the personal, the plant, the flower, but the universal, the idea of the plant, the idea of the flower.</p> +<p>At the summit I rested for a while beside a sign that read "The Highest Point in Thailand," which I did not realize was the case, and perhaps not without some irony, was clearly not the highest point in Thailand, which required a five minute walk up from the parking area to the summit of the hill. At the summit after guzzling a bottle of ice-cold water and studying the map for a while I headed back down to a checkpoint I had passed on the way up. This checkpoint according to my information had one of the rare lady slipper orchids growing on the back of the soldiers quarters which the rangers would be happy to show you, if you stopped to ask.</p> +<p>It took only ten minutes of motorless gliding down the hill to reach the checkpoint where I inquired after the orchid. Unfortunately it turned out that the plant in question had died. With little time left before sunset I was forced to give up the search for the lady slipper orchid. I sat for a minute on the steps outside thinking what a different tale if Cinderella had never been found, if the prince simply wandered about forever clutching a glass slipper, never finding a foot that fit, until old and with a long beard perhaps, he wandered out of the Kingdom stopping perhaps at a checkpoint not unlike this one, not unlike the one Lao Tzu is said to have stopped at, where the guards said, please, could you write down what you know? To which the prince might well have answered simply, "I will never understand…"</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cc05862 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers.html @@ -0,0 +1,431 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The King Of Carrot Flowers - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="An early morning motorbike ride in search of the Lady Slipper Orchid in Doi Inthanan National Park, just outside of Chang Mai Thailand"> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="19.31503138144625, 98.84262083585055" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="19.31503138144625; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-17T18:53:17" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>17, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p>The light outside was still the inky blue of pre-dawn when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six-thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful than a cup of coffee — especially when you have no towel to dry off with. </p> +<p>After dropping my body temperature a few degrees drying off under the ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, climbed on my crappy rental scooter and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_51.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_51_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_51_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="me on a moped, thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_51.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>I’m not normally much of a morning person, but I know if I wanted to ride the 200 km journey to the highest point in Thailand in a single day I had to start early. </p> +<p>I rode out of Chiang Mai in the early morning chill. You don’t think of Thailand as cold, but it can be plenty cold up here in the mountains. I rode with fists clenched and teeth chattering uncontrollably, but the freedom of having my own transportation paled any discomforts the cold brought about.</p> +<p>I had forgotten what freedom a vehicle of one’s own can provide and I had never known the freedom that a motorbike provides. A motorbike, whether it be a clumsy scooter like mine or a more powerful, faster motorcycle, is to driving a car as body surfing is to using a board. </p> +<p>Without the surfboard or the car there is a greater intimacy with the environment. The pavement, the curbs and lines of paint, the wind and the whip of passing cars and trucks, the grass growing in the cracks whizzing past below your feet, all of these things and a million other details you don’t have the time to absorb become a symphony of movement not unlike the breaking of a wave, a singular sensation which absorbs and is absorbed by your body whole instantaneously and yet seems to stretch on forever.</p> +<hr /> + +<p>After a 60 or so kilometer ride on the main highway south of Chiang Mai I turned off onto the national park road and began to ascend through the dry grassy chaparral foothills and into the forest proper. My first stop was a small but peaceful waterfall. In fact nearly all my stops on the way to the summit were waterfalls except for one Karin village where I had lunch.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_21.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_21_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_21_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="waterfall doi inthanon national park thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_21.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_22.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_22_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_22_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="rainbow doi inthanon national park thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_22.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_06_OAYj1zV.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_06_OAYj1zV_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_06_OAYj1zV_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="colorful leaves, thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_06_OAYj1zV.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>My chief reason for coming to the park was the lady slipper orchid. There are many kinds of lady slipper orchids, which as you might imagine has a flower that resembled a lady’s slipper, but the particular variety found here is only found here and nowhere else in the world (in the wild anyway).</p> +<p>Ever since spending time with the orchids at Jim Thompson’s house, I have been studying up on them and wanting to see more. The previous day I rode the motorbike up to the Mae Sa Valley where there were a number of orchid farms and a very large botanical garden. </p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_17_cm8HYOo.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_17_cm8HYOo_pic66.jpg" alt="Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden, Mae sa valley, Thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_17_cm8HYOo.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_35.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_35_pic66.jpg" alt="purple orchids, Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden, Mae sa valley, Thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_35.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_41.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class=" " sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_41_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_41_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="Butterfly, Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden, Mae sa valley, Thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_41.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_49.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class=" " sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_49_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_49_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="white orchids, Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden, Mae sa valley, Thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_49.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</div> + +<p>It was at the Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden that I first read of the Lady Slipper Orchid that resides solely in Doi Inthanan National Park, and the specificity of such an ecological niche fascinated me. </p> +<p>While wandering slowly through various greenhouses full of the same purple and orange and yellow orchids I had seen in Bangkok and elsewhere, I began to wonder why it was that some are right here, right everywhere, while other orchids require searches that lead to the far ends of the earth whether that be deep in the jungles of Thailand or the keys of Florida. </p> +<p>What precisely is that drives evolution into such narrow back alleys that it can produce a plant on one mountain or one corner of a swamp and no other? Do all the pieces ultimately fit that tightly? If they do then what does it mean when it turns out that the piece does not fit? What if the mountain changes, the icy northern glaciers begin to grow, the temperature drops and the orchid finds itself alone, stranded atop a mountain it never intended to climb?</p> +<p>The basic orchid flower is composed of three sepals which make up the outer whorl, the part we generally think of as the flower. Within this structure there are three additional petals which form an inner whorl. With in this is a tongue or lip-like platform for pollinators. The lady slipper belongs the family Pathiopedilum, in which the two lower sepals of the flower become fused together and the lip, instead of being flat, takes the form of a slipper. </p> +<hr /> + +<p>From the first waterfall where I lingered maybe an hour studying the water polished rocks along the shore of the river above the falls, I continued upward pausing at the Wachiratan waterfall. The Wachiratan falls were larger and engulfed in a misty shroud of white with rainbows arcing out through the spray, moving and receding as I walked around, changing my angle from the sun. </p> +<p>To escape from the chill of the spray I wandered down the riverbed among oaks and cashew trees with Tamarind trees reaching high into the sky and massive impenetrable stands of bamboo dark and foreboding in the growing afternoon shadows of the forest floor.</p> +<p>I had the rather optimistic idea that perhaps I could find a Lady Slipper Orchid clinging to a tree or sprouting out of a rock, but with a flower that rare, one does not just stumble across it. Somewhere along the way I discovered the road also led to the highest point in Thailand as well.</p> +<p>Near the summit I paused to let some trucks pass and then waited a while not wanting to ride in the trail of exhaust they left behind. I sat on the bike staring at a pinkish leafed tree which stood out against the otherwise green hillsides. Behind the pink tree an afternoon thunder cloud drifted slowly by. </p> +<p>At the summit I rested for a while beside a sign that read “The Highest Point in Thailand,” which was clearly not the highest point in Thailand. To get to that required a five minute walk up from the parking area to the summit of the hill. </p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_42.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_42_pic66.jpg" alt="sign marking the highest point in Thailand, with a hill and obviously higher point behind it photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_42.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_47.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_47_pic66.jpg" alt="view from the highest point in Thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_47.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_39_9rPH8G7.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class=" " sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_39_9rPH8G7_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_39_9rPH8G7_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="view from the highest point in Thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_39_9rPH8G7.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_45.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class=" " sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_45_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_45_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="Me at the highest point in Thailand photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_45.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</div> + +<p>At the summit after guzzling a bottle of ice-cold water and studying the map for a while I headed back down to a checkpoint I had passed on the way up. This checkpoint according to my information had one of the rare lady slipper orchids growing on the back of the soldiers quarters which the rangers would be happy to show you, if you stopped to ask.</p> +<p>It took only ten minutes of motorless gliding down the hill to reach the checkpoint. I inquired after the orchid, but it turned out that the plant in question had died. With little time left before sunset I was forced to give up the search for a lady slipper orchid and head home.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing" rel="prev" title=" You and I Are Disappearing">You and I Are Disappearing</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/down-river" rel="next" title=" Down the River">Down the River</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="36" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833482" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="e6166c7bcecccf8cfbcabd546387f3ed01c0b196" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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A cold shower at six-thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful than a cup of coffee -- especially when you have no towel to dry off with.
+
+After dropping my body temperature a few degrees drying off under the ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, climbed on my crappy rental scooter and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park.
+
+
+<img src="images/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_51.jpg" id="image-2119" class="picwide" />
+
+I'm not normally much of a morning person, but I know if I wanted to ride the 200 km journey to the highest point in Thailand in a single day I had to start early.
+
+I rode out of Chiang Mai in the early morning chill. You don't think of Thailand as cold, but it can be plenty cold up here in the mountains. I rode with fists clenched and teeth chattering uncontrollably, but the freedom of having my own transportation paled any discomforts the cold brought about.
+
+I had forgotten what freedom a vehicle of one's own can provide and I had never known the freedom that a motorbike provides. A motorbike, whether it be a clumsy scooter like mine or a more powerful, faster motorcycle, is to driving a car as body surfing is to using a board.
+
+Without the surfboard or the car there is a greater intimacy with the environment. The pavement, the curbs and lines of paint, the wind and the whip of passing cars and trucks, the grass growing in the cracks whizzing past below your feet, all of these things and a million other details you don't have the time to absorb become a symphony of movement not unlike the breaking of a wave, a singular sensation which absorbs and is absorbed by your body whole instantaneously and yet seems to stretch on forever.
+
+<hr />
+
+After a 60 or so kilometer ride on the main highway south of Chiang Mai I turned off onto the national park road and began to ascend through the dry grassy chaparral foothills and into the forest proper. My first stop was a small but peaceful waterfall. In fact nearly all my stops on the way to the summit were waterfalls except for one Karin village where I had lunch.
+
+<img src="images/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_21.jpg" id="image-2120" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_22.jpg" id="image-2121" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_06_OAYj1zV.jpg" id="image-2118" class="picwide" />
+
+My chief reason for coming to the park was the lady slipper orchid. There are many kinds of lady slipper orchids, which as you might imagine has a flower that resembled a lady's slipper, but the particular variety found here is only found here and nowhere else in the world (in the wild anyway).
+
+Ever since spending time with the orchids at Jim Thompson's house, I have been studying up on them and wanting to see more. The previous day I rode the motorbike up to the Mae Sa Valley where there were a number of orchid farms and a very large botanical garden.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_17_cm8HYOo.jpg" id="image-2129" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_35.jpg" id="image-2130" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+<img src="images/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_41.jpg" id="image-2131" class="cluster picwide" />
+<img src="images/2006/Mae_Sa_Valley1_9_06_49.jpg" id="image-2132" class="cluster picwide" />
+</div>
+
+It was at the Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden that I first read of the Lady Slipper Orchid that resides solely in Doi Inthanan National Park, and the specificity of such an ecological niche fascinated me.
+
+While wandering slowly through various greenhouses full of the same purple and orange and yellow orchids I had seen in Bangkok and elsewhere, I began to wonder why it was that some are right here, right everywhere, while other orchids require searches that lead to the far ends of the earth whether that be deep in the jungles of Thailand or the keys of Florida.
+
+What precisely is that drives evolution into such narrow back alleys that it can produce a plant on one mountain or one corner of a swamp and no other? Do all the pieces ultimately fit that tightly? If they do then what does it mean when it turns out that the piece does not fit? What if the mountain changes, the icy northern glaciers begin to grow, the temperature drops and the orchid finds itself alone, stranded atop a mountain it never intended to climb?
+
+The basic orchid flower is composed of three sepals which make up the outer whorl, the part we generally think of as the flower. Within this structure there are three additional petals which form an inner whorl. With in this is a tongue or lip-like platform for pollinators. The lady slipper belongs the family Pathiopedilum, in which the two lower sepals of the flower become fused together and the lip, instead of being flat, takes the form of a slipper.
+
+<hr />
+
+From the first waterfall where I lingered maybe an hour studying the water polished rocks along the shore of the river above the falls, I continued upward pausing at the Wachiratan waterfall. The Wachiratan falls were larger and engulfed in a misty shroud of white with rainbows arcing out through the spray, moving and receding as I walked around, changing my angle from the sun.
+
+To escape from the chill of the spray I wandered down the riverbed among oaks and cashew trees with Tamarind trees reaching high into the sky and massive impenetrable stands of bamboo dark and foreboding in the growing afternoon shadows of the forest floor.
+
+
+I had the rather optimistic idea that perhaps I could find a Lady Slipper Orchid clinging to a tree or sprouting out of a rock, but with a flower that rare, one does not just stumble across it. Somewhere along the way I discovered the road also led to the highest point in Thailand as well.
+
+Near the summit I paused to let some trucks pass and then waited a while not wanting to ride in the trail of exhaust they left behind. I sat on the bike staring at a pinkish leafed tree which stood out against the otherwise green hillsides. Behind the pink tree an afternoon thunder cloud drifted slowly by.
+
+At the summit I rested for a while beside a sign that read "The Highest Point in Thailand," which was clearly not the highest point in Thailand. To get to that required a five minute walk up from the parking area to the summit of the hill.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_42.jpg" id="image-2124" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2006/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_47.jpg" id="image-2127" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+<img src="images/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_39_9rPH8G7.jpg" id="image-2123" class="cluster picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/Thailand-_Chiang_Mai_Doi_Inthanon_NP1_10_06_45.jpg" id="image-2125" class="cluster picwide" />
+</div>
+
+At the summit after guzzling a bottle of ice-cold water and studying the map for a while I headed back down to a checkpoint I had passed on the way up. This checkpoint according to my information had one of the rare lady slipper orchids growing on the back of the soldiers quarters which the rangers would be happy to show you, if you stopped to ask.
+
+It took only ten minutes of motorless gliding down the hill to reach the checkpoint. I inquired after the orchid, but it turned out that the plant in question had died. With little time left before sunset I was forced to give up the search for a lady slipper orchid and head home. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..64fb32a --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing.amp @@ -0,0 +1,190 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>You and I Are Disappearing</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Exploring the Wats of Chiang Mai, Thailand, particularly Wat UMong, home of the emaciated Buddha statue."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="You and I Are Disappearing"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/changmaiumong.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Chang Mai, Thailand"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="TH-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="You and I Are Disappearing" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Exploring the Wats of Chiang Mai, Thailand, particularly Wat UMong, home of the emaciated Buddha statue." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-01-12T00:52:30" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/changmaiumong.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chiangmaielephant.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/watumongtunnel.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/emaciatedbuddha.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/umongfishpond.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "You and I Are Disappearing", + "description": "Exploring the Wats of Chiang Mai, Thailand, particularly Wat UMong, home of the emaciated Buddha statue.", + "datePublished": "2006-01-12T00:52:30", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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+ font-size: 0.875rem; +} +blockquote * { + font-style: italic; +} +blockquote * em { + font-weight: bold; +} +blockquote * strong { + font-style: normal; +} +hr { + border: none; + border-bottom: 0.0625rem dotted #ccc; +} +.hide {display: none;} +</style> +<style>body {opacity: 0}</style><noscript><style>body {opacity: 1}</style></noscript> +<script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> +</head> +<body> + +<nav> +<a href="https://luxagraf.net/"> +luxagraf</a> +</nav> + +<main class="h-entry"> + <article class="h-entry hentry post--article" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/Article"> + <header id="header" class="post--header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post--title" itemprop="headline">You and I Are Disappearing</h1> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2006-01-12T00:52:30" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>12, 2006</span></time> + <p class="p-author author hide" itemprop="author"><span class="byline-author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></span></p> + <aside class="p-location h-adr adr post--location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <span class="p-region">Chang Mai</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/thailand/" title="travel writing from Thailand">Thailand</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> had been watching the eastern horizon for what felt like an hour, waiting for some perceptible change that would signal the coming of dawn, but it wasn't until after the bus stopped and my fellow passengers and I disembarked at the 7-11 next to the truck stop, that I finally noticed a slight glow. </p> +<p>It had been, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy night, except that it wasn't stormy, it was simply dark. I have become completely incapable of sleeping in any sort of moving vehicle. When warping space through movement, time slows down and while this may sound metaphorical given that a bus does not move through space fast enough to <em>actually</em> slow down time, it is not. The two weeks I spent in Bangkok flew by, but when I am moving from place to place time always seems to slow down, and not just the actual traveling time, but all time, even that spent in a restaurant or at night in bed with a book; everything happens slower when you're traveling. </p> +<p><break> +I got off the bus and studied my fellow travelers many of whom I spent the last three hours observing in their sleep, comparing the personas I had invented for them while they slept with those they really possessed. I was tired, bleary-eyed tired, but for some reason unable to sleep. I spent most of the journey listening to my iPod with Daniel Carter's <em>Luminescence</em> looping over and over, which made a particularly compelling soundtrack to the passage of the darkness outside the window and the small beam of light on the highway in front of the bus. </break></p> +<p>I bought a bottle of orange juice and sat down on the curb to watch the sunrise, but found my attention drawn instead to a dying moth fluttering about on its back making near perfect circles on the concrete. It continued without rest the entire time I sat there and seemed to me to signify something, though in my foggy sleep-deprived state, I could not say what it was the moth's movements meant to me, merely that they meant something.</p> +<p>By the time we actually reached Chiang Mai it was well past dawn and the city just beginning to stir. After securing a room and depositing my belonging I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonablely modern and in my opinion not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Wat Chiang Man, Chiang Mai, Thailand" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chiangmaielephant.jpg" width="173"></amp-img>The most striking of the three was the oldest, wat Chiang Man from which Chiang Mai takes its name. The main stupha near the rear of the temple compound was a decaying edifice of what appeared to be limestone. The structure was about average in height, that is to say around 30 meters, and near the base a number of carved elephants jutted out. The stone was weathered black and splotchy from various lichens and mosses and of course the rain and pollution. I have no doubt it is earmarked for renovation, but I find that I enjoy crumbling, weather beaten temples more than those that have been carefully restored. Perhaps it is that the wear and tear of ages spent in the tropical sun lends some authenticity of age to stone, a reminder that these structures were around even when my own culture was still wearing its metaphorical diapers. I have always thought of the standard timeline of history as a circle viewed from the side, and from this perspective there is a backside to what we normally think of as the passage of time. Rather than moving forward down a line, events recede and grow closer as they move through time; the weathering of the stone elephants was to me a reminder of this two dimensional movement of time, as if the stone had not only passed along a line, but also moved forward and backward, picking up here and there a spot or streak of rain or growth of moss.</p> +<p>While all of the wats were interesting in their own way, none compelled me to linger long and, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to ruin my round number and head to one more wat, wat Umong, located just outside the old city. I caught a ride with a songthaew (a truck taxi basically) to the entrance and wandered in. The main appeal of wat Umong was that, unlike the wats in the city, it sprawled out over a large forested hill. The forest reminded me a little of the area around Athens GA, but with no kudzu, a sort of forest I've never been able to put my finger on, not true jungle, but with lots of undergrowth and creeping vines crawling up the trunks of hardwood trees, and then broad leafed shrubs with white flowers, and an endless variety of ground cover much of it sprouting small purple flowers, even an orchid or two clinging to the trunk of an oak near the entrance; not what I would call jungle and not what I would call deciduous.</p> +<p>Most wats have a central focal point, some particular image of Buddha or an old temple building or something that creates a locus around which everything else has been constructed, but wat Umong lacked that focal point entirely. Various paved trails took off in all directions and I could see a number of buildings poking their characteristic pointed roofs up into the branches of nearby trees. Toward the back of the wat was a network of tunnels quite obviously dug out by human means. According to the monks I spoke to no one knows who originally dug the caves; the local legend is that a solitary monk came here to meditate and created the place himself. <amp-img alt="Wat UMong, Chiang Mai, Thailand" height="174" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/watumongtunnel.jpg" width="172"></amp-img>And though there is no historical evidence to support that story, I couldn't help but thinking of that solitary and one might think, maybe a little crazy, monk digging these tunnels with his bare hands. Such thoughts made the otherwise rather sterile and plain tunnels invested with an idiosyncratic quality, as if perhaps this fictitious monk were trying to get at some point in the tunnels, not some physical thing, but rather convey some mood or meaning through design alone.</p> +<p>Perhaps the reason wat Umong has no centrality is that the main image of Buddha at the wat is rather frightening looking and represents the Buddha at the end of one of his failed early attempts at enlightenment. For those that aren't familiar with the life of Buddha, Buddha tried unsuccessfully to reach enlightenment through various methods before he found the middle way as it is known. The method represented at wat Umong shows Buddha as an emaciated skeleton at the end of a long period of self-mortification. What was so striking about this statue once one gets past the near skeletal appearance of Buddha were the eyes which seemed to glow with, for lack of a better word, hunger. <amp-img alt="Emaciated Buddha, Wat Umong, Chiang Mai, Thailand" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/emaciatedbuddha.jpg" width="183"></amp-img>But not the calm sort of hunger that one might imagine the Buddha to have, this was more of a ravenous devouring and vaguely frightening hunger. The sort of piercing stare that threatens to engulf you when you step into it. </p> +<p>After loitering for a while in the peripherals of Buddha's famished gaze I made my way down to a small pagoda near the fishpond where, as the sign near the entrance had claimed, there would be an informal discussion on Buddhism with a monk. Several other westerners slowly trickled down as the appointed time arrived, including an older American man I had spoken to earlier. He had asked where I was from and I generally just answer that with the last place I've lived, which as it turned out he had also lived in. We spoke for a while of weather and the Red Socks and other things only New Englanders really care about and then I had wandered off to explore.</p> +<p>The session began slowly, no one wanted to ask any questions and my sleep-deprived mind was too slow to formulate anything intelligent enough to say out loud. For their part the monks were perfectly comfortable with the vast periods of silence which I could tell left many of those in attendance feeling a bit awkward. It's not often you meet people who are comfortable with long periods of silence. Eventually a few questions were voiced, mostly technical things like the difference between how monks practice Buddhism versus what you could call a layperson practices Buddhism, or what the goals of meditation are. I had a number of questions in my mind by then, but for some reason found myself unwilling to ask them. Part of me suspected that perhaps I did not really want to know the answers as the more I learn of Buddhism, the less I agree with it.</p> +<p>No matter where the questions began, in the course of his response the monk kept coming back to the phrase "cause and effect," which in his pronunciation sounded more like "cause and affect." This slight semantic difference became somehow telling to me the more he repeated it, as if his own language were betraying him. I have struggled to understand Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand since I arrived. Much of what I have seen at wats has been out of line with what I know of the Buddha's teachings and indeed the monks confirmed that as with any religion, many of those who follow Buddhism do not really practice what the Buddha taught. The chief thing the monk seemed concerned with was the relationship between the causes of action and effect of those actions. But his, and perhaps Buddhism's in general, interpretation of that relationship seemed to me woefully simplified.</p> +<p>I kept wondering what Buddhism would say to a theory like chaos mathematics. I did not ask because really I did not want to know, I prefer to wonder about these sort of things rather than have any definitive answer, assuming a definitive answer to such a nebulous question were even possible. But I failed to see how one could ever really determine a relationship between cause and effect given that the chain of events that follow from any one thought or action are far too wide reaching, complicated and extensive for the human mind to keep track of, and even if we were able to follow the chain clearly, it is unlikely that just because one's intentions were good, that it necessarily follows that the outcome of those intentions are positive for all that end up being effected by it. </p> +<p>Somewhere in the middle of the talk I realized that, while it may have betrayed my westernness in thinking so, I believe in randomness and ambiguity and patterns so complex as to be indecipherable and to try and find the order and meaning within them is to miss the point of their existence. There is actually a word for this idea, pareidolia, which means simply the fanciful perception of meaning in something that is actually ambiguous, and this is perhaps what troubled me about the monks ideas, not that they were wrong, but that they strove to remove all ambiguity from life. I thought again of the moth fluttering on the concrete; the pattern of his dying arcs could hold some meaning if I chose to attach one to the other, but at the same time, perhaps the deeper meaning lay with my own awareness that I was creating it. That is to say, perhaps the moth was simply dying and any connection beyond that was an act of my imagination, not something inherent in the moth's death, which isn't to say that that connection shouldn't be made, but merely to acknowledge that the connection arose from the imagination. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Umong fishpond, Chiang Mai, Thailand" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/umongfishpond.jpg" width="165"></amp-img>Eventually as new people arrived questions and answers began to repeat themselves and as discreetly as possible I slipped away and wandered down to the shores of the pond to watch the cumulous clouds forming over the distant hills. I sat for a while on a small bench near the shore thinking of the clouds and the patterns and shapes we sometimes see in them, which like the moth's circle are inventions of our mind at play. As I stood to walk home it occurred to me that perhaps that the joy of life is not to puzzle out the connections between things, but to play amongst them and with them.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..058ea45 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing.html @@ -0,0 +1,343 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>You And I Are Disappearing - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Exploring the Wats of Chiang Mai, Thailand, particularly Wat UMong, home of the emaciated Buddha statue."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="18.787042343613653, 98.9876746993555" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="18.787042343613653; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-01-12T00:52:30" itemprop="datePublished">January <span>12, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> had been watching the eastern horizon for what felt like an hour, waiting for some perceptible change that would signal the coming of dawn, but it wasn’t until after the bus stopped and my fellow passengers and I disembarked at the 7-11 next to the truck stop, that I finally noticed a slight glow. </p> +<p>It had been, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy night, except that it wasn’t stormy, it was simply dark. I have become completely incapable of sleeping in any sort of moving vehicle. When warping space through movement, time slows down and while this may sound metaphorical given that a bus does not move through space fast enough to <em>actually</em> slow down time, it is not. The two weeks I spent in Bangkok flew by, but when I am moving from place to place time always seems to slow down, and not just the actual traveling time, but all time, even that spent in a restaurant or at night in bed with a book; everything happens slower when you’re traveling. </p> +<p><break> +I got off the bus and studied my fellow travelers many of whom I spent the last three hours observing in their sleep, comparing the personas I had invented for them while they slept with those they really possessed. I was tired, bleary-eyed tired, but for some reason unable to sleep. I spent most of the journey listening to my iPod with Daniel Carter’s <em>Luminescence</em> looping over and over, which made a particularly compelling soundtrack to the passage of the darkness outside the window and the small beam of light on the highway in front of the bus. </p> +<p>I bought a bottle of orange juice and sat down on the curb to watch the sunrise, but found my attention drawn instead to a dying moth fluttering about on its back making near perfect circles on the concrete. It continued without rest the entire time I sat there and seemed to me to signify something, though in my foggy sleep-deprived state, I could not say what it was the moth’s movements meant to me, merely that they meant something.</p> +<p>By the time we actually reached Chiang Mai it was well past dawn and the city just beginning to stir. After securing a room and depositing my belonging I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonablely modern and in my opinion not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent. </p> +<p><img alt="Wat Chiang Man, Chiang Mai, Thailand" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chiangmaielephant.jpg" width="173"/>The most striking of the three was the oldest, wat Chiang Man from which Chiang Mai takes its name. The main stupha near the rear of the temple compound was a decaying edifice of what appeared to be limestone. The structure was about average in height, that is to say around 30 meters, and near the base a number of carved elephants jutted out. The stone was weathered black and splotchy from various lichens and mosses and of course the rain and pollution. I have no doubt it is earmarked for renovation, but I find that I enjoy crumbling, weather beaten temples more than those that have been carefully restored. Perhaps it is that the wear and tear of ages spent in the tropical sun lends some authenticity of age to stone, a reminder that these structures were around even when my own culture was still wearing its metaphorical diapers. I have always thought of the standard timeline of history as a circle viewed from the side, and from this perspective there is a backside to what we normally think of as the passage of time. Rather than moving forward down a line, events recede and grow closer as they move through time; the weathering of the stone elephants was to me a reminder of this two dimensional movement of time, as if the stone had not only passed along a line, but also moved forward and backward, picking up here and there a spot or streak of rain or growth of moss.</p> +<p>While all of the wats were interesting in their own way, none compelled me to linger long and, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to ruin my round number and head to one more wat, wat Umong, located just outside the old city. I caught a ride with a songthaew (a truck taxi basically) to the entrance and wandered in. The main appeal of wat Umong was that, unlike the wats in the city, it sprawled out over a large forested hill. The forest reminded me a little of the area around Athens GA, but with no kudzu, a sort of forest I’ve never been able to put my finger on, not true jungle, but with lots of undergrowth and creeping vines crawling up the trunks of hardwood trees, and then broad leafed shrubs with white flowers, and an endless variety of ground cover much of it sprouting small purple flowers, even an orchid or two clinging to the trunk of an oak near the entrance; not what I would call jungle and not what I would call deciduous.</p> +<p>Most wats have a central focal point, some particular image of Buddha or an old temple building or something that creates a locus around which everything else has been constructed, but wat Umong lacked that focal point entirely. Various paved trails took off in all directions and I could see a number of buildings poking their characteristic pointed roofs up into the branches of nearby trees. Toward the back of the wat was a network of tunnels quite obviously dug out by human means. According to the monks I spoke to no one knows who originally dug the caves; the local legend is that a solitary monk came here to meditate and created the place himself. <img alt="Wat UMong, Chiang Mai, Thailand" class="postpicright" height="174" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/watumongtunnel.jpg" width="172"/>And though there is no historical evidence to support that story, I couldn’t help but thinking of that solitary and one might think, maybe a little crazy, monk digging these tunnels with his bare hands. Such thoughts made the otherwise rather sterile and plain tunnels invested with an idiosyncratic quality, as if perhaps this fictitious monk were trying to get at some point in the tunnels, not some physical thing, but rather convey some mood or meaning through design alone.</p> +<p>Perhaps the reason wat Umong has no centrality is that the main image of Buddha at the wat is rather frightening looking and represents the Buddha at the end of one of his failed early attempts at enlightenment. For those that aren’t familiar with the life of Buddha, Buddha tried unsuccessfully to reach enlightenment through various methods before he found the middle way as it is known. The method represented at wat Umong shows Buddha as an emaciated skeleton at the end of a long period of self-mortification. What was so striking about this statue once one gets past the near skeletal appearance of Buddha were the eyes which seemed to glow with, for lack of a better word, hunger. <img alt="Emaciated Buddha, Wat Umong, Chiang Mai, Thailand" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/emaciatedbuddha.jpg" width="183"/>But not the calm sort of hunger that one might imagine the Buddha to have, this was more of a ravenous devouring and vaguely frightening hunger. The sort of piercing stare that threatens to engulf you when you step into it. </p> +<p>After loitering for a while in the peripherals of Buddha’s famished gaze I made my way down to a small pagoda near the fishpond where, as the sign near the entrance had claimed, there would be an informal discussion on Buddhism with a monk. Several other westerners slowly trickled down as the appointed time arrived, including an older American man I had spoken to earlier. He had asked where I was from and I generally just answer that with the last place I’ve lived, which as it turned out he had also lived in. We spoke for a while of weather and the Red Socks and other things only New Englanders really care about and then I had wandered off to explore.</p> +<p>The session began slowly, no one wanted to ask any questions and my sleep-deprived mind was too slow to formulate anything intelligent enough to say out loud. For their part the monks were perfectly comfortable with the vast periods of silence which I could tell left many of those in attendance feeling a bit awkward. It’s not often you meet people who are comfortable with long periods of silence. Eventually a few questions were voiced, mostly technical things like the difference between how monks practice Buddhism versus what you could call a layperson practices Buddhism, or what the goals of meditation are. I had a number of questions in my mind by then, but for some reason found myself unwilling to ask them. Part of me suspected that perhaps I did not really want to know the answers as the more I learn of Buddhism, the less I agree with it.</p> +<p>No matter where the questions began, in the course of his response the monk kept coming back to the phrase “cause and effect,” which in his pronunciation sounded more like “cause and affect.” This slight semantic difference became somehow telling to me the more he repeated it, as if his own language were betraying him. I have struggled to understand Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand since I arrived. Much of what I have seen at wats has been out of line with what I know of the Buddha’s teachings and indeed the monks confirmed that as with any religion, many of those who follow Buddhism do not really practice what the Buddha taught. The chief thing the monk seemed concerned with was the relationship between the causes of action and effect of those actions. But his, and perhaps Buddhism’s in general, interpretation of that relationship seemed to me woefully simplified.</p> +<p>I kept wondering what Buddhism would say to a theory like chaos mathematics. I did not ask because really I did not want to know, I prefer to wonder about these sort of things rather than have any definitive answer, assuming a definitive answer to such a nebulous question were even possible. But I failed to see how one could ever really determine a relationship between cause and effect given that the chain of events that follow from any one thought or action are far too wide reaching, complicated and extensive for the human mind to keep track of, and even if we were able to follow the chain clearly, it is unlikely that just because one’s intentions were good, that it necessarily follows that the outcome of those intentions are positive for all that end up being effected by it. </p> +<p>Somewhere in the middle of the talk I realized that, while it may have betrayed my westernness in thinking so, I believe in randomness and ambiguity and patterns so complex as to be indecipherable and to try and find the order and meaning within them is to miss the point of their existence. There is actually a word for this idea, pareidolia, which means simply the fanciful perception of meaning in something that is actually ambiguous, and this is perhaps what troubled me about the monks ideas, not that they were wrong, but that they strove to remove all ambiguity from life. I thought again of the moth fluttering on the concrete; the pattern of his dying arcs could hold some meaning if I chose to attach one to the other, but at the same time, perhaps the deeper meaning lay with my own awareness that I was creating it. That is to say, perhaps the moth was simply dying and any connection beyond that was an act of my imagination, not something inherent in the moth’s death, which isn’t to say that that connection shouldn’t be made, but merely to acknowledge that the connection arose from the imagination. </p> +<p><img alt="Umong fishpond, Chiang Mai, Thailand" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/umongfishpond.jpg" width="165"/>Eventually as new people arrived questions and answers began to repeat themselves and as discreetly as possible I slipped away and wandered down to the shores of the pond to watch the cumulous clouds forming over the distant hills. I sat for a while on a small bench near the shore thinking of the clouds and the patterns and shapes we sometimes see in them, which like the moth’s circle are inventions of our mind at play. As I stood to walk home it occurred to me that perhaps that the joy of life is not to puzzle out the connections between things, but to play amongst them and with them.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/buddha-bounty" rel="prev" title=" Buddha on the Bounty">Buddha on the Bounty</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers" rel="next" title=" The King of Carrot Flowers">The King of Carrot Flowers</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="35" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833483" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="30fbbea44964701e3ee434d00961ff25454ada3e" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+It had been, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy night, except that it wasn't stormy, it was simply dark. I have become completely incapable of sleeping in any sort of moving vehicle. When warping space through movement, time slows down and while this may sound metaphorical given that a bus does not move through space fast enough to *actually* slow down time, it is not. The two weeks I spent in Bangkok flew by, but when I am moving from place to place time always seems to slow down, and not just the actual traveling time, but all time, even that spent in a restaurant or at night in bed with a book; everything happens slower when you're traveling.
+
+<break>
+I got off the bus and studied my fellow travelers many of whom I spent the last three hours observing in their sleep, comparing the personas I had invented for them while they slept with those they really possessed. I was tired, bleary-eyed tired, but for some reason unable to sleep. I spent most of the journey listening to my iPod with Daniel Carter's *Luminescence* looping over and over, which made a particularly compelling soundtrack to the passage of the darkness outside the window and the small beam of light on the highway in front of the bus.
+
+I bought a bottle of orange juice and sat down on the curb to watch the sunrise, but found my attention drawn instead to a dying moth fluttering about on its back making near perfect circles on the concrete. It continued without rest the entire time I sat there and seemed to me to signify something, though in my foggy sleep-deprived state, I could not say what it was the moth's movements meant to me, merely that they meant something.
+
+By the time we actually reached Chiang Mai it was well past dawn and the city just beginning to stir. After securing a room and depositing my belonging I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonablely modern and in my opinion not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/chiangmaielephant.jpg" width="173" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Wat Chiang Man, Chiang Mai, Thailand" />The most striking of the three was the oldest, wat Chiang Man from which Chiang Mai takes its name. The main stupha near the rear of the temple compound was a decaying edifice of what appeared to be limestone. The structure was about average in height, that is to say around 30 meters, and near the base a number of carved elephants jutted out. The stone was weathered black and splotchy from various lichens and mosses and of course the rain and pollution. I have no doubt it is earmarked for renovation, but I find that I enjoy crumbling, weather beaten temples more than those that have been carefully restored. Perhaps it is that the wear and tear of ages spent in the tropical sun lends some authenticity of age to stone, a reminder that these structures were around even when my own culture was still wearing its metaphorical diapers. I have always thought of the standard timeline of history as a circle viewed from the side, and from this perspective there is a backside to what we normally think of as the passage of time. Rather than moving forward down a line, events recede and grow closer as they move through time; the weathering of the stone elephants was to me a reminder of this two dimensional movement of time, as if the stone had not only passed along a line, but also moved forward and backward, picking up here and there a spot or streak of rain or growth of moss.
+
+While all of the wats were interesting in their own way, none compelled me to linger long and, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to ruin my round number and head to one more wat, wat Umong, located just outside the old city. I caught a ride with a songthaew (a truck taxi basically) to the entrance and wandered in. The main appeal of wat Umong was that, unlike the wats in the city, it sprawled out over a large forested hill. The forest reminded me a little of the area around Athens GA, but with no kudzu, a sort of forest I've never been able to put my finger on, not true jungle, but with lots of undergrowth and creeping vines crawling up the trunks of hardwood trees, and then broad leafed shrubs with white flowers, and an endless variety of ground cover much of it sprouting small purple flowers, even an orchid or two clinging to the trunk of an oak near the entrance; not what I would call jungle and not what I would call deciduous.
+
+Most wats have a central focal point, some particular image of Buddha or an old temple building or something that creates a locus around which everything else has been constructed, but wat Umong lacked that focal point entirely. Various paved trails took off in all directions and I could see a number of buildings poking their characteristic pointed roofs up into the branches of nearby trees. Toward the back of the wat was a network of tunnels quite obviously dug out by human means. According to the monks I spoke to no one knows who originally dug the caves; the local legend is that a solitary monk came here to meditate and created the place himself. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/watumongtunnel.jpg" width="172" height="174" class="postpicright" alt="Wat UMong, Chiang Mai, Thailand" />And though there is no historical evidence to support that story, I couldn't help but thinking of that solitary and one might think, maybe a little crazy, monk digging these tunnels with his bare hands. Such thoughts made the otherwise rather sterile and plain tunnels invested with an idiosyncratic quality, as if perhaps this fictitious monk were trying to get at some point in the tunnels, not some physical thing, but rather convey some mood or meaning through design alone.
+
+Perhaps the reason wat Umong has no centrality is that the main image of Buddha at the wat is rather frightening looking and represents the Buddha at the end of one of his failed early attempts at enlightenment. For those that aren't familiar with the life of Buddha, Buddha tried unsuccessfully to reach enlightenment through various methods before he found the middle way as it is known. The method represented at wat Umong shows Buddha as an emaciated skeleton at the end of a long period of self-mortification. What was so striking about this statue once one gets past the near skeletal appearance of Buddha were the eyes which seemed to glow with, for lack of a better word, hunger. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/emaciatedbuddha.jpg" width="183" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Emaciated Buddha, Wat Umong, Chiang Mai, Thailand" />But not the calm sort of hunger that one might imagine the Buddha to have, this was more of a ravenous devouring and vaguely frightening hunger. The sort of piercing stare that threatens to engulf you when you step into it.
+
+After loitering for a while in the peripherals of Buddha's famished gaze I made my way down to a small pagoda near the fishpond where, as the sign near the entrance had claimed, there would be an informal discussion on Buddhism with a monk. Several other westerners slowly trickled down as the appointed time arrived, including an older American man I had spoken to earlier. He had asked where I was from and I generally just answer that with the last place I've lived, which as it turned out he had also lived in. We spoke for a while of weather and the Red Socks and other things only New Englanders really care about and then I had wandered off to explore.
+
+The session began slowly, no one wanted to ask any questions and my sleep-deprived mind was too slow to formulate anything intelligent enough to say out loud. For their part the monks were perfectly comfortable with the vast periods of silence which I could tell left many of those in attendance feeling a bit awkward. It's not often you meet people who are comfortable with long periods of silence. Eventually a few questions were voiced, mostly technical things like the difference between how monks practice Buddhism versus what you could call a layperson practices Buddhism, or what the goals of meditation are. I had a number of questions in my mind by then, but for some reason found myself unwilling to ask them. Part of me suspected that perhaps I did not really want to know the answers as the more I learn of Buddhism, the less I agree with it.
+
+No matter where the questions began, in the course of his response the monk kept coming back to the phrase "cause and effect," which in his pronunciation sounded more like "cause and affect." This slight semantic difference became somehow telling to me the more he repeated it, as if his own language were betraying him. I have struggled to understand Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand since I arrived. Much of what I have seen at wats has been out of line with what I know of the Buddha's teachings and indeed the monks confirmed that as with any religion, many of those who follow Buddhism do not really practice what the Buddha taught. The chief thing the monk seemed concerned with was the relationship between the causes of action and effect of those actions. But his, and perhaps Buddhism's in general, interpretation of that relationship seemed to me woefully simplified.
+
+I kept wondering what Buddhism would say to a theory like chaos mathematics. I did not ask because really I did not want to know, I prefer to wonder about these sort of things rather than have any definitive answer, assuming a definitive answer to such a nebulous question were even possible. But I failed to see how one could ever really determine a relationship between cause and effect given that the chain of events that follow from any one thought or action are far too wide reaching, complicated and extensive for the human mind to keep track of, and even if we were able to follow the chain clearly, it is unlikely that just because one's intentions were good, that it necessarily follows that the outcome of those intentions are positive for all that end up being effected by it.
+
+Somewhere in the middle of the talk I realized that, while it may have betrayed my westernness in thinking so, I believe in randomness and ambiguity and patterns so complex as to be indecipherable and to try and find the order and meaning within them is to miss the point of their existence. There is actually a word for this idea, pareidolia, which means simply the fanciful perception of meaning in something that is actually ambiguous, and this is perhaps what troubled me about the monks ideas, not that they were wrong, but that they strove to remove all ambiguity from life. I thought again of the moth fluttering on the concrete; the pattern of his dying arcs could hold some meaning if I chose to attach one to the other, but at the same time, perhaps the deeper meaning lay with my own awareness that I was creating it. That is to say, perhaps the moth was simply dying and any connection beyond that was an act of my imagination, not something inherent in the moth's death, which isn't to say that that connection shouldn't be made, but merely to acknowledge that the connection arose from the imagination.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/umongfishpond.jpg" width="165" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Umong fishpond, Chiang Mai, Thailand" />Eventually as new people arrived questions and answers began to repeat themselves and as discreetly as possible I slipped away and wandered down to the shores of the pond to watch the cumulous clouds forming over the distant hills. I sat for a while on a small bench near the shore thinking of the clouds and the patterns and shapes we sometimes see in them, which like the moth's circle are inventions of our mind at play. As I stood to walk home it occurred to me that perhaps that the joy of life is not to puzzle out the connections between things, but to play amongst them and with them. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/cant-get-there-here.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/cant-get-there-here.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..15e5543 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/cant-get-there-here.amp @@ -0,0 +1,191 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Can&#8217;t Get There From Here</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="The most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau, an amazing, wonderful place, and not the least because no one else is here."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Can’t Get There From Here"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/attapeulight.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Attapeu, Lao (PDR)"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="LA-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Can’t Get There From Here" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="The most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau, an amazing, wonderful place, and not the least because no one else is here." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-02-24T20:00:03" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/attapeulight.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeucanoe.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hochiminhtrail.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/russianmissile.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeumarket.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeuvolleyball.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeuboy.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeucircus.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Can’t Get There From Here", + "description": "The most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau, an amazing, wonderful place, and not the least because no one else is here.", + "datePublished": "2006-02-24T20:00:03", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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For some reason not many tourists seem to make it out to the Bolevan Plateau, in spite of the fact that the roads are quite good, transport runs regularly, the villages peaceful, relaxed, even sleepy, little hamlets, a rarely used word that fits exactly what I mean. </p> +<p>All in all the Bolevan Plateau is wonderful, and not the least in part because no one else is there. <amp-img alt="Sekong River, Attapeu, Laos" height="176" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeucanoe.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>In eight days of traveling we saw maybe ten tourists. The curious thing about it was that those we did meet seemed to for some reason think that we must know what we were doing and where we were going, which is comical to us since nothing could be further from the truth. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, often the first question someone asked would be the one thing we did know and so perhaps for that reason we came off as semi-knowledgeable. We met a very nice British couple our last night in Sekong, Jules and Ben, which for Francois Truffaut fans such as myself, was eerily close to <strong>Jules et Jim</strong> so I took an immediate liking to them. We ended up running into Jules and Ben again on the bus to Attapeu and shared a tuk-tuk to the guesthouse, which was actually more of a luxury hotel (by Laos standards anyway). Matt, Debi and I discovered that many of the nicer hotels have rooms with a double and single bed, thus fitting three people and solving the chief dilemma of traveling with three people—who has to pay more for their own room. Splitting the nice hotel three ways brought the costs down to roughly equal what we would typically pay at a rundown guesthouse and is obviously, well, nicer.</p> +<p><break> +As I've mentioned before, wandering around this area of Laos without a guide is not the safest activity in the world, but guides cost money. Luckily, with the addition of Jules and Ben (and yes I am going to keep typing their names out, because it's fun to say), the price of three motorbikes and guide became roughly the same as the two motorbikes we would have needed anyway. So we went for it especially given that the place we were interested in visiting was the epicenter of American bombing—the Ho Chi Minh Trail.</break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Villager, Ho Chi Minh Trail, Laos" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hochiminhtrail.jpg" width="197"></amp-img>Ask your average American to describe what they think the Ho Chi Minh Trail looks like and they would likely paint you a picture bearing some resemblance to an Oliver Stone film, a thin trail snaking though the jungle, a network of tunnels and, as I used to think, they would likely say it ran through Vietnam. In fact the Ho Chi Minh "Trail" was a road, and not just one road, but a whole network of roads crisscrossing the jungle and vast majority of it ran through Laos and Cambodia, not Vietnam.</p> +<p>Although we asked to be taken to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in the morning our guide took us out to see a "tribal village", which turned out to be rather more like one woman camped out in the middle of the jungle, roasting a mouse for lunch. Not to say that we were ripped off, but it was sort of a waste of a morning. It was nice to meet her and see how the villagers live when they're out in the jungle (not very well, most having been driven out of the more fertile hill areas by the government), but it was hardly worth the effort it took to get there. </p> +<p>The afternoon was somewhat better; we headed to Pa'am a small village at a junction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The road getting there was a bit bumpy, especially for Matt and I. With the two of us on one motorbike we easily outweighed the rest of the group and on an aging Honda Dream with nothing much in the way of shocks (or brakes or mirrors for that matter), weight is not what you want. On the way there I made some attempts at dodging potholes and gullies (often skidding to do so), on the way back Matt drove and decided that the straight path was at least quicker, if not smoother. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Russian SAM, Pa'am, Laos" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/russianmissile.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>In case anyone had any doubts about whether or not the Russians were helping the North Vietnamese in the war, they left behind a now rusted and falling apart SAM missile and launcher (presumably the warhead has been removed, but we never got a straight answer on that one). Otherwise the Ho Chi Minh Trail was somewhat anti-climatic, more of what I like to call a checklist site, that is, see it, check it off the list and move on.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Vegetables, Market, Attapeu, Laos" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeumarket.jpg" width="173"></amp-img>Back in Attapeu we took a stroll around the evening market and then headed down to the banks of Sekong River to watch the sunset and sip a Beer Lao. The sunset was gorgeous, reflecting off the water and lingering on the distant clouds far longer than anywhere else we've seen in Laos. We watched the fishermen casting nets and canoes plying their way up and down the river with various cargos. Up the shoreline from us a group of boys played volleyball (a very popular sport in Laos) in the fading light.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Playing Volleyball, Attapeu, Laos" height="126" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeuvolleyball.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>If you look at a map of Laos (the one thing I haven't been good about on this site is showing maps, I'll work on that), there is a road that continues from Attapeu back around to Champasak where it joins route 13. This bit of road would make it possible to complete a loop around the Bolevan Plateau without having to retrace your steps. Unfortunately no public transport plies this road. Later in the evening after the sun had gone down and we climbed up the bank of the river to a restaurant, we ran into an Austrian man who was traveling by motorcycle (real motorcycle, not a Honda Dream) who had come over the road. He put it at roughly eighteen hours to cover one hundred kilometers and muttered something about "lots of rivers." At one point in his trip it had started to rain at which point he said he was covering about five kilometers an hour.</p> +<p>The next day we rented motorbikes again and set out down that road for a day trip to see what sort of villages and sights might be found along the way. At least leaving Attapeu the road wasn't too bad, but looking off at the distant cliffs and hills of the Bolevan Plateau it was easy to see how the road would likely get pretty bad. Nevertheless we had a good ride through the countryside stopping here and there to amuse the locals (we contemplated various song and dance routines, but just our existence seemed to sufficient for side-splitting entertainment, especially for children). </p> +<p>The one regret I have about traveling in Laos is that I'm here at the peak of the dry season, as such, as I've mentioned before, most plant life is brown or leafless, sort of like what you would find in Massachusetts right about now, but hot. <amp-img alt="Village Boy, outside Attapeu, Laos" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeuboy.jpg" width="195"></amp-img>Every now and then though we run across an irrigated rice paddy and for a moment it's possible to imagine how beautiful Laos is around the end of August or beginning of September when the wet season is just ending and everything that's now brown has turned a bright, almost iridescent green. If you ever come to Laos I recommend August or September, though it will be hot and probably pretty steamy.</p> +<p>It was nearly nightfall by the time we made it back to Attapeu. We grabbed a bite to eat at small restaurant where some Vietnamese truck drivers tried to ply us with drinks and make conversation in very rough English with the occasional Laos phrase. Walking home we decided to stop by the carnival that was in town for a few days. We wandered about the various stalls and played a few rounds of the apparently worldwide game where you throw darts at balloons. Debi and I won mints; Matt was somewhat more successful and won an orange drink of some sort. We also paid to see two obviously poorly treated monkeys ride bicycles around a centrifuge, which we at first thought might spin them around or something rather awful like that, but luckily for the monkeys their act was short and involved no spinning. <amp-img alt="Circus, Attapeu, Laos" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeucircus.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>The spinning was left to the bigger and perhaps one it tempted to say, not as bright monkeys—humans. Using the centrifugal force about six circus performers climbed walls, sat on chairs and did other tricks for about five minutes. It made me dizzy just to watch them. My understanding of centrifuges was that they separated fluids of different densities (ah Mr. Dukes would be so proud that I remember that), but apparently, at least in Southeast Asia, it's a circus act as well.</p> +<p>Eventually the number of people began to dwindle and not wanting to steal too much attention from the real circus acts, we headed home, feeling not a little bit guilty about contributing to the rough treatment of what looked like some truly miserable monkeys. Back in the hotel we sat up watching <strong>Lost in Translation</strong> on my laptop and drinking some of the wine Debi had brought from Thailand, all and all the perfect way to end a day.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/cant-get-there-here.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/cant-get-there-here.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3eea8e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/cant-get-there-here.html @@ -0,0 +1,460 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Can’T Get There From Here - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="The most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau, an amazing, wonderful place, and not the least because no one else is here."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="14.806085524831923, 106.83689115944489" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="14.806085524831923; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-02-24T20:00:03" itemprop="datePublished">February <span>24, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p>The light of Bolevan Plateau is unlike any I have seen before. It has something more. It has something indescribable, ineffable, something you want to see everywhere, but never will again. </p> +<p>Not many tourists make it out to the Bolevan Plateau. I’m not sure why. The roads are good, transport runs regularly. The villages out here are peacefully quiet. You might even call them sleepy little hamlets if you were a travel guide writer.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_33.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_33_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_33_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="man paddling a boat across the river, near Xekong Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_33.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>All in all the Bolevan Plateau is wonderful, but possibly in part <em>because</em> no one else is out here. It’s just you, the river, the people, and the light.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_25.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_25_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_25_picwide-med.jpg 1170w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_25_featured_jrnl.jpg 520w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_25_picwide-med.jpg" alt="Sunset over the river, near Attapeu Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_25.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>In eight days of traveling we saw maybe ten tourists. The curious thing about it was that those we did meet seemed to assume that we must know what we were doing, where we were going, where they should be going. In fact we never have any idea what we’re doing, out here especially. We were usually just wandering around, probably lost. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, the first question someone asked always turned out to be the one thing we did know, which gave this illusion that we knew what we were doing. </p> +<p>Our last night in Sekong we met a very nice British couple who knew even more than us. And we ended up running into Jules and Ben again on the bus to Attapeu so we all shared a tuk-tuk to the guesthouse, which was actually more of a luxury hotel (by our standards anyway). </p> +<p>This was where we discovered that many of the nicer hotels have rooms with a double and single bed, thus fitting three people and solving the chief dilemma of traveling with three people, which is that someone has to pay more for their own room. Splitting the nice hotel three ways brought the costs down to roughly equal what we would typically pay at a rundown guesthouse and it was, well, much nicer.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_52.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_52_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_52_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="me matt and debi, Sekong Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_52.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>As I’ve mentioned before, wandering off in the bush around this area of Laos without a guide is not the safest activity in the world, unexploded ordinance and all. Attapeu is about the closest you can get to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, epicenter of American bombing for much of the Vietnam war. Every other guesthouse and restaurant in these villages wants to take you out to see whatever is left of the war.</p> +<p>Guides cost a good bit of money though. War tourism isn’t all that appealing to me, especially if it’s expensive. This time though, with five people, we were able to work out a deal that wasn’t too much more than just the price of a motorbike for one person. So we went out to see the Ho Chi Minh Trail.</p> +<p>Ask your average American to describe what they think the Ho Chi Minh Trail looks like and they would likely paint you a picture bearing some resemblance to a cheesy Oliver Stone film, a thin trail snaking though the jungle, a network of tunnels and, as I used to think, they would likely say it ran through Vietnam. </p> +<p>In fact the Ho Chi Minh “Trail” was a road, and not just one road, but a whole network of roads crisscrossing the jungle. The vast majority of it ran through Laos and Cambodia, not Vietnam.</p> +<p>This is Laos though, so even though we asked to be taken to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, we were first taken somewhere else. Our guide really thought we would want to see a “tribal village”, which turned out to be rather more like one woman camped out in the middle of the jungle, roasting a mouse for lunch. It reminded me far too much of the <a href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur">zoo-like aspects of Shilpogram</a> to enjoy it. It was one of the many moments I wish I knew more Laos.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_65.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_65_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_65_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="Laos countryside photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_65.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>The afternoon was somewhat better; we headed to Pa’am a small village at a junction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The road getting there was a bit bumpy, especially for Matt and I. With the two of us on one motorbike we easily outweighed the rest of the group by quite a bit. On an aging Honda Dream with nothing much in the way of shocks (or brakes or mirrors for that matter), weight is not what you want. On the way there I made some attempts at dodging potholes and gullies (often skidding to do so), on the way back Matt decided that the straight path was at least quicker, if not smoother. </p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_66.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_66_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_66_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="rest break, riding motorbikes, Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_66.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_61.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_61_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_61_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="matt riding a motorbike across ricketty wooden bridge in Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_61.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_67.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_67_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_67_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="rider in the distance, laos countryside photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_67.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>In case anyone had any doubts about whether or not the Russians were helping the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, they left behind a SAM missile and launcher (presumably the warhead has been removed, but we never got a straight answer on that). Otherwise the Ho Chi Minh Trail was somewhat anti-climatic. It’s a famous road that turns out to be, well, a road.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_69.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_69_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_69_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="Russian SAM missile, Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_69.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>Back in Attapeu we took a stroll around the evening market and then headed down to the banks of Sekong River to watch the sunset and sip a Beer Lao. The light catches the water and seems to linger on clouds far longer than should be possible, like time is moving just a little slower than normal out here. We watched fishermen cast nets and canoes plying their way up and down the river with cargo hidden under tarps. Up the shoreline from us a group of boys played volleyball in the fading light.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_39.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_39_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_39_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="another orange sunset over the river, near Sekong Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_39.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_40.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_40_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_40_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="sunset over the river, near Sekong Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_40.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>If you look at a map of Laos there is a road that continues from Attapeu back around to Champasak where it rejoins route 13. This bit of road would make it possible to complete a loop around the Bolevan Plateau without having to retrace your steps. Unfortunately no public transportation plies this road. </p> +<p>Later that evening, after the sun had gone down and we climbed up the bank of the river to a restaurant, we ran into an Austrian man who was traveling by motorcycle (real motorcycle, not a Honda Dream). He had just come over the road. He put it at roughly eighteen hours to cover one hundred kilometers and muttered something about “lots of rivers.” He said he managed about five kilometers an hour most of the way, much of it in pouring rain. It made me wish, not for the first time, that I had a motorcycle of my own.</p> +<p>The next day we did what we could and rented motorbikes again to see if we couldn’t at least see a little of the now infamous (to us at least) road. Leaving Attapeu the road wasn’t too bad, but looking off at the distant cliffs and hills of the Bolevan Plateau it was easy to see how the road would likely turn pretty awful, pretty quick. </p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_83.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_83_pic66.jpg" alt="little boy by the side of a rice field, Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_83.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_85.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_85_pic66.jpg" alt="riding in the countryside, Laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_85.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_94.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class=" " sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_94_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_94_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="setting sun from the road, laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_94.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</div> + +<p>We ran out of daylight before we got that far. Nevertheless we had a good ride through the countryside stopping here and there to amuse the locals with our existence. I considered starting some sort of song and dance routine, but just showing up always seemed sufficient for side-splitting entertainment, especially for children. </p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_96.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_96_pic66.jpg" alt="riding in the sunset, laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_96.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_98.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_98_pic66.jpg" alt="mountains of laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_98.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> +</div> + +<p>It was nearly nightfall by the time we made it back to Attapeu. We grabbed a bite to eat at small restaurant where some Vietnamese truck drivers plied us with drinks and made conversation in very rough English with the occasional Laos phrase. </p> +<p>Walking home we decided to stop by the carnival that was in town for a few days. We wandered about the various stalls and threw a few rounds of darts at balloons. Debi and I won mints; Matt was somewhat more successful and won an orange drink of some sort. </p> +<p>We also paid to see two obviously poorly treated monkeys ride bicycles around a centrifuge, which we at first thought might spin them around or something rather awful like that, but luckily for the monkeys their act was short and involved no spinning. </p> +<p>The spinning was left to the bigger and perhaps one it tempted to say, not as bright monkeys — humans. Using the centrifugal force about six circus performers climbed walls, sat on chairs and did other tricks for about five minutes. It made me dizzy just to watch them. </p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_57.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_57_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_57_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="dancers spinning at the local fair, laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_57.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_55.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_55_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_55_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" alt="dancers spinning at the local fair, laos photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_55.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>Eventually the number of people began to dwindle and not wanting to steal too much attention from the real circus acts, we headed home, feeling not a little bit guilty about contributing to the rough treatment of what looked like some truly miserable monkeys. Back in the hotel we sat up watching <em>Lost in Translation</em> and drinking wine Debi brought from Thailand. The perfect way to end a day.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/safe-milk" rel="prev" title=" Safe as Milk">Safe as Milk</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/little-corner-world" rel="next" title=" Little Corner of the World">Little Corner of the World</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="44" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833480" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="cec0050e7e0882b27c5acbd7bb79a181b152045a" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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It has something more. It has something indescribable, ineffable, something you want to see everywhere, but never will again.
+
+Not many tourists make it out to the Bolevan Plateau. I'm not sure why. The roads are good, transport runs regularly. The villages out here are peacefully quiet. You might even call them sleepy little hamlets if you were a travel guide writer.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_33.jpg" id="image-2162" class="picwide" />
+
+All in all the Bolevan Plateau is wonderful, but possibly in part *because* no one else is out here. It's just you, the river, the people, and the light.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_25.jpg" id="image-2161" class="picwide" />
+
+In eight days of traveling we saw maybe ten tourists. The curious thing about it was that those we did meet seemed to assume that we must know what we were doing, where we were going, where they should be going. In fact we never have any idea what we're doing, out here especially. We were usually just wandering around, probably lost. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, the first question someone asked always turned out to be the one thing we did know, which gave this illusion that we knew what we were doing.
+
+Our last night in Sekong we met a very nice British couple who knew even more than us. And we ended up running into Jules and Ben again on the bus to Attapeu so we all shared a tuk-tuk to the guesthouse, which was actually more of a luxury hotel (by our standards anyway).
+
+This was where we discovered that many of the nicer hotels have rooms with a double and single bed, thus fitting three people and solving the chief dilemma of traveling with three people, which is that someone has to pay more for their own room. Splitting the nice hotel three ways brought the costs down to roughly equal what we would typically pay at a rundown guesthouse and it was, well, much nicer.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_52.jpg" id="image-2165" class="picwide" />
+
+As I've mentioned before, wandering off in the bush around this area of Laos without a guide is not the safest activity in the world, unexploded ordinance and all. Attapeu is about the closest you can get to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, epicenter of American bombing for much of the Vietnam war. Every other guesthouse and restaurant in these villages wants to take you out to see whatever is left of the war.
+
+Guides cost a good bit of money though. War tourism isn't all that appealing to me, especially if it's expensive. This time though, with five people, we were able to work out a deal that wasn't too much more than just the price of a motorbike for one person. So we went out to see the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
+
+Ask your average American to describe what they think the Ho Chi Minh Trail looks like and they would likely paint you a picture bearing some resemblance to a cheesy Oliver Stone film, a thin trail snaking though the jungle, a network of tunnels and, as I used to think, they would likely say it ran through Vietnam.
+
+In fact the Ho Chi Minh "Trail" was a road, and not just one road, but a whole network of roads crisscrossing the jungle. The vast majority of it ran through Laos and Cambodia, not Vietnam.
+
+This is Laos though, so even though we asked to be taken to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, we were first taken somewhere else. Our guide really thought we would want to see a "tribal village", which turned out to be rather more like one woman camped out in the middle of the jungle, roasting a mouse for lunch. It reminded me far too much of the [zoo-like aspects of Shilpogram](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur) to enjoy it. It was one of the many moments I wish I knew more Laos.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_65.jpg" id="image-2167" class="picwide" />
+
+
+The afternoon was somewhat better; we headed to Pa'am a small village at a junction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The road getting there was a bit bumpy, especially for Matt and I. With the two of us on one motorbike we easily outweighed the rest of the group by quite a bit. On an aging Honda Dream with nothing much in the way of shocks (or brakes or mirrors for that matter), weight is not what you want. On the way there I made some attempts at dodging potholes and gullies (often skidding to do so), on the way back Matt decided that the straight path was at least quicker, if not smoother.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_66.jpg" id="image-2168" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_61.jpg" id="image-2166" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_67.jpg" id="image-2169" class="picwide" />
+
+In case anyone had any doubts about whether or not the Russians were helping the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, they left behind a SAM missile and launcher (presumably the warhead has been removed, but we never got a straight answer on that). Otherwise the Ho Chi Minh Trail was somewhat anti-climatic. It's a famous road that turns out to be, well, a road.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_69.jpg" id="image-2170" class="picwide" />
+
+Back in Attapeu we took a stroll around the evening market and then headed down to the banks of Sekong River to watch the sunset and sip a Beer Lao. The light catches the water and seems to linger on clouds far longer than should be possible, like time is moving just a little slower than normal out here. We watched fishermen cast nets and canoes plying their way up and down the river with cargo hidden under tarps. Up the shoreline from us a group of boys played volleyball in the fading light.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_39.jpg" id="image-2164" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_40.jpg" id="image-2163" class="picwide" />
+
+If you look at a map of Laos there is a road that continues from Attapeu back around to Champasak where it rejoins route 13. This bit of road would make it possible to complete a loop around the Bolevan Plateau without having to retrace your steps. Unfortunately no public transportation plies this road.
+
+Later that evening, after the sun had gone down and we climbed up the bank of the river to a restaurant, we ran into an Austrian man who was traveling by motorcycle (real motorcycle, not a Honda Dream). He had just come over the road. He put it at roughly eighteen hours to cover one hundred kilometers and muttered something about "lots of rivers." He said he managed about five kilometers an hour most of the way, much of it in pouring rain. It made me wish, not for the first time, that I had a motorcycle of my own.
+
+The next day we did what we could and rented motorbikes again to see if we couldn't at least see a little of the now infamous (to us at least) road. Leaving Attapeu the road wasn't too bad, but looking off at the distant cliffs and hills of the Bolevan Plateau it was easy to see how the road would likely turn pretty awful, pretty quick.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_83.jpg" id="image-2171" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_85.jpg" id="image-2172" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_94.jpg" id="image-2173" class="cluster picwide" />
+</div>
+
+We ran out of daylight before we got that far. Nevertheless we had a good ride through the countryside stopping here and there to amuse the locals with our existence. I considered starting some sort of song and dance routine, but just showing up always seemed sufficient for side-splitting entertainment, especially for children.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_96.jpg" id="image-2174" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_98.jpg" id="image-2175" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+</div>
+
+It was nearly nightfall by the time we made it back to Attapeu. We grabbed a bite to eat at small restaurant where some Vietnamese truck drivers plied us with drinks and made conversation in very rough English with the occasional Laos phrase.
+
+Walking home we decided to stop by the carnival that was in town for a few days. We wandered about the various stalls and threw a few rounds of darts at balloons. Debi and I won mints; Matt was somewhat more successful and won an orange drink of some sort.
+
+We also paid to see two obviously poorly treated monkeys ride bicycles around a centrifuge, which we at first thought might spin them around or something rather awful like that, but luckily for the monkeys their act was short and involved no spinning.
+
+The spinning was left to the bigger and perhaps one it tempted to say, not as bright monkeys -- humans. Using the centrifugal force about six circus performers climbed walls, sat on chairs and did other tricks for about five minutes. It made me dizzy just to watch them.
+
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_57.jpg" id="image-2177" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2019/Laos_Sekong_Attapeu_2_18-20_06_55.jpg" id="image-2176" class="picwide" />
+
+Eventually the number of people began to dwindle and not wanting to steal too much attention from the real circus acts, we headed home, feeling not a little bit guilty about contributing to the rough treatment of what looked like some truly miserable monkeys. Back in the hotel we sat up watching *Lost in Translation* and drinking wine Debi brought from Thailand. The perfect way to end a day. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..afca16a --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth.amp @@ -0,0 +1,186 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Everyday the Fourteenth</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe and set out down a no name river in central Laos."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Everyday the Fourteenth"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/hinbunriver.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Savannakhet, Lao (PDR)"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="LA-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Everyday the Fourteenth" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe and set out down a no name river in central Laos." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-02-14T19:50:35" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/hinbunriver.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunboat.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunriver.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunwaiting.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatlofalls.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Everyday the Fourteenth", + "description": "We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe and set out down a no name river in central Laos.", + "datePublished": "2006-02-14T19:50:35", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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Perhaps it was the fact that we already knew where we were going, perhaps we stopped less along the way, perhaps we went faster, whatever the case, the second time the road didn't seem as long or as bad. We got dropped off at Ralph's restaurant, ate some breakfast and then took a tuk-tuk down to the river with Bon's cousin who was piloting the boat. We then piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. At least it looked like a dugout canoe, but it leaked like a sieve which leads me to believe there must have been a seam somewhere. Jackie and I traded off bailing to keep our bags dry. </p> +<p>The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached—perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed. +<break></break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Hin Bun River, Laos" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunriver.jpg" width="216"></amp-img>We passed through series of stunning valleys with jagged karst mountains on all sides. The dark limestone has a way of looking menacing and foreboding even in the glare of the midday sun. As with the untapped spelunking, there is a wealth of amazing climbing routes just waiting for first ascents from someone willing the brave the tigers and UXO.</p> +<p>The scenery was beautiful, but the sun baked our skin and the hard wooden planks on which we sat for five hours without stopping did nothing to help our already sore butts. In fact even two weeks later as I write this, I still have difficulty sitting on anything wooden for more than an hour. There is certain point at which even molded plastic chairs seem like luxurious padding.</p> +<p>We were dropped off in a small unremarkable roadside town and after paying Bon's cousin we walked up to route 13 just as the sun was setting and plopped our bags at the side of the road. I will admit that our prospects for a ride did not look good. We bet on how long it would take and it was Jackie, ever the optimist, who got closest—a mere ten minutes. We barely had time to buy some oranges before a bus came to a roaring stop next to our bags. <amp-img alt="Waiting for the Bus, Hin Bun, Laos" height="182" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunwaiting.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>We threw our belongings on the roof and climbed over the various bags of rice and still flopping fish that are standard fare on any Lao bus ride. We didn't meet them that night, but there was another western couple of the bus who later confessed to being deeply impressed that we were just standing at the side of the road in a town that doesn't even make it on most maps. Of course the truth is our journey off the beaten path was anything but challenging, but naturally we didn't tell them that.</p> +<p>Matt and I remained standing in the aisle most of the four hour ride to Savannakhet, which was just fine with me since I had been sitting for fifteen hours previously. Checking into a guesthouse in Savannakhet proved a surreal experience since the owner was watching BBC news; I hadn't seen the news since I left Thailand almost six weeks ago. It was vaguely depressing to notice that while the names changed and the countries involved were sometimes different, the news was essentially the same, probably always was the same and probably always will be the same. Ofir and I flipped on the in room TV and watched some Mad Max, which, like the news, was essentially the same as last time I saw it, but Mad Max has a character named "feral boy" which is something the news generally lacks.</p> +<p>We spent the next day exploring Savannakhet by bicycle, but really there wasn't much to see so we mainly sat in the room recuperating and watching movies. Early next morning we continued on to Pakse, but after one night there we didn't see much point in staying. Jackie, Matt and I headed up onto the Bolaven Plateau to a small town named Tat Lo, which was essentially the same as Vang Vieng though slightly less touristy. Ofir decided to part ways and head down to the four thousand islands area since his visa was about to expire. We were sorry to see him go, especially me since I had been traveling with him for over a month by that point. Good luck Ofir, enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Tat Lo Waterfall, Laos" height="123" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatlofalls.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>Tat Lo was peaceful and swimming in the waterfall on a hot afternoon was very refreshing but the place didn't really grab us. We decided to wait one extra day and see if Debi would indeed meet up with us again. The only remarkable thing that happened in Tat Lo was Valentines Day which we celebrated by, well, going to bed early and alone the way single people tend to celebrate Valentine's Day. Jackie very thoughtfully gave both Matt and I paper roses and cigarette lighters which she found god knows where. And of course we had nothing to reciprocate with which might go a long way to explain why the both of us are single. But then again the day before, riding in the back of a sawngthaew we watched a young Lao lad on a motorbike try to give a rose to a young Lao girl on the back of another motorbike, which would have been terribly endearing except that she didn't accept it. Sorry we're such flakes Jackie, but you already knew that; this post is hereby dedicated to you. Happy Valentine's Day.</p> +<p>As I mentioned earlier the idea behind going to Tat Lo was to find somewhere pleasant to wait for Debi to catch up, but Jackie was out of time and went to join Ofir in the four thousand Islands before her visa ran out. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip Jackie and I promise I'll visit you in Berlin. Matt and I were a little unsure what to do since we had told Debi to come to Tat Lo, but we didn't like it much so we elected to head farther out over the Bolaven Plateau to the town of Sekong. It turned out that Debi was having her own little misadventure having flown to the wrong city in Thailand. So she had to catch an over night bus to Pakse, which despite the hilarity of it (never have your brother's <strong>ex</strong>girlfriend book your plane flight, even if she is Thai), worked out perfectly when she met us the next night in Sekong.</p> +<p>Many thanks to Ofir and Jackie for the use of their photos; the first is Ofir's and the one of us at the side of the road is Jackie's.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e42641c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth.html @@ -0,0 +1,339 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Everyday The Fourteenth - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe and set out down a no name river in central Laos."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="16.560435757136183, 104.75026129218114" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="16.560435757136183; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-02-14T19:50:35" itemprop="datePublished">February <span>14, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span>f the water had been high enough we could have simply headed downstream from Konglor village and followed the Hin Bun River all the way to a small village where we could walk to route 13, the major north south artery of Laos. </p> +<p><img alt="Boat, Hin Bun River, Laos" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunboat.jpg" width="152"/>Unfortunately for us the water level was too low to leave from Konglor so we set off at 6 AM by sawngthaew to retrace the brutal journey of the day before. Perhaps it was the fact that we already knew where we were going, perhaps we stopped less along the way, perhaps we went faster, whatever the case, the second time the road didn’t seem as long or as bad. We got dropped off at Ralph’s restaurant, ate some breakfast and then took a tuk-tuk down to the river with Bon’s cousin who was piloting the boat. We then piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. At least it looked like a dugout canoe, but it leaked like a sieve which leads me to believe there must have been a seam somewhere. Jackie and I traded off bailing to keep our bags dry. </p> +<p>The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached—perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed. +<break></p> +<p><img alt="Hin Bun River, Laos" class="postpic" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunriver.jpg" width="216"/>We passed through series of stunning valleys with jagged karst mountains on all sides. The dark limestone has a way of looking menacing and foreboding even in the glare of the midday sun. As with the untapped spelunking, there is a wealth of amazing climbing routes just waiting for first ascents from someone willing the brave the tigers and UXO.</p> +<p>The scenery was beautiful, but the sun baked our skin and the hard wooden planks on which we sat for five hours without stopping did nothing to help our already sore butts. In fact even two weeks later as I write this, I still have difficulty sitting on anything wooden for more than an hour. There is certain point at which even molded plastic chairs seem like luxurious padding.</p> +<p>We were dropped off in a small unremarkable roadside town and after paying Bon’s cousin we walked up to route 13 just as the sun was setting and plopped our bags at the side of the road. I will admit that our prospects for a ride did not look good. We bet on how long it would take and it was Jackie, ever the optimist, who got closest—a mere ten minutes. We barely had time to buy some oranges before a bus came to a roaring stop next to our bags. <img alt="Waiting for the Bus, Hin Bun, Laos" class="postpicright" height="182" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunwaiting.jpg" width="220"/>We threw our belongings on the roof and climbed over the various bags of rice and still flopping fish that are standard fare on any Lao bus ride. We didn’t meet them that night, but there was another western couple of the bus who later confessed to being deeply impressed that we were just standing at the side of the road in a town that doesn’t even make it on most maps. Of course the truth is our journey off the beaten path was anything but challenging, but naturally we didn’t tell them that.</p> +<p>Matt and I remained standing in the aisle most of the four hour ride to Savannakhet, which was just fine with me since I had been sitting for fifteen hours previously. Checking into a guesthouse in Savannakhet proved a surreal experience since the owner was watching BBC news; I hadn’t seen the news since I left Thailand almost six weeks ago. It was vaguely depressing to notice that while the names changed and the countries involved were sometimes different, the news was essentially the same, probably always was the same and probably always will be the same. Ofir and I flipped on the in room TV and watched some Mad Max, which, like the news, was essentially the same as last time I saw it, but Mad Max has a character named “feral boy” which is something the news generally lacks.</p> +<p>We spent the next day exploring Savannakhet by bicycle, but really there wasn’t much to see so we mainly sat in the room recuperating and watching movies. Early next morning we continued on to Pakse, but after one night there we didn’t see much point in staying. Jackie, Matt and I headed up onto the Bolaven Plateau to a small town named Tat Lo, which was essentially the same as Vang Vieng though slightly less touristy. Ofir decided to part ways and head down to the four thousand islands area since his visa was about to expire. We were sorry to see him go, especially me since I had been traveling with him for over a month by that point. Good luck Ofir, enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand.</p> +<p><img alt="Tat Lo Waterfall, Laos" class="postpic" height="123" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatlofalls.jpg" width="230"/>Tat Lo was peaceful and swimming in the waterfall on a hot afternoon was very refreshing but the place didn’t really grab us. We decided to wait one extra day and see if Debi would indeed meet up with us again. The only remarkable thing that happened in Tat Lo was Valentines Day which we celebrated by, well, going to bed early and alone the way single people tend to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Jackie very thoughtfully gave both Matt and I paper roses and cigarette lighters which she found god knows where. And of course we had nothing to reciprocate with which might go a long way to explain why the both of us are single. But then again the day before, riding in the back of a sawngthaew we watched a young Lao lad on a motorbike try to give a rose to a young Lao girl on the back of another motorbike, which would have been terribly endearing except that she didn’t accept it. Sorry we’re such flakes Jackie, but you already knew that; this post is hereby dedicated to you. Happy Valentine’s Day.</p> +<p>As I mentioned earlier the idea behind going to Tat Lo was to find somewhere pleasant to wait for Debi to catch up, but Jackie was out of time and went to join Ofir in the four thousand Islands before her visa ran out. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip Jackie and I promise I’ll visit you in Berlin. Matt and I were a little unsure what to do since we had told Debi to come to Tat Lo, but we didn’t like it much so we elected to head farther out over the Bolaven Plateau to the town of Sekong. It turned out that Debi was having her own little misadventure having flown to the wrong city in Thailand. So she had to catch an over night bus to Pakse, which despite the hilarity of it (never have your brother’s <strong>ex</strong>girlfriend book your plane flight, even if she is Thai), worked out perfectly when she met us the next night in Sekong.</p> +<p>Many thanks to Ofir and Jackie for the use of their photos; the first is Ofir’s and the one of us at the side of the road is Jackie’s.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides" rel="prev" title=" Water Slides and Spirit Guides">Water Slides and Spirit Guides</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/safe-milk" rel="next" title=" Safe as Milk">Safe as Milk</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="42" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833480" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="5fe357b2fefeb358d16c513c742b77b0ff084a4e" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunboat.jpg" width="152" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="Boat, Hin Bun River, Laos" />Unfortunately for us the water level was too low to leave from Konglor so we set off at 6 AM by sawngthaew to retrace the brutal journey of the day before. Perhaps it was the fact that we already knew where we were going, perhaps we stopped less along the way, perhaps we went faster, whatever the case, the second time the road didn't seem as long or as bad. We got dropped off at Ralph's restaurant, ate some breakfast and then took a tuk-tuk down to the river with Bon's cousin who was piloting the boat. We then piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. At least it looked like a dugout canoe, but it leaked like a sieve which leads me to believe there must have been a seam somewhere. Jackie and I traded off bailing to keep our bags dry.
+
+The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached—perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed.
+<break>
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunriver.jpg" width="216" height="165" class="postpic" alt="Hin Bun River, Laos" />We passed through series of stunning valleys with jagged karst mountains on all sides. The dark limestone has a way of looking menacing and foreboding even in the glare of the midday sun. As with the untapped spelunking, there is a wealth of amazing climbing routes just waiting for first ascents from someone willing the brave the tigers and UXO.
+
+The scenery was beautiful, but the sun baked our skin and the hard wooden planks on which we sat for five hours without stopping did nothing to help our already sore butts. In fact even two weeks later as I write this, I still have difficulty sitting on anything wooden for more than an hour. There is certain point at which even molded plastic chairs seem like luxurious padding.
+
+We were dropped off in a small unremarkable roadside town and after paying Bon's cousin we walked up to route 13 just as the sun was setting and plopped our bags at the side of the road. I will admit that our prospects for a ride did not look good. We bet on how long it would take and it was Jackie, ever the optimist, who got closest—a mere ten minutes. We barely had time to buy some oranges before a bus came to a roaring stop next to our bags. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunwaiting.jpg" width="220" height="182" class="postpicright" alt="Waiting for the Bus, Hin Bun, Laos" />We threw our belongings on the roof and climbed over the various bags of rice and still flopping fish that are standard fare on any Lao bus ride. We didn't meet them that night, but there was another western couple of the bus who later confessed to being deeply impressed that we were just standing at the side of the road in a town that doesn't even make it on most maps. Of course the truth is our journey off the beaten path was anything but challenging, but naturally we didn't tell them that.
+
+Matt and I remained standing in the aisle most of the four hour ride to Savannakhet, which was just fine with me since I had been sitting for fifteen hours previously. Checking into a guesthouse in Savannakhet proved a surreal experience since the owner was watching BBC news; I hadn't seen the news since I left Thailand almost six weeks ago. It was vaguely depressing to notice that while the names changed and the countries involved were sometimes different, the news was essentially the same, probably always was the same and probably always will be the same. Ofir and I flipped on the in room TV and watched some Mad Max, which, like the news, was essentially the same as last time I saw it, but Mad Max has a character named "feral boy" which is something the news generally lacks.
+
+We spent the next day exploring Savannakhet by bicycle, but really there wasn't much to see so we mainly sat in the room recuperating and watching movies. Early next morning we continued on to Pakse, but after one night there we didn't see much point in staying. Jackie, Matt and I headed up onto the Bolaven Plateau to a small town named Tat Lo, which was essentially the same as Vang Vieng though slightly less touristy. Ofir decided to part ways and head down to the four thousand islands area since his visa was about to expire. We were sorry to see him go, especially me since I had been traveling with him for over a month by that point. Good luck Ofir, enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/tatlofalls.jpg" width="230" height="123" class="postpic" alt="Tat Lo Waterfall, Laos" />Tat Lo was peaceful and swimming in the waterfall on a hot afternoon was very refreshing but the place didn't really grab us. We decided to wait one extra day and see if Debi would indeed meet up with us again. The only remarkable thing that happened in Tat Lo was Valentines Day which we celebrated by, well, going to bed early and alone the way single people tend to celebrate Valentine's Day. Jackie very thoughtfully gave both Matt and I paper roses and cigarette lighters which she found god knows where. And of course we had nothing to reciprocate with which might go a long way to explain why the both of us are single. But then again the day before, riding in the back of a sawngthaew we watched a young Lao lad on a motorbike try to give a rose to a young Lao girl on the back of another motorbike, which would have been terribly endearing except that she didn't accept it. Sorry we're such flakes Jackie, but you already knew that; this post is hereby dedicated to you. Happy Valentine's Day.
+
+As I mentioned earlier the idea behind going to Tat Lo was to find somewhere pleasant to wait for Debi to catch up, but Jackie was out of time and went to join Ofir in the four thousand Islands before her visa ran out. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip Jackie and I promise I'll visit you in Berlin. Matt and I were a little unsure what to do since we had told Debi to come to Tat Lo, but we didn't like it much so we elected to head farther out over the Bolaven Plateau to the town of Sekong. It turned out that Debi was having her own little misadventure having flown to the wrong city in Thailand. So she had to catch an over night bus to Pakse, which despite the hilarity of it (never have your brother's **ex**girlfriend book your plane flight, even if she is Thai), worked out perfectly when she met us the next night in Sekong.
+
+Many thanks to Ofir and Jackie for the use of their photos; the first is Ofir's and the one of us at the side of the road is Jackie's. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aaaf3f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,119 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link 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Debi and Matt opted to head up to Salavan and then on to a small village called Tahoy, where rumor had it the tigers were so plentiful it wasn't safe to go out at night. It sounded fun and if they had seen tigers, I would have regretted my decision, but I've come to be pretty wary of anything written in a guidebook so I opted to take the bus straight back to Pakse where I was pretty sure some website revisions would be waiting for me in my inbox. </p> +<p><break> +My hunch was correct and I spent a day and a half in Pakse working on the website I started way back in Vang Vieng. After a trip to the morning market the next day, I caught a truck down to Champasak where I was to wait for Matt and Debi. <amp-img alt="Morning Market, Pakse, Laos" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/paksemarket.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>The chief draw in Champasak is an aging wat that dates from the Angkor period and was apparently the northern most outpost of the Angkor Empire. Aside from the wat, the town of Champasak is yet another very sleepily and very small town along the Mekong, but not an unpleasant place to pass a few days. I briefly toured around the wat, which was nice, and perhaps a bit of warm up for Angkor Wat, but regrettably most of the great artifacts from Wat Phu were at some point carted off and then later returned and now housed in a museum at the base of the wat. </break></p> +<p>Wat Phu is another UNESCO site and was at the time I was there an active archeological dig. Perhaps at some point the original statues, figures and carvings will be returned to the grounds of the wat, but for the time being there are house in air conditioned comfort and thus the wat itself is rather lacking. Just to once again slag the Lonely Planet Guide to Laos, if, as the book says, this is "one of the highlights" to your visit to Laos, well, I pity you, you have not seen much of Laos. [I have a sneaking suspicion that the authors of the Laos Lonely Planet deliberately build up the more touristy areas and neglect the lesser known parts out of self-interest—they want to keep the good stuff to themselves—which is fine with me since it isn't that hard to figure everything out once you get here, provided you invest a modicum of effort].</p> +<p>Mainly I spent my time in Champasak sitting of the veranda of my guesthouse reading and writing. The second afternoon, somewhat to my surprise, Debi and Matt wandered up the stairs.<amp-img alt="View from Guesthouse, Champasak, Laos" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/champasakgh.jpg" width="200"></amp-img> I wanted to meet up with them again, but given that we had no real means of communication I wasn't sure it would happen, but luckily it did. The next day I met an American woman, Christie, and we all caught the bus down to the four thousand Islands to relax for a few days before heading into Cambodia. </p> +<p>It's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. That sounds like a complaint, but it's not meant to be. Southern Laos is simply, well, the villagers tend to the fields in the morning and evening, or fish or weave and generally the heat of the day is spent lying around trying not to move. There is good reason for that, it's hot and the air is deathly still most of the time. When the air does move it's somewhat like the puff of heat that might come from a convention oven when you open the door.</p> +<p>I have long held to a theory that the environment shapes culture and the people who create it. For instance heavy industrial development does not seem to happen in equatorial areas and there's a good reason for that. Those that think the west is more "advanced" because of their work ethic or that sort of thing, ought to come out here to Laos and see how motivated for work they are at one in the afternoon.</p> +<p>I came to the four thousand islands to avoid everything involving heavy machinery and peacefully wind down my time in Laos. There isn't much to see nor much to do, which provides some excellent time for lying in hammock and reflecting on the two months I've spent here. Just down the Mekong lies a whole new experience—Cambodia—but before I move on I wanted to spend a few days thinking about where I've been. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunset over the Sekong River, Laos" height="225" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/finalsunsetlaos.jpg" width="300"></amp-img>As I've written before I had no intention of spending more than a few weeks in Laos, just enough time to see the big sights and then drop back into Thailand with a new visa. As fate or life or what have you often works my plans disappeared in a puff of smoke somewhere on the Mekong that first day in Laos. This compounded with some personal events that I will not mention here compelled me to dig deeper into Laos. For these reasons and many more, too many to list, Laos will always occupy a profoundly vivid spot in my memory. The people of Laos did what I did not think would be possible, they topped the enthusiasm, warmth and friendliness of India (which is in no way meant to diminish the Indians). The landscape is some of the most beautiful I've seen in Southeast Asia and I will return here someday, I wouldn't consider any trip to Southeast Asia complete without a few months in Laos. </p> +<p>Farewell Laos and people of Laos, I look forward to returning one day.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/little-corner-world.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/little-corner-world.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..09f63af --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/little-corner-world.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Little Corner Of The World - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="It's difficult to explain, but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. 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Debi and Matt opted to head up to Salavan and then on to a small village called Tahoy, where rumor had it the tigers were so plentiful it wasn’t safe to go out at night. It sounded fun and if they had seen tigers, I would have regretted my decision, but I’ve come to be pretty wary of anything written in a guidebook so I opted to take the bus straight back to Pakse where I was pretty sure some website revisions would be waiting for me in my inbox. </p> +<p><break> +My hunch was correct and I spent a day and a half in Pakse working on the website I started way back in Vang Vieng. After a trip to the morning market the next day, I caught a truck down to Champasak where I was to wait for Matt and Debi. <img alt="Morning Market, Pakse, Laos" class="postpic" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/paksemarket.jpg" width="230"/>The chief draw in Champasak is an aging wat that dates from the Angkor period and was apparently the northern most outpost of the Angkor Empire. Aside from the wat, the town of Champasak is yet another very sleepily and very small town along the Mekong, but not an unpleasant place to pass a few days. I briefly toured around the wat, which was nice, and perhaps a bit of warm up for Angkor Wat, but regrettably most of the great artifacts from Wat Phu were at some point carted off and then later returned and now housed in a museum at the base of the wat. </p> +<p>Wat Phu is another UNESCO site and was at the time I was there an active archeological dig. Perhaps at some point the original statues, figures and carvings will be returned to the grounds of the wat, but for the time being there are house in air conditioned comfort and thus the wat itself is rather lacking. Just to once again slag the Lonely Planet Guide to Laos, if, as the book says, this is “one of the highlights” to your visit to Laos, well, I pity you, you have not seen much of Laos. [I have a sneaking suspicion that the authors of the Laos Lonely Planet deliberately build up the more touristy areas and neglect the lesser known parts out of self-interest—they want to keep the good stuff to themselves—which is fine with me since it isn’t that hard to figure everything out once you get here, provided you invest a modicum of effort].</p> +<p>Mainly I spent my time in Champasak sitting of the veranda of my guesthouse reading and writing. The second afternoon, somewhat to my surprise, Debi and Matt wandered up the stairs.<img alt="View from Guesthouse, Champasak, Laos" class="postpicright" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/champasakgh.jpg" width="200"/> I wanted to meet up with them again, but given that we had no real means of communication I wasn’t sure it would happen, but luckily it did. The next day I met an American woman, Christie, and we all caught the bus down to the four thousand Islands to relax for a few days before heading into Cambodia. </p> +<p>It’s difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. That sounds like a complaint, but it’s not meant to be. Southern Laos is simply, well, the villagers tend to the fields in the morning and evening, or fish or weave and generally the heat of the day is spent lying around trying not to move. There is good reason for that, it’s hot and the air is deathly still most of the time. When the air does move it’s somewhat like the puff of heat that might come from a convention oven when you open the door.</p> +<p>I have long held to a theory that the environment shapes culture and the people who create it. For instance heavy industrial development does not seem to happen in equatorial areas and there’s a good reason for that. Those that think the west is more “advanced” because of their work ethic or that sort of thing, ought to come out here to Laos and see how motivated for work they are at one in the afternoon.</p> +<p>I came to the four thousand islands to avoid everything involving heavy machinery and peacefully wind down my time in Laos. There isn’t much to see nor much to do, which provides some excellent time for lying in hammock and reflecting on the two months I’ve spent here. Just down the Mekong lies a whole new experience—Cambodia—but before I move on I wanted to spend a few days thinking about where I’ve been. </p> +<p><img alt="Sunset over the Sekong River, Laos" class="postpic" height="225" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/finalsunsetlaos.jpg" width="300"/>As I’ve written before I had no intention of spending more than a few weeks in Laos, just enough time to see the big sights and then drop back into Thailand with a new visa. As fate or life or what have you often works my plans disappeared in a puff of smoke somewhere on the Mekong that first day in Laos. This compounded with some personal events that I will not mention here compelled me to dig deeper into Laos. For these reasons and many more, too many to list, Laos will always occupy a profoundly vivid spot in my memory. The people of Laos did what I did not think would be possible, they topped the enthusiasm, warmth and friendliness of India (which is in no way meant to diminish the Indians). The landscape is some of the most beautiful I’ve seen in Southeast Asia and I will return here someday, I wouldn’t consider any trip to Southeast Asia complete without a few months in Laos. </p> +<p>Farewell Laos and people of Laos, I look forward to returning one day.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here" rel="prev" title=" Can&#8217;t Get There From Here">Can’t Get There From Here</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride" rel="next" title=" Ticket To Ride">Ticket To Ride</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="45" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833479" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="0c953f6bcaf9207e1a6e1f2b0fbb0aa4d822c073" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Debi and Matt opted to head up to Salavan and then on to a small village called Tahoy, where rumor had it the tigers were so plentiful it wasn't safe to go out at night. It sounded fun and if they had seen tigers, I would have regretted my decision, but I've come to be pretty wary of anything written in a guidebook so I opted to take the bus straight back to Pakse where I was pretty sure some website revisions would be waiting for me in my inbox.
+
+<break>
+My hunch was correct and I spent a day and a half in Pakse working on the website I started way back in Vang Vieng. After a trip to the morning market the next day, I caught a truck down to Champasak where I was to wait for Matt and Debi. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/paksemarket.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpic" alt="Morning Market, Pakse, Laos" />The chief draw in Champasak is an aging wat that dates from the Angkor period and was apparently the northern most outpost of the Angkor Empire. Aside from the wat, the town of Champasak is yet another very sleepily and very small town along the Mekong, but not an unpleasant place to pass a few days. I briefly toured around the wat, which was nice, and perhaps a bit of warm up for Angkor Wat, but regrettably most of the great artifacts from Wat Phu were at some point carted off and then later returned and now housed in a museum at the base of the wat.
+
+Wat Phu is another UNESCO site and was at the time I was there an active archeological dig. Perhaps at some point the original statues, figures and carvings will be returned to the grounds of the wat, but for the time being there are house in air conditioned comfort and thus the wat itself is rather lacking. Just to once again slag the Lonely Planet Guide to Laos, if, as the book says, this is "one of the highlights" to your visit to Laos, well, I pity you, you have not seen much of Laos. [I have a sneaking suspicion that the authors of the Laos Lonely Planet deliberately build up the more touristy areas and neglect the lesser known parts out of self-interest—they want to keep the good stuff to themselves—which is fine with me since it isn't that hard to figure everything out once you get here, provided you invest a modicum of effort].
+
+Mainly I spent my time in Champasak sitting of the veranda of my guesthouse reading and writing. The second afternoon, somewhat to my surprise, Debi and Matt wandered up the stairs.<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/champasakgh.jpg" width="200" height="150" class="postpicright" alt="View from Guesthouse, Champasak, Laos" /> I wanted to meet up with them again, but given that we had no real means of communication I wasn't sure it would happen, but luckily it did. The next day I met an American woman, Christie, and we all caught the bus down to the four thousand Islands to relax for a few days before heading into Cambodia.
+
+It's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. That sounds like a complaint, but it's not meant to be. Southern Laos is simply, well, the villagers tend to the fields in the morning and evening, or fish or weave and generally the heat of the day is spent lying around trying not to move. There is good reason for that, it's hot and the air is deathly still most of the time. When the air does move it's somewhat like the puff of heat that might come from a convention oven when you open the door.
+
+I have long held to a theory that the environment shapes culture and the people who create it. For instance heavy industrial development does not seem to happen in equatorial areas and there's a good reason for that. Those that think the west is more "advanced" because of their work ethic or that sort of thing, ought to come out here to Laos and see how motivated for work they are at one in the afternoon.
+
+I came to the four thousand islands to avoid everything involving heavy machinery and peacefully wind down my time in Laos. There isn't much to see nor much to do, which provides some excellent time for lying in hammock and reflecting on the two months I've spent here. Just down the Mekong lies a whole new experience—Cambodia—but before I move on I wanted to spend a few days thinking about where I've been.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/finalsunsetlaos.jpg" width="300" height="225" class="postpic" alt="Sunset over the Sekong River, Laos" />As I've written before I had no intention of spending more than a few weeks in Laos, just enough time to see the big sights and then drop back into Thailand with a new visa. As fate or life or what have you often works my plans disappeared in a puff of smoke somewhere on the Mekong that first day in Laos. This compounded with some personal events that I will not mention here compelled me to dig deeper into Laos. For these reasons and many more, too many to list, Laos will always occupy a profoundly vivid spot in my memory. The people of Laos did what I did not think would be possible, they topped the enthusiasm, warmth and friendliness of India (which is in no way meant to diminish the Indians). The landscape is some of the most beautiful I've seen in Southeast Asia and I will return here someday, I wouldn't consider any trip to Southeast Asia complete without a few months in Laos.
+
+Farewell Laos and people of Laos, I look forward to returning one day. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/lovely-universe.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/lovely-universe.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..84d2648 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/lovely-universe.amp @@ -0,0 +1,191 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Lovely Universe</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations"/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Lovely Universe"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/vangveing.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Vang Vieng, Lao (PDR)"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="LA-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="The Lovely Universe" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations" /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-02-04T23:43:28" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/vangveing.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengsunset.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangvienggroupn.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengafternoonn.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengfireside.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "The Lovely Universe", + "description": "I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations", + "datePublished": "2006-02-04T23:43:28", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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Robin had to return to Thailand and then headed home to Sweden. </p> +<p>After talking it over for a while, Ofir and I decided that two more days on the slow boat back to Luang Prabang was marginally less miserable than taking the bus back over the dusty roads. Beside which the slow boat is good way to meet new people, so we ended up returning full circle to Luang Prabang. </p> +<p>As it turned out the second trip down the river was an entirely different experience. Our boat was not a talkative bunch and we didn't meet anyone, but I did spend a good bit of time listening to music and contemplating the life the Strangler Fig Tree.</p> +<p>In the west (or America anyway) the Strangler Fig is more commonly known as the Banyan tree and is most notable for its long drooping roots (which make it ideal for building tree houses since it's a very stable tree). But the most interesting thing about the Strangler Fig is how it grows. The seeds from a mature tree are eaten by arboreal animals that then deposit them (crap them out for the none scientific among us) in the branches of some unsuspecting and already full-grown tree. For a while the Strangler Fig lives a bit like an orchid (and is perhaps one of the reasons people think orchids are parasitic, but they aren't) attached to the host tree, but not yet parasitic. </p> +<p>As the Strangler Fig grows its roots head downward, thin tendrils searching for the ground. When the roots finally reach the ground they dig in and begin to wrap around the host tree's roots stealing its water and nutrients. From there the fig just sort of takes over and eventually the original tree dies, but you can generally still see the trunk buried somewhere under the roots of the full grown fig. The largest Banyan tree in the world is somewhere in India and occupies the better part of two acres, but in Laos, because the fig must reach up out of the jungle canopy to get light, the trees tend to be tall rather than spread out. </p> +<p>The fig is, though it may be a bit cynical to say so, is not unlike the ever growing tourism industry. One can almost see the way in which the first guest house in any given town started as a purely separate existence, an oddity growing in the branches of a village, but then, over time, the roots of travelers begin to squeeze out what was once a farming or fishing village, until at some point a critical mass is reached. Sometimes, as in case of Luang Prabang, it's fairly easy to find that tipping point, things like the UNESCO seal of approval and the completion of an airport might well be the moment the roots of the original tree finally give in, the economy shifted and what remains is merely tourism, a fig tree in which an endless amount of guesthouses and western style restaurants begin to appear.</p> +<p>But perhaps the tree is best left simply as a tree, a good place to build a tree house if that is your inclination, or maybe just something to marvel out while you float down the same river that already took everything out of you; what's left when everything is gone? Laos. Whatever the case Ofir and I had already decided we didn't want to spend any more time in Luang Prabang.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunset view from the river, Vang Veing, Laos" height="603" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengsunset.jpg" width="960"></amp-img></p> +<p>The plan was to buy a bus ticket and then take it easy, eat an early dinner and catch up on some sleep. Of course when you're traveling that's easier said that done. We were sitting in small cafe on the main street in Luang Prabang when suddenly Ofir jumped up and took off down the street. I saw him talk for a while to someone and then the two of them came back over to the table and I met Andy, a German man Ofir had traveled with some months ago in India. Andy invited us to dinner (which is strange invitation to people eating dinner, but hey) with some people he had met on the slow boat two days before, which is the semi-convoluted way in which I met, Matt from Holland, Jackie, Keith, Matt from London, Georgia, and Debi. Of course the names mean nothing to you, so lets at least try it with a picture, from the back left corner: Ofir, Matt from Holland, Keith from Ireland, Jackie from Germany, Debi from London, Matt also from London, Georgia from Australia and me. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Group shot, Vang Veing, Laos" height="424" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangvienggroupn.jpg" width="660"></amp-img></p> +<p>Ofir and I were headed for Vang Vieng and so was everyone else so we made plans to meet up at some point. After traveling more or less constantly for ten days over some very bad roads and very long rivers, Ofir and I arrived in Vang Veing with the intention of doing nothing for at least a week. After that we were planning to head back into Thailand. I had some work to do, articles to write and websites to build so the down time was good for me. Vang Vieng was a curious little town, a town where the strangler fig of tourism long ago squeezed out whatever the village used to be. But sometimes you need a bit of westernism. At this point Vang Vieng is chiefly famous for inner tubing trips down the river and its endless row of bars, the majority of which play old episodes of <em>Friends</em> from morning far into the night. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Vang Vieng, Laos" height="423" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengafternoonn.jpg" width="660"></amp-img></p> +<p>I spent the majority of my time in Vang Vieng lying back in a small thatched awning hut beside the river, feet kicked up, alternately reading, writing and watching the light change hues through the afternoon. In the evenings, just after sundown, the cliffs in the distance emitted a massive smoky-looking plume out the western cliff face—bats, thousands and thousands of bats heading out into the night sky. It was one of the more amazing sights I've witnessed in Laos and it happened so regularly you could set your clock by it.</p> +<p>When Andy and the rest of the larger group showed up, Ofir and followed them to new guesthouse which had nice sitting area, a free sauna, a great restaurant and cheap massages, which isn't bad for three dollars a night (Thank you Georgia). I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing nothing, making new friends, drinking a beer round the fire at night.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Vang Vieng River Bar, Laos" height="371" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengfireside.jpg" width="660"></amp-img> </p> +<p>The only thing I managed to do was make a day trip down to Vientiane with Debi. Debi had an infected cut on her foot and wanted to have it look at by real doctors at the Australian clinic and I need to extend my Laos visa, which is strange considering I was only planning on spending a few days here to renew my Thai visa. So it was that we found ourselves at the bus station at six thirty in the morning trying to make a day trip to the capital. After taking care of the various medical and paperwork necessities in Vientiane, we passed the afternoon drinking beer at massage/spa (yes that is a strange place to spend your afternoon drinking beer, but if I were to list all the strange places there wouldn't be much else to write about). Having had no problem getting to Vientiane we assumed it would be no problem to get back, but such was not the case. Finally, after making a tuktuk powered tour of all three Vientiane bus stations, we finally found a bus back to Vang Vieng.</p> +<p>The piece of bad new we discovered on our day trip to Vientiane was that Chinese new years was in full swing and unlike a western new years, the Asia countries take the whole week off, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. And so we were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/lovely-universe.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/lovely-universe.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d29d5ee --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/lovely-universe.html @@ -0,0 +1,344 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Lovely Universe - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations"> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="18.92544862065571, 102.43755339150223" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="18.92544862065571; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-02-04T23:43:28" itemprop="datePublished">February <span>4, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p>Because we didn’t find out about the Gibbon Experience until we were halfway to Luang Prabang, we ended up making a loop through northern Laos and in the end Robin, Ofir and I found ourselves once more in the border town of Huay Xai. Robin had to return to Thailand and then headed home to Sweden. </p> +<p>After talking it over for a while, Ofir and I decided that two more days on the slow boat back to Luang Prabang was marginally less miserable than taking the bus back over the dusty roads. Beside which the slow boat is good way to meet new people, so we ended up returning full circle to Luang Prabang. </p> +<p>As it turned out the second trip down the river was an entirely different experience. Our boat was not a talkative bunch and we didn’t meet anyone, but I did spend a good bit of time listening to music and contemplating the life the Strangler Fig Tree.</p> +<p>In the west (or America anyway) the Strangler Fig is more commonly known as the Banyan tree and is most notable for its long drooping roots (which make it ideal for building tree houses since it’s a very stable tree). But the most interesting thing about the Strangler Fig is how it grows. The seeds from a mature tree are eaten by arboreal animals that then deposit them (crap them out for the none scientific among us) in the branches of some unsuspecting and already full-grown tree. For a while the Strangler Fig lives a bit like an orchid (and is perhaps one of the reasons people think orchids are parasitic, but they aren’t) attached to the host tree, but not yet parasitic. </p> +<p>As the Strangler Fig grows its roots head downward, thin tendrils searching for the ground. When the roots finally reach the ground they dig in and begin to wrap around the host tree’s roots stealing its water and nutrients. From there the fig just sort of takes over and eventually the original tree dies, but you can generally still see the trunk buried somewhere under the roots of the full grown fig. The largest Banyan tree in the world is somewhere in India and occupies the better part of two acres, but in Laos, because the fig must reach up out of the jungle canopy to get light, the trees tend to be tall rather than spread out. </p> +<p>The fig is, though it may be a bit cynical to say so, is not unlike the ever growing tourism industry. One can almost see the way in which the first guest house in any given town started as a purely separate existence, an oddity growing in the branches of a village, but then, over time, the roots of travelers begin to squeeze out what was once a farming or fishing village, until at some point a critical mass is reached. Sometimes, as in case of Luang Prabang, it’s fairly easy to find that tipping point, things like the UNESCO seal of approval and the completion of an airport might well be the moment the roots of the original tree finally give in, the economy shifted and what remains is merely tourism, a fig tree in which an endless amount of guesthouses and western style restaurants begin to appear.</p> +<p>But perhaps the tree is best left simply as a tree, a good place to build a tree house if that is your inclination, or maybe just something to marvel out while you float down the same river that already took everything out of you; what’s left when everything is gone? Laos. Whatever the case Ofir and I had already decided we didn’t want to spend any more time in Luang Prabang.</p> +<p><img alt="Sunset view from the river, Vang Veing, Laos" class="picwide960" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengsunset.jpg"/></p> +<p>The plan was to buy a bus ticket and then take it easy, eat an early dinner and catch up on some sleep. Of course when you’re traveling that’s easier said that done. We were sitting in small cafe on the main street in Luang Prabang when suddenly Ofir jumped up and took off down the street. I saw him talk for a while to someone and then the two of them came back over to the table and I met Andy, a German man Ofir had traveled with some months ago in India. Andy invited us to dinner (which is strange invitation to people eating dinner, but hey) with some people he had met on the slow boat two days before, which is the semi-convoluted way in which I met, Matt from Holland, Jackie, Keith, Matt from London, Georgia, and Debi. Of course the names mean nothing to you, so lets at least try it with a picture, from the back left corner: Ofir, Matt from Holland, Keith from Ireland, Jackie from Germany, Debi from London, Matt also from London, Georgia from Australia and me. </p> +<p><img alt="Group shot, Vang Veing, Laos" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangvienggroupn.jpg"/></p> +<p>Ofir and I were headed for Vang Vieng and so was everyone else so we made plans to meet up at some point. After traveling more or less constantly for ten days over some very bad roads and very long rivers, Ofir and I arrived in Vang Veing with the intention of doing nothing for at least a week. After that we were planning to head back into Thailand. I had some work to do, articles to write and websites to build so the down time was good for me. Vang Vieng was a curious little town, a town where the strangler fig of tourism long ago squeezed out whatever the village used to be. But sometimes you need a bit of westernism. At this point Vang Vieng is chiefly famous for inner tubing trips down the river and its endless row of bars, the majority of which play old episodes of <em>Friends</em> from morning far into the night. </p> +<p><img alt="Vang Vieng, Laos" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengafternoonn.jpg"/></p> +<p>I spent the majority of my time in Vang Vieng lying back in a small thatched awning hut beside the river, feet kicked up, alternately reading, writing and watching the light change hues through the afternoon. In the evenings, just after sundown, the cliffs in the distance emitted a massive smoky-looking plume out the western cliff face—bats, thousands and thousands of bats heading out into the night sky. It was one of the more amazing sights I’ve witnessed in Laos and it happened so regularly you could set your clock by it.</p> +<p>When Andy and the rest of the larger group showed up, Ofir and followed them to new guesthouse which had nice sitting area, a free sauna, a great restaurant and cheap massages, which isn’t bad for three dollars a night (Thank you Georgia). I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing nothing, making new friends, drinking a beer round the fire at night.</p> +<p><img alt="Vang Vieng River Bar, Laos" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengfireside.jpg"/> </p> +<p>The only thing I managed to do was make a day trip down to Vientiane with Debi. Debi had an infected cut on her foot and wanted to have it look at by real doctors at the Australian clinic and I need to extend my Laos visa, which is strange considering I was only planning on spending a few days here to renew my Thai visa. So it was that we found ourselves at the bus station at six thirty in the morning trying to make a day trip to the capital. After taking care of the various medical and paperwork necessities in Vientiane, we passed the afternoon drinking beer at massage/spa (yes that is a strange place to spend your afternoon drinking beer, but if I were to list all the strange places there wouldn’t be much else to write about). Having had no problem getting to Vientiane we assumed it would be no problem to get back, but such was not the case. Finally, after making a tuktuk powered tour of all three Vientiane bus stations, we finally found a bus back to Vang Vieng.</p> +<p>The piece of bad new we discovered on our day trip to Vientiane was that Chinese new years was in full swing and unlike a western new years, the Asia countries take the whole week off, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. And so we were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan" rel="prev" title=" I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan">I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides" rel="next" title=" Water Slides and Spirit Guides">Water Slides and Spirit Guides</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="40" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833481" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="4425697b5b48138c711c73d48df16e842fcc609e" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Robin had to return to Thailand and then headed home to Sweden.
+
+After talking it over for a while, Ofir and I decided that two more days on the slow boat back to Luang Prabang was marginally less miserable than taking the bus back over the dusty roads. Beside which the slow boat is good way to meet new people, so we ended up returning full circle to Luang Prabang.
+
+As it turned out the second trip down the river was an entirely different experience. Our boat was not a talkative bunch and we didn't meet anyone, but I did spend a good bit of time listening to music and contemplating the life the Strangler Fig Tree.
+
+In the west (or America anyway) the Strangler Fig is more commonly known as the Banyan tree and is most notable for its long drooping roots (which make it ideal for building tree houses since it's a very stable tree). But the most interesting thing about the Strangler Fig is how it grows. The seeds from a mature tree are eaten by arboreal animals that then deposit them (crap them out for the none scientific among us) in the branches of some unsuspecting and already full-grown tree. For a while the Strangler Fig lives a bit like an orchid (and is perhaps one of the reasons people think orchids are parasitic, but they aren't) attached to the host tree, but not yet parasitic.
+
+As the Strangler Fig grows its roots head downward, thin tendrils searching for the ground. When the roots finally reach the ground they dig in and begin to wrap around the host tree's roots stealing its water and nutrients. From there the fig just sort of takes over and eventually the original tree dies, but you can generally still see the trunk buried somewhere under the roots of the full grown fig. The largest Banyan tree in the world is somewhere in India and occupies the better part of two acres, but in Laos, because the fig must reach up out of the jungle canopy to get light, the trees tend to be tall rather than spread out.
+
+The fig is, though it may be a bit cynical to say so, is not unlike the ever growing tourism industry. One can almost see the way in which the first guest house in any given town started as a purely separate existence, an oddity growing in the branches of a village, but then, over time, the roots of travelers begin to squeeze out what was once a farming or fishing village, until at some point a critical mass is reached. Sometimes, as in case of Luang Prabang, it's fairly easy to find that tipping point, things like the UNESCO seal of approval and the completion of an airport might well be the moment the roots of the original tree finally give in, the economy shifted and what remains is merely tourism, a fig tree in which an endless amount of guesthouses and western style restaurants begin to appear.
+
+But perhaps the tree is best left simply as a tree, a good place to build a tree house if that is your inclination, or maybe just something to marvel out while you float down the same river that already took everything out of you; what's left when everything is gone? Laos. Whatever the case Ofir and I had already decided we didn't want to spend any more time in Luang Prabang.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/vangviengsunset.jpg" class="picwide960" alt="Sunset view from the river, Vang Veing, Laos" />
+
+The plan was to buy a bus ticket and then take it easy, eat an early dinner and catch up on some sleep. Of course when you're traveling that's easier said that done. We were sitting in small cafe on the main street in Luang Prabang when suddenly Ofir jumped up and took off down the street. I saw him talk for a while to someone and then the two of them came back over to the table and I met Andy, a German man Ofir had traveled with some months ago in India. Andy invited us to dinner (which is strange invitation to people eating dinner, but hey) with some people he had met on the slow boat two days before, which is the semi-convoluted way in which I met, Matt from Holland, Jackie, Keith, Matt from London, Georgia, and Debi. Of course the names mean nothing to you, so lets at least try it with a picture, from the back left corner: Ofir, Matt from Holland, Keith from Ireland, Jackie from Germany, Debi from London, Matt also from London, Georgia from Australia and me.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/vangvienggroupn.jpg" class="picfull" alt="Group shot, Vang Veing, Laos" />
+
+Ofir and I were headed for Vang Vieng and so was everyone else so we made plans to meet up at some point. After traveling more or less constantly for ten days over some very bad roads and very long rivers, Ofir and I arrived in Vang Veing with the intention of doing nothing for at least a week. After that we were planning to head back into Thailand. I had some work to do, articles to write and websites to build so the down time was good for me. Vang Vieng was a curious little town, a town where the strangler fig of tourism long ago squeezed out whatever the village used to be. But sometimes you need a bit of westernism. At this point Vang Vieng is chiefly famous for inner tubing trips down the river and its endless row of bars, the majority of which play old episodes of *Friends* from morning far into the night.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/vangviengafternoonn.jpg" class="picfull" alt="Vang Vieng, Laos" />
+
+I spent the majority of my time in Vang Vieng lying back in a small thatched awning hut beside the river, feet kicked up, alternately reading, writing and watching the light change hues through the afternoon. In the evenings, just after sundown, the cliffs in the distance emitted a massive smoky-looking plume out the western cliff face—bats, thousands and thousands of bats heading out into the night sky. It was one of the more amazing sights I've witnessed in Laos and it happened so regularly you could set your clock by it.
+
+When Andy and the rest of the larger group showed up, Ofir and followed them to new guesthouse which had nice sitting area, a free sauna, a great restaurant and cheap massages, which isn't bad for three dollars a night (Thank you Georgia). I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing nothing, making new friends, drinking a beer round the fire at night.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/vangviengfireside.jpg" class="picfull" alt="Vang Vieng River Bar, Laos" />
+
+The only thing I managed to do was make a day trip down to Vientiane with Debi. Debi had an infected cut on her foot and wanted to have it look at by real doctors at the Australian clinic and I need to extend my Laos visa, which is strange considering I was only planning on spending a few days here to renew my Thai visa. So it was that we found ourselves at the bus station at six thirty in the morning trying to make a day trip to the capital. After taking care of the various medical and paperwork necessities in Vientiane, we passed the afternoon drinking beer at massage/spa (yes that is a strange place to spend your afternoon drinking beer, but if I were to list all the strange places there wouldn't be much else to write about). Having had no problem getting to Vientiane we assumed it would be no problem to get back, but such was not the case. Finally, after making a tuktuk powered tour of all three Vientiane bus stations, we finally found a bus back to Vang Vieng.
+
+The piece of bad new we discovered on our day trip to Vientiane was that Chinese new years was in full swing and unlike a western new years, the Asia countries take the whole week off, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. And so we were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/safe-milk.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/safe-milk.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae28d07 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/safe-milk.amp @@ -0,0 +1,184 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Safe as Milk</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/safe-milk"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/02/safe-milk"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="If you were illegally bombing a foreign country, you probably wouldn't stamp your name on the side of your bombs. 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The peculiar thing about the UXO museum was, well, you would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp "US Bomb" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was: "US Bomb." </p> +<p>Of course the bomb in the photo below is probably fake, but plenty of the real ones lying about (disarmed and hollow of course) still had paint flakes that clearly read "US" on the side of them. Obviously somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode.</p> +<p><break> +<amp-img alt="US Bomb, Sekong, Laos" height="157" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/usbomb.jpg" width="204"></amp-img>Sekong province was the most heavily bombed area in all of the "Second Indochina War" as it's referred to around here. Indeed everyday we were in the Bolaven Plateau area we saw at least one U.N. UXO jeep either coming or going somewhere off in the countryside. That said, the threat to tourists is small, the major towns are clear (or simple relocated in the case of Paksong) and even the villages are for the most part no threat. Still Sekong province is not a good place to live out those cross-country bushwhacking-over-the-mountains-to-Vietnam fantasies you've been thinking about for years. If you are planning to travel off the major roads it's a good idea to hire a guide who knows where is safe and where isn't. And keep in mind that UXO is not just a problem here, the same trucks are scouring the hills of Bosnia right now as well, and as Matt and Debi told me even London still turns up the occasional German bomb when somebody digs a new foundation deeper than they should. The tragic reality of war is that it doesn't end when a truce is signed.</break></p> +<p>One thing I did not know until I got to Sekong was that there were major ground battles in this area and in fact a U.S. led collection of Thai, Laos, and South Vietnamese armies held the area for a while before being driven out by the NVA. Most of the evidence of such activities, abandoned tanks, jeeps and downed warplanes, has long since been chopped up and carted off to Thailand or Vietnam for sale as scrap metal. Still one does see rather odd things like a thousand-pound bomb sawed in half length wise and turned into a planter for flowers, or a water trough for livestock. The hotel where I am writing this has chopped smaller bombs in half and turned then on their fins to use as ashtrays.</p> +<p>But the reason we spent an extra day in Sekong has nothing to do with scrap metal or UXO; it was the people. I have written before about how friendly the Lao are, but the farther south we go the friendlier they get. Nearly everywhere we went in Sekong we attracted a throng of people just curiously following along, some stopping to practice their English or find out where we were from (and no they didn't seem to hold it against me that my country bombed the living hell out of them for ten years).</p> +<p>The very first night, after we met up with Debi, we were all headed out for dinner when two teenage Lao girls riding by on a bike stopped to talk to us. For the most part they talked to Matt and Debi and I continued on ahead not thinking too much about it, people always stop to talk to you on the street. When Matt later joined us, he said that the girls wanted to show us around the town. Again we didn't think too much of it, people always want to show you around, sometimes you let them sometimes you don't. But then the next morning the girls were knocking on the hotel door at ten in the morning. <amp-img alt="Matt contempates the details of a Lao Wedding, Sekong, Laos" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mattandgirlfriend.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>At this point Matt began to get a little nervous thinking perhaps he might end up in Lao wedding if he wasn't careful. So when we ran into them again down at the market and they helped negotiate a cheaper price for our tuk-tuk ride out to see a local waterfall, it seemed only polite to invite them along. I think Matt may have actually started sweating for a minute when we had to stop by the girls' house and meet their parents. It did seem for a while like Matt might be going on a date and of course I did nothing to discourage him from thinking that (hey what are friends for?), but at least half of his suspicions were unfounded. Or maybe a quarter of them. Actually, looking back on it now, he was probably right, he was on a date with a girl and her sister.</p> +<p>Whatever their intentions were the girls were very nice and spent the afternoon with us at the waterfall. <amp-img alt="Debi at the pufferfish pool, Sekong, Laos" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/pufferfishpool.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>The waterfall deserves mention if only because the pool below it is apparently home to fresh water pufferfish with, and I quote from The Rough Guide, "a piranha like appetite." The locals claim the pufferfish seems to have a penchant for biting off the tip of a man's penis and we didn't see anyone venture into the lower pool the whole time we were there. Between UXO, penis eating pufferfish and teenage girls chasing blond Londoners through the countryside, we had an interesting afternoon. Speaking of blond I never realized how fascinating blond is to the people of southeast Asia; Matt gets stared at wherever he goes and sometime children will come up and try to pull the hair out of his arms as if checking to make sure it's real. Any westerner who travels to the smaller towns and villages will get stared out, but the attention you get if you're blond is easily double what I get.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Waterfall, Sekong, Laos" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sekongfalls.jpg" width="165"></amp-img>In spite of the pufferfish we swam for a while (in the small pools above the falls rather than the big one below) and even sat in the middle of the falls and let the water cascade over us. Eventually it began to look like rain and thunder rumbled off in the distance (or possibly that was the UXO teams at work you never know), so we headed back to Sekong and had a late lunch. </p> +<p>The next morning we left for Attapeu but not before the girls stopped by and gave us presents, some polished gourds whose purpose we weren't exactly clear on, but they were very nice. Debi and I couldn't help laughing when we noticed that Matt's gourd was larger, had been more ornately decorated and had a couple extra woven baskets attached to it.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/safe-milk.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/safe-milk.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cfad70 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/safe-milk.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Safe As Milk - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="If you were illegally bombing a foreign country, you probably wouldn't stamp your name on the side of your bombs. 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The peculiar thing about the UXO museum was, well, you would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp “US Bomb” on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was: “US Bomb.” </p> +<p>Of course the bomb in the photo below is probably fake, but plenty of the real ones lying about (disarmed and hollow of course) still had paint flakes that clearly read “US” on the side of them. Obviously somebody didn’t think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode.</p> +<p><break> +<img alt="US Bomb, Sekong, Laos" class="postpic" height="157" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/usbomb.jpg" width="204"/>Sekong province was the most heavily bombed area in all of the “Second Indochina War” as it’s referred to around here. Indeed everyday we were in the Bolaven Plateau area we saw at least one U.N. UXO jeep either coming or going somewhere off in the countryside. That said, the threat to tourists is small, the major towns are clear (or simple relocated in the case of Paksong) and even the villages are for the most part no threat. Still Sekong province is not a good place to live out those cross-country bushwhacking-over-the-mountains-to-Vietnam fantasies you’ve been thinking about for years. If you are planning to travel off the major roads it’s a good idea to hire a guide who knows where is safe and where isn’t. And keep in mind that UXO is not just a problem here, the same trucks are scouring the hills of Bosnia right now as well, and as Matt and Debi told me even London still turns up the occasional German bomb when somebody digs a new foundation deeper than they should. The tragic reality of war is that it doesn’t end when a truce is signed.</p> +<p>One thing I did not know until I got to Sekong was that there were major ground battles in this area and in fact a U.S. led collection of Thai, Laos, and South Vietnamese armies held the area for a while before being driven out by the NVA. Most of the evidence of such activities, abandoned tanks, jeeps and downed warplanes, has long since been chopped up and carted off to Thailand or Vietnam for sale as scrap metal. Still one does see rather odd things like a thousand-pound bomb sawed in half length wise and turned into a planter for flowers, or a water trough for livestock. The hotel where I am writing this has chopped smaller bombs in half and turned then on their fins to use as ashtrays.</p> +<p>But the reason we spent an extra day in Sekong has nothing to do with scrap metal or UXO; it was the people. I have written before about how friendly the Lao are, but the farther south we go the friendlier they get. Nearly everywhere we went in Sekong we attracted a throng of people just curiously following along, some stopping to practice their English or find out where we were from (and no they didn’t seem to hold it against me that my country bombed the living hell out of them for ten years).</p> +<p>The very first night, after we met up with Debi, we were all headed out for dinner when two teenage Lao girls riding by on a bike stopped to talk to us. For the most part they talked to Matt and Debi and I continued on ahead not thinking too much about it, people always stop to talk to you on the street. When Matt later joined us, he said that the girls wanted to show us around the town. Again we didn’t think too much of it, people always want to show you around, sometimes you let them sometimes you don’t. But then the next morning the girls were knocking on the hotel door at ten in the morning. <img alt="Matt contempates the details of a Lao Wedding, Sekong, Laos" class="postpic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mattandgirlfriend.jpg" width="240"/>At this point Matt began to get a little nervous thinking perhaps he might end up in Lao wedding if he wasn’t careful. So when we ran into them again down at the market and they helped negotiate a cheaper price for our tuk-tuk ride out to see a local waterfall, it seemed only polite to invite them along. I think Matt may have actually started sweating for a minute when we had to stop by the girls’ house and meet their parents. It did seem for a while like Matt might be going on a date and of course I did nothing to discourage him from thinking that (hey what are friends for?), but at least half of his suspicions were unfounded. Or maybe a quarter of them. Actually, looking back on it now, he was probably right, he was on a date with a girl and her sister.</p> +<p>Whatever their intentions were the girls were very nice and spent the afternoon with us at the waterfall. <img alt="Debi at the pufferfish pool, Sekong, Laos" class="postpic" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/pufferfishpool.jpg" width="250"/>The waterfall deserves mention if only because the pool below it is apparently home to fresh water pufferfish with, and I quote from The Rough Guide, “a piranha like appetite.” The locals claim the pufferfish seems to have a penchant for biting off the tip of a man’s penis and we didn’t see anyone venture into the lower pool the whole time we were there. Between UXO, penis eating pufferfish and teenage girls chasing blond Londoners through the countryside, we had an interesting afternoon. Speaking of blond I never realized how fascinating blond is to the people of southeast Asia; Matt gets stared at wherever he goes and sometime children will come up and try to pull the hair out of his arms as if checking to make sure it’s real. Any westerner who travels to the smaller towns and villages will get stared out, but the attention you get if you’re blond is easily double what I get.</p> +<p><img alt="Waterfall, Sekong, Laos" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sekongfalls.jpg" width="165"/>In spite of the pufferfish we swam for a while (in the small pools above the falls rather than the big one below) and even sat in the middle of the falls and let the water cascade over us. Eventually it began to look like rain and thunder rumbled off in the distance (or possibly that was the UXO teams at work you never know), so we headed back to Sekong and had a late lunch. </p> +<p>The next morning we left for Attapeu but not before the girls stopped by and gave us presents, some polished gourds whose purpose we weren’t exactly clear on, but they were very nice. Debi and I couldn’t help laughing when we noticed that Matt’s gourd was larger, had been more ornately decorated and had a couple extra woven baskets attached to it.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth" rel="prev" title=" Everyday the Fourteenth">Everyday the Fourteenth</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here" rel="next" title=" Can&#8217;t Get There From Here">Can’t Get There From Here</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="43" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833480" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="9ab2f6e6572b2c821b01351f2d0b2706c1572fdc" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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The peculiar thing about the UXO museum was, well, you would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp "US Bomb" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was: "US Bomb."
+
+Of course the bomb in the photo below is probably fake, but plenty of the real ones lying about (disarmed and hollow of course) still had paint flakes that clearly read "US" on the side of them. Obviously somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode.
+
+<break>
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/usbomb.jpg" width="204" height="157" class="postpic" alt="US Bomb, Sekong, Laos" />Sekong province was the most heavily bombed area in all of the "Second Indochina War" as it's referred to around here. Indeed everyday we were in the Bolaven Plateau area we saw at least one U.N. UXO jeep either coming or going somewhere off in the countryside. That said, the threat to tourists is small, the major towns are clear (or simple relocated in the case of Paksong) and even the villages are for the most part no threat. Still Sekong province is not a good place to live out those cross-country bushwhacking-over-the-mountains-to-Vietnam fantasies you've been thinking about for years. If you are planning to travel off the major roads it's a good idea to hire a guide who knows where is safe and where isn't. And keep in mind that UXO is not just a problem here, the same trucks are scouring the hills of Bosnia right now as well, and as Matt and Debi told me even London still turns up the occasional German bomb when somebody digs a new foundation deeper than they should. The tragic reality of war is that it doesn't end when a truce is signed.
+
+One thing I did not know until I got to Sekong was that there were major ground battles in this area and in fact a U.S. led collection of Thai, Laos, and South Vietnamese armies held the area for a while before being driven out by the NVA. Most of the evidence of such activities, abandoned tanks, jeeps and downed warplanes, has long since been chopped up and carted off to Thailand or Vietnam for sale as scrap metal. Still one does see rather odd things like a thousand-pound bomb sawed in half length wise and turned into a planter for flowers, or a water trough for livestock. The hotel where I am writing this has chopped smaller bombs in half and turned then on their fins to use as ashtrays.
+
+But the reason we spent an extra day in Sekong has nothing to do with scrap metal or UXO; it was the people. I have written before about how friendly the Lao are, but the farther south we go the friendlier they get. Nearly everywhere we went in Sekong we attracted a throng of people just curiously following along, some stopping to practice their English or find out where we were from (and no they didn't seem to hold it against me that my country bombed the living hell out of them for ten years).
+
+The very first night, after we met up with Debi, we were all headed out for dinner when two teenage Lao girls riding by on a bike stopped to talk to us. For the most part they talked to Matt and Debi and I continued on ahead not thinking too much about it, people always stop to talk to you on the street. When Matt later joined us, he said that the girls wanted to show us around the town. Again we didn't think too much of it, people always want to show you around, sometimes you let them sometimes you don't. But then the next morning the girls were knocking on the hotel door at ten in the morning. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/mattandgirlfriend.jpg" width="240" height="180" class="postpic" alt="Matt contempates the details of a Lao Wedding, Sekong, Laos" />At this point Matt began to get a little nervous thinking perhaps he might end up in Lao wedding if he wasn't careful. So when we ran into them again down at the market and they helped negotiate a cheaper price for our tuk-tuk ride out to see a local waterfall, it seemed only polite to invite them along. I think Matt may have actually started sweating for a minute when we had to stop by the girls' house and meet their parents. It did seem for a while like Matt might be going on a date and of course I did nothing to discourage him from thinking that (hey what are friends for?), but at least half of his suspicions were unfounded. Or maybe a quarter of them. Actually, looking back on it now, he was probably right, he was on a date with a girl and her sister.
+
+Whatever their intentions were the girls were very nice and spent the afternoon with us at the waterfall. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/pufferfishpool.jpg" width="250" height="188" class="postpic" alt="Debi at the pufferfish pool, Sekong, Laos" />The waterfall deserves mention if only because the pool below it is apparently home to fresh water pufferfish with, and I quote from The Rough Guide, "a piranha like appetite." The locals claim the pufferfish seems to have a penchant for biting off the tip of a man's penis and we didn't see anyone venture into the lower pool the whole time we were there. Between UXO, penis eating pufferfish and teenage girls chasing blond Londoners through the countryside, we had an interesting afternoon. Speaking of blond I never realized how fascinating blond is to the people of southeast Asia; Matt gets stared at wherever he goes and sometime children will come up and try to pull the hair out of his arms as if checking to make sure it's real. Any westerner who travels to the smaller towns and villages will get stared out, but the attention you get if you're blond is easily double what I get.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/sekongfalls.jpg" width="165" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Waterfall, Sekong, Laos" />In spite of the pufferfish we swam for a while (in the small pools above the falls rather than the big one below) and even sat in the middle of the falls and let the water cascade over us. Eventually it began to look like rain and thunder rumbled off in the distance (or possibly that was the UXO teams at work you never know), so we headed back to Sekong and had a late lunch.
+
+The next morning we left for Attapeu but not before the girls stopped by and gave us presents, some polished gourds whose purpose we weren't exactly clear on, but they were very nice. Debi and I couldn't help laughing when we noticed that Matt's gourd was larger, had been more ornately decorated and had a couple extra woven baskets attached to it. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..532e7d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides.amp @@ -0,0 +1,204 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Water Slides and Spirit Guides</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="If you find Ban Na Hin, Laos you're a better traveler than I. 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I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light fade from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, <amp-img alt="Ralph's Restaurant, Ban Na Hin, Laos" height="126" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunrestaurant.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>or if there even existed an explanation. Just to consider how many first dates had to work out to even produce the DNA you call home is more or less a complete reconstruction of the history of the world. But then as we walked down to Ralph's restaurant I realized that kind of detail is best left to William T. Vollman and other prodigious folks with real publishers that deal print on real paper. +<break></break></p> +<p>My reconstructions are limited to the last several weeks, though at times even such limited recollections feel as though they might grow ever more detailed with every reexamination, another memory daisy-chained to the back of the one that preceded it, an effort that might ultimately require several chapters. Let us start with Ralph, or, as this chapter could be called, The English are Everywhere. On the bus ride from Vientiane to Vieng Kham we met an Englishman named Ralph, or, if I were to tell the story properly I would say, at some point on the bus ride, right near the end as a matter of fact, Matt wandered off for a bathroom break and returned from the bushes with an Englishman, which, as everyone knows, is not really uncommon, in fact I believe it's more unusual to find bushes lacking Englishman. Were I to ever climb Mt. Everest I would fully expect to arrive at the summit to see an Englishman enjoying an afternoon tea; the English are like that, wherever you go, there they are—Dr. Livingstone I presume? What's even more curious is that often these English folks are often not tourists but simply ended up wherever they are and apparently decided returning home was more traumatic than staying. So yes, out of the bushes came Ralph who as it turned out owned a restaurant in the Ban Na Hin (its worth pointing out that he had been on our bus the whole time, but see Englishmen don't meet each other on buses, they have to be out in foreign bushes before they notice each other).</p> +<p>So with Ralph's help we were able to reach Ban Na Hin with no trouble at all and even better Ralph's wife Bon helped organize our trip to Tham Lot Kong Lo Cave (which was the real reason we had deviated off the main road in the first place). Bon seemed happy to arrange our transport to and from the cave and also went to the trouble of calling her cousin and arranging for him to make a five hour journey up river to pick us up and take us back down the Hin Bun River to the Mekong where we could continue southward. The Hin Bun River journey was the idyllic way out of the valley, which even the guidebook said could be tricky to arrange; I didn't have high hopes of finding a boatman, but it all worked out.</p> +<p>The truth is though that it started much earlier than even this. Way back in Vang Vieng. Not unlike Agatha Christie's mystery novel <em>Ten Little Indians</em> people began to disappear from the group before we even left Vang Vieng. Some went back to Thailand and others on to Cambodia or Vietnam until in the end there remained only five of us, Jackie, Matt, Ofir, Debi and me. As I mentioned previously we were waiting for the Cambodian Embassy to reopen, or rather Matt, Debi and I were waiting since we had plans to head from southern Laos into Cambodia via the Mekong River. Jackie and Ofir wanted to see southern Laos, but were then headed to Vietnam and Thailand respectively.</p> +<p>The five of us set out for Vientiane early one morning several weeks ago. Or possibly it was less than that; time is problematic when you're traveling. Whatever day it might have been, we reached Vientiane around noon. Vientiane is the largest city and capital of Laos, but it still manages to feel like a small town clustered beside the Mekong and looking peacefully across at the bustling Thai city, Nong Khai, on the opposite shore. Of course Vientiane has the usual amenities like internet and a wide variety of guesthouses and nicer hotels as well as a large selection of international restaurants, but for all intents and purposes it is more or less an oversized villages with houses made of concrete rather than bamboo. It is without a doubt the most laid back and relaxing capital city in the world. The only real reason we stopped for two nights in Vientiane was to renew our Laos visas and get Cambodian visas since the Mekong border in the far south is the one and only Cambodian border crossing that doesn't offer a visa on entry (I have since heard on good authority that the Cambodian border does now offer visas, but better to be on the safe side). </p> +<p>After dropping our passports at the various agencies Matt and Debi and I went to the Laos National Museum. The National Museum was an interesting mix of natural history and political ideology. The highlight for me was getting to see the largest of the stone Jars that dot the Plain of Jars just outside Phonsavan, an area I originally wanted to go to, but ended up skipping out of sloth. The highlight for Matt and Debi was the signage in the political history area which constantly referred to "the Imperialist Americans and their puppet soldiers." Naturally I had to travel to the National Museum of the one country that Britain never colonized in the company of two Londoners. But I am winning on the "are-they-yours-or-are-they-mine" game that Matt and I came up with, which consists in finding the silliest looking, idiotic dressed or just generally annoying tourists and finding out whether they are British or American, because they invariably are one or the other. I am happy to report that the score is thus far 3-6, though I am willing to concede that since only 6% of the America population actually holds a passport, I do have a distinct advantage in the game.</p> +<p>Other than the beating I took on the propaganda, the National Museum was surprisingly informative about the history of Laos and maybe the only place in the world where the French and Americans get lumped together as indistinguishable imperialists. The interesting thing is not one Lao person, even those that I knew are old enough to have been alive when American (and possibly even French) bombs were falling seem to care that I am American, which is a distinct contrast to some stories I have heard of both Americans and Canadians being insulted and spit on by the Vietnamese (why the Canadians got such ill treatment is a mystery, maybe they're guilty by proximate geography or something).</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Dinner by the Mekong, Vientiane, Laos" height="153" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vientianeriversidedinner.jpg" width="190"></amp-img>Both nights we ate dinner at the food venders along the banks of the river gorging ourselves on grilled pork ribs and plenty of laap, the national dish of Laos, or at least it should be, though truthfully it may be the <strong>only</strong> dish of Laos. In either case it's usually pretty good, mint, basil, chili and lime mixed with either chicken, pork, beef or, when by a river, fish. The second night in Vientiane we said goodbye to Debi whose foot still had not healed and was told by the Australian Clinic to go to Bangkok and seek, as they put it, "proper medical attention." Laos is not totally backward, though it is fairly primitive in some areas, medicine being one of them. The general consensus among travelers is that if you injure yourself in Laos, you go to Thailand. Or just amputate, whatever you prefer. Debi apparently wanted to keep her foot attached to her leg so she booked an early morning flight to Bangkok while the rest of us caught the bus south with the vague idea that we would get off in a small town named Vieng Kham and then catch a truck to the even smaller town of Ban Na Hin. Ralph and Bon made the journey simpler than we thought and even cooked us up some dinner at their restaurant.</p> +<p>In fact we liked Ban Na Hin so much we decided to stay an extra night and spend an afternoon hiking to a waterfall. Unfortunately as previous mentioned, this is the dry season and in many places Laos looks more like Africa than the jungle you might envision, and the waterfall was no exception, trickling over the cliff with little more power than a gibbon with a full bladder. So it was that I found myself back early, showered and city on the back porch watching the sky, listening to breeze and waiting for the others.</p> +<h3>Konglor Cave</h3> +<p>Though mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebooks it seemed few people deviated from route 13 on their way from Vientiane to Pakse in the south, indeed in the four days we were in the Ban Ha Hin/Konglor Cave area we saw one other western tourist, Andy from Scotland who was traveling by motorcycle toward Vietnam. I would not say we were off the beaten path, but we were at the very least lucky enough to <em>feel</em> like we off the beaten path.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Road to Konglor Cave, Laos" height="217" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunroad.jpg" width="159"></amp-img>Our journey began the next morning after knocking back an English breakfast at Ralph's restaurant. We were picked up by a sawngthaew, piling in with a dozen or so Lao people and a few bags of rice, the odd chicken and duck here and there, all in all a full load. The road, if it may be called that, which heads south from Ban Na Hin to the cave was every bit the torturous, bumpy, dusty experience we all knew it would be, but somehow having travel live up to your worst fears does not make it any easier to bear the bone-jarring, ass-numbing roller coaster ride on wooden planks. The best part was we already knew we would have to repeat the trip the next morning to catch the boat.</p> +<p>Despite the rough ride the scenery was spectacular and there is nothing like careening across a dried up rice paddy with the afternoon light playing across the distant trees and limestone cliffs to make you feel like yes, finally I have made it out there, whatever out there may mean. After roughly four perhaps five hours, we finally made it to the small village of Konglor where we would be spending the night with a host family. <amp-img alt="Tree, Road to Konglor Cave, Laos" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunroadtree.jpg" width="178"></amp-img>But before we had time to do much more than drop off the bags and grab a bowl of noodle soup, we were ushered down to the river and immediately set off for the cave. We were trying to make the trip through to the other side, see the hidden valley and make it back before nightfall so there wasn't a lot of time it linger.</p> +<p>As would happen for the remainder of the time Matt and I traveled with her, the villagers immediately assumed he was her husband (later, in other places they would variously assume I was her husband); we decided without much debate to just leave it alone, since explaining cultural differences in broken English, French and Laos would be more confusing than just rolling with it. The idea that an unmarried woman would travel with three men is apparently unfathomable for the Lao. So it was that Matt and Jackie piled into one canoe and Ofir and I in the other and we set off down the river toward the cave.</p> +<p>I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting the cave to be like, but I wasn't quite prepared for how absolutely massive it would be inside. According to Lonely Planet it's about 150 meters at its widest and about as high at its tallest. There were several places where the river was too low and we had to get out and wade while the guides carried the boats over various rapids and rocks, but then at other times my headlamp disappeared into to water that seemed like it may well have been 150 meters deep. <amp-img alt="Inside Konglor Cave, Laos" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/insidekonglor.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>When I talked to Ralph about it later he said that no one has any idea how deep it is in some spots and the large cavern where we stopped to look at some stalactites and stalagmites has been extensively explored but no end yet found. If you happen to be into spelunking and such, this is definitely the place for you.</p> +<p>On the far side of the cave from the village is a huge hidden valley ringed on all sides by karst limestone ridges. The water level was not high enough, nor was there enough daylight left, to go very far into the valley, but we did stop at the first village and enjoy some warm sodas and played with the local children. The sodas and everything else that the village gets that isn't grown by them must come like we did, through the cave. The surrounding ridges are impassible to all but the hardiest of climbers and for all intents and purposes impenetrable. The tribal people that live here came through to escape persecution at various times in their history and so far it has proved entirely successful.</p> +<p>After taking some pictures and sharing them with the local children (the digital camera is a boon to the language barrier the world over, snap, display, laugh, etc), we piled back in the boats and set off. The boat Ofir and I were in was decidedly slower than the other and we were soon alone in the darkness of the cave, this time without the light of the other boat in the distance. But being the slow boat was actually quite nice since when we finally came out the other side of the cave the sunset was in full swing and as we headed upstream the local people were just wading out into the water and beginning to cast their nets looking for tomorrow's food.<amp-img alt="Sunset, Hin Bun River, Laos" height="195" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunsunset.jpg" width="248"></amp-img></p> +<p>Back at the stilt home where we were staying Ofir and I had dinner with our host family, sticky rice and an omelet with some instant noodles (for whatever reason in Laos, instant ramen noodles are regarded as a delicacy, I think more for the ease with which they can be prepared than for the taste, but many a restaurant proudly advertises "instant noodles here"). The dinner conversation was, well, it was non-existent since our Laos was probably better than their English, but we managed to convey a few ideas through hand gestures and some consolation with the back of the guidebook. After dinner Ofir and I went out to explore the village and maybe stumble across a cold Beer Lao, which we managed to find and again endured the awkwardness of impenetrable language barriers. I have managed to pick up a little Lao, I can count to ten, order food, say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, you're welcome, how much, and more of these sorts of things, but nothing approaching conversation. But the Laos people seemed quite happy to talk amongst themselves and watch us drink our beer. We already knew it would be an early night; Lao villagers go to bed around eight pm, which was just as well since we had to get back in the truck at six AM.</p> +<p>I lay in bed for a while with my headphones on, listening to music and thinking about life in Lao villages. I was trying to go over our actions of the last few hours and make sure that we had not offended anyone; the majority of villages in central and south Laos are animists and believe in spirits, the most important of which is often the house spirit. Consequently there are a number of things listed in the Lonely Planet book that one ought not to do inside a villager's house. For instance clapping is big no-no and will likely result in the slaughter of a buffalo to appease the offended spirits, which is something the villagers can't afford and certainly don't want to do. I'm not sure how intact these beliefs still are given the prevalence of satellite television in Laos (yes even the smallest villages the first thing they do when the get electricity is not refrigeration, it's television), but I didn't want to be responsible for the death of any buffalo.</p> +<p>According to Ralph, and I relate this as purely anecdotal evidence, shortly after the quake that triggered the tsunami there was a residual quake somewhere in the mountains north and here and it would seem that some sort of large fissure opened up and for the better part of the day the river was swallowed by the earth. The villagers were naturally freaked out by having their livelihood disappear and after gathering the stranded, beached fish they promptly sacrificed a buffalo. One hour later the water begin to refill the riverbed and within the week the river was back to normal. So perhaps their faith in the spirits is understandably quite intact.</p> +<p>There is a saying in Southeast Asia that the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow. I'm not exactly sure what this is getting at since I haven't been to Vietnam or Cambodia, but I think the gist of what it's saying is that the Lao are very very relaxed. And please don't confuse relaxed with lazy; when there is work to be done the Lao do it, but they do it at a Lao pace and according to what everyone who visits comes to refer to as "Lao time," distinctly slower and more relaxed than western time, Lao time accords plenty of the day to having fun. As Ralph said, when the Lao want to build a house they first have a party, when they get done building the house, they have another party. But it isn't that they don't want to build the house, they just seem to recognize that life is in some sense, or is for them anyway, much more of a relaxed, fun-filled experience than for many of us in the west with all our so-called modern worries. I don't know how long it will be before the Lao start to adopt such western worries, or even if they ever will, but let us hope it is no time soon.</p> +<p>Its easy to see why communism is popular here, the Laos are essentially communist without the ideology, which is not to say that the ideology does not get in the way or that there is none of the usual corruption, of course there is that, but it is no worse than the States. For instance several Lao have complained to us that the hill tribes are being driven out of the mountains and down to the river plains so that the government can award illegal contracts to Vietnamese logging companies which then clear-cut the hills. But the people themselves in their everyday actions are close to what Karl Marx wrote about than anything I have ever seen elsewhere. Or perhaps really they are closer to what Rousseau wanted the ideal pre-civilized man to be; except that the Laos are highly civilized and yet they retain a spirit of community that simple does not exist in the west.</p> +<p>And they do so without being tight lipped or exclusive, the Laos are in fact probably friendlier and even more inviting than the Indians. I'm not going to pretend to understand Lao culture, nor pretend I have been a part of it, but if you are walking down the street you will be inundated with calls of sabaai-dii (hello) from small children, babies perched in their parents arms, old women smoking cheroot, school children walking home in uniforms, teenagers on bikes, middle-aged Lao eager to practice their English and always excited to teach you some Lao. Late at night there is always someone willing to break the law, sell you a little Beer Lao and try to communicate through a mixture of all languages including the most universal—excitement. Of all the places I have been Laos would be top of the list for a return trip; perhaps it is after all really just a matter or listening to rice grow.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunrise Hin Bun River, Laos" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunsunrise.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>The next morning we awoke at five and walked down to the river to watch the sunrise as the women gathered water in buckets and the children splashed on the banks. Ofir and I then had a quick breakfast with our host family, after which, despite some harsh sounding words from the sawngthaew driver, our hosts preformed what is know as a Baci ceremony. We held a boiled egg and a bit of sticky rice in our right hand while the host waved their hands over ours, saying prayers and offering the rice to the spirits in exchange for luck. The ceremony ended with a simple pieced of string tied about our wrists. Because he was able to speak some French with the other host family, we later learned from Matt that the string brings the luck and blessing of the spirits with you on your journey. Say what you will of animism or any other primitivism spirituality, we have had extraordinary luck ever since those simple pieces of string were tied around our wrist.</p> +<p>Many thanks to Bon and Ralph as well as Bon's cousin and all the others who helped us see the Hin Bun River Valley and welcomed us into their homes.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..58263bc --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides.html @@ -0,0 +1,355 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Water Slides And Spirit Guides - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="If you find Ban Na Hin, Laos you're a better traveler than I. 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I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light fade from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, <img alt="Ralph's Restaurant, Ban Na Hin, Laos" class="postpicright" height="126" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunrestaurant.jpg" width="220"/>or if there even existed an explanation. Just to consider how many first dates had to work out to even produce the DNA you call home is more or less a complete reconstruction of the history of the world. But then as we walked down to Ralph’s restaurant I realized that kind of detail is best left to William T. Vollman and other prodigious folks with real publishers that deal print on real paper. +<break></p> +<p>My reconstructions are limited to the last several weeks, though at times even such limited recollections feel as though they might grow ever more detailed with every reexamination, another memory daisy-chained to the back of the one that preceded it, an effort that might ultimately require several chapters. Let us start with Ralph, or, as this chapter could be called, The English are Everywhere. On the bus ride from Vientiane to Vieng Kham we met an Englishman named Ralph, or, if I were to tell the story properly I would say, at some point on the bus ride, right near the end as a matter of fact, Matt wandered off for a bathroom break and returned from the bushes with an Englishman, which, as everyone knows, is not really uncommon, in fact I believe it’s more unusual to find bushes lacking Englishman. Were I to ever climb Mt. Everest I would fully expect to arrive at the summit to see an Englishman enjoying an afternoon tea; the English are like that, wherever you go, there they are—Dr. Livingstone I presume? What’s even more curious is that often these English folks are often not tourists but simply ended up wherever they are and apparently decided returning home was more traumatic than staying. So yes, out of the bushes came Ralph who as it turned out owned a restaurant in the Ban Na Hin (its worth pointing out that he had been on our bus the whole time, but see Englishmen don’t meet each other on buses, they have to be out in foreign bushes before they notice each other).</p> +<p>So with Ralph’s help we were able to reach Ban Na Hin with no trouble at all and even better Ralph’s wife Bon helped organize our trip to Tham Lot Kong Lo Cave (which was the real reason we had deviated off the main road in the first place). Bon seemed happy to arrange our transport to and from the cave and also went to the trouble of calling her cousin and arranging for him to make a five hour journey up river to pick us up and take us back down the Hin Bun River to the Mekong where we could continue southward. The Hin Bun River journey was the idyllic way out of the valley, which even the guidebook said could be tricky to arrange; I didn’t have high hopes of finding a boatman, but it all worked out.</p> +<p>The truth is though that it started much earlier than even this. Way back in Vang Vieng. Not unlike Agatha Christie’s mystery novel <em>Ten Little Indians</em> people began to disappear from the group before we even left Vang Vieng. Some went back to Thailand and others on to Cambodia or Vietnam until in the end there remained only five of us, Jackie, Matt, Ofir, Debi and me. As I mentioned previously we were waiting for the Cambodian Embassy to reopen, or rather Matt, Debi and I were waiting since we had plans to head from southern Laos into Cambodia via the Mekong River. Jackie and Ofir wanted to see southern Laos, but were then headed to Vietnam and Thailand respectively.</p> +<p>The five of us set out for Vientiane early one morning several weeks ago. Or possibly it was less than that; time is problematic when you’re traveling. Whatever day it might have been, we reached Vientiane around noon. Vientiane is the largest city and capital of Laos, but it still manages to feel like a small town clustered beside the Mekong and looking peacefully across at the bustling Thai city, Nong Khai, on the opposite shore. Of course Vientiane has the usual amenities like internet and a wide variety of guesthouses and nicer hotels as well as a large selection of international restaurants, but for all intents and purposes it is more or less an oversized villages with houses made of concrete rather than bamboo. It is without a doubt the most laid back and relaxing capital city in the world. The only real reason we stopped for two nights in Vientiane was to renew our Laos visas and get Cambodian visas since the Mekong border in the far south is the one and only Cambodian border crossing that doesn’t offer a visa on entry (I have since heard on good authority that the Cambodian border does now offer visas, but better to be on the safe side). </p> +<p>After dropping our passports at the various agencies Matt and Debi and I went to the Laos National Museum. The National Museum was an interesting mix of natural history and political ideology. The highlight for me was getting to see the largest of the stone Jars that dot the Plain of Jars just outside Phonsavan, an area I originally wanted to go to, but ended up skipping out of sloth. The highlight for Matt and Debi was the signage in the political history area which constantly referred to “the Imperialist Americans and their puppet soldiers.” Naturally I had to travel to the National Museum of the one country that Britain never colonized in the company of two Londoners. But I am winning on the “are-they-yours-or-are-they-mine” game that Matt and I came up with, which consists in finding the silliest looking, idiotic dressed or just generally annoying tourists and finding out whether they are British or American, because they invariably are one or the other. I am happy to report that the score is thus far 3-6, though I am willing to concede that since only 6% of the America population actually holds a passport, I do have a distinct advantage in the game.</p> +<p>Other than the beating I took on the propaganda, the National Museum was surprisingly informative about the history of Laos and maybe the only place in the world where the French and Americans get lumped together as indistinguishable imperialists. The interesting thing is not one Lao person, even those that I knew are old enough to have been alive when American (and possibly even French) bombs were falling seem to care that I am American, which is a distinct contrast to some stories I have heard of both Americans and Canadians being insulted and spit on by the Vietnamese (why the Canadians got such ill treatment is a mystery, maybe they’re guilty by proximate geography or something).</p> +<p><img alt="Dinner by the Mekong, Vientiane, Laos" class="postpic" height="153" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vientianeriversidedinner.jpg" width="190"/>Both nights we ate dinner at the food venders along the banks of the river gorging ourselves on grilled pork ribs and plenty of laap, the national dish of Laos, or at least it should be, though truthfully it may be the <strong>only</strong> dish of Laos. In either case it’s usually pretty good, mint, basil, chili and lime mixed with either chicken, pork, beef or, when by a river, fish. The second night in Vientiane we said goodbye to Debi whose foot still had not healed and was told by the Australian Clinic to go to Bangkok and seek, as they put it, “proper medical attention.” Laos is not totally backward, though it is fairly primitive in some areas, medicine being one of them. The general consensus among travelers is that if you injure yourself in Laos, you go to Thailand. Or just amputate, whatever you prefer. Debi apparently wanted to keep her foot attached to her leg so she booked an early morning flight to Bangkok while the rest of us caught the bus south with the vague idea that we would get off in a small town named Vieng Kham and then catch a truck to the even smaller town of Ban Na Hin. Ralph and Bon made the journey simpler than we thought and even cooked us up some dinner at their restaurant.</p> +<p>In fact we liked Ban Na Hin so much we decided to stay an extra night and spend an afternoon hiking to a waterfall. Unfortunately as previous mentioned, this is the dry season and in many places Laos looks more like Africa than the jungle you might envision, and the waterfall was no exception, trickling over the cliff with little more power than a gibbon with a full bladder. So it was that I found myself back early, showered and city on the back porch watching the sky, listening to breeze and waiting for the others.</p> +<h3>Konglor Cave</h3> + +<p>Though mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebooks it seemed few people deviated from route 13 on their way from Vientiane to Pakse in the south, indeed in the four days we were in the Ban Ha Hin/Konglor Cave area we saw one other western tourist, Andy from Scotland who was traveling by motorcycle toward Vietnam. I would not say we were off the beaten path, but we were at the very least lucky enough to <em>feel</em> like we off the beaten path.</p> +<p><img alt="Road to Konglor Cave, Laos" class="postpic" height="217" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunroad.jpg" width="159"/>Our journey began the next morning after knocking back an English breakfast at Ralph’s restaurant. We were picked up by a sawngthaew, piling in with a dozen or so Lao people and a few bags of rice, the odd chicken and duck here and there, all in all a full load. The road, if it may be called that, which heads south from Ban Na Hin to the cave was every bit the torturous, bumpy, dusty experience we all knew it would be, but somehow having travel live up to your worst fears does not make it any easier to bear the bone-jarring, ass-numbing roller coaster ride on wooden planks. The best part was we already knew we would have to repeat the trip the next morning to catch the boat.</p> +<p>Despite the rough ride the scenery was spectacular and there is nothing like careening across a dried up rice paddy with the afternoon light playing across the distant trees and limestone cliffs to make you feel like yes, finally I have made it out there, whatever out there may mean. After roughly four perhaps five hours, we finally made it to the small village of Konglor where we would be spending the night with a host family. <img alt="Tree, Road to Konglor Cave, Laos" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunroadtree.jpg" width="178"/>But before we had time to do much more than drop off the bags and grab a bowl of noodle soup, we were ushered down to the river and immediately set off for the cave. We were trying to make the trip through to the other side, see the hidden valley and make it back before nightfall so there wasn’t a lot of time it linger.</p> +<p>As would happen for the remainder of the time Matt and I traveled with her, the villagers immediately assumed he was her husband (later, in other places they would variously assume I was her husband); we decided without much debate to just leave it alone, since explaining cultural differences in broken English, French and Laos would be more confusing than just rolling with it. The idea that an unmarried woman would travel with three men is apparently unfathomable for the Lao. So it was that Matt and Jackie piled into one canoe and Ofir and I in the other and we set off down the river toward the cave.</p> +<p>I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting the cave to be like, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how absolutely massive it would be inside. According to Lonely Planet it’s about 150 meters at its widest and about as high at its tallest. There were several places where the river was too low and we had to get out and wade while the guides carried the boats over various rapids and rocks, but then at other times my headlamp disappeared into to water that seemed like it may well have been 150 meters deep. <img alt="Inside Konglor Cave, Laos" class="postpic" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/insidekonglor.jpg" width="230"/>When I talked to Ralph about it later he said that no one has any idea how deep it is in some spots and the large cavern where we stopped to look at some stalactites and stalagmites has been extensively explored but no end yet found. If you happen to be into spelunking and such, this is definitely the place for you.</p> +<p>On the far side of the cave from the village is a huge hidden valley ringed on all sides by karst limestone ridges. The water level was not high enough, nor was there enough daylight left, to go very far into the valley, but we did stop at the first village and enjoy some warm sodas and played with the local children. The sodas and everything else that the village gets that isn’t grown by them must come like we did, through the cave. The surrounding ridges are impassible to all but the hardiest of climbers and for all intents and purposes impenetrable. The tribal people that live here came through to escape persecution at various times in their history and so far it has proved entirely successful.</p> +<p>After taking some pictures and sharing them with the local children (the digital camera is a boon to the language barrier the world over, snap, display, laugh, etc), we piled back in the boats and set off. The boat Ofir and I were in was decidedly slower than the other and we were soon alone in the darkness of the cave, this time without the light of the other boat in the distance. But being the slow boat was actually quite nice since when we finally came out the other side of the cave the sunset was in full swing and as we headed upstream the local people were just wading out into the water and beginning to cast their nets looking for tomorrow’s food.<img alt="Sunset, Hin Bun River, Laos" class="postpicright" height="195" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunsunset.jpg" width="248"/></p> +<p>Back at the stilt home where we were staying Ofir and I had dinner with our host family, sticky rice and an omelet with some instant noodles (for whatever reason in Laos, instant ramen noodles are regarded as a delicacy, I think more for the ease with which they can be prepared than for the taste, but many a restaurant proudly advertises “instant noodles here”). The dinner conversation was, well, it was non-existent since our Laos was probably better than their English, but we managed to convey a few ideas through hand gestures and some consolation with the back of the guidebook. After dinner Ofir and I went out to explore the village and maybe stumble across a cold Beer Lao, which we managed to find and again endured the awkwardness of impenetrable language barriers. I have managed to pick up a little Lao, I can count to ten, order food, say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, you’re welcome, how much, and more of these sorts of things, but nothing approaching conversation. But the Laos people seemed quite happy to talk amongst themselves and watch us drink our beer. We already knew it would be an early night; Lao villagers go to bed around eight pm, which was just as well since we had to get back in the truck at six AM.</p> +<p>I lay in bed for a while with my headphones on, listening to music and thinking about life in Lao villages. I was trying to go over our actions of the last few hours and make sure that we had not offended anyone; the majority of villages in central and south Laos are animists and believe in spirits, the most important of which is often the house spirit. Consequently there are a number of things listed in the Lonely Planet book that one ought not to do inside a villager’s house. For instance clapping is big no-no and will likely result in the slaughter of a buffalo to appease the offended spirits, which is something the villagers can’t afford and certainly don’t want to do. I’m not sure how intact these beliefs still are given the prevalence of satellite television in Laos (yes even the smallest villages the first thing they do when the get electricity is not refrigeration, it’s television), but I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of any buffalo.</p> +<p>According to Ralph, and I relate this as purely anecdotal evidence, shortly after the quake that triggered the tsunami there was a residual quake somewhere in the mountains north and here and it would seem that some sort of large fissure opened up and for the better part of the day the river was swallowed by the earth. The villagers were naturally freaked out by having their livelihood disappear and after gathering the stranded, beached fish they promptly sacrificed a buffalo. One hour later the water begin to refill the riverbed and within the week the river was back to normal. So perhaps their faith in the spirits is understandably quite intact.</p> +<p>There is a saying in Southeast Asia that the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow. I’m not exactly sure what this is getting at since I haven’t been to Vietnam or Cambodia, but I think the gist of what it’s saying is that the Lao are very very relaxed. And please don’t confuse relaxed with lazy; when there is work to be done the Lao do it, but they do it at a Lao pace and according to what everyone who visits comes to refer to as “Lao time,” distinctly slower and more relaxed than western time, Lao time accords plenty of the day to having fun. As Ralph said, when the Lao want to build a house they first have a party, when they get done building the house, they have another party. But it isn’t that they don’t want to build the house, they just seem to recognize that life is in some sense, or is for them anyway, much more of a relaxed, fun-filled experience than for many of us in the west with all our so-called modern worries. I don’t know how long it will be before the Lao start to adopt such western worries, or even if they ever will, but let us hope it is no time soon.</p> +<p>Its easy to see why communism is popular here, the Laos are essentially communist without the ideology, which is not to say that the ideology does not get in the way or that there is none of the usual corruption, of course there is that, but it is no worse than the States. For instance several Lao have complained to us that the hill tribes are being driven out of the mountains and down to the river plains so that the government can award illegal contracts to Vietnamese logging companies which then clear-cut the hills. But the people themselves in their everyday actions are close to what Karl Marx wrote about than anything I have ever seen elsewhere. Or perhaps really they are closer to what Rousseau wanted the ideal pre-civilized man to be; except that the Laos are highly civilized and yet they retain a spirit of community that simple does not exist in the west.</p> +<p>And they do so without being tight lipped or exclusive, the Laos are in fact probably friendlier and even more inviting than the Indians. I’m not going to pretend to understand Lao culture, nor pretend I have been a part of it, but if you are walking down the street you will be inundated with calls of sabaai-dii (hello) from small children, babies perched in their parents arms, old women smoking cheroot, school children walking home in uniforms, teenagers on bikes, middle-aged Lao eager to practice their English and always excited to teach you some Lao. Late at night there is always someone willing to break the law, sell you a little Beer Lao and try to communicate through a mixture of all languages including the most universal—excitement. Of all the places I have been Laos would be top of the list for a return trip; perhaps it is after all really just a matter or listening to rice grow.</p> +<p><img alt="Sunrise Hin Bun River, Laos" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunsunrise.jpg" width="180"/>The next morning we awoke at five and walked down to the river to watch the sunrise as the women gathered water in buckets and the children splashed on the banks. Ofir and I then had a quick breakfast with our host family, after which, despite some harsh sounding words from the sawngthaew driver, our hosts preformed what is know as a Baci ceremony. We held a boiled egg and a bit of sticky rice in our right hand while the host waved their hands over ours, saying prayers and offering the rice to the spirits in exchange for luck. The ceremony ended with a simple pieced of string tied about our wrists. Because he was able to speak some French with the other host family, we later learned from Matt that the string brings the luck and blessing of the spirits with you on your journey. Say what you will of animism or any other primitivism spirituality, we have had extraordinary luck ever since those simple pieces of string were tied around our wrist.</p> +<p>Many thanks to Bon and Ralph as well as Bon’s cousin and all the others who helped us see the Hin Bun River Valley and welcomed us into their homes.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe" rel="prev" title=" The Lovely Universe">The Lovely Universe</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth" rel="next" title=" Everyday the Fourteenth">Everyday the Fourteenth</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="41" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833481" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="0d8db28646683be0dad2af64634f3a61fb5f221f" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+The dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded and were it not the dry season it would be easy to believe the monsoon had arrived. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light fade from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunrestaurant.jpg" width="220" height="126" class="postpicright" alt="Ralph's Restaurant, Ban Na Hin, Laos" />or if there even existed an explanation. Just to consider how many first dates had to work out to even produce the DNA you call home is more or less a complete reconstruction of the history of the world. But then as we walked down to Ralph's restaurant I realized that kind of detail is best left to William T. Vollman and other prodigious folks with real publishers that deal print on real paper.
+<break>
+
+My reconstructions are limited to the last several weeks, though at times even such limited recollections feel as though they might grow ever more detailed with every reexamination, another memory daisy-chained to the back of the one that preceded it, an effort that might ultimately require several chapters. Let us start with Ralph, or, as this chapter could be called, The English are Everywhere. On the bus ride from Vientiane to Vieng Kham we met an Englishman named Ralph, or, if I were to tell the story properly I would say, at some point on the bus ride, right near the end as a matter of fact, Matt wandered off for a bathroom break and returned from the bushes with an Englishman, which, as everyone knows, is not really uncommon, in fact I believe it's more unusual to find bushes lacking Englishman. Were I to ever climb Mt. Everest I would fully expect to arrive at the summit to see an Englishman enjoying an afternoon tea; the English are like that, wherever you go, there they are—Dr. Livingstone I presume? What's even more curious is that often these English folks are often not tourists but simply ended up wherever they are and apparently decided returning home was more traumatic than staying. So yes, out of the bushes came Ralph who as it turned out owned a restaurant in the Ban Na Hin (its worth pointing out that he had been on our bus the whole time, but see Englishmen don't meet each other on buses, they have to be out in foreign bushes before they notice each other).
+
+So with Ralph's help we were able to reach Ban Na Hin with no trouble at all and even better Ralph's wife Bon helped organize our trip to Tham Lot Kong Lo Cave (which was the real reason we had deviated off the main road in the first place). Bon seemed happy to arrange our transport to and from the cave and also went to the trouble of calling her cousin and arranging for him to make a five hour journey up river to pick us up and take us back down the Hin Bun River to the Mekong where we could continue southward. The Hin Bun River journey was the idyllic way out of the valley, which even the guidebook said could be tricky to arrange; I didn't have high hopes of finding a boatman, but it all worked out.
+
+The truth is though that it started much earlier than even this. Way back in Vang Vieng. Not unlike Agatha Christie's mystery novel *Ten Little Indians* people began to disappear from the group before we even left Vang Vieng. Some went back to Thailand and others on to Cambodia or Vietnam until in the end there remained only five of us, Jackie, Matt, Ofir, Debi and me. As I mentioned previously we were waiting for the Cambodian Embassy to reopen, or rather Matt, Debi and I were waiting since we had plans to head from southern Laos into Cambodia via the Mekong River. Jackie and Ofir wanted to see southern Laos, but were then headed to Vietnam and Thailand respectively.
+
+The five of us set out for Vientiane early one morning several weeks ago. Or possibly it was less than that; time is problematic when you're traveling. Whatever day it might have been, we reached Vientiane around noon. Vientiane is the largest city and capital of Laos, but it still manages to feel like a small town clustered beside the Mekong and looking peacefully across at the bustling Thai city, Nong Khai, on the opposite shore. Of course Vientiane has the usual amenities like internet and a wide variety of guesthouses and nicer hotels as well as a large selection of international restaurants, but for all intents and purposes it is more or less an oversized villages with houses made of concrete rather than bamboo. It is without a doubt the most laid back and relaxing capital city in the world. The only real reason we stopped for two nights in Vientiane was to renew our Laos visas and get Cambodian visas since the Mekong border in the far south is the one and only Cambodian border crossing that doesn't offer a visa on entry (I have since heard on good authority that the Cambodian border does now offer visas, but better to be on the safe side).
+
+After dropping our passports at the various agencies Matt and Debi and I went to the Laos National Museum. The National Museum was an interesting mix of natural history and political ideology. The highlight for me was getting to see the largest of the stone Jars that dot the Plain of Jars just outside Phonsavan, an area I originally wanted to go to, but ended up skipping out of sloth. The highlight for Matt and Debi was the signage in the political history area which constantly referred to "the Imperialist Americans and their puppet soldiers." Naturally I had to travel to the National Museum of the one country that Britain never colonized in the company of two Londoners. But I am winning on the "are-they-yours-or-are-they-mine" game that Matt and I came up with, which consists in finding the silliest looking, idiotic dressed or just generally annoying tourists and finding out whether they are British or American, because they invariably are one or the other. I am happy to report that the score is thus far 3-6, though I am willing to concede that since only 6% of the America population actually holds a passport, I do have a distinct advantage in the game.
+
+Other than the beating I took on the propaganda, the National Museum was surprisingly informative about the history of Laos and maybe the only place in the world where the French and Americans get lumped together as indistinguishable imperialists. The interesting thing is not one Lao person, even those that I knew are old enough to have been alive when American (and possibly even French) bombs were falling seem to care that I am American, which is a distinct contrast to some stories I have heard of both Americans and Canadians being insulted and spit on by the Vietnamese (why the Canadians got such ill treatment is a mystery, maybe they're guilty by proximate geography or something).
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/vientianeriversidedinner.jpg" width="190" height="153" class="postpic" alt="Dinner by the Mekong, Vientiane, Laos" />Both nights we ate dinner at the food venders along the banks of the river gorging ourselves on grilled pork ribs and plenty of laap, the national dish of Laos, or at least it should be, though truthfully it may be the **only** dish of Laos. In either case it's usually pretty good, mint, basil, chili and lime mixed with either chicken, pork, beef or, when by a river, fish. The second night in Vientiane we said goodbye to Debi whose foot still had not healed and was told by the Australian Clinic to go to Bangkok and seek, as they put it, "proper medical attention." Laos is not totally backward, though it is fairly primitive in some areas, medicine being one of them. The general consensus among travelers is that if you injure yourself in Laos, you go to Thailand. Or just amputate, whatever you prefer. Debi apparently wanted to keep her foot attached to her leg so she booked an early morning flight to Bangkok while the rest of us caught the bus south with the vague idea that we would get off in a small town named Vieng Kham and then catch a truck to the even smaller town of Ban Na Hin. Ralph and Bon made the journey simpler than we thought and even cooked us up some dinner at their restaurant.
+
+In fact we liked Ban Na Hin so much we decided to stay an extra night and spend an afternoon hiking to a waterfall. Unfortunately as previous mentioned, this is the dry season and in many places Laos looks more like Africa than the jungle you might envision, and the waterfall was no exception, trickling over the cliff with little more power than a gibbon with a full bladder. So it was that I found myself back early, showered and city on the back porch watching the sky, listening to breeze and waiting for the others.
+
+<h3>Konglor Cave</h3>
+
+Though mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebooks it seemed few people deviated from route 13 on their way from Vientiane to Pakse in the south, indeed in the four days we were in the Ban Ha Hin/Konglor Cave area we saw one other western tourist, Andy from Scotland who was traveling by motorcycle toward Vietnam. I would not say we were off the beaten path, but we were at the very least lucky enough to *feel* like we off the beaten path.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunroad.jpg" width="159" height="217" class="postpic" alt="Road to Konglor Cave, Laos" />Our journey began the next morning after knocking back an English breakfast at Ralph's restaurant. We were picked up by a sawngthaew, piling in with a dozen or so Lao people and a few bags of rice, the odd chicken and duck here and there, all in all a full load. The road, if it may be called that, which heads south from Ban Na Hin to the cave was every bit the torturous, bumpy, dusty experience we all knew it would be, but somehow having travel live up to your worst fears does not make it any easier to bear the bone-jarring, ass-numbing roller coaster ride on wooden planks. The best part was we already knew we would have to repeat the trip the next morning to catch the boat.
+
+Despite the rough ride the scenery was spectacular and there is nothing like careening across a dried up rice paddy with the afternoon light playing across the distant trees and limestone cliffs to make you feel like yes, finally I have made it out there, whatever out there may mean. After roughly four perhaps five hours, we finally made it to the small village of Konglor where we would be spending the night with a host family. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunroadtree.jpg" width="178" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Tree, Road to Konglor Cave, Laos" />But before we had time to do much more than drop off the bags and grab a bowl of noodle soup, we were ushered down to the river and immediately set off for the cave. We were trying to make the trip through to the other side, see the hidden valley and make it back before nightfall so there wasn't a lot of time it linger.
+
+As would happen for the remainder of the time Matt and I traveled with her, the villagers immediately assumed he was her husband (later, in other places they would variously assume I was her husband); we decided without much debate to just leave it alone, since explaining cultural differences in broken English, French and Laos would be more confusing than just rolling with it. The idea that an unmarried woman would travel with three men is apparently unfathomable for the Lao. So it was that Matt and Jackie piled into one canoe and Ofir and I in the other and we set off down the river toward the cave.
+
+I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting the cave to be like, but I wasn't quite prepared for how absolutely massive it would be inside. According to Lonely Planet it's about 150 meters at its widest and about as high at its tallest. There were several places where the river was too low and we had to get out and wade while the guides carried the boats over various rapids and rocks, but then at other times my headlamp disappeared into to water that seemed like it may well have been 150 meters deep. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/insidekonglor.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpic" alt="Inside Konglor Cave, Laos" />When I talked to Ralph about it later he said that no one has any idea how deep it is in some spots and the large cavern where we stopped to look at some stalactites and stalagmites has been extensively explored but no end yet found. If you happen to be into spelunking and such, this is definitely the place for you.
+
+On the far side of the cave from the village is a huge hidden valley ringed on all sides by karst limestone ridges. The water level was not high enough, nor was there enough daylight left, to go very far into the valley, but we did stop at the first village and enjoy some warm sodas and played with the local children. The sodas and everything else that the village gets that isn't grown by them must come like we did, through the cave. The surrounding ridges are impassible to all but the hardiest of climbers and for all intents and purposes impenetrable. The tribal people that live here came through to escape persecution at various times in their history and so far it has proved entirely successful.
+
+After taking some pictures and sharing them with the local children (the digital camera is a boon to the language barrier the world over, snap, display, laugh, etc), we piled back in the boats and set off. The boat Ofir and I were in was decidedly slower than the other and we were soon alone in the darkness of the cave, this time without the light of the other boat in the distance. But being the slow boat was actually quite nice since when we finally came out the other side of the cave the sunset was in full swing and as we headed upstream the local people were just wading out into the water and beginning to cast their nets looking for tomorrow's food.<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunsunset.jpg" width="248" height="195" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset, Hin Bun River, Laos" />
+
+Back at the stilt home where we were staying Ofir and I had dinner with our host family, sticky rice and an omelet with some instant noodles (for whatever reason in Laos, instant ramen noodles are regarded as a delicacy, I think more for the ease with which they can be prepared than for the taste, but many a restaurant proudly advertises "instant noodles here"). The dinner conversation was, well, it was non-existent since our Laos was probably better than their English, but we managed to convey a few ideas through hand gestures and some consolation with the back of the guidebook. After dinner Ofir and I went out to explore the village and maybe stumble across a cold Beer Lao, which we managed to find and again endured the awkwardness of impenetrable language barriers. I have managed to pick up a little Lao, I can count to ten, order food, say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, you're welcome, how much, and more of these sorts of things, but nothing approaching conversation. But the Laos people seemed quite happy to talk amongst themselves and watch us drink our beer. We already knew it would be an early night; Lao villagers go to bed around eight pm, which was just as well since we had to get back in the truck at six AM.
+
+I lay in bed for a while with my headphones on, listening to music and thinking about life in Lao villages. I was trying to go over our actions of the last few hours and make sure that we had not offended anyone; the majority of villages in central and south Laos are animists and believe in spirits, the most important of which is often the house spirit. Consequently there are a number of things listed in the Lonely Planet book that one ought not to do inside a villager's house. For instance clapping is big no-no and will likely result in the slaughter of a buffalo to appease the offended spirits, which is something the villagers can't afford and certainly don't want to do. I'm not sure how intact these beliefs still are given the prevalence of satellite television in Laos (yes even the smallest villages the first thing they do when the get electricity is not refrigeration, it's television), but I didn't want to be responsible for the death of any buffalo.
+
+According to Ralph, and I relate this as purely anecdotal evidence, shortly after the quake that triggered the tsunami there was a residual quake somewhere in the mountains north and here and it would seem that some sort of large fissure opened up and for the better part of the day the river was swallowed by the earth. The villagers were naturally freaked out by having their livelihood disappear and after gathering the stranded, beached fish they promptly sacrificed a buffalo. One hour later the water begin to refill the riverbed and within the week the river was back to normal. So perhaps their faith in the spirits is understandably quite intact.
+
+There is a saying in Southeast Asia that the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow. I'm not exactly sure what this is getting at since I haven't been to Vietnam or Cambodia, but I think the gist of what it's saying is that the Lao are very very relaxed. And please don't confuse relaxed with lazy; when there is work to be done the Lao do it, but they do it at a Lao pace and according to what everyone who visits comes to refer to as "Lao time," distinctly slower and more relaxed than western time, Lao time accords plenty of the day to having fun. As Ralph said, when the Lao want to build a house they first have a party, when they get done building the house, they have another party. But it isn't that they don't want to build the house, they just seem to recognize that life is in some sense, or is for them anyway, much more of a relaxed, fun-filled experience than for many of us in the west with all our so-called modern worries. I don't know how long it will be before the Lao start to adopt such western worries, or even if they ever will, but let us hope it is no time soon.
+
+Its easy to see why communism is popular here, the Laos are essentially communist without the ideology, which is not to say that the ideology does not get in the way or that there is none of the usual corruption, of course there is that, but it is no worse than the States. For instance several Lao have complained to us that the hill tribes are being driven out of the mountains and down to the river plains so that the government can award illegal contracts to Vietnamese logging companies which then clear-cut the hills. But the people themselves in their everyday actions are close to what Karl Marx wrote about than anything I have ever seen elsewhere. Or perhaps really they are closer to what Rousseau wanted the ideal pre-civilized man to be; except that the Laos are highly civilized and yet they retain a spirit of community that simple does not exist in the west.
+
+And they do so without being tight lipped or exclusive, the Laos are in fact probably friendlier and even more inviting than the Indians. I'm not going to pretend to understand Lao culture, nor pretend I have been a part of it, but if you are walking down the street you will be inundated with calls of sabaai-dii (hello) from small children, babies perched in their parents arms, old women smoking cheroot, school children walking home in uniforms, teenagers on bikes, middle-aged Lao eager to practice their English and always excited to teach you some Lao. Late at night there is always someone willing to break the law, sell you a little Beer Lao and try to communicate through a mixture of all languages including the most universal—excitement. Of all the places I have been Laos would be top of the list for a return trip; perhaps it is after all really just a matter or listening to rice grow.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunsunrise.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Sunrise Hin Bun River, Laos" />The next morning we awoke at five and walked down to the river to watch the sunrise as the women gathered water in buckets and the children splashed on the banks. Ofir and I then had a quick breakfast with our host family, after which, despite some harsh sounding words from the sawngthaew driver, our hosts preformed what is know as a Baci ceremony. We held a boiled egg and a bit of sticky rice in our right hand while the host waved their hands over ours, saying prayers and offering the rice to the spirits in exchange for luck. The ceremony ended with a simple pieced of string tied about our wrists. Because he was able to speak some French with the other host family, we later learned from Matt that the string brings the luck and blessing of the spirits with you on your journey. Say what you will of animism or any other primitivism spirituality, we have had extraordinary luck ever since those simple pieces of string were tied around our wrist.
+
+Many thanks to Bon and Ralph as well as Bon's cousin and all the others who helped us see the Hin Bun River Valley and welcomed us into their homes. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca1affc --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.amp @@ -0,0 +1,197 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Angkor Wat</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Angkor Wat is crowded, but if you go out during in the heat of the day, you can almost have it to yourself."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Angkor Wat"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/angkorwat.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Angkor Wat, Cambodia"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="KH-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Angkor Wat" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Angkor Wat is crowded, but if you go out during in the heat of the day, you can almost have it to yourself." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-03-21T23:55:50" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/angkorwat.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcrowds.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatsunrise.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatmonk.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkortaprohm.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcreeperfig.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorfacecarving.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bengmeleaovergrowth.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorlastdaybayon.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Angkor Wat", + "description": "Angkor Wat is crowded, but if you go out during in the heat of the day, you can almost have it to yourself.", + "datePublished": "2006-03-21T23:55:50", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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Right now it's about 8 pm and I'm sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It's hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot." Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place. </p> +<p>I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that's what you get when you don't plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you'll be in the neighborhood. +<break> +But if it's going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it's not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca's like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it's the way to do it. Or not.</break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcrowds.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>Three day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. "You spent three days at a temple?" Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it's not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Empire" title="Wikipedia entry on The Khmer Empire">Khmer Empire</a> whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions). </p> +<p>I have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules.</p> +<p>After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It's one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it's rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket?</p> +<p>Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. <amp-img alt="Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor Cambodia" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatsunrise.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn't feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward.</p> +<p>I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I've met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn't want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatmonk.jpg" width="172"></amp-img>I was going to skip Bayon and pass out in the tuk-tuk but since the driver was aggravating me, I decided to make a quick loop through the main courtyard. I did fall asleep in the tuk-tuk while Matt and Debi went to see a temple that didn't look like anymore than a crumbled wall of stones to me.</p> +<p>I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. <amp-img alt="Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia" height="307" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkortaprohm.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I've never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars. </p> +<p>The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it's builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game.</p> +<p>The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I've seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. <amp-img alt="Creeper Figs, Angkor Cambodia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcreeperfig.jpg" width="170"></amp-img>Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it's difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They're back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn't really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate.</p> +<p>But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don't take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to "former grandeur" they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don't want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides.</p> +<p>After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don't think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. <amp-img alt="Carved Face Bayon, Angkor Cambodia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorfacecarving.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can't quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I've never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn't matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot. </p> +<p>Later in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is.</p> +<p>Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It's no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there's a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, Cambodia" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bengmeleaovergrowth.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>But that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Debi, Me and Bayon, Angkor Cambodia" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorlastdaybayon.jpg" width="224"></amp-img>Beng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn't a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9c4514 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/angkor-wat.html @@ -0,0 +1,346 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Angkor Wat - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Angkor Wat is crowded, but if you go out during in the heat of the day, you can almost have it to yourself."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="13.497808126788645, 103.89289854510803" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="13.497808126788645; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-03-21T23:55:50" itemprop="datePublished">March <span>21, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">A</span>t some point during the four days I was in Seam Reap I emailed on of my friends the following, which she found utterly hilarious: “I can honestly say I have never been this hot or even close to this hot ever in my life. Right now it’s about 8 pm and I’m sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It’s hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot.” Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place. </p> +<p>I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that’s what you get when you don’t plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you’ll be in the neighborhood. +<break> +But if it’s going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it’s not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca’s like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it’s the way to do it. Or not.</p> +<p><img alt="Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcrowds.jpg" width="200"/>Three day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. “You spent three days at a temple?” Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it’s not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Empire" title="Wikipedia entry on The Khmer Empire">Khmer Empire</a> whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions). </p> +<p>I have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules.</p> +<p>After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It’s one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it’s rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket?</p> +<p>Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. <img alt="Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor Cambodia" class="postpic" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatsunrise.jpg" width="220"/>We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn’t feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward.</p> +<p>I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I’ve met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn’t want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk. </p> +<p><img alt="" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatmonk.jpg" width="172"/>I was going to skip Bayon and pass out in the tuk-tuk but since the driver was aggravating me, I decided to make a quick loop through the main courtyard. I did fall asleep in the tuk-tuk while Matt and Debi went to see a temple that didn’t look like anymore than a crumbled wall of stones to me.</p> +<p>I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. <img alt="Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="307" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkortaprohm.jpg" width="230"/>As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn’t shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I’ve never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars. </p> +<p>The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it’s builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game.</p> +<p>The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I’ve seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. <img alt="Creeper Figs, Angkor Cambodia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcreeperfig.jpg" width="170"/>Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it’s difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They’re back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn’t really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate.</p> +<p>But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don’t take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to “former grandeur” they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don’t want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides.</p> +<p>After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don’t think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. <img alt="Carved Face Bayon, Angkor Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorfacecarving.jpg" width="180"/>At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can’t quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I’ve never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn’t matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot. </p> +<p>Later in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is.</p> +<p>Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It’s no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there’s a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer.</p> +<p><img alt="Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bengmeleaovergrowth.jpg" width="230"/>But that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end.</p> +<p><img alt="Debi, Me and Bayon, Angkor Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorlastdaybayon.jpg" width="224"/>Beng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn’t a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows" rel="prev" title=" ...Wait 'til it Blows">...Wait 'til it Blows</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world" rel="next" title=" Midnight in a Perfect World">Midnight in a Perfect World</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="50" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833478" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="bc46423295d10a508f82a8b9c3a466dfdeb89aa5" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Right now it's about 8 pm and I'm sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It's hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot." Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place.
+
+I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that's what you get when you don't plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you'll be in the neighborhood.
+<break>
+But if it's going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it's not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca's like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it's the way to do it. Or not.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/angkorcrowds.jpg" width="200" height="150" class="postpicright" alt="Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia" />Three day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. "You spent three days at a temple?" Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it's not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Empire" title="Wikipedia entry on The Khmer Empire">Khmer Empire</a> whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions).
+
+I have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules.
+
+After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It's one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it's rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket?
+
+Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/angkorwatsunrise.jpg" width="220" height="165" class="postpic" alt="Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor Cambodia" />We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn't feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward.
+
+I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I've met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn't want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/angkorwatmonk.jpg" width="172" height="230" class="postpic" alt="" />I was going to skip Bayon and pass out in the tuk-tuk but since the driver was aggravating me, I decided to make a quick loop through the main courtyard. I did fall asleep in the tuk-tuk while Matt and Debi went to see a temple that didn't look like anymore than a crumbled wall of stones to me.
+
+I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/angkortaprohm.jpg" width="230" height="307" class="postpicright" alt="Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia" />As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I've never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars.
+
+The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it's builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game.
+
+The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I've seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/angkorcreeperfig.jpg" width="170" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Creeper Figs, Angkor Cambodia" />Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it's difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They're back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn't really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate.
+
+But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don't take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to "former grandeur" they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don't want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides.
+
+After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don't think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/angkorfacecarving.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Carved Face Bayon, Angkor Cambodia" />At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can't quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I've never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn't matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot.
+
+Later in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is.
+
+Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It's no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there's a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bengmeleaovergrowth.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpic" alt="Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, Cambodia" />But that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/angkorlastdaybayon.jpg" width="224" height="250" class="postpicright" alt="Debi, Me and Bayon, Angkor Cambodia" />Beng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn't a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f62eb6e --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.amp @@ -0,0 +1,191 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Beginning to See the Light</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/beginning-see-light"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/03/beginning-see-light"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. 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It's a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens. </p> +<p>The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it's not a good sign. </p> +<p><break> +I have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore. </break></p> +<p>I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I've never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat. </p> +<p>But none of that is actually in the journal, that's just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station….</p> +<p>I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local's seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman's voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I've missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia" height="162" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/floatingvillage.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it's only a ten-minute boat ride to shore. </p> +<p>But the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Floating Village, Cambodia" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/skybluefloating.jpg" width="165"></amp-img>I remember the sky was crystalline blue with windswept high altitude clouds that made the water seem brown and paltry in comparison. The villagers, ethnically Vietnamese, were not stoically unwelcoming as the guidebook suggested, but full of friendly smiles and gregarious waves (more or less everything in a guidebook is dead wrong, but you have to actually go somewhere to realize it). <amp-img alt="" height="166" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/villagersfloatingvillage.jpg" width="260"></amp-img>I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it's closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can't tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in.</p> +<p>But we wouldn't let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what's known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. <amp-img alt="Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bamboorailway.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you're away.</p> +<p>It's a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it <strong>is</strong> fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn't so much that it was rat, it was more that it's typically been flattened to the point that it's lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it's a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. <amp-img alt="Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia" height="273" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/girlwithrat.jpg" width="196"></amp-img>Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn't true. Matt even had seconds.</p> +<p>When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they're big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive.</p> +<p>But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn't even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and "listen" to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you'll never convince me it isn't because they have fun watching it. It's been fun to realize how wrong I was. It's fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia" height="192" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bamboorailwaybikes.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>My only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can't put the rat in your mouth, but I'm glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you'd be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14f66eb --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/beginning-see-light.html @@ -0,0 +1,342 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Beginning To See The Light - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. 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It’s a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens. </p> +<p>The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it’s not a good sign. </p> +<p><break> +I have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore. </p> +<p>I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I’ve never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat. </p> +<p>But none of that is actually in the journal, that’s just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station….</p> +<p>I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local’s seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman’s voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I’ve missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something. </p> +<p><img alt="Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="162" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/floatingvillage.jpg" width="230"/>A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it’s only a ten-minute boat ride to shore. </p> +<p>But the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads. </p> +<p><img alt="Floating Village, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/skybluefloating.jpg" width="165"/>I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it’s closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can’t tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in.</p> +<p>But we wouldn’t let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what’s known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. <img alt="Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bamboorailway.jpg" width="180"/>But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you’re away.</p> +<p>It’s a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it <strong>is</strong> fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn’t so much that it was rat, it was more that it’s typically been flattened to the point that it’s lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it’s a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. <img alt="Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="273" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/girlwithrat.jpg" width="196"/>Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn’t true. Matt even had seconds.</p> +<p>When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they’re big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive.</p> +<p>But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn’t even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and “listen” to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you’ll never convince me it isn’t because they have fun watching it. It’s been fun to realize how wrong I was. It’s fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look. </p> +<p><img alt="Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="192" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bamboorailwaybikes.jpg" width="220"/>My only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can’t put the rat in your mouth, but I’m glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you’d be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/blood-tracks" rel="prev" title=" Blood on the Tracks">Blood on the Tracks</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows" rel="next" title=" ...Wait 'til it Blows">...Wait 'til it Blows</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="48" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833479" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="fab6b2f142dabc7d2c9bff33b161e6d53057ddc7" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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It's a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens.
+
+The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it's not a good sign.
+
+<break>
+I have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore.
+
+I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I've never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat.
+
+But none of that is actually in the journal, that's just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station….
+
+I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local's seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman's voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I've missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/floatingvillage.jpg" width="230" height="162" class="postpic" alt="Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia" />A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it's only a ten-minute boat ride to shore.
+
+But the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/skybluefloating.jpg" width="165" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Floating Village, Cambodia" />I remember the sky was crystalline blue with windswept high altitude clouds that made the water seem brown and paltry in comparison. The villagers, ethnically Vietnamese, were not stoically unwelcoming as the guidebook suggested, but full of friendly smiles and gregarious waves (more or less everything in a guidebook is dead wrong, but you have to actually go somewhere to realize it). <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/villagersfloatingvillage.jpg" width="260" height="166" class="postpic" alt="" />I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it's closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can't tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in.
+
+But we wouldn't let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what's known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bamboorailway.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia" />But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you're away.
+
+It's a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it **is** fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn't so much that it was rat, it was more that it's typically been flattened to the point that it's lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it's a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/girlwithrat.jpg" width="196" height="273" class="postpic" alt="Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia" />Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn't true. Matt even had seconds.
+
+When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they're big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive.
+
+But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn't even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and "listen" to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you'll never convince me it isn't because they have fun watching it. It's been fun to realize how wrong I was. It's fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bamboorailwaybikes.jpg" width="220" height="192" class="postpicright" alt="Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia" />My only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can't put the rat in your mouth, but I'm glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you'd be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f009412 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.amp @@ -0,0 +1,197 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Blood on the Tracks</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/blood-tracks"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/03/blood-tracks"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Fever dreams of Ban Lung, Kratie and Sen Monoron. 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The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water. +<break></break></p> +<p>As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. <amp-img alt="Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, Cambodia" height="174" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/truckaccident.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>The accident did not look recent, but the wreck remained. And was blocking all traffic over the bridge. The majority of the cars using the road to Sen Monoron were four-wheel drive and didn't have too much trouble heading down around the bridge and through the riverbed. Naturally our cheap transport was only two-wheel drive and very top heavy. After studying the situation for the better part of half an hour, our driver apparently decided he could do it. Wrong. <amp-img alt="Truck Tipping Over, Sen Monoron, Cambodia" height="300" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/trucktipping.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver's folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks.</p> +<p>Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO's which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO's seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers.</p> +<p>Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It's easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979). </p> +<p>And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don't know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power.</p> +<p>In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in. </p> +<p>For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no "killing field," there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all.</p> +<p>During this time the west did absolutely nothing.</p> +<p>The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991. </p> +<p>Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Killing Fields, Phnom Penh Cambodia" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/killingfieldswomenandchildrenpit.jpg" width="158"></amp-img>After spending about an hour walking around the Killing Fields, seeing the graves, the tree where children where tied and beaten while their parents were forced to watch, seeing the clothes still leeching up out of the soil, seeing the tree where the Khmer soldiers hung speakers to blare music that would drown out the screaming, seeing the massive towering monument full of skulls and clothes, after seeing as much horror and sadness as I could bear and perhaps a little more, I sat down at a table beneath some trees and smoked a cigarette. <amp-img alt="Skulls, Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" height="149" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/skullskillingfields.jpg" width="215"></amp-img>I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero.</p> +<p>After a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. <em>A very sad place no…?</em> he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres.</p> +<p><em>I was very young when this happened.</em> He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. <em>I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick.</em> I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. <em>So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.</em></p> +<p>He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I'm not sure if that's cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/S21tortureroom.jpg" width="179"></amp-img>S21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners' were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/S21pictures.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>The creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/S21victim.jpg" width="144"></amp-img>After touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I've read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can't wrap my head around genocide, I just don't understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it's never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge.</p> +<p>It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..62d5ae7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/blood-tracks.html @@ -0,0 +1,347 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Blood On The Tracks - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Fever dreams of Ban Lung, Kratie and Sen Monoron. 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The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water. +<break></p> +<p>As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it’s not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don’t have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. <img alt="Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="174" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/truckaccident.jpg" width="200"/>The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver’s folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks.</p> +<p>Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO’s which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO’s seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers.</p> +<p>Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It’s easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979). </p> +<p>And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don’t know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power.</p> +<p>In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge’s goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in. </p> +<p>For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no “killing field,” there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all.</p> +<p>During this time the west did absolutely nothing.</p> +<p>The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991. </p> +<p>Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957.</p> +<p><img alt="Killing Fields, Phnom Penh Cambodia" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/killingfieldswomenandchildrenpit.jpg" width="158"/>I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero.</p> +<p>After a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. <em>A very sad place no…?</em> he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres.</p> +<p><em>I was very young when this happened.</em> He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. <em>I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick.</em> I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. <em>So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.</em></p> +<p>He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I’m not sure if that’s cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation.</p> +<p><img alt="Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/S21tortureroom.jpg" width="179"/>S21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners’ were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams.</p> +<p><img alt="Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/S21pictures.jpg" width="220"/>The creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs.</p> +<p><img alt="Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/S21victim.jpg" width="144"/>After touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I’ve read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can’t wrap my head around genocide, I just don’t understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it’s never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge.</p> +<p>It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride" rel="prev" title=" Ticket To Ride">Ticket To Ride</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/beginning-see-light" rel="next" title=" Beginning to See the Light">Beginning to See the Light</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="47" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833479" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="31aa01bf5a9bc9419cef55156a1e3eaba5eca5fa" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+The killing fields outside of Phnom Penh are in fact just that, fields with depressions, large holes in the ground, some marked with staggering numbers, others with no sign at all. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water.
+<break>
+
+As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. <img src="[[base_url]]2006/truckaccident.jpg" width="200" height="174" class="postpic" alt="Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, Cambodia" />The accident did not look recent, but the wreck remained. And was blocking all traffic over the bridge. The majority of the cars using the road to Sen Monoron were four-wheel drive and didn't have too much trouble heading down around the bridge and through the riverbed. Naturally our cheap transport was only two-wheel drive and very top heavy. After studying the situation for the better part of half an hour, our driver apparently decided he could do it. Wrong. <img src="[[base_url]]2006/trucktipping.jpg" width="180" height="300" class="postpicright" alt="Truck Tipping Over, Sen Monoron, Cambodia" />The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver's folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks.
+
+Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO's which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO's seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers.
+
+Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It's easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979).
+
+And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don't know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power.
+
+In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in.
+
+For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no "killing field," there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all.
+
+During this time the west did absolutely nothing.
+
+The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991.
+
+Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]2006/killingfieldswomenandchildrenpit.jpg" width="158" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Killing Fields, Phnom Penh Cambodia" />After spending about an hour walking around the Killing Fields, seeing the graves, the tree where children where tied and beaten while their parents were forced to watch, seeing the clothes still leeching up out of the soil, seeing the tree where the Khmer soldiers hung speakers to blare music that would drown out the screaming, seeing the massive towering monument full of skulls and clothes, after seeing as much horror and sadness as I could bear and perhaps a little more, I sat down at a table beneath some trees and smoked a cigarette. <img src="[[base_url]]2006/skullskillingfields.jpg" width="215" height="149" class="postpicright" alt="Skulls, Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" />I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero.
+
+After a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. *A very sad place no…?* he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres.
+
+*I was very young when this happened.* He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. *I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick.* I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. *So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.*
+
+He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I'm not sure if that's cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]2006/S21tortureroom.jpg" width="179" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" />S21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners' were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]2006/S21pictures.jpg" width="220" height="165" class="postpicright" alt="Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" />The creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/S21victim.jpg" width="144" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia" />After touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I've read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can't wrap my head around genocide, I just don't understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it's never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge.
+
+It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1256f82 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.amp @@ -0,0 +1,194 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Book of Right On</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/book-right"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/03/book-right"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville, Cambodia is a pleasant, if somewhat cheesy, travelers haven. 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There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king's summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorflowers.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>The clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us. +<break> +Between the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king's former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then across<amp-img alt="Church Bokor Hill, Cambodia" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorhillchurch.jpg" width="175"></amp-img> a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat.</break></p> +<p>We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John's is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I've met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it.</p> +<p>We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won't bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn't know I had in me. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorhillcasino.jpg" width="173"></amp-img>One of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they've heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide's version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who's at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden….</p> +<p>After wandering around the church and the casino, which are both burned out abandoned stone buildings that do have an eerie quality to them that would certainly lend itself to visions of ghost and ghouls, we headed back down the mountain for a swim in the local river.<amp-img alt="Swimming, Near Kampot, Cambodia" height="164" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kampotriverswimming.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>With the kind of foresight that I demonstrate regularly I forgot to wear swim trunks and I already knew it takes days for my shorts to dry and they tend not to smell so good at the end of it. I skipped the swim. After a dunk in the water we took a half hour or so boat ride back to Kampot. I've seen sunsets over just about every possible terrain on this trip and sunsets from Southeast Asia rivers are still my favorite. <amp-img alt="River Journey, Kampot, Cambodia" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kampotriverboat.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>I'm not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears. </p> +<p>The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Everyone, Sinoukville Cambodia" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sinoukvillegroup.jpg" width="260"></amp-img>It was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn't stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I'm no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I'll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed "the happy sad," which I can't precisely explain; it's something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you've listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean.</p> +<p>And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I've lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can't. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I'd go for verse, but I'm no good with it. I haven't got any minor chords on the laptop. <amp-img alt="Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia" height="169" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sinoukvillebeachbike.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually <strong>feel</strong> what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it's like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I'm having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don't know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can't do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn't sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I'm going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who's traveled more than I because this is better than I can do:</p> +<blockquote> + + You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven't seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It's the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It's kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again. + +</blockquote> +<p>So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I've never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0621a55 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/book-right.html @@ -0,0 +1,345 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Book Of Right On - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville, Cambodia is a pleasant, if somewhat cheesy, travelers haven. 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There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king’s summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word. </p> +<p><img alt="Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorflowers.jpg" width="150"/>The clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us. +<break> +Between the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king’s former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then across<img alt="Church Bokor Hill, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorhillchurch.jpg" width="175"/> a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat.</p> +<p>We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John’s is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I’ve met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it.</p> +<p>We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won’t bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn’t know I had in me. </p> +<p><img alt="Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorhillcasino.jpg" width="173"/>One of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they’ve heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide’s version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who’s at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden….</p> +<p>After wandering around the church and the casino, which are both burned out abandoned stone buildings that do have an eerie quality to them that would certainly lend itself to visions of ghost and ghouls, we headed back down the mountain for a swim in the local river.<img alt="Swimming, Near Kampot, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="164" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kampotriverswimming.jpg" width="230"/>I’m not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears. </p> +<p>The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia’s attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do.</p> +<p><img alt="Everyone, Sinoukville Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sinoukvillegroup.jpg" width="260"/>It was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn’t stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I’m no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I’ll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed “the happy sad,” which I can’t precisely explain; it’s something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you’ve listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean.</p> +<p>And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I’ve lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can’t. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I’d go for verse, but I’m no good with it. I haven’t got any minor chords on the laptop. <img alt="Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="169" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sinoukvillebeachbike.jpg" width="230"/>Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually <strong>feel</strong> what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it’s like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I’m having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don’t know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can’t do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn’t sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I’m going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who’s traveled more than I because this is better than I can do:</p> +<blockquote> + + You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven’t seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It’s the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It’s kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again. + +</blockquote> + +<p>So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I’ve never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). 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There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king's summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bokorflowers.jpg" width="150" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia" />The clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us.
+<break>
+Between the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king's former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then across<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bokorhillchurch.jpg" width="175" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Church Bokor Hill, Cambodia" /> a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat.
+
+We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John's is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I've met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it.
+
+We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won't bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn't know I had in me.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bokorhillcasino.jpg" width="173" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia" />One of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they've heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide's version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who's at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden….
+
+After wandering around the church and the casino, which are both burned out abandoned stone buildings that do have an eerie quality to them that would certainly lend itself to visions of ghost and ghouls, we headed back down the mountain for a swim in the local river.<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/kampotriverswimming.jpg" width="230" height="164" class="postpicright" alt="Swimming, Near Kampot, Cambodia" />With the kind of foresight that I demonstrate regularly I forgot to wear swim trunks and I already knew it takes days for my shorts to dry and they tend not to smell so good at the end of it. I skipped the swim. After a dunk in the water we took a half hour or so boat ride back to Kampot. I've seen sunsets over just about every possible terrain on this trip and sunsets from Southeast Asia rivers are still my favorite. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/kampotriverboat.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpic" alt="River Journey, Kampot, Cambodia" />I'm not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears.
+
+The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/sinoukvillegroup.jpg" width="260" height="180" class="postpicright" alt="Everyone, Sinoukville Cambodia" />It was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn't stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I'm no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I'll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed "the happy sad," which I can't precisely explain; it's something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you've listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean.
+
+And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I've lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can't. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I'd go for verse, but I'm no good with it. I haven't got any minor chords on the laptop. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/sinoukvillebeachbike.jpg" width="230" height="169" class="postpic" alt="Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia" />Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually **feel** what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it's like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I'm having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don't know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can't do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn't sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I'm going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who's traveled more than I because this is better than I can do:
+
+<blockquote>
+
+ You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven't seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It's the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It's kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again.
+
+</blockquote>
+
+So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I've never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80b4251 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,122 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv8.css" + media="screen"> + <!--[if IE]> + <link rel="stylesheet" + 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The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert. </p> +<p>Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn't know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. <amp-img alt="Islands, Cambodia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/deathislandhammock.jpg" width="173"></amp-img>Every so often a few would break off and began to drift down the beach toward me weaving about like little bits of clothe torn and floating on the breeze over the blue green water. Rob was down the beach somewhere looking for fisherman with something better than a squid jig and a million reasons to stay on shore. The lazy midday nothingness was briefly interrupted by the curious sight of villager driving a cow into the sea, whether for a bath or for his own amusement was hard to tell from our vantage point up the beach. The cow seemed less than thrilled with the operation. <amp-img alt="Sunset, Cambodia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sunsetcambodiaislands.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones <strong>Sympathy of the Devil</strong> drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. +<break> +After three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful.</break></p> +<p>There wasn't a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there's at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we'll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island.</p> +<p>Yes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Beach, islands, Cambodia" height="128" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cambodiaislandsbeach.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>I found Death Island to be the best island I've been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I've been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away.</p> +<p>The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen's huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn't much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn't much.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunset Hammock, Islands, Cambodia" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cambodiaislands.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>We generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="restaurant, Islands, Cambodia" height="156" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cardtablecambodia.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>It turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it's a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I'm not good enough to do that. And besides I don't have a job to quit so it just wouldn't work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you've never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I'm not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I'm not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days. </p> +<p>We spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision. </p> +<p>Off in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me.</p> +<p>I had had <strong>Sympathy of the Devil</strong> in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we'll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil's game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil's game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that's just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I've realized lately that I haven't been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we're all looking for.</p> +<p>After a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6269c07 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world.html @@ -0,0 +1,341 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Midnight In A Perfect World - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="A lost island off the Cambodian coast where the crab is fresh and the bungalows cheap. A perfect world. 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A perfect world. By Scott Gilbertson" +} +</script> + +</head> +<body > + <div class="wrapper" id="wrapper"> + <div class="header-wrapper"> + <header class="site-banner"> + <div id="logo"> + <a href="/" title="Home">Luxagraf</a> + <span class="sitesubtitle">Walk Slowly</span> + </div> + <nav> + <ul> + <li><a href="/jrnl/" title="Stories of life on the road.">Jrnl</a> & <a href="/field-notes/" title="Short stories, snapshots of daily life on the road.">Field Notes</a></li> + <li><a href="/guide/" title="Advice, Tools, Tips and Tricks for Full Time Van or RV Life.">Guides</a></li> + <li><a href="/newsletter/" title="The 'friends of a long year' newsletter">newsletter</a></li> + <li><a href="/about" title="About Scott">About</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + </header> + </div> + <ol class="bl" id="breadcrumbs" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BreadcrumbList"> + <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem"><a itemprop="item" href="/"><span itemprop="name">Home</span></a> → + <meta itemprop="position" content="1" /> + </li> + <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem"> + + <a href="/jrnl/" itemprop="item"><span itemprop="name">jrnl</span></a> + <meta itemprop="position" content="2" /> + <meta itemprop="position" content="2" /> + </li> + </ol> + + + <main> + <article class="h-entry hentry entry-content content" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/BlogPosting"> + <header id="header" class="post-header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post-title" itemprop="headline">Midnight in a Perfect World</h1> + + <div class="post-linewrapper"> + <div class="p-location h-adr adr post-location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <h3 class="h-adr" itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"><span class="p-region" itemprop="addressRegion">Death Island</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/cambodia/" title="travel writing from Cambodia"><span itemprop="addressCountry">Cambodia</span></a></h3> + – <a href="" onclick="showMap(10.438267017137903, 104.32325361706974, { type:'point', lat:'10.438267017137903', lon:'104.32325361706974'}); return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-03-26T23:58:12" itemprop="datePublished">March <span>26, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> lounged for a while in the shallows letting the small waves lapped over my back while I studied the rock and shell bed that lay just under the surface of the waves, watching the stones and bits of shells pitch back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert. </p> +<p>Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn’t know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. <img alt="Islands, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/deathislandhammock.jpg" width="173"/>For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones <strong>Sympathy of the Devil</strong> drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. +<break> +After three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful.</p> +<p>There wasn’t a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there’s at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we’ll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island.</p> +<p>Yes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is.</p> +<p><img alt="Beach, islands, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="128" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cambodiaislandsbeach.jpg" width="220"/>I found Death Island to be the best island I’ve been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I’ve been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn’t get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you’re away.</p> +<p>The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen’s huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn’t much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn’t much.</p> +<p><img alt="Sunset Hammock, Islands, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cambodiaislands.jpg" width="240"/>We generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such.</p> +<p><img alt="restaurant, Islands, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="156" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cardtablecambodia.jpg" width="220"/>It turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it’s a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I’m not good enough to do that. And besides I don’t have a job to quit so it just wouldn’t work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you’ve never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I’m not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I’m not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days. </p> +<p>We spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision. </p> +<p>Off in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me.</p> +<p>I had had <strong>Sympathy of the Devil</strong> in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we’ll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil’s game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil’s game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that’s just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I’ve realized lately that I haven’t been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we’re all looking for.</p> +<p>After a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat" rel="prev" title=" Angkor Wat">Angkor Wat</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/book-right" rel="next" title=" The Book of Right On">The Book of Right On</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="51" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833478" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="b3954fd7fb224bbae8d95cb3f094581ef02d99b7" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert.
+
+Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn't know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/deathislandhammock.jpg" width="173" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Islands, Cambodia" />Every so often a few would break off and began to drift down the beach toward me weaving about like little bits of clothe torn and floating on the breeze over the blue green water. Rob was down the beach somewhere looking for fisherman with something better than a squid jig and a million reasons to stay on shore. The lazy midday nothingness was briefly interrupted by the curious sight of villager driving a cow into the sea, whether for a bath or for his own amusement was hard to tell from our vantage point up the beach. The cow seemed less than thrilled with the operation. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/sunsetcambodiaislands.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset, Cambodia" />For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones **Sympathy of the Devil** drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic.
+<break>
+After three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful.
+
+There wasn't a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there's at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we'll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island.
+
+Yes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/cambodiaislandsbeach.jpg" width="220" height="128" class="postpicright" alt="Beach, islands, Cambodia" />I found Death Island to be the best island I've been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I've been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away.
+
+The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen's huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn't much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn't much.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/cambodiaislands.jpg" width="240" height="180" class="postpic" alt="Sunset Hammock, Islands, Cambodia" />We generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/cardtablecambodia.jpg" width="220" height="156" class="postpicright" alt="restaurant, Islands, Cambodia" />It turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it's a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I'm not good enough to do that. And besides I don't have a job to quit so it just wouldn't work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you've never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I'm not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I'm not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days.
+
+We spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision.
+
+Off in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me.
+
+I had had **Sympathy of the Devil** in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we'll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil's game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil's game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that's just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I've realized lately that I haven't been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we're all looking for.
+
+After a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..29a79ae --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.amp @@ -0,0 +1,188 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Ticket To Ride</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Riding the mighty Honda dream through the backroads of Cambodia."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Ticket To Ride"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/hondadream.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Ban Lung, Cambodia"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="KH-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Ticket To Ride" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Riding the mighty Honda dream through the backroads of Cambodia." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-03-07T23:39:02" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/hondadream.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/backofacab.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/banlungforest.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/boengyeaklom.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/spirittotem.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Ticket To Ride", + "description": "Riding the mighty Honda dream through the backroads of Cambodia.", + "datePublished": "2006-03-07T23:39:02", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us. </p> +<p>The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I've managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can't see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let's take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can't tell if it's the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren't even there. Helmets? Helmets? You're joking right? <strong>Name your top three memories from this trip</strong> A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, <em>it's only a Honda dream Jim, you can't push ‘er any more than you are.</em> And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response. +<break> +At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn't for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.</break></p> +<p>Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days.</p> +<p>We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos. </p> +<p>We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don't have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. <amp-img alt="Matt, Debi and I" height="123" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/backofacab.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.</p> +<p>It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn't been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there's room for more.</p> +<p>Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn't as bad at it sounds).</p> +<p>It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn't feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. <amp-img alt="Ban Lung Forest" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/banlungforest.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We're no slouches with the Honda dream and we'd been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren't there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.</p> +<p>That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it's actually true. <amp-img alt="Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, Cambodia" height="204" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/boengyeaklom.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.</p> +<p>The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person's occupation.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, Cambodia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/spirittotem.jpg" width="159"></amp-img>It wasn't until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said <em>yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride…</em> Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don't know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don't all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger.</p> +<p>But maybe that's just me.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c83641 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/ticket-ride.html @@ -0,0 +1,341 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Ticket To Ride - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Riding the mighty Honda dream through the backroads of Cambodia."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="13.734549299840165, 106.97941301763984" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="13.734549299840165; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-03-07T23:39:02" itemprop="datePublished">March <span>7, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> can’t see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us. </p> +<p>The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I’ve managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can’t see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let’s take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can’t tell if it’s the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren’t even there. Helmets? Helmets? You’re joking right? <strong>Name your top three memories from this trip</strong> A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, <em>it’s only a Honda dream Jim, you can’t push ‘er any more than you are.</em> And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response. +<break> +At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn’t for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.</p> +<p>Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days.</p> +<p>We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos. </p> +<p>We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don’t have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. <img alt="Matt, Debi and I" class="postpic" height="123" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/backofacab.jpg" width="200"/>We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.</p> +<p>It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn’t been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there’s room for more.</p> +<p>Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn’t as bad at it sounds).</p> +<p>It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn’t feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. <img alt="Ban Lung Forest" class="postpicright" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/banlungforest.jpg" width="230"/>And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We’re no slouches with the Honda dream and we’d been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren’t there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.</p> +<p>That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it’s actually true. <img alt="Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="204" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/boengyeaklom.jpg" width="220"/>Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.</p> +<p>The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person’s occupation.</p> +<p><img alt="Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, Cambodia" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/spirittotem.jpg" width="159"/>It wasn’t until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said <em>yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride…</em> Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don’t know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don’t all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger.</p> +<p>But maybe that’s just me.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/little-corner-world" rel="prev" title=" Little Corner of the World">Little Corner of the World</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/blood-tracks" rel="next" title=" Blood on the Tracks">Blood on the Tracks</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="46" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833479" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="4d6c14315c9d86d81592816693aaf6538e2adedd" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us.
+
+The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I've managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can't see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let's take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can't tell if it's the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren't even there. Helmets? Helmets? You're joking right? **Name your top three memories from this trip** A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, <em>it's only a Honda dream Jim, you can't push ‘er any more than you are.</em> And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response.
+<break>
+At that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn't for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.
+
+Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days.
+
+We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos.
+
+We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don't have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/backofacab.jpg" width="200" height="123" class="postpic" alt="Matt, Debi and I" />We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.
+
+It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn't been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there's room for more.
+
+Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn't as bad at it sounds).
+
+It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn't feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/banlungforest.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpicright" alt="Ban Lung Forest" />And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We're no slouches with the Honda dream and we'd been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren't there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.
+
+That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it's actually true. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/boengyeaklom.jpg" width="220" height="204" class="postpic" alt="Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, Cambodia" />Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.
+
+The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person's occupation.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/spirittotem.jpg" width="159" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, Cambodia" />It wasn't until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said <em>yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride…</em> Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don't know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don't all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger.
+
+But maybe that's just me. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..38749d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.amp @@ -0,0 +1,185 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>...Wait 'til it Blows</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Land mines are the legacy of modern warfare and Cambodia has plenty. 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The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why. </p> +<p>Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I've seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn't particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you're staying and then they call a cousin in the town you're heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there's anything wrong with such practices, they're generally fine since all the guesthouses we've seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that. </p> +<p>The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum. </p> +<p>One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn't funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/landminemuseum.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>The museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren't hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless.</p> +<p><a href="http://www.akiramineaction.com/story.html" title="Aki Ra, My Life Story">Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum</a> is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he's also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both.</p> +<p>You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it's really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he's good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the "bouncing betty" made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the "kill radius" as jargon would have it).</p> +<p>Landmines aren't glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren't the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren't as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it's tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is.</p> +<p>The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren't actually very effective in today's battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen. </p> +<p>So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that's not an indictment against Bush, it's an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials. </p> +<p>Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I've seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I've seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I'm too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he's never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love.</p> +<p>If you'd like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to <a href="http://www.akiramineaction.com/help.html" title="Help the Landmine Museum Seam Reap, Cambodia">The Landmine Museum</a> in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at <a href="http://www.icbl.org/" title="Support the International Ban on Landmines">the international ban on landmines</a> which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won't sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local <strike>news</strike> bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn't part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won't be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we <em>have</em> to do something about it. Choose wisely.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2391b52 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows.html @@ -0,0 +1,341 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>…Wait ‘Til It Blows - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Land mines are the legacy of modern warfare and Cambodia has plenty. 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The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why. </p> +<p>Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I’ve seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn’t particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you’re staying and then they call a cousin in the town you’re heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with such practices, they’re generally fine since all the guesthouses we’ve seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that. </p> +<p>The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum. </p> +<p>One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn’t funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia.</p> +<p><img alt="Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia" class="postpic" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/landminemuseum.jpg" width="220"/>The museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren’t hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless.</p> +<p><a href="http://www.akiramineaction.com/story.html" title="Aki Ra, My Life Story">Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum</a> is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he’s also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both.</p> +<p>You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it’s really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he’s good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the “bouncing betty” made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the “kill radius” as jargon would have it).</p> +<p>Landmines aren’t glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren’t the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren’t as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it’s tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is.</p> +<p>The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren’t actually very effective in today’s battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen. </p> +<p>So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that’s not an indictment against Bush, it’s an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials. </p> +<p>Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I’ve seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I’ve seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I’m too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he’s never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love.</p> +<p>If you’d like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to <a href="http://www.akiramineaction.com/help.html" title="Help the Landmine Museum Seam Reap, Cambodia">The Landmine Museum</a> in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at <a href="http://www.icbl.org/" title="Support the International Ban on Landmines">the international ban on landmines</a> which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won’t sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local <strike>news</strike> bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn’t part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won’t be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we <em>have</em> to do something about it. 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The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why.
+
+Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I've seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn't particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus.
+
+<break>
+
+We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you're staying and then they call a cousin in the town you're heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there's anything wrong with such practices, they're generally fine since all the guesthouses we've seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that.
+
+The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum.
+
+One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn't funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/landminemuseum.jpg" height="165" width="220" alt="Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia" class="postpic" />The museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren't hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless.
+
+<a href="http://www.akiramineaction.com/story.html" title="Aki Ra, My Life Story">Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum</a> is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he's also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both.
+
+You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it's really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he's good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the "bouncing betty" made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the "kill radius" as jargon would have it).
+
+Landmines aren't glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren't the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren't as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it's tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is.
+
+The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren't actually very effective in today's battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen.
+
+So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that's not an indictment against Bush, it's an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials.
+
+Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I've seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I've seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I'm too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he's never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love.
+
+If you'd like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to <a href="http://www.akiramineaction.com/help.html" title="Help the Landmine Museum Seam Reap, Cambodia">The Landmine Museum</a> in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at <a href="http://www.icbl.org/" title="Support the International Ban on Landmines">the international ban on landmines</a> which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won't sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local <strike>news</strike> bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn't part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won't be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we *have* to do something about it. Choose wisely.
+
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It was slowly beginning to sink in that my trip was nearly over, the money nearly gone and coming home no longer felt so far in the future. </p> +<p>After leaving Leah and Kate at the resort I returned to the isthmus to find Thai New Year, or Sonkron as it's called, in full swing. I had planned to spend a quiet day writing and relaxing, but things took a different turn. It wasn't long before I was completely soaked (one of the traditions of Sonkron is to throw water) and covered in white paste. I stopped in for a drink and next thing I knew it was late at night and I was due to catch a ferry the next morning.</p> +<p>I wasn't expecting much from Ko Lanta; I was using it mainly as a jumping off point for some of the islands to the south. Regrettably Lanta was as touristy and underwhelming as I expected. The majority of the big resorts are clustered at the north end of the island so naturally I headed south toward the marine park and stayed at the southern most bungalow operation I could find. The next thing south from where I stayed was the national part headquarters and the lighthouse at the southern terminus of the island. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Lands End, Ko Lanta, Thailand" height="713" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/landsendkolanta.jpg" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/landsendkolanta-640.jpg 640w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/landsendkolanta.jpg 1140w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/landsendkolanta-2280.jpg 2280w" width="1140"></amp-img></p> +<p>I spent the first day on the beach under overcast skies wondering just what it was that I was missing. The sunset was spectacular, probably the most spectacular I've seen in all my travels and yet it failed to move me.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="" height="760" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kolantasunset.jpg" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kolantasunset-640.jpg 640w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kolantasunset.jpg 1180w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kolantasunset-2280.jpg 2280w" width="1140"></amp-img></p> +<p>My overwhelming memory of Lanta is the smell of garbage. Trash piles at the side of the road, beside guesthouse, restaurants, dive shops, ferry docks, everywhere you turn there's another pile of trash. The way I figured it the best bet would be to rent a Honda Dream and try to move faster than the piling trash. For the most part all the development on Ko Lanta is along the western shore and it's heaviest at the north end of the island. </p> +<p>The next day I rented a motorbike and drove down every single length of road on the island. It turned out that the eastern shore is largely undeveloped at least in the tourist sense. There is a very pleasant Muslim fishing village toward the southern end of eastern side. The local children were still celebrating Sonkron and stood by the side of the road chucking buckets of ice water on passing cars and motorbikes which was refreshing enough that I would slow down for a bit of dunk each time a passed. </p> +<p>The next day I got on a ferry bound for islands to the south. I hopped off at the first stop, Ko Hai, about 20 km south of Ko Lanta. Ko Hai is small and most people visit <amp-img alt="Sunset, Ko Hai, Thailand" height="237" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kohaisunset.jpg" width="178"></amp-img>it only as a snorkeling stop on island hopping day trips. Nevertheless there are two resorts and one small collection of bungalows around a restaurant. For once Lonely Planet was right about something, the bungalows, while pleasant enough, are staffed by Thais so grumpy and unfriendly as to ruin the experience (which is exactly what it said in the guide). Still I spent three nights on Ko Hai. A short walk from the bungalow area and there was a half a mile of deserted white sand beaches. I was finally able to catch up on some writing and reading and generally unwind.</p> +<p>But after three days I was sick of the staff and sick of the annoying Swedish girls cluttering the main beach. I hopped on a four island tour boat that passed by in the morning headed for Ko Kradan. Though I only paid for the boat ride, the crew of the boat were kind enough to lone me a snorkel mask each time we stopped. I snorkeled on the backside of Ko Hai and swam through the spectacular Emerald cave to the hidden valley beyond it. <amp-img alt="Outside Emerald Cave, Ko Muk, Thailand" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/outsideemeraldcavekomuk.jpg" width="144"></amp-img>For eighty meters you swim in complete blackness and emerge out the other side to a valley that's about two hundred meters in diameter with cliff walls at least that high. Unfortunately, because it's such a small and dramatically high enclosure it's nearly impossible to photograph.</p> +<p>Eventually we all clamored back on the boat and the captain made a short detour to drop me off on Ko Kradan.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/beginning-end.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/beginning-end.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b7f6ba3 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/beginning-end.html @@ -0,0 +1,271 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Beginning Of The End - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="I will confess to being a bit melancholy on the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta. 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It was slowly beginning to sink in that my trip was nearly over, the money nearly gone and coming home no longer felt so far in the future. </p> +<p>After leaving Leah and Kate at the resort I returned to the isthmus to find Thai New Year, or Sonkron as it’s called, in full swing. I had planned to spend a quiet day writing and relaxing, but things took a different turn. It wasn’t long before I was completely soaked (one of the traditions of Sonkron is to throw water) and covered in white paste. I stopped in for a drink and next thing I knew it was late at night and I was due to catch a ferry the next morning.</p> +<p>I wasn’t expecting much from Ko Lanta; I was using it mainly as a jumping off point for some of the islands to the south. Regrettably Lanta was as touristy and underwhelming as I expected. The majority of the big resorts are clustered at the north end of the island so naturally I headed south toward the marine park and stayed at the southern most bungalow operation I could find. The next thing south from where I stayed was the national part headquarters and the lighthouse at the southern terminus of the island. </p> +<p><img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 1140px) 95vw" + srcset="[[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta-640.jpg 640w, + [[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta.jpg 1140w, + [[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta-2280.jpg 2280w" + src="[[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta.jpg" alt="Lands End, Ko Lanta, Thailand"></p> +<p>I spent the first day on the beach under overcast skies wondering just what it was that I was missing. The sunset was spectacular, probably the most spectacular I’ve seen in all my travels and yet it failed to move me.</p> +<p><img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw" + srcset="[[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset-640.jpg 640w, + [[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset.jpg 1180w, + [[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset-2280.jpg 2280w" + src="[[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset.jpg" alt=""></p> +<p>My overwhelming memory of Lanta is the smell of garbage. Trash piles at the side of the road, beside guesthouse, restaurants, dive shops, ferry docks, everywhere you turn there’s another pile of trash. The way I figured it the best bet would be to rent a Honda Dream and try to move faster than the piling trash. For the most part all the development on Ko Lanta is along the western shore and it’s heaviest at the north end of the island. </p> +<p>The next day I rented a motorbike and drove down every single length of road on the island. It turned out that the eastern shore is largely undeveloped at least in the tourist sense. There is a very pleasant Muslim fishing village toward the southern end of eastern side. The local children were still celebrating Sonkron and stood by the side of the road chucking buckets of ice water on passing cars and motorbikes which was refreshing enough that I would slow down for a bit of dunk each time a passed. </p> +<p>The next day I got on a ferry bound for islands to the south. I hopped off at the first stop, Ko Hai, about 20 km south of Ko Lanta. Ko Hai is small and most people visit <img alt="Sunset, Ko Hai, Thailand" class="postpic" height="237" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kohaisunset.jpg" width="178"/>it only as a snorkeling stop on island hopping day trips. Nevertheless there are two resorts and one small collection of bungalows around a restaurant. For once Lonely Planet was right about something, the bungalows, while pleasant enough, are staffed by Thais so grumpy and unfriendly as to ruin the experience (which is exactly what it said in the guide). Still I spent three nights on Ko Hai. A short walk from the bungalow area and there was a half a mile of deserted white sand beaches. I was finally able to catch up on some writing and reading and generally unwind.</p> +<p>But after three days I was sick of the staff and sick of the annoying Swedish girls cluttering the main beach. I hopped on a four island tour boat that passed by in the morning headed for Ko Kradan. Though I only paid for the boat ride, the crew of the boat were kind enough to lone me a snorkel mask each time we stopped. I snorkeled on the backside of Ko Hai and swam through the spectacular Emerald cave to the hidden valley beyond it. <img alt="Outside Emerald Cave, Ko Muk, Thailand" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/outsideemeraldcavekomuk.jpg" width="144"/>For eighty meters you swim in complete blackness and emerge out the other side to a valley that’s about two hundred meters in diameter with cliff walls at least that high. Unfortunately, because it’s such a small and dramatically high enclosure it’s nearly impossible to photograph.</p> +<p>Eventually we all clamored back on the boat and the captain made a short detour to drop me off on Ko Kradan.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/04/going-down-south" rel="prev" title=" Going Down South">Going Down South</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise" rel="next" title=" Bird of Paradise">Bird of Paradise</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + +<p class="comments--header" style="text-align: center">Sorry, comments have been disabled for this post.</p> + +</main> + + + + <footer class="bl"> + <ul class="footer-nav"> + <li><a href="/blogroll" title="Sites that inspire us">Blogroll</a></li> + <li><a href="/contact/" title="contact luxagraf">Contact</a></li> + <li>Follow Along: + <ul> + <li><a href="/jrnl/feed.xml" title="RSS feed">RSS</a></li> + <li><a href="/newsletter/" title="Luxagraf Email Updates">Email</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Instagram">Instagram</a></li> + </ul> + </ul> + <div class="support">Support luxagraf: + <div class="donate-btn"> + <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top"> + <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick"> + <input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="HYJFZQSBGJ8QQ"> + <input type="submit" name="submit" title="Donate to luxagraf via PayPal"> + </form> + </div> + <div class="donate-btn"> + <a class="liberapay-btn" href="https://liberapay.com/luxagraf/donate"><span>Donate</span></a> + </div> + </div> + <p id="license"> + © 2003-2020 + <span class="h-card"><a class="p-name u-url" href="https://luxagraf.net/">Scott Gilbertson</a><data class="p-nickname" value="luxagraf"></data><data class="p-locality" value="Athens"></data><data class="p-region" value="Georgia"></data><data class="p-country-name" value="United States"></data></span>. + </p> + </footer> + </div> + +<script> +document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) { + var leaflet = document.createElement('script'); + leaflet.src = "/media/js/leaflet-master/leaflet-mod.js"; + document.body.appendChild(leaflet); + var lightbox = document.createElement('script'); + lightbox.src = "/media/js/lightbox.js"; + document.body.appendChild(lightbox); + leaflet.onload = function(){ + var detail = document.createElement('script'); + detail.src = "/media/js/detail.min.js"; + document.body.appendChild(detail); + + detail.onload = function(){ + createMap(); + var open = false; + } + + } + + lightbox.onload = function() { + var opts= { + //nextOnClick: false, + captions: true, + onload: function(){ + var im = document.getElementById("jslghtbx-contentwrapper"); + var link = im.appendChild(document.createElement('a')) + link.href = im.firstChild.src; + link.innerHTML= "open "; + link.target = "_blank"; + link.setAttribute('class', 'p-link'); + im.appendChild(link); + } + }; + var lightbox = new Lightbox(); + lightbox.load(opts); + } + + + +}); +</script> + +<script> +<!-- +// Register our service-worker +//if (navigator.serviceWorker) { +// window.addEventListener('load', function() { +// if (navigator.serviceWorker.controller) { +// navigator.serviceWorker.controller.postMessage({'command': 'trimCaches'}); +// } else { +// navigator.serviceWorker.register('/serviceworker.js', { +// scope: '/' +// }); +// } +// }); +//} +//--> + +<!-- Piwik --> +var _paq = _paq || []; +_paq.push(["disableCookies"]); +_paq.push(['trackPageView']); +_paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']); +(function() { + var u="https://stats.luxagraf.net/"; + _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'piwik.php']); + _paq.push(['setSiteId', 1]); + var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; + g.type='text/javascript'; g.async=true; g.defer=true; g.src=u+'piwik.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s); + })(); +<!-- End Piwik Code --> +</script> +<noscript><p><img src="//stats.luxagraf.net/piwik.php?idsite=1" style="border:0;" alt="" /></p></noscript> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/beginning-end.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/beginning-end.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..67bf310 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/beginning-end.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +Beginning of the End +==================== + + by Scott Gilbertson + </jrnl/2006/04/beginning-end> + Wednesday, 12 April 2006 + +I will confess to being a bit melancholy on the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta. It was slowly beginning to sink in that my trip was nearly over, the money nearly gone and coming home no longer felt so far in the future.
+
+After leaving Leah and Kate at the resort I returned to the isthmus to find Thai New Year, or Sonkron as it's called, in full swing. I had planned to spend a quiet day writing and relaxing, but things took a different turn. It wasn't long before I was completely soaked (one of the traditions of Sonkron is to throw water) and covered in white paste. I stopped in for a drink and next thing I knew it was late at night and I was due to catch a ferry the next morning.
+
+I wasn't expecting much from Ko Lanta; I was using it mainly as a jumping off point for some of the islands to the south. Regrettably Lanta was as touristy and underwhelming as I expected. The majority of the big resorts are clustered at the north end of the island so naturally I headed south toward the marine park and stayed at the southern most bungalow operation I could find. The next thing south from where I stayed was the national part headquarters and the lighthouse at the southern terminus of the island.
+
+<img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 1140px) 95vw"
+ srcset="[[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta-640.jpg 640w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta.jpg 1140w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta-2280.jpg 2280w"
+ src="[[base_url]]2006/landsendkolanta.jpg" alt="Lands End, Ko Lanta, Thailand">
+
+
+I spent the first day on the beach under overcast skies wondering just what it was that I was missing. The sunset was spectacular, probably the most spectacular I've seen in all my travels and yet it failed to move me.
+
+<img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw"
+ srcset="[[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset-640.jpg 640w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset.jpg 1180w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset-2280.jpg 2280w"
+ src="[[base_url]]2006/kolantasunset.jpg" alt="">
+
+
+My overwhelming memory of Lanta is the smell of garbage. Trash piles at the side of the road, beside guesthouse, restaurants, dive shops, ferry docks, everywhere you turn there's another pile of trash. The way I figured it the best bet would be to rent a Honda Dream and try to move faster than the piling trash. For the most part all the development on Ko Lanta is along the western shore and it's heaviest at the north end of the island.
+
+The next day I rented a motorbike and drove down every single length of road on the island. It turned out that the eastern shore is largely undeveloped at least in the tourist sense. There is a very pleasant Muslim fishing village toward the southern end of eastern side. The local children were still celebrating Sonkron and stood by the side of the road chucking buckets of ice water on passing cars and motorbikes which was refreshing enough that I would slow down for a bit of dunk each time a passed.
+
+The next day I got on a ferry bound for islands to the south. I hopped off at the first stop, Ko Hai, about 20 km south of Ko Lanta. Ko Hai is small and most people visit <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/kohaisunset.jpg" width="178" height="237" class="postpic" alt="Sunset, Ko Hai, Thailand" />it only as a snorkeling stop on island hopping day trips. Nevertheless there are two resorts and one small collection of bungalows around a restaurant. For once Lonely Planet was right about something, the bungalows, while pleasant enough, are staffed by Thais so grumpy and unfriendly as to ruin the experience (which is exactly what it said in the guide). Still I spent three nights on Ko Hai. A short walk from the bungalow area and there was a half a mile of deserted white sand beaches. I was finally able to catch up on some writing and reading and generally unwind.
+
+But after three days I was sick of the staff and sick of the annoying Swedish girls cluttering the main beach. I hopped on a four island tour boat that passed by in the morning headed for Ko Kradan. Though I only paid for the boat ride, the crew of the boat were kind enough to lone me a snorkel mask each time we stopped. I snorkeled on the backside of Ko Hai and swam through the spectacular Emerald cave to the hidden valley beyond it. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/outsideemeraldcavekomuk.jpg" width="144" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Outside Emerald Cave, Ko Muk, Thailand" />For eighty meters you swim in complete blackness and emerge out the other side to a valley that's about two hundred meters in diameter with cliff walls at least that high. Unfortunately, because it's such a small and dramatically high enclosure it's nearly impossible to photograph.
+
+Eventually we all clamored back on the boat and the captain made a short detour to drop me off on Ko Kradan. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/bird-paradise.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/bird-paradise.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d47b894 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/bird-paradise.amp @@ -0,0 +1,215 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Bird of Paradise</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Ko Kradan is a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here forty years ago."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Bird of Paradise"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/kokradan.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Koh Kradan, Thailand"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="TH-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Bird of Paradise" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Ko Kradan is a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here forty years ago." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2006-04-22T00:11:20" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/kokradan.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tangkokradan.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/reef.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/sergeant-major.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sunsetbeachkokradan.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kradan-sunset-beach.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Bird of Paradise", + "description": "Ko Kradan is a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here forty years ago.", + "datePublished": "2006-04-22T00:11:20", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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After a day spent snorkeling various coves and islands the boat stopped for lunch on the windward side of Ko Kradan or what should have been the windward side, but at the particular moment, with an offshore wind blowing in from the east, was the calmest part of the island. The ferry dropped me off at a deserted beach and the captain pointed to what looked like just jungle and said that if I followed that path I'd get to the other side of the island. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Me on the beach at Ko Kradan Thailand" height="659" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach.jpg" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach-640.jpg 640w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach.jpg 1180w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach-2280.jpg 2280w" width="1140"></amp-img></p> +<p>Ominous black clouds had been moving westward all day and were nearly overhead by the time I jumped off the boat. The captain wasted no time in pulling away. I was hardly to the tree line with my bag before the boat disappear around the corner of the cove. I sat down on the sand and smoke a cigarette. Worst case scenario I get a little wet is some warm tropical rain. Sitting there I felt for a fleeting second like maybe I understood a little bit of what Tom Neale must have felt that first say when the boat dropped him off on Suvarov. But the the rain came so I quickly gathered up my things and headed inland. </p> +<p>The path the captain mentioned actually did exist when I got close enough to the tree line to see it. In the end wasn't that long either. I emerged out of the jungle into a small clearing with a restaurant and a few bungalows. So much for Suvarov, though this little collection of huts would turn out to be about as close as it's safe to wish for these days. For me anyway.</p> +<p>The Paradise Lost Resort was not listed in any guidebook I'd ever read. And it was owned by an American. That was enough to put me on edge. After chatting with said American for a bit I decided to check out my options. Pig headed man that I am I continued on to the other side of the island in search of where I had intended to stay. Just about the time I reached the eastern beach the rain decided to get more serious. I took shelter under a few of pine trees that lined the back of the beach and met Zoë, who had been out on the beach and also taken shelter from the storm. We chatted for a while and she recommended that I turn around and stay at Paradise Lost rather than continue up the beach to the other resort which she described as "more of a refugee camp."</p> +<p>So it was that I came to meet, Tony, Zoë's husband, and Inda, their three-year-old daughter, as well as that american I had chatted with before, Wally Sanger, the man who runs Paradise Lost, along with his partner Nok.</p> +<p>Up until I arrived on Ko Kradan I had been, were I too be honest, not too fond of Thailand. Despite its reputation as the land of smiles, I hadn't found the Thais to be nearly as friendly or welcoming as the Cambodians and Lao. I also generally found the travelers in Thailand to be a rather cold and often downright rude bunch. As a result I spent the month of January alone and ever since the girls left I'd hardly talked to anyone. But on Ko Kradan I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Me on the beach at Ko Kradan Thailand" height="641" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree.jpg" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree-640.jpg 640w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree.jpg 1180w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree-2280.jpg 2280w" width="1140"></amp-img></p> +<p>Nok and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.</p> +<p>Wally arrived on Ko Kradan six years ago having spent the twenty years before that sailing all over the South Pacific. How exactly he came to start a guesthouse operation I never did hear, but it was quite an operation. Nok was an excellent cook and had an especially tasty (and spicy) massaman curry which is a southern Thai specialty, but Wally also offered a full range of barbeque options from massive steaks to pork chops and chicken. And as I discovered one night, when you order the grilled chicken dinner you in fact get a grilled chicken, as in the whole damn chicken, which works out well for the six or seven dogs that live at Paradise Lost (all purebred Thai ridgebacks and probably the best cared for and most spoiled dogs in all of Southeast Asia). <amp-img alt="Me and Tang, Ko Kradan, Thailand" height="183" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tangkokradan.jpg" width="210"></amp-img>One of the dogs, Tang, took a liking to me (or else he just liked company on the beach, who knows) and would follow me down the beach everyday, though he usually took off once I disappeared on the reef.</p> +<p>The reef off the southern end of Ko Kradan was the best snorkeling I found in the Islands provided you made it out during high tide, as it could be tough to navigate at low tide. For the entire week I was there I spent nearly every morning on the reef swimming amongst the Moorish Idols, Parrot Fish, Trigger Fish, Cleaner Wrasses and Butterfly Fish as well as the ever present Sergeant Majors and Barracuda. </p> +<p class="sans-caption"><amp-img alt="Reef, Ko Kradan, Thailand, copyright Cristen Andrews, Flickr" height="407" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/reef.jpg" width="680"></amp-img> +<small>Image copyright Cristen Andrews, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cristenrene/3269502504/">Flickr</a>.</small> +</p> +<p>Ko Kradan was barely touched by the tsunami so the reef was as it had always been. According to Wally there were a breeding pair of turtles somewhere out there, but regrettably I never came across them. So long as I got out there before noon when the day trip boats began to arrive, I had the reef to myself like some sort of private underwater playground.</p> +<p>Afternoons were my favorite time on the island, after the day tripping long tails from nearby Ko Muk departed for home and the four island tour boats from Ko Lanta moved on to the next island, a peaceful silence and almost total stillness settled over the beaches of Ko Kradan. Often a westerly breeze would kick up around two providing a welcome relief from the midday heat and the tide would retreat to the point that when I went back out on the reef the coral fairly scrapped my nose as I floated about, listening to the sound of Parrot Fish munching on bits of lumpy coral or the broken antlers of staghorn coral already half eaten and partly covered in sand.</p> +<p>I got in the habit of not using fins when I snorkeled so I tended to just drift with the currents moving rather slowly over great fields of coral, reddish brown staghorn with white tips and countless fish hiding in the numerous tangled shadows, including schools of smaller iridescent blue fish with yellow tails, fish whose bodies seemed to me the brightest and most intense blue I've ever seen. Other times I'd do a bit of swimming to follow one of the massive Parrot Fish who's front fins flapped not unlike the wings of their arboreal namesake. These huge riots of pastel hues, pinks and greens and blues and yellows often seemed, when viewed at very close range, to be so finely detailed and the colors so smoothly flowing in gradients of pastel that would have made any circa 1986 interior designer proud, that it was impossible to distinguish scales and after a while they seem to have been perhaps airbrushed or created by some Photoshop whiz. Moorish Idols too, which most often swim in pairs, have such fine scales that even up close with the water magnifying everything it's still impossible to make out the scales.</p> +<p>Whenever I was on the reef a school of juvenile parrotfish, small wrasses and Sergeant Majors would follow behind me nipping at my knees and ankles hoping for a bit a bread which they are accustomed to getting from the tour boats. Despite the fact that I never had any food they persisted from one end of the reef to the other. Once I stopped to adjust my mask and stood on a large lump of coral. While I was fiddling with the mask I could feel, but not see, something nipping at a cut on my left foot. I put the mask back on and peered down to discover that I had stopped at a cleaner wrasse's station and though no doubt slightly confused by my foot, the fish was nevertheless gamely doing what it did best. I waited until the fish seemed satisfied with his work and then I swam off following a parrotfish so large it had a sucker fish attached to its gills.</p> +<p>Sometimes I swam out past the reef, where the bottom turned sandy and dropped off rather quickly making it impossible to see, in hopes of finding the turtles or perhaps a black tipped reef shark (which are perfectly harmless for the most part), but neither ever showed their faces. Eventually I would give up and move back toward the reef which by then would be very shallow indeed and only passable by carefully swimming through the sandy gullies between the fields of coral, an experience somewhat like I imagine it would feel to fly low and fast through the canyon country of eastern Utah and northern Arizona.</p> +<p class="sans-caption"> +<amp-img alt="Sergeant Majors, Thailand, image by Vincent Wang Yean-Perng Flickr" height="619" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/sergeant-major.jpg" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/sergeant-major.jpg 960w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/sergeant-major-2x.jpg 1920w," width="960"></amp-img> +<small>Image by Vincent Wang Yean-Perng, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yp-wang/11447359323/">Flickr</a>.</small> +</p> +<p>Closer into shore where the coral began to drop off, great fields of giant black sea urchins lay swaying in the currents and small waves in such a way that the spines looked like little fingers feeling about in the murky water, and at the center of each a great yellow and blue "eye" stared back up at you. Where the coral stopped and rocks began to be half covered in sand, the water visibility dropped and the fish became fewer limited to delicately colored yellow and blue striped fish with bodies and eyes that resembled squirrel fish and a few tiny Gobi fish that darted skittishly about as I floated over them. The reefs around Ko Kradan are known for their abundance of rock fish which sit here in the shallows, heavily camouflaged and difficult to see as they remain still, perched on their front flippers, as if patiently waiting for the fins to evolve into arms so that they can leave the sea behind once and for all.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sunsetbeachkokradan.jpg" width="170"></amp-img>I never wanted to get out of the water, but inevitably some reminder of my terrestrial origins would come back, thirst, hunger or perhaps just exhaustion, and I would head back to Paradise Lost for a late lunch. </p> +<p>Everyday around six I would take the trail back to the beach where I was originally dropped off and watch the sunset from the lookout on the bluff. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunset from Ko Kradan's sunset beach" height="425" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kradan-sunset-beach.jpg" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kradan-sunset-beach.jpg 680w, + https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/kradan-sunset-beach-2x.jpg 1360w," width="680"></amp-img></p> +<p>Eventually Tony, Zoë and Inda left for Malaysia and for two days it was just Wally and I. But then a few yachty friends of Wally's sailed in and I met, Brian, Dawn and CT, the crew of a fifty-two foot yacht sailing under the name Ten Large. While they slept on the boat, the three of them came ashore during the day and always ate dinner at Paradise Lost. Another yacht whose name I've forgotten, also with a crew of three, came ashore for two days. And eventually an Australian named Peter escaped the other resort (refugee camp was a rather apt description I discovered when I finally made it down that way) to stay at Paradise Lost. </p> +<p>Wally operates mostly on word of mouth, and, in cases like mine, dumb luck. But because he isn't listed in very many guidebooks, the other resort is able to waylay travelers in Trang with package deals paid for in advance. They simply meet the trains arriving from Bangkok and book an all-inclusive package, boat transfer, lodging, etc. and ask for the money up front. Eventually most of these folks find Paradise Lost and end up eating here, but because they've already paid for the lodging they're stuck down at the refugee camp. </p> +<p>It's too bad because Wally has a great place with friendly people, excellent food and nice bungalows. If you happen to be headed to Ko Kradan or any of the south Thai islands I encourage you to stop by. Wally <span class="strike><a href=" http:="" title="Paradise Lost Resort Information">has a website with contact info [update: the sites is gone], but beware that there is no internet on Ko Kradan and the cell phone reception isn't great so you may have to call a few times to get a decent connection. I just showed up and got a room, but it's worth calling ahead, especially in the high season since there aren't too many bungalows available (though Wally is building more every year).</span></p> +<p>I spent the evening eating barbecue and chatting with CT, Dawn and Brian about our various travels and some of their sailing adventures (they recently became mini celebrities in the yachty world when they were boarded by pirates while passing through Malaysia). One day I took a break from snorkeling and made a return trip to emerald cave with the crew of the other yacht. It was a nice change and this time we had the cave to ourselves for quite some time.</p> +<p>But like all things that begin, my time on Ko Kradan had to end. I didn't want to leave, but I had a plane flight to London that couldn't be missed. So after ten brilliant days on Ko Kradan we all caught a long tail for shore as Ten Large needed to clear customs and Wally needed supplies for the island. After spending the day running errands with everyone, they dropped me off at the train station and I headed back up to Bangkok.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/bird-paradise.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/bird-paradise.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a749ace --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/bird-paradise.html @@ -0,0 +1,434 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Bird Of Paradise - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Ko Kradan is a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here forty years ago."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="7.308899962925842, 99.25542353204538" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="7.308899962925842; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2006-04-22T00:11:20" itemprop="datePublished">April <span>22, 2006</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p>I hitched a ride with a snorkel tour boat one morning to <a href="https://live.luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/04/beginning-end">escape Ko Hai</a>. After a day spent snorkeling various coves and islands the boat stopped for lunch on the windward side of Ko Kradan or what should have been the windward side, but at the particular moment, with an offshore wind blowing in from the east, was the calmest part of the island. The ferry dropped me off at a deserted beach and the captain pointed to what looked like just jungle and said that if I followed that path I’d get to the other side of the island. </p> +<p><img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw" + srcset="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-640.jpg 640w, + [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach.jpg 1180w, + [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-2280.jpg 2280w" + src="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach.jpg" alt="Me on the beach at Ko Kradan Thailand"></p> +<p>Ominous black clouds had been moving westward all day and were nearly overhead by the time I jumped off the boat. The captain wasted no time in pulling away. I was hardly to the tree line with my bag before the boat disappear around the corner of the cove. I sat down on the sand and smoke a cigarette. Worst case scenario I get a little wet is some warm tropical rain. Sitting there I felt for a fleeting second like maybe I understood a little bit of what Tom Neale must have felt that first say when the boat dropped him off on Suvarov. But the the rain came so I quickly gathered up my things and headed inland. </p> +<p>The path the captain mentioned actually did exist when I got close enough to the tree line to see it. In the end wasn’t that long either. I emerged out of the jungle into a small clearing with a restaurant and a few bungalows. So much for Suvarov, though this little collection of huts would turn out to be about as close as it’s safe to wish for these days. For me anyway.</p> +<p>The Paradise Lost Resort was not listed in any guidebook I’d ever read. And it was owned by an American. That was enough to put me on edge. After chatting with said American for a bit I decided to check out my options. Pig headed man that I am I continued on to the other side of the island in search of where I had intended to stay. Just about the time I reached the eastern beach the rain decided to get more serious. I took shelter under a few of pine trees that lined the back of the beach and met Zoë, who had been out on the beach and also taken shelter from the storm. We chatted for a while and she recommended that I turn around and stay at Paradise Lost rather than continue up the beach to the other resort which she described as “more of a refugee camp.”</p> +<p>So it was that I came to meet, Tony, Zoë’s husband, and Inda, their three-year-old daughter, as well as that american I had chatted with before, Wally Sanger, the man who runs Paradise Lost, along with his partner Nok.</p> +<p>Up until I arrived on Ko Kradan I had been, were I too be honest, not too fond of Thailand. Despite its reputation as the land of smiles, I hadn’t found the Thais to be nearly as friendly or welcoming as the Cambodians and Lao. I also generally found the travelers in Thailand to be a rather cold and often downright rude bunch. As a result I spent the month of January alone and ever since the girls left I’d hardly talked to anyone. But on Ko Kradan I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it’s often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. </p> +<p><img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw" + srcset="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree-640.jpg 640w, + [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree.jpg 1180w, + [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree-2280.jpg 2280w" + src="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree.jpg" alt="Me on the beach at Ko Kradan Thailand"></p> +<p>Nok and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I’ve come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.</p> +<p>Wally arrived on Ko Kradan six years ago having spent the twenty years before that sailing all over the South Pacific. How exactly he came to start a guesthouse operation I never did hear, but it was quite an operation. Nok was an excellent cook and had an especially tasty (and spicy) massaman curry which is a southern Thai specialty, but Wally also offered a full range of barbeque options from massive steaks to pork chops and chicken. And as I discovered one night, when you order the grilled chicken dinner you in fact get a grilled chicken, as in the whole damn chicken, which works out well for the six or seven dogs that live at Paradise Lost (all purebred Thai ridgebacks and probably the best cared for and most spoiled dogs in all of Southeast Asia). <img alt="Me and Tang, Ko Kradan, Thailand" class="postpicright" height="183" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tangkokradan.jpg" width="210"/>One of the dogs, Tang, took a liking to me (or else he just liked company on the beach, who knows) and would follow me down the beach everyday, though he usually took off once I disappeared on the reef.</p> +<p>The reef off the southern end of Ko Kradan was the best snorkeling I found in the Islands provided you made it out during high tide, as it could be tough to navigate at low tide. For the entire week I was there I spent nearly every morning on the reef swimming amongst the Moorish Idols, Parrot Fish, Trigger Fish, Cleaner Wrasses and Butterfly Fish as well as the ever present Sergeant Majors and Barracuda. </p> +<p class="sans-caption"><img alt="Reef, Ko Kradan, Thailand, copyright Cristen Andrews, Flickr" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/reef.jpg"/> + <small>Image copyright Cristen Andrews, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cristenrene/3269502504/">Flickr</a>.</small> +</p> + +<p>Ko Kradan was barely touched by the tsunami so the reef was as it had always been. According to Wally there were a breeding pair of turtles somewhere out there, but regrettably I never came across them. So long as I got out there before noon when the day trip boats began to arrive, I had the reef to myself like some sort of private underwater playground.</p> +<p>Afternoons were my favorite time on the island, after the day tripping long tails from nearby Ko Muk departed for home and the four island tour boats from Ko Lanta moved on to the next island, a peaceful silence and almost total stillness settled over the beaches of Ko Kradan. Often a westerly breeze would kick up around two providing a welcome relief from the midday heat and the tide would retreat to the point that when I went back out on the reef the coral fairly scrapped my nose as I floated about, listening to the sound of Parrot Fish munching on bits of lumpy coral or the broken antlers of staghorn coral already half eaten and partly covered in sand.</p> +<p>I got in the habit of not using fins when I snorkeled so I tended to just drift with the currents moving rather slowly over great fields of coral, reddish brown staghorn with white tips and countless fish hiding in the numerous tangled shadows, including schools of smaller iridescent blue fish with yellow tails, fish whose bodies seemed to me the brightest and most intense blue I’ve ever seen. Other times I’d do a bit of swimming to follow one of the massive Parrot Fish who’s front fins flapped not unlike the wings of their arboreal namesake. These huge riots of pastel hues, pinks and greens and blues and yellows often seemed, when viewed at very close range, to be so finely detailed and the colors so smoothly flowing in gradients of pastel that would have made any circa 1986 interior designer proud, that it was impossible to distinguish scales and after a while they seem to have been perhaps airbrushed or created by some Photoshop whiz. Moorish Idols too, which most often swim in pairs, have such fine scales that even up close with the water magnifying everything it’s still impossible to make out the scales.</p> +<p>Whenever I was on the reef a school of juvenile parrotfish, small wrasses and Sergeant Majors would follow behind me nipping at my knees and ankles hoping for a bit a bread which they are accustomed to getting from the tour boats. Despite the fact that I never had any food they persisted from one end of the reef to the other. Once I stopped to adjust my mask and stood on a large lump of coral. While I was fiddling with the mask I could feel, but not see, something nipping at a cut on my left foot. I put the mask back on and peered down to discover that I had stopped at a cleaner wrasse’s station and though no doubt slightly confused by my foot, the fish was nevertheless gamely doing what it did best. I waited until the fish seemed satisfied with his work and then I swam off following a parrotfish so large it had a sucker fish attached to its gills.</p> +<p>Sometimes I swam out past the reef, where the bottom turned sandy and dropped off rather quickly making it impossible to see, in hopes of finding the turtles or perhaps a black tipped reef shark (which are perfectly harmless for the most part), but neither ever showed their faces. Eventually I would give up and move back toward the reef which by then would be very shallow indeed and only passable by carefully swimming through the sandy gullies between the fields of coral, an experience somewhat like I imagine it would feel to fly low and fast through the canyon country of eastern Utah and northern Arizona.</p> +<p class="sans-caption"> +<img class="picwide960" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, (min-width: 961) 960px" + srcset="[[base_url]]2006/sergeant-major.jpg 960w, + [[base_url]]2006/sergeant-major-2x.jpg 1920w," + src="[[base_url]]2006/sergeant-major.jpg" alt="Sergeant Majors, Thailand, image by Vincent Wang Yean-Perng Flickr"> + <small>Image by Vincent Wang Yean-Perng, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yp-wang/11447359323/">Flickr</a>.</small> +</p> + +<p>Closer into shore where the coral began to drop off, great fields of giant black sea urchins lay swaying in the currents and small waves in such a way that the spines looked like little fingers feeling about in the murky water, and at the center of each a great yellow and blue “eye” stared back up at you. Where the coral stopped and rocks began to be half covered in sand, the water visibility dropped and the fish became fewer limited to delicately colored yellow and blue striped fish with bodies and eyes that resembled squirrel fish and a few tiny Gobi fish that darted skittishly about as I floated over them. The reefs around Ko Kradan are known for their abundance of rock fish which sit here in the shallows, heavily camouflaged and difficult to see as they remain still, perched on their front flippers, as if patiently waiting for the fins to evolve into arms so that they can leave the sea behind once and for all.</p> +<p><img alt="" class="postpic" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sunsetbeachkokradan.jpg" width="170"/>I never wanted to get out of the water, but inevitably some reminder of my terrestrial origins would come back, thirst, hunger or perhaps just exhaustion, and I would head back to Paradise Lost for a late lunch. </p> +<p>Everyday around six I would take the trail back to the beach where I was originally dropped off and watch the sunset from the lookout on the bluff. </p> +<p><img class="picfull" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, (min-width: 681) 680px" + srcset="[[base_url]]2006/kradan-sunset-beach.jpg 680w, + [[base_url]]2006/kradan-sunset-beach-2x.jpg 1360w," + src="[[base_url]]2006/kradan-sunset-beach.jpg" alt="Sunset from Ko Kradan's sunset beach"></p> +<p>Eventually Tony, Zoë and Inda left for Malaysia and for two days it was just Wally and I. But then a few yachty friends of Wally’s sailed in and I met, Brian, Dawn and CT, the crew of a fifty-two foot yacht sailing under the name Ten Large. While they slept on the boat, the three of them came ashore during the day and always ate dinner at Paradise Lost. Another yacht whose name I’ve forgotten, also with a crew of three, came ashore for two days. And eventually an Australian named Peter escaped the other resort (refugee camp was a rather apt description I discovered when I finally made it down that way) to stay at Paradise Lost. </p> +<p>Wally operates mostly on word of mouth, and, in cases like mine, dumb luck. But because he isn’t listed in very many guidebooks, the other resort is able to waylay travelers in Trang with package deals paid for in advance. They simply meet the trains arriving from Bangkok and book an all-inclusive package, boat transfer, lodging, etc. and ask for the money up front. Eventually most of these folks find Paradise Lost and end up eating here, but because they’ve already paid for the lodging they’re stuck down at the refugee camp. </p> +<p>It’s too bad because Wally has a great place with friendly people, excellent food and nice bungalows. If you happen to be headed to Ko Kradan or any of the south Thai islands I encourage you to stop by. Wally <span class="strike><a href="http://www.kokradan.com" title="Paradise Lost Resort Information">has a website with contact info</a></strike> [update: the sites is gone], but beware that there is no internet on Ko Kradan and the cell phone reception isn’t great so you may have to call a few times to get a decent connection. I just showed up and got a room, but it’s worth calling ahead, especially in the high season since there aren’t too many bungalows available (though Wally is building more every year).</p> +<p>I spent the evening eating barbecue and chatting with CT, Dawn and Brian about our various travels and some of their sailing adventures (they recently became mini celebrities in the yachty world when they were boarded by pirates while passing through Malaysia). One day I took a break from snorkeling and made a return trip to emerald cave with the crew of the other yacht. It was a nice change and this time we had the cave to ourselves for quite some time.</p> +<p>But like all things that begin, my time on Ko Kradan had to end. I didn’t want to leave, but I had a plane flight to London that couldn’t be missed. So after ten brilliant days on Ko Kradan we all caught a long tail for shore as Ten Large needed to clear customs and Wally needed supplies for the island. After spending the day running errands with everyone, they dropped me off at the train station and I headed back up to Bangkok.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/04/beginning-end" rel="prev" title=" Beginning of the End">Beginning of the End</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/closing-time" rel="next" title=" Closing Time">Closing Time</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<p class="comments--header">2 Comments</p> + + + + + + + <div class="comments--wrapper"> + + <div id="comment-8" class="comment"> + <noscript class="datahashloader" data-hash="default"> + <img class="gravatar" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/gravcache/default.jpg" alt="gravatar icon for Lee" /> + </noscript> + <div class="comment--head"> + <span class="who"><b>Lee</b></span> + <span class="when">March 23, 2010 at 8:26 p.m.</span> + </div> + + <div class="comment--body"> + + <p>Read this with real interest. I stayed at Ko Kradan for 3 days pre Tsunami and cursed the place as i left. Infact this is the reason that i read your piece as i was checking to see if the place had been devestated by the Tsunami. We stayed there in Sept 2004 so off season. One place to eat and a bunch of huts on the edge of a jungle. The guy running the place didnt give a shit about either his guests or the place itself. Dont remember him being American .. thought he was Thai. He would drink a bottle of water and throw the bottle in the sea. There was no food on the island except chicken and rice. My wife was 4 months pregnant and constantly hungry and he did not give a monkies. We had a Rat the size of a small Dog living in the roof of our hut , and he still refused to move us despite there being only one other person staying there. We visited 13 different islands in Trang and Krabi and this was the worst by some distance. Aslo there were about seven dogs running about .On the second day they all attacked one dog and that dog was running around the island in obvious distress with its eye hanging out in the blazing sunshine. My wife were woken at 4 in the morning with the dog scratching at our door screaming in pain , its ripped out eye being almost eaten by insects. The owner did not give a shit.</p> +<p>Is there more than one place to stay on the island as reading your piece its difficult to believe that this can be the same place</p> + + </div> + </div> + + <div id="comment-9" class="comment"> + <noscript class="datahashloader" data-hash="d64f4854965b2b1c3ecafee4b2a66fac"> + <img class="gravatar" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/gravcache/d64f4854965b2b1c3ecafee4b2a66fac.jpg" alt="gravatar icon for luxagraf" /> + </noscript> + <div class="comment--head"> + <span class="who"><b><a href="https://luxagraf.net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">luxagraf</a></b></span> + <span class="when">March 24, 2010 at 8:29 p.m.</span> + </div> + + <div class="comment--body"> + + <p>@lee-</p> +<p>That sounds awful.</p> +<p>To answer your question, yes, there are two places on Ko Kradan, and yes the other one is run by a Thai. I never actually encountered him, but I’ve heard several stories that sound just like yours.</p> +<p>Wally’s place was down a beach and bit and back in the interior of the island (about a five minute walk from the beach. no water front views, but nice). That said, last I heard Wally had to go up to Phuket for medical reasons, so I can’t say for sure what the situation is on Ko Kradan these days.</p> + + </div> + </div> + + </div> + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper comment-form-border"> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="54" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833477" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="8bc8175281f342467e98443f81aa91dacd0cd281" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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After a day spent snorkeling various coves and islands the boat stopped for lunch on the windward side of Ko Kradan or what should have been the windward side, but at the particular moment, with an offshore wind blowing in from the east, was the calmest part of the island. The ferry dropped me off at a deserted beach and the captain pointed to what looked like just jungle and said that if I followed that path I'd get to the other side of the island.
+
+<img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw"
+ srcset="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-640.jpg 640w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach.jpg 1180w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-2280.jpg 2280w"
+ src="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach.jpg" alt="Me on the beach at Ko Kradan Thailand">
+
+Ominous black clouds had been moving westward all day and were nearly overhead by the time I jumped off the boat. The captain wasted no time in pulling away. I was hardly to the tree line with my bag before the boat disappear around the corner of the cove. I sat down on the sand and smoke a cigarette. Worst case scenario I get a little wet is some warm tropical rain. Sitting there I felt for a fleeting second like maybe I understood a little bit of what Tom Neale must have felt that first say when the boat dropped him off on Suvarov. But the the rain came so I quickly gathered up my things and headed inland.
+
+The path the captain mentioned actually did exist when I got close enough to the tree line to see it. In the end wasn't that long either. I emerged out of the jungle into a small clearing with a restaurant and a few bungalows. So much for Suvarov, though this little collection of huts would turn out to be about as close as it's safe to wish for these days. For me anyway.
+
+The Paradise Lost Resort was not listed in any guidebook I'd ever read. And it was owned by an American. That was enough to put me on edge. After chatting with said American for a bit I decided to check out my options. Pig headed man that I am I continued on to the other side of the island in search of where I had intended to stay. Just about the time I reached the eastern beach the rain decided to get more serious. I took shelter under a few of pine trees that lined the back of the beach and met Zoë, who had been out on the beach and also taken shelter from the storm. We chatted for a while and she recommended that I turn around and stay at Paradise Lost rather than continue up the beach to the other resort which she described as "more of a refugee camp."
+
+So it was that I came to meet, Tony, Zoë's husband, and Inda, their three-year-old daughter, as well as that american I had chatted with before, Wally Sanger, the man who runs Paradise Lost, along with his partner Nok.
+
+Up until I arrived on Ko Kradan I had been, were I too be honest, not too fond of Thailand. Despite its reputation as the land of smiles, I hadn't found the Thais to be nearly as friendly or welcoming as the Cambodians and Lao. I also generally found the travelers in Thailand to be a rather cold and often downright rude bunch. As a result I spent the month of January alone and ever since the girls left I'd hardly talked to anyone. But on Ko Kradan I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago.
+
+<img class="picwide" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw"
+ srcset="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree-640.jpg 640w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree.jpg 1180w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree-2280.jpg 2280w"
+ src="[[base_url]]2006/ko-kradan-beach-tree.jpg" alt="Me on the beach at Ko Kradan Thailand">
+
+Nok and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.
+
+Wally arrived on Ko Kradan six years ago having spent the twenty years before that sailing all over the South Pacific. How exactly he came to start a guesthouse operation I never did hear, but it was quite an operation. Nok was an excellent cook and had an especially tasty (and spicy) massaman curry which is a southern Thai specialty, but Wally also offered a full range of barbeque options from massive steaks to pork chops and chicken. And as I discovered one night, when you order the grilled chicken dinner you in fact get a grilled chicken, as in the whole damn chicken, which works out well for the six or seven dogs that live at Paradise Lost (all purebred Thai ridgebacks and probably the best cared for and most spoiled dogs in all of Southeast Asia). <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/tangkokradan.jpg" width="210" height="183" class="postpicright" alt="Me and Tang, Ko Kradan, Thailand" />One of the dogs, Tang, took a liking to me (or else he just liked company on the beach, who knows) and would follow me down the beach everyday, though he usually took off once I disappeared on the reef.
+
+The reef off the southern end of Ko Kradan was the best snorkeling I found in the Islands provided you made it out during high tide, as it could be tough to navigate at low tide. For the entire week I was there I spent nearly every morning on the reef swimming amongst the Moorish Idols, Parrot Fish, Trigger Fish, Cleaner Wrasses and Butterfly Fish as well as the ever present Sergeant Majors and Barracuda.
+
+<p class="sans-caption"><img src="[[base_url]]/2006/reef.jpg" alt="Reef, Ko Kradan, Thailand, copyright Cristen Andrews, Flickr" class="picfull" />
+ <small>Image copyright Cristen Andrews, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cristenrene/3269502504/">Flickr</a>.</small>
+</p>
+
+Ko Kradan was barely touched by the tsunami so the reef was as it had always been. According to Wally there were a breeding pair of turtles somewhere out there, but regrettably I never came across them. So long as I got out there before noon when the day trip boats began to arrive, I had the reef to myself like some sort of private underwater playground.
+
+Afternoons were my favorite time on the island, after the day tripping long tails from nearby Ko Muk departed for home and the four island tour boats from Ko Lanta moved on to the next island, a peaceful silence and almost total stillness settled over the beaches of Ko Kradan. Often a westerly breeze would kick up around two providing a welcome relief from the midday heat and the tide would retreat to the point that when I went back out on the reef the coral fairly scrapped my nose as I floated about, listening to the sound of Parrot Fish munching on bits of lumpy coral or the broken antlers of staghorn coral already half eaten and partly covered in sand.
+
+I got in the habit of not using fins when I snorkeled so I tended to just drift with the currents moving rather slowly over great fields of coral, reddish brown staghorn with white tips and countless fish hiding in the numerous tangled shadows, including schools of smaller iridescent blue fish with yellow tails, fish whose bodies seemed to me the brightest and most intense blue I've ever seen. Other times I'd do a bit of swimming to follow one of the massive Parrot Fish who's front fins flapped not unlike the wings of their arboreal namesake. These huge riots of pastel hues, pinks and greens and blues and yellows often seemed, when viewed at very close range, to be so finely detailed and the colors so smoothly flowing in gradients of pastel that would have made any circa 1986 interior designer proud, that it was impossible to distinguish scales and after a while they seem to have been perhaps airbrushed or created by some Photoshop whiz. Moorish Idols too, which most often swim in pairs, have such fine scales that even up close with the water magnifying everything it's still impossible to make out the scales.
+
+Whenever I was on the reef a school of juvenile parrotfish, small wrasses and Sergeant Majors would follow behind me nipping at my knees and ankles hoping for a bit a bread which they are accustomed to getting from the tour boats. Despite the fact that I never had any food they persisted from one end of the reef to the other. Once I stopped to adjust my mask and stood on a large lump of coral. While I was fiddling with the mask I could feel, but not see, something nipping at a cut on my left foot. I put the mask back on and peered down to discover that I had stopped at a cleaner wrasse's station and though no doubt slightly confused by my foot, the fish was nevertheless gamely doing what it did best. I waited until the fish seemed satisfied with his work and then I swam off following a parrotfish so large it had a sucker fish attached to its gills.
+
+Sometimes I swam out past the reef, where the bottom turned sandy and dropped off rather quickly making it impossible to see, in hopes of finding the turtles or perhaps a black tipped reef shark (which are perfectly harmless for the most part), but neither ever showed their faces. Eventually I would give up and move back toward the reef which by then would be very shallow indeed and only passable by carefully swimming through the sandy gullies between the fields of coral, an experience somewhat like I imagine it would feel to fly low and fast through the canyon country of eastern Utah and northern Arizona.
+
+<p class="sans-caption">
+<img class="picwide960" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, (min-width: 961) 960px"
+ srcset="[[base_url]]2006/sergeant-major.jpg 960w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/sergeant-major-2x.jpg 1920w,"
+ src="[[base_url]]2006/sergeant-major.jpg" alt="Sergeant Majors, Thailand, image by Vincent Wang Yean-Perng Flickr">
+ <small>Image by Vincent Wang Yean-Perng, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yp-wang/11447359323/">Flickr</a>.</small>
+</p>
+
+Closer into shore where the coral began to drop off, great fields of giant black sea urchins lay swaying in the currents and small waves in such a way that the spines looked like little fingers feeling about in the murky water, and at the center of each a great yellow and blue "eye" stared back up at you. Where the coral stopped and rocks began to be half covered in sand, the water visibility dropped and the fish became fewer limited to delicately colored yellow and blue striped fish with bodies and eyes that resembled squirrel fish and a few tiny Gobi fish that darted skittishly about as I floated over them. The reefs around Ko Kradan are known for their abundance of rock fish which sit here in the shallows, heavily camouflaged and difficult to see as they remain still, perched on their front flippers, as if patiently waiting for the fins to evolve into arms so that they can leave the sea behind once and for all.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/sunsetbeachkokradan.jpg" width="170" height="220" class="postpic" alt="" />I never wanted to get out of the water, but inevitably some reminder of my terrestrial origins would come back, thirst, hunger or perhaps just exhaustion, and I would head back to Paradise Lost for a late lunch.
+
+Everyday around six I would take the trail back to the beach where I was originally dropped off and watch the sunset from the lookout on the bluff.
+
+<img class="picfull" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, (min-width: 681) 680px"
+ srcset="[[base_url]]2006/kradan-sunset-beach.jpg 680w,
+ [[base_url]]2006/kradan-sunset-beach-2x.jpg 1360w,"
+ src="[[base_url]]2006/kradan-sunset-beach.jpg" alt="Sunset from Ko Kradan's sunset beach">
+
+
+Eventually Tony, Zoë and Inda left for Malaysia and for two days it was just Wally and I. But then a few yachty friends of Wally's sailed in and I met, Brian, Dawn and CT, the crew of a fifty-two foot yacht sailing under the name Ten Large. While they slept on the boat, the three of them came ashore during the day and always ate dinner at Paradise Lost. Another yacht whose name I've forgotten, also with a crew of three, came ashore for two days. And eventually an Australian named Peter escaped the other resort (refugee camp was a rather apt description I discovered when I finally made it down that way) to stay at Paradise Lost.
+
+Wally operates mostly on word of mouth, and, in cases like mine, dumb luck. But because he isn't listed in very many guidebooks, the other resort is able to waylay travelers in Trang with package deals paid for in advance. They simply meet the trains arriving from Bangkok and book an all-inclusive package, boat transfer, lodging, etc. and ask for the money up front. Eventually most of these folks find Paradise Lost and end up eating here, but because they've already paid for the lodging they're stuck down at the refugee camp.
+
+It's too bad because Wally has a great place with friendly people, excellent food and nice bungalows. If you happen to be headed to Ko Kradan or any of the south Thai islands I encourage you to stop by. Wally <span class="strike><a href="http://www.kokradan.com" title="Paradise Lost Resort Information">has a website with contact info</a></strike> [update: the sites is gone], but beware that there is no internet on Ko Kradan and the cell phone reception isn't great so you may have to call a few times to get a decent connection. I just showed up and got a room, but it's worth calling ahead, especially in the high season since there aren't too many bungalows available (though Wally is building more every year).
+
+I spent the evening eating barbecue and chatting with CT, Dawn and Brian about our various travels and some of their sailing adventures (they recently became mini celebrities in the yachty world when they were boarded by pirates while passing through Malaysia). One day I took a break from snorkeling and made a return trip to emerald cave with the crew of the other yacht. It was a nice change and this time we had the cave to ourselves for quite some time.
+
+But like all things that begin, my time on Ko Kradan had to end. I didn't want to leave, but I had a plane flight to London that couldn't be missed. So after ten brilliant days on Ko Kradan we all caught a long tail for shore as Ten Large needed to clear customs and Wally needed supplies for the island. After spending the day running errands with everyone, they dropped me off at the train station and I headed back up to Bangkok. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/going-down-south.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/going-down-south.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..49ef50c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/going-down-south.amp @@ -0,0 +1,199 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Going Down South</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/04/going-down-south"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/04/going-down-south"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Somehow I wound up at the Phi Phi Island Resort, a private beach, beautiful reef, fancy swimming pools and rooms with real sheets. 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When we tried to spend the afternoon in the sun, it poured. But then I write, so a bit of drama is never a bad thing. </p> +<p>We had a good time anyway. And the next morning we headed back across the border into Thailand. Strange to think that I had gone to Laos for the sole purpose of renewing my Thai visa and here I was, three months later, finally returning to Thailand. If I've learned anything it's the truth of Woody Allen's phrase, "if you want to make god laugh, have a plan." +<break> +By a strange act of god (who must have been having himself a laugh at the time), both Matt and I were headed back to Bangkok to meet up with friends from home. But before that we made an honest effort at tracking down Ofir. I had kept up with Ofir via email ever since he left Laos, and, though I hadn't heard from him in a few days. I knew he should be in Bangkok at the same time as Matt and I. I also knew that he was flying out the next day to return home to Israel. I compulsively checked my email throughout the evening but never heard anything. Matt and I hatched a plan that must have split god's sides with laughter; we decided to set out into Bangkok in some vain hope of running into Ofir. A city of seven million, how hard could it be?</break></p> +<p>Our best hope was the Khao San Rd. I don't believe I devoted any time to the Khao San Rd in my previous Bangkok posts which is largely because I avoided it like the plague. Khao San is everything I don't like about traveling, thousands and thousands of western tourists behaving badly. But, taking a tip from our experiences with heat, we thought why not? Why not embrace the cheesy touristy aspect of it? And we also thought Ofir, having his last night in Bangkok might think the same thing. So we hit the Khao San in full swing. As it turned out, Ofir had more taste than we did and was nowhere near the Khao San Rd on his last night in Bangkok, but we had fun nevertheless. We ate a bit of street food and parked ourselves in the cheesiest, most tourist saturated bar and watched the parade of humanity that is Khao San.</p> +<p>And then we gave up. The next day we both had errands to run, I need a plane ticket to London among other things and so Matt and I split up for the day, which was a bit strange since all the time he and Debi and I traveled together we always stuck together. But the strangest part is, and this goes to show you the fallacy of plans, about six hours later Matt and I ran into each other at the central pier. Yes, in a city of seven million, I ran into the one person I knew. This is why planning never works. Things happen or they don't and there's nothing you can do about it.</p> +<p>Traveling for as long as I have, one tends to lose track of time. It's been months since I could have told you with any confidence what day of the week it was or what day of the month, once I even got the month wrong. It just isn't something worth keeping track of; time exists to measure days that in reality aren't worth measuring. When I was managing a restaurant I could have told you not just day and date, but probably the hour and often right down to the minute because this is how we manage to do the things we have to do. It's been nearly a year since I've had to do anything.</p> +<p>It should then have been no surprise when the phone rang a day earlier than I expected and familiar voice sank slowly into my still sleep-fogged brain. Oh crap. My friends aren't coming tomorrow, they're here today. Whoops. I said a hurried goodbye to Matt (yes that was always how it was going to end wasn't it? Cheers mate), and slipped into the next chapter as it were.</p> +<p>Leah and Kate were staying at the Westin Sukhumvit which was shall we say a bit nicer than my lodgings. It was something akin to culture shock to step into the immaculateness of the Westin after spending the last six months in sleeping quarters where the old saying "don't let the bed bugs bite" isn't an antiquated joke, it's genuine advice. Not that I mind high class resorts nor look down my nose at them, so long as we all understand that high class resorts are for vacations; they don't qualify as traveling. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Change and adaptability are what got humanity this far and who am I to buck evolutionary trends? So I spent a minute in the lobby before I went up to their room, adjusting myself, adapting. It sounds stupid, but it does take you a minute to orient yourself in five star surroundings after so long in well, whatever. </p> +<p>After adjusting myself to the idea of air conditioning and polished marble floors and cushioned chairs I hopped in the elevator (elevator, damn I forgot about those) thinking this was probably good since I would be back in the west in less than a month and I needed to get used to these things again. I have for some time been dreading returning to the west with all its stodgy formalities and laws and cleanliness. I don't necessarily have a problem with the west, though I do feel a greater sense of freedom in S.E Asia than I ever have in America, I've just forgot what these things are like. My plan is to head from Bangkok to London and then, after visiting a friend I met in India, continuing on to Budapest where I will meet up with my parents and travel central Europe for a month before returning to the States. When the elevator opened into the large luxuriously padded carpet of the Westin's seventh floor hallway, I realized that I was not mentally prepared to return. I've actually come to rather like dodgy food and grungy guesthouses.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="River Taxi, Bangkok, Thailand" height="132" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bangkokriverboatview.jpg" width="210"></amp-img>The girls were surprisingly bright-eyed and animated for people that should have been jet lagged and half asleep. My own grogginess was still wearing off, but we set off straight away since Bangkok is pretty warm by midday and the temples have little in the way of shade. Leah and Kate had only one day in Bangkok and wanted to see some temples and other touristy sights. I was planning to take them to Wat Phra Krew and Wat Pho via public transport since that way you get to see the river as well. We hopped on the sky train, caught the river taxi and walked for a bit around Wat Phra Krew. After about an hour it was too hot to think. Bangkok averages in the high 90s this time of year and humidity is around 80. If you look it up on Weatherunderground it has that, "feel like…" index which typically is about 116 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know how they calculate it, but it sounds about right. <amp-img alt="Wat Phra Kae, Bangkok, Thailand" height="210" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/watphrakaetwo.jpg" width="168"></amp-img>It's hotter than it ever gets in say Athens, GA in the summer, but not as hot as Seam Reap. It's bearable if you're used to it, but coming out of air conditioning into that kind of heat and humidity will quickly drain you. </p> +<p>We decided to give up on the temples and head back to the hotel. The girls went up to the rooftop pool and I set out to buy a plane ticket to London and on to Budapest. After walking around in the heat for two hours and realizing that there is some sort of price fixing travel agent mafia in Bangkok, I gave up and went to the pool myself. After a few hours in the sun and a bit of snooze on the couch, we set out for dinner at Sciorocco. I hadn't been up to the towers before, but the view was roughly the same as the Baiyoke Sky hotel—stunning. Unfortunately, a few minutes after we were seated, it started to pour. Everyone scattered for cover and the restaurant struggled gamely to accommodate everyone that had been outside, inside. Curiously the only additional seating they seemed to have was a room two floors up which was half set for a wedding reception the next day. </p> +<p>We tried to make ourselves comfortable but it was a bit peculiar, particularly the ceiling which looked like the inside of a massive telescope, white hexagonal tiles with metal bracings and exposed pipeworks, across which various colors of neon lights in cheesy floral patterns performed highly unnatural sweeping motions. For a minute I felt like I was at some really bad laser lights show back in Los Angeles. After sitting there for a few minutes in fits of laughter, half expecting Pink Floyd to come erupting out of some hidden speaker system, we decided that it just wasn't going to work. Normally I wouldn't complain about it, I even liked the campy aspect in some ways, but the girls were only going to have one fancy dinner in Bangkok and they understandably didn't want it to resemble a wedding reception at the Hollywood bowl. After speaking to the hostess, we decided to head down a few floors where there was an Italian restaurant. Not very Thai to be sure, but damn it was good.</p> +<p>The next day the girls left for Phuket. I spent another day in Bangkok, finally bought my ticket to London and on to Budapest, and then caught an overnight bus to Krabia which is about half way down the peninsula of Thailand. The plan was to meet up with Kate and Leah again on Ko Phi Phi. On the bus ride down I met a very nice woman from Sweden and spent the day walking around Krabie with her and while I liked Krabie, I couldn't see any reason to stay. I caught the last ferry of the day out to Ko Phi Phi.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Phi Phi Don from longtail, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand" height="167" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphidonlongtail.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>Koh Phi Phi is small island just south of Phuket, about an hour by ferry, and west of Krabie, about forty minutes by ferry. Actually Koh Phi Phi is two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don which is developed and Ko Phi Phi Leh which is not. Phi Phi Don is a long skinny island which at one point narrows to an isthmus less than a hundred meters across. On both sides of the sandy isthmus are towering limestone cliffs and to the west there is nothing but Andaman Sea. As a result, outside of Phuket, Koh Phi Phi Don was probably hit the hardest by last year's tsunami. The initial wave actually broke over the island at the isthmus, wiping out the entire area and killing over 1737 people.</p> +<p>The truly strange thing is, aside from a gap in the otherwise omnipresent palm trees and a tsunami memorial, you'd never know the area was almost completely destroyed just over a year ago. Nearly everything has already been rebuilt and life seems to have returned to normal on the island. And for Phi Phi normal means tons of tourists and resorts catering to western cravings—burgers, Swedish meatballs and the ubiquitous traveler favorite, banana pancakes. The problem with Phi Phi is that in spite of its tourism and crowds it is a truly stunning island, one you ought not to miss if you ever find yourself in the area, just be aware of what you're getting into.</p> +<p>I spent the first night on the isthmus at a small guesthouse slightly inland from the beach and then the next morning I chartered a long tail around the island to the resort on the eastern shore where the girls were staying. After spending most of the day crashing the resort, Leah and Kate finally showed up and I felt a bit more legitimate. The Phi Phi Island Resort where the girls stayed is nestled on the leeward shore of the island with a lovely private beach that slopes ever so slowly into the sea and about two hundred meters out gives way to a beautiful reef. I rented a snorkel and mask and spent the afternoon on the reef with Leah. Generally when people talk of Thailand's islands they talk of the scuba diving, but the snorkeling is also first rate. The water clarity is generally better than anywhere else I've been though evening storms did stir things up a bit while we were there. The best thing about the resort is that it provides an escape from the crowds concentrated around the isthmus. For the better part of the afternoon Leah and I had the reef to ourselves save for the occasional long tail passing off in the distance.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Cruise Ship, Phi Phi Don, Thailand" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cruiseshipphiphileh.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>That evening after dinner we booked a boat trip to go around Phi Phi Leh with several stops for snorkeling and swimming. By nine the next morning we were onboard a large powerboat headed for Phi Phi Leh. As we came around the southern tip of Phi Phi Don where the island juts westward toward the isthmus I realized just how lucky we were to be in the relative isolation of the resort. Anchored just off the main harbor was a massive cruise ship which must have deposited several thousand additional people in the isthmus area. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Cliffs Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphilehnorthend.jpg" width="186"></amp-img>Luckily we breezed right by the isthmus and cruise ship booth bound for the reef on the east side of Phi Phi Leh. The underwater scenery was spectacular, loads of fish, not as much coral as some places I've been, but I don't know if that was from the tsunami or just the way the reefs are in Thailand. After snorkeling for an hour or so we hoped back on the boat and headed into a very narrow shallow bay surrounded on all sides by steep limestone cliffs. <amp-img alt="turquoise waters, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphibluewater.jpg" width="188"></amp-img>Though there was no reef below it was nevertheless amazingly beautiful. We anchored for half and hour and took turns jumping off the upper decks of the boat into the perfect, bathwater warm, cyan-colored bay. </p> +<p>After swimming for a while in the bay we began to circle around the island to the west. Our next stop was a sheltered lagoon which holds the only real beach of Phi Phi Leh. We stopped for lunch and bit of swimming and sunbathing. </p> +<p>I've never personally seen it, but supposedly the movie <em>The Beach</em> was filmed there. After lunch we continued around the backside of Phi Phi Leh which consisted mainly of imposing sheer cliffs that rise straight out of the sea. After rounding the northern point of the Island which conveys just how narrow Phi Phi Leh actually is, we headed back to the resort. As Phi Phi Leh shrunk in the distance I watched my fellow backpackers zoom by on speedboats packed together like sardines under the meager shade on cheap canvas canopies. Silly backpackers.</p> +<p>That evening we watched the clouds glow pink and orange and bright red with the fading light of a sunset we couldn't directly see and I taught the girls how to play shithead, which <amp-img alt="Leah and Kate on the Boat, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" height="191" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/leahkatephiphileh.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>I proceeded to lose at. Rather badly. The results of which shall not be mentioned here. The next day I headed back to join my fellow silly backpackers on the isthmus (luckily the cruise ship had moved on by then). It was really nice to spend time with Kate and Leah, you meet many people when you're traveling but it's not often that you get to see people from home. Thank you girls for letting me crash your vacation and I hope you had as much fun as I did. I only wish we had more time. Oh and for those who were wondering… I charged the whole thing to the Underhill's credit card. 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When we tried to spend the afternoon in the sun, it poured. But then I write, so a bit of drama is never a bad thing. </p> +<p>We had a good time anyway. And the next morning we headed back across the border into Thailand. Strange to think that I had gone to Laos for the sole purpose of renewing my Thai visa and here I was, three months later, finally returning to Thailand. If I’ve learned anything it’s the truth of Woody Allen’s phrase, “if you want to make god laugh, have a plan.” +<break> +By a strange act of god (who must have been having himself a laugh at the time), both Matt and I were headed back to Bangkok to meet up with friends from home. But before that we made an honest effort at tracking down Ofir. I had kept up with Ofir via email ever since he left Laos, and, though I hadn’t heard from him in a few days. I knew he should be in Bangkok at the same time as Matt and I. I also knew that he was flying out the next day to return home to Israel. I compulsively checked my email throughout the evening but never heard anything. Matt and I hatched a plan that must have split god’s sides with laughter; we decided to set out into Bangkok in some vain hope of running into Ofir. A city of seven million, how hard could it be?</p> +<p>Our best hope was the Khao San Rd. I don’t believe I devoted any time to the Khao San Rd in my previous Bangkok posts which is largely because I avoided it like the plague. Khao San is everything I don’t like about traveling, thousands and thousands of western tourists behaving badly. But, taking a tip from our experiences with heat, we thought why not? Why not embrace the cheesy touristy aspect of it? And we also thought Ofir, having his last night in Bangkok might think the same thing. So we hit the Khao San in full swing. As it turned out, Ofir had more taste than we did and was nowhere near the Khao San Rd on his last night in Bangkok, but we had fun nevertheless. We ate a bit of street food and parked ourselves in the cheesiest, most tourist saturated bar and watched the parade of humanity that is Khao San.</p> +<p>And then we gave up. The next day we both had errands to run, I need a plane ticket to London among other things and so Matt and I split up for the day, which was a bit strange since all the time he and Debi and I traveled together we always stuck together. But the strangest part is, and this goes to show you the fallacy of plans, about six hours later Matt and I ran into each other at the central pier. Yes, in a city of seven million, I ran into the one person I knew. This is why planning never works. Things happen or they don’t and there’s nothing you can do about it.</p> +<p>Traveling for as long as I have, one tends to lose track of time. It’s been months since I could have told you with any confidence what day of the week it was or what day of the month, once I even got the month wrong. It just isn’t something worth keeping track of; time exists to measure days that in reality aren’t worth measuring. When I was managing a restaurant I could have told you not just day and date, but probably the hour and often right down to the minute because this is how we manage to do the things we have to do. It’s been nearly a year since I’ve had to do anything.</p> +<p>It should then have been no surprise when the phone rang a day earlier than I expected and familiar voice sank slowly into my still sleep-fogged brain. Oh crap. My friends aren’t coming tomorrow, they’re here today. Whoops. I said a hurried goodbye to Matt (yes that was always how it was going to end wasn’t it? Cheers mate), and slipped into the next chapter as it were.</p> +<p>Leah and Kate were staying at the Westin Sukhumvit which was shall we say a bit nicer than my lodgings. It was something akin to culture shock to step into the immaculateness of the Westin after spending the last six months in sleeping quarters where the old saying “don’t let the bed bugs bite” isn’t an antiquated joke, it’s genuine advice. Not that I mind high class resorts nor look down my nose at them, so long as we all understand that high class resorts are for vacations; they don’t qualify as traveling. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Change and adaptability are what got humanity this far and who am I to buck evolutionary trends? So I spent a minute in the lobby before I went up to their room, adjusting myself, adapting. It sounds stupid, but it does take you a minute to orient yourself in five star surroundings after so long in well, whatever. </p> +<p>After adjusting myself to the idea of air conditioning and polished marble floors and cushioned chairs I hopped in the elevator (elevator, damn I forgot about those) thinking this was probably good since I would be back in the west in less than a month and I needed to get used to these things again. I have for some time been dreading returning to the west with all its stodgy formalities and laws and cleanliness. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the west, though I do feel a greater sense of freedom in S.E Asia than I ever have in America, I’ve just forgot what these things are like. My plan is to head from Bangkok to London and then, after visiting a friend I met in India, continuing on to Budapest where I will meet up with my parents and travel central Europe for a month before returning to the States. When the elevator opened into the large luxuriously padded carpet of the Westin’s seventh floor hallway, I realized that I was not mentally prepared to return. I’ve actually come to rather like dodgy food and grungy guesthouses.</p> +<p><img alt="River Taxi, Bangkok, Thailand" class="postpic" height="132" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bangkokriverboatview.jpg" width="210"/>It’s hotter than it ever gets in say Athens, GA in the summer, but not as hot as Seam Reap. It’s bearable if you’re used to it, but coming out of air conditioning into that kind of heat and humidity will quickly drain you. </p> +<p>We decided to give up on the temples and head back to the hotel. The girls went up to the rooftop pool and I set out to buy a plane ticket to London and on to Budapest. After walking around in the heat for two hours and realizing that there is some sort of price fixing travel agent mafia in Bangkok, I gave up and went to the pool myself. After a few hours in the sun and a bit of snooze on the couch, we set out for dinner at Sciorocco. I hadn’t been up to the towers before, but the view was roughly the same as the Baiyoke Sky hotel—stunning. Unfortunately, a few minutes after we were seated, it started to pour. Everyone scattered for cover and the restaurant struggled gamely to accommodate everyone that had been outside, inside. Curiously the only additional seating they seemed to have was a room two floors up which was half set for a wedding reception the next day. </p> +<p>We tried to make ourselves comfortable but it was a bit peculiar, particularly the ceiling which looked like the inside of a massive telescope, white hexagonal tiles with metal bracings and exposed pipeworks, across which various colors of neon lights in cheesy floral patterns performed highly unnatural sweeping motions. For a minute I felt like I was at some really bad laser lights show back in Los Angeles. After sitting there for a few minutes in fits of laughter, half expecting Pink Floyd to come erupting out of some hidden speaker system, we decided that it just wasn’t going to work. Normally I wouldn’t complain about it, I even liked the campy aspect in some ways, but the girls were only going to have one fancy dinner in Bangkok and they understandably didn’t want it to resemble a wedding reception at the Hollywood bowl. After speaking to the hostess, we decided to head down a few floors where there was an Italian restaurant. Not very Thai to be sure, but damn it was good.</p> +<p>The next day the girls left for Phuket. I spent another day in Bangkok, finally bought my ticket to London and on to Budapest, and then caught an overnight bus to Krabia which is about half way down the peninsula of Thailand. The plan was to meet up with Kate and Leah again on Ko Phi Phi. On the bus ride down I met a very nice woman from Sweden and spent the day walking around Krabie with her and while I liked Krabie, I couldn’t see any reason to stay. I caught the last ferry of the day out to Ko Phi Phi.</p> +<p><img alt="Phi Phi Don from longtail, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand" class="postpic" height="176" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphidonlongtail.jpg" width="230"/>Koh Phi Phi is small island just south of Phuket, about an hour by ferry, and west of Krabie, about forty minutes by ferry. Actually Koh Phi Phi is two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don which is developed and Ko Phi Phi Leh which is not. Phi Phi Don is a long skinny island which at one point narrows to an isthmus less than a hundred meters across. On both sides of the sandy isthmus are towering limestone cliffs and to the west there is nothing but Andaman Sea. As a result, outside of Phuket, Koh Phi Phi Don was probably hit the hardest by last year’s tsunami. The initial wave actually broke over the island at the isthmus, wiping out the entire area and killing over 1737 people.</p> +<p>The truly strange thing is, aside from a gap in the otherwise omnipresent palm trees and a tsunami memorial, you’d never know the area was almost completely destroyed just over a year ago. Nearly everything has already been rebuilt and life seems to have returned to normal on the island. And for Phi Phi normal means tons of tourists and resorts catering to western cravings—burgers, Swedish meatballs and the ubiquitous traveler favorite, banana pancakes. The problem with Phi Phi is that in spite of its tourism and crowds it is a truly stunning island, one you ought not to miss if you ever find yourself in the area, just be aware of what you’re getting into.</p> +<p>I spent the first night on the isthmus at a small guesthouse slightly inland from the beach and then the next morning I chartered a long tail around the island to the resort on the eastern shore where the girls were staying. After spending most of the day crashing the resort, Leah and Kate finally showed up and I felt a bit more legitimate. The Phi Phi Island Resort where the girls stayed is on the leeward shore of the island with a lovely private beach that slopes ever so slowly into the sea and about two hundred meters out gives way to a beautiful reef. I rented a snorkel and mask and spent the afternoon on the reef with Leah. Generally when people talk of Thailand’s islands they talk of the scuba diving, but the snorkeling is also first rate. The water clarity is generally better than anywhere else I’ve been though evening storms did stir things up a bit while we were there. The best thing about the resort is that it provides an escape from the crowds concentrated around the isthmus. For the better part of the afternoon Leah and I had the reef to ourselves save for the occasional long tail passing off in the distance.</p> +<p><img alt="Cruise Ship, Phi Phi Don, Thailand" class="postpic" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cruiseshipphiphileh.jpg" width="240"/>That evening after dinner we booked a boat trip to go around Phi Phi Leh with several stops for snorkeling and swimming. By nine the next morning we were onboard a large powerboat headed for Phi Phi Leh. As we came around the southern tip of Phi Phi Don where the island juts westward toward the isthmus I realized just how lucky we were to be in the relative isolation of the resort. Anchored just off the main harbor was a massive cruise ship which must have deposited several thousand additional people in the isthmus area. </p> +<p><img alt="Cliffs Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphilehnorthend.jpg" width="186"/>Though there was no reef below it was nevertheless amazingly beautiful. We anchored for half and hour and took turns jumping off the upper decks of the boat into the perfect, bathwater warm, cyan-colored bay. </p> +<p>After swimming for a while in the bay we began to circle around the island to the west. Our next stop was a sheltered lagoon which holds the only real beach of Phi Phi Leh. We stopped for lunch and bit of swimming and sunbathing. </p> +<p>I’ve never personally seen it, but supposedly the movie <em>The Beach</em> was filmed there. After lunch we continued around the backside of Phi Phi Leh which consisted mainly of imposing sheer cliffs that rise straight out of the sea. After rounding the northern point of the Island which conveys just how narrow Phi Phi Leh actually is, we headed back to the resort. As Phi Phi Leh shrunk in the distance I watched my fellow backpackers zoom by on speedboats packed together like sardines under the meager shade on cheap canvas canopies. Silly backpackers.</p> +<p>That evening we watched the clouds glow pink and orange and bright red with the fading light of a sunset we couldn’t directly see and I taught the girls how to play shithead, which <img alt="Leah and Kate on the Boat, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" class="postpic" height="191" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/leahkatephiphileh.jpg" width="220"/>I proceeded to lose at. Rather badly. The results of which shall not be mentioned here. The next day I headed back to join my fellow silly backpackers on the isthmus (luckily the cruise ship had moved on by then). It was really nice to spend time with Kate and Leah, you meet many people when you’re traveling but it’s not often that you get to see people from home. Thank you girls for letting me crash your vacation and I hope you had as much fun as I did. I only wish we had more time. Oh and for those who were wondering… I charged the whole thing to the Underhill’s credit card. 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When we tried to spend the afternoon in the sun, it poured. But then I write, so a bit of drama is never a bad thing.
+
+We had a good time anyway. And the next morning we headed back across the border into Thailand. Strange to think that I had gone to Laos for the sole purpose of renewing my Thai visa and here I was, three months later, finally returning to Thailand. If I've learned anything it's the truth of Woody Allen's phrase, "if you want to make god laugh, have a plan."
+<break>
+By a strange act of god (who must have been having himself a laugh at the time), both Matt and I were headed back to Bangkok to meet up with friends from home. But before that we made an honest effort at tracking down Ofir. I had kept up with Ofir via email ever since he left Laos, and, though I hadn't heard from him in a few days. I knew he should be in Bangkok at the same time as Matt and I. I also knew that he was flying out the next day to return home to Israel. I compulsively checked my email throughout the evening but never heard anything. Matt and I hatched a plan that must have split god's sides with laughter; we decided to set out into Bangkok in some vain hope of running into Ofir. A city of seven million, how hard could it be?
+
+Our best hope was the Khao San Rd. I don't believe I devoted any time to the Khao San Rd in my previous Bangkok posts which is largely because I avoided it like the plague. Khao San is everything I don't like about traveling, thousands and thousands of western tourists behaving badly. But, taking a tip from our experiences with heat, we thought why not? Why not embrace the cheesy touristy aspect of it? And we also thought Ofir, having his last night in Bangkok might think the same thing. So we hit the Khao San in full swing. As it turned out, Ofir had more taste than we did and was nowhere near the Khao San Rd on his last night in Bangkok, but we had fun nevertheless. We ate a bit of street food and parked ourselves in the cheesiest, most tourist saturated bar and watched the parade of humanity that is Khao San.
+
+And then we gave up. The next day we both had errands to run, I need a plane ticket to London among other things and so Matt and I split up for the day, which was a bit strange since all the time he and Debi and I traveled together we always stuck together. But the strangest part is, and this goes to show you the fallacy of plans, about six hours later Matt and I ran into each other at the central pier. Yes, in a city of seven million, I ran into the one person I knew. This is why planning never works. Things happen or they don't and there's nothing you can do about it.
+
+Traveling for as long as I have, one tends to lose track of time. It's been months since I could have told you with any confidence what day of the week it was or what day of the month, once I even got the month wrong. It just isn't something worth keeping track of; time exists to measure days that in reality aren't worth measuring. When I was managing a restaurant I could have told you not just day and date, but probably the hour and often right down to the minute because this is how we manage to do the things we have to do. It's been nearly a year since I've had to do anything.
+
+It should then have been no surprise when the phone rang a day earlier than I expected and familiar voice sank slowly into my still sleep-fogged brain. Oh crap. My friends aren't coming tomorrow, they're here today. Whoops. I said a hurried goodbye to Matt (yes that was always how it was going to end wasn't it? Cheers mate), and slipped into the next chapter as it were.
+
+Leah and Kate were staying at the Westin Sukhumvit which was shall we say a bit nicer than my lodgings. It was something akin to culture shock to step into the immaculateness of the Westin after spending the last six months in sleeping quarters where the old saying "don't let the bed bugs bite" isn't an antiquated joke, it's genuine advice. Not that I mind high class resorts nor look down my nose at them, so long as we all understand that high class resorts are for vacations; they don't qualify as traveling. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Change and adaptability are what got humanity this far and who am I to buck evolutionary trends? So I spent a minute in the lobby before I went up to their room, adjusting myself, adapting. It sounds stupid, but it does take you a minute to orient yourself in five star surroundings after so long in well, whatever.
+
+After adjusting myself to the idea of air conditioning and polished marble floors and cushioned chairs I hopped in the elevator (elevator, damn I forgot about those) thinking this was probably good since I would be back in the west in less than a month and I needed to get used to these things again. I have for some time been dreading returning to the west with all its stodgy formalities and laws and cleanliness. I don't necessarily have a problem with the west, though I do feel a greater sense of freedom in S.E Asia than I ever have in America, I've just forgot what these things are like. My plan is to head from Bangkok to London and then, after visiting a friend I met in India, continuing on to Budapest where I will meet up with my parents and travel central Europe for a month before returning to the States. When the elevator opened into the large luxuriously padded carpet of the Westin's seventh floor hallway, I realized that I was not mentally prepared to return. I've actually come to rather like dodgy food and grungy guesthouses.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bangkokriverboatview.jpg" width="210" height="132" class="postpic" alt="River Taxi, Bangkok, Thailand" />The girls were surprisingly bright-eyed and animated for people that should have been jet lagged and half asleep. My own grogginess was still wearing off, but we set off straight away since Bangkok is pretty warm by midday and the temples have little in the way of shade. Leah and Kate had only one day in Bangkok and wanted to see some temples and other touristy sights. I was planning to take them to Wat Phra Krew and Wat Pho via public transport since that way you get to see the river as well. We hopped on the sky train, caught the river taxi and walked for a bit around Wat Phra Krew. After about an hour it was too hot to think. Bangkok averages in the high 90s this time of year and humidity is around 80. If you look it up on Weatherunderground it has that, "feel like…" index which typically is about 116 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know how they calculate it, but it sounds about right. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/watphrakaetwo.jpg" width="168" height="210" class="postpicright" alt="Wat Phra Kae, Bangkok, Thailand" />It's hotter than it ever gets in say Athens, GA in the summer, but not as hot as Seam Reap. It's bearable if you're used to it, but coming out of air conditioning into that kind of heat and humidity will quickly drain you.
+
+We decided to give up on the temples and head back to the hotel. The girls went up to the rooftop pool and I set out to buy a plane ticket to London and on to Budapest. After walking around in the heat for two hours and realizing that there is some sort of price fixing travel agent mafia in Bangkok, I gave up and went to the pool myself. After a few hours in the sun and a bit of snooze on the couch, we set out for dinner at Sciorocco. I hadn't been up to the towers before, but the view was roughly the same as the Baiyoke Sky hotel—stunning. Unfortunately, a few minutes after we were seated, it started to pour. Everyone scattered for cover and the restaurant struggled gamely to accommodate everyone that had been outside, inside. Curiously the only additional seating they seemed to have was a room two floors up which was half set for a wedding reception the next day.
+
+We tried to make ourselves comfortable but it was a bit peculiar, particularly the ceiling which looked like the inside of a massive telescope, white hexagonal tiles with metal bracings and exposed pipeworks, across which various colors of neon lights in cheesy floral patterns performed highly unnatural sweeping motions. For a minute I felt like I was at some really bad laser lights show back in Los Angeles. After sitting there for a few minutes in fits of laughter, half expecting Pink Floyd to come erupting out of some hidden speaker system, we decided that it just wasn't going to work. Normally I wouldn't complain about it, I even liked the campy aspect in some ways, but the girls were only going to have one fancy dinner in Bangkok and they understandably didn't want it to resemble a wedding reception at the Hollywood bowl. After speaking to the hostess, we decided to head down a few floors where there was an Italian restaurant. Not very Thai to be sure, but damn it was good.
+
+The next day the girls left for Phuket. I spent another day in Bangkok, finally bought my ticket to London and on to Budapest, and then caught an overnight bus to Krabia which is about half way down the peninsula of Thailand. The plan was to meet up with Kate and Leah again on Ko Phi Phi. On the bus ride down I met a very nice woman from Sweden and spent the day walking around Krabie with her and while I liked Krabie, I couldn't see any reason to stay. I caught the last ferry of the day out to Ko Phi Phi.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/phiphidonlongtail.jpg" width="230" height="176" class="postpic" alt="Phi Phi Don from longtail, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand" />Koh Phi Phi is small island just south of Phuket, about an hour by ferry, and west of Krabie, about forty minutes by ferry. Actually Koh Phi Phi is two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don which is developed and Ko Phi Phi Leh which is not. Phi Phi Don is a long skinny island which at one point narrows to an isthmus less than a hundred meters across. On both sides of the sandy isthmus are towering limestone cliffs and to the west there is nothing but Andaman Sea. As a result, outside of Phuket, Koh Phi Phi Don was probably hit the hardest by last year's tsunami. The initial wave actually broke over the island at the isthmus, wiping out the entire area and killing over 1737 people.
+
+The truly strange thing is, aside from a gap in the otherwise omnipresent palm trees and a tsunami memorial, you'd never know the area was almost completely destroyed just over a year ago. Nearly everything has already been rebuilt and life seems to have returned to normal on the island. And for Phi Phi normal means tons of tourists and resorts catering to western cravings—burgers, Swedish meatballs and the ubiquitous traveler favorite, banana pancakes. The problem with Phi Phi is that in spite of its tourism and crowds it is a truly stunning island, one you ought not to miss if you ever find yourself in the area, just be aware of what you're getting into.
+
+I spent the first night on the isthmus at a small guesthouse slightly inland from the beach and then the next morning I chartered a long tail around the island to the resort on the eastern shore where the girls were staying. After spending most of the day crashing the resort, Leah and Kate finally showed up and I felt a bit more legitimate. The Phi Phi Island Resort where the girls stayed is on the leeward shore of the island with a lovely private beach that slopes ever so slowly into the sea and about two hundred meters out gives way to a beautiful reef. I rented a snorkel and mask and spent the afternoon on the reef with Leah. Generally when people talk of Thailand's islands they talk of the scuba diving, but the snorkeling is also first rate. The water clarity is generally better than anywhere else I've been though evening storms did stir things up a bit while we were there. The best thing about the resort is that it provides an escape from the crowds concentrated around the isthmus. For the better part of the afternoon Leah and I had the reef to ourselves save for the occasional long tail passing off in the distance.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/cruiseshipphiphileh.jpg" width="240" height="120" class="postpic" alt="Cruise Ship, Phi Phi Don, Thailand" />That evening after dinner we booked a boat trip to go around Phi Phi Leh with several stops for snorkeling and swimming. By nine the next morning we were onboard a large powerboat headed for Phi Phi Leh. As we came around the southern tip of Phi Phi Don where the island juts westward toward the isthmus I realized just how lucky we were to be in the relative isolation of the resort. Anchored just off the main harbor was a massive cruise ship which must have deposited several thousand additional people in the isthmus area.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/phiphilehnorthend.jpg" width="186" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="Cliffs Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" />Luckily we breezed right by the isthmus and cruise ship booth bound for the reef on the east side of Phi Phi Leh. The underwater scenery was spectacular, loads of fish, not as much coral as some places I've been, but I don't know if that was from the tsunami or just the way the reefs are in Thailand. After snorkeling for an hour or so we hoped back on the boat and headed into a very narrow shallow bay surrounded on all sides by steep limestone cliffs. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/phiphibluewater.jpg" width="188" height="220" class="postpic" alt="turquoise waters, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" />Though there was no reef below it was nevertheless amazingly beautiful. We anchored for half and hour and took turns jumping off the upper decks of the boat into the perfect, bathwater warm, cyan-colored bay.
+
+After swimming for a while in the bay we began to circle around the island to the west. Our next stop was a sheltered lagoon which holds the only real beach of Phi Phi Leh. We stopped for lunch and bit of swimming and sunbathing.
+
+I've never personally seen it, but supposedly the movie <em>The Beach</em> was filmed there. After lunch we continued around the backside of Phi Phi Leh which consisted mainly of imposing sheer cliffs that rise straight out of the sea. After rounding the northern point of the Island which conveys just how narrow Phi Phi Leh actually is, we headed back to the resort. As Phi Phi Leh shrunk in the distance I watched my fellow backpackers zoom by on speedboats packed together like sardines under the meager shade on cheap canvas canopies. Silly backpackers.
+
+That evening we watched the clouds glow pink and orange and bright red with the fading light of a sunset we couldn't directly see and I taught the girls how to play shithead, which <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/leahkatephiphileh.jpg" width="220" height="191" class="postpic" alt="Leah and Kate on the Boat, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand" />I proceeded to lose at. Rather badly. The results of which shall not be mentioned here. The next day I headed back to join my fellow silly backpackers on the isthmus (luckily the cruise ship had moved on by then). It was really nice to spend time with Kate and Leah, you meet many people when you're traveling but it's not often that you get to see people from home. Thank you girls for letting me crash your vacation and I hope you had as much fun as I did. I only wish we had more time. Oh and for those who were wondering… I charged the whole thing to the Underhill's credit card. You want the number? diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..720ee4c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/04/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,110 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv8.css" + media="screen"> + <!--[if IE]> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/css/ie.css" + media="screen"> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="manifest.json"> + <meta property="fb:pages" content="900822029969349" /> + +</head> +<body id="archive"> + <div class="wrapper" id="wrapper"> + <div class="header-wrapper"> + <header role="banner"> + <h1><a id="logo" href="/" title="home">Luxagraf</a></h1> + <h2>Walk Slowly</h2> + </header> + <nav role="navigation" class="bl"> + <ul> + <li id="laverdad"><a href="/jrnl/" title="What we've been up to lately">Journal</a></li> + <!--<li id="nota"><a href="/field-notes/" title="Quick notes and images from the road">Notes</a></li> + <li id="fotos"><a href="/photos/" title="Photos from travels around the world">Photos</a></li>i--> + <li id="maps"><a href="/map" title="Maps">Map</a></li> + <li id="about"><a href="/about" title="About Luxagraf">About</a></li> + <li id="etc" class="last"><a href="/projects/" title="the less visible portions of the iceberg">More</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + <ul class="bl" id="breadcrumbs" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb"> + <li><a href="/" title="luxagraf homepage" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Home</span></a> → </li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/" title="See all Journal Entries" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Journal</span></a> →</li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/2006/">2006</a> →</li> + <li>April</li> + </ul> + <main role="main" id="writing-archive" class="archive"> + <h1> Archive: April 2006</h1> + <ul class="date-archive"> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise" title="Bird of Paradise">Bird of Paradise</a> + <time datetime="2006-04-22T00:11:20-04:00">Apr 22, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/04/beginning-end" title="Beginning of the End">Beginning of the End</a> + <time datetime="2006-04-12T02:56:22-04:00">Apr 12, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/04/going-down-south" title="Going Down South">Going Down South</a> + <time datetime="2006-04-11T00:10:50-04:00">Apr 11, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + + + + <footer role="contentinfo"> + <nav class="bl"> + <ul> + <li><a href="/blogroll" title="Sites that inspire us">Blogroll</a></li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/feed.xml" title="RSS feed">Subscribe</a></li> + <li><a href="/contact/" title="contact luxagraf">Contact</a></li> + <li><a href="https://twitter.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="follow luxagraf on Twitter">Twitter</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Flickr">Flickr</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Facebook">Facebook</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/luxagraf/" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Instacrap">Instacrap</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + <p id="license"> + © 2003-2018 + <span class="h-card"><a class="p-name u-url" href="https://luxagraf.net/">Scott Gilbertson</a><data class="p-nickname" value="luxagraf"></data><data class="p-locality" value="Athens"></data><data class="p-region" value="Georgia"></data><data class="p-country-name" value="United States"></data></span>, except photos, which are licensed under the Creative Commons (<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" title="read the Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 deed">details</a>). + </p> + </footer> + </div> + +<!-- Piwik --> +<script type="text/javascript"> +var _paq = _paq || []; 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But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Azure Waters, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" height="195" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicebluewater.gif" width="230"></amp-img> The Serbs held the area for the duration of the conflict, though it's difficult to imagine why they wanted it. Lake Plitvice is chiefly notable for its natural beauty and as a gateway to the mountains, hardly a militarily strategic spot since no roads actually run up into, let alone over, the mountains. Nevertheless, here is where it began, though as with all beginnings, it did not really start here, it started with the leaders whose poisoned, greedy hearts and minds dragged the former Yugoslavia into a war no one wanted. +<break> +My parents rented a car in Budapest and we drove south through Hungary toward the Croatian border. The Hungarian countryside was unremarkable but pleasantly so; the same sort of scenery one might pass from Philadelphia to Pittsburg or London to Bath. Around lunch time we crossed over into Croatia, a country that had previously existed for me simply as a place where bad things happen — war, ethnic cleansing, etc — not a place at all actually, just a word. <amp-img alt="Mossy Tree reflection, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicetreereflection.gif" width="180"></amp-img>Like most Americans, I never had a real handle on the Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia war. I was dimly aware that The U.S. at some point, with the backing of U.N. (remember when we played by the rules?) launched a campaign of air strikes in Kosovo. For those that like me could never get it sorted, here's a quick rundown (taken half from guidebooks and half from some Croatians and Serbs I met). The former republic of Yugoslavia was an artificially created state that grew out of the end of world war two and a man named Tito. Tito is an interesting historical figure; he managed with some success to keep one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world together for thirty-five years. Naturally there were some iron-fisted clampdowns and not everyone seems to have been fond of him, but in spite of his occasionally brutal tactics he did keep the peace (if at the expense of some). And his tactics were certainly no more brutal than the war that followed his death. Shortly after Tito died in 1980 Yugoslavia was hit by heavy inflation which resulted from Tito's habit of borrowing foreign money and Yugoslavia's inability to pay it back. </break></p> +<p>Slovenia was the first the break away and is the most ethnically and religiously coherent of the various Balkan states. For the most part Slovenia managed to stay out of the fighting that would soon engulf the area. The Croatians were the next to go, declaring independence in 1991 and finally getting U.N. recognition in 1992. That left Serbia, Bosnia and tiny Kosovo. The trouble was there were a lot of Serbians in Croatia, Croatians in Serbia, Bosnians in Croatia, etc. It's tough to say there was a good side and bad side in the war that followed, but isn't it always? The Serbians started the war; the first shot were fired at Lake Plitvice National Park where my parents and I were staying. And yes the Serbians are guilty of ethnic cleansing, rounding up and killing thousands of Croatians. But then the Croatians drove the Serbs out and turned around and engaged in more or less the same ethnic cleansing. War. Everybody loses. Everybody dies. </p> +<p>And so today there are four nations Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Herzegovina, where Yugoslavia once existed. [Except, before I was able to get this to press, Montenegro has voted to break away from Serbia, so now there are five. I must publish this before Kosovo does the same.] For the most part the war and its effects are gone. Like Cambodia there is a landmine problem that will continue to exist and kill and main for some time to come, but the tensions seems to have passed and aside from a few bullet riddled buildings and bombed out, caved in roofs, you'd never guess that the largest European war since WWII ended just ten years ago.</p> +<p>Lake Plitvice National Park is a unique geological phenomena formed by two factors: porous karst limestone which absorbs water and erodes quickly, and mineral deposits from since departed glaciers. <amp-img alt="Walkway, Upper Lake, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicewalkway.gif" width="188"></amp-img>As lake water seeped into the Karst, the rock decayed forming a series of lakes and interconnecting waterfalls that cascade through the forests. The national park service has created some trails which pass along the edges of the waterfalls and lakes as they wind their way downhill (or if you're masochistic and/or not that bright—uphill). </p> +<p>The waters are both the clearest water I've ever seen and yet somehow manage to reflect a color close to bright teal and look a bit like photographs of Banff Canada where similar minerals create the same effect on Lake Louise.</p> +<p>But where Lake Louise is so dramatic as to be almost overwhelming, the natural beauty of Plitvice is quieter and less imposing. There is no overlook or scenic viewpoint with flash popping tourists and calendar worthy photographs, to experience Plitvice you have to get out of the car, <amp-img alt="Forest Floor, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitviceforest.gif" width="173"></amp-img>off the road and simply wander the forests in the cool of the morning or evening when the light filtering through the forest is softened by the subtle bending forces of the atmosphere and the forest floor becomes a leaf padded wonderland.</p> +<p>We started at the highest lake and walked downward through cascades of water and reed lined lakeshores, passing at times through the forests where the moss-covered old growth creates a canopy through which sunlight trickles in to form pools of light and shadow forever shifting about as you walk. Strangely there was very little in the way of wildlife. The lakes were choked full of fish, but the forests curiously empty, though I did see a frog lazing in the sunshine near the lakeshore. </p> +<p>As with any Karst area there are a number of caves in Lake Plitvice one of which forms a near vertical chasm through the hillside and can be climbed by means of a series of slippery switch-backing stone staircases. At the right time of day beams of sunlight fall in from above, <amp-img alt="Cave, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicecave.gif" width="165"></amp-img>illuminating the darker passageways and side tunnels which presumably, with a proper torch could be explored. But I neglected to bring any sort of torch and had to content myself with the main cavern.</p> +<p>The hillsides were covered in the green of spring, the dark shades of firs and the lighter, brighter leaves of beeches and maples. The most remarkable of these trees were the white firs whose branches had nearly florescent tips, the result of fresh spring growth. I spent the first evening in Lake Plitvice studying the white firs around our lodge, trying to make sense of how something so bright could eventually fade to the dark, almost black, green of the inner branches. The newly formed tips were such a striking viridescent contrast to the inner tangle that I couldn't help but wonder what lay within that nearly impenetrable jumble of darkness nearer to the trunk.</p> +<p>Near the inner tree where the evening light does not penetrate, some hidden gesture of nature as if to remind us that not everything is so easily seen, not everything is in grand sweeping gestures or romantic vistas, sure the highlights capture our attention, but what lies beneath in that dark tangle near the origins? Does the truth perhaps lie in there amongst the dense and inaccessible darkness? Or do I here sound too much like Joseph Conrad obsessed by the darkness of his river and the human heart he saw beating at the end of it?</p> +<p>It occurred to me that my thinking was mistaken, that in fact due to the physics of light, <amp-img alt="New Growth Pine Trees, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" height="169" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicepinetreetips.gif" width="330"></amp-img>the inner branches were in fact actually lighter, they appear darker because they reflect less light back to my eye, but without my eye and its entrapments what you might observe is actually a dense forest of light, all that light not given up by the world and therefore seen by us as darkness. Perhaps that's the reason a number of artists have chosen to start with a completely black canvas and add color on top of it, as if to transcend the limitations of the human eye.</p> +<p>But perhaps I am too technical since there is no way to <em>see</em> the world as we could say it really is, because the only means we have to see it are our own eyes, our poor senses cannot reveal this impenetrable universe in which not all is illuminated, not everything makes a sound and much carries the scent of nothing on some solar wind which none of us will ever perceive let alone understand.</p> +<p>I have read that in pure darkness the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a candle at a distance of forty kilometers. <amp-img alt="Rainbow, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicerainbow.gif" width="196"></amp-img>And yet in spite of this remarkable attunement to light, light is our limitation, without it nothing exists for us. Perhaps the inner branches of the firs and pines are merely the unyielding tangle of dead needles and cobwebs and beetles that I imagine and there is no metaphor, no truth which is what drives us out of bed in the vague hint of predawn to stand facing east at the shore of some body of water and wait with such anxious anticipations for the coming of the morning light on the water where, as Flaubert once wrote, “the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal.”</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/blue-milk.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/blue-milk.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aabc3a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/blue-milk.html @@ -0,0 +1,343 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Blue Milk - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Looking down at the milky blue waters of Like Plitvice it's hard to believe that the largest European conflict since WWII began here. 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But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman. </p> +<p><img alt="Azure Waters, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="195" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicebluewater.gif" width="230"/> The Serbs held the area for the duration of the conflict, though it’s difficult to imagine why they wanted it. Lake Plitvice is chiefly notable for its natural beauty and as a gateway to the mountains, hardly a militarily strategic spot since no roads actually run up into, let alone over, the mountains. Nevertheless, here is where it began, though as with all beginnings, it did not really start here, it started with the leaders whose poisoned, greedy hearts and minds dragged the former Yugoslavia into a war no one wanted. +<break> +My parents rented a car in Budapest and we drove south through Hungary toward the Croatian border. The Hungarian countryside was unremarkable but pleasantly so; the same sort of scenery one might pass from Philadelphia to Pittsburg or London to Bath. Around lunch time we crossed over into Croatia, a country that had previously existed for me simply as a place where bad things happen — war, ethnic cleansing, etc — not a place at all actually, just a word. <img alt="Mossy Tree reflection, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicetreereflection.gif" width="180"/>Like most Americans, I never had a real handle on the Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia war. I was dimly aware that The U.S. at some point, with the backing of U.N. (remember when we played by the rules?) launched a campaign of air strikes in Kosovo. For those that like me could never get it sorted, here’s a quick rundown (taken half from guidebooks and half from some Croatians and Serbs I met). The former republic of Yugoslavia was an artificially created state that grew out of the end of world war two and a man named Tito. Tito is an interesting historical figure; he managed with some success to keep one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world together for thirty-five years. Naturally there were some iron-fisted clampdowns and not everyone seems to have been fond of him, but in spite of his occasionally brutal tactics he did keep the peace (if at the expense of some). And his tactics were certainly no more brutal than the war that followed his death. Shortly after Tito died in 1980 Yugoslavia was hit by heavy inflation which resulted from Tito’s habit of borrowing foreign money and Yugoslavia’s inability to pay it back. </p> +<p>Slovenia was the first the break away and is the most ethnically and religiously coherent of the various Balkan states. For the most part Slovenia managed to stay out of the fighting that would soon engulf the area. The Croatians were the next to go, declaring independence in 1991 and finally getting U.N. recognition in 1992. That left Serbia, Bosnia and tiny Kosovo. The trouble was there were a lot of Serbians in Croatia, Croatians in Serbia, Bosnians in Croatia, etc. It’s tough to say there was a good side and bad side in the war that followed, but isn’t it always? The Serbians started the war; the first shot were fired at Lake Plitvice National Park where my parents and I were staying. And yes the Serbians are guilty of ethnic cleansing, rounding up and killing thousands of Croatians. But then the Croatians drove the Serbs out and turned around and engaged in more or less the same ethnic cleansing. War. Everybody loses. Everybody dies. </p> +<p>And so today there are four nations Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Herzegovina, where Yugoslavia once existed. [Except, before I was able to get this to press, Montenegro has voted to break away from Serbia, so now there are five. I must publish this before Kosovo does the same.] For the most part the war and its effects are gone. Like Cambodia there is a landmine problem that will continue to exist and kill and main for some time to come, but the tensions seems to have passed and aside from a few bullet riddled buildings and bombed out, caved in roofs, you’d never guess that the largest European war since WWII ended just ten years ago.</p> +<p>Lake Plitvice National Park is a unique geological phenomena formed by two factors: porous karst limestone which absorbs water and erodes quickly, and mineral deposits from since departed glaciers. <img alt="Walkway, Upper Lake, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicewalkway.gif" width="188"/>As lake water seeped into the Karst, the rock decayed forming a series of lakes and interconnecting waterfalls that cascade through the forests. The national park service has created some trails which pass along the edges of the waterfalls and lakes as they wind their way downhill (or if you’re masochistic and/or not that bright—uphill). </p> +<p>The waters are both the clearest water I’ve ever seen and yet somehow manage to reflect a color close to bright teal and look a bit like photographs of Banff Canada where similar minerals create the same effect on Lake Louise.</p> +<p>But where Lake Louise is so dramatic as to be almost overwhelming, the natural beauty of Plitvice is quieter and less imposing. There is no overlook or scenic viewpoint with flash popping tourists and calendar worthy photographs, to experience Plitvice you have to get out of the car, <img alt="Forest Floor, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitviceforest.gif" width="173"/>off the road and simply wander the forests in the cool of the morning or evening when the light filtering through the forest is softened by the subtle bending forces of the atmosphere and the forest floor becomes a leaf padded wonderland.</p> +<p>We started at the highest lake and walked downward through cascades of water and reed lined lakeshores, passing at times through the forests where the moss-covered old growth creates a canopy through which sunlight trickles in to form pools of light and shadow forever shifting about as you walk. Strangely there was very little in the way of wildlife. The lakes were choked full of fish, but the forests curiously empty, though I did see a frog lazing in the sunshine near the lakeshore. </p> +<p>As with any Karst area there are a number of caves in Lake Plitvice one of which forms a near vertical chasm through the hillside and can be climbed by means of a series of slippery switch-backing stone staircases. At the right time of day beams of sunlight fall in from above, <img alt="Cave, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicecave.gif" width="165"/>illuminating the darker passageways and side tunnels which presumably, with a proper torch could be explored. But I neglected to bring any sort of torch and had to content myself with the main cavern.</p> +<p>The hillsides were covered in the green of spring, the dark shades of firs and the lighter, brighter leaves of beeches and maples. The most remarkable of these trees were the white firs whose branches had nearly florescent tips, the result of fresh spring growth. I spent the first evening in Lake Plitvice studying the white firs around our lodge, trying to make sense of how something so bright could eventually fade to the dark, almost black, green of the inner branches. The newly formed tips were such a striking viridescent contrast to the inner tangle that I couldn’t help but wonder what lay within that nearly impenetrable jumble of darkness nearer to the trunk.</p> +<p>Near the inner tree where the evening light does not penetrate, some hidden gesture of nature as if to remind us that not everything is so easily seen, not everything is in grand sweeping gestures or romantic vistas, sure the highlights capture our attention, but what lies beneath in that dark tangle near the origins? Does the truth perhaps lie in there amongst the dense and inaccessible darkness? Or do I here sound too much like Joseph Conrad obsessed by the darkness of his river and the human heart he saw beating at the end of it?</p> +<p>It occurred to me that my thinking was mistaken, that in fact due to the physics of light, <img alt="New Growth Pine Trees, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" class="postpic" height="169" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicepinetreetips.gif" width="330"/>the inner branches were in fact actually lighter, they appear darker because they reflect less light back to my eye, but without my eye and its entrapments what you might observe is actually a dense forest of light, all that light not given up by the world and therefore seen by us as darkness. Perhaps that’s the reason a number of artists have chosen to start with a completely black canvas and add color on top of it, as if to transcend the limitations of the human eye.</p> +<p>But perhaps I am too technical since there is no way to <em>see</em> the world as we could say it really is, because the only means we have to see it are our own eyes, our poor senses cannot reveal this impenetrable universe in which not all is illuminated, not everything makes a sound and much carries the scent of nothing on some solar wind which none of us will ever perceive let alone understand.</p> +<p>I have read that in pure darkness the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a candle at a distance of forty kilometers. <img alt="Rainbow, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicerainbow.gif" width="196"/>And yet in spite of this remarkable attunement to light, light is our limitation, without it nothing exists for us. Perhaps the inner branches of the firs and pines are merely the unyielding tangle of dead needles and cobwebs and beetles that I imagine and there is no metaphor, no truth which is what drives us out of bed in the vague hint of predawn to stand facing east at the shore of some body of water and wait with such anxious anticipations for the coming of the morning light on the water where, as Flaubert once wrote, “the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal.”</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/refracted-light-and-grace" rel="prev" title=" Refracted Light and Grace">Refracted Light and Grace</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/feel-good-lost" rel="next" title=" Feel Good Lost">Feel Good Lost</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="58" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833475" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="a496fc1235d05d366f822fc10f1ca8d41e5cac40" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicebluewater.gif" width="230" height="195" class="postpicright" alt="Azure Waters, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" /> The Serbs held the area for the duration of the conflict, though it's difficult to imagine why they wanted it. Lake Plitvice is chiefly notable for its natural beauty and as a gateway to the mountains, hardly a militarily strategic spot since no roads actually run up into, let alone over, the mountains. Nevertheless, here is where it began, though as with all beginnings, it did not really start here, it started with the leaders whose poisoned, greedy hearts and minds dragged the former Yugoslavia into a war no one wanted.
+<break>
+My parents rented a car in Budapest and we drove south through Hungary toward the Croatian border. The Hungarian countryside was unremarkable but pleasantly so; the same sort of scenery one might pass from Philadelphia to Pittsburg or London to Bath. Around lunch time we crossed over into Croatia, a country that had previously existed for me simply as a place where bad things happen — war, ethnic cleansing, etc — not a place at all actually, just a word. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicetreereflection.gif" width="180" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Mossy Tree reflection, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" />Like most Americans, I never had a real handle on the Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia war. I was dimly aware that The U.S. at some point, with the backing of U.N. (remember when we played by the rules?) launched a campaign of air strikes in Kosovo. For those that like me could never get it sorted, here's a quick rundown (taken half from guidebooks and half from some Croatians and Serbs I met). The former republic of Yugoslavia was an artificially created state that grew out of the end of world war two and a man named Tito. Tito is an interesting historical figure; he managed with some success to keep one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world together for thirty-five years. Naturally there were some iron-fisted clampdowns and not everyone seems to have been fond of him, but in spite of his occasionally brutal tactics he did keep the peace (if at the expense of some). And his tactics were certainly no more brutal than the war that followed his death. Shortly after Tito died in 1980 Yugoslavia was hit by heavy inflation which resulted from Tito's habit of borrowing foreign money and Yugoslavia's inability to pay it back.
+
+Slovenia was the first the break away and is the most ethnically and religiously coherent of the various Balkan states. For the most part Slovenia managed to stay out of the fighting that would soon engulf the area. The Croatians were the next to go, declaring independence in 1991 and finally getting U.N. recognition in 1992. That left Serbia, Bosnia and tiny Kosovo. The trouble was there were a lot of Serbians in Croatia, Croatians in Serbia, Bosnians in Croatia, etc. It's tough to say there was a good side and bad side in the war that followed, but isn't it always? The Serbians started the war; the first shot were fired at Lake Plitvice National Park where my parents and I were staying. And yes the Serbians are guilty of ethnic cleansing, rounding up and killing thousands of Croatians. But then the Croatians drove the Serbs out and turned around and engaged in more or less the same ethnic cleansing. War. Everybody loses. Everybody dies.
+
+And so today there are four nations Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Herzegovina, where Yugoslavia once existed. [Except, before I was able to get this to press, Montenegro has voted to break away from Serbia, so now there are five. I must publish this before Kosovo does the same.] For the most part the war and its effects are gone. Like Cambodia there is a landmine problem that will continue to exist and kill and main for some time to come, but the tensions seems to have passed and aside from a few bullet riddled buildings and bombed out, caved in roofs, you'd never guess that the largest European war since WWII ended just ten years ago.
+
+Lake Plitvice National Park is a unique geological phenomena formed by two factors: porous karst limestone which absorbs water and erodes quickly, and mineral deposits from since departed glaciers. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicewalkway.gif" width="188" height="250" class="postpicright" alt="Walkway, Upper Lake, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" />As lake water seeped into the Karst, the rock decayed forming a series of lakes and interconnecting waterfalls that cascade through the forests. The national park service has created some trails which pass along the edges of the waterfalls and lakes as they wind their way downhill (or if you're masochistic and/or not that bright—uphill).
+
+The waters are both the clearest water I've ever seen and yet somehow manage to reflect a color close to bright teal and look a bit like photographs of Banff Canada where similar minerals create the same effect on Lake Louise.
+
+But where Lake Louise is so dramatic as to be almost overwhelming, the natural beauty of Plitvice is quieter and less imposing. There is no overlook or scenic viewpoint with flash popping tourists and calendar worthy photographs, to experience Plitvice you have to get out of the car, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/plitviceforest.gif" width="173" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Forest Floor, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" />off the road and simply wander the forests in the cool of the morning or evening when the light filtering through the forest is softened by the subtle bending forces of the atmosphere and the forest floor becomes a leaf padded wonderland.
+
+We started at the highest lake and walked downward through cascades of water and reed lined lakeshores, passing at times through the forests where the moss-covered old growth creates a canopy through which sunlight trickles in to form pools of light and shadow forever shifting about as you walk. Strangely there was very little in the way of wildlife. The lakes were choked full of fish, but the forests curiously empty, though I did see a frog lazing in the sunshine near the lakeshore.
+
+As with any Karst area there are a number of caves in Lake Plitvice one of which forms a near vertical chasm through the hillside and can be climbed by means of a series of slippery switch-backing stone staircases. At the right time of day beams of sunlight fall in from above, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicecave.gif" width="165" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Cave, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" />illuminating the darker passageways and side tunnels which presumably, with a proper torch could be explored. But I neglected to bring any sort of torch and had to content myself with the main cavern.
+
+The hillsides were covered in the green of spring, the dark shades of firs and the lighter, brighter leaves of beeches and maples. The most remarkable of these trees were the white firs whose branches had nearly florescent tips, the result of fresh spring growth. I spent the first evening in Lake Plitvice studying the white firs around our lodge, trying to make sense of how something so bright could eventually fade to the dark, almost black, green of the inner branches. The newly formed tips were such a striking viridescent contrast to the inner tangle that I couldn't help but wonder what lay within that nearly impenetrable jumble of darkness nearer to the trunk.
+
+Near the inner tree where the evening light does not penetrate, some hidden gesture of nature as if to remind us that not everything is so easily seen, not everything is in grand sweeping gestures or romantic vistas, sure the highlights capture our attention, but what lies beneath in that dark tangle near the origins? Does the truth perhaps lie in there amongst the dense and inaccessible darkness? Or do I here sound too much like Joseph Conrad obsessed by the darkness of his river and the human heart he saw beating at the end of it?
+
+It occurred to me that my thinking was mistaken, that in fact due to the physics of light, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicepinetreetips.gif" width="330" height="169" class="postpic" alt="New Growth Pine Trees, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" />the inner branches were in fact actually lighter, they appear darker because they reflect less light back to my eye, but without my eye and its entrapments what you might observe is actually a dense forest of light, all that light not given up by the world and therefore seen by us as darkness. Perhaps that's the reason a number of artists have chosen to start with a completely black canvas and add color on top of it, as if to transcend the limitations of the human eye.
+
+But perhaps I am too technical since there is no way to <em>see</em> the world as we could say it really is, because the only means we have to see it are our own eyes, our poor senses cannot reveal this impenetrable universe in which not all is illuminated, not everything makes a sound and much carries the scent of nothing on some solar wind which none of us will ever perceive let alone understand.
+
+I have read that in pure darkness the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a candle at a distance of forty kilometers. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicerainbow.gif" width="196" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Rainbow, Lake Plitvice, Croatia" />And yet in spite of this remarkable attunement to light, light is our limitation, without it nothing exists for us. Perhaps the inner branches of the firs and pines are merely the unyielding tangle of dead needles and cobwebs and beetles that I imagine and there is no metaphor, no truth which is what drives us out of bed in the vague hint of predawn to stand facing east at the shore of some body of water and wait with such anxious anticipations for the coming of the morning light on the water where, as Flaubert once wrote, “the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal.” diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/closing-time.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/closing-time.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4cb070b --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/closing-time.amp @@ -0,0 +1,180 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Closing Time</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/closing-time"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/05/closing-time"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="This moment, on this train. 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I had been feeling a bit drab, far too much celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening (which is an Australian holiday to remember a battle on the first world war and was technically only appropriate for Peter the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn't have wanted him to celebrate alone).</p> +<p><break> +I spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I'm not mistake, were Kudzu. The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart (Ko Kradan bus service) or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling about begging for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach.</break></p> +<p>Children in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. I thought also of the fact that my time in Southeast Asia was nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs and then poof it disappears from me for now. But it's less the place I will miss that the people, both the locals I've met and the travelers. I'll miss you Southeast Asia, you've changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I'd see.</p> +<p>Like the evening light now falling on the hillsides just north of Trang, a quiet, relaxed light that falls like one of Winslow Homer's washes over the green hills and white thunderheads turning them a golden orange against the distant blackness of a storm over the gulf of Thailand. Thailand in this light becomes a softer, subtler place, less dramatic and harsh than in the glare of the midday sun.</p> +<p>I started to write a bit of reminiscence, try to remember the highlights of my time in this part of the world before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying—be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia. There is no way I could sum anything up for you, no way I can convey what I've seen and done and even what I have written of is only about one tenth of what I've actually done. So I'm not going to try.</p> +<p>I know it's hard to do when you're at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow… that bit about yesterday… one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I'm not very good at this sort of thing; instead I'll leave you with some thoughts from others:</p> +<p class="quote">"To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question." – <cite>Edward Abbey</cite></p> +<p class="quote">"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." – <cite>e.e. cummings</cite></p> +<p class="quote">"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" – <cite>George Eliot</cite></p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/closing-time.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/closing-time.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d740c0d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/closing-time.html @@ -0,0 +1,338 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Closing Time - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="This moment, on this train. 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I had been feeling a bit drab, far too much celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening (which is an Australian holiday to remember a battle on the first world war and was technically only appropriate for Peter the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn’t have wanted him to celebrate alone).</p> +<p>I spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I’m not mistake, were Kudzu. The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart (Ko Kradan bus service) or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling about begging for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach.</p> +<p>Children in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. I thought also of the fact that my time in Southeast Asia was nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs and then poof it disappears from me for now. But it’s less the place I will miss that the people, both the locals I’ve met and the travelers. I’ll miss you Southeast Asia, you’ve changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I’d see.</p> +<p>Like the evening light now falling on the hillsides just north of Trang, a quiet, relaxed light that falls like one of Winslow Homer’s washes over the green hills and white thunderheads turning them a golden orange against the distant blackness of a storm over the gulf of Thailand. Thailand in this light becomes a softer, subtler place, less dramatic and harsh than in the glare of the midday sun.</p> +<p>I started to write a bit of reminiscence, try to remember the highlights of my time in this part of the world before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying—be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I’ll post something from Southeast Asia. There is no way I could sum anything up for you, no way I can convey what I’ve seen and done and even what I have written of is only about one tenth of what I’ve actually done. So I’m not going to try.</p> +<p>I know it’s hard to do when you’re at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow… that bit about yesterday… one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I’m not very good at this sort of thing; instead I’ll leave you with some thoughts from others:</p> +<p class="quote">“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.” – <cite>Edward Abbey</cite></p> + +<p class="quote">“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.” – <cite>e.e. cummings</cite></p> + +<p class="quote">“What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” – <cite>George Eliot</cite></p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise" rel="prev" title=" Bird of Paradise">Bird of Paradise</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/london-calling" rel="next" title=" London Calling">London Calling</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="55" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833476" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="94cb5f82df0c9b381f74bd84ced268fb6cabcc0d" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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I had been feeling a bit drab, far too much celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening (which is an Australian holiday to remember a battle on the first world war and was technically only appropriate for Peter the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn't have wanted him to celebrate alone).
+
+I spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I'm not mistake, were Kudzu. The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart (Ko Kradan bus service) or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling about begging for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach.
+
+Children in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. I thought also of the fact that my time in Southeast Asia was nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs and then poof it disappears from me for now. But it's less the place I will miss that the people, both the locals I've met and the travelers. I'll miss you Southeast Asia, you've changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I'd see.
+
+Like the evening light now falling on the hillsides just north of Trang, a quiet, relaxed light that falls like one of Winslow Homer's washes over the green hills and white thunderheads turning them a golden orange against the distant blackness of a storm over the gulf of Thailand. Thailand in this light becomes a softer, subtler place, less dramatic and harsh than in the glare of the midday sun.
+
+I started to write a bit of reminiscence, try to remember the highlights of my time in this part of the world before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying—be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia. There is no way I could sum anything up for you, no way I can convey what I've seen and done and even what I have written of is only about one tenth of what I've actually done. So I'm not going to try.
+
+I know it's hard to do when you're at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow… that bit about yesterday… one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I'm not very good at this sort of thing; instead I'll leave you with some thoughts from others:
+
+<p class="quote">"To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question." – <cite>Edward Abbey</cite></p>
+
+<p class="quote">"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." – <cite>e.e. cummings</cite></p>
+
+<p class="quote">"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" – <cite>George Eliot</cite></p> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/feel-good-lost.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/feel-good-lost.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..69bc1cb --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/feel-good-lost.amp @@ -0,0 +1,196 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Feel Good Lost</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/feel-good-lost"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/05/feel-good-lost"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the Adriatic Sea and leads, eventually, to the fairy tale city of Dubrovnik. By Scott Gilbertson"/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Feel Good Lost"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/dubrovnik.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Dubrovnik, Croatia"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="HR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Feel Good Lost" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/feel-good-lost" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the Adriatic Sea and leads, eventually, to the fairy tale city of Dubrovnik. 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Eventually, after a four or five hour drive, we arrived at the seaside village of Dubrovnik. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>A walled trading city whose origins can be traced as far back as the 7th century and variously controlled by the Byzantines, Venetians and Turks, Dubrovnik is encircled by high walls and filled with narrow cobblestones streets and looks from above like an endless sea of mottled red and orange roof tiles. </p> +<p>Owing to a curious set of circumstances our original hotel was overbooked and we were forced to go to a nicer one which also gave me a private room (I hate it when that happens). <amp-img alt="Sunset from my Hotel Window, Dubrovnik, Croatia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniksunset.gif" width="173"></amp-img>The Argentinean was very typically European, small rooms heavy draperies and most importantly an old and heavy cherry wood desk, the sort of desk where you could say sit down and get a bit of writing done. I am picky about only two things when it comes to writing, the desk my laptop sits on and/or, as the case may be, the pen I use. The wrong equipment often produces the wrong words, these things are important. Trust me.</p> +<p>The downside to the Argentinean was its location, a bit of a walk from the old walled city, but after getting settled we set out for a stroll through old town. Dubrovnik's old town area feels a bit like stepping back in time several centuries. </p> +<p>Most of the still standing buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, which leveled nearly everything on the Adriatic Sea. There are the remains of a monastery and nunnery, now merely crumbling walls and piled stones, which date from much early than the rest of the city, but by and large the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century. Long known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, many people think Dubrovnik is the most beautiful city in Europe and from what I've seen I believe them. <amp-img alt="Main Street Nightscape, Dubrovnik, Croatia" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniknightmainstreet.gif" width="250"></amp-img>The downside of course is the resulting crowds, but most tourists seemed to be a bit older than me and for the most part headed home around ten. Insomniacs can have the place to themselves late at night and that's when the city looks its best anyway, the polished stone streets reflect the glittering lamplight and no one is around.</p> +<p>Dubrovnik is famous for its red tiled roofs. Apparently the tiles were unique, or perhaps just older than the other towns in the area, whatever the case nearly every photograph you're likely to see of the city is from above looking out over the roofs. Regrettably Dubrovnik was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, thus Dubrovnik's roofscape is not quite what it used to be. But to my eye it looked better with the new and slightly different tiles mottled together with older slightly yellower tiles. <amp-img alt="Dubrovnik Rooftops, Croatia" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikrooftops.gif" width="220"></amp-img>The contrast between the colors made the roofs look less a postcard perfect vision and more of an actual city. After all fairy tales are myth, reality looks a little more like someone parked a howitzer on the nearby hilltop and started lobbing injustice down on the world.</p> +<p>The next day we paid the rather exorbitant admission and set out to walk to walls. Dubrovnik's walls range from a thickness of about four meters to as much as ten in some spots and comprise a distance of roughly two kilometers as they zigzag around the city. Walking the walls seemed a bit surreal to me. It would be more proper to say I staggered about the walls in a sort of trance owing to the fact that I had never actually seen a fairy tale city. As with most things that overwhelm me I found myself staring at the often mundane details instead, stockings hanging from a clothesline, a row of potted plants on a windowsill, an olive tree growing over a crumbling stone wall, a garden of lupines and morningbells growing out of an old tile roof. Perhaps the most surreal thing about Dubrovnik is that it still a functioning city and even as we tourists walked about the walls staring down at the narrow streets running off in all directions, <amp-img alt="Stockings on the Clothesline, Dubrovnik, Croatia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikstockings.gif" width="191"></amp-img>the people of Dubrovnik were tending their gardens and hanging out the days laundry or heading off to work. The sights from the walls looked like something out of a European children's story and any given window may well have contained a princess I simply overlooked.</p> +<p>To the best of my knowledge she was not a princess, but I did meet a lovely Croatia woman one night who, along with a couple of her friends attempted to explain the Bosnia-Croatia-Serbian conflict to me. However, about half way through both Martina and her friend Marco seemed to lose track of the thread. It may have been the beer, it may have been simply that there are better things to do, but halfway through Marco kind of shrugged and said roughly ‘I don't know, a bunch of assholes shot at us and we shot at them and then it stopped and now it's history,' which more or less covers it I believe.<break></break></p> +<p>I promised I would here mention that Marco and Martina had both recently moved to Dubrovnik to work at a lovely little ultra modern bar named <a href="http://www.igotfresh.com" title="Fresh.com">Fresh</a> which also serves various wraps and sandwiches by day. I only went out two nights in Dubrovnik (I had to make use of the lovely desk one night), but Fresh was by far the most fun. It's the sort of spot that aimed both at travelers and locals though on the particular night I was there there were only three of us there and two were new employees which I think made the owner nervous. So I have done my part, if you're in Dubrovnik, <a href="http:/www.igotfresh.com" title="Fresh.com">stop by Fresh</a> and have a drink or two.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Rooftop Garden, Dubrovnik, Croatia" height="169" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikroofgarden.gif" width="230"></amp-img>Dubrovnik was something out of a fairy tale, or at least that's the only way I can contextualize it. I was thinking just the other day about American's fascination with Europe (the number of Americans in Europe is staggering compared to what I saw in Asia. If only 6% of Americans have passports and therefore can leave the country, 5.99% of them come to Europe). I think part of what compels Americans in Europe is simply the idea that there is some history beyond the eighteen-century. Things as simple as that existence of buildings older than the 19th century is somewhat magical to those of us that come from a country whose history is so short. There may be a few old buildings in New York, but by and large American buildings are recent, which is something I don't think Europeans can fully appreciate, surrounded as they are by everyday reminders of the past. We are new. We barely have a past. </p> +<p>When the majority of European cities were being designed and built America was as yet unknown. Thus for an American to be in a city like Dubrovnik is something akin to stepping into a history book. For instance, near where I grew up one of the oldest areas is a city called Orange. Orange has an "old town" circle area whose buildings date from the early 1920s. This is about as far back as Southern California history goes. When I lived in Athens, GA there were a handful of antebellum mansions that date from more like the late 1700s, but nothing goes back further. To see anything that existed before 1700 is I think, for many Americans, a shocking revelation. Sure we <strong>know</strong> that Europe is there and it has all this old architecture, just like I know central America exists, but it won't mean anything to me until I get there.</p> +<p>I've never really been one to dig too deep into the history of places, but something about Dubrovnik compelled me to. I spent the first evening digging around in a local bookshop and discovered that Dubrovnik can trace its history all the way back to the seventh century or so. But what I thought about later was not the actual history of Dubrovnik, but rather the realization that the longer I travel the more estranged I am from my own past and yet the more compelled I feel by history. Not that my past doesn't matter to me, in fact it matters immensely since I see the present as a collision between yesterday and tomorrow, but my own history seems to me now more of something I read in a book than events that actually happened. I could not for instance tell you much about what I was thinking before I felt on this trip, but I could talk for hours about Jim Thompson and the silk trade of Thailand. I don't remember what I did in Los Angeles last summer, but I know exactly when the Khmer Dynasty began construction on Angkor Wat.</p> +<p>When home fades, as it does when you travel, and your past begins to seem more like a secondhand memory, perhaps it's only natural that you feel a bit lost and maybe my fascination with history is merely a grasping at straws to recover something I've lost. <amp-img alt="Narrow Streets, Dubrovnik, Croatia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniknightstreet.gif" width="180"></amp-img>Perhaps this is the reason that expats gravitate toward each other, not because they feel some connection with home, but because they seek others who have lost that connection and the connection to the loss becomes their new home.</p> +<p>A friend of mine used to tell me that, owing to a childhood spent moving from town to town, she never felt like she really had a home. Someone recently wrote me in an email saying, much as Tom Wolfe's novel <em>You Can Never Go Home Again</em> implies, once you've left you will forever feel like a foreigner no matter where you may go. It's a difficult feeling to explain except to say that the further you go, through both time and space, the less you feel connected to anything that happened before you left.</p> +<p>But that's not to say I've forgotten you my friends, people remain every bit as real, it's the events that fade, the mindset that changes. And it isn't a bad thing, on the contrary I find it quite liberating. I am without a doubt happier traveling than I ever have been at home. For the first time in my life, on this trip, I feel like I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. And it feels good.</p> +<p>Many people have written to ask what I plan to do when I get home. My quick answer is always, leave again. It may seem like I've been all over the place on this trip, but from my point of view I've merely revealed how little I've seen. The past, something called home, seems at this point unreal. There is so much of my own past that no longer fits in the present and I fear, as my friend said, that I will forever be a stranger in my own land.</p> +<p>And yet if anything becomes more real without a past, it's a connection to the present. It has become trite, that Buddhist saying, be here now, but now is where we live and no matter what you do you can't live in the past or the future, so indeed you may as well be here now and learn, as I am trying to do, how to feel good lost.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/feel-good-lost.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/feel-good-lost.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8aa2d5b --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/feel-good-lost.html @@ -0,0 +1,346 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Feel Good Lost - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the Adriatic Sea and leads, eventually, to the fairy tale city of Dubrovnik. 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Eventually, after a four or five hour drive, we arrived at the seaside village of Dubrovnik. </p> +<p><break></p> +<p>A walled trading city whose origins can be traced as far back as the 7th century and variously controlled by the Byzantines, Venetians and Turks, Dubrovnik is encircled by high walls and filled with narrow cobblestones streets and looks from above like an endless sea of mottled red and orange roof tiles. </p> +<p>Owing to a curious set of circumstances our original hotel was overbooked and we were forced to go to a nicer one which also gave me a private room (I hate it when that happens). <img alt="Sunset from my Hotel Window, Dubrovnik, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniksunset.gif" width="173"/>The Argentinean was very typically European, small rooms heavy draperies and most importantly an old and heavy cherry wood desk, the sort of desk where you could say sit down and get a bit of writing done. I am picky about only two things when it comes to writing, the desk my laptop sits on and/or, as the case may be, the pen I use. The wrong equipment often produces the wrong words, these things are important. Trust me.</p> +<p>The downside to the Argentinean was its location, a bit of a walk from the old walled city, but after getting settled we set out for a stroll through old town. Dubrovnik’s old town area feels a bit like stepping back in time several centuries. </p> +<p>Most of the still standing buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, which leveled nearly everything on the Adriatic Sea. There are the remains of a monastery and nunnery, now merely crumbling walls and piled stones, which date from much early than the rest of the city, but by and large the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century. Long known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, many people think Dubrovnik is the most beautiful city in Europe and from what I’ve seen I believe them. <img alt="Main Street Nightscape, Dubrovnik, Croatia" class="postpic" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniknightmainstreet.gif" width="250"/>The downside of course is the resulting crowds, but most tourists seemed to be a bit older than me and for the most part headed home around ten. Insomniacs can have the place to themselves late at night and that’s when the city looks its best anyway, the polished stone streets reflect the glittering lamplight and no one is around.</p> +<p>Dubrovnik is famous for its red tiled roofs. Apparently the tiles were unique, or perhaps just older than the other towns in the area, whatever the case nearly every photograph you’re likely to see of the city is from above looking out over the roofs. Regrettably Dubrovnik was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, thus Dubrovnik’s roofscape is not quite what it used to be. But to my eye it looked better with the new and slightly different tiles mottled together with older slightly yellower tiles. <img alt="Dubrovnik Rooftops, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikrooftops.gif" width="220"/>The contrast between the colors made the roofs look less a postcard perfect vision and more of an actual city. After all fairy tales are myth, reality looks a little more like someone parked a howitzer on the nearby hilltop and started lobbing injustice down on the world.</p> +<p>The next day we paid the rather exorbitant admission and set out to walk to walls. Dubrovnik’s walls range from a thickness of about four meters to as much as ten in some spots and comprise a distance of roughly two kilometers as they zigzag around the city. Walking the walls seemed a bit surreal to me. It would be more proper to say I staggered about the walls in a sort of trance owing to the fact that I had never actually seen a fairy tale city. As with most things that overwhelm me I found myself staring at the often mundane details instead, stockings hanging from a clothesline, a row of potted plants on a windowsill, an olive tree growing over a crumbling stone wall, a garden of lupines and morningbells growing out of an old tile roof. Perhaps the most surreal thing about Dubrovnik is that it still a functioning city and even as we tourists walked about the walls staring down at the narrow streets running off in all directions, <img alt="Stockings on the Clothesline, Dubrovnik, Croatia" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikstockings.gif" width="191"/>the people of Dubrovnik were tending their gardens and hanging out the days laundry or heading off to work. The sights from the walls looked like something out of a European children’s story and any given window may well have contained a princess I simply overlooked.</p> +<p>To the best of my knowledge she was not a princess, but I did meet a lovely Croatia woman one night who, along with a couple of her friends attempted to explain the Bosnia-Croatia-Serbian conflict to me. However, about half way through both Martina and her friend Marco seemed to lose track of the thread. It may have been the beer, it may have been simply that there are better things to do, but halfway through Marco kind of shrugged and said roughly ‘I don’t know, a bunch of assholes shot at us and we shot at them and then it stopped and now it’s history,’ which more or less covers it I believe.<break></p> +<p>I promised I would here mention that Marco and Martina had both recently moved to Dubrovnik to work at a lovely little ultra modern bar named <a href="http://www.igotfresh.com" title="Fresh.com">Fresh</a> which also serves various wraps and sandwiches by day. I only went out two nights in Dubrovnik (I had to make use of the lovely desk one night), but Fresh was by far the most fun. It’s the sort of spot that aimed both at travelers and locals though on the particular night I was there there were only three of us there and two were new employees which I think made the owner nervous. So I have done my part, if you’re in Dubrovnik, <a href="http:/www.igotfresh.com" title="Fresh.com">stop by Fresh</a> and have a drink or two.</p> +<p><img alt="Rooftop Garden, Dubrovnik, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="169" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikroofgarden.gif" width="230"/>Dubrovnik was something out of a fairy tale, or at least that’s the only way I can contextualize it. I was thinking just the other day about American’s fascination with Europe (the number of Americans in Europe is staggering compared to what I saw in Asia. If only 6% of Americans have passports and therefore can leave the country, 5.99% of them come to Europe). I think part of what compels Americans in Europe is simply the idea that there is some history beyond the eighteen-century. Things as simple as that existence of buildings older than the 19th century is somewhat magical to those of us that come from a country whose history is so short. There may be a few old buildings in New York, but by and large American buildings are recent, which is something I don’t think Europeans can fully appreciate, surrounded as they are by everyday reminders of the past. We are new. We barely have a past. </p> +<p>When the majority of European cities were being designed and built America was as yet unknown. Thus for an American to be in a city like Dubrovnik is something akin to stepping into a history book. For instance, near where I grew up one of the oldest areas is a city called Orange. Orange has an “old town” circle area whose buildings date from the early 1920s. This is about as far back as Southern California history goes. When I lived in Athens, GA there were a handful of antebellum mansions that date from more like the late 1700s, but nothing goes back further. To see anything that existed before 1700 is I think, for many Americans, a shocking revelation. Sure we <strong>know</strong> that Europe is there and it has all this old architecture, just like I know central America exists, but it won’t mean anything to me until I get there.</p> +<p>I’ve never really been one to dig too deep into the history of places, but something about Dubrovnik compelled me to. I spent the first evening digging around in a local bookshop and discovered that Dubrovnik can trace its history all the way back to the seventh century or so. But what I thought about later was not the actual history of Dubrovnik, but rather the realization that the longer I travel the more estranged I am from my own past and yet the more compelled I feel by history. Not that my past doesn’t matter to me, in fact it matters immensely since I see the present as a collision between yesterday and tomorrow, but my own history seems to me now more of something I read in a book than events that actually happened. I could not for instance tell you much about what I was thinking before I felt on this trip, but I could talk for hours about Jim Thompson and the silk trade of Thailand. I don’t remember what I did in Los Angeles last summer, but I know exactly when the Khmer Dynasty began construction on Angkor Wat.</p> +<p>When home fades, as it does when you travel, and your past begins to seem more like a secondhand memory, perhaps it’s only natural that you feel a bit lost and maybe my fascination with history is merely a grasping at straws to recover something I’ve lost. <img alt="Narrow Streets, Dubrovnik, Croatia" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniknightstreet.gif" width="180"/>Perhaps this is the reason that expats gravitate toward each other, not because they feel some connection with home, but because they seek others who have lost that connection and the connection to the loss becomes their new home.</p> +<p>A friend of mine used to tell me that, owing to a childhood spent moving from town to town, she never felt like she really had a home. Someone recently wrote me in an email saying, much as Tom Wolfe’s novel <em>You Can Never Go Home Again</em> implies, once you’ve left you will forever feel like a foreigner no matter where you may go. It’s a difficult feeling to explain except to say that the further you go, through both time and space, the less you feel connected to anything that happened before you left.</p> +<p>But that’s not to say I’ve forgotten you my friends, people remain every bit as real, it’s the events that fade, the mindset that changes. And it isn’t a bad thing, on the contrary I find it quite liberating. I am without a doubt happier traveling than I ever have been at home. For the first time in my life, on this trip, I feel like I’m doing what I am supposed to be doing. And it feels good.</p> +<p>Many people have written to ask what I plan to do when I get home. My quick answer is always, leave again. It may seem like I’ve been all over the place on this trip, but from my point of view I’ve merely revealed how little I’ve seen. The past, something called home, seems at this point unreal. There is so much of my own past that no longer fits in the present and I fear, as my friend said, that I will forever be a stranger in my own land.</p> +<p>And yet if anything becomes more real without a past, it’s a connection to the present. It has become trite, that Buddhist saying, be here now, but now is where we live and no matter what you do you can’t live in the past or the future, so indeed you may as well be here now and learn, as I am trying to do, how to feel good lost.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/blue-milk" rel="prev" title=" Blue Milk">Blue Milk</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/ghost" rel="next" title=" Ghost">Ghost</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="59" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833475" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="d7e1353c1155c5f1fb707dc84cff0698b33f3439" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikcoastline.gif" width="223" height="220" class="postpic" alt="Coastline Near Dubrovnik, Croatia" />From the road I watched the cobalt seas specked occasionally with a yacht or fishing boat and forming a stark contrast with the red roof tiles of small villages and seaside hamlets such that, after a while, I had the sensation of having played too long with a color wheel, much the same way that staring at a word for too long can make one question the spelling. Eventually, after a four or five hour drive, we arrived at the seaside village of Dubrovnik.
+
+<break>
+
+A walled trading city whose origins can be traced as far back as the 7th century and variously controlled by the Byzantines, Venetians and Turks, Dubrovnik is encircled by high walls and filled with narrow cobblestones streets and looks from above like an endless sea of mottled red and orange roof tiles.
+
+Owing to a curious set of circumstances our original hotel was overbooked and we were forced to go to a nicer one which also gave me a private room (I hate it when that happens). <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovniksunset.gif" width="173" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset from my Hotel Window, Dubrovnik, Croatia" />The Argentinean was very typically European, small rooms heavy draperies and most importantly an old and heavy cherry wood desk, the sort of desk where you could say sit down and get a bit of writing done. I am picky about only two things when it comes to writing, the desk my laptop sits on and/or, as the case may be, the pen I use. The wrong equipment often produces the wrong words, these things are important. Trust me.
+
+The downside to the Argentinean was its location, a bit of a walk from the old walled city, but after getting settled we set out for a stroll through old town. Dubrovnik's old town area feels a bit like stepping back in time several centuries.
+
+Most of the still standing buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, which leveled nearly everything on the Adriatic Sea. There are the remains of a monastery and nunnery, now merely crumbling walls and piled stones, which date from much early than the rest of the city, but by and large the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century. Long known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, many people think Dubrovnik is the most beautiful city in Europe and from what I've seen I believe them. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovniknightmainstreet.gif" width="250" height="188" class="postpic" alt="Main Street Nightscape, Dubrovnik, Croatia" />The downside of course is the resulting crowds, but most tourists seemed to be a bit older than me and for the most part headed home around ten. Insomniacs can have the place to themselves late at night and that's when the city looks its best anyway, the polished stone streets reflect the glittering lamplight and no one is around.
+
+Dubrovnik is famous for its red tiled roofs. Apparently the tiles were unique, or perhaps just older than the other towns in the area, whatever the case nearly every photograph you're likely to see of the city is from above looking out over the roofs. Regrettably Dubrovnik was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, thus Dubrovnik's roofscape is not quite what it used to be. But to my eye it looked better with the new and slightly different tiles mottled together with older slightly yellower tiles. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikrooftops.gif" width="220" height="165" class="postpicright" alt="Dubrovnik Rooftops, Croatia" />The contrast between the colors made the roofs look less a postcard perfect vision and more of an actual city. After all fairy tales are myth, reality looks a little more like someone parked a howitzer on the nearby hilltop and started lobbing injustice down on the world.
+
+The next day we paid the rather exorbitant admission and set out to walk to walls. Dubrovnik's walls range from a thickness of about four meters to as much as ten in some spots and comprise a distance of roughly two kilometers as they zigzag around the city. Walking the walls seemed a bit surreal to me. It would be more proper to say I staggered about the walls in a sort of trance owing to the fact that I had never actually seen a fairy tale city. As with most things that overwhelm me I found myself staring at the often mundane details instead, stockings hanging from a clothesline, a row of potted plants on a windowsill, an olive tree growing over a crumbling stone wall, a garden of lupines and morningbells growing out of an old tile roof. Perhaps the most surreal thing about Dubrovnik is that it still a functioning city and even as we tourists walked about the walls staring down at the narrow streets running off in all directions, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikstockings.gif" width="191" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Stockings on the Clothesline, Dubrovnik, Croatia" />the people of Dubrovnik were tending their gardens and hanging out the days laundry or heading off to work. The sights from the walls looked like something out of a European children's story and any given window may well have contained a princess I simply overlooked.
+
+To the best of my knowledge she was not a princess, but I did meet a lovely Croatia woman one night who, along with a couple of her friends attempted to explain the Bosnia-Croatia-Serbian conflict to me. However, about half way through both Martina and her friend Marco seemed to lose track of the thread. It may have been the beer, it may have been simply that there are better things to do, but halfway through Marco kind of shrugged and said roughly ‘I don't know, a bunch of assholes shot at us and we shot at them and then it stopped and now it's history,' which more or less covers it I believe.<break>
+
+I promised I would here mention that Marco and Martina had both recently moved to Dubrovnik to work at a lovely little ultra modern bar named <a href="http://www.igotfresh.com" title="Fresh.com">Fresh</a> which also serves various wraps and sandwiches by day. I only went out two nights in Dubrovnik (I had to make use of the lovely desk one night), but Fresh was by far the most fun. It's the sort of spot that aimed both at travelers and locals though on the particular night I was there there were only three of us there and two were new employees which I think made the owner nervous. So I have done my part, if you're in Dubrovnik, <a href="http:/www.igotfresh.com" title="Fresh.com">stop by Fresh</a> and have a drink or two.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikroofgarden.gif" width="230" height="169" class="postpicright" alt="Rooftop Garden, Dubrovnik, Croatia" />Dubrovnik was something out of a fairy tale, or at least that's the only way I can contextualize it. I was thinking just the other day about American's fascination with Europe (the number of Americans in Europe is staggering compared to what I saw in Asia. If only 6% of Americans have passports and therefore can leave the country, 5.99% of them come to Europe). I think part of what compels Americans in Europe is simply the idea that there is some history beyond the eighteen-century. Things as simple as that existence of buildings older than the 19th century is somewhat magical to those of us that come from a country whose history is so short. There may be a few old buildings in New York, but by and large American buildings are recent, which is something I don't think Europeans can fully appreciate, surrounded as they are by everyday reminders of the past. We are new. We barely have a past.
+
+When the majority of European cities were being designed and built America was as yet unknown. Thus for an American to be in a city like Dubrovnik is something akin to stepping into a history book. For instance, near where I grew up one of the oldest areas is a city called Orange. Orange has an "old town" circle area whose buildings date from the early 1920s. This is about as far back as Southern California history goes. When I lived in Athens, GA there were a handful of antebellum mansions that date from more like the late 1700s, but nothing goes back further. To see anything that existed before 1700 is I think, for many Americans, a shocking revelation. Sure we **know** that Europe is there and it has all this old architecture, just like I know central America exists, but it won't mean anything to me until I get there.
+
+I've never really been one to dig too deep into the history of places, but something about Dubrovnik compelled me to. I spent the first evening digging around in a local bookshop and discovered that Dubrovnik can trace its history all the way back to the seventh century or so. But what I thought about later was not the actual history of Dubrovnik, but rather the realization that the longer I travel the more estranged I am from my own past and yet the more compelled I feel by history. Not that my past doesn't matter to me, in fact it matters immensely since I see the present as a collision between yesterday and tomorrow, but my own history seems to me now more of something I read in a book than events that actually happened. I could not for instance tell you much about what I was thinking before I felt on this trip, but I could talk for hours about Jim Thompson and the silk trade of Thailand. I don't remember what I did in Los Angeles last summer, but I know exactly when the Khmer Dynasty began construction on Angkor Wat.
+
+When home fades, as it does when you travel, and your past begins to seem more like a secondhand memory, perhaps it's only natural that you feel a bit lost and maybe my fascination with history is merely a grasping at straws to recover something I've lost. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovniknightstreet.gif" width="180" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Narrow Streets, Dubrovnik, Croatia" />Perhaps this is the reason that expats gravitate toward each other, not because they feel some connection with home, but because they seek others who have lost that connection and the connection to the loss becomes their new home.
+
+A friend of mine used to tell me that, owing to a childhood spent moving from town to town, she never felt like she really had a home. Someone recently wrote me in an email saying, much as Tom Wolfe's novel *You Can Never Go Home Again* implies, once you've left you will forever feel like a foreigner no matter where you may go. It's a difficult feeling to explain except to say that the further you go, through both time and space, the less you feel connected to anything that happened before you left.
+
+But that's not to say I've forgotten you my friends, people remain every bit as real, it's the events that fade, the mindset that changes. And it isn't a bad thing, on the contrary I find it quite liberating. I am without a doubt happier traveling than I ever have been at home. For the first time in my life, on this trip, I feel like I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. And it feels good.
+
+Many people have written to ask what I plan to do when I get home. My quick answer is always, leave again. It may seem like I've been all over the place on this trip, but from my point of view I've merely revealed how little I've seen. The past, something called home, seems at this point unreal. There is so much of my own past that no longer fits in the present and I fear, as my friend said, that I will forever be a stranger in my own land.
+
+And yet if anything becomes more real without a past, it's a connection to the present. It has become trite, that Buddhist saying, be here now, but now is where we live and no matter what you do you can't live in the past or the future, so indeed you may as well be here now and learn, as I am trying to do, how to feel good lost.
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A place, a scene on a street, a city, a whole country, colors your memory like a child's crayon scribbling across your pupils. Jaisalmer India looks reddish brown and pink in my memory, Laos a dusty beige mist, Ko Kradan Thailand a green and blue cloak… and Prague was a pale yellow just this side of ochre. </p> +<p><break> +<amp-img alt="Prague, Czech Republic, night" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguetowernight.jpg" width="165"></amp-img>It started from the moment we drove into town. Mildly lost, displaced and confused by road construction, we passed by a yellow building several times. I cannot say exactly why I noticed this yellow building over a thousand other, and perhaps more striking details, but it is the yellow building I remember. </break></p> +<p>And once the building lodged itself in my mind I seemed to develop some heightened observational acuity for the color yellow — stale champagne flat in its flute, crushed threads of saffron in little tins at the market, primrose blooms in a window planter, lotus in a pond, cough syrup for a child, ecru linen on the laundry line, tarnished gold lamps languishing unused in the dark corners of a hotel room, gilded Torah scrolls, the jaundiced skin of a Golem, faded magazines at the newsstand, sunflowers in a store window, chicken skin on the chopping block and a thousand other snapshots tinted yellow.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Kafka Statue, Prague, Czech Republic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguekafkastatue.jpg" width="173"></amp-img>I read somewhere that yellow daffodils are a symbol of unrequited love. An agreed upon meaning for yellow buildings has thus far remained elusive in my research. Which is to say I never looked into it; I am content with the simplicity of memory unencumbered by meaning. Memory is a strange and mysterious thing, not to be fully trusted. For instance I can't say for sure, but I feel like I saw yellow daffodils in the New Jewish Cemetery near the grave of Franz Kafka, but it's entirely possible I invented this detail on reflection.</p> +<p>Whatever the case I do know that Prague was home to Franz Kafka, a man who has in death assumed a life so large his last name is an adjective in common parlance, Kafkaesque—an adjective I'm pretty sure I've used somewhere in these very pages.</p> +<p>I made a cursory visit to Kafka's tomb, just as I did to Proust's in Pere Lechaise, compelled by some sense of validation, as if standing in front of these slabs of granite one can finally feel like one has reached the end of the literary journey and yet knowing that in fact not only is that not true, but just the opposite is true. As with any journey made mainly in the mental space of books and stories, the infringement of the real into the world of the imagination was wholly disappointing. Kafka's grave is unremarkable in every way, a stone monument <amp-img alt="Franz Kafka's Grave, Prague" height="210" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguekafkagrave.jpg" width="158"></amp-img>standing over a patch of grass beneath which lies what at this point probably little more than dust and teeth, not unlike the dusty yellowing pages of Kafka's books mingling with the old stained-ivory smell of dust mites and dry rot in the musty air of libraries.</p> +<p>I have spent and still do spend, a fair amount of my time lost in books, stories and poems. One of my favorite lines from Kafka addresses literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”</p> +<p>Someone recently wrote me an email asking me to spend more time talking about places and less time in these abstractions, talking about perhaps nothing at all. A Hemingway fan no doubt. I hate to disappoint, but I seem to feel the need to wield a hatchet against my own icy seas. It is tempting to extend Kafka's analogy in this day and age when there actually is a northwest passage and the literal ice of our seas melts with every passing day, but what I personally find compelling about Kafka's words is the absolute futility they imply. He could for instance have said a hatchet which chops at the frozen blocks of ice inside us, certainly that would imply some chance of success, but he did not. He wrote “frozen seas,” against which a hatchet is most certainly futile.</p> +<p>Futile but important, for without the hatchet there is no hope at all. And I think Kafka would agree with the notion that while literature may be a hatchet, there are other tools available, the important thing is to chop at the frozen seas, lest they overwhelm us and freeze our souls. And by soul I mean something akin to what I believe James Brown probably meant, something that is at once within us and outside us, something that does not seem to yellow with the passing of time, but as many believe, shall even outlast our teeth, our bones, our history far past the time when we are only a name in someone else's memory. </p> +<p>Just north of Prague's old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue on Siroka Street in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust.</p> +<p>It is a stark place and yet not cold. It has a calmative warmth beneath the monstrousness of what it bears witness to that seems somehow hopeful in spite of the past. Some might believe that it is time to move beyond the Holocaust, time to forget, but they are wrong. It is important that we do not forget the Holocaust of World War Two nor any of the many that have happened since. It is important to remember these atrocities not because that might prevent another, which as we surely must realize by now is wishful thinking, <amp-img alt="Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguepinkascloseup.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>but because those who died ought to be remembered as everyone who has died ought to be remembered, not for how they died, but for who they were. The Pinkas synagogue reminds us not of the deaths of the victims, but of the lives they once had, reduced here to their essence, their names. </p> +<p>Upstairs in the Pinkas Synagogue there is an exhibit of paintings done by the children in Theresienstadt (originally named Terezin), paintings that resemble the ones on your refrigerator if you have children or the ones your parents once hung on their refrigerator, except that these were painted by children awaiting transportation to the gas chamber. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguepinkas.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>It's easy to get rather angry at humanity when confronted with such things, but I stood there thinking instead that those children, young as they were and headed to a fate none of us can imagine, nevertheless managed to produce beautiful finger and brush paintings. Perhaps they were too young to realize what was happening to them, perhaps they were too innocent to conceive of such a thing happening, but what if they did know? What if they knew full well that they were going to die and yet they went on anyway, painting and being children because there was nothing else they could do? Because there is nothing else any of us can do.</p> +<p>Chopping. Chopping. Chopping.</p> +<p>[Today's title comes from a composition by John Cage. For those that aren't familiar with Cage or the piece, 4'33" is a piece of music in which the pianist comes on stage, opens the lid of the piano and sits down to play. For 4 minutes and thirty-three seconds he plays nothing. He then closes the piano, bows and walks offstage.</p> +<p>You can see where it would be tempting to see this as a somewhat pretentious intellectual exercise, but as with Duchamp's Fountain, I think to see this as <em>only</em> as some challenge to our accepted notions is simple minded. Of course it flies in the face of convention, but it also does much more.</p> +<p>Music, rhythm, harmony, melody and all its other components are capable of inducing all sorts of amazing things in us, both beautiful and terrifying which as Proust says in the quote that started this piece, widens our soul. So what happens when the music is not music, but an absence of music? What Cage has done is handed us Kafka's hatchet, in 4'33" the chopping of the frozen seas is left to the individual.</p> +<p>I've never actually seen 4'33" performed, but I would venture to say that it isn't silent. While the performer may not make any noise, there will likely be plenty of noise, traffic outside the theatre, a airplane passing overhead, perhaps the wail of an ambulance siren, and even inside—the ruffling of programs and papers of fellow concert goers shifting in their seats, the creaks and groans of humanity sitting still, perhaps even the sound of blood rushing through your veins and throbbing in your eardrums.</p> +<p>Unlike most public performances, 4'33" is intensely personal. There is no hatchet save the one in your own hand and perhaps 4'33"'s poor reception in some quarters comes from the fact that confronting the frozen seas alone is a desolate and intimidating experience, one we often shrink from in fear. But if the children of Terezin were capable of joy in the face of such a monstrosity, surely we can find a similar kind of hope.</p> +<p>I can't explain what it's like to stand in a place like Pinkas Synagogue or the killing fields or S21 or any other memorial of mass slaughter, but I can say this, there was no music and yet nor was there silence.] </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7cd30f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds.html @@ -0,0 +1,350 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="What happens when your last name becomes an adjective? 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A place, a scene on a street, a city, a whole country, colors your memory like a child’s crayon scribbling across your pupils. Jaisalmer India looks reddish brown and pink in my memory, Laos a dusty beige mist, Ko Kradan Thailand a green and blue cloak… and Prague was a pale yellow just this side of ochre. </p> +<p><break> +<img alt="Prague, Czech Republic, night" class="postpic" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguetowernight.jpg" width="165"/>It started from the moment we drove into town. Mildly lost, displaced and confused by road construction, we passed by a yellow building several times. I cannot say exactly why I noticed this yellow building over a thousand other, and perhaps more striking details, but it is the yellow building I remember. </p> +<p>And once the building lodged itself in my mind I seemed to develop some heightened observational acuity for the color yellow — stale champagne flat in its flute, crushed threads of saffron in little tins at the market, primrose blooms in a window planter, lotus in a pond, cough syrup for a child, ecru linen on the laundry line, tarnished gold lamps languishing unused in the dark corners of a hotel room, gilded Torah scrolls, the jaundiced skin of a Golem, faded magazines at the newsstand, sunflowers in a store window, chicken skin on the chopping block and a thousand other snapshots tinted yellow.</p> +<p><img alt="Kafka Statue, Prague, Czech Republic" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguekafkastatue.jpg" width="173"/>I read somewhere that yellow daffodils are a symbol of unrequited love. An agreed upon meaning for yellow buildings has thus far remained elusive in my research. Which is to say I never looked into it; I am content with the simplicity of memory unencumbered by meaning. Memory is a strange and mysterious thing, not to be fully trusted. For instance I can’t say for sure, but I feel like I saw yellow daffodils in the New Jewish Cemetery near the grave of Franz Kafka, but it’s entirely possible I invented this detail on reflection.</p> +<p>Whatever the case I do know that Prague was home to Franz Kafka, a man who has in death assumed a life so large his last name is an adjective in common parlance, Kafkaesque—an adjective I’m pretty sure I’ve used somewhere in these very pages.</p> +<p>I made a cursory visit to Kafka’s tomb, just as I did to Proust’s in Pere Lechaise, compelled by some sense of validation, as if standing in front of these slabs of granite one can finally feel like one has reached the end of the literary journey and yet knowing that in fact not only is that not true, but just the opposite is true. As with any journey made mainly in the mental space of books and stories, the infringement of the real into the world of the imagination was wholly disappointing. Kafka’s grave is unremarkable in every way, a stone monument <img alt="Franz Kafka's Grave, Prague" class="postpic" height="210" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguekafkagrave.jpg" width="158"/>standing over a patch of grass beneath which lies what at this point probably little more than dust and teeth, not unlike the dusty yellowing pages of Kafka’s books mingling with the old stained-ivory smell of dust mites and dry rot in the musty air of libraries.</p> +<p>I have spent and still do spend, a fair amount of my time lost in books, stories and poems. One of my favorite lines from Kafka addresses literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”</p> +<p>Someone recently wrote me an email asking me to spend more time talking about places and less time in these abstractions, talking about perhaps nothing at all. A Hemingway fan no doubt. I hate to disappoint, but I seem to feel the need to wield a hatchet against my own icy seas. It is tempting to extend Kafka’s analogy in this day and age when there actually is a northwest passage and the literal ice of our seas melts with every passing day, but what I personally find compelling about Kafka’s words is the absolute futility they imply. He could for instance have said a hatchet which chops at the frozen blocks of ice inside us, certainly that would imply some chance of success, but he did not. He wrote “frozen seas,” against which a hatchet is most certainly futile.</p> +<p>Futile but important, for without the hatchet there is no hope at all. And I think Kafka would agree with the notion that while literature may be a hatchet, there are other tools available, the important thing is to chop at the frozen seas, lest they overwhelm us and freeze our souls. And by soul I mean something akin to what I believe James Brown probably meant, something that is at once within us and outside us, something that does not seem to yellow with the passing of time, but as many believe, shall even outlast our teeth, our bones, our history far past the time when we are only a name in someone else’s memory. </p> +<p>Just north of Prague’s old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue on Siroka Street in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust.</p> +<p>It is a stark place and yet not cold. It has a calmative warmth beneath the monstrousness of what it bears witness to that seems somehow hopeful in spite of the past. Some might believe that it is time to move beyond the Holocaust, time to forget, but they are wrong. It is important that we do not forget the Holocaust of World War Two nor any of the many that have happened since. It is important to remember these atrocities not because that might prevent another, which as we surely must realize by now is wishful thinking, <img alt="Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague" class="postpicright" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguepinkascloseup.jpg" width="240"/>but because those who died ought to be remembered as everyone who has died ought to be remembered, not for how they died, but for who they were. The Pinkas synagogue reminds us not of the deaths of the victims, but of the lives they once had, reduced here to their essence, their names. </p> +<p>Upstairs in the Pinkas Synagogue there is an exhibit of paintings done by the children in Theresienstadt (originally named Terezin), paintings that resemble the ones on your refrigerator if you have children or the ones your parents once hung on their refrigerator, except that these were painted by children awaiting transportation to the gas chamber. </p> +<p><img alt="Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague" class="postpic" height="165" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguepinkas.jpg" width="220"/>It’s easy to get rather angry at humanity when confronted with such things, but I stood there thinking instead that those children, young as they were and headed to a fate none of us can imagine, nevertheless managed to produce beautiful finger and brush paintings. Perhaps they were too young to realize what was happening to them, perhaps they were too innocent to conceive of such a thing happening, but what if they did know? What if they knew full well that they were going to die and yet they went on anyway, painting and being children because there was nothing else they could do? Because there is nothing else any of us can do.</p> +<p>Chopping. Chopping. Chopping.</p> +<p>[Today’s title comes from a composition by John Cage. For those that aren’t familiar with Cage or the piece, 4‘33” is a piece of music in which the pianist comes on stage, opens the lid of the piano and sits down to play. For 4 minutes and thirty-three seconds he plays nothing. He then closes the piano, bows and walks offstage.</p> +<p>You can see where it would be tempting to see this as a somewhat pretentious intellectual exercise, but as with Duchamp’s Fountain, I think to see this as <em>only</em> as some challenge to our accepted notions is simple minded. Of course it flies in the face of convention, but it also does much more.</p> +<p>Music, rhythm, harmony, melody and all its other components are capable of inducing all sorts of amazing things in us, both beautiful and terrifying which as Proust says in the quote that started this piece, widens our soul. So what happens when the music is not music, but an absence of music? What Cage has done is handed us Kafka’s hatchet, in 4‘33” the chopping of the frozen seas is left to the individual.</p> +<p>I’ve never actually seen 4‘33” performed, but I would venture to say that it isn’t silent. While the performer may not make any noise, there will likely be plenty of noise, traffic outside the theatre, a airplane passing overhead, perhaps the wail of an ambulance siren, and even inside—the ruffling of programs and papers of fellow concert goers shifting in their seats, the creaks and groans of humanity sitting still, perhaps even the sound of blood rushing through your veins and throbbing in your eardrums.</p> +<p>Unlike most public performances, 4‘33” is intensely personal. There is no hatchet save the one in your own hand and perhaps 4‘33“‘s poor reception in some quarters comes from the fact that confronting the frozen seas alone is a desolate and intimidating experience, one we often shrink from in fear. But if the children of Terezin were capable of joy in the face of such a monstrosity, surely we can find a similar kind of hope.</p> +<p>I can’t explain what it’s like to stand in a place like Pinkas Synagogue or the killing fields or S21 or any other memorial of mass slaughter, but I can say this, there was no music and yet nor was there silence.] </p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/inside-and-out" rel="prev" title=" Inside and Out">Inside and Out</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/unreflected" rel="next" title=" Unreflected">Unreflected</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="63" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833474" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="f3ab14e0a40905bf162d3b0c3221aff56431dbeb" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+<span class="drop">P</span>laces have signature colors, they inscribe themselves onto you in liquid strokes of a pen you never quite see until the ink rolls down your forehead and covers your eyes with a thin veil, the mist through which you come to see a place. A place, a scene on a street, a city, a whole country, colors your memory like a child's crayon scribbling across your pupils. Jaisalmer India looks reddish brown and pink in my memory, Laos a dusty beige mist, Ko Kradan Thailand a green and blue cloak… and Prague was a pale yellow just this side of ochre.
+
+<break>
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/praguetowernight.jpg" width="165" height="220" class="postpic" alt="Prague, Czech Republic, night" />It started from the moment we drove into town. Mildly lost, displaced and confused by road construction, we passed by a yellow building several times. I cannot say exactly why I noticed this yellow building over a thousand other, and perhaps more striking details, but it is the yellow building I remember.
+
+And once the building lodged itself in my mind I seemed to develop some heightened observational acuity for the color yellow — stale champagne flat in its flute, crushed threads of saffron in little tins at the market, primrose blooms in a window planter, lotus in a pond, cough syrup for a child, ecru linen on the laundry line, tarnished gold lamps languishing unused in the dark corners of a hotel room, gilded Torah scrolls, the jaundiced skin of a Golem, faded magazines at the newsstand, sunflowers in a store window, chicken skin on the chopping block and a thousand other snapshots tinted yellow.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/praguekafkastatue.jpg" width="173" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="Kafka Statue, Prague, Czech Republic" />I read somewhere that yellow daffodils are a symbol of unrequited love. An agreed upon meaning for yellow buildings has thus far remained elusive in my research. Which is to say I never looked into it; I am content with the simplicity of memory unencumbered by meaning. Memory is a strange and mysterious thing, not to be fully trusted. For instance I can't say for sure, but I feel like I saw yellow daffodils in the New Jewish Cemetery near the grave of Franz Kafka, but it's entirely possible I invented this detail on reflection.
+
+Whatever the case I do know that Prague was home to Franz Kafka, a man who has in death assumed a life so large his last name is an adjective in common parlance, Kafkaesque—an adjective I'm pretty sure I've used somewhere in these very pages.
+
+I made a cursory visit to Kafka's tomb, just as I did to Proust's in Pere Lechaise, compelled by some sense of validation, as if standing in front of these slabs of granite one can finally feel like one has reached the end of the literary journey and yet knowing that in fact not only is that not true, but just the opposite is true. As with any journey made mainly in the mental space of books and stories, the infringement of the real into the world of the imagination was wholly disappointing. Kafka's grave is unremarkable in every way, a stone monument <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/praguekafkagrave.jpg" width="158" height="210" class="postpic" alt="Franz Kafka's Grave, Prague" />standing over a patch of grass beneath which lies what at this point probably little more than dust and teeth, not unlike the dusty yellowing pages of Kafka's books mingling with the old stained-ivory smell of dust mites and dry rot in the musty air of libraries.
+
+I have spent and still do spend, a fair amount of my time lost in books, stories and poems. One of my favorite lines from Kafka addresses literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”
+
+Someone recently wrote me an email asking me to spend more time talking about places and less time in these abstractions, talking about perhaps nothing at all. A Hemingway fan no doubt. I hate to disappoint, but I seem to feel the need to wield a hatchet against my own icy seas. It is tempting to extend Kafka's analogy in this day and age when there actually is a northwest passage and the literal ice of our seas melts with every passing day, but what I personally find compelling about Kafka's words is the absolute futility they imply. He could for instance have said a hatchet which chops at the frozen blocks of ice inside us, certainly that would imply some chance of success, but he did not. He wrote “frozen seas,” against which a hatchet is most certainly futile.
+
+Futile but important, for without the hatchet there is no hope at all. And I think Kafka would agree with the notion that while literature may be a hatchet, there are other tools available, the important thing is to chop at the frozen seas, lest they overwhelm us and freeze our souls. And by soul I mean something akin to what I believe James Brown probably meant, something that is at once within us and outside us, something that does not seem to yellow with the passing of time, but as many believe, shall even outlast our teeth, our bones, our history far past the time when we are only a name in someone else's memory.
+
+Just north of Prague's old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue on Siroka Street in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust.
+
+It is a stark place and yet not cold. It has a calmative warmth beneath the monstrousness of what it bears witness to that seems somehow hopeful in spite of the past. Some might believe that it is time to move beyond the Holocaust, time to forget, but they are wrong. It is important that we do not forget the Holocaust of World War Two nor any of the many that have happened since. It is important to remember these atrocities not because that might prevent another, which as we surely must realize by now is wishful thinking, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/praguepinkascloseup.jpg" width="240" height="180" class="postpicright" alt="Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague" />but because those who died ought to be remembered as everyone who has died ought to be remembered, not for how they died, but for who they were. The Pinkas synagogue reminds us not of the deaths of the victims, but of the lives they once had, reduced here to their essence, their names.
+
+Upstairs in the Pinkas Synagogue there is an exhibit of paintings done by the children in Theresienstadt (originally named Terezin), paintings that resemble the ones on your refrigerator if you have children or the ones your parents once hung on their refrigerator, except that these were painted by children awaiting transportation to the gas chamber.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/praguepinkas.jpg" width="220" height="165" class="postpic" alt="Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague" />It's easy to get rather angry at humanity when confronted with such things, but I stood there thinking instead that those children, young as they were and headed to a fate none of us can imagine, nevertheless managed to produce beautiful finger and brush paintings. Perhaps they were too young to realize what was happening to them, perhaps they were too innocent to conceive of such a thing happening, but what if they did know? What if they knew full well that they were going to die and yet they went on anyway, painting and being children because there was nothing else they could do? Because there is nothing else any of us can do.
+
+Chopping. Chopping. Chopping.
+
+[Today's title comes from a composition by John Cage. For those that aren't familiar with Cage or the piece, 4'33" is a piece of music in which the pianist comes on stage, opens the lid of the piano and sits down to play. For 4 minutes and thirty-three seconds he plays nothing. He then closes the piano, bows and walks offstage.
+
+You can see where it would be tempting to see this as a somewhat pretentious intellectual exercise, but as with Duchamp's Fountain, I think to see this as <em>only</em> as some challenge to our accepted notions is simple minded. Of course it flies in the face of convention, but it also does much more.
+
+Music, rhythm, harmony, melody and all its other components are capable of inducing all sorts of amazing things in us, both beautiful and terrifying which as Proust says in the quote that started this piece, widens our soul. So what happens when the music is not music, but an absence of music? What Cage has done is handed us Kafka's hatchet, in 4'33" the chopping of the frozen seas is left to the individual.
+
+I've never actually seen 4'33" performed, but I would venture to say that it isn't silent. While the performer may not make any noise, there will likely be plenty of noise, traffic outside the theatre, a airplane passing overhead, perhaps the wail of an ambulance siren, and even inside—the ruffling of programs and papers of fellow concert goers shifting in their seats, the creaks and groans of humanity sitting still, perhaps even the sound of blood rushing through your veins and throbbing in your eardrums.
+
+Unlike most public performances, 4'33" is intensely personal. There is no hatchet save the one in your own hand and perhaps 4'33"'s poor reception in some quarters comes from the fact that confronting the frozen seas alone is a desolate and intimidating experience, one we often shrink from in fear. But if the children of Terezin were capable of joy in the face of such a monstrosity, surely we can find a similar kind of hope.
+
+I can't explain what it's like to stand in a place like Pinkas Synagogue or the killing fields or S21 or any other memorial of mass slaughter, but I can say this, there was no music and yet nor was there silence.] diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/ghost.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/ghost.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5bfcdc6 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/ghost.amp @@ -0,0 +1,188 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Ghost</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/ghost"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/05/ghost"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="From the cobblestone alleys and arched doorways of Trogir, Croatia to Ljubljana, Slovenia, home of Europe's greatest graffiti. 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Like Dubrovnik, Trogir was a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir's wall has largely crumbled away or been removed, though I know not how or why. Still it had the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and high towering forts that give all these Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality. </p> +<p>Trogir was notably different from Dubrovnik chiefly in that it was not inundated with tourists. There were tourists to be sure, but most of them were yachters who contented themselves by sitting in the waterfront cafes just in front of their moorings, admiring each other's yachts and telling sea tales. </p> +<p>The rest of the town was given over to a handful of tourists who disappeared among the narrow winding streets such that I often found myself walking for long periods of time undisturbed by a soul. We wandered into the main church,<amp-img alt="sunlight on alter, Trogir, Croatia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirchurchalter.jpg" width="210"></amp-img> a large stone block affair just off the central square and only recently restored, just before sundown. The church was small and unremarkable save for its old tombstones or at least headstones, embedded right in the floor next to the pews. I had recently finished reading an essay by W.G. Sebald in which he argues, among other things, that our use of tombstones and crypts is really spurred by an urge to lock the dead in the earth, which we cleverly disguise to ourselves as commemorative memorials. </p> +<p>I stood for a minute in the church watching the last sunbeams fall in through the windows near the roofline wondering if in fact just beneath me, buried in the fourteenth century, was some man or woman desperate to get out and wander the earth, slightly smaller than in life, as the dead are said to be, but larger in understanding and memory. <amp-img alt="Grave, Trogir, Croatia" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirchurchgrave.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>I think it was Nabakov who said in one of his novel that writers and the dead travel in the same thing—the past. Indeed I have found, not just through sloth, that I prefer to write these anecdotes as past tense and see what remains with me a few days after I have left. </p> +<p>This is why perhaps I may seem to have missed some fairly key things, like for instance the oldest pharmacy in the world which I saw in Dubrovnik, because the truth is, I simply don't have time to record everything. I remember the pharmacy now with its a collection of shelves full of dusty bottles and curios who use has long been forgotten, but when <amp-img alt="Church Bell, Trogir, Croatia" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirbell.jpg" width="163"></amp-img>I came to write of Dubrovnik it was not there. Memories come and go, pass through us like the ghosts that live in them. Sometimes they are there when we want them, sometimes they are not, and sometimes they are there when we don't want them as well. </p> +<p>So if I say in Trogir that I remember little more than the peculiar quality of the light as the sun set and electric lanterns began to come on, you will forgive me I hope for my inability to say more. Certain memories passed through me walking the streets of Trogir in the fading twilight, that are too old to speak of here, too far gone to retrace, it is enough for them to merely pass through, a bit of warmth and then they move on. I can say of Trogir though, <amp-img alt="Streets at Night, Trogir, Croatia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirstreetnight.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>if you don't believe in ghosts, have a late night walk in the old city and tell me how you feel about ghosts when you're done. I have never doubted that the dead move among us, and never been so sure of it as standing in that church staring down at the tombstones from the thirteenth century.</p> +<p>The following morning after watching the fisherman board their craft and motor out to sea, we climbed back in the car and drove on north to Ljubljana, Slovenia. Some of you may know that I have for some years (though not recently) published a literary journal under the name castagraf (which is currently being held ransom by some asshole domain squatters, so no link at the moment). To come to the point, in the course of several issues castagraf <amp-img alt="Ljubljana, Slovenia" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanariver.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>I published a number of Slovenian authors, most notably the highly esteemed Tomaz Salamun, Slovenia's national poet, or whatever title they have for the same idea. But along with Tomaz we published to two younger poets whom I would have liked to meet in Ljubljana, but I did not, owing in part to my own incompetence and in part to the estranged relationship I have with my former co-editor who processes their email address.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Evening light, Ljubljana, Slovenia" height="158" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanasunlight.jpg" width="210"></amp-img>So I was unable to look you up Primoz and Gregor for which I am sorry. I should liked to have met you both. But I did enjoy Ljubljana for the two says I spent there, a truly lovely city to call home. Ljubljana is one part old European city and one part college town owing to its relatively small size and large university. The center of town is two streets running parallel on opposite sides of the river, each street lined with cafes and restaurants frequented by locals and tourists alike. </p> +<p>Though we spent a very short time in Ljubljana it remains one if my favorite European cities and it was fun to wander the streets where so many of my friends have previously been and which I had heard no shortage of stories about. It was nice as well to see the hometown of Tomaz Salamun whose poetry has had no small influence on my own.</p> +<p>I spent the evening walking the streets trying to get a feel for the city. As the sun set and it began to grow cooler I stopped to put on a sweater and noticed a singularly striking and a little bit frightening piece of graffiti. What struck me about it was the contrast between <amp-img alt="Graffiti, Ljubljana, Slovenia" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanagraffiti.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>the gleaming, blood dripping eyes of the bat-like creature above a bed of blooming flowers which seemed for a moment to perfectly encapsulate the contrast between pain and joy that makes up our world. Later that night I dreamed about the strange bat creature, something about it got the better of my imagination, already overrun as it was with ghosts and memories of the dead, but at the end of the dream, of which I recall very little, the flowers were just coming up out of the soil, and the bat was no longer anywhere to be found. +<break></break></p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/ghost.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/ghost.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..73502ff --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/ghost.html @@ -0,0 +1,338 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Ghost - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="From the cobblestone alleys and arched doorways of Trogir, Croatia to Ljubljana, Slovenia, home of Europe's greatest graffiti. 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Like Dubrovnik, Trogir was a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir’s wall has largely crumbled away or been removed, though I know not how or why. Still it had the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and high towering forts that give all these Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality. </p> +<p>Trogir was notably different from Dubrovnik chiefly in that it was not inundated with tourists. There were tourists to be sure, but most of them were yachters who contented themselves by sitting in the waterfront cafes just in front of their moorings, admiring each other’s yachts and telling sea tales. </p> +<p>The rest of the town was given over to a handful of tourists who disappeared among the narrow winding streets such that I often found myself walking for long periods of time undisturbed by a soul. We wandered into the main church,<img alt="sunlight on alter, Trogir, Croatia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirchurchalter.jpg" width="210"/> a large stone block affair just off the central square and only recently restored, just before sundown. The church was small and unremarkable save for its old tombstones or at least headstones, embedded right in the floor next to the pews. I had recently finished reading an essay by W.G. Sebald in which he argues, among other things, that our use of tombstones and crypts is really spurred by an urge to lock the dead in the earth, which we cleverly disguise to ourselves as commemorative memorials. </p> +<p>I stood for a minute in the church watching the last sunbeams fall in through the windows near the roofline wondering if in fact just beneath me, buried in the fourteenth century, was some man or woman desperate to get out and wander the earth, slightly smaller than in life, as the dead are said to be, but larger in understanding and memory. <img alt="Grave, Trogir, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirchurchgrave.jpg" width="230"/>I think it was Nabakov who said in one of his novel that writers and the dead travel in the same thing—the past. Indeed I have found, not just through sloth, that I prefer to write these anecdotes as past tense and see what remains with me a few days after I have left. </p> +<p>This is why perhaps I may seem to have missed some fairly key things, like for instance the oldest pharmacy in the world which I saw in Dubrovnik, because the truth is, I simply don’t have time to record everything. I remember the pharmacy now with its a collection of shelves full of dusty bottles and curios who use has long been forgotten, but when <img alt="Church Bell, Trogir, Croatia" class="postpic" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirbell.jpg" width="163"/>I came to write of Dubrovnik it was not there. Memories come and go, pass through us like the ghosts that live in them. Sometimes they are there when we want them, sometimes they are not, and sometimes they are there when we don’t want them as well. </p> +<p>So if I say in Trogir that I remember little more than the peculiar quality of the light as the sun set and electric lanterns began to come on, you will forgive me I hope for my inability to say more. Certain memories passed through me walking the streets of Trogir in the fading twilight, that are too old to speak of here, too far gone to retrace, it is enough for them to merely pass through, a bit of warmth and then they move on. I can say of Trogir though, <img alt="Streets at Night, Trogir, Croatia" class="postpicright" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirstreetnight.jpg" width="180"/>if you don’t believe in ghosts, have a late night walk in the old city and tell me how you feel about ghosts when you’re done. I have never doubted that the dead move among us, and never been so sure of it as standing in that church staring down at the tombstones from the thirteenth century.</p> +<p>The following morning after watching the fisherman board their craft and motor out to sea, we climbed back in the car and drove on north to Ljubljana, Slovenia. Some of you may know that I have for some years (though not recently) published a literary journal under the name castagraf (which is currently being held ransom by some asshole domain squatters, so no link at the moment). To come to the point, in the course of several issues castagraf <img alt="Ljubljana, Slovenia" class="postpic" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanariver.jpg" width="230"/>I published a number of Slovenian authors, most notably the highly esteemed Tomaz Salamun, Slovenia’s national poet, or whatever title they have for the same idea. But along with Tomaz we published to two younger poets whom I would have liked to meet in Ljubljana, but I did not, owing in part to my own incompetence and in part to the estranged relationship I have with my former co-editor who processes their email address.</p> +<p><img alt="Evening light, Ljubljana, Slovenia" class="postpicright" height="158" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanasunlight.jpg" width="210"/>So I was unable to look you up Primoz and Gregor for which I am sorry. I should liked to have met you both. But I did enjoy Ljubljana for the two says I spent there, a truly lovely city to call home. Ljubljana is one part old European city and one part college town owing to its relatively small size and large university. The center of town is two streets running parallel on opposite sides of the river, each street lined with cafes and restaurants frequented by locals and tourists alike. </p> +<p>Though we spent a very short time in Ljubljana it remains one if my favorite European cities and it was fun to wander the streets where so many of my friends have previously been and which I had heard no shortage of stories about. It was nice as well to see the hometown of Tomaz Salamun whose poetry has had no small influence on my own.</p> +<p>I spent the evening walking the streets trying to get a feel for the city. As the sun set and it began to grow cooler I stopped to put on a sweater and noticed a singularly striking and a little bit frightening piece of graffiti. What struck me about it was the contrast between <img alt="Graffiti, Ljubljana, Slovenia" class="postpic" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanagraffiti.jpg" width="220"/>the gleaming, blood dripping eyes of the bat-like creature above a bed of blooming flowers which seemed for a moment to perfectly encapsulate the contrast between pain and joy that makes up our world. Later that night I dreamed about the strange bat creature, something about it got the better of my imagination, already overrun as it was with ghosts and memories of the dead, but at the end of the dream, of which I recall very little, the flowers were just coming up out of the soil, and the bat was no longer anywhere to be found. +<break></p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/feel-good-lost" rel="prev" title=" Feel Good Lost">Feel Good Lost</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two" rel="next" title=" The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two">The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="60" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833475" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="621b6c168f78421d884fd406de73bd29a0b631c8" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Like Dubrovnik, Trogir was a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir's wall has largely crumbled away or been removed, though I know not how or why. Still it had the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and high towering forts that give all these Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality.
+
+Trogir was notably different from Dubrovnik chiefly in that it was not inundated with tourists. There were tourists to be sure, but most of them were yachters who contented themselves by sitting in the waterfront cafes just in front of their moorings, admiring each other's yachts and telling sea tales.
+
+The rest of the town was given over to a handful of tourists who disappeared among the narrow winding streets such that I often found myself walking for long periods of time undisturbed by a soul. We wandered into the main church,<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/trogirchurchalter.jpg" width="210" height="230" class="postpic" alt="sunlight on alter, Trogir, Croatia" /> a large stone block affair just off the central square and only recently restored, just before sundown. The church was small and unremarkable save for its old tombstones or at least headstones, embedded right in the floor next to the pews. I had recently finished reading an essay by W.G. Sebald in which he argues, among other things, that our use of tombstones and crypts is really spurred by an urge to lock the dead in the earth, which we cleverly disguise to ourselves as commemorative memorials.
+
+I stood for a minute in the church watching the last sunbeams fall in through the windows near the roofline wondering if in fact just beneath me, buried in the fourteenth century, was some man or woman desperate to get out and wander the earth, slightly smaller than in life, as the dead are said to be, but larger in understanding and memory. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/trogirchurchgrave.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpicright" alt="Grave, Trogir, Croatia" />I think it was Nabakov who said in one of his novel that writers and the dead travel in the same thing—the past. Indeed I have found, not just through sloth, that I prefer to write these anecdotes as past tense and see what remains with me a few days after I have left.
+
+This is why perhaps I may seem to have missed some fairly key things, like for instance the oldest pharmacy in the world which I saw in Dubrovnik, because the truth is, I simply don't have time to record everything. I remember the pharmacy now with its a collection of shelves full of dusty bottles and curios who use has long been forgotten, but when <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/trogirbell.jpg" width="163" height="220" class="postpic" alt="Church Bell, Trogir, Croatia" />I came to write of Dubrovnik it was not there. Memories come and go, pass through us like the ghosts that live in them. Sometimes they are there when we want them, sometimes they are not, and sometimes they are there when we don't want them as well.
+
+So if I say in Trogir that I remember little more than the peculiar quality of the light as the sun set and electric lanterns began to come on, you will forgive me I hope for my inability to say more. Certain memories passed through me walking the streets of Trogir in the fading twilight, that are too old to speak of here, too far gone to retrace, it is enough for them to merely pass through, a bit of warmth and then they move on. I can say of Trogir though, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/trogirstreetnight.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Streets at Night, Trogir, Croatia" />if you don't believe in ghosts, have a late night walk in the old city and tell me how you feel about ghosts when you're done. I have never doubted that the dead move among us, and never been so sure of it as standing in that church staring down at the tombstones from the thirteenth century.
+
+The following morning after watching the fisherman board their craft and motor out to sea, we climbed back in the car and drove on north to Ljubljana, Slovenia. Some of you may know that I have for some years (though not recently) published a literary journal under the name castagraf (which is currently being held ransom by some asshole domain squatters, so no link at the moment). To come to the point, in the course of several issues castagraf <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ljubljanariver.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpic" alt="Ljubljana, Slovenia" />I published a number of Slovenian authors, most notably the highly esteemed Tomaz Salamun, Slovenia's national poet, or whatever title they have for the same idea. But along with Tomaz we published to two younger poets whom I would have liked to meet in Ljubljana, but I did not, owing in part to my own incompetence and in part to the estranged relationship I have with my former co-editor who processes their email address.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ljubljanasunlight.jpg" width="210" height="158" class="postpicright" alt="Evening light, Ljubljana, Slovenia" />So I was unable to look you up Primoz and Gregor for which I am sorry. I should liked to have met you both. But I did enjoy Ljubljana for the two says I spent there, a truly lovely city to call home. Ljubljana is one part old European city and one part college town owing to its relatively small size and large university. The center of town is two streets running parallel on opposite sides of the river, each street lined with cafes and restaurants frequented by locals and tourists alike.
+
+Though we spent a very short time in Ljubljana it remains one if my favorite European cities and it was fun to wander the streets where so many of my friends have previously been and which I had heard no shortage of stories about. It was nice as well to see the hometown of Tomaz Salamun whose poetry has had no small influence on my own.
+
+I spent the evening walking the streets trying to get a feel for the city. As the sun set and it began to grow cooler I stopped to put on a sweater and noticed a singularly striking and a little bit frightening piece of graffiti. What struck me about it was the contrast between <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ljubljanagraffiti.jpg" width="220" height="188" class="postpic" alt="Graffiti, Ljubljana, Slovenia" />the gleaming, blood dripping eyes of the bat-like creature above a bed of blooming flowers which seemed for a moment to perfectly encapsulate the contrast between pain and joy that makes up our world. Later that night I dreamed about the strange bat creature, something about it got the better of my imagination, already overrun as it was with ghosts and memories of the dead, but at the end of the dream, of which I recall very little, the flowers were just coming up out of the soil, and the bat was no longer anywhere to be found.
+<break> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0d2ddae --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.amp @@ -0,0 +1,271 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>I Don't Sleep I Dream</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="A mock interview with Sigmund Freud Vienna, composed in what was once the waiting room of Frued's office in Vienna, Austria. 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There are essentially only two rooms that bear any resemblance to what the place looked like in his day. In glass cases are a few knickknacks, figurines, actually it's a rather impressive collection with pieces from the Sumerian, India, Polynesia and other exotic locales. Another room is full of photographs and explanatory notation in German and English.</p> +<p><break> +The rest of the apartment is given over to something between an exhibition room and an art gallery. But what everyone came here for then is absent now. No word on where the couch might have gone or why some duplicate hasn't been made. Plenty of other sofas, divans and other reclining furniture are on display in one of the gallery rooms, but the original is nowhere to be found.</break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Waiting Room, Frued's office, Vienna Austria" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennafreudoffice.jpg" width="212"></amp-img></p> +<p>The closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room. There were no ropes saying you couldn't so I did what everyone used to come here for, to lie down on the divan and stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were.</p> +<p>I lay down. I stared at the ceiling.</p> +<p>"Tell me about it."</p> +<p>"About what?"</p> +<p>"What did you come here for?"</p> +<p>"I'm not sure. I think I wanted to see it. To maybe have something to attach the abstractions too, maybe to know, rather than wonder — what did it look like? What sort of trees were on the street? What did the air taste like? How did the concrete and asphalt smell when it rained? What was the view from the window? How hot was the upstairs room where you worked? All the mundane details of life in places where I don't live... And I know I can't <em>know</em> these things in any real way without actually being there at the time. I know all I will find are half truths and suggestions, but the more I know the freer my imagination seems to become, the more it builds things out of the details, things which often bear no resemblance to reality but to me are more real."</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Window, Freud's Office, Vienna Austria" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennafreudwindow.jpg" width="172"></amp-img></p> +<p>"Interesting."</p> +<p>"Yeah it is. It totally contradicts an old quote from somebody named Suzuki that I used to like."</p> +<p>"Which is?"</p> +<p>"‘For the beginner an infinite range of possibilities exist, for the expert few options remain.' Or something along those lines. And I don't by any means consider myself an expert. In fact the more I know and see the more I feel like a beginner. I don't even know what an expert is."</p> +<p>"Perhaps that's the veiled significance of this Suzuki's words, that we are all beginners, that there are no experts so we are free, as you say, with our imaginations. But remember that imagination is not all daydreams and pretty flowers; there are monsters and demons in us too. There seems to be in us all a struggle between light and dark..."</p> +<p>"Like the Robert Mitchum movie? Or Spike Lee's version? A friend of mine claims that there are equal proportions of light and dark in the world, or good and evil or whatever metaphor you want to use, anyway her point is, I think, that these dualities are struggling for balance and that's where we find ourselves -- caught in that struggle. I think it's actually an idea she borrowed from Jewish Scripture, and it's a good metaphor so long as we consider the fact that which is which -- good/bad etc -- is wholly dependent on our judgments. That is, what you or I call dark or evil is actually neither, that is simple our interpretation of it. Not to be relativistic, which I don't like, in fact I think relativism misses out on the subtle undercurrents of life in favor of simplistic rationalism to offer an easy to grok interpretation of life's essential mysteries. But that said, there is some relativism in our interpretations of good and evil etc. Any given event, no matter how good it seems, is itself the result of all sorts of other events, some may have been good, some bad, but without them we wouldn't be doing that "good" thing now. And so with the future. If I give you some money to pay a debt that may be a good thing, but down the road it's possible that you will find yourself in a bad situation not just in spite of my good act, but perhaps because of it."</p> +<p>"Mmmhmm. Tell me about your dreams..."</p> +<p>"No."</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p><amp-img alt="painting" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennamonster.jpg" width="150"></amp-img></p> +<p>"Okay. Just yesterday I dreamed a friend of mine was in trouble. So today I called her. Turns out she's not in trouble. She's doing just fine. So what the hell does that mean?"</p> +<p>"Perhaps you feel a certain helplessness at not being able to know whether your friend is in trouble or not. Your subconscious feels helpless and seeks to create a situation in which it can help someone else so that it alleviates the feelings of helplessness."</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>"The imagination can ruin and cripple as much as it can heal and give hope."</p> +<p>"Well don't you sort of have a vested interest in promoting that idea since your life's work hinges on it being true, on the notion that there is something wrong with me that I can not directly get to, but with assistance it can be drawn out..."</p> +<p>"My vested interest was in helping people for whom there was no help at the time."</p> +<p>"Okay. Fair enough. Sorry. There is just so much baggage around you. I want to believe, I really do."</p> +<p>"It's possible I was wrong, I did make some mistakes."</p> +<p>"Yeah you did. Turns out cocaine <em>is</em> addictive."</p> +<p>"I made bigger ones than that."</p> +<p>"I know, but I saw that quote over there on the wall by that picture of Dora."</p> +<p>"Ah yes. Dora." </p> +<p>"The one that got away huh? So, why was all of your early work focused on women?"</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>"Okay. Well.... Do you like what they've done with the place?"</p> +<p>"Well. It was just a place you know. This room we are sitting in was originally the waiting room, the consultations were in there. But it is just a place, one room is as good as another."</p> +<p>"Yeah. But weren't you the one who always directed attention toward trivialities like "methodological principle," which in some ways is influenced by the room, the mood it creates. I mean if you had disco lighting and Al Green playing when patients came over things would've been different no?"</p> +<p>"Yes I did say that. And methodology, set and setting as that American doctor put it, are important. But I also said sometimes a cigar..."</p> +<p>"Yeah and we all wish you hadn't. That undercuts almost everything else you said because it highlights the subjective — dare I say arbitrary? — interpretations in your theories. I mean what if Newton has said ‘well gravity exists, but it doesn't always exist, it certain doesn't exist for <em>me</em>? That's a bit elitist don't you think? In the end we'd have to conclude that either gravity doesn't exist or that a cigar is never just a cigar, neither of which are particularly helpful."</p> +<p>"You seem hostile toward me."</p> +<p>"I'm not hostile, I'm just saying that psychology and this therapy bit is, in the end, no different than the kind of insight you can get from a book or a night out with friends or just sitting on the toilet contemplating life. But you invested the whole process with a pseudo-scientific framework that makes some people think they can't find their own answers."</p> +<p>"People can't find their own answers. And even those that can find some can't find others. We cannot see our own subconscious, we can only see the effects of it, the manifestations of it."</p> +<p>"Look I'm not saying I have it all sussed out. Far from it. But what you're talking about seems to me like a rewritten metaphor for god. And I think your metaphors were wrong about some key stuff. Like Oedipus for example. First off mythology is probably not a good base to draw from if your goal is to make sweeping ‘scientific' generalizations about human development. And secondly the stages Oedipus passes through, well you skipped a fairly key one, he was abandoned by his parents as a baby, which is tantamount to child abuse and hardly seems archetypical to the way most children are raised. I think you were a brilliant literary critic centuries ahead of his time, but I think your science was, well, to be blunt, nonexistent. Which would have been fine except..."</p> +<p>"Hmmm. Yes. Perhaps. But I could argue that birth itself is abandonment"</p> +<p>"Please don't."</p> +<p>"I wasn't going to, I was just saying I <em>could</em>."</p> +<p>"And yet that Oedipal theory, while professional psychologists may not pay much attention to it, holds a powerful sway over how we perceive ourselves today. And it carries that weight because it passed and continues to pass as science. See science is our god now so anything that gets you the title doctor is perceived as having some authority that overrides even common sense."</p> +<p>"Well, in my defense, it isn't really all that different than the story of the fall in the Jewish and Christian mythologies which also influences how you see yourself. And I did have a degree in medicine."</p> +<p>"I know you did. I'm not debating your training or skills I'm saying that psychology is not was not and never will be a science."</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry. It just isn't."</p> +<p>"Have you read The Interpre..."<amp-img alt="'Fire' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennawar.jpg" width="190"></amp-img></p> +<p>"Yes. But to be honest I don't see why our dreams need to be interpreted. Isn't it possible that they have no meaning at all? That we really <em>really</em> want them to have meaning because this is what we do, we find connections, metaphors to link things, and we can find threads in our dreams that seem to connect them to this world, but in the end what if they are just dreams? Something outside meaning and interpretation because the world which they inhabit is guided by rules and schema that bear no resemblance to the ones that guide this world? What if there is no common language by which we can make interpretations, metaphors or any meaning at all out of our dreams?</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>"I'll tell you what does interest me though — the differences in the way we conduct ourselves in our dream lives and real lives and those people who seem to break down the differences."</p> +<p>"Such as?"</p> +<p>"Well on the positive side you have someone like Antonio Gaudí or Frank Stanford. But of course there's the negative side as well, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc."</p> +<p>"It's interesting that you choose artists and writers as representative of the positive and serial killers, despots and murderers as the negative... perhaps neither is really accurate. It's possible you know that Gaudí was inspired by imagination and Pol Pot by greed and lust for power and that neither of them is representative of someone bringing dreams to life."</p> +<p>"Yes but don't dreams underlie imagination and greed and lust and everything else? We act out our dreams in realities. In fact I would say nearly everything we do is an act of externalizing our dreams — the hopes, fears and strangeness that they contain. We bring them forth into the world of struggling forces and they are bandied and battered about by circumstances which are often beyond our control."</p> +<p>"Didn't you just say the opposite?"</p> +<p>"No I said it was possible that our dreams have no meaning in this world that we can ever understand, but that doesn't mean we don't spend our lives externalizing them and <em>trying</em> to understand them.</p> +<p>"Exactly. Sometimes you get art, other times murder, such is the nature of dreams and the world in which we find ourselves."</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>"What do you think of these art exhibits in the other room...?"</p> +<p>"That's the sort of rhetorical question you pose so you can skip over whatever my answer may be and delve into what you really wanted to talk about — what <em>you</em> think of the art in the other room. Why don't we skip what I think and you tell me what it is you must get off your chest?"</p> +<p>"You just can't put one over on you can you? I think the art's crap. In execution anyway. But I think the idea of the couch is very significant. I think the fact that you chose to have patients on a couch, or divan, or sofa or whatever you want to call it was genius, possibly your only moment of genius. I mean you could have had then in bed, but that's too close to actual sleep you could easily lose them in their unconscious worlds. You could have had them sit in a chair, but that's too formal, too far removed from dreams. The couch is perfect, reclined, perhaps close to sleep, but not all the way there, still able to pull back from the brink so to speak. It's like that sign over there says: ‘In a prone position, the clear certainties of thought can be diverted from their course into a twilight state of drowsiness and further into the anesthetized state of sleep or into the depths of illegitimate sexuality'"</p> +<p>"And I've noticed that this thing, this couch, which was fairly arbitrary by the way, has become the symbol of choice..."</p> +<p>"Yeah if I needed to create one of those universal language airport ideograms for psychology the couch would get the idea across. In the west anyway."</p> +<p>"But why do you think the art is ‘crap'?"</p> +<p>"I've come to think painting peaked in the 16th century or so. These modern things just don't have any soul, their narcissistic, self-absorbed, lacking depth... Though some of the painters around your day were good, Egon Schiele, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, others. I sound like a grumpy old man don't I?"</p> +<p>"Well. Yes. But there are great painters in every age, great writers, great musicians, great everything, you just have to know where to look and how to look."</p> +<p>"I know. I didn't mean it. I got carried away with my tendency toward hyperbole. I do that a lot, but I never really mean it, I just like to string the words together... I try you know. I try to find the good stuff. But sometimes I feel like I'm always trying and rarely succeeding."</p> +<p>"Trying is all that matters"</p> +<p>"Just yesterday I was thinking of an old cover from a new York literary magazine... It was a drawing of a pigeon or a dove or some sort of bird, a bird with one wing and one arm. The caption read: trying trying trying."</p> +<p>"Mmmm. Yes. About like that."</p> +<p>"Yeah I thought so too, that's why it's stuck with me. Everything seems to stick with me. And yet sometimes I deny remembering things which I remember better and more clearly than the person telling me about them just so I can see what they remember. I don't know why I do that."</p> +<p>"You're avoiding something."</p> +<p>"Maybe. Maybe I just enjoy hearing things retold by other people. Maybe I don't like to think too much about the past, my history, the world's history, our history. It can get pretty ugly at times. There is a whole lot of violence and bloodshed and war and famine in the past, sometimes I think that this whole notion of trying is waste of time. I mean we've yet to succeed. Big business runs the world, people die, wars are fought so certain people can gain access to certain things. It seems so totally pointless and stupid and yet we keep doing it. The forces keep struggling and we keep twisting and turning some riding atop and some crushed beneath."</p> +<p>"Yes the world is a mess. But if we stop trying then there isn't even the hope of anything getting better."</p> +<p>"Isn't that a tad bit delusional though? I mean if it's always going to be a mess than what's the difference? Why is hope necessary?"</p> +<p>"Because without hope there is no love. And without love there is nothing, because whoever loves becomes humble; those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism."</p> +<p>"And it's our narcissism that has us in the situation we find ourselves?"</p> +<p>"Among other things yes. Naturally nothing is reducible to any one factor, but I would say, did say in fact, that most of our problems, whether personal or geopolitical or anywhere in between, stem from our narcissism."</p> +<p><amp-img alt="'Winter' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaharvest.jpg" width="175"></amp-img></p> +<p>"See you were a much better writer than scientist."</p> +<p>"Well I once wrote, ‘Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me'"</p> +<p>"Well just about anybody could say that."</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>"A lot of people I know say they feel lost."</p> +<p>"They should read more poetry."</p> +<p>"Sometimes I feel lost too. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. Other times I feel like I am in the place where I should be. Lately I've been feeling more confident, but I worry about my friends."</p> +<p>"Love and work... Work and love, that's all there is."</p> +<p>"..."</p> +<p>[Note that some of this faux dialogue is actual quotes and some are more summaries and some I just made up. None of it is in any way intended to represent the opinions in the writings, lectures and other works of Sigmund Freud. More or less if something sounds like it's too smart for me to have come up, that's an actual Freud quote.]</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fcf5963 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.html @@ -0,0 +1,423 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>I Don’t Sleep I Dream - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="A mock interview with Sigmund Freud Vienna, composed in what was once the waiting room of Frued's office in Vienna, Austria. 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There are essentially only two rooms that bear any resemblance to what the place looked like in his day. In glass cases are a few knickknacks, figurines, actually it’s a rather impressive collection with pieces from the Sumerian, India, Polynesia and other exotic locales. Another room is full of photographs and explanatory notation in German and English.</p> +<p><break> +The rest of the apartment is given over to something between an exhibition room and an art gallery. But what everyone came here for then is absent now. No word on where the couch might have gone or why some duplicate hasn’t been made. Plenty of other sofas, divans and other reclining furniture are on display in one of the gallery rooms, but the original is nowhere to be found.</p> +<p><img alt="Waiting Room, Frued's office, Vienna Austria" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennafreudoffice.jpg" width="212"/></p> +<p>The closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room. There were no ropes saying you couldn’t so I did what everyone used to come here for, to lie down on the divan and stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were.</p> +<p>I lay down. I stared at the ceiling.</p> +<p>“Tell me about it.”</p> +<p>“About what?”</p> +<p>“What did you come here for?”</p> +<p>“I’m not sure. I think I wanted to see it. To maybe have something to attach the abstractions too, maybe to know, rather than wonder — what did it look like? What sort of trees were on the street? What did the air taste like? How did the concrete and asphalt smell when it rained? What was the view from the window? How hot was the upstairs room where you worked? All the mundane details of life in places where I don’t live… And I know I can’t <em>know</em> these things in any real way without actually being there at the time. I know all I will find are half truths and suggestions, but the more I know the freer my imagination seems to become, the more it builds things out of the details, things which often bear no resemblance to reality but to me are more real.”</p> +<p><img alt="Window, Freud's Office, Vienna Austria" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennafreudwindow.jpg" width="172"/></p> +<p>“Interesting.”</p> +<p>“Yeah it is. It totally contradicts an old quote from somebody named Suzuki that I used to like.”</p> +<p>“Which is?”</p> +<p>“‘For the beginner an infinite range of possibilities exist, for the expert few options remain.’ Or something along those lines. And I don’t by any means consider myself an expert. In fact the more I know and see the more I feel like a beginner. I don’t even know what an expert is.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps that’s the veiled significance of this Suzuki’s words, that we are all beginners, that there are no experts so we are free, as you say, with our imaginations. But remember that imagination is not all daydreams and pretty flowers; there are monsters and demons in us too. There seems to be in us all a struggle between light and dark…”</p> +<p>“Like the Robert Mitchum movie? Or Spike Lee’s version? A friend of mine claims that there are equal proportions of light and dark in the world, or good and evil or whatever metaphor you want to use, anyway her point is, I think, that these dualities are struggling for balance and that’s where we find ourselves — caught in that struggle. I think it’s actually an idea she borrowed from Jewish Scripture, and it’s a good metaphor so long as we consider the fact that which is which — good/bad etc — is wholly dependent on our judgments. That is, what you or I call dark or evil is actually neither, that is simple our interpretation of it. Not to be relativistic, which I don’t like, in fact I think relativism misses out on the subtle undercurrents of life in favor of simplistic rationalism to offer an easy to grok interpretation of life’s essential mysteries. But that said, there is some relativism in our interpretations of good and evil etc. Any given event, no matter how good it seems, is itself the result of all sorts of other events, some may have been good, some bad, but without them we wouldn’t be doing that “good” thing now. And so with the future. If I give you some money to pay a debt that may be a good thing, but down the road it’s possible that you will find yourself in a bad situation not just in spite of my good act, but perhaps because of it.”</p> +<p>“Mmmhmm. Tell me about your dreams…”</p> +<p>“No.”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p><img alt="painting" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennamonster.jpg" width="150"/></p> +<p>“Okay. Just yesterday I dreamed a friend of mine was in trouble. So today I called her. Turns out she’s not in trouble. She’s doing just fine. So what the hell does that mean?”</p> +<p>“Perhaps you feel a certain helplessness at not being able to know whether your friend is in trouble or not. Your subconscious feels helpless and seeks to create a situation in which it can help someone else so that it alleviates the feelings of helplessness.”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>“The imagination can ruin and cripple as much as it can heal and give hope.”</p> +<p>“Well don’t you sort of have a vested interest in promoting that idea since your life’s work hinges on it being true, on the notion that there is something wrong with me that I can not directly get to, but with assistance it can be drawn out…”</p> +<p>“My vested interest was in helping people for whom there was no help at the time.”</p> +<p>“Okay. Fair enough. Sorry. There is just so much baggage around you. I want to believe, I really do.”</p> +<p>“It’s possible I was wrong, I did make some mistakes.”</p> +<p>“Yeah you did. Turns out cocaine <em>is</em> addictive.”</p> +<p>“I made bigger ones than that.”</p> +<p>“I know, but I saw that quote over there on the wall by that picture of Dora.”</p> +<p>“Ah yes. Dora.” </p> +<p>“The one that got away huh? So, why was all of your early work focused on women?”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>“Okay. Well…. Do you like what they’ve done with the place?”</p> +<p>“Well. It was just a place you know. This room we are sitting in was originally the waiting room, the consultations were in there. But it is just a place, one room is as good as another.”</p> +<p>“Yeah. But weren’t you the one who always directed attention toward trivialities like “methodological principle,” which in some ways is influenced by the room, the mood it creates. I mean if you had disco lighting and Al Green playing when patients came over things would’ve been different no?”</p> +<p>“Yes I did say that. And methodology, set and setting as that American doctor put it, are important. But I also said sometimes a cigar…”</p> +<p>“Yeah and we all wish you hadn’t. That undercuts almost everything else you said because it highlights the subjective — dare I say arbitrary? — interpretations in your theories. I mean what if Newton has said ‘well gravity exists, but it doesn’t always exist, it certain doesn’t exist for <em>me</em>? That’s a bit elitist don’t you think? In the end we’d have to conclude that either gravity doesn’t exist or that a cigar is never just a cigar, neither of which are particularly helpful.”</p> +<p>“You seem hostile toward me.”</p> +<p>“I’m not hostile, I’m just saying that psychology and this therapy bit is, in the end, no different than the kind of insight you can get from a book or a night out with friends or just sitting on the toilet contemplating life. But you invested the whole process with a pseudo-scientific framework that makes some people think they can’t find their own answers.”</p> +<p>“People can’t find their own answers. And even those that can find some can’t find others. We cannot see our own subconscious, we can only see the effects of it, the manifestations of it.”</p> +<p>“Look I’m not saying I have it all sussed out. Far from it. But what you’re talking about seems to me like a rewritten metaphor for god. And I think your metaphors were wrong about some key stuff. Like Oedipus for example. First off mythology is probably not a good base to draw from if your goal is to make sweeping ‘scientific’ generalizations about human development. And secondly the stages Oedipus passes through, well you skipped a fairly key one, he was abandoned by his parents as a baby, which is tantamount to child abuse and hardly seems archetypical to the way most children are raised. I think you were a brilliant literary critic centuries ahead of his time, but I think your science was, well, to be blunt, nonexistent. Which would have been fine except…”</p> +<p>“Hmmm. Yes. Perhaps. But I could argue that birth itself is abandonment”</p> +<p>“Please don’t.”</p> +<p>“I wasn’t going to, I was just saying I <em>could</em>.”</p> +<p>“And yet that Oedipal theory, while professional psychologists may not pay much attention to it, holds a powerful sway over how we perceive ourselves today. And it carries that weight because it passed and continues to pass as science. See science is our god now so anything that gets you the title doctor is perceived as having some authority that overrides even common sense.”</p> +<p>“Well, in my defense, it isn’t really all that different than the story of the fall in the Jewish and Christian mythologies which also influences how you see yourself. And I did have a degree in medicine.”</p> +<p>“I know you did. I’m not debating your training or skills I’m saying that psychology is not was not and never will be a science.”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>“I’m sorry. It just isn’t.”</p> +<p>“Have you read The Interpre…”<img alt="'Fire' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennawar.jpg" width="190"/></p> +<p>“Yes. But to be honest I don’t see why our dreams need to be interpreted. Isn’t it possible that they have no meaning at all? That we really <em>really</em> want them to have meaning because this is what we do, we find connections, metaphors to link things, and we can find threads in our dreams that seem to connect them to this world, but in the end what if they are just dreams? Something outside meaning and interpretation because the world which they inhabit is guided by rules and schema that bear no resemblance to the ones that guide this world? What if there is no common language by which we can make interpretations, metaphors or any meaning at all out of our dreams?</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>“I’ll tell you what does interest me though — the differences in the way we conduct ourselves in our dream lives and real lives and those people who seem to break down the differences.”</p> +<p>“Such as?”</p> +<p>“Well on the positive side you have someone like Antonio Gaudí or Frank Stanford. But of course there’s the negative side as well, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc.”</p> +<p>“It’s interesting that you choose artists and writers as representative of the positive and serial killers, despots and murderers as the negative… perhaps neither is really accurate. It’s possible you know that Gaudí was inspired by imagination and Pol Pot by greed and lust for power and that neither of them is representative of someone bringing dreams to life.”</p> +<p>“Yes but don’t dreams underlie imagination and greed and lust and everything else? We act out our dreams in realities. In fact I would say nearly everything we do is an act of externalizing our dreams — the hopes, fears and strangeness that they contain. We bring them forth into the world of struggling forces and they are bandied and battered about by circumstances which are often beyond our control.”</p> +<p>“Didn’t you just say the opposite?”</p> +<p>“No I said it was possible that our dreams have no meaning in this world that we can ever understand, but that doesn’t mean we don’t spend our lives externalizing them and <em>trying</em> to understand them.</p> +<p>“Exactly. Sometimes you get art, other times murder, such is the nature of dreams and the world in which we find ourselves.”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>“What do you think of these art exhibits in the other room…?”</p> +<p>“That’s the sort of rhetorical question you pose so you can skip over whatever my answer may be and delve into what you really wanted to talk about — what <em>you</em> think of the art in the other room. Why don’t we skip what I think and you tell me what it is you must get off your chest?”</p> +<p>“You just can’t put one over on you can you? I think the art’s crap. In execution anyway. But I think the idea of the couch is very significant. I think the fact that you chose to have patients on a couch, or divan, or sofa or whatever you want to call it was genius, possibly your only moment of genius. I mean you could have had then in bed, but that’s too close to actual sleep you could easily lose them in their unconscious worlds. You could have had them sit in a chair, but that’s too formal, too far removed from dreams. The couch is perfect, reclined, perhaps close to sleep, but not all the way there, still able to pull back from the brink so to speak. It’s like that sign over there says: ‘In a prone position, the clear certainties of thought can be diverted from their course into a twilight state of drowsiness and further into the anesthetized state of sleep or into the depths of illegitimate sexuality’”</p> +<p>“And I’ve noticed that this thing, this couch, which was fairly arbitrary by the way, has become the symbol of choice…”</p> +<p>“Yeah if I needed to create one of those universal language airport ideograms for psychology the couch would get the idea across. In the west anyway.”</p> +<p>“But why do you think the art is ‘crap’?”</p> +<p>“I’ve come to think painting peaked in the 16th century or so. These modern things just don’t have any soul, their narcissistic, self-absorbed, lacking depth… Though some of the painters around your day were good, Egon Schiele, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, others. I sound like a grumpy old man don’t I?”</p> +<p>“Well. Yes. But there are great painters in every age, great writers, great musicians, great everything, you just have to know where to look and how to look.”</p> +<p>“I know. I didn’t mean it. I got carried away with my tendency toward hyperbole. I do that a lot, but I never really mean it, I just like to string the words together… I try you know. I try to find the good stuff. But sometimes I feel like I’m always trying and rarely succeeding.”</p> +<p>“Trying is all that matters”</p> +<p>“Just yesterday I was thinking of an old cover from a new York literary magazine… It was a drawing of a pigeon or a dove or some sort of bird, a bird with one wing and one arm. The caption read: trying trying trying.”</p> +<p>“Mmmm. Yes. About like that.”</p> +<p>“Yeah I thought so too, that’s why it’s stuck with me. Everything seems to stick with me. And yet sometimes I deny remembering things which I remember better and more clearly than the person telling me about them just so I can see what they remember. I don’t know why I do that.”</p> +<p>“You’re avoiding something.”</p> +<p>“Maybe. Maybe I just enjoy hearing things retold by other people. Maybe I don’t like to think too much about the past, my history, the world’s history, our history. It can get pretty ugly at times. There is a whole lot of violence and bloodshed and war and famine in the past, sometimes I think that this whole notion of trying is waste of time. I mean we’ve yet to succeed. Big business runs the world, people die, wars are fought so certain people can gain access to certain things. It seems so totally pointless and stupid and yet we keep doing it. The forces keep struggling and we keep twisting and turning some riding atop and some crushed beneath.”</p> +<p>“Yes the world is a mess. But if we stop trying then there isn’t even the hope of anything getting better.”</p> +<p>“Isn’t that a tad bit delusional though? I mean if it’s always going to be a mess than what’s the difference? Why is hope necessary?”</p> +<p>“Because without hope there is no love. And without love there is nothing, because whoever loves becomes humble; those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.”</p> +<p>“And it’s our narcissism that has us in the situation we find ourselves?”</p> +<p>“Among other things yes. Naturally nothing is reducible to any one factor, but I would say, did say in fact, that most of our problems, whether personal or geopolitical or anywhere in between, stem from our narcissism.”</p> +<p><img alt="'Winter' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaharvest.jpg" width="175"/></p> +<p>“See you were a much better writer than scientist.”</p> +<p>“Well I once wrote, ‘Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me’”</p> +<p>“Well just about anybody could say that.”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>“A lot of people I know say they feel lost.”</p> +<p>“They should read more poetry.”</p> +<p>“Sometimes I feel lost too. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing. Other times I feel like I am in the place where I should be. Lately I’ve been feeling more confident, but I worry about my friends.”</p> +<p>“Love and work… Work and love, that’s all there is.”</p> +<p>“…”</p> +<p>[Note that some of this faux dialogue is actual quotes and some are more summaries and some I just made up. None of it is in any way intended to represent the opinions in the writings, lectures and other works of Sigmund Freud. More or less if something sounds like it’s too smart for me to have come up, that’s an actual Freud quote.]</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/unreflected" rel="prev" title=" Unreflected">Unreflected</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/06/cadenza" rel="next" title=" Cadenza">Cadenza</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="65" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833474" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="65f2a07551908782858d0ad1f89aba0d70da5ca5" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <code><b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a></code>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice. </p> + + +</div> + +</main> + + + + <footer class="bl"> + <ul class="footer-nav"> + <li><a href="/blogroll" title="Sites that inspire us">Blogroll</a></li> + <li><a href="/contact/" title="contact luxagraf">Contact</a></li> + <li>Follow Along: + <ul> + <li><a href="/jrnl/feed.xml" title="RSS feed">RSS</a></li> + <li><a href="/newsletter/" title="Luxagraf Email Updates">Email</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Instagram">Instagram</a></li> + </ul> + </ul> + <div class="support">Support luxagraf: + <div class="donate-btn"> + <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top"> + <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick"> + <input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="HYJFZQSBGJ8QQ"> + <input type="submit" name="submit" title="Donate to luxagraf via PayPal"> + </form> + </div> + <div class="donate-btn"> + <a class="liberapay-btn" href="https://liberapay.com/luxagraf/donate"><span>Donate</span></a> + </div> + </div> + <p id="license"> + © 2003-2020 + <span class="h-card"><a class="p-name u-url" href="https://luxagraf.net/">Scott Gilbertson</a><data class="p-nickname" value="luxagraf"></data><data class="p-locality" value="Athens"></data><data class="p-region" value="Georgia"></data><data class="p-country-name" value="United States"></data></span>. + </p> + </footer> + </div> + +<script> +document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) { + var leaflet = document.createElement('script'); + leaflet.src = "/media/js/leaflet-master/leaflet-mod.js"; + document.body.appendChild(leaflet); + var lightbox = document.createElement('script'); + lightbox.src = "/media/js/lightbox.js"; + document.body.appendChild(lightbox); + leaflet.onload = function(){ + var detail = document.createElement('script'); + detail.src = "/media/js/detail.min.js"; + document.body.appendChild(detail); + + detail.onload = function(){ + createMap(); + var open = false; + } + + } + + lightbox.onload = function() { + var opts= { + //nextOnClick: false, + captions: true, + onload: function(){ + var im = document.getElementById("jslghtbx-contentwrapper"); + var link = im.appendChild(document.createElement('a')) + link.href = im.firstChild.src; + link.innerHTML= "open "; + link.target = "_blank"; + link.setAttribute('class', 'p-link'); + im.appendChild(link); + } + }; + var lightbox = new Lightbox(); + lightbox.load(opts); + } + + + + + + +}); +</script> + +<script> +<!-- +// Register our service-worker +//if (navigator.serviceWorker) { +// window.addEventListener('load', function() { +// if (navigator.serviceWorker.controller) { +// navigator.serviceWorker.controller.postMessage({'command': 'trimCaches'}); +// } else { +// navigator.serviceWorker.register('/serviceworker.js', { +// scope: '/' +// }); +// } +// }); +//} +//--> + +<!-- Piwik --> +var _paq = _paq || []; +_paq.push(["disableCookies"]); +_paq.push(['trackPageView']); +_paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']); +(function() { + var u="https://stats.luxagraf.net/"; + _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'piwik.php']); + _paq.push(['setSiteId', 1]); + var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; + g.type='text/javascript'; g.async=true; g.defer=true; g.src=u+'piwik.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s); + })(); +<!-- End Piwik Code --> +</script> +<noscript><p><img src="//stats.luxagraf.net/piwik.php?idsite=1" style="border:0;" alt="" /></p></noscript> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..969afa0 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream.txt @@ -0,0 +1,197 @@ +I Don't Sleep I Dream +===================== + + by Scott Gilbertson + </jrnl/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream> + Sunday, 28 May 2006 + +<span class="drop">O</span>nce you pass through the odd and oversized foyer, which feels like a half finished storefront for H&M or the like, stairs lead up to the first floor. There are essentially only two rooms that bear any resemblance to what the place looked like in his day. In glass cases are a few knickknacks, figurines, actually it's a rather impressive collection with pieces from the Sumerian, India, Polynesia and other exotic locales. Another room is full of photographs and explanatory notation in German and English.
+
+<break>
+The rest of the apartment is given over to something between an exhibition room and an art gallery. But what everyone came here for then is absent now. No word on where the couch might have gone or why some duplicate hasn't been made. Plenty of other sofas, divans and other reclining furniture are on display in one of the gallery rooms, but the original is nowhere to be found.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennafreudoffice.jpg" width="212" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="Waiting Room, Frued's office, Vienna Austria" />
+
+The closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room. There were no ropes saying you couldn't so I did what everyone used to come here for, to lie down on the divan and stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were.
+
+I lay down. I stared at the ceiling.
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"What did you come here for?"
+
+"I'm not sure. I think I wanted to see it. To maybe have something to attach the abstractions too, maybe to know, rather than wonder — what did it look like? What sort of trees were on the street? What did the air taste like? How did the concrete and asphalt smell when it rained? What was the view from the window? How hot was the upstairs room where you worked? All the mundane details of life in places where I don't live... And I know I can't <em>know</em> these things in any real way without actually being there at the time. I know all I will find are half truths and suggestions, but the more I know the freer my imagination seems to become, the more it builds things out of the details, things which often bear no resemblance to reality but to me are more real."
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennafreudwindow.jpg" width="172" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Window, Freud's Office, Vienna Austria" />
+
+"Interesting."
+
+"Yeah it is. It totally contradicts an old quote from somebody named Suzuki that I used to like."
+
+"Which is?"
+
+"‘For the beginner an infinite range of possibilities exist, for the expert few options remain.' Or something along those lines. And I don't by any means consider myself an expert. In fact the more I know and see the more I feel like a beginner. I don't even know what an expert is."
+
+"Perhaps that's the veiled significance of this Suzuki's words, that we are all beginners, that there are no experts so we are free, as you say, with our imaginations. But remember that imagination is not all daydreams and pretty flowers; there are monsters and demons in us too. There seems to be in us all a struggle between light and dark..."
+
+"Like the Robert Mitchum movie? Or Spike Lee's version? A friend of mine claims that there are equal proportions of light and dark in the world, or good and evil or whatever metaphor you want to use, anyway her point is, I think, that these dualities are struggling for balance and that's where we find ourselves -- caught in that struggle. I think it's actually an idea she borrowed from Jewish Scripture, and it's a good metaphor so long as we consider the fact that which is which -- good/bad etc -- is wholly dependent on our judgments. That is, what you or I call dark or evil is actually neither, that is simple our interpretation of it. Not to be relativistic, which I don't like, in fact I think relativism misses out on the subtle undercurrents of life in favor of simplistic rationalism to offer an easy to grok interpretation of life's essential mysteries. But that said, there is some relativism in our interpretations of good and evil etc. Any given event, no matter how good it seems, is itself the result of all sorts of other events, some may have been good, some bad, but without them we wouldn't be doing that "good" thing now. And so with the future. If I give you some money to pay a debt that may be a good thing, but down the road it's possible that you will find yourself in a bad situation not just in spite of my good act, but perhaps because of it."
+
+"Mmmhmm. Tell me about your dreams..."
+
+"No."
+
+"..."
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennamonster.jpg" width="150" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="painting" />
+
+"Okay. Just yesterday I dreamed a friend of mine was in trouble. So today I called her. Turns out she's not in trouble. She's doing just fine. So what the hell does that mean?"
+
+"Perhaps you feel a certain helplessness at not being able to know whether your friend is in trouble or not. Your subconscious feels helpless and seeks to create a situation in which it can help someone else so that it alleviates the feelings of helplessness."
+
+"..."
+
+"The imagination can ruin and cripple as much as it can heal and give hope."
+
+"Well don't you sort of have a vested interest in promoting that idea since your life's work hinges on it being true, on the notion that there is something wrong with me that I can not directly get to, but with assistance it can be drawn out..."
+
+"My vested interest was in helping people for whom there was no help at the time."
+
+"Okay. Fair enough. Sorry. There is just so much baggage around you. I want to believe, I really do."
+
+"It's possible I was wrong, I did make some mistakes."
+
+"Yeah you did. Turns out cocaine <em>is</em> addictive."
+
+"I made bigger ones than that."
+
+"I know, but I saw that quote over there on the wall by that picture of Dora."
+
+"Ah yes. Dora."
+
+"The one that got away huh? So, why was all of your early work focused on women?"
+
+"..."
+
+"Okay. Well.... Do you like what they've done with the place?"
+
+"Well. It was just a place you know. This room we are sitting in was originally the waiting room, the consultations were in there. But it is just a place, one room is as good as another."
+
+"Yeah. But weren't you the one who always directed attention toward trivialities like "methodological principle," which in some ways is influenced by the room, the mood it creates. I mean if you had disco lighting and Al Green playing when patients came over things would've been different no?"
+
+"Yes I did say that. And methodology, set and setting as that American doctor put it, are important. But I also said sometimes a cigar..."
+
+"Yeah and we all wish you hadn't. That undercuts almost everything else you said because it highlights the subjective — dare I say arbitrary? — interpretations in your theories. I mean what if Newton has said ‘well gravity exists, but it doesn't always exist, it certain doesn't exist for <em>me</em>? That's a bit elitist don't you think? In the end we'd have to conclude that either gravity doesn't exist or that a cigar is never just a cigar, neither of which are particularly helpful."
+
+"You seem hostile toward me."
+
+"I'm not hostile, I'm just saying that psychology and this therapy bit is, in the end, no different than the kind of insight you can get from a book or a night out with friends or just sitting on the toilet contemplating life. But you invested the whole process with a pseudo-scientific framework that makes some people think they can't find their own answers."
+
+"People can't find their own answers. And even those that can find some can't find others. We cannot see our own subconscious, we can only see the effects of it, the manifestations of it."
+
+"Look I'm not saying I have it all sussed out. Far from it. But what you're talking about seems to me like a rewritten metaphor for god. And I think your metaphors were wrong about some key stuff. Like Oedipus for example. First off mythology is probably not a good base to draw from if your goal is to make sweeping ‘scientific' generalizations about human development. And secondly the stages Oedipus passes through, well you skipped a fairly key one, he was abandoned by his parents as a baby, which is tantamount to child abuse and hardly seems archetypical to the way most children are raised. I think you were a brilliant literary critic centuries ahead of his time, but I think your science was, well, to be blunt, nonexistent. Which would have been fine except..."
+
+"Hmmm. Yes. Perhaps. But I could argue that birth itself is abandonment"
+
+"Please don't."
+
+"I wasn't going to, I was just saying I <em>could</em>."
+
+"And yet that Oedipal theory, while professional psychologists may not pay much attention to it, holds a powerful sway over how we perceive ourselves today. And it carries that weight because it passed and continues to pass as science. See science is our god now so anything that gets you the title doctor is perceived as having some authority that overrides even common sense."
+
+"Well, in my defense, it isn't really all that different than the story of the fall in the Jewish and Christian mythologies which also influences how you see yourself. And I did have a degree in medicine."
+
+"I know you did. I'm not debating your training or skills I'm saying that psychology is not was not and never will be a science."
+
+"..."
+
+"I'm sorry. It just isn't."
+
+"Have you read The Interpre..."<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennawar.jpg" width="190" height="240" class="postpic" alt="'Fire' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo" />
+
+"Yes. But to be honest I don't see why our dreams need to be interpreted. Isn't it possible that they have no meaning at all? That we really <em>really</em> want them to have meaning because this is what we do, we find connections, metaphors to link things, and we can find threads in our dreams that seem to connect them to this world, but in the end what if they are just dreams? Something outside meaning and interpretation because the world which they inhabit is guided by rules and schema that bear no resemblance to the ones that guide this world? What if there is no common language by which we can make interpretations, metaphors or any meaning at all out of our dreams?
+
+"..."
+
+"I'll tell you what does interest me though — the differences in the way we conduct ourselves in our dream lives and real lives and those people who seem to break down the differences."
+
+"Such as?"
+
+"Well on the positive side you have someone like Antonio Gaudí or Frank Stanford. But of course there's the negative side as well, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc."
+
+"It's interesting that you choose artists and writers as representative of the positive and serial killers, despots and murderers as the negative... perhaps neither is really accurate. It's possible you know that Gaudí was inspired by imagination and Pol Pot by greed and lust for power and that neither of them is representative of someone bringing dreams to life."
+
+"Yes but don't dreams underlie imagination and greed and lust and everything else? We act out our dreams in realities. In fact I would say nearly everything we do is an act of externalizing our dreams — the hopes, fears and strangeness that they contain. We bring them forth into the world of struggling forces and they are bandied and battered about by circumstances which are often beyond our control."
+
+"Didn't you just say the opposite?"
+
+"No I said it was possible that our dreams have no meaning in this world that we can ever understand, but that doesn't mean we don't spend our lives externalizing them and <em>trying</em> to understand them.
+
+"Exactly. Sometimes you get art, other times murder, such is the nature of dreams and the world in which we find ourselves."
+
+"..."
+
+"..."
+
+"What do you think of these art exhibits in the other room...?"
+
+"That's the sort of rhetorical question you pose so you can skip over whatever my answer may be and delve into what you really wanted to talk about — what <em>you</em> think of the art in the other room. Why don't we skip what I think and you tell me what it is you must get off your chest?"
+
+"You just can't put one over on you can you? I think the art's crap. In execution anyway. But I think the idea of the couch is very significant. I think the fact that you chose to have patients on a couch, or divan, or sofa or whatever you want to call it was genius, possibly your only moment of genius. I mean you could have had then in bed, but that's too close to actual sleep you could easily lose them in their unconscious worlds. You could have had them sit in a chair, but that's too formal, too far removed from dreams. The couch is perfect, reclined, perhaps close to sleep, but not all the way there, still able to pull back from the brink so to speak. It's like that sign over there says: ‘In a prone position, the clear certainties of thought can be diverted from their course into a twilight state of drowsiness and further into the anesthetized state of sleep or into the depths of illegitimate sexuality'"
+
+"And I've noticed that this thing, this couch, which was fairly arbitrary by the way, has become the symbol of choice..."
+
+"Yeah if I needed to create one of those universal language airport ideograms for psychology the couch would get the idea across. In the west anyway."
+
+"But why do you think the art is ‘crap'?"
+
+"I've come to think painting peaked in the 16th century or so. These modern things just don't have any soul, their narcissistic, self-absorbed, lacking depth... Though some of the painters around your day were good, Egon Schiele, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, others. I sound like a grumpy old man don't I?"
+
+"Well. Yes. But there are great painters in every age, great writers, great musicians, great everything, you just have to know where to look and how to look."
+
+"I know. I didn't mean it. I got carried away with my tendency toward hyperbole. I do that a lot, but I never really mean it, I just like to string the words together... I try you know. I try to find the good stuff. But sometimes I feel like I'm always trying and rarely succeeding."
+
+"Trying is all that matters"
+
+"Just yesterday I was thinking of an old cover from a new York literary magazine... It was a drawing of a pigeon or a dove or some sort of bird, a bird with one wing and one arm. The caption read: trying trying trying."
+
+"Mmmm. Yes. About like that."
+
+"Yeah I thought so too, that's why it's stuck with me. Everything seems to stick with me. And yet sometimes I deny remembering things which I remember better and more clearly than the person telling me about them just so I can see what they remember. I don't know why I do that."
+
+"You're avoiding something."
+
+"Maybe. Maybe I just enjoy hearing things retold by other people. Maybe I don't like to think too much about the past, my history, the world's history, our history. It can get pretty ugly at times. There is a whole lot of violence and bloodshed and war and famine in the past, sometimes I think that this whole notion of trying is waste of time. I mean we've yet to succeed. Big business runs the world, people die, wars are fought so certain people can gain access to certain things. It seems so totally pointless and stupid and yet we keep doing it. The forces keep struggling and we keep twisting and turning some riding atop and some crushed beneath."
+
+"Yes the world is a mess. But if we stop trying then there isn't even the hope of anything getting better."
+
+"Isn't that a tad bit delusional though? I mean if it's always going to be a mess than what's the difference? Why is hope necessary?"
+
+"Because without hope there is no love. And without love there is nothing, because whoever loves becomes humble; those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism."
+
+"And it's our narcissism that has us in the situation we find ourselves?"
+
+"Among other things yes. Naturally nothing is reducible to any one factor, but I would say, did say in fact, that most of our problems, whether personal or geopolitical or anywhere in between, stem from our narcissism."
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennaharvest.jpg" width="175" height="230" class="postpic" alt="'Winter' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo" />
+
+"See you were a much better writer than scientist."
+
+"Well I once wrote, ‘Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me'"
+
+"Well just about anybody could say that."
+
+"..."
+
+"A lot of people I know say they feel lost."
+
+"They should read more poetry."
+
+"Sometimes I feel lost too. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. Other times I feel like I am in the place where I should be. Lately I've been feeling more confident, but I worry about my friends."
+
+"Love and work... Work and love, that's all there is."
+
+"..."
+
+[Note that some of this faux dialogue is actual quotes and some are more summaries and some I just made up. None of it is in any way intended to represent the opinions in the writings, lectures and other works of Sigmund Freud. More or less if something sounds like it's too smart for me to have come up, that's an actual Freud quote.] diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1f056e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,134 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + 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datetime="2006-05-27T23:55:46-04:00">May 27, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds" title="Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds">Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-26T14:50:24-04:00">May 26, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/inside-and-out" title="Inside and Out">Inside and Out</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-25T17:45:12-04:00">May 25, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two" title="The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two">The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-22T20:44:33-04:00">May 22, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/ghost" title="Ghost">Ghost</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-19T19:37:07-04:00">May 19, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/feel-good-lost" title="Feel Good Lost">Feel Good Lost</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-18T00:38:37-04:00">May 18, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/blue-milk" title="Blue Milk">Blue Milk</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-16T00:32:27-04:00">May 16, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/refracted-light-and-grace" title="Refracted Light and Grace">Refracted Light and Grace</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-11T00:26:59-04:00">May 11, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/london-calling" title="London Calling">London Calling</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-10T00:16:42-04:00">May 10, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/05/closing-time" title="Closing Time">Closing Time</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-01T00:14:23-04:00">May 01, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + + + + <footer role="contentinfo"> + <nav class="bl"> + <ul> + <li><a href="/blogroll" title="Sites that inspire us">Blogroll</a></li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/feed.xml" title="RSS feed">Subscribe</a></li> + 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Like any European city worth its salt, it has a dramatic castle on a hill and all the trappings of the once glorious feudal age, but with only one day to spend, a stopover on the way to Prague, I decided, rather than try to run around seeing a bunch of stuff in a hurry, to simply pick a place and spend the day there. </p> +<p>As it happened, Cesky Krumlov was home to the magnificent Egon Schiele museum, just the sort of place I could while away an afternoon relaxing and wandering aimlessly through an art gallery, for it was indeed more of gallery than a museum. <amp-img alt="Castle Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" height="170" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovcastle.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>Schiele's mother was born in Cesky Krumlov and the artist was drawn here by some compulsion of scenery and setting several times during his life, painting the narrow cobblestone streets and wonderful mixture of Gothic and art nouveau architecture (which what was actually new in his day). One of the most beautiful things about European towns is the rich array of vibrant color schemes you see on even the most ordinary of buildings. The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Egon Schiele Sketch, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" height="159" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovschiele1.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>The first time Schiele came to Cesky Krumlov he lived here for several years. It's entirely possible he would have lived here forever were it not that the otherwise conservative town more or less ran him out for what the history books loosely refer to has his “lifestyle.” I don't propose to know exactly what Schiele's lifestyle entailed, but it probably didn't help that his primary work at the time was a series of oils and sketches of nude pubescent girls. Europe, for all its supposed open-mindedness on art, has had its moments of prudishness. Walking the streets just adjacent the town square it wasn't hard to image Schiele being out of place here and from what I know of his life, he probably made little attempt to hide anything, for he seemed to live as he painted, openly, not provoking, but perhaps confused and somewhat dismayed that not everyone found the same joys in life that he had discovered. +<break> +I spent most of the afternoon wandering through the various rooms and the oversized attic of the building which made the most fascinating museums I've ever been in. Heavy, low-hanging oak beams with cracked white plaster ceiling between them and raw unvarnished floorboards that creaked and groaned with every footstep, as if reminding you constantly of your own presence, some subliminal mnemonic of temporal space, made the museum unlike any other I have been too here in Europe or anywhere else.</break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Attic, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum1.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>I've never been one to pay to much attentions to the details of curation, everything from the work selected to the way it's lit and hung, but for the first time I realized how important all those tiny little decisions are to the experience we the viewers come away with and the curation at the Egon Schiele museum was nothing short of genius (for an example of terrible curation stop by the pompous and ill-conceived J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles).</p> +<p>In addition to the permanent Schiele collection, the museum has several exhibitions as well which during the time of my visit were sketches and paintings by Alberto Giacometti and Eva Prokopcova. Giacometti's work was a mixed bag, some of his paintings weren't worth the cost of the oils he bought to make them, but one remarkable series of sketches redeemed him. A “graphic cycle” as the museum called it, entitled <strong>Paris Without End</strong>, featured the charcoal sketches Giacometti made toward the end of his life (most of which he spent in Paris). Displayed as the facing pages of a large sketchbook, the works were intended to become lithographs but that never happened and apparently the whole sequence had never been displayed together in its original form. Giacometti's <strong>Paris Without End</strong> formed a kind of walking tour of the city in sketch form, marvelously detailed and yet extraordinarily minimalist as well. I've developed a fascination with negative space and Giacometti was a marvelous study in what can be created by a few simple lines organizing an otherwise blank page to reveal a small scene of a Parisian side street, an awning in three strokes of pen, a lamppost in the brief blur of charcoal. Walking around the display, which was laid out side by side around a massive white walled room, I had the feeling of having accompanied Giacometti on a walk around Paris during which he might have paused to note something, trace out an outline, remark on a scene. As one continuous experience, that is, all the sketches taken as a whole, the sketches felt like an intensely personal look into another person's soul, to see for a moment how they view the world. Though I knew nothing of him when I arrived at the museum, I couldn't shake the feeling on leaving that we had known each other well and can see myself at some point strolling down an alley in Montparnesse and thinking to myself, oh yes, this is where Alberto stopped to sketch the girl stepping off the train, where he huddled under the cafe awning in the rain to trace out the splash of auto tires on uneven cobblestones. But in spite of the intimate nature of the works, or perhaps because of it, the sketches are not off putting or insular, but have an openness rather like a fun filled confession to which all were invited.</p> +<p>The other artist on display was a local Czech artist named Eva Prokopcova whose abstract sketches filled the one odd and out of place room in the museum, on the ground floor, a strangely modern industrial feeling room with bare walls and floor to ceiling windows which unfortunately created a good bit of glare. Upstairs was another room of her oil paintings <amp-img alt="Eva Prokopcova Ink Drawing, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovprokopcova1.jpg" width="165"></amp-img>which displayed chronologically around the room and gave a fascinating glimpse into the progression of the artist, both what changed and what remains the same. On first glance it was easy to see that Prokopcova had been moving away from realistic forms for some time and by the time I reached the far side of the room the canvases bore a stamp of abstraction and fascination with form that owed no small debt to Jackson Pollock, if not in style at least in underlying assumptions and conceptualization of those assumptions. And yet her work is nothing like Pollack's, where he swirled into increasingly muddy tones she seemed to be moving toward brighter and brighter colors and more contrasting tones, colors that exploded to reveal forms you might say.</p> +<p>The silence of the massive attic hall began to feel slightly oppressive to me after a while and so I wandered through low arched doorway to a smaller room which had one final, separate collection of works by Prokopova, a number of small eight by ten charcoals mounted one after the other, frame touching frame, and encircling the entire room at roughly chest height. Many of these had the most warmth and joy of anything in the museum, Schiele included, and I spent considerable time, circling the room twice to study the exquisite, chaotic stabs and blotches of ink that looked somehow contented in the afternoon light which streamed in through the attic window behind me. It was not unlike the inside of a ring I thought at one point. I sat down in a solitary chair in the middle of the room and tried to imagine myself sitting in the middle of a ring, as if the room were a transparent finger and I inside it. I spent some time considering whether this observation was purely my imagination or perhaps an intension of the artist to transport us, like Sun Ra perhaps, to some ringed planet where the senses spin and mingle more freely.</p> +<p>I sat for a while in an oversized armchair alone in the center of the small attic room watching the single beam of sunlight slowly move across the floorboards while I scribbled a few notes and listened to some music on my headphones. <amp-img alt="Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum2.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>I had recently become obsessed with the ambient work of Nobukazu Takemura, or in the convention of Japanese names, Takemura Nobukazu, which somehow seemed to perfectly fit the room, the solitary finger of light dragging across the floor to the quiet chant of children's voices mingled with warbles and bleats of strings and electronic instruments, piano lines that faded to trumpet blasts, the hollow whisper of air over half full bottles, the chime of bells, the tinkling of a jack-in-the-box, and so many sounds which I cannot conjure sources for, sounds which come from a space somewhere in the imagination, as if Takemura had reached behind the curtain of life, some back door to Saturn's outer rings, and retrieved a few moments of musical clarity which he played with until arriving at the xylophonic children's symphony that I could hear in my headphones. Eventually I found I had stopped writing altogether and was simply staring into space thinking about what it would feel like to touch sound. Takemura's compositions seem to wrap themselves around you like blanket on a wintry morning or the sun at the beach, they, not unlike I might add, many of Schiele's paintings, inhabit a space that once entered reminds you immediately why you're happy to be alive, why just being is sometimes enough, no traveling, no movement and very little thought of anything other than the scene laid out before you and perhaps a lingering desire to touch the sound, the wrap your own arms around some sonic wave as it breaks over you. Perhaps you can feel the structure of time disintegrating pleasantly about you, as if a giant hand were pulling apart a pomegranate to reveal a forest of stars and the quiet clouds of light between then, whole nebulae that at once envelope and carry you out over the shadowy afternoon light drenching the forested hills, the trees warbling with birdcalls, and then you slowly spiral down again. <amp-img alt="Egon Schiele Painting, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" height="174" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovschiele2.jpg" width="222"></amp-img>I thought of Kindinsky and his synesthesia, the man whose paintbrush sang to him, who painted in cello blue and trumpet reds. I've never heard a color, though I do think colors smell differently. The room with red walls has a scent far removed from the cool afternoon creams and peaches of the dining room in the house where I once lived. I was too old for the house as it turned out, but I remember the sunlight reflection off the stainless steel kitchen sink sang to me some mornings. </p> +<p>So far as I know Schiele did not hear color either and perhaps that's why he had to make it sing on the canvas, a cool dark sound you can almost hear drifting in the window from Cesky Krumlov's streets below.</p> +<p>It was the mingling sausage scents and hunger that finally drew me back downstairs and out into the streets where a synesthetic wonderland was dressed in evening light and sounded like a river running over… <amp-img alt="Vltava River, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovriver.jpg" width="173"></amp-img>I decided as I left the Schiele museum behind that we are all synthesists in a way, there are not those clear lines between our sense that we imagine, one cannot see without hearing and tasting and touching and smelling, the sun now before me visible between the narrow slices of buildings the reflection of orange light in the waters of the river, is inseparable from the taste of Budvar, the smell of mustard and shoe polish, the sound of bells, the flapping of pigeon wings, the taste of sausage, the cool damp of the evening air, the gurgle of the river, the voices drifting out of windows, the fine inlay work on the tile floor, the shape of my chair, the yellow brown walls, the schoolgirls laughing, the waitress's perfume, the man in the corner singing softly with a cigar between his lips; everything is always happening everywhere.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/inside-and-out.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/inside-and-out.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4516751 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/inside-and-out.html @@ -0,0 +1,339 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Inside And Out - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="I've never heard a color, but I do think they smell differently. 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Like any European city worth its salt, it has a dramatic castle on a hill and all the trappings of the once glorious feudal age, but with only one day to spend, a stopover on the way to Prague, I decided, rather than try to run around seeing a bunch of stuff in a hurry, to simply pick a place and spend the day there. </p> +<p>As it happened, Cesky Krumlov was home to the magnificent Egon Schiele museum, just the sort of place I could while away an afternoon relaxing and wandering aimlessly through an art gallery, for it was indeed more of gallery than a museum. <img alt="Castle Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" class="postpic" height="170" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovcastle.jpg" width="230"/>Schiele’s mother was born in Cesky Krumlov and the artist was drawn here by some compulsion of scenery and setting several times during his life, painting the narrow cobblestone streets and wonderful mixture of Gothic and art nouveau architecture (which what was actually new in his day). One of the most beautiful things about European towns is the rich array of vibrant color schemes you see on even the most ordinary of buildings. The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London.</p> +<p><img alt="Egon Schiele Sketch, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" class="postpicright" height="159" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovschiele1.jpg" width="240"/>The first time Schiele came to Cesky Krumlov he lived here for several years. It’s entirely possible he would have lived here forever were it not that the otherwise conservative town more or less ran him out for what the history books loosely refer to has his “lifestyle.” I don’t propose to know exactly what Schiele’s lifestyle entailed, but it probably didn’t help that his primary work at the time was a series of oils and sketches of nude pubescent girls. Europe, for all its supposed open-mindedness on art, has had its moments of prudishness. Walking the streets just adjacent the town square it wasn’t hard to image Schiele being out of place here and from what I know of his life, he probably made little attempt to hide anything, for he seemed to live as he painted, openly, not provoking, but perhaps confused and somewhat dismayed that not everyone found the same joys in life that he had discovered. +<break> +I spent most of the afternoon wandering through the various rooms and the oversized attic of the building which made the most fascinating museums I’ve ever been in. Heavy, low-hanging oak beams with cracked white plaster ceiling between them and raw unvarnished floorboards that creaked and groaned with every footstep, as if reminding you constantly of your own presence, some subliminal mnemonic of temporal space, made the museum unlike any other I have been too here in Europe or anywhere else.</p> +<p><img alt="Attic, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" class="postpic" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum1.jpg" width="250"/>I’ve never been one to pay to much attentions to the details of curation, everything from the work selected to the way it’s lit and hung, but for the first time I realized how important all those tiny little decisions are to the experience we the viewers come away with and the curation at the Egon Schiele museum was nothing short of genius (for an example of terrible curation stop by the pompous and ill-conceived J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles).</p> +<p>In addition to the permanent Schiele collection, the museum has several exhibitions as well which during the time of my visit were sketches and paintings by Alberto Giacometti and Eva Prokopcova. Giacometti’s work was a mixed bag, some of his paintings weren’t worth the cost of the oils he bought to make them, but one remarkable series of sketches redeemed him. A “graphic cycle” as the museum called it, entitled <strong>Paris Without End</strong>, featured the charcoal sketches Giacometti made toward the end of his life (most of which he spent in Paris). Displayed as the facing pages of a large sketchbook, the works were intended to become lithographs but that never happened and apparently the whole sequence had never been displayed together in its original form. Giacometti’s <strong>Paris Without End</strong> formed a kind of walking tour of the city in sketch form, marvelously detailed and yet extraordinarily minimalist as well. I’ve developed a fascination with negative space and Giacometti was a marvelous study in what can be created by a few simple lines organizing an otherwise blank page to reveal a small scene of a Parisian side street, an awning in three strokes of pen, a lamppost in the brief blur of charcoal. Walking around the display, which was laid out side by side around a massive white walled room, I had the feeling of having accompanied Giacometti on a walk around Paris during which he might have paused to note something, trace out an outline, remark on a scene. As one continuous experience, that is, all the sketches taken as a whole, the sketches felt like an intensely personal look into another person’s soul, to see for a moment how they view the world. Though I knew nothing of him when I arrived at the museum, I couldn’t shake the feeling on leaving that we had known each other well and can see myself at some point strolling down an alley in Montparnesse and thinking to myself, oh yes, this is where Alberto stopped to sketch the girl stepping off the train, where he huddled under the cafe awning in the rain to trace out the splash of auto tires on uneven cobblestones. But in spite of the intimate nature of the works, or perhaps because of it, the sketches are not off putting or insular, but have an openness rather like a fun filled confession to which all were invited.</p> +<p>The other artist on display was a local Czech artist named Eva Prokopcova whose abstract sketches filled the one odd and out of place room in the museum, on the ground floor, a strangely modern industrial feeling room with bare walls and floor to ceiling windows which unfortunately created a good bit of glare. Upstairs was another room of her oil paintings <img alt="Eva Prokopcova Ink Drawing, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" class="postpicright" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovprokopcova1.jpg" width="165"/>which displayed chronologically around the room and gave a fascinating glimpse into the progression of the artist, both what changed and what remains the same. On first glance it was easy to see that Prokopcova had been moving away from realistic forms for some time and by the time I reached the far side of the room the canvases bore a stamp of abstraction and fascination with form that owed no small debt to Jackson Pollock, if not in style at least in underlying assumptions and conceptualization of those assumptions. And yet her work is nothing like Pollack’s, where he swirled into increasingly muddy tones she seemed to be moving toward brighter and brighter colors and more contrasting tones, colors that exploded to reveal forms you might say.</p> +<p>The silence of the massive attic hall began to feel slightly oppressive to me after a while and so I wandered through low arched doorway to a smaller room which had one final, separate collection of works by Prokopova, a number of small eight by ten charcoals mounted one after the other, frame touching frame, and encircling the entire room at roughly chest height. Many of these had the most warmth and joy of anything in the museum, Schiele included, and I spent considerable time, circling the room twice to study the exquisite, chaotic stabs and blotches of ink that looked somehow contented in the afternoon light which streamed in through the attic window behind me. It was not unlike the inside of a ring I thought at one point. I sat down in a solitary chair in the middle of the room and tried to imagine myself sitting in the middle of a ring, as if the room were a transparent finger and I inside it. I spent some time considering whether this observation was purely my imagination or perhaps an intension of the artist to transport us, like Sun Ra perhaps, to some ringed planet where the senses spin and mingle more freely.</p> +<p>I sat for a while in an oversized armchair alone in the center of the small attic room watching the single beam of sunlight slowly move across the floorboards while I scribbled a few notes and listened to some music on my headphones. <img alt="Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" class="postpic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum2.jpg" width="240"/>I thought of Kindinsky and his synesthesia, the man whose paintbrush sang to him, who painted in cello blue and trumpet reds. I’ve never heard a color, though I do think colors smell differently. The room with red walls has a scent far removed from the cool afternoon creams and peaches of the dining room in the house where I once lived. I was too old for the house as it turned out, but I remember the sunlight reflection off the stainless steel kitchen sink sang to me some mornings. </p> +<p>So far as I know Schiele did not hear color either and perhaps that’s why he had to make it sing on the canvas, a cool dark sound you can almost hear drifting in the window from Cesky Krumlov’s streets below.</p> +<p>It was the mingling sausage scents and hunger that finally drew me back downstairs and out into the streets where a synesthetic wonderland was dressed in evening light and sounded like a river running over… <img alt="Vltava River, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovriver.jpg" width="173"/>I decided as I left the Schiele museum behind that we are all synthesists in a way, there are not those clear lines between our sense that we imagine, one cannot see without hearing and tasting and touching and smelling, the sun now before me visible between the narrow slices of buildings the reflection of orange light in the waters of the river, is inseparable from the taste of Budvar, the smell of mustard and shoe polish, the sound of bells, the flapping of pigeon wings, the taste of sausage, the cool damp of the evening air, the gurgle of the river, the voices drifting out of windows, the fine inlay work on the tile floor, the shape of my chair, the yellow brown walls, the schoolgirls laughing, the waitress’s perfume, the man in the corner singing softly with a cigar between his lips; everything is always happening everywhere.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two" rel="prev" title=" The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two">The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds" rel="next" title=" Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds">Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="62" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833475" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="12f95f5351d1a8b5f49a4ee7371488db3c3ff619" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Like any European city worth its salt, it has a dramatic castle on a hill and all the trappings of the once glorious feudal age, but with only one day to spend, a stopover on the way to Prague, I decided, rather than try to run around seeing a bunch of stuff in a hurry, to simply pick a place and spend the day there.
+
+As it happened, Cesky Krumlov was home to the magnificent Egon Schiele museum, just the sort of place I could while away an afternoon relaxing and wandering aimlessly through an art gallery, for it was indeed more of gallery than a museum. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovcastle.jpg" width="230" height="170" class="postpic" alt="Castle Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" />Schiele's mother was born in Cesky Krumlov and the artist was drawn here by some compulsion of scenery and setting several times during his life, painting the narrow cobblestone streets and wonderful mixture of Gothic and art nouveau architecture (which what was actually new in his day). One of the most beautiful things about European towns is the rich array of vibrant color schemes you see on even the most ordinary of buildings. The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovschiele1.jpg" width="240" height="159" class="postpicright" alt="Egon Schiele Sketch, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" />The first time Schiele came to Cesky Krumlov he lived here for several years. It's entirely possible he would have lived here forever were it not that the otherwise conservative town more or less ran him out for what the history books loosely refer to has his “lifestyle.” I don't propose to know exactly what Schiele's lifestyle entailed, but it probably didn't help that his primary work at the time was a series of oils and sketches of nude pubescent girls. Europe, for all its supposed open-mindedness on art, has had its moments of prudishness. Walking the streets just adjacent the town square it wasn't hard to image Schiele being out of place here and from what I know of his life, he probably made little attempt to hide anything, for he seemed to live as he painted, openly, not provoking, but perhaps confused and somewhat dismayed that not everyone found the same joys in life that he had discovered.
+<break>
+I spent most of the afternoon wandering through the various rooms and the oversized attic of the building which made the most fascinating museums I've ever been in. Heavy, low-hanging oak beams with cracked white plaster ceiling between them and raw unvarnished floorboards that creaked and groaned with every footstep, as if reminding you constantly of your own presence, some subliminal mnemonic of temporal space, made the museum unlike any other I have been too here in Europe or anywhere else.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum1.jpg" width="250" height="188" class="postpic" alt="Attic, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" />I've never been one to pay to much attentions to the details of curation, everything from the work selected to the way it's lit and hung, but for the first time I realized how important all those tiny little decisions are to the experience we the viewers come away with and the curation at the Egon Schiele museum was nothing short of genius (for an example of terrible curation stop by the pompous and ill-conceived J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles).
+
+In addition to the permanent Schiele collection, the museum has several exhibitions as well which during the time of my visit were sketches and paintings by Alberto Giacometti and Eva Prokopcova. Giacometti's work was a mixed bag, some of his paintings weren't worth the cost of the oils he bought to make them, but one remarkable series of sketches redeemed him. A “graphic cycle” as the museum called it, entitled **Paris Without End**, featured the charcoal sketches Giacometti made toward the end of his life (most of which he spent in Paris). Displayed as the facing pages of a large sketchbook, the works were intended to become lithographs but that never happened and apparently the whole sequence had never been displayed together in its original form. Giacometti's **Paris Without End** formed a kind of walking tour of the city in sketch form, marvelously detailed and yet extraordinarily minimalist as well. I've developed a fascination with negative space and Giacometti was a marvelous study in what can be created by a few simple lines organizing an otherwise blank page to reveal a small scene of a Parisian side street, an awning in three strokes of pen, a lamppost in the brief blur of charcoal. Walking around the display, which was laid out side by side around a massive white walled room, I had the feeling of having accompanied Giacometti on a walk around Paris during which he might have paused to note something, trace out an outline, remark on a scene. As one continuous experience, that is, all the sketches taken as a whole, the sketches felt like an intensely personal look into another person's soul, to see for a moment how they view the world. Though I knew nothing of him when I arrived at the museum, I couldn't shake the feeling on leaving that we had known each other well and can see myself at some point strolling down an alley in Montparnesse and thinking to myself, oh yes, this is where Alberto stopped to sketch the girl stepping off the train, where he huddled under the cafe awning in the rain to trace out the splash of auto tires on uneven cobblestones. But in spite of the intimate nature of the works, or perhaps because of it, the sketches are not off putting or insular, but have an openness rather like a fun filled confession to which all were invited.
+
+The other artist on display was a local Czech artist named Eva Prokopcova whose abstract sketches filled the one odd and out of place room in the museum, on the ground floor, a strangely modern industrial feeling room with bare walls and floor to ceiling windows which unfortunately created a good bit of glare. Upstairs was another room of her oil paintings <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovprokopcova1.jpg" width="165" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Eva Prokopcova Ink Drawing, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" />which displayed chronologically around the room and gave a fascinating glimpse into the progression of the artist, both what changed and what remains the same. On first glance it was easy to see that Prokopcova had been moving away from realistic forms for some time and by the time I reached the far side of the room the canvases bore a stamp of abstraction and fascination with form that owed no small debt to Jackson Pollock, if not in style at least in underlying assumptions and conceptualization of those assumptions. And yet her work is nothing like Pollack's, where he swirled into increasingly muddy tones she seemed to be moving toward brighter and brighter colors and more contrasting tones, colors that exploded to reveal forms you might say.
+
+The silence of the massive attic hall began to feel slightly oppressive to me after a while and so I wandered through low arched doorway to a smaller room which had one final, separate collection of works by Prokopova, a number of small eight by ten charcoals mounted one after the other, frame touching frame, and encircling the entire room at roughly chest height. Many of these had the most warmth and joy of anything in the museum, Schiele included, and I spent considerable time, circling the room twice to study the exquisite, chaotic stabs and blotches of ink that looked somehow contented in the afternoon light which streamed in through the attic window behind me. It was not unlike the inside of a ring I thought at one point. I sat down in a solitary chair in the middle of the room and tried to imagine myself sitting in the middle of a ring, as if the room were a transparent finger and I inside it. I spent some time considering whether this observation was purely my imagination or perhaps an intension of the artist to transport us, like Sun Ra perhaps, to some ringed planet where the senses spin and mingle more freely.
+
+I sat for a while in an oversized armchair alone in the center of the small attic room watching the single beam of sunlight slowly move across the floorboards while I scribbled a few notes and listened to some music on my headphones. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum2.jpg" width="240" height="180" class="postpic" alt="Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" />I had recently become obsessed with the ambient work of Nobukazu Takemura, or in the convention of Japanese names, Takemura Nobukazu, which somehow seemed to perfectly fit the room, the solitary finger of light dragging across the floor to the quiet chant of children's voices mingled with warbles and bleats of strings and electronic instruments, piano lines that faded to trumpet blasts, the hollow whisper of air over half full bottles, the chime of bells, the tinkling of a jack-in-the-box, and so many sounds which I cannot conjure sources for, sounds which come from a space somewhere in the imagination, as if Takemura had reached behind the curtain of life, some back door to Saturn's outer rings, and retrieved a few moments of musical clarity which he played with until arriving at the xylophonic children's symphony that I could hear in my headphones. Eventually I found I had stopped writing altogether and was simply staring into space thinking about what it would feel like to touch sound. Takemura's compositions seem to wrap themselves around you like blanket on a wintry morning or the sun at the beach, they, not unlike I might add, many of Schiele's paintings, inhabit a space that once entered reminds you immediately why you're happy to be alive, why just being is sometimes enough, no traveling, no movement and very little thought of anything other than the scene laid out before you and perhaps a lingering desire to touch the sound, the wrap your own arms around some sonic wave as it breaks over you. Perhaps you can feel the structure of time disintegrating pleasantly about you, as if a giant hand were pulling apart a pomegranate to reveal a forest of stars and the quiet clouds of light between then, whole nebulae that at once envelope and carry you out over the shadowy afternoon light drenching the forested hills, the trees warbling with birdcalls, and then you slowly spiral down again. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovschiele2.jpg" width="222" height="174" class="postpicright" alt="Egon Schiele Painting, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" />I thought of Kindinsky and his synesthesia, the man whose paintbrush sang to him, who painted in cello blue and trumpet reds. I've never heard a color, though I do think colors smell differently. The room with red walls has a scent far removed from the cool afternoon creams and peaches of the dining room in the house where I once lived. I was too old for the house as it turned out, but I remember the sunlight reflection off the stainless steel kitchen sink sang to me some mornings.
+
+So far as I know Schiele did not hear color either and perhaps that's why he had to make it sing on the canvas, a cool dark sound you can almost hear drifting in the window from Cesky Krumlov's streets below.
+
+It was the mingling sausage scents and hunger that finally drew me back downstairs and out into the streets where a synesthetic wonderland was dressed in evening light and sounded like a river running over… <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovriver.jpg" width="173" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Vltava River, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic" />I decided as I left the Schiele museum behind that we are all synthesists in a way, there are not those clear lines between our sense that we imagine, one cannot see without hearing and tasting and touching and smelling, the sun now before me visible between the narrow slices of buildings the reflection of orange light in the waters of the river, is inseparable from the taste of Budvar, the smell of mustard and shoe polish, the sound of bells, the flapping of pigeon wings, the taste of sausage, the cool damp of the evening air, the gurgle of the river, the voices drifting out of windows, the fine inlay work on the tile floor, the shape of my chair, the yellow brown walls, the schoolgirls laughing, the waitress's perfume, the man in the corner singing softly with a cigar between his lips; everything is always happening everywhere. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddd4608 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two.amp @@ -0,0 +1,191 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Neutral Milk Hotel, the mountains of Bled Slovenia and just how many people can you fit in your heart? 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But owing to a change in the weather which turned from the perfect sunshine of the Dalmatian Coast to rather stormy skies, I did not see much of the sweeping panorama but instead found myself drawn to tiny little scenes in miniature which when examined closely held the same sweeping views but on a different scale. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="monastery, Bled Slovenia" height="192" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledmonastery.jpg" width="220"></amp-img>There is a roughly 200km loop of road that leads northwest out of Bled, through a pass in the Julian Alps and then down the other side, twisting and winding back toward Bled by way of craggy canyons, small hamlets and crystalline rivers. We set out sometime after breakfast and first stopped about halfway up to the pass to see a memorial to the prisoners of war who died building the road during the First World War. My parents walked uphill to the monument, but I elected to take a short walk through the forest. The hidden sun cast a fine even light, as if filtered through a veil of ash, over the forest such that there were few shadows and even the deepest reaches of the woods were visible. I stopped near the road to examine for a while the lichen clinging to the side of a tree, which first caught my eye as a grey-green confusion against otherwise dark brown bark, but, on looking closer, I noticed the confusion gave way to an organization. <amp-img alt="Lichens, Near Bled, Slovenia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledlichens.jpg" width="170"></amp-img>The lichen grew in clumps and rows, much as a forest does and in the valleys and hallows between the pale green strands of lichen, dozens of tiny insects wandered in the midst of what, for them, must be towering fronds. Beetles and ants treaded up and down the rows of lichen, while tiny green insects hovered pensively just above, as if trying to decided whether to duck into the forest of pale silvery branches below. </p> +<p>Lichen are a composite plant consisting of a fungus which contains photosynthetic algae cells. I remember reading once that lichen grow very slowly and that these growths, which often appear on rocks and trees as a crustlike expansion, slowly covering over their surroundings, can live as long and sometimes longer than many of the trees to which they cling. I couldn't help but notice that lichen bears an uncanny resemblance to coral, which also hosts green algae in their tissues to draw nutrients from the sunlight. Coral is one of the smallest creatures in the world and yet it is the only animal whose architecture is visible from space. Only tiny coral joining together into colonies as it does is capable of making something so massive it's visible from well beyond our world. </p> +<p>Lichen may not be as spectacular in architectural achievement as coral, but then again, neither are we. I continued on into the forest lost in the strangeness of the thought that the largest things should come from the smallest sources. I walked aimlessly and rather slow, letting the forest step by step reveal a path, <amp-img alt="Forest, near Bled, Slovenia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledforest.jpg" width="173"></amp-img>which it did; tree by tree, bush by bush it moved me to the only direction I could go. After walking maybe a hundred meters I came to a small clearing where the trees stood apart in a ring and forest floor turned to brilliant green grass and a kaleidoscope of colorful wildflowers—wild mustard, blue-eyed mary, woodruff, dandelions and many more whose names I do not know. I stood in the middle of the clearing and began, for no reason at all to turn in circles with my head tipped back, staring up at the branches and leaves of the white firs and pines swollen with yellow clumps of pollen. When I think of it now I see something a bit like the long panoramic sweeps through the forest that filmmaker Terrance Malik is so fond of, panning up into the canopy of trees and leaves with flashes of sunlight peaking through from behind the milky white low hanging clouds. I continued to spin slowly in a circle, stumbling at times but keeping my head up high until I began to feel as if I were floating up into the air, almost able to touch the top leaves of a nearby beech tree before slowly spiraling back down the earth.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="dandelions, near Bled, Slovenia" height="163" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bleddandelion.jpg" width="244"></amp-img>Eventually I was overcomes with dizziness and had to sit down in the middle of the clearing while the world still turned slowly around me. I lay back in the grass so I was eyelevel with the dandelion puffs and watched them shudder in the stray currents of air floating down from the pass which shook the beeches as well making their leaves flutter and quake. I would have been quite happy to have died in that moment, or to have suddenly flown off up into the heavens. There is a peace in mountains, forests, by the sea, in middle of Central Park, Jardin des Plantes, the Garmond in Vienna, a train station in Munich, that does, as the man said, passeth all understanding. Or perhaps, as I have come to believe, the place is entirely irrelevant, it is in fact a place within us that creates the peace, as place as Marc Bolan once sang, "deep in my heart that's big enough to hold, just about all of you." I lay there wondering with smile who exactly wouldn't fit in Marc Bolan's heart and with less of the smile who wouldn't fit in mine. I would like to think that there isn't anyone who wouldn't fit. In fact I decided that the folding chairs in my soul would well be carried down to my heart and used to hold the overflow. Eventually when I had worked out this oversight to my satisfaction, I sat up and lit a cigarette.</p> +<p>Through the trees behind me, if I craned my neck I could just make out the roof of the memorial. I began to wonder about the soldiers who died here from exhaustion and cold. I wondered if they found the mountains beautiful even in the midst of their forced labor. I wondered what they dreamed of at night as the slept in the tiny shelters which could scarcely have afforded them much comfort. After a while I could almost see them around me, ghostly figures shrunken slightly with death, still wearing the tattered uniforms and worn wool overcoats they were buried in <amp-img alt="Blue Flowers, near Bled, Slovenia" height="214" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledbluebells.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>standing in a half circle on the edge of the clearing, smiling, having found a place beyond the cold, beyond hatred, war and cynicism, happy to be free in some place where we will all one day go to return to the children we once were, to laugh and dance and sing and most of all be silly again. I raised myself on one elbow and looked behind me at the trees and between them the soldiers and smiled to salute them, and they smiled back as if to say it's okay, all is forgiven, you and me and they slowly turned to walk back through the woods. I followed their footsteps retracing my path in the forest back to the road, the car and world of the living.</p> +<p>By the time we reached the pass the clouds had descended over the upper reaches of the peaks and continued to spill down the hill like milk poured from heaven. We walked for a few minutes around the sandy soils of the high alpine tundra where only the hardiest of plants can grow, the tall trees absent, only stunted white firs and few beds of heather <amp-img alt="Mountains and clouds, near Bled, Slovenia" height="164" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledpassclouds.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>stretching up the sloping scree and talus peaks. At a small stand beside the park headquarters a little girl and her father were buying postcards from a souvenir stand, the girl repeating over and over to her dad, "look at my beautiful picture, look at my beautiful picture" as she clutched the small piece of paper to her overcoat. She then turned to her mother and began again, "mummy, look at my beautiful picture," as her parents ushered her back in the car.</p> +<p>As we made our way down the mountain the road joined up with a river and began to wind its way alongside it. We noticed a rickety suspension bridge at one point and felt compelled to stop and walk across it. My father and I walked to the other side, stopping to make some photographs and look at the strange milky blue water of Slovenian rivers, which seem to me the clearest most beautiful waters I've ever seen. I suppose the blue tinge is from the glacial silt, but that doesn't really make sense because it seems to me silt would be washed downstream by the force of the river. Whatever the case, the water is turquoise and standing beside it there is a smell I've never noticed before, a smell of clarity, if such a thing may be said to exist. <amp-img alt="suspension bridge, near Bled, slovenia" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledriverme.jpg" width="179"></amp-img>Little tuffs of cotton-like spores floated downwind in the breeze and I noticed one particular tree which seemed to be milking itself. A strange foamy liquid seeped out of every joint in its branches, bubbling in the sunlight until it settled to clear liquid and fell from the trees to land on our arms. It was not sticky and had no taste. If it was sap it had spent to long near the clear river water until it too had come to possess the same lucid transparency that seems to seep out of everything in Slovenia.</p> +<p>Down the far side of the pass we turned off onto a very narrow road and passed through several small towns consisting of stone farm houses, wooden sheds and barns and rocky walls dividing up the valley, which was a veritable explosion of spring wildflowers, so dense and colorful as to nearly hide the green grass beneath them. <amp-img alt="Cord wood, near Bled, Slovenia" height="172" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledwood.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>Beside nearly every house whether solitary on a plot of farmland or clustered in the number of small villages, was a stack of cordwood covered by a small lean-to or roof of some kind. I watched as these piles of firewood floated past my window reflecting on the almost eerie sense of pattern and order visible in them. It seemed to me rather like an architect had planned to intricate combination and balance of angles and light and shadow and positive and negative space, until in the end it more closely resembled a carefully thought out mosaic than a haphazard stack of split wood.</p> +<p>We stopped in one of the towns to visit an old church lying rather sleepily, nestled in a curve of the road under the shade of an elm which towered majestically above the church bell tower. <amp-img alt="Church, near Bled, Slovenia" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledchurch.jpg" width="174"></amp-img>I waited across the road while a German couple loitered around the front yard wanting for once to be alone in a church. The church was not remarkable architecturally, not listed in any guidebook, it was simply a village church, humble, but yet standing out from the other buildings by virtue of its tower. Eventually I walked up the steps and into the cool darkness of the foyer, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light before I could continue. As my pupils widened and the darkness took form and shape I made my way forward toward the altar where I stopped to study a small figurine of the Virgin Mary. Her face seemed peaceful looking down at the baby in her arms. I said a brief prayer for the soldiers and, as I looked at Mary and child, I began to think of the girl up at the pass with her beautiful pictures postcards, I thought of a Jeff Tweedy lyric, "my fangs have been pulled" and realized with great sigh that indeed, in the last eight months, my fangs have been pulled and all I want to do is show you my picture, my beautiful, but tragically incomplete picture. +<break></break></p> +<p>As I walked out of the church and back toward the car I remember something I believe Picasso said, that we are all trying to remember how to be children.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a54671f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two.html @@ -0,0 +1,339 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The King Of Carrot Flowers Part Two - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Neutral Milk Hotel, the mountains of Bled Slovenia and just how many people can you fit in your heart? 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But owing to a change in the weather which turned from the perfect sunshine of the Dalmatian Coast to rather stormy skies, I did not see much of the sweeping panorama but instead found myself drawn to tiny little scenes in miniature which when examined closely held the same sweeping views but on a different scale. </p> +<p><img alt="monastery, Bled Slovenia" class="postpic" height="192" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledmonastery.jpg" width="220"/>The lichen grew in clumps and rows, much as a forest does and in the valleys and hallows between the pale green strands of lichen, dozens of tiny insects wandered in the midst of what, for them, must be towering fronds. Beetles and ants treaded up and down the rows of lichen, while tiny green insects hovered pensively just above, as if trying to decided whether to duck into the forest of pale silvery branches below. </p> +<p>Lichen are a composite plant consisting of a fungus which contains photosynthetic algae cells. I remember reading once that lichen grow very slowly and that these growths, which often appear on rocks and trees as a crustlike expansion, slowly covering over their surroundings, can live as long and sometimes longer than many of the trees to which they cling. I couldn’t help but notice that lichen bears an uncanny resemblance to coral, which also hosts green algae in their tissues to draw nutrients from the sunlight. Coral is one of the smallest creatures in the world and yet it is the only animal whose architecture is visible from space. Only tiny coral joining together into colonies as it does is capable of making something so massive it’s visible from well beyond our world. </p> +<p>Lichen may not be as spectacular in architectural achievement as coral, but then again, neither are we. I continued on into the forest lost in the strangeness of the thought that the largest things should come from the smallest sources. I walked aimlessly and rather slow, letting the forest step by step reveal a path, <img alt="Forest, near Bled, Slovenia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledforest.jpg" width="173"/>which it did; tree by tree, bush by bush it moved me to the only direction I could go. After walking maybe a hundred meters I came to a small clearing where the trees stood apart in a ring and forest floor turned to brilliant green grass and a kaleidoscope of colorful wildflowers—wild mustard, blue-eyed mary, woodruff, dandelions and many more whose names I do not know. I stood in the middle of the clearing and began, for no reason at all to turn in circles with my head tipped back, staring up at the branches and leaves of the white firs and pines swollen with yellow clumps of pollen. When I think of it now I see something a bit like the long panoramic sweeps through the forest that filmmaker Terrance Malik is so fond of, panning up into the canopy of trees and leaves with flashes of sunlight peaking through from behind the milky white low hanging clouds. I continued to spin slowly in a circle, stumbling at times but keeping my head up high until I began to feel as if I were floating up into the air, almost able to touch the top leaves of a nearby beech tree before slowly spiraling back down the earth.</p> +<p><img alt="dandelions, near Bled, Slovenia" class="postpicright" height="163" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bleddandelion.jpg" width="244"/>Eventually I was overcomes with dizziness and had to sit down in the middle of the clearing while the world still turned slowly around me. I lay back in the grass so I was eyelevel with the dandelion puffs and watched them shudder in the stray currents of air floating down from the pass which shook the beeches as well making their leaves flutter and quake. I would have been quite happy to have died in that moment, or to have suddenly flown off up into the heavens. There is a peace in mountains, forests, by the sea, in middle of Central Park, Jardin des Plantes, the Garmond in Vienna, a train station in Munich, that does, as the man said, passeth all understanding. Or perhaps, as I have come to believe, the place is entirely irrelevant, it is in fact a place within us that creates the peace, as place as Marc Bolan once sang, “deep in my heart that’s big enough to hold, just about all of you.” I lay there wondering with smile who exactly wouldn’t fit in Marc Bolan’s heart and with less of the smile who wouldn’t fit in mine. I would like to think that there isn’t anyone who wouldn’t fit. In fact I decided that the folding chairs in my soul would well be carried down to my heart and used to hold the overflow. Eventually when I had worked out this oversight to my satisfaction, I sat up and lit a cigarette.</p> +<p>Through the trees behind me, if I craned my neck I could just make out the roof of the memorial. I began to wonder about the soldiers who died here from exhaustion and cold. I wondered if they found the mountains beautiful even in the midst of their forced labor. I wondered what they dreamed of at night as the slept in the tiny shelters which could scarcely have afforded them much comfort. After a while I could almost see them around me, ghostly figures shrunken slightly with death, still wearing the tattered uniforms and worn wool overcoats they were buried in <img alt="Blue Flowers, near Bled, Slovenia" class="postpic" height="214" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledbluebells.jpg" width="230"/>standing in a half circle on the edge of the clearing, smiling, having found a place beyond the cold, beyond hatred, war and cynicism, happy to be free in some place where we will all one day go to return to the children we once were, to laugh and dance and sing and most of all be silly again. I raised myself on one elbow and looked behind me at the trees and between them the soldiers and smiled to salute them, and they smiled back as if to say it’s okay, all is forgiven, you and me and they slowly turned to walk back through the woods. I followed their footsteps retracing my path in the forest back to the road, the car and world of the living.</p> +<p>By the time we reached the pass the clouds had descended over the upper reaches of the peaks and continued to spill down the hill like milk poured from heaven. We walked for a few minutes around the sandy soils of the high alpine tundra where only the hardiest of plants can grow, the tall trees absent, only stunted white firs and few beds of heather <img alt="Mountains and clouds, near Bled, Slovenia" class="postpicright" height="164" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledpassclouds.jpg" width="240"/>stretching up the sloping scree and talus peaks. At a small stand beside the park headquarters a little girl and her father were buying postcards from a souvenir stand, the girl repeating over and over to her dad, “look at my beautiful picture, look at my beautiful picture” as she clutched the small piece of paper to her overcoat. She then turned to her mother and began again, “mummy, look at my beautiful picture,” as her parents ushered her back in the car.</p> +<p>As we made our way down the mountain the road joined up with a river and began to wind its way alongside it. We noticed a rickety suspension bridge at one point and felt compelled to stop and walk across it. My father and I walked to the other side, stopping to make some photographs and look at the strange milky blue water of Slovenian rivers, which seem to me the clearest most beautiful waters I’ve ever seen. I suppose the blue tinge is from the glacial silt, but that doesn’t really make sense because it seems to me silt would be washed downstream by the force of the river. Whatever the case, the water is turquoise and standing beside it there is a smell I’ve never noticed before, a smell of clarity, if such a thing may be said to exist. <img alt="suspension bridge, near Bled, slovenia" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledriverme.jpg" width="179"/>Little tuffs of cotton-like spores floated downwind in the breeze and I noticed one particular tree which seemed to be milking itself. A strange foamy liquid seeped out of every joint in its branches, bubbling in the sunlight until it settled to clear liquid and fell from the trees to land on our arms. It was not sticky and had no taste. If it was sap it had spent to long near the clear river water until it too had come to possess the same lucid transparency that seems to seep out of everything in Slovenia.</p> +<p>Down the far side of the pass we turned off onto a very narrow road and passed through several small towns consisting of stone farm houses, wooden sheds and barns and rocky walls dividing up the valley, which was a veritable explosion of spring wildflowers, so dense and colorful as to nearly hide the green grass beneath them. <img alt="Cord wood, near Bled, Slovenia" class="postpicright" height="172" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledwood.jpg" width="230"/>Beside nearly every house whether solitary on a plot of farmland or clustered in the number of small villages, was a stack of cordwood covered by a small lean-to or roof of some kind. I watched as these piles of firewood floated past my window reflecting on the almost eerie sense of pattern and order visible in them. It seemed to me rather like an architect had planned to intricate combination and balance of angles and light and shadow and positive and negative space, until in the end it more closely resembled a carefully thought out mosaic than a haphazard stack of split wood.</p> +<p>We stopped in one of the towns to visit an old church lying rather sleepily, nestled in a curve of the road under the shade of an elm which towered majestically above the church bell tower. <img alt="Church, near Bled, Slovenia" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledchurch.jpg" width="174"/>I waited across the road while a German couple loitered around the front yard wanting for once to be alone in a church. The church was not remarkable architecturally, not listed in any guidebook, it was simply a village church, humble, but yet standing out from the other buildings by virtue of its tower. Eventually I walked up the steps and into the cool darkness of the foyer, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light before I could continue. As my pupils widened and the darkness took form and shape I made my way forward toward the altar where I stopped to study a small figurine of the Virgin Mary. Her face seemed peaceful looking down at the baby in her arms. I said a brief prayer for the soldiers and, as I looked at Mary and child, I began to think of the girl up at the pass with her beautiful pictures postcards, I thought of a Jeff Tweedy lyric, “my fangs have been pulled” and realized with great sigh that indeed, in the last eight months, my fangs have been pulled and all I want to do is show you my picture, my beautiful, but tragically incomplete picture. +<break></p> +<p>As I walked out of the church and back toward the car I remember something I believe Picasso said, that we are all trying to remember how to be children.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/ghost" rel="prev" title=" Ghost">Ghost</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/inside-and-out" rel="next" title=" Inside and Out">Inside and Out</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="61" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833475" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="ddc3b146cc111abd6ce7c22abc963f83c1418099" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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But owing to a change in the weather which turned from the perfect sunshine of the Dalmatian Coast to rather stormy skies, I did not see much of the sweeping panorama but instead found myself drawn to tiny little scenes in miniature which when examined closely held the same sweeping views but on a different scale.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledmonastery.jpg" width="220" height="192" class="postpic" alt="monastery, Bled Slovenia" />There is a roughly 200km loop of road that leads northwest out of Bled, through a pass in the Julian Alps and then down the other side, twisting and winding back toward Bled by way of craggy canyons, small hamlets and crystalline rivers. We set out sometime after breakfast and first stopped about halfway up to the pass to see a memorial to the prisoners of war who died building the road during the First World War. My parents walked uphill to the monument, but I elected to take a short walk through the forest. The hidden sun cast a fine even light, as if filtered through a veil of ash, over the forest such that there were few shadows and even the deepest reaches of the woods were visible. I stopped near the road to examine for a while the lichen clinging to the side of a tree, which first caught my eye as a grey-green confusion against otherwise dark brown bark, but, on looking closer, I noticed the confusion gave way to an organization. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledlichens.jpg" width="170" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Lichens, Near Bled, Slovenia" />The lichen grew in clumps and rows, much as a forest does and in the valleys and hallows between the pale green strands of lichen, dozens of tiny insects wandered in the midst of what, for them, must be towering fronds. Beetles and ants treaded up and down the rows of lichen, while tiny green insects hovered pensively just above, as if trying to decided whether to duck into the forest of pale silvery branches below.
+
+Lichen are a composite plant consisting of a fungus which contains photosynthetic algae cells. I remember reading once that lichen grow very slowly and that these growths, which often appear on rocks and trees as a crustlike expansion, slowly covering over their surroundings, can live as long and sometimes longer than many of the trees to which they cling. I couldn't help but notice that lichen bears an uncanny resemblance to coral, which also hosts green algae in their tissues to draw nutrients from the sunlight. Coral is one of the smallest creatures in the world and yet it is the only animal whose architecture is visible from space. Only tiny coral joining together into colonies as it does is capable of making something so massive it's visible from well beyond our world.
+
+Lichen may not be as spectacular in architectural achievement as coral, but then again, neither are we. I continued on into the forest lost in the strangeness of the thought that the largest things should come from the smallest sources. I walked aimlessly and rather slow, letting the forest step by step reveal a path, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledforest.jpg" width="173" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Forest, near Bled, Slovenia" />which it did; tree by tree, bush by bush it moved me to the only direction I could go. After walking maybe a hundred meters I came to a small clearing where the trees stood apart in a ring and forest floor turned to brilliant green grass and a kaleidoscope of colorful wildflowers—wild mustard, blue-eyed mary, woodruff, dandelions and many more whose names I do not know. I stood in the middle of the clearing and began, for no reason at all to turn in circles with my head tipped back, staring up at the branches and leaves of the white firs and pines swollen with yellow clumps of pollen. When I think of it now I see something a bit like the long panoramic sweeps through the forest that filmmaker Terrance Malik is so fond of, panning up into the canopy of trees and leaves with flashes of sunlight peaking through from behind the milky white low hanging clouds. I continued to spin slowly in a circle, stumbling at times but keeping my head up high until I began to feel as if I were floating up into the air, almost able to touch the top leaves of a nearby beech tree before slowly spiraling back down the earth.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bleddandelion.jpg" width="244" height="163" class="postpicright" alt="dandelions, near Bled, Slovenia" />Eventually I was overcomes with dizziness and had to sit down in the middle of the clearing while the world still turned slowly around me. I lay back in the grass so I was eyelevel with the dandelion puffs and watched them shudder in the stray currents of air floating down from the pass which shook the beeches as well making their leaves flutter and quake. I would have been quite happy to have died in that moment, or to have suddenly flown off up into the heavens. There is a peace in mountains, forests, by the sea, in middle of Central Park, Jardin des Plantes, the Garmond in Vienna, a train station in Munich, that does, as the man said, passeth all understanding. Or perhaps, as I have come to believe, the place is entirely irrelevant, it is in fact a place within us that creates the peace, as place as Marc Bolan once sang, "deep in my heart that's big enough to hold, just about all of you." I lay there wondering with smile who exactly wouldn't fit in Marc Bolan's heart and with less of the smile who wouldn't fit in mine. I would like to think that there isn't anyone who wouldn't fit. In fact I decided that the folding chairs in my soul would well be carried down to my heart and used to hold the overflow. Eventually when I had worked out this oversight to my satisfaction, I sat up and lit a cigarette.
+
+Through the trees behind me, if I craned my neck I could just make out the roof of the memorial. I began to wonder about the soldiers who died here from exhaustion and cold. I wondered if they found the mountains beautiful even in the midst of their forced labor. I wondered what they dreamed of at night as the slept in the tiny shelters which could scarcely have afforded them much comfort. After a while I could almost see them around me, ghostly figures shrunken slightly with death, still wearing the tattered uniforms and worn wool overcoats they were buried in <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledbluebells.jpg" width="230" height="214" class="postpic" alt="Blue Flowers, near Bled, Slovenia" />standing in a half circle on the edge of the clearing, smiling, having found a place beyond the cold, beyond hatred, war and cynicism, happy to be free in some place where we will all one day go to return to the children we once were, to laugh and dance and sing and most of all be silly again. I raised myself on one elbow and looked behind me at the trees and between them the soldiers and smiled to salute them, and they smiled back as if to say it's okay, all is forgiven, you and me and they slowly turned to walk back through the woods. I followed their footsteps retracing my path in the forest back to the road, the car and world of the living.
+
+By the time we reached the pass the clouds had descended over the upper reaches of the peaks and continued to spill down the hill like milk poured from heaven. We walked for a few minutes around the sandy soils of the high alpine tundra where only the hardiest of plants can grow, the tall trees absent, only stunted white firs and few beds of heather <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledpassclouds.jpg" width="240" height="164" class="postpicright" alt="Mountains and clouds, near Bled, Slovenia" />stretching up the sloping scree and talus peaks. At a small stand beside the park headquarters a little girl and her father were buying postcards from a souvenir stand, the girl repeating over and over to her dad, "look at my beautiful picture, look at my beautiful picture" as she clutched the small piece of paper to her overcoat. She then turned to her mother and began again, "mummy, look at my beautiful picture," as her parents ushered her back in the car.
+
+As we made our way down the mountain the road joined up with a river and began to wind its way alongside it. We noticed a rickety suspension bridge at one point and felt compelled to stop and walk across it. My father and I walked to the other side, stopping to make some photographs and look at the strange milky blue water of Slovenian rivers, which seem to me the clearest most beautiful waters I've ever seen. I suppose the blue tinge is from the glacial silt, but that doesn't really make sense because it seems to me silt would be washed downstream by the force of the river. Whatever the case, the water is turquoise and standing beside it there is a smell I've never noticed before, a smell of clarity, if such a thing may be said to exist. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledriverme.jpg" width="179" height="230" class="postpic" alt="suspension bridge, near Bled, slovenia" />Little tuffs of cotton-like spores floated downwind in the breeze and I noticed one particular tree which seemed to be milking itself. A strange foamy liquid seeped out of every joint in its branches, bubbling in the sunlight until it settled to clear liquid and fell from the trees to land on our arms. It was not sticky and had no taste. If it was sap it had spent to long near the clear river water until it too had come to possess the same lucid transparency that seems to seep out of everything in Slovenia.
+
+Down the far side of the pass we turned off onto a very narrow road and passed through several small towns consisting of stone farm houses, wooden sheds and barns and rocky walls dividing up the valley, which was a veritable explosion of spring wildflowers, so dense and colorful as to nearly hide the green grass beneath them. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledwood.jpg" width="230" height="172" class="postpicright" alt="Cord wood, near Bled, Slovenia" />Beside nearly every house whether solitary on a plot of farmland or clustered in the number of small villages, was a stack of cordwood covered by a small lean-to or roof of some kind. I watched as these piles of firewood floated past my window reflecting on the almost eerie sense of pattern and order visible in them. It seemed to me rather like an architect had planned to intricate combination and balance of angles and light and shadow and positive and negative space, until in the end it more closely resembled a carefully thought out mosaic than a haphazard stack of split wood.
+
+We stopped in one of the towns to visit an old church lying rather sleepily, nestled in a curve of the road under the shade of an elm which towered majestically above the church bell tower. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/bledchurch.jpg" width="174" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Church, near Bled, Slovenia" />I waited across the road while a German couple loitered around the front yard wanting for once to be alone in a church. The church was not remarkable architecturally, not listed in any guidebook, it was simply a village church, humble, but yet standing out from the other buildings by virtue of its tower. Eventually I walked up the steps and into the cool darkness of the foyer, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light before I could continue. As my pupils widened and the darkness took form and shape I made my way forward toward the altar where I stopped to study a small figurine of the Virgin Mary. Her face seemed peaceful looking down at the baby in her arms. I said a brief prayer for the soldiers and, as I looked at Mary and child, I began to think of the girl up at the pass with her beautiful pictures postcards, I thought of a Jeff Tweedy lyric, "my fangs have been pulled" and realized with great sigh that indeed, in the last eight months, my fangs have been pulled and all I want to do is show you my picture, my beautiful, but tragically incomplete picture.
+<break>
+
+As I walked out of the church and back toward the car I remember something I believe Picasso said, that we are all trying to remember how to be children. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/london-calling.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/london-calling.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..336e4f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/london-calling.amp @@ -0,0 +1,210 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>London Calling</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/london-calling"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/05/london-calling"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="London called, but then it almost didn't answer. Or, how I got into Great Britain by making snide jokes about America. 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On me? None. I was planning to use that ATM behind you."<br/> +"Do you have any bank statements showing how much money you have?"<br/> +"Uh, no, I didn't know that I needed…"<br/> +"You have onward tickets?"<br/> +"Yes."<br/> +"May I see them?"<br/> +"Uh, no. I haven't printed the receipt yet."<br/> +"When are you planning to do that?"<br/> +"Soon."<br/> +"So you have no money, no proof of onward travel and no reason for coming to London?"<br/> +"Correct."<br/> +"If I showed up in the States you would turn me around and send me back…"<br/> +"Well, <strong>I</strong> wouldn't… and besides why would you want to go to the States?"<br/></p> +<p>This last line elicits the faint traces of a smile and the otherwise very serious and prim border agent relents. She says something about a verbal warning but stamps my passport anyway letting me into the U.K. I try not to run but hurry just in case she changes her mind. I find it highly ironic that of all the borders I've crossed in countries that were only recently at war the one in Heathrow was by far the hardest. That's the west for you. Reasons and rules. Welcome home. You were right Wally; you do have a lot more freedom on Ko Kradan than anywhere else. +<break> +My advice, when crossing borders and just generally when traveling, is to learn a bit of self-deprecation, or national deprecation, particularly if your American. By and large the world seems to like Americans, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy making fun of us. We seem to be seen as sort of hapless idiots who don't really mean any harm, but just aren't very bright. Which is basically accurate I suppose. The nicest thing anyone's said to me on this trip was my friend Keith who looked at me one night and said, "you're the least American American I've met." So it goes.</break></p> +<p>I don't want to come off as being down on Americans, I'm not, but I do sympathize with the world's disdain for certain, er, character flaws we seem to have, such a tendency to be a bit squeamish and particular about sanitation. And our use of the English language is a bit um, primitive. But you don't need to travel to know that. The English for instance absolutely hate American slang and when you get down to words like, "dude" and "awesome" does make you sound a bit daft.</p> +<p>But I didn't come to England to practice the Queen's English; I came to see Thet who I met way back in <a href="http://luxagraf.net/2005/dec/05/camel-no-name/" title="Luxagraf Entry from Jaisalmer India">Jaisalmer India on the camel trek</a>. Thet and I kept in touch periodically and since my Thai visa expired a week before I was due in Budapest, she kindly said I could spend a few layover days with her in London. Thet and her flatmate live a few blocks off Holloway road in what I believe qualifies as North London (if I'm wrong about that set me straight in the comments section).</p> +<p>Compared to getting through customs, finding Thet's flat was ridiculously easy. After a lovely breakfast and some catch up travel stories, we set out to explore London. We took the bus down to Trafalgar square, walked through Chinatown and snacked on dim sum before making a brief walk through of the National Gallery. Then we ended up in SoHo where we managed to find a bar with £2 drinks at happy hour. Forgive me for interupting the narrative with pointless tangents, but I spent the last three months around Londoners so I had a fair number of expectations, er, misconceptions. The first thing I have to set straight is London's reputation as the most expensive place around. Now if you're coming in with dollars or euros or any currency other than pounds, yes London is expensive. But the expense is in the exchange rate. If you happen to live in London and earn pounds I think London is actually quite cheap. Drinks are rarely more than a fiver, a huge meal can be had for fewer than £10. I can't comment on rent, but in general living expenses in London are less than New York and certainly less than Paris. The key is to earn pounds. If you don't have sterling than yes London will drain your wallet in the time it takes you to work out the difference between pants and trousers.</p> +<p>The next day we set out for the Tate Modern and were joined by Thet's friend Terese who's originally from Sweden (Another friend of Thet's, Joy is from Thailand and her flatmate is from China. I traveled extensively in SE Asia with Londoners and spent my time in London with emigrants, which is exactly how I'd want it). <amp-img alt="London Bridge, London, England" height="228" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonbridge.jpg" width="205"></amp-img>After taking the bus down to Bank and having a look at London Bridge, we walked in the sunshine along the Thames. We paused briefly to inspect the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's works were first brought to the stage. I didn't go in because I wasn't in the mood for an organized, narrated walk through. <amp-img alt="Shakespeare Globe Theatre, London, England" height="176" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonglobetheatre.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>Perhaps it's just the nerdy English major coming out in me, but it made me feel good to see that not only is Shakespeare still in print and still read, but the English have taken the time to reconstruct the Theatre as well (the original was destroyed by a fire and then The Globe V2 was destroyed by those pesky puritans). Art isn't dead. And people still read, pundits be damned. And the show always goes on.</p> +<p><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/" title="Tate Modern Online">The Tate Modern</a> is an imposing, factory like building housing an impressive collection of Modern art. What's most impressive about the Tate Modern is that it's free (anyone been to the MOMA in New York lately? Decidedly not free), well you have to pay for the exhibitions, but the permanent collection is free. Unfortunately the Tate Modern was re-hanging much of their permanent collection (my museum timing has always been awful) so there was a limited amount of art on display. <amp-img alt="Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londontatecytwombly.jpg" width="161"></amp-img>There are a number of amazing pieces by Jean Miro and Max Ernst, as well as some Picassos and the usual suspects of 20th Century art. But for me the highlight was Cy Twombly's paintings and sculptures. I have a friend who loves Cy Twombly so I was familiar with his work through books and photos, but frankly it always seemed a bit jumbled and lacking to me. However when you get up close to the actual canvas the detail is amazing and something about the four paintings at the Tate (entitled Quattro Stagioni - a painting in four parts) were spellbinding to me. <amp-img alt="Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londontatecytwomblytwo.jpg" width="172"></amp-img>Its as if you can actually feel the swirling chaos begin to envelope you and then settle to produce a calm that wasn't there before you stepped in front of them. I must have spent twenty minutes staring at them. Long enough that Thet and Terese were already outside waiting for me. Eventually I tore myself away, though I honestly could have stood there for a couple of hours.</p> +<p>We walked down the river toward another gallery I have never heard of but which Thet promised me was good. It turned out that the gallery had packed it in and moved to Chelsea but I did get to see the London eye and Big Ben and Parliament and such tourist sites. <amp-img alt="Parliament, Thames River, London England" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonparliament.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>Eventually Terese had to go home and Thet and I stopped in at a riverside pub and sat outside drinking a few glasses of bitter. Oh yes, I forgot the best part, it was twenty degrees, the warmest day of the year so far in London and hardly a cloud in the sky. The atmosphere on the streets was near jubilation everyone smiling and invested with that same strange energy that I used to see after the first true thaw in Northampton. There is something about a long dark winter that makes you appreciate spring so much more. We sat in the sunshine and chatted about future trips and the essential differences between Americans and the British and then we headed home for a bite to eat.</p> +<p>The following day the thermometer climbed up to 25 Celsius and we scrapped our original plans in favor of a barbeque in Hampstead Heath. We stopped by the grocery store and picked up a disposable grill and a few pieces of chicken and sausage and headed for the park. After climbing up a hill that overlooked all of London we sat down in the high, unmowed spring grasses. Luckily said grasses were green and water logged or we would probably have burned down a good portion of Hampstead Heath with our portable grill. We did not, as is suggested in the instructions, elevate the grill on rocks or bricks. No, we just set it on the grass and lit it up. As the flames whipped in the wind and began to light the long strands of grass on fire we started to get a little nervous. I stayed by the grill trying to press the grass down on all sides so it wouldn't catch fire while Thet looked for some stones or something nonflammable to set the grill on. I was a little concerned that the heat from the bottom of the grill was going to ignite the hillside before she got back (we all know the temperature at which books burn thanks to Mr. Bradbury, but I haven't a clue what temperature grass begins to spontaneously combust). Fortunately Thet found a good size log and disaster was averted. I would like to have seen the look on that border agent's face if I had burned down Hampstead Heath. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Hampstead Heath, London, England" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonmollyhampsteadheath.jpg" width="230"></amp-img>We grilled chicken and sausage and it wasn't long before every dog in the park was sniffing their way over to our little spot. For the most part they left when their owners called but one lab just stayed. Molly was her name and curiously she never went after the food. She simply sat in the grass in front of us and hung out. Perhaps she was just bored with her owner or maybe she was trying to escape the three poodles that she apparently lived with, whatever the case we had a dog for the afternoon. A friend of mine once suggested that there ought to be a dog rental service for those that wanted a dog, but not all the time. Well if you want a dog, get a grill and head for the park. Just be careful with the flames, London has a bad history of fires.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Thet, Terese, Joy and me, London, England" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonthetteresejoyme.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>Later that night we met up with Terese and Joy and hit a few pubs on a street whose name I don't remember but which I gathered was well known for its bars and pubs. </p> +<p>My last day we took it easy. I accompanied Thet on a few errands (by bizarre stroke of chance I have now been to the employment offices of both England and France, but still never made it to one in the States) and then we went to another park. That evening after having the requisite dinner of fish and chips we wandered about to a few pubs and called it an early night since I was leaving quite early in the morning.</p> +<p>All in all I adjusted fairly quickly to being back in the west. Strangely the things that I thought might bother me didn't too much and things I hadn't considered became very noticeable. The most interesting change that I hadn't considered was the length of the day. For the last seven months I have been within a few hundred kilometers of the equator which means that the sun rises at about 6:30 and sets at about 6:30. In London however the sun doesn't set until well past eight at night, which completely messed up my sense of time. The best thing about the west though is that you can drink the tap water. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, <amp-img alt="London at night from the bus" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonnightbus.jpg" width="193"></amp-img>probably simply because you can. And true tap water rarely tastes very good, but you don't realize what a great thing it is to brush your teeth in tap water until you haven't for a long time. Wash machines were also a revolutionary idea, too revolutionary for me.</p> +<p>I wish that I had been able to stay in London longer, it's by far my favorite city I've visited on this trip and the only other city I would rank with New York (Paris and Bangkok are both nice and I enjoyed them both, but neither of them is at the same level as New York and London). There is something about both New York and London that the minute I arrive, I feel at home, as if that is where I ought to be, have always been and may well be forever.</p> +<p>Many thanks to Thet and her friends for their hospitality and kindness to strangers; should I ever actually have a place in the U.S. you are all welcome whenever you like (and I'll read up on Manhattan landmarks so I can figure out where they are). Cheers.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/london-calling.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/london-calling.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f119c38 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/london-calling.html @@ -0,0 +1,359 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>London Calling - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="London called, but then it almost didn't answer. Or, how I got into Great Britain by making snide jokes about America. 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On me? None. I was planning to use that ATM behind you.”<br /> +“Do you have any bank statements showing how much money you have?”<br /> +“Uh, no, I didn’t know that I needed…”<br /> +“You have onward tickets?”<br /> +“Yes.”<br /> +“May I see them?”<br /> +“Uh, no. I haven’t printed the receipt yet.”<br /> +“When are you planning to do that?”<br /> +“Soon.”<br /> +“So you have no money, no proof of onward travel and no reason for coming to London?”<br /> +“Correct.”<br /> +“If I showed up in the States you would turn me around and send me back…”<br /> +“Well, <strong>I</strong> wouldn’t… and besides why would you want to go to the States?”<br /></p> +<p>This last line elicits the faint traces of a smile and the otherwise very serious and prim border agent relents. She says something about a verbal warning but stamps my passport anyway letting me into the U.K. I try not to run but hurry just in case she changes her mind. I find it highly ironic that of all the borders I’ve crossed in countries that were only recently at war the one in Heathrow was by far the hardest. That’s the west for you. Reasons and rules. Welcome home. You were right Wally; you do have a lot more freedom on Ko Kradan than anywhere else. +<break> +My advice, when crossing borders and just generally when traveling, is to learn a bit of self-deprecation, or national deprecation, particularly if your American. By and large the world seems to like Americans, but that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy making fun of us. We seem to be seen as sort of hapless idiots who don’t really mean any harm, but just aren’t very bright. Which is basically accurate I suppose. The nicest thing anyone’s said to me on this trip was my friend Keith who looked at me one night and said, “you’re the least American American I’ve met.” So it goes.</p> +<p>I don’t want to come off as being down on Americans, I’m not, but I do sympathize with the world’s disdain for certain, er, character flaws we seem to have, such a tendency to be a bit squeamish and particular about sanitation. And our use of the English language is a bit um, primitive. But you don’t need to travel to know that. The English for instance absolutely hate American slang and when you get down to words like, “dude” and “awesome” does make you sound a bit daft.</p> +<p>But I didn’t come to England to practice the Queen’s English; I came to see Thet who I met way back in <a href="http://luxagraf.net/2005/dec/05/camel-no-name/" title="Luxagraf Entry from Jaisalmer India">Jaisalmer India on the camel trek</a>. Thet and I kept in touch periodically and since my Thai visa expired a week before I was due in Budapest, she kindly said I could spend a few layover days with her in London. Thet and her flatmate live a few blocks off Holloway road in what I believe qualifies as North London (if I’m wrong about that set me straight in the comments section).</p> +<p>Compared to getting through customs, finding Thet’s flat was ridiculously easy. After a lovely breakfast and some catch up travel stories, we set out to explore London. We took the bus down to Trafalgar square, walked through Chinatown and snacked on dim sum before making a brief walk through of the National Gallery. Then we ended up in SoHo where we managed to find a bar with £2 drinks at happy hour. Forgive me for interupting the narrative with pointless tangents, but I spent the last three months around Londoners so I had a fair number of expectations, er, misconceptions. The first thing I have to set straight is London’s reputation as the most expensive place around. Now if you’re coming in with dollars or euros or any currency other than pounds, yes London is expensive. But the expense is in the exchange rate. If you happen to live in London and earn pounds I think London is actually quite cheap. Drinks are rarely more than a fiver, a huge meal can be had for fewer than £10. I can’t comment on rent, but in general living expenses in London are less than New York and certainly less than Paris. The key is to earn pounds. If you don’t have sterling than yes London will drain your wallet in the time it takes you to work out the difference between pants and trousers.</p> +<p>The next day we set out for the Tate Modern and were joined by Thet’s friend Terese who’s originally from Sweden (Another friend of Thet’s, Joy is from Thailand and her flatmate is from China. I traveled extensively in SE Asia with Londoners and spent my time in London with emigrants, which is exactly how I’d want it). <img alt="London Bridge, London, England" class="postpic" height="228" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonbridge.jpg" width="205"/>Perhaps it’s just the nerdy English major coming out in me, but it made me feel good to see that not only is Shakespeare still in print and still read, but the English have taken the time to reconstruct the Theatre as well (the original was destroyed by a fire and then The Globe V2 was destroyed by those pesky puritans). Art isn’t dead. And people still read, pundits be damned. And the show always goes on.</p> +<p><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/" title="Tate Modern Online">The Tate Modern</a> is an imposing, factory like building housing an impressive collection of Modern art. What’s most impressive about the Tate Modern is that it’s free (anyone been to the MOMA in New York lately? Decidedly not free), well you have to pay for the exhibitions, but the permanent collection is free. Unfortunately the Tate Modern was re-hanging much of their permanent collection (my museum timing has always been awful) so there was a limited amount of art on display. <img alt="Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England" class="postpic" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londontatecytwombly.jpg" width="161"/>Its as if you can actually feel the swirling chaos begin to envelope you and then settle to produce a calm that wasn’t there before you stepped in front of them. I must have spent twenty minutes staring at them. Long enough that Thet and Terese were already outside waiting for me. Eventually I tore myself away, though I honestly could have stood there for a couple of hours.</p> +<p>We walked down the river toward another gallery I have never heard of but which Thet promised me was good. It turned out that the gallery had packed it in and moved to Chelsea but I did get to see the London eye and Big Ben and Parliament and such tourist sites. <img alt="Parliament, Thames River, London England" class="postpic" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonparliament.jpg" width="230"/>Eventually Terese had to go home and Thet and I stopped in at a riverside pub and sat outside drinking a few glasses of bitter. Oh yes, I forgot the best part, it was twenty degrees, the warmest day of the year so far in London and hardly a cloud in the sky. The atmosphere on the streets was near jubilation everyone smiling and invested with that same strange energy that I used to see after the first true thaw in Northampton. There is something about a long dark winter that makes you appreciate spring so much more. We sat in the sunshine and chatted about future trips and the essential differences between Americans and the British and then we headed home for a bite to eat.</p> +<p>The following day the thermometer climbed up to 25 Celsius and we scrapped our original plans in favor of a barbeque in Hampstead Heath. We stopped by the grocery store and picked up a disposable grill and a few pieces of chicken and sausage and headed for the park. After climbing up a hill that overlooked all of London we sat down in the high, unmowed spring grasses. Luckily said grasses were green and water logged or we would probably have burned down a good portion of Hampstead Heath with our portable grill. We did not, as is suggested in the instructions, elevate the grill on rocks or bricks. No, we just set it on the grass and lit it up. As the flames whipped in the wind and began to light the long strands of grass on fire we started to get a little nervous. I stayed by the grill trying to press the grass down on all sides so it wouldn’t catch fire while Thet looked for some stones or something nonflammable to set the grill on. I was a little concerned that the heat from the bottom of the grill was going to ignite the hillside before she got back (we all know the temperature at which books burn thanks to Mr. Bradbury, but I haven’t a clue what temperature grass begins to spontaneously combust). Fortunately Thet found a good size log and disaster was averted. I would like to have seen the look on that border agent’s face if I had burned down Hampstead Heath. </p> +<p><img alt="Hampstead Heath, London, England" class="postpicright" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonmollyhampsteadheath.jpg" width="230"/>We grilled chicken and sausage and it wasn’t long before every dog in the park was sniffing their way over to our little spot. For the most part they left when their owners called but one lab just stayed. Molly was her name and curiously she never went after the food. She simply sat in the grass in front of us and hung out. Perhaps she was just bored with her owner or maybe she was trying to escape the three poodles that she apparently lived with, whatever the case we had a dog for the afternoon. A friend of mine once suggested that there ought to be a dog rental service for those that wanted a dog, but not all the time. Well if you want a dog, get a grill and head for the park. Just be careful with the flames, London has a bad history of fires.</p> +<p><img alt="Thet, Terese, Joy and me, London, England" class="postpic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonthetteresejoyme.jpg" width="240"/>Later that night we met up with Terese and Joy and hit a few pubs on a street whose name I don’t remember but which I gathered was well known for its bars and pubs. </p> +<p>My last day we took it easy. I accompanied Thet on a few errands (by bizarre stroke of chance I have now been to the employment offices of both England and France, but still never made it to one in the States) and then we went to another park. That evening after having the requisite dinner of fish and chips we wandered about to a few pubs and called it an early night since I was leaving quite early in the morning.</p> +<p>All in all I adjusted fairly quickly to being back in the west. Strangely the things that I thought might bother me didn’t too much and things I hadn’t considered became very noticeable. The most interesting change that I hadn’t considered was the length of the day. For the last seven months I have been within a few hundred kilometers of the equator which means that the sun rises at about 6:30 and sets at about 6:30. In London however the sun doesn’t set until well past eight at night, which completely messed up my sense of time. The best thing about the west though is that you can drink the tap water. I don’t know why I enjoyed it so much, <img alt="London at night from the bus" class="postpicright" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonnightbus.jpg" width="193"/>probably simply because you can. And true tap water rarely tastes very good, but you don’t realize what a great thing it is to brush your teeth in tap water until you haven’t for a long time. Wash machines were also a revolutionary idea, too revolutionary for me.</p> +<p>I wish that I had been able to stay in London longer, it’s by far my favorite city I’ve visited on this trip and the only other city I would rank with New York (Paris and Bangkok are both nice and I enjoyed them both, but neither of them is at the same level as New York and London). There is something about both New York and London that the minute I arrive, I feel at home, as if that is where I ought to be, have always been and may well be forever.</p> +<p>Many thanks to Thet and her friends for their hospitality and kindness to strangers; should I ever actually have a place in the U.S. you are all welcome whenever you like (and I’ll read up on Manhattan landmarks so I can figure out where they are). 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+(shrug) (smile)<br />
+"How much money are you bringing in?"<br />
+"Money? On me? None. I was planning to use that ATM behind you."<br />
+"Do you have any bank statements showing how much money you have?"<br />
+"Uh, no, I didn't know that I needed…"<br />
+"You have onward tickets?"<br />
+"Yes."<br />
+"May I see them?"<br />
+"Uh, no. I haven't printed the receipt yet."<br />
+"When are you planning to do that?"<br />
+"Soon."<br />
+"So you have no money, no proof of onward travel and no reason for coming to London?"<br />
+"Correct."<br />
+"If I showed up in the States you would turn me around and send me back…"<br />
+"Well, **I** wouldn't… and besides why would you want to go to the States?"<br />
+
+This last line elicits the faint traces of a smile and the otherwise very serious and prim border agent relents. She says something about a verbal warning but stamps my passport anyway letting me into the U.K. I try not to run but hurry just in case she changes her mind. I find it highly ironic that of all the borders I've crossed in countries that were only recently at war the one in Heathrow was by far the hardest. That's the west for you. Reasons and rules. Welcome home. You were right Wally; you do have a lot more freedom on Ko Kradan than anywhere else.
+<break>
+My advice, when crossing borders and just generally when traveling, is to learn a bit of self-deprecation, or national deprecation, particularly if your American. By and large the world seems to like Americans, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy making fun of us. We seem to be seen as sort of hapless idiots who don't really mean any harm, but just aren't very bright. Which is basically accurate I suppose. The nicest thing anyone's said to me on this trip was my friend Keith who looked at me one night and said, "you're the least American American I've met." So it goes.
+
+I don't want to come off as being down on Americans, I'm not, but I do sympathize with the world's disdain for certain, er, character flaws we seem to have, such a tendency to be a bit squeamish and particular about sanitation. And our use of the English language is a bit um, primitive. But you don't need to travel to know that. The English for instance absolutely hate American slang and when you get down to words like, "dude" and "awesome" does make you sound a bit daft.
+
+But I didn't come to England to practice the Queen's English; I came to see Thet who I met way back in <a href="http://luxagraf.net/2005/dec/05/camel-no-name/" title="Luxagraf Entry from Jaisalmer India">Jaisalmer India on the camel trek</a>. Thet and I kept in touch periodically and since my Thai visa expired a week before I was due in Budapest, she kindly said I could spend a few layover days with her in London. Thet and her flatmate live a few blocks off Holloway road in what I believe qualifies as North London (if I'm wrong about that set me straight in the comments section).
+
+Compared to getting through customs, finding Thet's flat was ridiculously easy. After a lovely breakfast and some catch up travel stories, we set out to explore London. We took the bus down to Trafalgar square, walked through Chinatown and snacked on dim sum before making a brief walk through of the National Gallery. Then we ended up in SoHo where we managed to find a bar with £2 drinks at happy hour. Forgive me for interupting the narrative with pointless tangents, but I spent the last three months around Londoners so I had a fair number of expectations, er, misconceptions. The first thing I have to set straight is London's reputation as the most expensive place around. Now if you're coming in with dollars or euros or any currency other than pounds, yes London is expensive. But the expense is in the exchange rate. If you happen to live in London and earn pounds I think London is actually quite cheap. Drinks are rarely more than a fiver, a huge meal can be had for fewer than £10. I can't comment on rent, but in general living expenses in London are less than New York and certainly less than Paris. The key is to earn pounds. If you don't have sterling than yes London will drain your wallet in the time it takes you to work out the difference between pants and trousers.
+
+The next day we set out for the Tate Modern and were joined by Thet's friend Terese who's originally from Sweden (Another friend of Thet's, Joy is from Thailand and her flatmate is from China. I traveled extensively in SE Asia with Londoners and spent my time in London with emigrants, which is exactly how I'd want it). <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londonbridge.jpg" width="205" height="228" class="postpic" alt="London Bridge, London, England" />After taking the bus down to Bank and having a look at London Bridge, we walked in the sunshine along the Thames. We paused briefly to inspect the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's works were first brought to the stage. I didn't go in because I wasn't in the mood for an organized, narrated walk through. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londonglobetheatre.jpg" width="240" height="176" class="postpicright" alt="Shakespeare Globe Theatre, London, England" />Perhaps it's just the nerdy English major coming out in me, but it made me feel good to see that not only is Shakespeare still in print and still read, but the English have taken the time to reconstruct the Theatre as well (the original was destroyed by a fire and then The Globe V2 was destroyed by those pesky puritans). Art isn't dead. And people still read, pundits be damned. And the show always goes on.
+
+<a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/" title="Tate Modern Online">The Tate Modern</a> is an imposing, factory like building housing an impressive collection of Modern art. What's most impressive about the Tate Modern is that it's free (anyone been to the MOMA in New York lately? Decidedly not free), well you have to pay for the exhibitions, but the permanent collection is free. Unfortunately the Tate Modern was re-hanging much of their permanent collection (my museum timing has always been awful) so there was a limited amount of art on display. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londontatecytwombly.jpg" width="161" height="230" class="postpic" alt="Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England" />There are a number of amazing pieces by Jean Miro and Max Ernst, as well as some Picassos and the usual suspects of 20th Century art. But for me the highlight was Cy Twombly's paintings and sculptures. I have a friend who loves Cy Twombly so I was familiar with his work through books and photos, but frankly it always seemed a bit jumbled and lacking to me. However when you get up close to the actual canvas the detail is amazing and something about the four paintings at the Tate (entitled Quattro Stagioni - a painting in four parts) were spellbinding to me. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londontatecytwomblytwo.jpg" width="172" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England" />Its as if you can actually feel the swirling chaos begin to envelope you and then settle to produce a calm that wasn't there before you stepped in front of them. I must have spent twenty minutes staring at them. Long enough that Thet and Terese were already outside waiting for me. Eventually I tore myself away, though I honestly could have stood there for a couple of hours.
+
+We walked down the river toward another gallery I have never heard of but which Thet promised me was good. It turned out that the gallery had packed it in and moved to Chelsea but I did get to see the London eye and Big Ben and Parliament and such tourist sites. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londonparliament.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpic" alt="Parliament, Thames River, London England" />Eventually Terese had to go home and Thet and I stopped in at a riverside pub and sat outside drinking a few glasses of bitter. Oh yes, I forgot the best part, it was twenty degrees, the warmest day of the year so far in London and hardly a cloud in the sky. The atmosphere on the streets was near jubilation everyone smiling and invested with that same strange energy that I used to see after the first true thaw in Northampton. There is something about a long dark winter that makes you appreciate spring so much more. We sat in the sunshine and chatted about future trips and the essential differences between Americans and the British and then we headed home for a bite to eat.
+
+The following day the thermometer climbed up to 25 Celsius and we scrapped our original plans in favor of a barbeque in Hampstead Heath. We stopped by the grocery store and picked up a disposable grill and a few pieces of chicken and sausage and headed for the park. After climbing up a hill that overlooked all of London we sat down in the high, unmowed spring grasses. Luckily said grasses were green and water logged or we would probably have burned down a good portion of Hampstead Heath with our portable grill. We did not, as is suggested in the instructions, elevate the grill on rocks or bricks. No, we just set it on the grass and lit it up. As the flames whipped in the wind and began to light the long strands of grass on fire we started to get a little nervous. I stayed by the grill trying to press the grass down on all sides so it wouldn't catch fire while Thet looked for some stones or something nonflammable to set the grill on. I was a little concerned that the heat from the bottom of the grill was going to ignite the hillside before she got back (we all know the temperature at which books burn thanks to Mr. Bradbury, but I haven't a clue what temperature grass begins to spontaneously combust). Fortunately Thet found a good size log and disaster was averted. I would like to have seen the look on that border agent's face if I had burned down Hampstead Heath.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londonmollyhampsteadheath.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpicright" alt="Hampstead Heath, London, England" />We grilled chicken and sausage and it wasn't long before every dog in the park was sniffing their way over to our little spot. For the most part they left when their owners called but one lab just stayed. Molly was her name and curiously she never went after the food. She simply sat in the grass in front of us and hung out. Perhaps she was just bored with her owner or maybe she was trying to escape the three poodles that she apparently lived with, whatever the case we had a dog for the afternoon. A friend of mine once suggested that there ought to be a dog rental service for those that wanted a dog, but not all the time. Well if you want a dog, get a grill and head for the park. Just be careful with the flames, London has a bad history of fires.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londonthetteresejoyme.jpg" width="240" height="180" class="postpic" alt="Thet, Terese, Joy and me, London, England" />Later that night we met up with Terese and Joy and hit a few pubs on a street whose name I don't remember but which I gathered was well known for its bars and pubs.
+
+My last day we took it easy. I accompanied Thet on a few errands (by bizarre stroke of chance I have now been to the employment offices of both England and France, but still never made it to one in the States) and then we went to another park. That evening after having the requisite dinner of fish and chips we wandered about to a few pubs and called it an early night since I was leaving quite early in the morning.
+
+All in all I adjusted fairly quickly to being back in the west. Strangely the things that I thought might bother me didn't too much and things I hadn't considered became very noticeable. The most interesting change that I hadn't considered was the length of the day. For the last seven months I have been within a few hundred kilometers of the equator which means that the sun rises at about 6:30 and sets at about 6:30. In London however the sun doesn't set until well past eight at night, which completely messed up my sense of time. The best thing about the west though is that you can drink the tap water. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/londonnightbus.jpg" width="193" height="250" class="postpicright" alt="London at night from the bus" />probably simply because you can. And true tap water rarely tastes very good, but you don't realize what a great thing it is to brush your teeth in tap water until you haven't for a long time. Wash machines were also a revolutionary idea, too revolutionary for me.
+
+I wish that I had been able to stay in London longer, it's by far my favorite city I've visited on this trip and the only other city I would rank with New York (Paris and Bangkok are both nice and I enjoyed them both, but neither of them is at the same level as New York and London). There is something about both New York and London that the minute I arrive, I feel at home, as if that is where I ought to be, have always been and may well be forever.
+
+Many thanks to Thet and her friends for their hospitality and kindness to strangers; should I ever actually have a place in the U.S. you are all welcome whenever you like (and I'll read up on Manhattan landmarks so I can figure out where they are). 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Every colonizing country seems to leave behind some token of itself, a scent, not unlike a dog pausing to lift a leg on every tree it passes. </p> +<p>The French tend to leave behind Arc de Triomphes of varying sizes and a deep knowledge of bread making. With the Spanish it tends toward Stucco churches, the English a habit of afternoon tea and some distilleries. The Soviets version of leg lifting can be seen in the form of monstrous, boxy concrete high-rise apartment buildings as ugly, cheerless and cold as the former regime itself.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>From the air over a Budapest the most immediately striking feature are the Soviet style high-rises just outside the old town areas. Which is not so say Hungarian architecture is lacking, just perhaps not as conspicuous ugly as that of the Soviets. I'm sure in due time the Hungarians will tear down these architectural insults as they have all the statues of Party leaders and Communist heroes (which some entrepreneurial sort bought up and placed in a park where today for a modest fee you can see Lenin and Stalin immortalized in iron and carefully quarantined outside of the city which never wanted anything to do with them), but for the time being the dominate the view from the air.</p> +<p>I spent a few minutes, maybe half an hour, at the airport studying the blocky structures from a distance, trying to get away from the immediately oppressive feeling they gave me. Eventually my shuttle bus arrived and pulled me out of the dismal stupor I had fallen into. The jostling of luggage and fellow passengers finding seats in the van provided a human inertia that slowly propelled me out of the gloomy mood that had crept over me. As we drove out of the suburbs toward the city I watched as the Soviet style apartment buildings slowly gave way to blocks of older vaguely Art Nouveau buildings until finally when we crossed the bridge into Pest I was confronted with the modern Budapest—the faceless glass of modern hotels juxtaposed against a background of striking Gothic-spired Churches and Baroque facades.</p> +<p>Budapest actually consists of two cities, Buda and Pest separated by the Danube River. The hotel where we were staying was located on the Pest side of the river. <amp-img alt="Danube banks Budapest Hungary" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestriverwalk.gif" width="194"></amp-img>High on the fifth floor, where my suitably generic but comfortable room was located, my balcony afforded a view of the small riverside walkway below where several cafes had tables and umbrellas overlooking the Danube and then beyond where the river floated lazily by and in the background Buda's Castle Hill district rose up from the opposite bank. I also had a clear view of the so-called Chain Bridge a few hundred meters up the river, one of three or four bridges that span the Danube linking Buda and Pest. </p> +<p>After getting settled in the hotel we decided to head out for a bit of an explore up the banks of the river. Walking along the Danube that night as the sun slowly sank behind the north end of Castle Hill and the shadows lengthened across the face of the old Parliament building, I came across a strange and vaguely disturbing monument of iron shoes sitting in pairs at the edge of the river. Most monuments, whether they commemorate misery or good fortune, exist as positive space, a statue in a square, a wall under some leafy trees, a cannon pointing out over a field, but a few, particularly those that commemorate loss, evoke emptiness and anguish through a sculptural negative space. </p> +<p>The iron shoes scattered there beside the river seemed to me a kind of sculptural synecdoche, tiny parts chosen to represent a whole which was forcibly removed from time. <amp-img alt="Shoe Memorial, Budapest, Hungary" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestshoes.gif" width="188"></amp-img>Approaching the shoes scattered on the concrete embankment one does not at first realize they are iron or even a sculpture as the iron is quite blackened and in the fading light of evening they looked as if a group of people simply left their shoes for an afternoon swim. But on closer examination one quickly notices that the styles and cuts of the shoes are outdated and harkened from some moment in the past. But it's a moment curiously suspended, as if the owners might at any moment climb back up out of the river into which they were cast and reclaim their lost footwear. </p> +<p>None of the various guidebooks we were carrying mentioned the monument, but a small plague embedded in the concrete back away from the shoes themselves commemorates the deaths of thousands Jews who were forced into the Danube by the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazi Party). What's most striking about Sculptor Gyula Pauer's memorial is its quietude in the midst of so many rather loud, larger than life monuments and buildings like the towering pose of the nearby parliament buildings whose Gothic high arches and turrets seemed suddenly overwrought and desperate in their attempt to establish themselves. I thought of how sometimes the quietest statements are the most powerful, the way for instance Nick Drake's <em>Pink Moon</em>, though almost whispering at times, is one of the most formidable records I've heard.</p> +<p>The shoes sitting quietly there on the embankment, very nearly in the shadow of the Margit Island Bridge and so still against the backdrop of the Danube waters reminded me of Newton's famous analogy comparing the concept of time to the Thames River. <amp-img alt="Castle Hill Buda, Budapest, Hungary" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcastlehillsunset.gif" width="230"></amp-img>If a substitution of rivers may be allowed, the shoes then seemed to me to perfectly capture a moment, a frozen piece of time which allowed one to circumventing the present through a sculptural trapdoor, to return to something that refused to be swept away by the river.</p> +<p>I recalled one evening in Cambodia when Rob remarked with some surprise that neither Matt nor Debi nor I had any kind of timepiece between us. And in fact none of us ever had. I don't know about either of them but I don't wear a watch. Once some years ago I badly burned my arm with boiling water. Most of the skin on the back of my hand and part of my wrist sloughed off and was cut away by surgeons. By a strange trick of physics the leather band of the wristwatch I was wearing at the time, wicked the water away from my skin before it could be burned. Thus I had a thin band of flesh surrounded by two rather disgusting areas of boiled skin. Eventually of course the burned skin healed, but curiously, the skin where my watch had been remained several shades lighter than that of the burned areas. In spite of the fact that the watch ostensibly saved my skin, it was that protected portion that looked out of place in the end. I decided then that I would never wear a watch again.</p> +<p>How I translated a burn and bit of discolored skin into an intense dislike of mechanical time is something I can't quite explain except to say that perhaps noticing what was not on my wrist suddenly made me keenly aware of other things that also were not there. Eventually the whole concept of time came to seem too arbitrary to me. Morning, evening, spring, fall these words evoke things, numbers require second hand translation and seem to me a wasted effort.</p> +<p>Later that evening after dinner I sat for a while outside on the balcony smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Castle Hill which rose up out of the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric <amp-img alt="Castle Hill, Buda, Budapest, Hungary" height="164" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcastlehillnight.gif" width="230"></amp-img>tram squealing out of the station filled the evening air. A riverboat slowly churned up river with a handful of tourists pointing cameras back toward the banks, capturing moments of time, moments they will likely playback later for family and loved ones who were not there. I sincerely doubt if any of them will ever say “this was taken at 7 pm on May 10th.” Instead they will likely say this was our first evening in Budapest, this was the night we sailed along a river, and this was where we walked, danced and swam.</p> +<p>We set out early the next day to explore the Castle Hill area which is the oldest part of the city. The name Castle Hill fails to encapsulate the area. The left side of the hill is actually a palace where the kings once ruled and now stand several museums. The right side of the hill, still encircled by the castle walls contains Buda's old town quarter. All total the area is more than a kilometer long and encompasses a small city, referred to now as “old town” since like it or not time is our major marker of space.</p> +<p>Castle hill is a sprawling affair that reminded me somewhat of the similarly sprawling City Palace in Udaipur India. Both occupy the top of reasonable sized hills and both encircle what were once functioning cities. And both were constructed over long periods of time according the changing whims of successive rulers until looking at them today they become a reflection of the changing architectural tastes of their respective cultures.</p> +<p>Which is not to say that these two very different places have much in common beyond being large castles built on hills. When traveling for long periods of time it's easy to slip into the comfortable notion that one has seen and done certain things that need not be seen or done again. It is in other words easy to feel that if you've seen one tree you've seen them all. But if that were truly the case we could live the life of lightening bugs and be done with it by sunrise. A beech is not a maple is not an oak is certainly not a white fir, the differences in bark and leaves and roots and scent and shade and a million other things will leap out at you provided you pay attention. The notion that the part can be representative of the whole is popular in postmodernist circles, but take it outside the academic and it quickly shows itself as it is—a failure of the imagination.</p> +<p>I believe that one could pick at random any one object and study it, look at it, feel it, breathe it, hear it and be with it every day for the rest of your life without ever really being able to say that you know it, that you understand it, that it has failed to move you, provoke you or challenge you in some way you weren't expecting. One of my favorite characters in film is Harvey Keitel's character in Wayne Wang's <em>Smoke</em>. Keitel's character, Aggie, takes the same photograph of the same scene from the same place at the same time every day for ten years and has all the prints in massive photo albums and explains to John Hurt's character the subtle differences between each. That's the sort of patience and dedication and love that we all ought to aspire to. </p> +<p>We spent the better part of the morning wandering the castle grounds, the narrow streets of old town and a made brief visit to the Hungarian National Gallery. Eventually some clouds rolled in and after lunch a light drizzle began to fall. My parents decided to head back since they were still adjusting to the time change. <amp-img alt="Old Town Castle Hill, Budapest, Hungary" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcasthillstreet.gif" width="180"></amp-img>I set out to find the underground passageways that lace the hillside beneath the castle. Most of the area from Budapest south is largely comprised a very porous limestone known as Karst (which, if you've been reading this site for while, you may remember also formed the caves I visited in Laos). Over millions of years the water that seeps into the Karst eventually carves out caves and tunnels. The ones beneath Castle Hill in Buda have been slightly improved by man over the centuries and have served as everything from wine cellar to bomb shelter depending on the times.</p> +<p>Today for a modest fee you can wander through a labyrinth of damp tunnels with dim lights and faux cave paintings in what I believe is supposed to give you taste of Neolithic religion and superstition or at least someone's idea of Neolithic caves, but unfortunately it comes off a little too campy to be all that interesting. It was a nice escape from the rain, but when I emerged out the far end of the tunnel I was craving something a little less Disneylandish.</p> +<p>I set out alone to escape the crowds of Castle Hill and explore the more modern parts of the city. Something in a travel brochure on the airplane had caught my eye and I decided to see if I could find my way to the tomb of Gul Baba a Turkish Whirling dervish <amp-img alt="Gul Baba, Whirling Dervish, Budapest, Hungary" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestgulbaba.gif" width="165"></amp-img>who died in Budapest in 1541. I don't know much about whirling dervishes aside from the fact that their Turkish in origin and a friend of mine is in a band of the same name (if you're curious you can visit <a href="http://www.myspace.com/thewhirlingdervish" title="Info on Whirling Dervish the band">whirling dervish's website for more info on the band</a>, but the rumor has it that Gul Baba brought the rose to Buda and the hill on which the tomb rests is known as Rose Hill.</p> +<p>The truth is that while the Dervish tomb appealed to me I mostly wanted to walk through the streets of the real part of the city since the downside to four star travel is that you're typically sequestered in tourist ghettos, though in Budapest it was more of a business traveler ghetto. In either case you don't really get to see the everyday life of the locals. So I walked through the rain to the tomb, made a few photographs and ducked into a cafe on my way home for a cup of coffee and bite of Hungarian pastry. </p> +<p>I sat in the back corner of the cafe waiting for the rain to let up thinking of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Art. For the most part there was little of note. The only highlight outside the Spanish gallery of El Grecco and Goya was a single piece from Gauguin's period in Tahiti. I don't recall the name of the painting, <amp-img alt="Old Woman at Window, Hungary" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestwindowwoman.gif" width="240"></amp-img>it wasn't very large, but the vibrant colors and almost overwhelming sense of passion and life made it fairly leap off the wall next to more muted Monet's and Picassos. Gauguin paid attention and he loved what he saw. His fascination with color seems to have eclipsed nearly every other concern in his mind. Figures are vague as if transitory and chiefly memorable for the light they reflect, background and foreground blend, what matters is not the precise place, nor the precise time, but the color, the color of the world that distinguishes not between only shade and tone and hue and tint to reveal the kaleidoscope that is always all around us.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/refracted-light-and-grace.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/refracted-light-and-grace.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e7fb2bc --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/refracted-light-and-grace.html @@ -0,0 +1,349 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Refracted Light And Grace - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Going upscale in Budapest: watching the Danube from my balcony, smoking cigarettes and enjoying the nightscape of Buda's Castle Hill. 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Every colonizing country seems to leave behind some token of itself, a scent, not unlike a dog pausing to lift a leg on every tree it passes. </p> +<p>The French tend to leave behind Arc de Triomphes of varying sizes and a deep knowledge of bread making. With the Spanish it tends toward Stucco churches, the English a habit of afternoon tea and some distilleries. The Soviets version of leg lifting can be seen in the form of monstrous, boxy concrete high-rise apartment buildings as ugly, cheerless and cold as the former regime itself.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>From the air over a Budapest the most immediately striking feature are the Soviet style high-rises just outside the old town areas. Which is not so say Hungarian architecture is lacking, just perhaps not as conspicuous ugly as that of the Soviets. I’m sure in due time the Hungarians will tear down these architectural insults as they have all the statues of Party leaders and Communist heroes (which some entrepreneurial sort bought up and placed in a park where today for a modest fee you can see Lenin and Stalin immortalized in iron and carefully quarantined outside of the city which never wanted anything to do with them), but for the time being the dominate the view from the air.</p> +<p>I spent a few minutes, maybe half an hour, at the airport studying the blocky structures from a distance, trying to get away from the immediately oppressive feeling they gave me. Eventually my shuttle bus arrived and pulled me out of the dismal stupor I had fallen into. The jostling of luggage and fellow passengers finding seats in the van provided a human inertia that slowly propelled me out of the gloomy mood that had crept over me. As we drove out of the suburbs toward the city I watched as the Soviet style apartment buildings slowly gave way to blocks of older vaguely Art Nouveau buildings until finally when we crossed the bridge into Pest I was confronted with the modern Budapest—the faceless glass of modern hotels juxtaposed against a background of striking Gothic-spired Churches and Baroque facades.</p> +<p>Budapest actually consists of two cities, Buda and Pest separated by the Danube River. The hotel where we were staying was located on the Pest side of the river. <img alt="Danube banks Budapest Hungary" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestriverwalk.gif" width="194"/>High on the fifth floor, where my suitably generic but comfortable room was located, my balcony afforded a view of the small riverside walkway below where several cafes had tables and umbrellas overlooking the Danube and then beyond where the river floated lazily by and in the background Buda’s Castle Hill district rose up from the opposite bank. I also had a clear view of the so-called Chain Bridge a few hundred meters up the river, one of three or four bridges that span the Danube linking Buda and Pest. </p> +<p>After getting settled in the hotel we decided to head out for a bit of an explore up the banks of the river. Walking along the Danube that night as the sun slowly sank behind the north end of Castle Hill and the shadows lengthened across the face of the old Parliament building, I came across a strange and vaguely disturbing monument of iron shoes sitting in pairs at the edge of the river. Most monuments, whether they commemorate misery or good fortune, exist as positive space, a statue in a square, a wall under some leafy trees, a cannon pointing out over a field, but a few, particularly those that commemorate loss, evoke emptiness and anguish through a sculptural negative space. </p> +<p>The iron shoes scattered there beside the river seemed to me a kind of sculptural synecdoche, tiny parts chosen to represent a whole which was forcibly removed from time. <img alt="Shoe Memorial, Budapest, Hungary" class="postpic" height="250" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestshoes.gif" width="188"/>Approaching the shoes scattered on the concrete embankment one does not at first realize they are iron or even a sculpture as the iron is quite blackened and in the fading light of evening they looked as if a group of people simply left their shoes for an afternoon swim. But on closer examination one quickly notices that the styles and cuts of the shoes are outdated and harkened from some moment in the past. But it’s a moment curiously suspended, as if the owners might at any moment climb back up out of the river into which they were cast and reclaim their lost footwear. </p> +<p>None of the various guidebooks we were carrying mentioned the monument, but a small plague embedded in the concrete back away from the shoes themselves commemorates the deaths of thousands Jews who were forced into the Danube by the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazi Party). What’s most striking about Sculptor Gyula Pauer’s memorial is its quietude in the midst of so many rather loud, larger than life monuments and buildings like the towering pose of the nearby parliament buildings whose Gothic high arches and turrets seemed suddenly overwrought and desperate in their attempt to establish themselves. I thought of how sometimes the quietest statements are the most powerful, the way for instance Nick Drake’s <em>Pink Moon</em>, though almost whispering at times, is one of the most formidable records I’ve heard.</p> +<p>The shoes sitting quietly there on the embankment, very nearly in the shadow of the Margit Island Bridge and so still against the backdrop of the Danube waters reminded me of Newton’s famous analogy comparing the concept of time to the Thames River. <img alt="Castle Hill Buda, Budapest, Hungary" class="postpicright" height="173" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcastlehillsunset.gif" width="230"/>If a substitution of rivers may be allowed, the shoes then seemed to me to perfectly capture a moment, a frozen piece of time which allowed one to circumventing the present through a sculptural trapdoor, to return to something that refused to be swept away by the river.</p> +<p>I recalled one evening in Cambodia when Rob remarked with some surprise that neither Matt nor Debi nor I had any kind of timepiece between us. And in fact none of us ever had. I don’t know about either of them but I don’t wear a watch. Once some years ago I badly burned my arm with boiling water. Most of the skin on the back of my hand and part of my wrist sloughed off and was cut away by surgeons. By a strange trick of physics the leather band of the wristwatch I was wearing at the time, wicked the water away from my skin before it could be burned. Thus I had a thin band of flesh surrounded by two rather disgusting areas of boiled skin. Eventually of course the burned skin healed, but curiously, the skin where my watch had been remained several shades lighter than that of the burned areas. In spite of the fact that the watch ostensibly saved my skin, it was that protected portion that looked out of place in the end. I decided then that I would never wear a watch again.</p> +<p>How I translated a burn and bit of discolored skin into an intense dislike of mechanical time is something I can’t quite explain except to say that perhaps noticing what was not on my wrist suddenly made me keenly aware of other things that also were not there. Eventually the whole concept of time came to seem too arbitrary to me. Morning, evening, spring, fall these words evoke things, numbers require second hand translation and seem to me a wasted effort.</p> +<p>Later that evening after dinner I sat for a while outside on the balcony smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Castle Hill which rose up out of the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric <img alt="Castle Hill, Buda, Budapest, Hungary" class="postpic" height="164" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcastlehillnight.gif" width="230"/>tram squealing out of the station filled the evening air. A riverboat slowly churned up river with a handful of tourists pointing cameras back toward the banks, capturing moments of time, moments they will likely playback later for family and loved ones who were not there. I sincerely doubt if any of them will ever say “this was taken at 7 pm on May 10th.” Instead they will likely say this was our first evening in Budapest, this was the night we sailed along a river, and this was where we walked, danced and swam.</p> +<p>We set out early the next day to explore the Castle Hill area which is the oldest part of the city. The name Castle Hill fails to encapsulate the area. The left side of the hill is actually a palace where the kings once ruled and now stand several museums. The right side of the hill, still encircled by the castle walls contains Buda’s old town quarter. All total the area is more than a kilometer long and encompasses a small city, referred to now as “old town” since like it or not time is our major marker of space.</p> +<p>Castle hill is a sprawling affair that reminded me somewhat of the similarly sprawling City Palace in Udaipur India. Both occupy the top of reasonable sized hills and both encircle what were once functioning cities. And both were constructed over long periods of time according the changing whims of successive rulers until looking at them today they become a reflection of the changing architectural tastes of their respective cultures.</p> +<p>Which is not to say that these two very different places have much in common beyond being large castles built on hills. When traveling for long periods of time it’s easy to slip into the comfortable notion that one has seen and done certain things that need not be seen or done again. It is in other words easy to feel that if you’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all. But if that were truly the case we could live the life of lightening bugs and be done with it by sunrise. A beech is not a maple is not an oak is certainly not a white fir, the differences in bark and leaves and roots and scent and shade and a million other things will leap out at you provided you pay attention. The notion that the part can be representative of the whole is popular in postmodernist circles, but take it outside the academic and it quickly shows itself as it is—a failure of the imagination.</p> +<p>I believe that one could pick at random any one object and study it, look at it, feel it, breathe it, hear it and be with it every day for the rest of your life without ever really being able to say that you know it, that you understand it, that it has failed to move you, provoke you or challenge you in some way you weren’t expecting. One of my favorite characters in film is Harvey Keitel’s character in Wayne Wang’s <em>Smoke</em>. Keitel’s character, Aggie, takes the same photograph of the same scene from the same place at the same time every day for ten years and has all the prints in massive photo albums and explains to John Hurt’s character the subtle differences between each. That’s the sort of patience and dedication and love that we all ought to aspire to. </p> +<p>We spent the better part of the morning wandering the castle grounds, the narrow streets of old town and a made brief visit to the Hungarian National Gallery. Eventually some clouds rolled in and after lunch a light drizzle began to fall. My parents decided to head back since they were still adjusting to the time change. <img alt="Old Town Castle Hill, Budapest, Hungary" class="postpicright" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcasthillstreet.gif" width="180"/>I set out to find the underground passageways that lace the hillside beneath the castle. Most of the area from Budapest south is largely comprised a very porous limestone known as Karst (which, if you’ve been reading this site for while, you may remember also formed the caves I visited in Laos). Over millions of years the water that seeps into the Karst eventually carves out caves and tunnels. The ones beneath Castle Hill in Buda have been slightly improved by man over the centuries and have served as everything from wine cellar to bomb shelter depending on the times.</p> +<p>Today for a modest fee you can wander through a labyrinth of damp tunnels with dim lights and faux cave paintings in what I believe is supposed to give you taste of Neolithic religion and superstition or at least someone’s idea of Neolithic caves, but unfortunately it comes off a little too campy to be all that interesting. It was a nice escape from the rain, but when I emerged out the far end of the tunnel I was craving something a little less Disneylandish.</p> +<p>I set out alone to escape the crowds of Castle Hill and explore the more modern parts of the city. Something in a travel brochure on the airplane had caught my eye and I decided to see if I could find my way to the tomb of Gul Baba a Turkish Whirling dervish <img alt="Gul Baba, Whirling Dervish, Budapest, Hungary" class="postpic" height="220" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestgulbaba.gif" width="165"/>who died in Budapest in 1541. I don’t know much about whirling dervishes aside from the fact that their Turkish in origin and a friend of mine is in a band of the same name (if you’re curious you can visit <a href="http://www.myspace.com/thewhirlingdervish" title="Info on Whirling Dervish the band">whirling dervish’s website for more info on the band</a>, but the rumor has it that Gul Baba brought the rose to Buda and the hill on which the tomb rests is known as Rose Hill.</p> +<p>The truth is that while the Dervish tomb appealed to me I mostly wanted to walk through the streets of the real part of the city since the downside to four star travel is that you’re typically sequestered in tourist ghettos, though in Budapest it was more of a business traveler ghetto. In either case you don’t really get to see the everyday life of the locals. So I walked through the rain to the tomb, made a few photographs and ducked into a cafe on my way home for a cup of coffee and bite of Hungarian pastry. </p> +<p>I sat in the back corner of the cafe waiting for the rain to let up thinking of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Art. For the most part there was little of note. The only highlight outside the Spanish gallery of El Grecco and Goya was a single piece from Gauguin’s period in Tahiti. I don’t recall the name of the painting, <img alt="Old Woman at Window, Hungary" class="postpicright" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestwindowwoman.gif" width="240"/>it wasn’t very large, but the vibrant colors and almost overwhelming sense of passion and life made it fairly leap off the wall next to more muted Monet’s and Picassos. Gauguin paid attention and he loved what he saw. His fascination with color seems to have eclipsed nearly every other concern in his mind. Figures are vague as if transitory and chiefly memorable for the light they reflect, background and foreground blend, what matters is not the precise place, nor the precise time, but the color, the color of the world that distinguishes not between only shade and tone and hue and tint to reveal the kaleidoscope that is always all around us.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/london-calling" rel="prev" title=" London Calling">London Calling</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/blue-milk" rel="next" title=" Blue Milk">Blue Milk</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="57" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833476" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="0cd870f2e7fbd176a2e9811754dac262680c2ab1" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Every colonizing country seems to leave behind some token of itself, a scent, not unlike a dog pausing to lift a leg on every tree it passes.
+
+The French tend to leave behind Arc de Triomphes of varying sizes and a deep knowledge of bread making. With the Spanish it tends toward Stucco churches, the English a habit of afternoon tea and some distilleries. The Soviets version of leg lifting can be seen in the form of monstrous, boxy concrete high-rise apartment buildings as ugly, cheerless and cold as the former regime itself.
+
+<break>
+
+From the air over a Budapest the most immediately striking feature are the Soviet style high-rises just outside the old town areas. Which is not so say Hungarian architecture is lacking, just perhaps not as conspicuous ugly as that of the Soviets. I'm sure in due time the Hungarians will tear down these architectural insults as they have all the statues of Party leaders and Communist heroes (which some entrepreneurial sort bought up and placed in a park where today for a modest fee you can see Lenin and Stalin immortalized in iron and carefully quarantined outside of the city which never wanted anything to do with them), but for the time being the dominate the view from the air.
+
+I spent a few minutes, maybe half an hour, at the airport studying the blocky structures from a distance, trying to get away from the immediately oppressive feeling they gave me. Eventually my shuttle bus arrived and pulled me out of the dismal stupor I had fallen into. The jostling of luggage and fellow passengers finding seats in the van provided a human inertia that slowly propelled me out of the gloomy mood that had crept over me. As we drove out of the suburbs toward the city I watched as the Soviet style apartment buildings slowly gave way to blocks of older vaguely Art Nouveau buildings until finally when we crossed the bridge into Pest I was confronted with the modern Budapest—the faceless glass of modern hotels juxtaposed against a background of striking Gothic-spired Churches and Baroque facades.
+
+Budapest actually consists of two cities, Buda and Pest separated by the Danube River. The hotel where we were staying was located on the Pest side of the river. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/budapestriverwalk.gif" width="194" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="Danube banks Budapest Hungary" />High on the fifth floor, where my suitably generic but comfortable room was located, my balcony afforded a view of the small riverside walkway below where several cafes had tables and umbrellas overlooking the Danube and then beyond where the river floated lazily by and in the background Buda's Castle Hill district rose up from the opposite bank. I also had a clear view of the so-called Chain Bridge a few hundred meters up the river, one of three or four bridges that span the Danube linking Buda and Pest.
+
+After getting settled in the hotel we decided to head out for a bit of an explore up the banks of the river. Walking along the Danube that night as the sun slowly sank behind the north end of Castle Hill and the shadows lengthened across the face of the old Parliament building, I came across a strange and vaguely disturbing monument of iron shoes sitting in pairs at the edge of the river. Most monuments, whether they commemorate misery or good fortune, exist as positive space, a statue in a square, a wall under some leafy trees, a cannon pointing out over a field, but a few, particularly those that commemorate loss, evoke emptiness and anguish through a sculptural negative space.
+
+The iron shoes scattered there beside the river seemed to me a kind of sculptural synecdoche, tiny parts chosen to represent a whole which was forcibly removed from time. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/budapestshoes.gif" width="188" height="250" class="postpic" alt="Shoe Memorial, Budapest, Hungary" />Approaching the shoes scattered on the concrete embankment one does not at first realize they are iron or even a sculpture as the iron is quite blackened and in the fading light of evening they looked as if a group of people simply left their shoes for an afternoon swim. But on closer examination one quickly notices that the styles and cuts of the shoes are outdated and harkened from some moment in the past. But it's a moment curiously suspended, as if the owners might at any moment climb back up out of the river into which they were cast and reclaim their lost footwear.
+
+None of the various guidebooks we were carrying mentioned the monument, but a small plague embedded in the concrete back away from the shoes themselves commemorates the deaths of thousands Jews who were forced into the Danube by the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazi Party). What's most striking about Sculptor Gyula Pauer's memorial is its quietude in the midst of so many rather loud, larger than life monuments and buildings like the towering pose of the nearby parliament buildings whose Gothic high arches and turrets seemed suddenly overwrought and desperate in their attempt to establish themselves. I thought of how sometimes the quietest statements are the most powerful, the way for instance Nick Drake's <em>Pink Moon</em>, though almost whispering at times, is one of the most formidable records I've heard.
+
+The shoes sitting quietly there on the embankment, very nearly in the shadow of the Margit Island Bridge and so still against the backdrop of the Danube waters reminded me of Newton's famous analogy comparing the concept of time to the Thames River. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/budapestcastlehillsunset.gif" width="230" height="173" class="postpicright" alt="Castle Hill Buda, Budapest, Hungary" />If a substitution of rivers may be allowed, the shoes then seemed to me to perfectly capture a moment, a frozen piece of time which allowed one to circumventing the present through a sculptural trapdoor, to return to something that refused to be swept away by the river.
+
+I recalled one evening in Cambodia when Rob remarked with some surprise that neither Matt nor Debi nor I had any kind of timepiece between us. And in fact none of us ever had. I don't know about either of them but I don't wear a watch. Once some years ago I badly burned my arm with boiling water. Most of the skin on the back of my hand and part of my wrist sloughed off and was cut away by surgeons. By a strange trick of physics the leather band of the wristwatch I was wearing at the time, wicked the water away from my skin before it could be burned. Thus I had a thin band of flesh surrounded by two rather disgusting areas of boiled skin. Eventually of course the burned skin healed, but curiously, the skin where my watch had been remained several shades lighter than that of the burned areas. In spite of the fact that the watch ostensibly saved my skin, it was that protected portion that looked out of place in the end. I decided then that I would never wear a watch again.
+
+How I translated a burn and bit of discolored skin into an intense dislike of mechanical time is something I can't quite explain except to say that perhaps noticing what was not on my wrist suddenly made me keenly aware of other things that also were not there. Eventually the whole concept of time came to seem too arbitrary to me. Morning, evening, spring, fall these words evoke things, numbers require second hand translation and seem to me a wasted effort.
+
+Later that evening after dinner I sat for a while outside on the balcony smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Castle Hill which rose up out of the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/budapestcastlehillnight.gif" width="230" height="164" class="postpic" alt="Castle Hill, Buda, Budapest, Hungary" />tram squealing out of the station filled the evening air. A riverboat slowly churned up river with a handful of tourists pointing cameras back toward the banks, capturing moments of time, moments they will likely playback later for family and loved ones who were not there. I sincerely doubt if any of them will ever say “this was taken at 7 pm on May 10th.” Instead they will likely say this was our first evening in Budapest, this was the night we sailed along a river, and this was where we walked, danced and swam.
+
+We set out early the next day to explore the Castle Hill area which is the oldest part of the city. The name Castle Hill fails to encapsulate the area. The left side of the hill is actually a palace where the kings once ruled and now stand several museums. The right side of the hill, still encircled by the castle walls contains Buda's old town quarter. All total the area is more than a kilometer long and encompasses a small city, referred to now as “old town” since like it or not time is our major marker of space.
+
+Castle hill is a sprawling affair that reminded me somewhat of the similarly sprawling City Palace in Udaipur India. Both occupy the top of reasonable sized hills and both encircle what were once functioning cities. And both were constructed over long periods of time according the changing whims of successive rulers until looking at them today they become a reflection of the changing architectural tastes of their respective cultures.
+
+Which is not to say that these two very different places have much in common beyond being large castles built on hills. When traveling for long periods of time it's easy to slip into the comfortable notion that one has seen and done certain things that need not be seen or done again. It is in other words easy to feel that if you've seen one tree you've seen them all. But if that were truly the case we could live the life of lightening bugs and be done with it by sunrise. A beech is not a maple is not an oak is certainly not a white fir, the differences in bark and leaves and roots and scent and shade and a million other things will leap out at you provided you pay attention. The notion that the part can be representative of the whole is popular in postmodernist circles, but take it outside the academic and it quickly shows itself as it is—a failure of the imagination.
+
+I believe that one could pick at random any one object and study it, look at it, feel it, breathe it, hear it and be with it every day for the rest of your life without ever really being able to say that you know it, that you understand it, that it has failed to move you, provoke you or challenge you in some way you weren't expecting. One of my favorite characters in film is Harvey Keitel's character in Wayne Wang's <em>Smoke</em>. Keitel's character, Aggie, takes the same photograph of the same scene from the same place at the same time every day for ten years and has all the prints in massive photo albums and explains to John Hurt's character the subtle differences between each. That's the sort of patience and dedication and love that we all ought to aspire to.
+
+We spent the better part of the morning wandering the castle grounds, the narrow streets of old town and a made brief visit to the Hungarian National Gallery. Eventually some clouds rolled in and after lunch a light drizzle began to fall. My parents decided to head back since they were still adjusting to the time change. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/budapestcasthillstreet.gif" width="180" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Old Town Castle Hill, Budapest, Hungary" />I set out to find the underground passageways that lace the hillside beneath the castle. Most of the area from Budapest south is largely comprised a very porous limestone known as Karst (which, if you've been reading this site for while, you may remember also formed the caves I visited in Laos). Over millions of years the water that seeps into the Karst eventually carves out caves and tunnels. The ones beneath Castle Hill in Buda have been slightly improved by man over the centuries and have served as everything from wine cellar to bomb shelter depending on the times.
+
+Today for a modest fee you can wander through a labyrinth of damp tunnels with dim lights and faux cave paintings in what I believe is supposed to give you taste of Neolithic religion and superstition or at least someone's idea of Neolithic caves, but unfortunately it comes off a little too campy to be all that interesting. It was a nice escape from the rain, but when I emerged out the far end of the tunnel I was craving something a little less Disneylandish.
+
+I set out alone to escape the crowds of Castle Hill and explore the more modern parts of the city. Something in a travel brochure on the airplane had caught my eye and I decided to see if I could find my way to the tomb of Gul Baba a Turkish Whirling dervish <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/budapestgulbaba.gif" width="165" height="220" class="postpic" alt="Gul Baba, Whirling Dervish, Budapest, Hungary" />who died in Budapest in 1541. I don't know much about whirling dervishes aside from the fact that their Turkish in origin and a friend of mine is in a band of the same name (if you're curious you can visit <a href="http://www.myspace.com/thewhirlingdervish" title="Info on Whirling Dervish the band">whirling dervish's website for more info on the band</a>, but the rumor has it that Gul Baba brought the rose to Buda and the hill on which the tomb rests is known as Rose Hill.
+
+The truth is that while the Dervish tomb appealed to me I mostly wanted to walk through the streets of the real part of the city since the downside to four star travel is that you're typically sequestered in tourist ghettos, though in Budapest it was more of a business traveler ghetto. In either case you don't really get to see the everyday life of the locals. So I walked through the rain to the tomb, made a few photographs and ducked into a cafe on my way home for a cup of coffee and bite of Hungarian pastry.
+
+I sat in the back corner of the cafe waiting for the rain to let up thinking of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Art. For the most part there was little of note. The only highlight outside the Spanish gallery of El Grecco and Goya was a single piece from Gauguin's period in Tahiti. I don't recall the name of the painting, <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/budapestwindowwoman.gif" width="240" height="180" class="postpicright" alt="Old Woman at Window, Hungary" />it wasn't very large, but the vibrant colors and almost overwhelming sense of passion and life made it fairly leap off the wall next to more muted Monet's and Picassos. Gauguin paid attention and he loved what he saw. His fascination with color seems to have eclipsed nearly every other concern in his mind. Figures are vague as if transitory and chiefly memorable for the light they reflect, background and foreground blend, what matters is not the precise place, nor the precise time, but the color, the color of the world that distinguishes not between only shade and tone and hue and tint to reveal the kaleidoscope that is always all around us. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/unreflected.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/unreflected.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e49f254 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/unreflected.amp @@ -0,0 +1,201 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Unreflected</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/05/unreflected"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/05/unreflected"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Finding Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and learning to play Frogger on the Ringstraße. 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Before this trip I was a dedicated driver, I've driven coast to coast across the U.S. six times and countless trips through the west, new England and the south (I once did LA to Atlanta in 26 hours straight through), but for some reason I've lost my taste for driving. So I was actually elated when we ditched the car in Prague and hopped a train for Vienna. Public transportation is much much better, you can relax, have a beer and meet strangers with funny hats.</p> +<p><break> +<amp-img alt="" height="216" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mantrain.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>Of course sometimes public transportation breaks and you find yourself in Slovakia instead of Austria, but these things are temporary. Usually. Or at least in this case it was. We spent a few hours loitering on Slovakian tracks waiting for another train to pass and then continued on in a roundabout way to Vienna during which time I was regretfully reminded of the inanity involved in conversing with Young American Males.</break></p> +<p>Vienna is a strange city; one I had trouble wrapping my head around at first. The old town area lies inside the Ringstraße (hereafter referred to as Ringstrasse because writing out that entity in html is a pain)<sup id="fnr-001"><a href="#fn-001">[1]</a></sup>. The Ringstrasse is a wide circular boulevard that runs, as its name implies, in a circle around the old city center. Inside the Ringstrasse are the fantastically massive Hapsburg Palace, several large churches and the upscale tourist destinations, hotels, shops and that sort of thing. The old city is ostensibly closed to traffic, though that doesn't see to stop the taxis, and consequently it's the tourist hub of Vienna.</p> +<p>Though I'm sure it was a carefully studied urban planning venture, which on paper sounds like a beautiful idea, a vehicleless downtown full of street markets, cafes, cobblestones and coffeehouses, in practice the Ringstrasse effectively isolates the center of Vienna and it left me feeling a bit trapped. Though I was excited to leave the car behind in Prague, I found myself once again seemingly wedged and isolated by vehicles as I watched a dizzying circle entrapping downtown visitors like corralled cattle. One afternoon I sat on a bench beside the Ringstrasse, smoking cigarettes under the still dripping leaves of an elm tree, watching the traffic ferry past like a scene in Koyaanisqatsi, and started to wonder if Frogger was by chance designed by an Austrian.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="St Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, Austria" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaststephens.jpg" width="161"></amp-img>After a day or two wandering among the Baroque facade of St. Stephens Cathedral, snacking of vast arrays of sausage and cabbage, learning to love oversize pints of hefeweizen, and generally avoiding all things castle or palace-like, I finally ventured out to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (which is admittedly not actually outside the Ringstrasse, but something about just seeing the vast open space just beyond the boulevard made me feel like I was again part of a city rather than stuck in a hole, cut off in the middle of a city).</p> +<p>The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what's remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg's private collection. The history of European ruling families is soaked in money, petty squabbles, the occasional inbreeding and plenty of sordid underbellies, but some of these families did have remarkable aesthetic vision in spite of their various handicaps. Yes I do think that wealth and power are handicaps to understanding the world around you because they remove you from the intricate struggles of everyday life and that in turn is a handicap to anything that might be called the development of an aesthetic sense based on something more than whim, fancy or cultural popularity, but let's be clear that handicaps are not insurmountable as the Hapsburg collection attests, which is to say that occasionally rich people are able to grasp greatness.</p> +<p>It had just stopped raining when I made my way from our penzion over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, rivulets of water ran between the cobblestone cracks and seeped through the long since worn-through soles of my shoes which caused my socks to make disturbing squishing sounds as I walked. The sky was a heavy leaden grey and looked as if it might start again the chilly drizzling rain that had been hanging around ever since we arrived. After paying the requisite fees and obtaining an audio guide (which I generally never bother with but for some reason on that day I felt the need to hear a voice), I wandered about the foyer for a minute absorbing the heavy baroque ceilings three stories overhead and the dark wood floors scuffed by the feet of the millions who passed through before me.</p> +<p>I had come mainly to see the works of Hieronymus Bosch, or at least out the painters mentioned in the brochure at our penzion, Bosch was the only one I found exciting. If you've never seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting they can be a bit shocking, especially considering he was painting around the turn of the 16<sup>th</sup> century. Bosch mixed mysticism, realism, religious symbolism, highly cerebral sense of irony, and magical iconography into a phantasmagoric stew that puts to shame the later so-called surrealists. Though I don't know that much about either of them Bosch and William Blake always come together in my mind. <amp-img alt="Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity, Hieronymus Bosch" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennabosch.jpg" width="179"></amp-img>Carl Jung called Bosch "The master of the monstrous… the discoverer of the unconscious," which could just as easily be applied to Blake. Philip II of Spain bought up the vast majority of Bosch's work long ago, and I probably shouldn't have expected to find much at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since I already knew most of his work is in the Prado Museum in Madrid, but I was a bit disappointed to find there were only two paintings in the Kunsthistorisches (<strong>The Adoration of the Kings</strong> is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for those looking for something closer to home). </p> +<p>Having rushed impatiently through the museum to find the Bosch, which, was every bit as gorgeous as I had hoped, though I was disappointed that the one I liked, <strong>Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity</strong>, didn't have an audio tour entry, I retraced my steps and wandered about the maze-like floor plan absorbing Dutch and Flemish painters whose names rang like a distant telephone you can hear, one you have in fact been hearing for years, but have never bothered to answer; maybe you didn't know it was a telephone, perhaps it just sounded like a murmur, that far off tone of the alarm clock before the world resolves itself out of sleep and becomes an actual object, a thing, an alarm, a phone, a Vermeer. But as semanticists are always pointing out, objects are not actually things, they are events, molecules arriving simultaneously at a lavish ballroom party, spinning, coalescing and collapsing in time to become what we <strong>call</strong> an object. And I don't mean that to be some overwrought analytical deconstruction, but rather as a beautiful thing, an object, whether it be a Vermeer or a Nokia, is an event happening, one which we can participate in, can join in, in fact can not avoid since the event happens solely so that we may see it. And from that perspective there is no historical burden to carry about, no cultural/political/social constructs to worry about, simply a painting coming together in the moment as our eyes sweep across it, which isn't to say that history, context and culture are irrelevant, rather they are optional, they are the gowns and tuxedos of the arriving molecules, the historical costumes of events which sometimes enrich our experience and sometimes stifle it with their gaudiness.</p> +<p>Off in the side corridor of the Italian wing I rounded a corner still listening to my audio guide rattle on about Rembrant and rather abruptly came face to face with a painting I had been wanting to see for years — <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong> (my photograph is less than stellar, for a much better image see the <a href="http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/parmigia/convex.html" title="Web Gallery of Art, image collection, virtual museum, searchable database of European fine arts (1100-1850)">Web Gallery of Art version</a> which allows for zooming and enlarging). </p> +<p>I originally came across Parmigianino through the title of John Ashbery's<sup id="fnr-002"><a href="#fn-002">[2]</a></sup> noted collection of poems, <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong>. Parmigianino's painting of the same title was the inspiration and graces the cover of Ashbery's book. There is that old adage about judgment and books and covers and things you ought not to do and yet I have often found that in fact sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and Ashbery's collection is, to my mind, such an example. I spent hours of class time studying that painting while others wrestled with the intentions and slippery meanings of the words inside. </p> +<p>What I never realized until I walked up to it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is that the actual painting is convex. Parmigianino had a ball of wood milled and them he sliced off the face of it to have convex surface on which to work. And that's just the beginning of the complexities of <strong>Self Portrait</strong>.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Parmigianino" height="247" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaselfportrait.jpg" width="260"></amp-img>What drew Ashbery and countless other critics to the painting are the subtle layers within it. Painted as a testament of personal skill, Parmigianino presented the canvas along with two others to Pope Clement VII hoping for a commission. Some have suggested that the enlarged forearm and hand are meant to suggest the artists skills, a sort of mildly disguised bit of self promotion, which sounds fine until you remember that if this is indeed what Parmigianino saw in a convex mirror, then the arm thrust forward is the left arm, not the right, which is traditionally associated with the painter's skills. This is perhaps one of the more trivial points in the painting, but it hints at the kind of layers of meaning and mystery which Parmigianino managed, whether intentional or not, to work into the painting. </p> +<p>There is within this small (just under 10 inches in diameter) painting so much to dwell on that I spent several hours studying it (Luckily for me there was a chair against the wall just opposite).</p> +<p>I am not an art critic nor am I a fan of the open-ended scholarly interpretation crap I just indulged in, but I do like to be able to say with some clarity, why I like something rather than simply leave it as self evident or begging the question, and yet it is very hard to say why I like this painting. After spending so much time with it, which I can assure is about one hour and fifty minutes longer than I've ever spent looking at any other painting, I realized it's the distortion within the distortion that compels me, the reflection of what isn't, reflected again in pigment, it's an opening of worlds, a stabbing at understanding which underlies all our endeavors in some way, a recognition of the complexities within complexities. I would like to see another painting of someone looking between two convex mirrors such that an infinite series of outwardly telescoping reflections was created.</p> +<p>When I was younger I travelled a good deal with my parents mainly camping in the southwestern US. My parents had a 1969 Ford truck with a camper on top. The size and shape of the camper necessitated large mirrors that extended out quite a ways from the door. The main mirror was rectangular and flat, a one to one reflection, but in the lower right corner of the large mirror a small convex mirror had be glued on to provide a wide angle view. Since I generally rode in the passenger's seat of the truck I spent most of the time staring at my distorted reflection, moving my hand in and out with the rush of wind watching it grow larger and more unnaturally arched and warped the closer I brought it to the mirror.</p> +<p>The first time I saw Parmigianino's <strong>Self Portrait</strong> on the cover of Ashbery's book I thought of the truck mirror and the millions of associations that came with those memories. <strong>Self Portrait</strong> came over time to amalgamate a collection of previously forgotten or overlooked memories until it attached itself and in many way became an inseparable part of the memories themselves. Rather than bandying about under the weight of historical context or canonical scholarship, it collapses now as an event in my own life.</p> +<p>My friend Mike said something to me the other day about realizing that it's fairly easy to find your way through a house of mirrors if you simply stare at your feet, but then, what's the fun in that? He's right and similarly, life can be fairly simple if you stare at the ground and don't worry to much about what's going on a round you, but the point of the house of mirrors maze isn't to solve it, to get to the end and leave, the point is stumble about, bump into walls, into other people, into your own distorted reflection and have fun while you do it. And in some way that's the pleasure I find in Parmigianino's <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong>, a reminder that the distortions are the real adventure, the real enjoyment and also the real truth.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li id="fn-001"> +<p class="note1">1. For language nerds (because I know some of you are): That entity, the ß, or Eszett as it's known, is a ligature of a long s dating from before the middle ages when ss was a separate letter of the alphabet (in English as well). The Eszett is fading out in modern German (officially dropped by the Swiss years ago and as anecdotally told to me by my friend Jackie, not all that common in modern Germany either), but its usage is still quite popular in Austria. According to the <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/german-spelling-reform-of-1996" title="Ubernerdy: Read about the German Spelling Reform of 1996">German Spelling Reform of 1996</a> the letter "ß" is to appear only after long vowels and diphthongs. <a class="footnoteBackLink" href="#fnr-001" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a></p> +</li> +<li id="fn-002"> +<p class="note1">2. As with anyone who has studied 20<sup>th</sup> century literature I passed through a certain period in which I became semi-obsessed with John Ashbery. Lots of post grad poetry students (I used to hang around with a lot of post grad poetry students) seem to think it's passé to extol someone as popular and widely established as John Ashbery, but that's just silly. I still, along with Wallace Stevens, Bernadette Mayer, Frank Stanford and Alice Notley consider him to be one of the truly great writers of our times. <a class="footnoteBackLink" href="#fnr-002" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩</a></p> +</li> +</ol> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/unreflected.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/unreflected.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f1e407d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/05/unreflected.html @@ -0,0 +1,354 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Unreflected - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Finding Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and learning to play Frogger on the Ringstraße. 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Before this trip I was a dedicated driver, I’ve driven coast to coast across the U.S. six times and countless trips through the west, new England and the south (I once did LA to Atlanta in 26 hours straight through), but for some reason I’ve lost my taste for driving. So I was actually elated when we ditched the car in Prague and hopped a train for Vienna. Public transportation is much much better, you can relax, have a beer and meet strangers with funny hats.</p> +<p><break> +<img alt="" class="postpic" height="216" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mantrain.jpg" width="200"/>Of course sometimes public transportation breaks and you find yourself in Slovakia instead of Austria, but these things are temporary. Usually. Or at least in this case it was. We spent a few hours loitering on Slovakian tracks waiting for another train to pass and then continued on in a roundabout way to Vienna during which time I was regretfully reminded of the inanity involved in conversing with Young American Males.</p> +<p>Vienna is a strange city; one I had trouble wrapping my head around at first. The old town area lies inside the Ringstraße (hereafter referred to as Ringstrasse because writing out that entity in html is a pain)<sup id="fnr-001"><a href="#fn-001">[1]</a></sup>. The Ringstrasse is a wide circular boulevard that runs, as its name implies, in a circle around the old city center. Inside the Ringstrasse are the fantastically massive Hapsburg Palace, several large churches and the upscale tourist destinations, hotels, shops and that sort of thing. The old city is ostensibly closed to traffic, though that doesn’t see to stop the taxis, and consequently it’s the tourist hub of Vienna.</p> +<p>Though I’m sure it was a carefully studied urban planning venture, which on paper sounds like a beautiful idea, a vehicleless downtown full of street markets, cafes, cobblestones and coffeehouses, in practice the Ringstrasse effectively isolates the center of Vienna and it left me feeling a bit trapped. Though I was excited to leave the car behind in Prague, I found myself once again seemingly wedged and isolated by vehicles as I watched a dizzying circle entrapping downtown visitors like corralled cattle. One afternoon I sat on a bench beside the Ringstrasse, smoking cigarettes under the still dripping leaves of an elm tree, watching the traffic ferry past like a scene in Koyaanisqatsi, and started to wonder if Frogger was by chance designed by an Austrian.</p> +<p><img alt="St Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, Austria" class="postpicright" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaststephens.jpg" width="161"/>After a day or two wandering among the Baroque facade of St. Stephens Cathedral, snacking of vast arrays of sausage and cabbage, learning to love oversize pints of hefeweizen, and generally avoiding all things castle or palace-like, I finally ventured out to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (which is admittedly not actually outside the Ringstrasse, but something about just seeing the vast open space just beyond the boulevard made me feel like I was again part of a city rather than stuck in a hole, cut off in the middle of a city).</p> +<p>The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what’s remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg’s private collection. The history of European ruling families is soaked in money, petty squabbles, the occasional inbreeding and plenty of sordid underbellies, but some of these families did have remarkable aesthetic vision in spite of their various handicaps. Yes I do think that wealth and power are handicaps to understanding the world around you because they remove you from the intricate struggles of everyday life and that in turn is a handicap to anything that might be called the development of an aesthetic sense based on something more than whim, fancy or cultural popularity, but let’s be clear that handicaps are not insurmountable as the Hapsburg collection attests, which is to say that occasionally rich people are able to grasp greatness.</p> +<p>It had just stopped raining when I made my way from our penzion over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, rivulets of water ran between the cobblestone cracks and seeped through the long since worn-through soles of my shoes which caused my socks to make disturbing squishing sounds as I walked. The sky was a heavy leaden grey and looked as if it might start again the chilly drizzling rain that had been hanging around ever since we arrived. After paying the requisite fees and obtaining an audio guide (which I generally never bother with but for some reason on that day I felt the need to hear a voice), I wandered about the foyer for a minute absorbing the heavy baroque ceilings three stories overhead and the dark wood floors scuffed by the feet of the millions who passed through before me.</p> +<p>I had come mainly to see the works of Hieronymus Bosch, or at least out the painters mentioned in the brochure at our penzion, Bosch was the only one I found exciting. If you’ve never seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting they can be a bit shocking, especially considering he was painting around the turn of the 16<sup>th</sup> century. Bosch mixed mysticism, realism, religious symbolism, highly cerebral sense of irony, and magical iconography into a phantasmagoric stew that puts to shame the later so-called surrealists. Though I don’t know that much about either of them Bosch and William Blake always come together in my mind. <img alt="Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity, Hieronymus Bosch" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennabosch.jpg" width="179"/>Carl Jung called Bosch “The master of the monstrous… the discoverer of the unconscious,” which could just as easily be applied to Blake. Philip II of Spain bought up the vast majority of Bosch’s work long ago, and I probably shouldn’t have expected to find much at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since I already knew most of his work is in the Prado Museum in Madrid, but I was a bit disappointed to find there were only two paintings in the Kunsthistorisches (<strong>The Adoration of the Kings</strong> is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for those looking for something closer to home). </p> +<p>Having rushed impatiently through the museum to find the Bosch, which, was every bit as gorgeous as I had hoped, though I was disappointed that the one I liked, <strong>Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity</strong>, didn’t have an audio tour entry, I retraced my steps and wandered about the maze-like floor plan absorbing Dutch and Flemish painters whose names rang like a distant telephone you can hear, one you have in fact been hearing for years, but have never bothered to answer; maybe you didn’t know it was a telephone, perhaps it just sounded like a murmur, that far off tone of the alarm clock before the world resolves itself out of sleep and becomes an actual object, a thing, an alarm, a phone, a Vermeer. But as semanticists are always pointing out, objects are not actually things, they are events, molecules arriving simultaneously at a lavish ballroom party, spinning, coalescing and collapsing in time to become what we <strong>call</strong> an object. And I don’t mean that to be some overwrought analytical deconstruction, but rather as a beautiful thing, an object, whether it be a Vermeer or a Nokia, is an event happening, one which we can participate in, can join in, in fact can not avoid since the event happens solely so that we may see it. And from that perspective there is no historical burden to carry about, no cultural/political/social constructs to worry about, simply a painting coming together in the moment as our eyes sweep across it, which isn’t to say that history, context and culture are irrelevant, rather they are optional, they are the gowns and tuxedos of the arriving molecules, the historical costumes of events which sometimes enrich our experience and sometimes stifle it with their gaudiness.</p> +<p>Off in the side corridor of the Italian wing I rounded a corner still listening to my audio guide rattle on about Rembrant and rather abruptly came face to face with a painting I had been wanting to see for years — <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong> (my photograph is less than stellar, for a much better image see the <a href="http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/parmigia/convex.html" title="Web Gallery of Art, image collection, virtual museum, searchable database of European fine arts (1100-1850)">Web Gallery of Art version</a> which allows for zooming and enlarging). </p> +<p>I originally came across Parmigianino through the title of John Ashbery’s<sup id="fnr-002"><a href="#fn-002">[2]</a></sup> noted collection of poems, <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong>. Parmigianino’s painting of the same title was the inspiration and graces the cover of Ashbery’s book. There is that old adage about judgment and books and covers and things you ought not to do and yet I have often found that in fact sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and Ashbery’s collection is, to my mind, such an example. I spent hours of class time studying that painting while others wrestled with the intentions and slippery meanings of the words inside. </p> +<p>What I never realized until I walked up to it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is that the actual painting is convex. Parmigianino had a ball of wood milled and them he sliced off the face of it to have convex surface on which to work. And that’s just the beginning of the complexities of <strong>Self Portrait</strong>.</p> +<p><img alt="Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Parmigianino" class="postpicright" height="247" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaselfportrait.jpg" width="260"/>What drew Ashbery and countless other critics to the painting are the subtle layers within it. Painted as a testament of personal skill, Parmigianino presented the canvas along with two others to Pope Clement VII hoping for a commission. Some have suggested that the enlarged forearm and hand are meant to suggest the artists skills, a sort of mildly disguised bit of self promotion, which sounds fine until you remember that if this is indeed what Parmigianino saw in a convex mirror, then the arm thrust forward is the left arm, not the right, which is traditionally associated with the painter’s skills. This is perhaps one of the more trivial points in the painting, but it hints at the kind of layers of meaning and mystery which Parmigianino managed, whether intentional or not, to work into the painting. </p> +<p>There is within this small (just under 10 inches in diameter) painting so much to dwell on that I spent several hours studying it (Luckily for me there was a chair against the wall just opposite).</p> +<p>I am not an art critic nor am I a fan of the open-ended scholarly interpretation crap I just indulged in, but I do like to be able to say with some clarity, why I like something rather than simply leave it as self evident or begging the question, and yet it is very hard to say why I like this painting. After spending so much time with it, which I can assure is about one hour and fifty minutes longer than I’ve ever spent looking at any other painting, I realized it’s the distortion within the distortion that compels me, the reflection of what isn’t, reflected again in pigment, it’s an opening of worlds, a stabbing at understanding which underlies all our endeavors in some way, a recognition of the complexities within complexities. I would like to see another painting of someone looking between two convex mirrors such that an infinite series of outwardly telescoping reflections was created.</p> +<p>When I was younger I travelled a good deal with my parents mainly camping in the southwestern US. My parents had a 1969 Ford truck with a camper on top. The size and shape of the camper necessitated large mirrors that extended out quite a ways from the door. The main mirror was rectangular and flat, a one to one reflection, but in the lower right corner of the large mirror a small convex mirror had be glued on to provide a wide angle view. Since I generally rode in the passenger’s seat of the truck I spent most of the time staring at my distorted reflection, moving my hand in and out with the rush of wind watching it grow larger and more unnaturally arched and warped the closer I brought it to the mirror.</p> +<p>The first time I saw Parmigianino’s <strong>Self Portrait</strong> on the cover of Ashbery’s book I thought of the truck mirror and the millions of associations that came with those memories. <strong>Self Portrait</strong> came over time to amalgamate a collection of previously forgotten or overlooked memories until it attached itself and in many way became an inseparable part of the memories themselves. Rather than bandying about under the weight of historical context or canonical scholarship, it collapses now as an event in my own life.</p> +<p>My friend Mike said something to me the other day about realizing that it’s fairly easy to find your way through a house of mirrors if you simply stare at your feet, but then, what’s the fun in that? He’s right and similarly, life can be fairly simple if you stare at the ground and don’t worry to much about what’s going on a round you, but the point of the house of mirrors maze isn’t to solve it, to get to the end and leave, the point is stumble about, bump into walls, into other people, into your own distorted reflection and have fun while you do it. And in some way that’s the pleasure I find in Parmigianino’s <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong>, a reminder that the distortions are the real adventure, the real enjoyment and also the real truth.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li id="fn-001"> +<p class="note1">1. For language nerds (because I know some of you are): That entity, the ß, or Eszett as it’s known, is a ligature of a long s dating from before the middle ages when ss was a separate letter of the alphabet (in English as well). The Eszett is fading out in modern German (officially dropped by the Swiss years ago and as anecdotally told to me by my friend Jackie, not all that common in modern Germany either), but its usage is still quite popular in Austria. According to the <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/german-spelling-reform-of-1996" title="Ubernerdy: Read about the German Spelling Reform of 1996">German Spelling Reform of 1996</a> the letter “ß” is to appear only after long vowels and diphthongs. <a href="#fnr-001" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a></p> +</li> +<li id="fn-002"> +<p class="note1">2. As with anyone who has studied 20<sup>th</sup> century literature I passed through a certain period in which I became semi-obsessed with John Ashbery. Lots of post grad poetry students (I used to hang around with a lot of post grad poetry students) seem to think it’s passé to extol someone as popular and widely established as John Ashbery, but that’s just silly. I still, along with Wallace Stevens, Bernadette Mayer, Frank Stanford and Alice Notley consider him to be one of the truly great writers of our times. <a href="#fnr-002" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩</a></p> +</li> +</ol> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds" rel="prev" title=" Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds">Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream" rel="next" title=" I Don't Sleep I Dream">I Don't Sleep I Dream</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="64" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833474" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="3244b6391ca62e1033933aa0cd71d3ffe9d71a3f" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Before this trip I was a dedicated driver, I've driven coast to coast across the U.S. six times and countless trips through the west, new England and the south (I once did LA to Atlanta in 26 hours straight through), but for some reason I've lost my taste for driving. So I was actually elated when we ditched the car in Prague and hopped a train for Vienna. Public transportation is much much better, you can relax, have a beer and meet strangers with funny hats.
+
+<break>
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/mantrain.jpg" width="200" height="216" class="postpic" alt="" />Of course sometimes public transportation breaks and you find yourself in Slovakia instead of Austria, but these things are temporary. Usually. Or at least in this case it was. We spent a few hours loitering on Slovakian tracks waiting for another train to pass and then continued on in a roundabout way to Vienna during which time I was regretfully reminded of the inanity involved in conversing with Young American Males.
+
+Vienna is a strange city; one I had trouble wrapping my head around at first. The old town area lies inside the Ringstraße (hereafter referred to as Ringstrasse because writing out that entity in html is a pain)<sup id="fnr-001"><a href="#fn-001">[1]</a></sup>. The Ringstrasse is a wide circular boulevard that runs, as its name implies, in a circle around the old city center. Inside the Ringstrasse are the fantastically massive Hapsburg Palace, several large churches and the upscale tourist destinations, hotels, shops and that sort of thing. The old city is ostensibly closed to traffic, though that doesn't see to stop the taxis, and consequently it's the tourist hub of Vienna.
+
+Though I'm sure it was a carefully studied urban planning venture, which on paper sounds like a beautiful idea, a vehicleless downtown full of street markets, cafes, cobblestones and coffeehouses, in practice the Ringstrasse effectively isolates the center of Vienna and it left me feeling a bit trapped. Though I was excited to leave the car behind in Prague, I found myself once again seemingly wedged and isolated by vehicles as I watched a dizzying circle entrapping downtown visitors like corralled cattle. One afternoon I sat on a bench beside the Ringstrasse, smoking cigarettes under the still dripping leaves of an elm tree, watching the traffic ferry past like a scene in Koyaanisqatsi, and started to wonder if Frogger was by chance designed by an Austrian.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennaststephens.jpg" width="161" height="230" class="postpicright" alt="St Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, Austria" />After a day or two wandering among the Baroque facade of St. Stephens Cathedral, snacking of vast arrays of sausage and cabbage, learning to love oversize pints of hefeweizen, and generally avoiding all things castle or palace-like, I finally ventured out to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (which is admittedly not actually outside the Ringstrasse, but something about just seeing the vast open space just beyond the boulevard made me feel like I was again part of a city rather than stuck in a hole, cut off in the middle of a city).
+
+The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what's remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg's private collection. The history of European ruling families is soaked in money, petty squabbles, the occasional inbreeding and plenty of sordid underbellies, but some of these families did have remarkable aesthetic vision in spite of their various handicaps. Yes I do think that wealth and power are handicaps to understanding the world around you because they remove you from the intricate struggles of everyday life and that in turn is a handicap to anything that might be called the development of an aesthetic sense based on something more than whim, fancy or cultural popularity, but let's be clear that handicaps are not insurmountable as the Hapsburg collection attests, which is to say that occasionally rich people are able to grasp greatness.
+
+It had just stopped raining when I made my way from our penzion over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, rivulets of water ran between the cobblestone cracks and seeped through the long since worn-through soles of my shoes which caused my socks to make disturbing squishing sounds as I walked. The sky was a heavy leaden grey and looked as if it might start again the chilly drizzling rain that had been hanging around ever since we arrived. After paying the requisite fees and obtaining an audio guide (which I generally never bother with but for some reason on that day I felt the need to hear a voice), I wandered about the foyer for a minute absorbing the heavy baroque ceilings three stories overhead and the dark wood floors scuffed by the feet of the millions who passed through before me.
+
+I had come mainly to see the works of Hieronymus Bosch, or at least out the painters mentioned in the brochure at our penzion, Bosch was the only one I found exciting. If you've never seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting they can be a bit shocking, especially considering he was painting around the turn of the 16<sup>th</sup> century. Bosch mixed mysticism, realism, religious symbolism, highly cerebral sense of irony, and magical iconography into a phantasmagoric stew that puts to shame the later so-called surrealists. Though I don't know that much about either of them Bosch and William Blake always come together in my mind. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennabosch.jpg" width="179" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity, Hieronymus Bosch" />Carl Jung called Bosch "The master of the monstrous… the discoverer of the unconscious," which could just as easily be applied to Blake. Philip II of Spain bought up the vast majority of Bosch's work long ago, and I probably shouldn't have expected to find much at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since I already knew most of his work is in the Prado Museum in Madrid, but I was a bit disappointed to find there were only two paintings in the Kunsthistorisches (**The Adoration of the Kings** is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for those looking for something closer to home).
+
+Having rushed impatiently through the museum to find the Bosch, which, was every bit as gorgeous as I had hoped, though I was disappointed that the one I liked, **Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity**, didn't have an audio tour entry, I retraced my steps and wandered about the maze-like floor plan absorbing Dutch and Flemish painters whose names rang like a distant telephone you can hear, one you have in fact been hearing for years, but have never bothered to answer; maybe you didn't know it was a telephone, perhaps it just sounded like a murmur, that far off tone of the alarm clock before the world resolves itself out of sleep and becomes an actual object, a thing, an alarm, a phone, a Vermeer. But as semanticists are always pointing out, objects are not actually things, they are events, molecules arriving simultaneously at a lavish ballroom party, spinning, coalescing and collapsing in time to become what we **call** an object. And I don't mean that to be some overwrought analytical deconstruction, but rather as a beautiful thing, an object, whether it be a Vermeer or a Nokia, is an event happening, one which we can participate in, can join in, in fact can not avoid since the event happens solely so that we may see it. And from that perspective there is no historical burden to carry about, no cultural/political/social constructs to worry about, simply a painting coming together in the moment as our eyes sweep across it, which isn't to say that history, context and culture are irrelevant, rather they are optional, they are the gowns and tuxedos of the arriving molecules, the historical costumes of events which sometimes enrich our experience and sometimes stifle it with their gaudiness.
+
+Off in the side corridor of the Italian wing I rounded a corner still listening to my audio guide rattle on about Rembrant and rather abruptly came face to face with a painting I had been wanting to see for years — **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror** (my photograph is less than stellar, for a much better image see the <a href="http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/parmigia/convex.html" title="Web Gallery of Art, image collection, virtual museum, searchable database of European fine arts (1100-1850)">Web Gallery of Art version</a> which allows for zooming and enlarging).
+
+I originally came across Parmigianino through the title of John Ashbery's<sup id="fnr-002"><a href="#fn-002">[2]</a></sup> noted collection of poems, **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror**. Parmigianino's painting of the same title was the inspiration and graces the cover of Ashbery's book. There is that old adage about judgment and books and covers and things you ought not to do and yet I have often found that in fact sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and Ashbery's collection is, to my mind, such an example. I spent hours of class time studying that painting while others wrestled with the intentions and slippery meanings of the words inside.
+
+What I never realized until I walked up to it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is that the actual painting is convex. Parmigianino had a ball of wood milled and them he sliced off the face of it to have convex surface on which to work. And that's just the beginning of the complexities of **Self Portrait**.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/viennaselfportrait.jpg" width="260" height="247" class="postpicright" alt="Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Parmigianino" />What drew Ashbery and countless other critics to the painting are the subtle layers within it. Painted as a testament of personal skill, Parmigianino presented the canvas along with two others to Pope Clement VII hoping for a commission. Some have suggested that the enlarged forearm and hand are meant to suggest the artists skills, a sort of mildly disguised bit of self promotion, which sounds fine until you remember that if this is indeed what Parmigianino saw in a convex mirror, then the arm thrust forward is the left arm, not the right, which is traditionally associated with the painter's skills. This is perhaps one of the more trivial points in the painting, but it hints at the kind of layers of meaning and mystery which Parmigianino managed, whether intentional or not, to work into the painting.
+
+There is within this small (just under 10 inches in diameter) painting so much to dwell on that I spent several hours studying it (Luckily for me there was a chair against the wall just opposite).
+
+I am not an art critic nor am I a fan of the open-ended scholarly interpretation crap I just indulged in, but I do like to be able to say with some clarity, why I like something rather than simply leave it as self evident or begging the question, and yet it is very hard to say why I like this painting. After spending so much time with it, which I can assure is about one hour and fifty minutes longer than I've ever spent looking at any other painting, I realized it's the distortion within the distortion that compels me, the reflection of what isn't, reflected again in pigment, it's an opening of worlds, a stabbing at understanding which underlies all our endeavors in some way, a recognition of the complexities within complexities. I would like to see another painting of someone looking between two convex mirrors such that an infinite series of outwardly telescoping reflections was created.
+
+When I was younger I travelled a good deal with my parents mainly camping in the southwestern US. My parents had a 1969 Ford truck with a camper on top. The size and shape of the camper necessitated large mirrors that extended out quite a ways from the door. The main mirror was rectangular and flat, a one to one reflection, but in the lower right corner of the large mirror a small convex mirror had be glued on to provide a wide angle view. Since I generally rode in the passenger's seat of the truck I spent most of the time staring at my distorted reflection, moving my hand in and out with the rush of wind watching it grow larger and more unnaturally arched and warped the closer I brought it to the mirror.
+
+The first time I saw Parmigianino's **Self Portrait** on the cover of Ashbery's book I thought of the truck mirror and the millions of associations that came with those memories. **Self Portrait** came over time to amalgamate a collection of previously forgotten or overlooked memories until it attached itself and in many way became an inseparable part of the memories themselves. Rather than bandying about under the weight of historical context or canonical scholarship, it collapses now as an event in my own life.
+
+My friend Mike said something to me the other day about realizing that it's fairly easy to find your way through a house of mirrors if you simply stare at your feet, but then, what's the fun in that? He's right and similarly, life can be fairly simple if you stare at the ground and don't worry to much about what's going on a round you, but the point of the house of mirrors maze isn't to solve it, to get to the end and leave, the point is stumble about, bump into walls, into other people, into your own distorted reflection and have fun while you do it. And in some way that's the pleasure I find in Parmigianino's **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror**, a reminder that the distortions are the real adventure, the real enjoyment and also the real truth.
+
+
+<ol class="footnote">
+<li id="fn-001">
+<p class="note1">1. For language nerds (because I know some of you are): That entity, the ß, or Eszett as it's known, is a ligature of a long s dating from before the middle ages when ss was a separate letter of the alphabet (in English as well). The Eszett is fading out in modern German (officially dropped by the Swiss years ago and as anecdotally told to me by my friend Jackie, not all that common in modern Germany either), but its usage is still quite popular in Austria. According to the <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/german-spelling-reform-of-1996" title="Ubernerdy: Read about the German Spelling Reform of 1996">German Spelling Reform of 1996</a> the letter "ß" is to appear only after long vowels and diphthongs. <a href="#fnr-001" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a></p>
+</li>
+<li id="fn-002">
+<p class="note1">2. As with anyone who has studied 20<sup>th</sup> century literature I passed through a certain period in which I became semi-obsessed with John Ashbery. Lots of post grad poetry students (I used to hang around with a lot of post grad poetry students) seem to think it's passé to extol someone as popular and widely established as John Ashbery, but that's just silly. I still, along with Wallace Stevens, Bernadette Mayer, Frank Stanford and Alice Notley consider him to be one of the truly great writers of our times. <a href="#fnr-002" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩</a></p>
+</li>
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Miller</cite></span> +<span class="drop">O</span>utside it's raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries, the young man with the blue umbrella crosses the street with his head down. The hiss of tires on the pavement comes softly between Satie's piano notes; the wet greens leaves flap against the dark bark of maples trees; the headlights reflect in red and white streaks in the puddles. The digital sign across the street prints out events in red dot matrix letters, concerts, plays, museum openings, things happen in the Marais. Things happen most everywhere. + +<break> + +For me this thing began happening when I left Paris. + +And now. Now I can see my reflection slighted in the window. I am haggard, tired, my cheeks slightly sunken. My pen is dry, my notebook full, my laptop out of juice and my iPod drained. I have no money, nowhere to stay. My girlfriend tells me she's in love with the Italian deli boy (natch) and the soles of my shoes are worn through so I can feel the cold of the cobblestones when I walk. + +To be honest this isn't how I wanted to return to Paris. + +And yet. And yet. I haven't been this happy in years. + +When I left it was autumn, the leaves were falling. We all wondered aloud if the trees would ever fall from the leaves but knew better and so did not answer. Instead we walked. When the trees fall they take the whole game with them. + +Paris in spring stifles. The leaves uniform monochrome. Except for the Japanese maples which make me hungry for something I've never tasted with their burgundy leaves hinting at autumn before it has come. Another summer to sweat through. Or maybe they are a reminder of an autumn past, some constant by which to trace our elliptical paths through these winding cobblestone alleys. + +Paris is much like New York in that both were designed with autumn in mind. Though New York is a bit short on cobblestones. + +Last night, having nothing to do after I parted ways with someone I met on the train from Vienna, I wandered down to the Latin Quarter, an arrondissement I never really spent much time in. I bought a copy of Lydia Davis' translation of <em>The Way by Swann's</em> and then strolled up away from the Seine. + +It began to drizzle lightly, just enough to mottle the lens of my eyeglasses which made the lights in store windows glitter and blur as I walked past. At some point I found myself under a small awning and I paused to wipe my glasses on my shirt. When I put them back on I noticed that the darkened and grated shop window next to me was full of old cameras — 1960's Pentax and Contax, Kodak Brownings, Leica bodies, rows of Carl Zeiss lens and even a few small collapsible bellows cameras. I thought about an article I had read several days before which covered the recent announcements from both Canon and Nikon that they will cease still film camera production this year. + +Film is already a curiosity. Even small children in out-of-the-way countries expect to see instant results in a small digital screen and are visibly disappointed when they cannot. Silver haloid preserved the twentieth century but now its service is ended. + +Just across the street was well-lit display of digital camera's, cd and mp3 players, plasma televisions. + +For a long time Kodak used the slogan “preserving your memories.” + +I have a lot of pictures. Over 2000 as a matter of fact. Only about twenty are any good, which is roughly the ratio of good to bad that convinced me to give up on being a professional photographer back in college, but strangely it's the really bad ones that are the most compelling to me. Compelling because they look nothing like what I remember and thus do not interfere with the memories. + +I am sitting at the same cafe sipping, but not really enjoying all that much, a chocolate chaud much like the ones I wrote about eight months ago. It isn't as good, there is something missing. Okay let's be honest, someone, but you'll have to do better than that to earn your junior detective badge. + +You know what you learn traveling? After all this time what do I understand now that I did not then? What makes this chocolate chaud less fulfilling than that last? + +Simple. + +You cannot go backwards. + +You will want to go backwards. + +You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. + +You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. + +You will want to return even after you have left. + +You will want things to be the same when you return. + +But they will not be the same. The people will be gone. + +And the people were the only reason you stayed. + +You will want to go backwards. + +You cannot go backwards. + +And now I am home. + +<em>for Lilli. Because. Someday you will be the only one left.</em></break></p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/cadenza.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/cadenza.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..93887a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/cadenza.html @@ -0,0 +1,388 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Cadenza - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Paris in the rain; the glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. This is where it all began. 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Miller</cite></span> + +<span class="drop">O</span>utside it’s raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries, the young man with the blue umbrella crosses the street with his head down. The hiss of tires on the pavement comes softly between Satie’s piano notes; the wet greens leaves flap against the dark bark of maples trees; the headlights reflect in red and white streaks in the puddles. The digital sign across the street prints out events in red dot matrix letters, concerts, plays, museum openings, things happen in the Marais. Things happen most everywhere. + +<break> + +For me this thing began happening when I left Paris. + +And now. Now I can see my reflection slighted in the window. I am haggard, tired, my cheeks slightly sunken. My pen is dry, my notebook full, my laptop out of juice and my iPod drained. I have no money, nowhere to stay. My girlfriend tells me she’s in love with the Italian deli boy (natch) and the soles of my shoes are worn through so I can feel the cold of the cobblestones when I walk. + +To be honest this isn’t how I wanted to return to Paris. + +And yet. And yet. I haven’t been this happy in years. + +When I left it was autumn, the leaves were falling. We all wondered aloud if the trees would ever fall from the leaves but knew better and so did not answer. Instead we walked. When the trees fall they take the whole game with them. + +Paris in spring stifles. The leaves uniform monochrome. Except for the Japanese maples which make me hungry for something I’ve never tasted with their burgundy leaves hinting at autumn before it has come. Another summer to sweat through. Or maybe they are a reminder of an autumn past, some constant by which to trace our elliptical paths through these winding cobblestone alleys. + +Paris is much like New York in that both were designed with autumn in mind. Though New York is a bit short on cobblestones. + +Last night, having nothing to do after I parted ways with someone I met on the train from Vienna, I wandered down to the Latin Quarter, an arrondissement I never really spent much time in. I bought a copy of Lydia Davis’ translation of <em>The Way by Swann’s</em> and then strolled up away from the Seine. + +It began to drizzle lightly, just enough to mottle the lens of my eyeglasses which made the lights in store windows glitter and blur as I walked past. At some point I found myself under a small awning and I paused to wipe my glasses on my shirt. When I put them back on I noticed that the darkened and grated shop window next to me was full of old cameras — 1960’s Pentax and Contax, Kodak Brownings, Leica bodies, rows of Carl Zeiss lens and even a few small collapsible bellows cameras. I thought about an article I had read several days before which covered the recent announcements from both Canon and Nikon that they will cease still film camera production this year. + +Film is already a curiosity. Even small children in out-of-the-way countries expect to see instant results in a small digital screen and are visibly disappointed when they cannot. Silver haloid preserved the twentieth century but now its service is ended. + +Just across the street was well-lit display of digital camera’s, cd and mp3 players, plasma televisions. + +For a long time Kodak used the slogan “preserving your memories.” + +I have a lot of pictures. Over 2000 as a matter of fact. Only about twenty are any good, which is roughly the ratio of good to bad that convinced me to give up on being a professional photographer back in college, but strangely it’s the really bad ones that are the most compelling to me. Compelling because they look nothing like what I remember and thus do not interfere with the memories. + +I am sitting at the same cafe sipping, but not really enjoying all that much, a chocolate chaud much like the ones I wrote about eight months ago. It isn’t as good, there is something missing. Okay let’s be honest, someone, but you’ll have to do better than that to earn your junior detective badge. + +You know what you learn traveling? After all this time what do I understand now that I did not then? What makes this chocolate chaud less fulfilling than that last? + +Simple. + +You cannot go backwards. + +You will want to go backwards. + +You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. + +You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. + +You will want to return even after you have left. + +You will want things to be the same when you return. + +But they will not be the same. The people will be gone. + +And the people were the only reason you stayed. + +You will want to go backwards. + +You cannot go backwards. + +And now I am home. + +<em>for Lilli. Because. Someday you will be the only one left.</em> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream" rel="prev" title=" I Don't Sleep I Dream">I Don't Sleep I Dream</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/06/homeward" rel="next" title=" Homeward">Homeward</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="66" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833473" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="c6a61ff0f02e18eca7c9f93cbd15ca572a1bd0bd" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Miller</cite></span>
+
+<span class="drop">O</span>utside it's raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries, the young man with the blue umbrella crosses the street with his head down. The hiss of tires on the pavement comes softly between Satie's piano notes; the wet greens leaves flap against the dark bark of maples trees; the headlights reflect in red and white streaks in the puddles. The digital sign across the street prints out events in red dot matrix letters, concerts, plays, museum openings, things happen in the Marais. Things happen most everywhere.
+
+<break>
+
+For me this thing began happening when I left Paris.
+
+And now. Now I can see my reflection slighted in the window. I am haggard, tired, my cheeks slightly sunken. My pen is dry, my notebook full, my laptop out of juice and my iPod drained. I have no money, nowhere to stay. My girlfriend tells me she's in love with the Italian deli boy (natch) and the soles of my shoes are worn through so I can feel the cold of the cobblestones when I walk.
+
+To be honest this isn't how I wanted to return to Paris.
+
+And yet. And yet. I haven't been this happy in years.
+
+When I left it was autumn, the leaves were falling. We all wondered aloud if the trees would ever fall from the leaves but knew better and so did not answer. Instead we walked. When the trees fall they take the whole game with them.
+
+Paris in spring stifles. The leaves uniform monochrome. Except for the Japanese maples which make me hungry for something I've never tasted with their burgundy leaves hinting at autumn before it has come. Another summer to sweat through. Or maybe they are a reminder of an autumn past, some constant by which to trace our elliptical paths through these winding cobblestone alleys.
+
+Paris is much like New York in that both were designed with autumn in mind. Though New York is a bit short on cobblestones.
+
+Last night, having nothing to do after I parted ways with someone I met on the train from Vienna, I wandered down to the Latin Quarter, an arrondissement I never really spent much time in. I bought a copy of Lydia Davis' translation of <em>The Way by Swann's</em> and then strolled up away from the Seine.
+
+It began to drizzle lightly, just enough to mottle the lens of my eyeglasses which made the lights in store windows glitter and blur as I walked past. At some point I found myself under a small awning and I paused to wipe my glasses on my shirt. When I put them back on I noticed that the darkened and grated shop window next to me was full of old cameras — 1960's Pentax and Contax, Kodak Brownings, Leica bodies, rows of Carl Zeiss lens and even a few small collapsible bellows cameras. I thought about an article I had read several days before which covered the recent announcements from both Canon and Nikon that they will cease still film camera production this year.
+
+Film is already a curiosity. Even small children in out-of-the-way countries expect to see instant results in a small digital screen and are visibly disappointed when they cannot. Silver haloid preserved the twentieth century but now its service is ended.
+
+Just across the street was well-lit display of digital camera's, cd and mp3 players, plasma televisions.
+
+For a long time Kodak used the slogan “preserving your memories.”
+
+I have a lot of pictures. Over 2000 as a matter of fact. Only about twenty are any good, which is roughly the ratio of good to bad that convinced me to give up on being a professional photographer back in college, but strangely it's the really bad ones that are the most compelling to me. Compelling because they look nothing like what I remember and thus do not interfere with the memories.
+
+I am sitting at the same cafe sipping, but not really enjoying all that much, a chocolate chaud much like the ones I wrote about eight months ago. It isn't as good, there is something missing. Okay let's be honest, someone, but you'll have to do better than that to earn your junior detective badge.
+
+You know what you learn traveling? After all this time what do I understand now that I did not then? What makes this chocolate chaud less fulfilling than that last?
+
+Simple.
+
+You cannot go backwards.
+
+You will want to go backwards.
+
+You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect.
+
+You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea.
+
+You will want to return even after you have left.
+
+You will want things to be the same when you return.
+
+But they will not be the same. The people will be gone.
+
+And the people were the only reason you stayed.
+
+You will want to go backwards.
+
+You cannot go backwards.
+
+And now I am home.
+
+<em>for Lilli. Because. Someday you will be the only one left.</em> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/homeward.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/homeward.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d24231e --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/homeward.amp @@ -0,0 +1,179 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Homeward</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/06/homeward"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2006/06/homeward"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="How do you come home after traveling the world? You don't. So what's it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there. 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John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. Concrete hiss of tires, parabolic freeway ramps, a moth trapped inside an airport bus, the sodium yellow glow of subway lights, the gentle rocking of a train car, the green boarded fronts of a sixth avenue newsstand, shoes still leaking, still tired and still not looking back.</p> +<p>Just off Bleeker, around the corner from Minetta where I once lived for a few weeks, there is a small coffee shop totally unremarkable in nearly every way save one distinguishing characteristic that drew me to it initially and draws me to it still — it doesn't close. Faced with a thirty six hour layover and nowhere near the cash to pay for a hotel (don't even ask about the credit cards) I figured good old Esperanta cafe was the ideal sort of place to spend the night.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>I would like to say that I got off the plane ready to kiss the ground and mumble something about home at last, thank god home at last, but that isn't how I felt and isn't what I did. soon after I arrived in Los Angeles to see my family, friends started to email and call, which was wonderful, except that nearly everyone asked what it was like to be back. </p> +<p>I've had three months to ponder that question now and I still don't have a definitive answer, which is at least partly my own fault because I've never asked exactly what you mean when you ask that question. Sometimes people ask that as a sort of loaded question, some people seemed to be waiting for me to bad mouth America. </p> +<p>So let's start there. I could say a million bad things about America, but the truth is people, things are no better anywhere else, like Tom Wait's said “I know I know, things is tough all over.” There are things America does better than the rest of the world and there are things we could do so much better. </p> +<p>I could be critical of America's corrupt, inept and lying politicians, but I could just as easily be critical of France's politicians, Cambodia's politicians, India's politicians, Laos, Thailand ad nauseam. We are no better and no worse. </p> +<p>Then there's the other side of that coin, some seem to expect that I would be overjoyed to finally be back in the U.S., but the truth is I didn't miss it. I missed a lot of people here in the States, but the country itself never much crossed my mind. </p> +<p>So what is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/homeward.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/homeward.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9335fc0 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/homeward.html @@ -0,0 +1,336 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Homeward - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="How do you come home after traveling the world? You don't. So what's it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there. 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John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. Concrete hiss of tires, parabolic freeway ramps, a moth trapped inside an airport bus, the sodium yellow glow of subway lights, the gentle rocking of a train car, the green boarded fronts of a sixth avenue newsstand, shoes still leaking, still tired and still not looking back.</p> +<p>Just off Bleeker, around the corner from Minetta where I once lived for a few weeks, there is a small coffee shop totally unremarkable in nearly every way save one distinguishing characteristic that drew me to it initially and draws me to it still — it doesn’t close. Faced with a thirty six hour layover and nowhere near the cash to pay for a hotel (don’t even ask about the credit cards) I figured good old Esperanta cafe was the ideal sort of place to spend the night.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>I would like to say that I got off the plane ready to kiss the ground and mumble something about home at last, thank god home at last, but that isn’t how I felt and isn’t what I did. soon after I arrived in Los Angeles to see my family, friends started to email and call, which was wonderful, except that nearly everyone asked what it was like to be back. </p> +<p>I’ve had three months to ponder that question now and I still don’t have a definitive answer, which is at least partly my own fault because I’ve never asked exactly what you mean when you ask that question. Sometimes people ask that as a sort of loaded question, some people seemed to be waiting for me to bad mouth America. </p> +<p>So let’s start there. I could say a million bad things about America, but the truth is people, things are no better anywhere else, like Tom Wait’s said “I know I know, things is tough all over.” There are things America does better than the rest of the world and there are things we could do so much better. </p> +<p>I could be critical of America’s corrupt, inept and lying politicians, but I could just as easily be critical of France’s politicians, Cambodia’s politicians, India’s politicians, Laos, Thailand ad nauseam. We are no better and no worse. </p> +<p>Then there’s the other side of that coin, some seem to expect that I would be overjoyed to finally be back in the U.S., but the truth is I didn’t miss it. I missed a lot of people here in the States, but the country itself never much crossed my mind. </p> +<p>So what is it like to be home? I don’t know, I’ll tell you when I get there.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/06/cadenza" rel="prev" title=" Cadenza">Cadenza</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/12/give-it-or-turnit-loose" rel="next" title=" Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose">Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="67" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833473" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="c1cf2f6330f4800e0b2708cd7adb8b9ce1cdcb2b" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. Concrete hiss of tires, parabolic freeway ramps, a moth trapped inside an airport bus, the sodium yellow glow of subway lights, the gentle rocking of a train car, the green boarded fronts of a sixth avenue newsstand, shoes still leaking, still tired and still not looking back.
+
+Just off Bleeker, around the corner from Minetta where I once lived for a few weeks, there is a small coffee shop totally unremarkable in nearly every way save one distinguishing characteristic that drew me to it initially and draws me to it still — it doesn't close. Faced with a thirty six hour layover and nowhere near the cash to pay for a hotel (don't even ask about the credit cards) I figured good old Esperanta cafe was the ideal sort of place to spend the night.
+
+<break>
+
+I would like to say that I got off the plane ready to kiss the ground and mumble something about home at last, thank god home at last, but that isn't how I felt and isn't what I did. soon after I arrived in Los Angeles to see my family, friends started to email and call, which was wonderful, except that nearly everyone asked what it was like to be back.
+
+I've had three months to ponder that question now and I still don't have a definitive answer, which is at least partly my own fault because I've never asked exactly what you mean when you ask that question. Sometimes people ask that as a sort of loaded question, some people seemed to be waiting for me to bad mouth America.
+
+So let's start there. I could say a million bad things about America, but the truth is people, things are no better anywhere else, like Tom Wait's said “I know I know, things is tough all over.” There are things America does better than the rest of the world and there are things we could do so much better.
+
+I could be critical of America's corrupt, inept and lying politicians, but I could just as easily be critical of France's politicians, Cambodia's politicians, India's politicians, Laos, Thailand ad nauseam. We are no better and no worse.
+
+Then there's the other side of that coin, some seem to expect that I would be overjoyed to finally be back in the U.S., but the truth is I didn't miss it. I missed a lot of people here in the States, but the country itself never much crossed my mind.
+
+So what is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5ade86 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/06/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,107 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv8.css" + media="screen"> + <!--[if IE]> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/css/ie.css" + media="screen"> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="manifest.json"> + <meta property="fb:pages" content="900822029969349" /> + +</head> +<body id="archive"> + <div class="wrapper" id="wrapper"> + <div class="header-wrapper"> + <header role="banner"> + <h1><a id="logo" href="/" title="home">Luxagraf</a></h1> + <h2>Walk Slowly</h2> + </header> + <nav role="navigation" class="bl"> + <ul> + <li id="laverdad"><a href="/jrnl/" title="What we've been up to lately">Journal</a></li> + <!--<li id="nota"><a href="/field-notes/" title="Quick notes and images from the road">Notes</a></li> + <li id="fotos"><a href="/photos/" title="Photos from travels around the world">Photos</a></li>i--> + <li id="maps"><a href="/map" title="Maps">Map</a></li> + <li id="about"><a href="/about" title="About Luxagraf">About</a></li> + <li id="etc" class="last"><a href="/projects/" title="the less visible portions of the iceberg">More</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + <ul class="bl" id="breadcrumbs" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb"> + <li><a href="/" title="luxagraf homepage" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Home</span></a> → </li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/" title="See all Journal Entries" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Journal</span></a> →</li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/2006/">2006</a> →</li> + <li>June</li> + </ul> + <main role="main" id="writing-archive" class="archive"> + <h1> Archive: June 2006</h1> + <ul class="date-archive"> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/06/homeward" title="Homeward">Homeward</a> + <time datetime="2006-06-09T11:05:34-04:00">Jun 09, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2006/06/cadenza" title="Cadenza">Cadenza</a> + <time datetime="2006-06-06T11:01:26-04:00">Jun 06, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + + + + <footer role="contentinfo"> + <nav class="bl"> + <ul> + <li><a href="/blogroll" title="Sites that inspire us">Blogroll</a></li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/feed.xml" title="RSS feed">Subscribe</a></li> + <li><a href="/contact/" title="contact luxagraf">Contact</a></li> + <li><a href="https://twitter.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="follow luxagraf on Twitter">Twitter</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Flickr">Flickr</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Facebook">Facebook</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/luxagraf/" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Instacrap">Instacrap</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + <p id="license"> + © 2003-2018 + <span class="h-card"><a class="p-name u-url" href="https://luxagraf.net/">Scott Gilbertson</a><data class="p-nickname" value="luxagraf"></data><data class="p-locality" value="Athens"></data><data class="p-region" value="Georgia"></data><data class="p-country-name" value="United States"></data></span>, except photos, which are licensed under the Creative Commons (<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" title="read the Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 deed">details</a>). + </p> + </footer> + </div> + +<!-- Piwik --> +<script type="text/javascript"> +var _paq = _paq || []; 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Normally I'm not one to dwell too much on celebrity deaths, after all it's not like I knew the man, but some people have an impact that goes far beyond their person or their life. Johnny Cash was such a person and for me, so was James Brown.</p> +<p>My first encounter with James Brown's music is lost on me. In many ways James Brown was just always there, background music at the Little Knight, something you tapped a foot to while shooting pool. I knew the hits and not much else.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>Then Jimmy played me the <em>Funk Power</em> compilation of Brown's short lived version of the JBs that included a then unknown Bootsy Collins. It would be a slight exaggeration to say the CD changed my life, but not an outright lie. We happened to be driving from Athens GA to New York at the time and we listened to that and Stevie Wonder's <em>Innervisions</em> pretty much the whole way.</p> +<p>The twelve minute rendition of Soul Power on that record is still probably the hardest funk music I've ever heard and lyrically that record transcends most of the rest of Brown's career. Maceo Parker and the rest of the old band had just quit, Bootsy and the new band would quit inside of a year, but for this one moment the raw unpolished perfection of the JBs comes screaming though.</p> +<p>I don't particularly like religion, but I think I do believe in the soul. And I realized at some point that when I say soul I mean something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there.</p> +<p>James Brown was not a perfect man, perhaps not even a great man if we are to consider his personal life in detail, but there were moments when he channeled something very few people ever get to touch and that is the real soul power.</p> +<p>So long Mr. Brown and say hello to Mr. Cash and Sun the one when you get wherever it is you're headed.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/12/give-it-or-turnit-loose.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/12/give-it-or-turnit-loose.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0244fe6 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/12/give-it-or-turnit-loose.html @@ -0,0 +1,335 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="James Brown was not a perfect man, but there were moments when he channeled what very few people ever get to feel: true soul power. 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Normally I’m not one to dwell too much on celebrity deaths, after all it’s not like I knew the man, but some people have an impact that goes far beyond their person or their life. Johnny Cash was such a person and for me, so was James Brown.</p> +<p>My first encounter with James Brown’s music is lost on me. In many ways James Brown was just always there, background music at the Little Knight, something you tapped a foot to while shooting pool. I knew the hits and not much else.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>Then Jimmy played me the <em>Funk Power</em> compilation of Brown’s short lived version of the JBs that included a then unknown Bootsy Collins. It would be a slight exaggeration to say the CD changed my life, but not an outright lie. We happened to be driving from Athens GA to New York at the time and we listened to that and Stevie Wonder’s <em>Innervisions</em> pretty much the whole way.</p> +<p>The twelve minute rendition of Soul Power on that record is still probably the hardest funk music I’ve ever heard and lyrically that record transcends most of the rest of Brown’s career. Maceo Parker and the rest of the old band had just quit, Bootsy and the new band would quit inside of a year, but for this one moment the raw unpolished perfection of the JBs comes screaming though.</p> +<p>I don’t particularly like religion, but I think I do believe in the soul. And I realized at some point that when I say soul I mean something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. Soul is not something out there or in you, it’s the place where you meet the out there.</p> +<p>James Brown was not a perfect man, perhaps not even a great man if we are to consider his personal life in detail, but there were moments when he channeled something very few people ever get to touch and that is the real soul power.</p> +<p>So long Mr. Brown and say hello to Mr. Cash and Sun the one when you get wherever it is you’re headed.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/06/homeward" rel="prev" title=" Homeward">Homeward</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2007/01/sun-came-no-conclusions" rel="next" title=" The Sun Came Up With No Conclusions">The Sun Came Up With No Conclusions</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="70" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833473" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="e0fb7cfbe07c9be0768e97bc0bbde3f37b8d1953" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Normally I'm not one to dwell too much on celebrity deaths, after all it's not like I knew the man, but some people have an impact that goes far beyond their person or their life. Johnny Cash was such a person and for me, so was James Brown.
+
+My first encounter with James Brown's music is lost on me. In many ways James Brown was just always there, background music at the Little Knight, something you tapped a foot to while shooting pool. I knew the hits and not much else.
+
+<break>
+
+Then Jimmy played me the <em>Funk Power</em> compilation of Brown's short lived version of the JBs that included a then unknown Bootsy Collins. It would be a slight exaggeration to say the CD changed my life, but not an outright lie. We happened to be driving from Athens GA to New York at the time and we listened to that and Stevie Wonder's <em>Innervisions</em> pretty much the whole way.
+
+The twelve minute rendition of Soul Power on that record is still probably the hardest funk music I've ever heard and lyrically that record transcends most of the rest of Brown's career. Maceo Parker and the rest of the old band had just quit, Bootsy and the new band would quit inside of a year, but for this one moment the raw unpolished perfection of the JBs comes screaming though.
+
+I don't particularly like religion, but I think I do believe in the soul. And I realized at some point that when I say soul I mean something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there.
+
+James Brown was not a perfect man, perhaps not even a great man if we are to consider his personal life in detail, but there were moments when he channeled something very few people ever get to touch and that is the real soul power.
+
+So long Mr. Brown and say hello to Mr. Cash and Sun the one when you get wherever it is you're headed. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/12/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/12/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f0f5355 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/12/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,104 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + 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b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2006/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,280 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv8.css" + media="screen"> + <!--[if IE]> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/css/ie.css" + media="screen"> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="manifest.json"> + <meta property="fb:pages" content="900822029969349" /> + +</head> +<body id="archive"> + <div class="wrapper" id="wrapper"> + <div class="header-wrapper"> + <header role="banner"> + <h1><a id="logo" href="/" title="home">Luxagraf</a></h1> + <h2>Walk Slowly</h2> + </header> + <nav role="navigation" class="bl"> + <ul> + <li id="laverdad"><a href="/jrnl/" title="What we've been up to lately">Journal</a></li> + <!--<li id="nota"><a href="/field-notes/" title="Quick notes and images from the road">Notes</a></li> + <li id="fotos"><a href="/photos/" title="Photos from travels around the world">Photos</a></li>i--> + <li id="maps"><a href="/map" title="Maps">Map</a></li> + <li id="about"><a href="/about" title="About Luxagraf">About</a></li> + <li id="etc" class="last"><a href="/projects/" title="the less visible portions of the iceberg">More</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + <ul class="bl" id="breadcrumbs" itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb"> + <li><a href="/" title="luxagraf homepage" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Home</span></a> → </li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/" title="See all Journal Entries" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Journal</span></a> →</li> + <li>2006</li> + + </ul> + <main role="main" id="writing-archive" class="archive"> + <h1>2006, on luxagraf</h1> + <ul class="date-archive"> + <li class="dater"><span>January 2006</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/i-used-fly-peter-pan" title="I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan">I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-21T19:42:47-05:00">Jan 21, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/hymn-big-wheel" title="Hymn of the Big Wheel">Hymn of the Big Wheel</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-19T19:37:46-05:00">Jan 19, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/down-river" title="Down the River">Down the River</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-17T20:13:26-05:00">Jan 17, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers" title="The King of Carrot Flowers">The King of Carrot Flowers</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-17T18:53:17-05:00">Jan 17, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/you-and-i-are-disappearing" title="You and I Are Disappearing">You and I Are Disappearing</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-12T00:52:30-05:00">Jan 12, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/buddha-bounty" title="Buddha on the Bounty">Buddha on the Bounty</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-05T18:43:03-05:00">Jan 05, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/brink-clouds" title="Brink of the Clouds">Brink of the Clouds</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-03T20:38:27-05:00">Jan 03, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock" title="Are You Amplified to Rock?">Are You Amplified to Rock?</a> + <time datetime="2006-01-01T18:37:48-05:00">Jan 01, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>February 2006</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/little-corner-world" title="Little Corner of the World">Little Corner of the World</a> + <time datetime="2006-02-28T20:13:00-05:00">Feb 28, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/cant-get-there-here" title="Can&#8217;t Get There From Here">Can’t Get There From Here</a> + <time datetime="2006-02-24T20:00:03-05:00">Feb 24, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/safe-milk" title="Safe as Milk">Safe as Milk</a> + <time datetime="2006-02-18T19:54:24-05:00">Feb 18, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/everyday-fourteenth" title="Everyday the Fourteenth">Everyday the Fourteenth</a> + <time datetime="2006-02-14T19:50:35-05:00">Feb 14, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/water-slides-and-spirit-guides" title="Water Slides and Spirit Guides">Water Slides and Spirit Guides</a> + <time datetime="2006-02-10T19:47:12-05:00">Feb 10, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe" title="The Lovely Universe">The Lovely Universe</a> + <time datetime="2006-02-04T23:43:28-05:00">Feb 04, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>March 2006</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/book-right" title="The Book of Right On">The Book of Right On</a> + <time datetime="2006-03-31T00:01:02-05:00">Mar 31, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/midnight-perfect-world" title="Midnight in a Perfect World">Midnight in a Perfect World</a> + <time datetime="2006-03-26T23:58:12-05:00">Mar 26, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat" title="Angkor Wat">Angkor Wat</a> + <time datetime="2006-03-21T23:55:50-05:00">Mar 21, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/wait-til-it-blows" title="...Wait 'til it Blows">…Wait ‘til it Blows</a> + <time datetime="2006-03-18T23:52:55-05:00">Mar 18, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/beginning-see-light" title="Beginning to See the Light">Beginning to See the Light</a> + <time datetime="2006-03-16T20:45:20-05:00">Mar 16, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/blood-tracks" title="Blood on the Tracks">Blood on the Tracks</a> + <time datetime="2006-03-14T23:41:41-05:00">Mar 14, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/03/ticket-ride" title="Ticket To Ride">Ticket To Ride</a> + <time datetime="2006-03-07T23:39:02-05:00">Mar 07, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>April 2006</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/04/bird-paradise" title="Bird of Paradise">Bird of Paradise</a> + <time datetime="2006-04-22T00:11:20-04:00">Apr 22, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/04/beginning-end" title="Beginning of the End">Beginning of the End</a> + <time datetime="2006-04-12T02:56:22-04:00">Apr 12, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/04/going-down-south" title="Going Down South">Going Down South</a> + <time datetime="2006-04-11T00:10:50-04:00">Apr 11, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>May 2006</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/i-dont-sleep-i-dream" title="I Don't Sleep I Dream">I Don’t Sleep I Dream</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-28T15:00:32-04:00">May 28, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/unreflected" title="Unreflected">Unreflected</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-27T23:55:46-04:00">May 27, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds" title="Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds">Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-26T14:50:24-04:00">May 26, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/inside-and-out" title="Inside and Out">Inside and Out</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-25T17:45:12-04:00">May 25, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/king-carrot-flowers-part-two" title="The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two">The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-22T20:44:33-04:00">May 22, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/ghost" title="Ghost">Ghost</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-19T19:37:07-04:00">May 19, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/feel-good-lost" title="Feel Good Lost">Feel Good Lost</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-18T00:38:37-04:00">May 18, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/blue-milk" title="Blue Milk">Blue Milk</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-16T00:32:27-04:00">May 16, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/refracted-light-and-grace" title="Refracted Light and Grace">Refracted Light and Grace</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-11T00:26:59-04:00">May 11, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/london-calling" title="London Calling">London Calling</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-10T00:16:42-04:00">May 10, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/05/closing-time" title="Closing Time">Closing Time</a> + <time datetime="2006-05-01T00:14:23-04:00">May 01, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>June 2006</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/06/homeward" title="Homeward">Homeward</a> + <time datetime="2006-06-09T11:05:34-04:00">Jun 09, 2006</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/06/cadenza" title="Cadenza">Cadenza</a> + <time datetime="2006-06-06T11:01:26-04:00">Jun 06, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>December 2006</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/12/give-it-or-turnit-loose" title="Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose">Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose</a> + <time datetime="2006-12-25T19:10:49-05:00">Dec 25, 2006</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + </ul> + + + <footer role="contentinfo"> + <nav class="bl"> + <ul> + <li><a href="/blogroll" title="Sites that inspire us">Blogroll</a></li> + <li><a href="/jrnl/feed.xml" title="RSS feed">Subscribe</a></li> + <li><a href="/contact/" title="contact luxagraf">Contact</a></li> + <li><a href="https://twitter.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="follow luxagraf on Twitter">Twitter</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Flickr">Flickr</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Facebook">Facebook</a></li> + <li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/luxagraf/" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Instacrap">Instacrap</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + <p id="license"> + © 2003-2018 + <span class="h-card"><a class="p-name 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