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Thompson committed suicide this past weekend. Like many I am saddened by Thompson's decision to take his own life. I don't for a moment pretend to understand why he did it, but after thinking about it for a few days I have decided that, despite the loss for the rest of us, this was precisely the way Thompson should depart— shocking, violent and utterly gonzo.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>Unfortunately, Thompson is probably best known for the unapologetic drug use of <strong>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</strong>. But to understand the impact of that book we consider its moment in time. Originally published as an ongoing series in the November 1971 issues of Rolling Stone<sup id="fnr-1-10-20-04"><a href="#fn-1-10-20-04">1</a></sup>, <strong>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</strong> sought to shock a deeply jaded populace. America was deep in the throws of an ideological civil war—Civil Rights, Vietnam, Hippies, et al. The counter-culture was trying to gain ground by going legit. Kerouac was dead, Ginsberg had failed to bring down the Pentagon with flowers, the optimism of the '60s was crashing and burning. </p> +<p>Into this melee stepped Hunter S Thompson with a eulogy for the dreams of the 1960's, one that mourned, but also tried to lay the empty idealism to rest. The drug use in the novel, to me anyway, is simply a so-deranged-its-sane reaction to a world that must certainly have seemed deranged. As they say, if everyone is insane, only the sane appear insane. </p> +<p>Also missing in most writing about the book (on the web anyway) is the novel's subtitle, which is really a more accurate description of the book: A savage journey to the heart of the America Dream<sup id="fnr-2-10-20-04"><a href="#fn-2-10-20-04">2</a></sup>. From <strong>Fear and Loathing</strong>:</p><blockquote>And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave....</blockquote><blockquote>So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right sort of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.</blockquote> +<p>What saddens me most of all about Thompson's death is that, like William Burroughs (and probably DeQuincy in his day), he will probably be remember more for the <strong>way</strong> he wrote than <strong>what</strong> he wrote. Yes, perhaps he did ingest a good bit of drugs and yes, perhaps he did celebrate it (which differs from Burroughs), but Thompson was not just drugs, nor was he just a journalist. <strong>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</strong> is, and will remain, a scathing indictment of the corruption and failure of the 1960s version of the American Dream. It's Thompson's chronicling of the metamorphosis from dream to nightmare, not his outlandish drug intake, that makes Fear and Loathing a compelling piece of literature. </p> +<p>Just as he stripped the glamor from drugs, he stripped the rhetoric and bullshit from politics. His self-described "gonzo" style of reporting is often characterized as the interjection of the reporter into the story. But Thompson knew as well of the rest of us that every writer interjects herself into the story. If anything, his "gonzo" style of journalism is less an injection of Hunter S. Thompson into the story that is was a removal of the mythical characteristic of his subjects. He stripped us all to our barest and yes sometimes basest parts. If the story still required myth then the fictionalized Thompson was there to step up, but never is there a moment in Thompson's political writings where politicians or leaders are any more than fellow fucked up passengers on voyage so grand that overshadows us all. A voyage on in which, as <a href="http://neutralmilkhotel.net/" title="Neutral Milk Hotel">Jeff Magnum</a> has said, "how strange it is to be anything at all."</p> +<p>And now Thompson has propelled himself beyond that voyage into yet another and so it is with sadness, but also with respect and admiration that I bid you fairwell Mr. Thompson and naively hope that the work you leave behind can grow to eclipse the shadow you cast in writing it.</p><p class="pic"><amp-img alt="Hunter S Thompson" height="230" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/thompson.jpg" width="360"></amp-img></p> +<ol class="footnote"><li id="fn-1-10-20-04"><p><span class="note1">1. Note to Rolling Stone, anytime you want to start publishing good fiction again, feel free...</span><a class="footnoteBackLink" href="#fnr-1-10-20-04" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a></p></li><li id="fn-2-10-20-04"><p class="note2">2. Interestingly enough the latest edition of *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas* omits this subtitle in favor of "And Other American Stories," which is unfortunate.<a class="footnoteBackLink" href="#fnr-2-10-20-04" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩</a></p></li></ol> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4e065f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson.html @@ -0,0 +1,357 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson - 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 savage journey to the heart of the America Dream comes to an end."> + <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/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="42.32263568118727, -72.62795447292214" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="42.32263568118727; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-02-24T18:11:10" itemprop="datePublished">February <span>24, 2005</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>Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide this past weekend. Like many I am saddened by Thompson’s decision to take his own life. I don’t for a moment pretend to understand why he did it, but after thinking about it for a few days I have decided that, despite the loss for the rest of us, this was precisely the way Thompson should depart — shocking, violent and utterly gonzo.</p> +<div class="picfull"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/thompson.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, (min-width: 751) 750px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2019/thompson_picfull-sm.jpg 750w" alt="hunter s thompson typing in car, rambler photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2019/thompson.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>Thompson is best known for the unapologetic drug use of <em>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</em>, but that’s really selling Thompson very short. It seems to me Thompson was trying to shock a deeply jaded populace. America was at the end of an ideological civil war — Civil Rights, Vietnam, Hippies, et al. Kerouac was dead. Ginsberg had failed to bring down the Pentagon with flowers. The optimism of the ‘60s was crashing and burning. </p> +<p>Into this melee stepped Hunter S Thompson with a eulogy for the dreams of the 1960’s, one that mourned, but also tried to lay the empty idealism to rest. The drug use in the novel, to me anyway, is a so-deranged-it’s-sane reaction to a world that must certainly have seemed deranged. As they say, if everyone is insane, sanity looks insane. </p> +<p>Also missing in most writing about the book (on the web anyway) is the novel’s subtitle, which is really a more accurate description of the book: <em>A savage journey to the heart of the America Dream</em><sup id="fnref:2"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>. </p> +<blockquote> +<p>And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right sort of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. <cite>– Fear and Loathing</cite></p> +</blockquote> +<p>What saddens me most of all about Thompson’s death is that, like William Burroughs (and probably DeQuincy in his day), he will probably be remember more for the <em>way</em> he wrote than <em>what</em> he wrote. Yes, perhaps he did ingest quite a few chemicals, and yes, perhaps he did celebrate it (which differs from Burroughs), but Thompson was not just chemicals, nor was he just a journalist. </p> +<p><em>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</em> is, and will remain, a scathing indictment of the corruption and failure of the 1960s version of the American Dream. It’s Thompson’s chronicling of the metamorphosis from dream to nightmare, not his outlandish drug intake, that makes Fear and Loathing a compelling piece of literature. </p> +<p>His self-described “gonzo” style of reporting is often characterized as the interjection of the reporter into the story, but Thompson knew as well of the rest of us that every writer interjects herself into the story. His “gonzo” style of writing is not an injection of Hunter S. Thompson into the story, but a removal of the mythical character of his subjects. Thompson killed our false heroes.</p> +<p>He stripped us all to our barest and yes sometimes basest parts. If the story still required myth then the fictionalized Thompson was there to step up, but never is there a moment in Thompson’s political writings where politicians or leaders are any more than fellow fucked up passengers on voyage so grand that overshadows us all. A voyage on in which, as <a href="http://neutralmilkhotel.net/" title="Neutral Milk Hotel">Jeff Magnum</a> has said, <em>how strange it is to be anything at all</em>.</p> +<p>And now Thompson has propelled himself beyond this voyage into another. I bid you farewell Mr. Thompson and naively hope that the work you leave behind can grow to eclipse the shadow you cast in writing it.</p> +<p><img alt="Hunter S Thompson" src="https://luxagraf.net/images/2005/thompson.jpg"/></p> +<div class="footnote"> +<hr> +<ol> +<li id="fn:1"> +<p>Note to Rolling Stone, anytime you want to start publishing good fiction again, feel free. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1" rev="footnote" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p> +</li> +<li id="fn:2"> +<p>Interestingly enough the latest edition of <em>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</em> omits this subtitle in favor of “And Other American Stories,” which is unfortunate. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:2" rev="footnote" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p> +</li> +</ol> +</div> + </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/2004/10/art-essay" rel="prev" title=" The Art of the Essay">The Art of the Essay</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text" rel="next" title=" New Adventures in HiFi Text">New Adventures in HiFi Text</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="6" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833490" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="7715faee3fbfaaf8b26aefbe663c19f201c4b747" 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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Thompson committed suicide this past weekend. Like many I am saddened by Thompson's decision to take his own life. I don't for a moment pretend to understand why he did it, but after thinking about it for a few days I have decided that, despite the loss for the rest of us, this was precisely the way Thompson should depart -- shocking, violent and utterly gonzo.
+
+<img src="images/2019/thompson.jpg" id="image-1928" class="picfull" />
+
+Thompson is best known for the unapologetic drug use of *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas*, but that's really selling Thompson very short. It seems to me Thompson was trying to shock a deeply jaded populace. America was at the end of an ideological civil war -- Civil Rights, Vietnam, Hippies, et al. Kerouac was dead. Ginsberg had failed to bring down the Pentagon with flowers. The optimism of the '60s was crashing and burning.
+
+Into this melee stepped Hunter S Thompson with a eulogy for the dreams of the 1960's, one that mourned, but also tried to lay the empty idealism to rest. The drug use in the novel, to me anyway, is a so-deranged-it's-sane reaction to a world that must certainly have seemed deranged. As they say, if everyone is insane, sanity looks insane.
+
+Also missing in most writing about the book (on the web anyway) is the novel's subtitle, which is really a more accurate description of the book: *A savage journey to the heart of the America Dream*[^2].
+
+> And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right sort of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. <cite>– Fear and Loathing</cite>
+
+What saddens me most of all about Thompson's death is that, like William Burroughs (and probably DeQuincy in his day), he will probably be remember more for the *way* he wrote than *what* he wrote. Yes, perhaps he did ingest quite a few chemicals, and yes, perhaps he did celebrate it (which differs from Burroughs), but Thompson was not just chemicals, nor was he just a journalist.
+
+*Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas* is, and will remain, a scathing indictment of the corruption and failure of the 1960s version of the American Dream. It's Thompson's chronicling of the metamorphosis from dream to nightmare, not his outlandish drug intake, that makes Fear and Loathing a compelling piece of literature.
+
+His self-described "gonzo" style of reporting is often characterized as the interjection of the reporter into the story, but Thompson knew as well of the rest of us that every writer interjects herself into the story. His "gonzo" style of writing is not an injection of Hunter S. Thompson into the story, but a removal of the mythical character of his subjects. Thompson killed our false heroes.
+
+He stripped us all to our barest and yes sometimes basest parts. If the story still required myth then the fictionalized Thompson was there to step up, but never is there a moment in Thompson's political writings where politicians or leaders are any more than fellow fucked up passengers on voyage so grand that overshadows us all. A voyage on in which, as <a href="http://neutralmilkhotel.net/" title="Neutral Milk Hotel">Jeff Magnum</a> has said, *how strange it is to be anything at all*.
+
+And now Thompson has propelled himself beyond this voyage into another. I bid you farewell Mr. Thompson and naively hope that the work you leave behind can grow to eclipse the shadow you cast in writing it.
+
+<img src="https://luxagraf.net/images/2005/thompson.jpg" alt="Hunter S Thompson" />
+
+[^1]: Note to Rolling Stone, anytime you want to start publishing good fiction again, feel free.
+[^2]: Interestingly enough the latest edition of *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas* omits this subtitle in favor of "And Other American Stories," which is unfortunate. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/02/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/02/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dc2de8d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/02/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" + 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/2005/">2005</a> →</li> + <li>February</li> + </ul> + <main role="main" id="writing-archive" class="archive"> + <h1> Archive: February 2005</h1> + <ul class="date-archive"> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson" title="Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson">Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson</a> + <time datetime="2005-02-24T18:11:10-05:00">Feb 24, 2005</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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The man outside the liquor store seems unconcerned. The sky seems to fall a good bit. Perhaps the man didn't notice. Perhaps the sky has fallen too many times now. Perhaps it's been falling for quite some time and we're just now noticing it. Perhaps its always falling. Perhaps it never has and never will fall. Perhaps we just really like to say the sky is falling. </p> +<p>This latest chunk of sky burling down at us is a brilliant little piece of circuitry known as the iPod. Andrew Sullivan, writing for <strong><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/" title="The London Times">The London Times</a></strong> claims "<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1501-1491500-1501,00.html" title="Comment: Andrew Sullivan: Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld">society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld</a>." A catchy headline no doubt, but it's basis in reality is questionable. Echoing this trend is John Naughton's recent article for <strong>The Guardian</strong>, "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1396485,00.html" title="A generation lost in its personal space">a generation lost in its personal space</a>." Joining these authors is Christine Rosen who has managed to parlay this topic into two separate articles, <strong><a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/7/rosen.htm" title="The Age of Egocasting">The Age of Egocasting</a></strong> and <strong><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/magazine/20WWLN.html?ex=1268974800&en=fca8190266cc6b78&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt" title="Rosen's NYTimes Magazine article">Bad Connections</a></strong>. Call it the iPod backlash.</p> +<p>The underlying implication of all these articles is that the iPod (and the cellphone and TiVo and the remote control and the mirro and dem Russians) narrow our perspectives and, in case of the first two, make us oblivious to and in public spaces. </p><blockquote>the proportion of young people who never venture out in public without first putting on headphones is astonishing <br/><cite>-John Naughten</cite></blockquote><blockquote>Even without the white wires you can tell who they are. They walk down the street in their own mp3 cocoon, bumping into others, deaf to small social cues, shutting out anyone not in their bubble. <br/><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote> +<p>I have owned an iPod since 2001 and I really enjoy my bubble. I was in a band a few years back and we were recording what would be our only production, a five song ep. For those that have never been in a recording studio and have this mistaken idea that it's all fun and games... well, it's not. Recording music is pretty boring actually. One evening the drummer and I were smoking cigarettes outside our studio and we got to talking about walkmans and the newfangled mp3 players that were just hitting the market. Nice we agreed, but what would be really cool I said, what I really want, is a way to put my entire collection of music in a device the size of a deck of cards. True story, 1995 or so. Buena Park California, sunset iridescent orange. High clouds lending a bit of purple. Swig of beer. Drag of cigarette. Yeah, that would be brilliant wouldn't it?</p> +<p>And it was. The first few were too small, 5 gigs and then 10, if I recall correctly from a billboard in Redondo Beach stuck in traffic and thinking, holy shit, they're gonna do it. And they did. When the 20 gig version arrived it seemed like plenty of space so I bought one. Unfortunately when I got done ripping all my cds it was almost full. Now four years later I have almost 35 gigs worth of mp3s and I'm needing a new iPod (holding out for the 80 gig model, which again seems like plenty...).</p> +<p>I am far too much an audiophile however to settle for the cult of white ear buds and in fact have never used apple's provided headphones (too much time spent in the recording studio to trust my music to cheap speakers). No I am actually worse in Mr Sullivan's view, I use noise canceling earbuds from Sennheiser. Even if I turn off my iPod I am still deaf to your social cues Mr. Sullivan. I will even confess that sometimes, when my iPod runs out of batteries, I leave the headphones in just to have an excuse to ignore social interaction. In fact, I find it really irritating when people fail to respect the message of headphones (don't talk to me) and insist that I remove them so they can ask me for a cigarette (no) or a donation (sorry, one step away from the breadline myself).</p> +<h3>Space is the Place</h3> +<p>At the same time I go out a lot with my girlfriend or with a group of friends and never wear headphones. As a writer overheard conversation and snippets of other lives caught accidentally or through purposeful audio voyeurism are very important to me, invaluable even. This is the sort of accidental material that can put you where you ought to be—where you least expected. But at the same time I never knew I would feel quite like <strong>that</strong> as the winter afternoon glare crystallized the spires at the top of the Sixth Avenue Library to the sound of Grant Lee Buffalo's lament of New Orleans. I got the same juxtaposition of the familiar and foreign that I might glean from an unexpected snippet of the overheard. Both have their place (and use from my point of view).</p> +<p>I like to be able to choose whether or not to involve myself in the public space. But the elective to remove oneself from the public is troubling for our iPod critics.</p><blockquote>Walk through any airport in the United States these days and you will see person after person gliding through the social ether as if on autopilot. <br/><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote><blockquote>And as a result, our concept of social space will change. Imagine the future: a crowded urban street, filled not with people interacting with one another, but with atomized individuals cocooned in their personalized sound-bubbles, moving from one retail opportunity to another. The only sounds are the shuffling of feet and the rock muzak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains.<br/><cite>-John Naughten</cite></blockquote> +<p>Why is it astonishing that a generation which finds itself bombarded with advertising and the crass commercial commodification of public space at every turn would want an isolationist bubble? To me that seems a perfectly logical extension of the culture we have created. Meet me down at the Blockbuster Pavilion where we can catch the Verizon Wireless Presents show tonight and maybe afterward we can head to the Trojan Condom presents DJ Circuit City spinning at Club Walmart. Come on down, we'll have a grand time ringing in the new Year of the Depend Undergarment. <br/></p> +<p>What Mr. Naughten seems to ignore is the second to last sentence of his own nightmare, one that has nothing to do with headphones and everything to do with cultural changes that precede the iPod—"moving from one retail opportunity to another." This is fast becoming the sum total of our public spaces—retail opportunities.</p> +<p>Rather than contributing to this sort of corporate co-opting of public spaces, the iPod allows us an escape from the so-called public space. Increasingly that space is not public at all, it's branded private space that views the public as little more than advertising targets. How long before we have advertisements beamed up into the night sky?</p> +<p>Headphones are an attempt to avoid the homogenization of the "rock musak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains." Is it not the desire to escape the vulgar commercialism of our advert culture that drives us to block out it's monotony? To seek something meaningful in one of the most intimately and meaningful realms—music. To interject back the danger that once lurked outside the burlesque theaters and dance halls that seem to have closed just after Henry and June snuck out the back door.</p> +<h3>The New (Old) Danger</h3> +<p>The problem with the iPod for these authors seems to lie in the shutting off of the public space in favor of the personal. As I've already pointed out we the public are losing our collective spaces (have lost?) to far more than the iPod. But, setting aside larger cultural issues like promiscuous advertising, what of the iPod's privatization of public space as these authors claim?</p> +<p>Neither author gives any kind of reason as to why this is bad. They both get abstract and use the iPod as jumping off point for larger concerns. Starting with Mr Sullivan who sees in the iPod the loss of, call it respect for music.</p><blockquote>Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall. It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album.<br/><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote> +<p>I don't know about you, but the music I listen to was never welcome in the living room I grew up in. For some reason, my parents failed to relate to or appreciate <strong>License to Ill</strong> or <strong>Nothing's Shocking</strong>. Mr. Sullivan seems to think 'once upon a time' music was confined to the space where we expect it and now, good god, now it's everywhere and no one is sharing or bonding over it. I for one would much rather everyone carried around a pair of speakers with their iPod and blasted them at 11 so music became a truly public space. But apparently I am alone in this desire and there are noise ordinances against this sort of thing. (If this notion intrigues you check out some of the Flaming Lips' experiments with hundreds of simultaneous playbacks to form textures of sound).</p> +<p>Typical of a web essays, Sullivan is really just aping statements made a generation earlier in response to the iPod's predecessor, the Walkman. Far more reasoned and persuasive (and lengthy) is Christine Rosen's piece in <strong><a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/" title="A journal of Society and Technology">The New Atlantis</a></strong>. As Rosen relates in her essay:</p><blockquote>Music columnist Norman Lebrecht argued, "No invention in my lifetime has so changed an art and cheapened it as the Sony Walkman." By removing music from its context—in the performance hall or the private home—and making it portable, the Walkman made music banal. "It becomes a utility, undeserving of more attention than drinking water from a tap." <br/><cite>-Christine Rosen</cite></blockquote> +<p>I suppose that's one way to look at it. If you swapped "iPod" and "Sony Walkman" for "radio" I might somewhat agree with both statements. But as it is, recorded music has never had a context. It has always existed in the abstract space of our heads more than any temporal location. We are not in the room as it as the music is played we get only an abstracted representation of the music. Recorded music has never been containable, just crank your speakers and enlighten the neighbors. </p> +<p>The notion that music (especially recorded music) has a natural space where it belongs is counter to waht it is—music located outside any temporal location. And if you are worried about the narrowing of public space, locking music up in the private space is not an argument against iPods. It's a safe way to avoid the issue, but it undercuts the other arguement, that personal space is invading public space. Let me get this straight. Headphones are narrowing our public cultural space, but music (in said headphones) ought to remain private space? So the problem then is not the music, but the space we occupy while we listen to it? </p> +<p>I for one don't think music should be consigned to where we feel safe with it. Music is not safe. It should not be relegated to the living room or the concert hall, it should be played in the streets at top volume until the sky really does shudder and crumble. But that option has already been taken away by noise ordinances. So we have gone internal, put the speaker directly in our ear.</p> +<p>If anything changes with headphones it's the attention devoted to the music. Music coming from speakers has a directional vector. It approaches you from some point and is blatantly external to the listener. Put on a decent pair of headphones and the music becomes omnidirectional and you are enveloped in it. Close your eyes and you can swim through it and pick out tiny bits of sound that you would never notice coming from an external speaker. For the listener on headphones the experience is both more intimate and more consuming than music from a living room stereo or even a concert hall stage.</p> +<p>As for the lose of public culture to personal headphone cocoon, is not the mere recognition of white earbuds itself a form of cultural interaction? Even if it be only a nod and smile, is this not even closer to the truth of life, the mystery unfathomed but acknowledged? I know how you feel the nod says and it is good speaketh the smile. </p> +<h3>Its All Around You</h3> +<p>Neither Sullivan nor Naughton is content with the iPod as harbinger of doom, the end of social space, the isolationist future of automatons. Yawn. No, it does not stop there, this is the slippery slope down which we all slide into communism and cannibalism and dem russians and dem russians and dem earbuds and dem earbuds and dem dem, damnit the sky is falling why don't you see it? Rosen at least has a more reasoned argument that might actually be on to something.</p> +<p>She believes that the personalization of media is leading to a narrowing of experience. That's a legitimate fear, one that I don't agree with, but legitimate nonetheless. The other two articles in question just use the iPod as evidence of a larger crumbling that is, rather suspiciously, never clearly delineated.</p> +<p>Mr. Naughton in the Guardian article sounds a bit like Wordsworth calling us all back to the countryside. he even goes so far as to stake his critique partly on recently uncovered Edwardian era documentary films. These movies he claims reveal a society where,</p><blockquote>Men raise their hats to women; people stop to talk; groups congregate at junctions and street corners. The clear implication is that, for Edwardians, being out in public meant being on display and being sociable. It meant paying attention to what was going on around you, and acknowledging the existence of others.</blockquote> +<p>Beware all calls for a return to past glories. Assuming for a moment that people act naturally in front of a camera and that they weren't in fact congregating to discuss the weirdos at the end of street pointing lens at everyone, so the Edwardians were more self-consciously aware when out in public. Does that make them role models of public behavior? They were also more elitist, racist, and classist as well; should we emulate those behaviors too while we're out for a Sunday stroll?</p> +<p>In researching this little piece I found several nice rebuttals to Sullivan's piece. The best of which is by a man named Jerry Stratton in an essay entitled <strong><a href="http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=92" title="society never ends, it just fades away">society never ends, it just fades away</a></strong>. Stratton rightly cuts past the iPod intro of Sullivan's article and addresses what Sullivan really wants to talk about.</p><blockquote>His most worthwhile observation was that iPod users sometimes accidentally break out into out-of-tune singing to whatever is on their pod. But he seems to think that it's bad, whereas I stand with Joni Mitchell that the more out-of-tune voices, the better. And that's the real point of Andrew's editorial. The proliferation of multiple viewpoints runs the risk of isolating individuals so that they hear only the viewpoints that they want to hear. We as individuals need more out-of-tune voices. <br/><cite>-Jerry Stratton</cite></blockquote> +<p>This is also Rosen's concern in both of her essays, that our means of consuming information (for her the mirro, remote control, TiVo, and iPod) are narrowing our exposure to new ideas. By meticulously selecting content that we already know we like we are even less likely to discover the new stuff. Couple this with "smart" search algorithms that pick recommendations based on what we already like and our chances of encountering the shocking, the challenging or the potentially enlightening approach nil according to Rosen. Without these sorts of jarring, chance encounters with the unknown we cease to think outside ourselves. This may well be true, but it's always been true. Conservative viewers are more likely to tune into Fox news because it fits their pre-existing worldview. Liberals read the the New York Times and watch Woody Allen movies. This is nothing new. It has always taken conscious effort to find viewpoints outside your own reality tunnel of beliefs.</p> +<p>I fail to see anyway in which the iPod contributes to this trend. In fact it may well go against it if only by virtue of its ubiquity. On college campuses for instance many students swap headphones to see what the other is listening to. The iPod's ease of use and the easy availability of mp3s make exploring new music simple—hear a band on someone's headphones, go home and fire up a torrent search, grab the album, slap it on your iPod and be enlightened. Illegal? Certainly. Potentially life enriching? Certainly.</p> +<h3>No Alarms and No Surprises</h3> +<p>When you come down to it, how is the iPod any different from other music devices that use headphones? It's not. It's just the latest harbinger on the chopping block if we mash our metaphors for a moment.</p> +<p>At the same time, the targeted nature of new modes of consumption do raise some issues for thought. Are narrowly targeted ads (i.e. users who bought x also bought y...) constricting our exposure to the unfamiliar? Maybe, but as illustrated earlier there has always been a tendency to seek the familiar, the safe, the comfortable, the expected. </p> +<p>But even that doesn't always happen. The gravity of this potential danger, if we may call it that, that comes from targeted advertising depends greatly on the realm in which occurs. If we are talking about the realm of politics then this kind of marsupial burrowing is decidedly bad. If you bought Bill O'Reilly's book (presumably he has one) and the suggested "you might like..." stuff is more of the same, then yes your worldview remains narrow. But in the realm of art where the political statement is often less overt, less likely to be partisan, more likely to be complicated and often not there at all, then the suggestion might be welcome and can lead one far from the sources that suggested it.</p> +<p>For example let's say you really like Jay-Z and so when the new album comes out you pre-order it on Amazon.com. The "you might like..." screen claims that people who like Jay-Z have also purchased Outkast. So you figure, what the hell I'll pick up this Outkast album. Turns out that those who purchased Outkast also bought both Stevie Wonder and Sun Ra. Hey, why not? You buy them too. If you're a fan of Jay-Z but have never ventured into Sun Ra territory, well, you're about to blow your mind.</p> +<p>In my own experience, I find that I tend to read books that mention other books. So I read the other books and maybe they mention some other books and on it goes. I don't see a significant difference between that and the Amazon suggestions. Or potentially TiVo's suggestions or any other targeted marketing. In the realm of the arts nothing is so much the same that it cannot lead to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation" title="Theory of Six Degrees of Separation">something ever more different</a>.</p> +<p>It seems that to a certain extent the authors in question here are specifically concerned with the potential narrowing of political capital, which is a concern given that democracy depend on the existence of a multitude of voices. Are we losing that? Well that's a larger question and one that does not necessarily relate to remote controls, TiVo or the iPod.</p> +<h3>You Were Wrong When You Said Everything's Gonna Be All Right</h3> +<p>Though it is odd I would say such a thing, it almost seems to me that all three of these articles smack of a bit of leftist sentimentality. After all isn't it the video-game-addicted, pill-popping future parents of America that are somehow responsible for this political mess we find ourselves in? Isn't their apathy the very thing that has gotten us eight years of GWB and friends? If they just took the headphones out of their ears, put down the remote, turned off the television and read a couple of books none of this would have happened right? Nice dream, nice dream... </p> +<p>In fact this notion of iPod=evil represents the same simplistic thinking that has landed us here in Dubya land in the first place. If easy prescriptions worked to solve our problems we wouldn't have the reactionary mess we have. And I don't mean that in partisan terms. I think we can all agree that America is somewhat of a mess right now. I don't think one political party or the other is as fault. We are all culpable. And we are all looking for solutions. </p> +<p>I don't believe in the techno-utopist future of completely wired life and peace through blogging, but I also don't believe in the techno-dystopist future where we all unplug and discover our heartfelt love and meet in central park for an earbud-free hug-a-thon. Reality is much more complex and to avoid it authors like Sullivan resort to cheap, easy sentimentality.</p><blockquote>but what are we missing? That hilarious shard of an overheard conversation that stays with you all day; the child whose chatter on the pavement takes you back to your early memories; birdsong; weather; accents; the laughter of others.<br/><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote> +<p>A lovely piece of sentimentality, it almost makes me want to take out these headphones and listen to the silence of the house. But as Wallace Stevens' said "sentimentality is a failure of feeling." Sentimentality is false feeling, pseudo-feeling and affectation. And Mr. Sullivan's quote above is the most embarrassing episode of mindless sentimentality I can think of right now. It fails to account for all kinds of complexity and depth ever-present in our lives.</p> +<p>Sentimentality is the easy answer: the birds, the laughter, the children (followed shortly by the the bullshit, the bullshit, the vomit, the vomit). Real feeling involves complexity, it rejects the simple. To realize that there is more to it than unplugging, more to it than any technology, more to it than a sound bite you can pass off as heartfelt—that is actually the very essence of the problem: the failure to engage your surroundings as anything other than a simplistic snapshot of what you wanted to see. Does Sullivan acknowledge the ugliness? Never. He skips right over it and tells you what you wanted to hear. Sullivan's sentimentality does the very thing he accuses the iPod of doing—he narrows your reality. Never for a second does Sullivan acknowledge that the birds might be endangered, headed for extinction, that the weather might be worsening with global warming, that the laughter of others might well be cynical and cheap or that the children are living below the poverty line, abused etc, etc. This the same sort of narcissistic thinking (I am observing, where the emphasis on I and observe is equal) that gave us romanticism, is it any wonder that these authors look too fondly at the Edwardians? Everything looks good from the lazy middle class intellectual point of view. Edit out the things you don't like and you too can narrow your reality to the point of irrelevancy.</p> +<p>Please do not mistake me for a cynic though. I use this example merely to acknowledge that there are things below the surface that we can happily ignore if we are constructing the world to our own desires rather than recognizing the complexity that is inherent in it. </p> +<h3>...And I Feel Fine</h3> +<p>Perhaps the problem with the iPod is so ephemeral it's slipping through our fingers. Perhaps there is no problem with the iPod. No harm in headphones. No danger to run from save the desire to have a new danger to run from, a new evil to fight because the real one is just too big to tackle, a new threat to declare war on because the old one just bores us to death, a new something to rage against because the dying of the light seems inevitable and unvanquishable. Perhaps the new danger, same as the old, is our own failure, our own sentimentality that show us the world not as it is but as we wish to see it.</p> +<p>At the same time I encourage everyone to, as Robert Anton Wilson often suggested, change reality tunnels. Point your RSS reader to sites with viewpoints you don't share, something outside your belief system, something you might even consider crazy. Listen to what these viewpoints are saying and think critically about why you do or don't agree with them. There has never (not even yesterday) been a day in the history of humankind when you have had so much information at your finger tips. Take advantage of that and see where it leads you—hopefully where you least expected.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/03/one-nation-under-groove.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/03/one-nation-under-groove.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1548ef2 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/03/one-nation-under-groove.html @@ -0,0 +1,326 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>One Nation Under A Groove - Luxagraf, Writing</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 sky is falling! The iPod! It's ruining our culture! 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The man outside the liquor store seems unconcerned. The sky seems to fall a good bit. Perhaps the man didn’t notice. Perhaps the sky has fallen too many times now. Perhaps it’s been falling for quite some time and we’re just now noticing it. Perhaps its always falling. Perhaps it never has and never will fall. Perhaps we just really like to say the sky is falling. </p> +<p>This latest chunk of sky burling down at us is a brilliant little piece of circuitry known as the iPod. Andrew Sullivan, writing for <strong><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/" title="The London Times">The London Times</a></strong> claims “<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1501-1491500-1501,00.html" title="Comment: Andrew Sullivan: Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld">society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld</a>.” A catchy headline no doubt, but it’s basis in reality is questionable. Echoing this trend is John Naughton’s recent article for <strong>The Guardian</strong>, “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1396485,00.html" title="A generation lost in its personal space">a generation lost in its personal space</a>.” Joining these authors is Christine Rosen who has managed to parlay this topic into two separate articles, <strong><a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-egocasting" title="The Age of Egocasting">The Age of Egocasting</a></strong> and <strong><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/magazine/20WWLN.html?ex=1268974800&en=fca8190266cc6b78&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt" title="Rosen's NYTimes Magazine article">Bad Connections</a></strong>. Call it the iPod backlash.</p> +<p>The underlying implication of all these articles is that the iPod (and the cellphone and TiVo and the remote control and…) narrow our perspectives and, in case of the first two, make us oblivious to and in public spaces. <blockquote>the proportion of young people who never venture out in public without first putting on headphones is astonishing <br /><cite>-John Naughten</cite></blockquote><blockquote>Even without the white wires you can tell who they are. They walk down the street in their own mp3 cocoon, bumping into others, deaf to small social cues, shutting out anyone not in their bubble. <br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote></p> +<p>I have owned an iPod since 2001 and I really enjoy my bubble. I was in a band a few years back and we were recording what would be our only production, a five song ep. For those that have never been in a recording studio and have this mistaken idea that it’s all fun and games… well, it’s not. Recording music is pretty boring actually. One evening the drummer and I were smoking cigarettes outside our studio and we got to talking about walkmans and the newfangled mp3 players that were just hitting the market. Nice we agreed, but what would be really cool I said, what I really want, is a way to put my entire collection of music in a device the size of a deck of cards. True story, 1995 or so. Buena Park California, sunset iridescent orange. High clouds lending a bit of purple. Swig of beer. Drag of cigarette. Yeah, that would be brilliant wouldn’t it?</p> +<p>And it was. The first few were too small, 5 gigs and then 10, if I recall correctly from a billboard in Redondo Beach stuck in traffic and thinking, holy shit, they’re gonna do it. And they did. When the 20 gig version arrived it seemed like plenty of space so I bought one. Unfortunately when I got done ripping all my cds it was almost full. Now four years later I have almost 35 gigs worth of mp3s and I’m needing a new iPod (holding out for the 80 gig model, which again seems like plenty…).</p> +<p>I am far too much an audiophile however to settle for the cult of white ear buds and in fact have never used apple’s provided headphones (too much time spent in the recording studio to trust my music to cheap speakers). No I am actually worse in Mr Sullivan’s view, I use noise canceling earbuds from Sennheiser. Even if I turn off my iPod I am still deaf to your social cues Mr. Sullivan. I will even confess that sometimes, when my iPod runs out of batteries, I leave the headphones in just to have an excuse to ignore social interaction. In fact, I find it really irritating when people fail to respect the message of headphones (don’t talk to me) and insist that I remove them so they can ask me for a cigarette (no) or a donation (sorry, one step away from the breadline myself).</p> +<h3>Space is the Place</h3> + +<p>At the same time I go out a lot with my girlfriend or with a group of friends and never wear headphones. As a writer overheard conversation and snippets of other lives caught accidentally or through purposeful audio voyeurism are very important to me, invaluable even. This is the sort of accidental material that can put you where you ought to be—where you least expected. But at the same time I never knew I would feel quite like <strong>that</strong> as the winter afternoon glare crystallized the spires at the top of the Sixth Avenue Library to the sound of Grant Lee Buffalo’s lament of New Orleans. I got the same juxtaposition of the familiar and foreign that I might glean from an unexpected snippet of the overheard. Both have their place (and use from my point of view).</p> +<p>I like to be able to choose whether or not to involve myself in the public space. But the elective to remove oneself from the public is troubling for our iPod critics.<blockquote>Walk through any airport in the United States these days and you will see person after person gliding through the social ether as if on autopilot. <br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote><blockquote>And as a result, our concept of social space will change. Imagine the future: a crowded urban street, filled not with people interacting with one another, but with atomized individuals cocooned in their personalized sound-bubbles, moving from one retail opportunity to another. The only sounds are the shuffling of feet and the rock muzak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains.<br /><cite>-John Naughten</cite></blockquote></p> +<p>Why is it astonishing that a generation which finds itself bombarded with advertising and the crass commercial commodification of public space at every turn would want an isolationist bubble? To me that seems a perfectly logical extension of the culture we have created. Meet me down at the Blockbuster Pavilion where we can catch the Verizon Wireless Presents show tonight and maybe afterward we can head to the Trojan Condom presents DJ Circuit City spinning at Club Walmart. Come on down, we’ll have a grand time ringing in the new Year of the Depend Undergarment. <br /></p> +<p>What Mr. Naughten seems to ignore is the second to last sentence of his own nightmare, one that has nothing to do with headphones and everything to do with cultural changes that precede the iPod—"moving from one retail opportunity to another." This is fast becoming the sum total of our public spaces—retail opportunities.</p> +<p>Rather than contributing to this sort of corporate co-opting of public spaces, the iPod allows us an escape from the so-called public space. Increasingly that space is not public at all, it’s branded private space that views the public as little more than advertising targets. How long before we have advertisements beamed up into the night sky?</p> +<p>Headphones are an attempt to avoid the homogenization of the "rock musak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains." Is it not the desire to escape the vulgar commercialism of our advert culture that drives us to block out it’s monotony? To seek something meaningful in one of the most intimately and meaningful realms—music. To interject back the danger that once lurked outside the burlesque theaters and dance halls that seem to have closed just after Henry and June sneaked out the back door.</p> +<h3>The New (Old) Danger</h3> + +<p>The problem with the iPod for these authors seems to lie in the shutting off of the public space in favor of the personal. As I’ve already pointed out we the public are losing our collective spaces (have lost?) to far more than the iPod. But, setting aside larger cultural issues like promiscuous advertising, what of the iPod’s privatization of public space as these authors claim?</p> +<p>Neither author gives any kind of reason as to why this is bad. They both get abstract and use the iPod as jumping off point for larger concerns. Starting with Mr Sullivan who sees in the iPod the loss of, call it respect for music.<blockquote>Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall. It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album.<br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote></p> +<p>I don’t know about you, but the music I listen to was never welcome in the living room I grew up in. For some reason, my parents failed to relate to or appreciate <strong>License to Ill</strong> or <strong>Nothing’s Shocking</strong>. Mr. Sullivan seems to think ‘once upon a time’ music was confined to the space where we expect it and now, good god, now it’s everywhere and no one is sharing or bonding over it. I for one would much rather everyone carried around a pair of speakers with their iPod and blasted them at 11 so music became a truly public space. But apparently I am alone in this desire and there are noise ordinances against this sort of thing. (If this notion intrigues you check out some of the Flaming Lips’ experiments with hundreds of simultaneous playbacks to form textures of sound).</p> +<p>Typical of a web essays, Sullivan is really just aping statements made a generation earlier in response to the iPod’s predecessor, the Walkman. Far more reasoned and persuasive (and lengthy) is Christine Rosen’s piece in <strong><a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/" title="A journal of Society and Technology">The New Atlantis</a></strong>. As Rosen relates in her essay:<blockquote>Music columnist Norman Lebrecht argued, "No invention in my lifetime has so changed an art and cheapened it as the Sony Walkman." By removing music from its context—in the performance hall or the private home—and making it portable, the Walkman made music banal. "It becomes a utility, undeserving of more attention than drinking water from a tap." <br /><cite>-Christine Rosen</cite></blockquote></p> +<p>I suppose that’s one way to look at it. If you swapped "iPod" and "Sony Walkman" for "radio" I might somewhat agree with both statements. But as it is, recorded music has never had a context. It has always existed in the abstract space of our heads more than any temporal location. We are not in the room as it as the music is played we get only an abstracted representation of the music. Recorded music has never been containable, just crank your speakers and enlighten the neighbors. </p> +<p>The notion that music (especially recorded music) has a natural space where it belongs is counter to what it is—music located outside any temporal location. And if you are worried about the narrowing of public space, locking music up in the private space is not an argument against iPods. It’s a safe way to avoid the issue, but it undercuts the other argument, that personal space is invading public space. Let me get this straight. Headphones are narrowing our public cultural space, but music (in said headphones) ought to remain private space? So the problem then is not the music, but the space we occupy while we listen to it? </p> +<p>I for one don’t think music should be consigned to where we feel safe with it. Music is not safe. It should not be relegated to the living room or the concert hall, it should be played in the streets at top volume until the sky really does shudder and crumble. But that option has already been taken away by noise ordinances. So we have gone internal, put the speaker directly in our ear.</p> +<p>If anything changes with headphones it’s the attention devoted to the music. Music coming from speakers has a directional vector. It approaches you from some point and is blatantly external to the listener. Put on a decent pair of headphones and the music becomes omnidirectional and you are enveloped in it. Close your eyes and you can swim through it and pick out tiny bits of sound that you would never notice coming from an external speaker. For the listener on headphones the experience is both more intimate and more consuming than music from a living room stereo or even a concert hall stage.</p> +<p>As for the lose of public culture to personal headphone cocoon, is not the mere recognition of white earbuds itself a form of cultural interaction? Even if it be only a nod and smile, is this not even closer to the truth of life, the mystery unfathomed but acknowledged? I know how you feel the nod says and it is good speaketh the smile. </p> +<h3>Its All Around You</h3> + +<p>Neither Sullivan nor Naughton is content with the iPod as harbinger of doom, the end of social space, the isolationist future of automatons. Yawn. No, it does not stop there, this is the slippery slope down which we all slide into communism and cannibalism and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49305/america-56d22b41f119f">them russians and them russians</a> and them earbuds and them earbuds and them them, damnit the sky is falling why don’t you see it? Rosen at least has a more reasoned argument that might actually be on to something.</p> +<p>She believes that the personalization of media is leading to a narrowing of experience. That’s a legitimate fear, one that I don’t agree with, but legitimate nonetheless. The other two articles in question just use the iPod as evidence of a larger crumbling that is, rather suspiciously, never clearly delineated.</p> +<p>Mr. Naughton in the Guardian article sounds a bit like Wordsworth calling us all back to the countryside. he even goes so far as to stake his critique partly on recently uncovered Edwardian era documentary films. These movies he claims reveal a society where,<blockquote>Men raise their hats to women; people stop to talk; groups congregate at junctions and street corners. The clear implication is that, for Edwardians, being out in public meant being on display and being sociable. It meant paying attention to what was going on around you, and acknowledging the existence of others.</blockquote></p> +<p>Beware all calls for a return to past glories. Assuming for a moment that people act naturally in front of a camera and that they weren’t in fact congregating to discuss the weirdos at the end of street pointing lens at everyone, so the Edwardians were more self-consciously aware when out in public. Does that make them role models of public behavior? They were also more elitist, racist, and classist as well; should we emulate those behaviors too while we’re out for a Sunday stroll?</p> +<p>In researching this little piece I found several nice rebuttals to Sullivan’s piece. The best of which is by a man named Jerry Stratton in an essay entitled <strong><a href="http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=92" title="society never ends, it just fades away">society never ends, it just fades away</a></strong>. Stratton rightly cuts past the iPod intro of Sullivan’s article and addresses what Sullivan really wants to talk about.<blockquote>His most worthwhile observation was that iPod users sometimes accidentally break out into out-of-tune singing to whatever is on their pod. But he seems to think that it’s bad, whereas I stand with Joni Mitchell that the more out-of-tune voices, the better. And that’s the real point of Andrew’s editorial. The proliferation of multiple viewpoints runs the risk of isolating individuals so that they hear only the viewpoints that they want to hear. We as individuals need more out-of-tune voices. <br /><cite>-Jerry Stratton</cite></blockquote></p> +<p>This is also Rosen’s concern in both of her essays, that our means of consuming information (for her the remote control, TiVo, and iPod) are narrowing our exposure to new ideas. By meticulously selecting content that we already know we like we are even less likely to discover the new stuff. Couple this with "smart" search algorithms that pick recommendations based on what we already like and our chances of encountering the shocking, the challenging or the potentially enlightening approach nil according to Rosen. Without these sorts of jarring, chance encounters with the unknown we cease to think outside ourselves. This may well be true, but it’s always been true. Conservative viewers are more likely to tune into Fox news because it fits their pre-existing worldview. Liberals read the the New York Times and watch Woody Allen movies. This is nothing new. It has always taken conscious effort to find viewpoints outside your own reality tunnel of beliefs.</p> +<p>I fail to see anyway in which the iPod contributes to this trend. In fact it may well go against it if only by virtue of its ubiquity. On college campuses for instance many students swap headphones to see what the other is listening to. The iPod’s ease of use and the easy availability of mp3s make exploring new music simple—hear a band on someone’s headphones, go home and fire up a torrent search, grab the album, slap it on your iPod and be enlightened. Illegal? Certainly. Potentially life enriching? Certainly.</p> +<h3>No Alarms and No Surprises</h3> + +<p>When you come down to it, how is the iPod any different from other music devices that use headphones? It’s not. It’s just the latest harbinger on the chopping block if we mash our metaphors for a moment.</p> +<p>At the same time, the targeted nature of new modes of consumption do raise some issues for thought. Are narrowly targeted ads (i.e. users who bought x also bought y…) constricting our exposure to the unfamiliar? Maybe, but as illustrated earlier there has always been a tendency to seek the familiar, the safe, the comfortable, the expected. </p> +<p>But even that doesn’t always happen. The gravity of this potential danger, if we may call it that, that comes from targeted advertising depends greatly on the realm in which occurs. If we are talking about the realm of politics then this kind of marsupial burrowing is decidedly bad. If you bought Bill O’Reilly’s book (presumably he has one) and the suggested "you might like…" stuff is more of the same, then yes your worldview remains narrow. But in the realm of art where the political statement is often less overt, less likely to be partisan, more likely to be complicated and often not there at all, then the suggestion might be welcome and can lead one far from the sources that suggested it.</p> +<p>For example let’s say you really like Jay-Z and so when the new album comes out you pre-order it on Amazon.com. The "you might like…" screen claims that people who like Jay-Z have also purchased Outkast. So you figure, what the hell I’ll pick up this Outkast album. Turns out that those who purchased Outkast also bought both Stevie Wonder and Sun Ra. Hey, why not? You buy them too. If you’re a fan of Jay-Z but have never ventured into Sun Ra territory, well, you’re about to blow your mind.</p> +<p>In my own experience, I find that I tend to read books that mention other books. So I read the other books and maybe they mention some other books and on it goes. I don’t see a significant difference between that and the Amazon suggestions. Or potentially TiVo’s suggestions or any other targeted marketing. In the realm of the arts nothing is so much the same that it cannot lead to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation" title="Theory of Six Degrees of Separation">something ever more different</a>.</p> +<p>It seems that to a certain extent the authors in question here are specifically concerned with the potential narrowing of political capital, which is a concern given that democracy depend on the existence of a multitude of voices. Are we losing that? Well that’s a larger question and one that does not necessarily relate to remote controls, TiVo or the iPod.</p> +<h3>You Were Wrong When You Said Everything’s Gonna Be All Right</h3> + +<p>Though it is odd I would say such a thing, it almost seems to me that all three of these articles smack of a bit of leftist sentimentality. After all isn’t it the video-game-addicted, pill-popping future parents of America that are somehow responsible for this political mess we find ourselves in? Isn’t their apathy the very thing that has gotten us eight years of GWB and friends? If they just took the headphones out of their ears, put down the remote, turned off the television and read a couple of books none of this would have happened right? Nice dream, nice dream… </p> +<p>In fact this notion of iPod=evil represents the same simplistic thinking that has landed us here in Dubya land in the first place. If easy prescriptions worked to solve our problems we wouldn’t have the reactionary mess we have. And I don’t mean that in partisan terms. I think we can all agree that America is somewhat of a mess right now. I don’t think one political party or the other is as fault. We are all culpable. And we are all looking for solutions. </p> +<p>I don’t believe in the techno-utopist future of completely wired life and peace through blogging, but I also don’t believe in the techno-dystopist future where we all unplug and discover our heartfelt love and meet in central park for an earbud-free hug-a-thon. Reality is much more complex and to avoid it authors like Sullivan resort to cheap, easy sentimentality.<blockquote>but what are we missing? That hilarious shard of an overheard conversation that stays with you all day; the child whose chatter on the pavement takes you back to your early memories; birdsong; weather; accents; the laughter of others.<br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote></p> +<p>A lovely piece of sentimentality, it almost makes me want to take out these headphones and listen to the silence of the house. But as Wallace Stevens’ said "sentimentality is a failure of feeling." Sentimentality is false feeling, pseudo-feeling and affectation. And Mr. Sullivan’s quote above is the most embarrassing episode of mindless sentimentality I can think of right now. It fails to account for all kinds of complexity and depth ever-present in our lives.</p> +<p>Sentimentality is the easy answer: the birds, the laughter, the children (followed shortly by the the bullshit, the bullshit, the vomit, the vomit). Real feeling involves complexity, it rejects the simple. To realize that there is more to it than unplugging, more to it than any technology, more to it than a sound bite you can pass off as heartfelt—that is actually the very essence of the problem: the failure to engage your surroundings as anything other than a simplistic snapshot of what you wanted to see. Does Sullivan acknowledge the ugliness? Never. He skips right over it and tells you what you wanted to hear. Sullivan’s sentimentality does the very thing he accuses the iPod of doing—he narrows your reality. Never for a second does Sullivan acknowledge that the birds might be endangered, headed for extinction, that the weather might be worsening with global warming, that the laughter of others might well be cynical and cheap or that the children are living below the poverty line, abused etc, etc. This the same sort of narcissistic thinking (I am observing, where the emphasis on I and observe is equal) that gave us romanticism, is it any wonder that these authors look too fondly at the Edwardians? Everything looks good from the lazy middle class intellectual point of view. Edit out the things you don’t like and you too can narrow your reality to the point of irrelevancy.</p> +<p>Please do not mistake me for a cynic though. I use this example merely to acknowledge that there are things below the surface that we can happily ignore if we are constructing the world to our own desires rather than recognizing the complexity that is inherent in it. </p> +<h3>…And I Feel Fine</h3> + +<p>Perhaps the problem with the iPod is so ephemeral it’s slipping through our fingers. Perhaps there is no problem with the iPod. No harm in headphones. No danger to run from save the desire to have a new danger to run from, a new evil to fight because the real one is just too big to tackle, a new threat to declare war on because the old one just bores us to death, a new something to rage against because the dying of the light seems inevitable and unvanquishable. Perhaps the new danger, same as the old, is our own failure, our own sentimentality that show us the world not as it is but as we wish to see it.</p> +<p>At the same time I encourage everyone to, as Robert Anton Wilson often suggested, change reality tunnels. Point your RSS reader to sites with viewpoints you don’t share, something outside your belief system, something you might even consider crazy. Listen to what these viewpoints are saying and think critically about why you do or don’t agree with them. There has never (not even yesterday) been a day in the history of humankind when you have had so much information at your finger tips. Take advantage of that and see where it leads you—hopefully where you least expected.</p> + </div> + <div class="entry-footer"> + + </div> + </article> + + + <nav id="page-navigation"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson" rel="prev" title=" Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson">Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text" rel="next" title=" New Adventures in HiFi Text">New Adventures in HiFi Text</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + + + </main> + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper"> +<p class="comment--form--header">Your thoughts? 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+
+The sky is falling again. The man outside the liquor store seems unconcerned. The sky seems to fall a good bit. Perhaps the man didn't notice. Perhaps the sky has fallen too many times now. Perhaps it's been falling for quite some time and we're just now noticing it. Perhaps its always falling. Perhaps it never has and never will fall. Perhaps we just really like to say the sky is falling.
+
+This latest chunk of sky burling down at us is a brilliant little piece of circuitry known as the iPod. Andrew Sullivan, writing for **<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/" title="The London Times">The London Times</a>** claims "<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1501-1491500-1501,00.html" title="Comment: Andrew Sullivan: Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld">society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld</a>." A catchy headline no doubt, but it's basis in reality is questionable. Echoing this trend is John Naughton's recent article for **The Guardian**, "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1396485,00.html" title="A generation lost in its personal space">a generation lost in its personal space</a>." Joining these authors is Christine Rosen who has managed to parlay this topic into two separate articles, **<a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-egocasting" title="The Age of Egocasting">The Age of Egocasting</a>** and **<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/magazine/20WWLN.html?ex=1268974800&en=fca8190266cc6b78&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt" title="Rosen's NYTimes Magazine article">Bad Connections</a>**. Call it the iPod backlash.
+
+The underlying implication of all these articles is that the iPod (and the cellphone and TiVo and the remote control and...) narrow our perspectives and, in case of the first two, make us oblivious to and in public spaces. <blockquote>the proportion of young people who never venture out in public without first putting on headphones is astonishing <br /><cite>-John Naughten</cite></blockquote><blockquote>Even without the white wires you can tell who they are. They walk down the street in their own mp3 cocoon, bumping into others, deaf to small social cues, shutting out anyone not in their bubble. <br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote>
+
+I have owned an iPod since 2001 and I really enjoy my bubble. I was in a band a few years back and we were recording what would be our only production, a five song ep. For those that have never been in a recording studio and have this mistaken idea that it's all fun and games... well, it's not. Recording music is pretty boring actually. One evening the drummer and I were smoking cigarettes outside our studio and we got to talking about walkmans and the newfangled mp3 players that were just hitting the market. Nice we agreed, but what would be really cool I said, what I really want, is a way to put my entire collection of music in a device the size of a deck of cards. True story, 1995 or so. Buena Park California, sunset iridescent orange. High clouds lending a bit of purple. Swig of beer. Drag of cigarette. Yeah, that would be brilliant wouldn't it?
+
+And it was. The first few were too small, 5 gigs and then 10, if I recall correctly from a billboard in Redondo Beach stuck in traffic and thinking, holy shit, they're gonna do it. And they did. When the 20 gig version arrived it seemed like plenty of space so I bought one. Unfortunately when I got done ripping all my cds it was almost full. Now four years later I have almost 35 gigs worth of mp3s and I'm needing a new iPod (holding out for the 80 gig model, which again seems like plenty...).
+
+I am far too much an audiophile however to settle for the cult of white ear buds and in fact have never used apple's provided headphones (too much time spent in the recording studio to trust my music to cheap speakers). No I am actually worse in Mr Sullivan's view, I use noise canceling earbuds from Sennheiser. Even if I turn off my iPod I am still deaf to your social cues Mr. Sullivan. I will even confess that sometimes, when my iPod runs out of batteries, I leave the headphones in just to have an excuse to ignore social interaction. In fact, I find it really irritating when people fail to respect the message of headphones (don't talk to me) and insist that I remove them so they can ask me for a cigarette (no) or a donation (sorry, one step away from the breadline myself).
+
+<h3>Space is the Place</h3>
+
+At the same time I go out a lot with my girlfriend or with a group of friends and never wear headphones. As a writer overheard conversation and snippets of other lives caught accidentally or through purposeful audio voyeurism are very important to me, invaluable even. This is the sort of accidental material that can put you where you ought to be—where you least expected. But at the same time I never knew I would feel quite like **that** as the winter afternoon glare crystallized the spires at the top of the Sixth Avenue Library to the sound of Grant Lee Buffalo's lament of New Orleans. I got the same juxtaposition of the familiar and foreign that I might glean from an unexpected snippet of the overheard. Both have their place (and use from my point of view).
+
+I like to be able to choose whether or not to involve myself in the public space. But the elective to remove oneself from the public is troubling for our iPod critics.<blockquote>Walk through any airport in the United States these days and you will see person after person gliding through the social ether as if on autopilot. <br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote><blockquote>And as a result, our concept of social space will change. Imagine the future: a crowded urban street, filled not with people interacting with one another, but with atomized individuals cocooned in their personalized sound-bubbles, moving from one retail opportunity to another. The only sounds are the shuffling of feet and the rock muzak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains.<br /><cite>-John Naughten</cite></blockquote>
+
+Why is it astonishing that a generation which finds itself bombarded with advertising and the crass commercial commodification of public space at every turn would want an isolationist bubble? To me that seems a perfectly logical extension of the culture we have created. Meet me down at the Blockbuster Pavilion where we can catch the Verizon Wireless Presents show tonight and maybe afterward we can head to the Trojan Condom presents DJ Circuit City spinning at Club Walmart. Come on down, we'll have a grand time ringing in the new Year of the Depend Undergarment. <br />
+
+What Mr. Naughten seems to ignore is the second to last sentence of his own nightmare, one that has nothing to do with headphones and everything to do with cultural changes that precede the iPod—"moving from one retail opportunity to another." This is fast becoming the sum total of our public spaces—retail opportunities.
+
+Rather than contributing to this sort of corporate co-opting of public spaces, the iPod allows us an escape from the so-called public space. Increasingly that space is not public at all, it's branded private space that views the public as little more than advertising targets. How long before we have advertisements beamed up into the night sky?
+
+Headphones are an attempt to avoid the homogenization of the "rock musak blaring from the doorways of specialized leisurewear chains." Is it not the desire to escape the vulgar commercialism of our advert culture that drives us to block out it's monotony? To seek something meaningful in one of the most intimately and meaningful realms—music. To interject back the danger that once lurked outside the burlesque theaters and dance halls that seem to have closed just after Henry and June sneaked out the back door.
+
+<h3>The New (Old) Danger</h3>
+
+The problem with the iPod for these authors seems to lie in the shutting off of the public space in favor of the personal. As I've already pointed out we the public are losing our collective spaces (have lost?) to far more than the iPod. But, setting aside larger cultural issues like promiscuous advertising, what of the iPod's privatization of public space as these authors claim?
+
+Neither author gives any kind of reason as to why this is bad. They both get abstract and use the iPod as jumping off point for larger concerns. Starting with Mr Sullivan who sees in the iPod the loss of, call it respect for music.<blockquote>Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall. It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album.<br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote>
+
+I don't know about you, but the music I listen to was never welcome in the living room I grew up in. For some reason, my parents failed to relate to or appreciate **License to Ill** or **Nothing's Shocking**. Mr. Sullivan seems to think 'once upon a time' music was confined to the space where we expect it and now, good god, now it's everywhere and no one is sharing or bonding over it. I for one would much rather everyone carried around a pair of speakers with their iPod and blasted them at 11 so music became a truly public space. But apparently I am alone in this desire and there are noise ordinances against this sort of thing. (If this notion intrigues you check out some of the Flaming Lips' experiments with hundreds of simultaneous playbacks to form textures of sound).
+
+Typical of a web essays, Sullivan is really just aping statements made a generation earlier in response to the iPod's predecessor, the Walkman. Far more reasoned and persuasive (and lengthy) is Christine Rosen's piece in **<a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/" title="A journal of Society and Technology">The New Atlantis</a>**. As Rosen relates in her essay:<blockquote>Music columnist Norman Lebrecht argued, "No invention in my lifetime has so changed an art and cheapened it as the Sony Walkman." By removing music from its context—in the performance hall or the private home—and making it portable, the Walkman made music banal. "It becomes a utility, undeserving of more attention than drinking water from a tap." <br /><cite>-Christine Rosen</cite></blockquote>
+
+I suppose that's one way to look at it. If you swapped "iPod" and "Sony Walkman" for "radio" I might somewhat agree with both statements. But as it is, recorded music has never had a context. It has always existed in the abstract space of our heads more than any temporal location. We are not in the room as it as the music is played we get only an abstracted representation of the music. Recorded music has never been containable, just crank your speakers and enlighten the neighbors.
+
+The notion that music (especially recorded music) has a natural space where it belongs is counter to what it is—music located outside any temporal location. And if you are worried about the narrowing of public space, locking music up in the private space is not an argument against iPods. It's a safe way to avoid the issue, but it undercuts the other argument, that personal space is invading public space. Let me get this straight. Headphones are narrowing our public cultural space, but music (in said headphones) ought to remain private space? So the problem then is not the music, but the space we occupy while we listen to it?
+
+I for one don't think music should be consigned to where we feel safe with it. Music is not safe. It should not be relegated to the living room or the concert hall, it should be played in the streets at top volume until the sky really does shudder and crumble. But that option has already been taken away by noise ordinances. So we have gone internal, put the speaker directly in our ear.
+
+If anything changes with headphones it's the attention devoted to the music. Music coming from speakers has a directional vector. It approaches you from some point and is blatantly external to the listener. Put on a decent pair of headphones and the music becomes omnidirectional and you are enveloped in it. Close your eyes and you can swim through it and pick out tiny bits of sound that you would never notice coming from an external speaker. For the listener on headphones the experience is both more intimate and more consuming than music from a living room stereo or even a concert hall stage.
+
+As for the lose of public culture to personal headphone cocoon, is not the mere recognition of white earbuds itself a form of cultural interaction? Even if it be only a nod and smile, is this not even closer to the truth of life, the mystery unfathomed but acknowledged? I know how you feel the nod says and it is good speaketh the smile.
+
+<h3>Its All Around You</h3>
+
+Neither Sullivan nor Naughton is content with the iPod as harbinger of doom, the end of social space, the isolationist future of automatons. Yawn. No, it does not stop there, this is the slippery slope down which we all slide into communism and cannibalism and [them russians and them russians](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49305/america-56d22b41f119f) and them earbuds and them earbuds and them them, damnit the sky is falling why don't you see it? Rosen at least has a more reasoned argument that might actually be on to something.
+
+She believes that the personalization of media is leading to a narrowing of experience. That's a legitimate fear, one that I don't agree with, but legitimate nonetheless. The other two articles in question just use the iPod as evidence of a larger crumbling that is, rather suspiciously, never clearly delineated.
+
+Mr. Naughton in the Guardian article sounds a bit like Wordsworth calling us all back to the countryside. he even goes so far as to stake his critique partly on recently uncovered Edwardian era documentary films. These movies he claims reveal a society where,<blockquote>Men raise their hats to women; people stop to talk; groups congregate at junctions and street corners. The clear implication is that, for Edwardians, being out in public meant being on display and being sociable. It meant paying attention to what was going on around you, and acknowledging the existence of others.</blockquote>
+
+Beware all calls for a return to past glories. Assuming for a moment that people act naturally in front of a camera and that they weren't in fact congregating to discuss the weirdos at the end of street pointing lens at everyone, so the Edwardians were more self-consciously aware when out in public. Does that make them role models of public behavior? They were also more elitist, racist, and classist as well; should we emulate those behaviors too while we're out for a Sunday stroll?
+
+In researching this little piece I found several nice rebuttals to Sullivan's piece. The best of which is by a man named Jerry Stratton in an essay entitled **<a href="http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=92" title="society never ends, it just fades away">society never ends, it just fades away</a>**. Stratton rightly cuts past the iPod intro of Sullivan's article and addresses what Sullivan really wants to talk about.<blockquote>His most worthwhile observation was that iPod users sometimes accidentally break out into out-of-tune singing to whatever is on their pod. But he seems to think that it's bad, whereas I stand with Joni Mitchell that the more out-of-tune voices, the better. And that's the real point of Andrew's editorial. The proliferation of multiple viewpoints runs the risk of isolating individuals so that they hear only the viewpoints that they want to hear. We as individuals need more out-of-tune voices. <br /><cite>-Jerry Stratton</cite></blockquote>
+
+This is also Rosen's concern in both of her essays, that our means of consuming information (for her the remote control, TiVo, and iPod) are narrowing our exposure to new ideas. By meticulously selecting content that we already know we like we are even less likely to discover the new stuff. Couple this with "smart" search algorithms that pick recommendations based on what we already like and our chances of encountering the shocking, the challenging or the potentially enlightening approach nil according to Rosen. Without these sorts of jarring, chance encounters with the unknown we cease to think outside ourselves. This may well be true, but it's always been true. Conservative viewers are more likely to tune into Fox news because it fits their pre-existing worldview. Liberals read the the New York Times and watch Woody Allen movies. This is nothing new. It has always taken conscious effort to find viewpoints outside your own reality tunnel of beliefs.
+
+I fail to see anyway in which the iPod contributes to this trend. In fact it may well go against it if only by virtue of its ubiquity. On college campuses for instance many students swap headphones to see what the other is listening to. The iPod's ease of use and the easy availability of mp3s make exploring new music simple—hear a band on someone's headphones, go home and fire up a torrent search, grab the album, slap it on your iPod and be enlightened. Illegal? Certainly. Potentially life enriching? Certainly.
+
+<h3>No Alarms and No Surprises</h3>
+
+When you come down to it, how is the iPod any different from other music devices that use headphones? It's not. It's just the latest harbinger on the chopping block if we mash our metaphors for a moment.
+
+At the same time, the targeted nature of new modes of consumption do raise some issues for thought. Are narrowly targeted ads (i.e. users who bought x also bought y...) constricting our exposure to the unfamiliar? Maybe, but as illustrated earlier there has always been a tendency to seek the familiar, the safe, the comfortable, the expected.
+
+But even that doesn't always happen. The gravity of this potential danger, if we may call it that, that comes from targeted advertising depends greatly on the realm in which occurs. If we are talking about the realm of politics then this kind of marsupial burrowing is decidedly bad. If you bought Bill O'Reilly's book (presumably he has one) and the suggested "you might like..." stuff is more of the same, then yes your worldview remains narrow. But in the realm of art where the political statement is often less overt, less likely to be partisan, more likely to be complicated and often not there at all, then the suggestion might be welcome and can lead one far from the sources that suggested it.
+
+For example let's say you really like Jay-Z and so when the new album comes out you pre-order it on Amazon.com. The "you might like..." screen claims that people who like Jay-Z have also purchased Outkast. So you figure, what the hell I'll pick up this Outkast album. Turns out that those who purchased Outkast also bought both Stevie Wonder and Sun Ra. Hey, why not? You buy them too. If you're a fan of Jay-Z but have never ventured into Sun Ra territory, well, you're about to blow your mind.
+
+In my own experience, I find that I tend to read books that mention other books. So I read the other books and maybe they mention some other books and on it goes. I don't see a significant difference between that and the Amazon suggestions. Or potentially TiVo's suggestions or any other targeted marketing. In the realm of the arts nothing is so much the same that it cannot lead to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation" title="Theory of Six Degrees of Separation">something ever more different</a>.
+
+It seems that to a certain extent the authors in question here are specifically concerned with the potential narrowing of political capital, which is a concern given that democracy depend on the existence of a multitude of voices. Are we losing that? Well that's a larger question and one that does not necessarily relate to remote controls, TiVo or the iPod.
+
+<h3>You Were Wrong When You Said Everything's Gonna Be All Right</h3>
+
+Though it is odd I would say such a thing, it almost seems to me that all three of these articles smack of a bit of leftist sentimentality. After all isn't it the video-game-addicted, pill-popping future parents of America that are somehow responsible for this political mess we find ourselves in? Isn't their apathy the very thing that has gotten us eight years of GWB and friends? If they just took the headphones out of their ears, put down the remote, turned off the television and read a couple of books none of this would have happened right? Nice dream, nice dream...
+
+In fact this notion of iPod=evil represents the same simplistic thinking that has landed us here in Dubya land in the first place. If easy prescriptions worked to solve our problems we wouldn't have the reactionary mess we have. And I don't mean that in partisan terms. I think we can all agree that America is somewhat of a mess right now. I don't think one political party or the other is as fault. We are all culpable. And we are all looking for solutions.
+
+I don't believe in the techno-utopist future of completely wired life and peace through blogging, but I also don't believe in the techno-dystopist future where we all unplug and discover our heartfelt love and meet in central park for an earbud-free hug-a-thon. Reality is much more complex and to avoid it authors like Sullivan resort to cheap, easy sentimentality.<blockquote>but what are we missing? That hilarious shard of an overheard conversation that stays with you all day; the child whose chatter on the pavement takes you back to your early memories; birdsong; weather; accents; the laughter of others.<br /><cite>-Andrew Sullivan</cite></blockquote>
+
+A lovely piece of sentimentality, it almost makes me want to take out these headphones and listen to the silence of the house. But as Wallace Stevens' said "sentimentality is a failure of feeling." Sentimentality is false feeling, pseudo-feeling and affectation. And Mr. Sullivan's quote above is the most embarrassing episode of mindless sentimentality I can think of right now. It fails to account for all kinds of complexity and depth ever-present in our lives.
+
+Sentimentality is the easy answer: the birds, the laughter, the children (followed shortly by the the bullshit, the bullshit, the vomit, the vomit). Real feeling involves complexity, it rejects the simple. To realize that there is more to it than unplugging, more to it than any technology, more to it than a sound bite you can pass off as heartfelt—that is actually the very essence of the problem: the failure to engage your surroundings as anything other than a simplistic snapshot of what you wanted to see. Does Sullivan acknowledge the ugliness? Never. He skips right over it and tells you what you wanted to hear. Sullivan's sentimentality does the very thing he accuses the iPod of doing—he narrows your reality. Never for a second does Sullivan acknowledge that the birds might be endangered, headed for extinction, that the weather might be worsening with global warming, that the laughter of others might well be cynical and cheap or that the children are living below the poverty line, abused etc, etc. This the same sort of narcissistic thinking (I am observing, where the emphasis on I and observe is equal) that gave us romanticism, is it any wonder that these authors look too fondly at the Edwardians? Everything looks good from the lazy middle class intellectual point of view. Edit out the things you don't like and you too can narrow your reality to the point of irrelevancy.
+
+Please do not mistake me for a cynic though. I use this example merely to acknowledge that there are things below the surface that we can happily ignore if we are constructing the world to our own desires rather than recognizing the complexity that is inherent in it.
+
+<h3>...And I Feel Fine</h3>
+
+Perhaps the problem with the iPod is so ephemeral it's slipping through our fingers. Perhaps there is no problem with the iPod. No harm in headphones. No danger to run from save the desire to have a new danger to run from, a new evil to fight because the real one is just too big to tackle, a new threat to declare war on because the old one just bores us to death, a new something to rage against because the dying of the light seems inevitable and unvanquishable. Perhaps the new danger, same as the old, is our own failure, our own sentimentality that show us the world not as it is but as we wish to see it.
+
+At the same time I encourage everyone to, as Robert Anton Wilson often suggested, change reality tunnels. Point your RSS reader to sites with viewpoints you don't share, something outside your belief system, something you might even consider crazy. Listen to what these viewpoints are saying and think critically about why you do or don't agree with them. There has never (not even yesterday) been a day in the history of humankind when you have had so much information at your finger tips. Take advantage of that and see where it leads you—hopefully where you least expected. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/05/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/05/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..932a8c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/05/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" + 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/2005/">2005</a> →</li> + <li>May</li> + </ul> + <main role="main" id="writing-archive" class="archive"> + <h1> Archive: May 2005</h1> + <ul class="date-archive"> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text" title="New Adventures in HiFi Text">New Adventures in HiFi Text</a> + <time datetime="2005-05-12T21:21:44-04:00">May 12, 2005</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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I guess I was a pioneer in some sense.</strong></p> +<p><strong>But yeah, there are much easier ways to do this now. I leave it up because Daring Fireball linked to it and to this day I get traffic looking for it.</strong></p> +<p><strong>What I stand by 100% is the philosophy and usefulness of plain text. It's all I use to store data -- usually in flat files, as described here, sometimes in databases. Whichever the case, plain text lasts, end of story. I also stand by my pronunciation of LaTeX. I know La Tech is correct, but I'll be damned if I'm going to say it that way.</strong></p> +<h3>In praise of plain text</h3> +<p>I sometimes bitch about Microsoft Word in this piece, but let me be clear that I do not hate Windows or Microsoft, nor am I a rabid fan of Apple. In fact prior to the advent of OS X, I was ready to ditch the platform altogether. I could list as many crappy things about Mac OS 7.x-9.x as I can about Windows. Maybe even more. But OS X changed that for me, it's everything I was looking for in an OS and very little I wasn't. But I also don't think Microsoft is inherently evil and Windows is their plan to exploit the vulnerable masses. I mean really, do you think <a href="http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/gates.asp" title="Bill Gates gets sexy for the teens--yes, that is a mac in the background">this guy</a> or anything he might do could be <em>evil</em>? Of course not. I happen to much prefer OS X, but that's just personal preference and computing needs. I use Windows all the time at work and I don't hate it, it just lacks a certain <em>je ne sais quoi</em>. [2014 update: These days I use Debian Linux because it just works better than any other OS I have use.]</p> +<p>That said, I have never really liked Microsoft Word on any platform. It does all sorts of things I would prefer that it didn't, such as capitalize URLs while I'm typing or automatically convert email addresses to live links. Probably you can turn these sorts of things on and off in the preferences, but that's not the point. I dislike the way Word approaches me, <a href="http://www1.appstate.edu/~clarkne/hatemicro.html" title="Microsoft Word Suicide Note help">assuming that I want every bell and whistle possible</a>, including a shifty looking paperclip with Great Gatsbyesque eyes watching my every move. </p> +<p>Word has too many features and yet fails to implement any of them with much success. Since I don't work in an office environment, I really don't have any need for Word (did I mention it's expensive and crashes with alarming frequency?). I write for a couple of magazines here and there, post things on this site, and slave away at the mediocre American novel, none of which requires me to use MS Word or the .doc format. In short, I don't <em>need</em> Word.</p> +<p>Yet for years I used it anyway. I still have the copy I purchased in college and even upgraded when it became available for OS X. But I used it mainly out of ignorance to the alternatives, rather than usefulness of the software. I can now say I have tried pretty much every office/word processing program that's available for OS X and I only like one of them -- <a href="http://www.redlers.com/" title="Mellel, great software and a bargin at $39">Mellel</a>. But aside from that one, I've concluded I just don't like word processors (including <a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/" title="Apple's Pages, part of the new iWork suite">Apple's new Pages program</a>). </p> +<p>These days I do my writing in a text editor, usually BBEdit. Since I've always used BBEdit to write code, it was open and ready to go. Over time I noticed that when I wanted to jot down some random idea I turned to BBEdit rather than opening up Word. It started as a convenience thing and just sort of snowballed from there. Now I'm really attached to writing in plain text.</p> +<p>In terms of archival storage, plain text is an excellent way to write. If BareBones, the makers of BBEdit, went bankrupt tomorrow I wouldn't miss a beat because just about any program out there can read my files. As a file storage format, plain text is almost totally platform independent (I'm sure someone has got a text editor running on their PS2 by now.), which makes plain text fairly future proof (and if it's not then we have bigger issues to deal with). Plain text is also easy to marked up for web display, a couple of <code><p></code> tags, maybe a link here and there and we're on our way.</p> +<h3>In praise of formatted text</h3> +<p>But there are some drawbacks to writing in plain text -- it sucks for physical documents. No one wants to read printed plain text. Because plain text must be single spaced printing renders some pretty small text with no room to make corrections -- less than ideal for editing purposes. Sure, I could adjust the font size and whatnot from within BBEdit's preferences, but I can't get the double spacing, which is indispensable for editing, but a waste of space when I'm actually writing. </p> +<p>Of course this may be peculiar to me. It may be hard for some people to write without having the double-spaced screen display. Most people probably look at what they're writing while they write it. I do not. I look at my hands. Not to find the keys, but rather with a sort of abstract fascination. My hands seem to know where to go without me having to think about it, it's kind of amazing and I like to watch it happen. I could well be thinking about something entirely different from what I'm typing and staring down at my hands produces a strange realization -- wow look at those fingers go, I wonder how they know what their doing? I'm thinking about the miraculous way they seem to know what their doing, rather than what they're actually doing. It's highly likely that this is my own freakishness, but it eliminates the need for nicely spaced screen output (and introduces the need for intense editing).</p> +<p>But wait, let's go back to that earlier part where I said its easy to mark up plain text for the web -- what if it were possible to mark up plain text for print? Now that would be something.</p> +<h3>The Best of Both Worlds (Maybe)</h3> +<p>In fact there is a markup language for print documents. Unfortunately its pretty clunky. It goes by the name TeX, the terseness of which should make you think -- ah, Unix. But TeX is actually really wonderful. It gives you the ability to write in plain text and use an, albeit esoteric and awkward, syntax to mark it up. TeX can then convert your document into something very classy and beautiful.</p> +<p>Now prior to the advent of Adobe's ubiquitous PDF format I have no idea what sort of things TeX produced, nor do I care, because PDF exists and TeX can leverage it to render printable, distributable, cross-platform, open standard and, most importantly, really good looking documents.</p> +<p>But first let's deal with the basics. TeX is convoluted, ugly, impossibly verbose and generally useless to anyone without a computer science degree. Recognizing this, some reasonable folks can along and said, hey, what if we wrote some simple macros to access this impossibly verbose difficult to comprehend language? That would be marvelous. And so some people did and called the result LaTeX because they were nerd/geeks and loved puns and the shift key. Actually I am told that LaTeX is pronounced Lah Tech, and that TeX should not be thought of as tex, but rather the greek letters tau, epsilon and chi. This is all good and well if you want to convince people you're using a markup language rather than checking out fetish websites, but the word is spelled latex and will be pronounced laytex as long as I'm the one saying it. (Note to Bono: Your name is actually pronounced bo know. Sorry, that's just how it is in my world.)</p> +<p>So, while TeX may do the actual work of formating your plain text document, what you actually use to mark up your documents is called LaTeX. I'm not entirely certain, but I assume that the packages that comprise LaTeX are simple interfaces that take basic input shortcuts and then tell TeX what they mean. Sort of like what Markdown does in converting text to HTML. Hmmm. More on that later.</p> +<h3>Installation and RTFM suggestions</h3> +<p>So I went through the whole unixy rigamarole of installing packages in usr/bin/ and other weird directories that I try to ignore and got a lovely little Mac OS X-native front end called <a href="http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html" title="TeXShop for Mac OS X">TeXShop</a>. Here is a link to the <a href="http://www.mecheng.adelaide.edu.au/~will/texstart/" title="TeX on Mac OS X: The most simple beginner's guide">Detailed instructions for the LaTeX/TeX set up I installed</a>. The process was awkward, but not painful. The instruction comprise only four steps, not as bad as say, um, well, okay, it's not drag-n-drop, but its pretty easy.</p> +<p>I also went a step further because LaTeX in most of it's incarnations is pretty picky about what fonts it will work with. If this seems idiotic to you, you are not alone. I thought hey, I have all these great fonts, I should be able to use any of them in a LaTeX document, but no, it's not that easy. Without delving too deep into the mysterious world of fonts, it seems that, in order to render text as well as it does, TeX needs special fonts -- particularly fonts that have specific ligatures included in them. Luckily a very nice gentlemen by the name of Jonathan Kew has already solved this problem for those of us using Mac OS X. So I <a href="http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex&_sc=1" title="The XeTeX typesetting system">downloaded and installed XeTeX</a>, which is actually a totally different macro processor that runs semi-separately from a standard LaTeX installation (at least I think it is, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. This link offers <a href="http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex_texshop" title="Using XeTeX with TexShop">more information on XeTeX</a>.</p> +<p>So then <a href="http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/" title="online LaTeX manual">I read the fucking manual</a> and <a href="http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/lshort.pdf" title="Not so Short introduction to LaTeX">the other fucking manual</a> (which should be on your list of best practices when dealing with new software or programming languages). After an hour or so of tinkering with pre-made templates developed by others, and consulting the aforementioned manuals, I was actually able to generate some decent looking documents.</p> +<p>But the syntax for LaTeX is awkward and verbose (remember -- written to avoid having to know an awkward and verbose syntax known as TeX). Would you rather write this:</p> +<pre><code>\section{Heading} +\font\a="Bell MT" at 12pt +\a some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. \href{some link text}{http://www.linkaddress.com} to demonstrate what a link looks like in XeTeX. \verb#here is a line of code# to show what inline code looks like in XeTeX some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin. +</code></pre> +<p>Or this:</p> +<pre><code>###Heading +some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. [some link text][1] to demonstrate what a link looks like in Markdown. `here is a line of code` to show what inline code looks like in Markdown. And some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin. +</code></pre> +<p>In simple terms of readability, <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/" title="Markdown">John Gruber's Markdown</a> (the second sample code) is a stroke of true brilliance. I can honestly say that nothing has changed my writing style as much since my parents bought one of these newfangled computer thingys back in the late 80's. So, with no more inane hyperbole, lets just say I like Markdown.</p> +<p>LaTeX on the other hand shows it's age like the denture baring ladies of a burlesque revival show. It ain't sexy. And believe me, my sample is the tip of the iceberg in terms of mark up.</p> +<h3>using Perl and Applescript to generate XeTeX</h3> +<p>Here's where I get vague, beg personal preferences, hint a vast undivulged knowledge of AppleScript (not true, I just use the "start recording" feature in BBEdit) and simply say that, with a limited knowledge of Perl, I was able to rewrite Markdown, combine that with some applescripts to call various Grep patterns (LaTeX must escape certain characters, most notably, <code>$</code> and <code>&</code>) and create a BBEdit Textfactory which combines the first two elements to generate LaTeX markup from a Markdown syntax plain text document. And no I haven't been reading Proust, I just like long, parenthetically-aside sentences.</p> +<p>Yes all of the convolution of the preceding sentence allows me to, in one step, convert this document to a latex document and output it as a PDF file. Don't believe me? <a href="http://www.luxagraf.com/pdf/hifitext.pdf" title="this article as an XeTeX generated pdf">Download this article as a PDF produced using LaTeX</a>. In fact it's so easy I'm going to batch process all my entries and make them into nice looking PDFs which will be available at the bottom of the page.</p> +<h3>Technical Details</h3> +<p>I first proposed this idea of using Markdown to generate LaTeX on the BBEdit mailing list and was informed that it would be counter-productive to the whole purpose and philosophy of LaTeX. While I sort of understand this guidance, I disagree. </p> +<p>I already have a ton of documents written with Markdown syntax. Markdown is the most minimal syntax I've found for generating html. Why not adapt my existing workflow to generate some basic LaTeX? See I don't want to write LaTeX documents; I want to write text documents with Markdown syntax in them and generate html and PDF from the same initial document. Then I want to revert the initial document back to it's original form and stash it away on my hard drive.</p> +<p>I simply wanted a one step method of processing a Markdown syntax text file into XeTeX to compliment the one step method I already have for turning the same document into HTML.</p> +<p>Here's how I do it. I modified Markdown to generate what LaTeX markup I need, i.e. specific definitions for list elements, headings, quotes, code blocks etc. This was actually pretty easy, and keep in mind that I have never gotten beyond a "hello world" script in Perl. Kudos to John Gruber for copious comments and very logical, easy to read code.</p> +<p>That's all good and well, but then there are some other things I needed to do to get a usable TeX version of my document. For instance certain characters need to be escaped, like the entities mentioned above. Now if I were more knowledgeable about Perl I would have just added these to the Markdown file, but rather than wrestle with Perl I elected to use grep via BBEdit. So I crafted an applescript that first parsed out things like <code>&mdash;</code> and replaced them with the unicode equivalent which is necessary to get an em-dash in XeTeX (in a normal LaTeX environment you would use <code>---</code> to generate an emdash). Other things like quote marks, curly brackets and ampersands are similarly replaced with their XeTeX equivalents (for some it's unicode, others like <code>{</code> or <code>}</code> must be escaped like so: <code>\{</code>). </p> +<p>Next I created a BBEdit Textfactory to call these scripts in the right order (for instance I need to replace quote marks after running my modified Markdown script since Markdown will use quotes to identify things like url title tags (which my version simply discards). Then I created an applescript that calls the textfactory and then applies a BBEdit glossary item to the resulting (selected) text, which adds all the preamble TeX definitions I use and then passes that whole code block off to XeTeX via TeXShop and outputs the result in Preview.</p> +<p>Convoluted? Yes. But now that it's done and assigned a shortcut key it takes less than two seconds to generate a pdf of really good looking (double spaced) text. The best part is if I want to change things around, the only file I have to adjust is the BBEdit glossary item that creates the preamble.</p> +<p>The only downside is that to undo the various manipulations wrought on the original text file I have to hit the undo command five times. At some point I'll sit down and figure out how to do everything using Perl and then it will be a one step undo just like regular Markdown. In the mean time I just wrote a quick applescript that calls undo five times :)</p> +<h3>Am I insane?</h3> +<p>I don't know. I'm willing to admit to esoteric and when pressed will concede stupid, but damnit I like it. And from initial install to completed workflow we're only talking about six hours, most of which was spent pouring over LaTeX manuals. Okay yes, I'm insane. I went to all this effort just to avoid an animated paperclip. But seriously, that thing is creepy.</p> +<p>Note of course that my LaTeX needs are limited and fairly simple. I wanted one version of my process to output a pretty simple double spaced document for editing. Then I whipped up another version for actual reading by others (single spaced, nice margins and header etc). I'm a humanities type, I'm not doing complex math equations, inline images, or typesetting an entire book with table of contents and bibliography. Of course even if I were, the only real change I would need to make is to the LaTeX preamble template. Everything else would remain the same, which is pretty future proof. And if BBEdit disappears and Apple goes belly up, well, I still have plain text files to edit on my PS457.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c54d3ac --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text.html @@ -0,0 +1,382 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>New Adventures In Hifi Text - 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 project is no longer maintained or necessary thanks to projects like Pandoc which can take Markdown use it to create LaTeX and a dozen other types of files. 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I guess I was a pioneer in some sense.</strong></p> +<p><strong>But yeah, there are much easier ways to do this now. I leave it up because Daring Fireball linked to it and to this day I get traffic looking for it.</strong></p> +<p><strong>What I stand by 100% is the philosophy and usefulness of plain text. It’s all I use to store data — usually in flat files, as described here, sometimes in databases. Whichever the case, plain text lasts, end of story. I also stand by my pronunciation of LaTeX. I know La Tech is correct, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to say it that way.</strong></p> +<h3>In praise of plain text</h3> +<p>I sometimes bitch about Microsoft Word in this piece, but let me be clear that I do not hate Windows or Microsoft, nor am I a rabid fan of Apple. In fact prior to the advent of OS X, I was ready to ditch the platform altogether. I could list as many crappy things about Mac OS 7.x-9.x as I can about Windows. Maybe even more. But OS X changed that for me, it’s everything I was looking for in an OS and very little I wasn’t. But I also don’t think Microsoft is inherently evil and Windows is their plan to exploit the vulnerable masses. I mean really, do you think <a href="http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/gates.asp" title="Bill Gates gets sexy for the teens--yes, that is a mac in the background">this guy</a> or anything he might do could be <em>evil</em>? Of course not. I happen to much prefer OS X, but that’s just personal preference and computing needs. I use Windows all the time at work and I don’t hate it, it just lacks a certain <em>je ne sais quoi</em>. [2014 update: These days I use Debian Linux because it just works better than any other OS I have use.]</p> +<p>That said, I have never really liked Microsoft Word on any platform. It does all sorts of things I would prefer that it didn’t, such as capitalize URLs while I’m typing or automatically convert email addresses to live links. Probably you can turn these sorts of things on and off in the preferences, but that’s not the point. I dislike the way Word approaches me, <a href="http://www1.appstate.edu/~clarkne/hatemicro.html" title="Microsoft Word Suicide Note help">assuming that I want every bell and whistle possible</a>, including a shifty looking paperclip with Great Gatsbyesque eyes watching my every move. </p> +<p>Word has too many features and yet fails to implement any of them with much success. Since I don’t work in an office environment, I really don’t have any need for Word (did I mention it’s expensive and crashes with alarming frequency?). I write for a couple of magazines here and there, post things on this site, and slave away at the mediocre American novel, none of which requires me to use MS Word or the .doc format. In short, I don’t <em>need</em> Word.</p> +<p>Yet for years I used it anyway. I still have the copy I purchased in college and even upgraded when it became available for OS X. But I used it mainly out of ignorance to the alternatives, rather than usefulness of the software. I can now say I have tried pretty much every office/word processing program that’s available for OS X and I only like one of them — <a href="http://www.redlers.com/" title="Mellel, great software and a bargin at $39">Mellel</a>. But aside from that one, I’ve concluded I just don’t like word processors (including <a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/" title="Apple's Pages, part of the new iWork suite">Apple’s new Pages program</a>). </p> +<p>These days I do my writing in a text editor, usually BBEdit. Since I’ve always used BBEdit to write code, it was open and ready to go. Over time I noticed that when I wanted to jot down some random idea I turned to BBEdit rather than opening up Word. It started as a convenience thing and just sort of snowballed from there. Now I’m really attached to writing in plain text.</p> +<p>In terms of archival storage, plain text is an excellent way to write. If BareBones, the makers of BBEdit, went bankrupt tomorrow I wouldn’t miss a beat because just about any program out there can read my files. As a file storage format, plain text is almost totally platform independent (I’m sure someone has got a text editor running on their PS2 by now.), which makes plain text fairly future proof (and if it’s not then we have bigger issues to deal with). Plain text is also easy to marked up for web display, a couple of <code><p></code> tags, maybe a link here and there and we’re on our way.</p> +<h3>In praise of formatted text</h3> +<p>But there are some drawbacks to writing in plain text — it sucks for physical documents. No one wants to read printed plain text. Because plain text must be single spaced printing renders some pretty small text with no room to make corrections — less than ideal for editing purposes. Sure, I could adjust the font size and whatnot from within BBEdit’s preferences, but I can’t get the double spacing, which is indispensable for editing, but a waste of space when I’m actually writing. </p> +<p>Of course this may be peculiar to me. It may be hard for some people to write without having the double-spaced screen display. Most people probably look at what they’re writing while they write it. I do not. I look at my hands. Not to find the keys, but rather with a sort of abstract fascination. My hands seem to know where to go without me having to think about it, it’s kind of amazing and I like to watch it happen. I could well be thinking about something entirely different from what I’m typing and staring down at my hands produces a strange realization — wow look at those fingers go, I wonder how they know what their doing? I’m thinking about the miraculous way they seem to know what their doing, rather than what they’re actually doing. It’s highly likely that this is my own freakishness, but it eliminates the need for nicely spaced screen output (and introduces the need for intense editing).</p> +<p>But wait, let’s go back to that earlier part where I said its easy to mark up plain text for the web — what if it were possible to mark up plain text for print? Now that would be something.</p> +<h3>The Best of Both Worlds (Maybe)</h3> +<p>In fact there is a markup language for print documents. Unfortunately its pretty clunky. It goes by the name TeX, the terseness of which should make you think — ah, Unix. But TeX is actually really wonderful. It gives you the ability to write in plain text and use an, albeit esoteric and awkward, syntax to mark it up. TeX can then convert your document into something very classy and beautiful.</p> +<p>Now prior to the advent of Adobe’s ubiquitous PDF format I have no idea what sort of things TeX produced, nor do I care, because PDF exists and TeX can leverage it to render printable, distributable, cross-platform, open standard and, most importantly, really good looking documents.</p> +<p>But first let’s deal with the basics. TeX is convoluted, ugly, impossibly verbose and generally useless to anyone without a computer science degree. Recognizing this, some reasonable folks can along and said, hey, what if we wrote some simple macros to access this impossibly verbose difficult to comprehend language? That would be marvelous. And so some people did and called the result LaTeX because they were nerd/geeks and loved puns and the shift key. Actually I am told that LaTeX is pronounced Lah Tech, and that TeX should not be thought of as tex, but rather the greek letters tau, epsilon and chi. This is all good and well if you want to convince people you’re using a markup language rather than checking out fetish websites, but the word is spelled latex and will be pronounced laytex as long as I’m the one saying it. (Note to Bono: Your name is actually pronounced bo know. Sorry, that’s just how it is in my world.)</p> +<p>So, while TeX may do the actual work of formating your plain text document, what you actually use to mark up your documents is called LaTeX. I’m not entirely certain, but I assume that the packages that comprise LaTeX are simple interfaces that take basic input shortcuts and then tell TeX what they mean. Sort of like what Markdown does in converting text to HTML. Hmmm. More on that later.</p> +<h3>Installation and RTFM suggestions</h3> +<p>So I went through the whole unixy rigamarole of installing packages in usr/bin/ and other weird directories that I try to ignore and got a lovely little Mac OS X-native front end called <a href="http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html" title="TeXShop for Mac OS X">TeXShop</a>. Here is a link to the <a href="http://www.mecheng.adelaide.edu.au/~will/texstart/" title="TeX on Mac OS X: The most simple beginner's guide">Detailed instructions for the LaTeX/TeX set up I installed</a>. The process was awkward, but not painful. The instruction comprise only four steps, not as bad as say, um, well, okay, it’s not drag-n-drop, but its pretty easy.</p> +<p>I also went a step further because LaTeX in most of it’s incarnations is pretty picky about what fonts it will work with. If this seems idiotic to you, you are not alone. I thought hey, I have all these great fonts, I should be able to use any of them in a LaTeX document, but no, it’s not that easy. Without delving too deep into the mysterious world of fonts, it seems that, in order to render text as well as it does, TeX needs special fonts — particularly fonts that have specific ligatures included in them. Luckily a very nice gentlemen by the name of Jonathan Kew has already solved this problem for those of us using Mac OS X. So I <a href="http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex&_sc=1" title="The XeTeX typesetting system">downloaded and installed XeTeX</a>, which is actually a totally different macro processor that runs semi-separately from a standard LaTeX installation (at least I think it is, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. This link offers <a href="http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex_texshop" title="Using XeTeX with TexShop">more information on XeTeX</a>.</p> +<p>So then <a href="http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/" title="online LaTeX manual">I read the fucking manual</a> and <a href="http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/lshort.pdf" title="Not so Short introduction to LaTeX">the other fucking manual</a> (which should be on your list of best practices when dealing with new software or programming languages). After an hour or so of tinkering with pre-made templates developed by others, and consulting the aforementioned manuals, I was actually able to generate some decent looking documents.</p> +<p>But the syntax for LaTeX is awkward and verbose (remember — written to avoid having to know an awkward and verbose syntax known as TeX). Would you rather write this:</p> +<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>\section{Heading} +\font\a="Bell MT" at 12pt +\a some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. \href{some link text}{http://www.linkaddress.com} to demonstrate what a link looks like in XeTeX. \verb#here is a line of code# to show what inline code looks like in XeTeX some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin. +</pre></div> + + +<p>Or this:</p> +<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>###Heading +some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. [some link text][1] to demonstrate what a link looks like in Markdown. `here is a line of code` to show what inline code looks like in Markdown. And some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin. +</pre></div> + + +<p>In simple terms of readability, <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/" title="Markdown">John Gruber’s Markdown</a> (the second sample code) is a stroke of true brilliance. I can honestly say that nothing has changed my writing style as much since my parents bought one of these newfangled computer thingys back in the late 80’s. So, with no more inane hyperbole, lets just say I like Markdown.</p> +<p>LaTeX on the other hand shows it’s age like the denture baring ladies of a burlesque revival show. It ain’t sexy. And believe me, my sample is the tip of the iceberg in terms of mark up.</p> +<h3>using Perl and Applescript to generate XeTeX</h3> +<p>Here’s where I get vague, beg personal preferences, hint a vast undivulged knowledge of AppleScript (not true, I just use the “start recording” feature in BBEdit) and simply say that, with a limited knowledge of Perl, I was able to rewrite Markdown, combine that with some applescripts to call various Grep patterns (LaTeX must escape certain characters, most notably, <code>$</code> and <code>&</code>) and create a BBEdit Textfactory which combines the first two elements to generate LaTeX markup from a Markdown syntax plain text document. And no I haven’t been reading Proust, I just like long, parenthetically-aside sentences.</p> +<p>Yes all of the convolution of the preceding sentence allows me to, in one step, convert this document to a latex document and output it as a PDF file. Don’t believe me? <a href="http://www.luxagraf.com/pdf/hifitext.pdf" title="this article as an XeTeX generated pdf">Download this article as a PDF produced using LaTeX</a>. In fact it’s so easy I’m going to batch process all my entries and make them into nice looking PDFs which will be available at the bottom of the page.</p> +<h3>Technical Details</h3> +<p>I first proposed this idea of using Markdown to generate LaTeX on the BBEdit mailing list and was informed that it would be counter-productive to the whole purpose and philosophy of LaTeX. While I sort of understand this guidance, I disagree. </p> +<p>I already have a ton of documents written with Markdown syntax. Markdown is the most minimal syntax I’ve found for generating html. Why not adapt my existing workflow to generate some basic LaTeX? See I don’t want to write LaTeX documents; I want to write text documents with Markdown syntax in them and generate html and PDF from the same initial document. Then I want to revert the initial document back to it’s original form and stash it away on my hard drive.</p> +<p>I simply wanted a one step method of processing a Markdown syntax text file into XeTeX to compliment the one step method I already have for turning the same document into HTML.</p> +<p>Here’s how I do it. I modified Markdown to generate what LaTeX markup I need, i.e. specific definitions for list elements, headings, quotes, code blocks etc. This was actually pretty easy, and keep in mind that I have never gotten beyond a “hello world” script in Perl. Kudos to John Gruber for copious comments and very logical, easy to read code.</p> +<p>That’s all good and well, but then there are some other things I needed to do to get a usable TeX version of my document. For instance certain characters need to be escaped, like the entities mentioned above. Now if I were more knowledgeable about Perl I would have just added these to the Markdown file, but rather than wrestle with Perl I elected to use grep via BBEdit. So I crafted an applescript that first parsed out things like <code>&mdash;</code> and replaced them with the unicode equivalent which is necessary to get an em-dash in XeTeX (in a normal LaTeX environment you would use <code>---</code> to generate an emdash). Other things like quote marks, curly brackets and ampersands are similarly replaced with their XeTeX equivalents (for some it’s unicode, others like <code>{</code> or <code>}</code> must be escaped like so: <code>\{</code>). </p> +<p>Next I created a BBEdit Textfactory to call these scripts in the right order (for instance I need to replace quote marks after running my modified Markdown script since Markdown will use quotes to identify things like url title tags (which my version simply discards). Then I created an applescript that calls the textfactory and then applies a BBEdit glossary item to the resulting (selected) text, which adds all the preamble TeX definitions I use and then passes that whole code block off to XeTeX via TeXShop and outputs the result in Preview.</p> +<p>Convoluted? Yes. But now that it’s done and assigned a shortcut key it takes less than two seconds to generate a pdf of really good looking (double spaced) text. The best part is if I want to change things around, the only file I have to adjust is the BBEdit glossary item that creates the preamble.</p> +<p>The only downside is that to undo the various manipulations wrought on the original text file I have to hit the undo command five times. At some point I’ll sit down and figure out how to do everything using Perl and then it will be a one step undo just like regular Markdown. In the mean time I just wrote a quick applescript that calls undo five times :)</p> +<h3>Am I insane?</h3> +<p>I don’t know. I’m willing to admit to esoteric and when pressed will concede stupid, but damnit I like it. And from initial install to completed workflow we’re only talking about six hours, most of which was spent pouring over LaTeX manuals. Okay yes, I’m insane. I went to all this effort just to avoid an animated paperclip. But seriously, that thing is creepy.</p> +<p>Note of course that my LaTeX needs are limited and fairly simple. I wanted one version of my process to output a pretty simple double spaced document for editing. Then I whipped up another version for actual reading by others (single spaced, nice margins and header etc). I’m a humanities type, I’m not doing complex math equations, inline images, or typesetting an entire book with table of contents and bibliography. Of course even if I were, the only real change I would need to make is to the LaTeX preamble template. Everything else would remain the same, which is pretty future proof. And if BBEdit disappears and Apple goes belly up, well, I still have plain text files to edit on my PS457.</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/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson" rel="prev" title=" Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson">Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/new-luddites" rel="next" title=" The New Luddites">The New Luddites</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="144" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833490" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="3d85d45863fdf4c726993bf86bd1367ec1f4419c" 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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+
+**This post is very old, most of the links are dead and none of it is necessary anymore thanks to projects like [Pandoc](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) which can take Markdown use it to create LaTeX and a dozen other types of files.**
+
+**When I wrote this in 2006 there was no Pandoc. I guess I was a pioneer in some sense.**
+
+**But yeah, there are much easier ways to do this now. I leave it up because Daring Fireball linked to it and to this day I get traffic looking for it.**
+
+**What I stand by 100% is the philosophy and usefulness of plain text. It's all I use to store data -- usually in flat files, as described here, sometimes in databases. Whichever the case, plain text lasts, end of story. I also stand by my pronunciation of LaTeX. I know La Tech is correct, but I'll be damned if I'm going to say it that way.**
+
+###In praise of plain text
+
+I sometimes bitch about Microsoft Word in this piece, but let me be clear that I do not hate Windows or Microsoft, nor am I a rabid fan of Apple. In fact prior to the advent of OS X, I was ready to ditch the platform altogether. I could list as many crappy things about Mac OS 7.x-9.x as I can about Windows. Maybe even more. But OS X changed that for me, it's everything I was looking for in an OS and very little I wasn't. But I also don't think Microsoft is inherently evil and Windows is their plan to exploit the vulnerable masses. I mean really, do you think [this guy][2] or anything he might do could be *evil*? Of course not. I happen to much prefer OS X, but that's just personal preference and computing needs. I use Windows all the time at work and I don't hate it, it just lacks a certain *je ne sais quoi*. [2014 update: These days I use Debian Linux because it just works better than any other OS I have use.]
+
+That said, I have never really liked Microsoft Word on any platform. It does all sorts of things I would prefer that it didn't, such as capitalize URLs while I'm typing or automatically convert email addresses to live links. Probably you can turn these sorts of things on and off in the preferences, but that's not the point. I dislike the way Word approaches me, [assuming that I want every bell and whistle possible][10], including a shifty looking paperclip with Great Gatsbyesque eyes watching my every move.
+
+Word has too many features and yet fails to implement any of them with much success. Since I don't work in an office environment, I really don't have any need for Word (did I mention it's expensive and crashes with alarming frequency?). I write for a couple of magazines here and there, post things on this site, and slave away at the mediocre American novel, none of which requires me to use MS Word or the .doc format. In short, I don't *need* Word.
+
+Yet for years I used it anyway. I still have the copy I purchased in college and even upgraded when it became available for OS X. But I used it mainly out of ignorance to the alternatives, rather than usefulness of the software. I can now say I have tried pretty much every office/word processing program that's available for OS X and I only like one of them -- [Mellel][11]. But aside from that one, I've concluded I just don't like word processors (including [Apple's new Pages program][12]).
+
+These days I do my writing in a text editor, usually BBEdit. Since I've always used BBEdit to write code, it was open and ready to go. Over time I noticed that when I wanted to jot down some random idea I turned to BBEdit rather than opening up Word. It started as a convenience thing and just sort of snowballed from there. Now I'm really attached to writing in plain text.
+
+In terms of archival storage, plain text is an excellent way to write. If BareBones, the makers of BBEdit, went bankrupt tomorrow I wouldn't miss a beat because just about any program out there can read my files. As a file storage format, plain text is almost totally platform independent (I'm sure someone has got a text editor running on their PS2 by now.), which makes plain text fairly future proof (and if it's not then we have bigger issues to deal with). Plain text is also easy to marked up for web display, a couple of `<p>` tags, maybe a link here and there and we're on our way.
+
+###In praise of formatted text
+
+But there are some drawbacks to writing in plain text -- it sucks for physical documents. No one wants to read printed plain text. Because plain text must be single spaced printing renders some pretty small text with no room to make corrections -- less than ideal for editing purposes. Sure, I could adjust the font size and whatnot from within BBEdit's preferences, but I can't get the double spacing, which is indispensable for editing, but a waste of space when I'm actually writing.
+
+Of course this may be peculiar to me. It may be hard for some people to write without having the double-spaced screen display. Most people probably look at what they're writing while they write it. I do not. I look at my hands. Not to find the keys, but rather with a sort of abstract fascination. My hands seem to know where to go without me having to think about it, it's kind of amazing and I like to watch it happen. I could well be thinking about something entirely different from what I'm typing and staring down at my hands produces a strange realization -- wow look at those fingers go, I wonder how they know what their doing? I'm thinking about the miraculous way they seem to know what their doing, rather than what they're actually doing. It's highly likely that this is my own freakishness, but it eliminates the need for nicely spaced screen output (and introduces the need for intense editing).
+
+But wait, let's go back to that earlier part where I said its easy to mark up plain text for the web -- what if it were possible to mark up plain text for print? Now that would be something.
+
+###The Best of Both Worlds (Maybe)
+
+In fact there is a markup language for print documents. Unfortunately its pretty clunky. It goes by the name TeX, the terseness of which should make you think -- ah, Unix. But TeX is actually really wonderful. It gives you the ability to write in plain text and use an, albeit esoteric and awkward, syntax to mark it up. TeX can then convert your document into something very classy and beautiful.
+
+Now prior to the advent of Adobe's ubiquitous PDF format I have no idea what sort of things TeX produced, nor do I care, because PDF exists and TeX can leverage it to render printable, distributable, cross-platform, open standard and, most importantly, really good looking documents.
+
+But first let's deal with the basics. TeX is convoluted, ugly, impossibly verbose and generally useless to anyone without a computer science degree. Recognizing this, some reasonable folks can along and said, hey, what if we wrote some simple macros to access this impossibly verbose difficult to comprehend language? That would be marvelous. And so some people did and called the result LaTeX because they were nerd/geeks and loved puns and the shift key. Actually I am told that LaTeX is pronounced Lah Tech, and that TeX should not be thought of as tex, but rather the greek letters tau, epsilon and chi. This is all good and well if you want to convince people you're using a markup language rather than checking out fetish websites, but the word is spelled latex and will be pronounced laytex as long as I'm the one saying it. (Note to Bono: Your name is actually pronounced bo know. Sorry, that's just how it is in my world.)
+
+So, while TeX may do the actual work of formating your plain text document, what you actually use to mark up your documents is called LaTeX. I'm not entirely certain, but I assume that the packages that comprise LaTeX are simple interfaces that take basic input shortcuts and then tell TeX what they mean. Sort of like what Markdown does in converting text to HTML. Hmmm. More on that later.
+
+###Installation and RTFM suggestions
+
+So I went through the whole unixy rigamarole of installing packages in usr/bin/ and other weird directories that I try to ignore and got a lovely little Mac OS X-native front end called [TeXShop][3]. Here is a link to the [Detailed instructions for the LaTeX/TeX set up I installed][4]. The process was awkward, but not painful. The instruction comprise only four steps, not as bad as say, um, well, okay, it's not drag-n-drop, but its pretty easy.
+
+I also went a step further because LaTeX in most of it's incarnations is pretty picky about what fonts it will work with. If this seems idiotic to you, you are not alone. I thought hey, I have all these great fonts, I should be able to use any of them in a LaTeX document, but no, it's not that easy. Without delving too deep into the mysterious world of fonts, it seems that, in order to render text as well as it does, TeX needs special fonts -- particularly fonts that have specific ligatures included in them. Luckily a very nice gentlemen by the name of Jonathan Kew has already solved this problem for those of us using Mac OS X. So I [downloaded and installed XeTeX][13], which is actually a totally different macro processor that runs semi-separately from a standard LaTeX installation (at least I think it is, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. This link offers [more information on XeTeX][5].
+
+So then [I read the fucking manual][6] and [the other fucking manual][7] (which should be on your list of best practices when dealing with new software or programming languages). After an hour or so of tinkering with pre-made templates developed by others, and consulting the aforementioned manuals, I was actually able to generate some decent looking documents.
+
+But the syntax for LaTeX is awkward and verbose (remember -- written to avoid having to know an awkward and verbose syntax known as TeX). Would you rather write this:
+
+ \section{Heading}
+ \font\a="Bell MT" at 12pt
+ \a some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. \href{some link text}{http://www.linkaddress.com} to demonstrate what a link looks like in XeTeX. \verb#here is a line of code# to show what inline code looks like in XeTeX some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin.
+
+Or this:
+
+ ###Heading
+ some text some text some text some text, for the love of god I will not use latin sample text because damnit I am not roman and do not like fiddling. [some link text][1] to demonstrate what a link looks like in Markdown. `here is a line of code` to show what inline code looks like in Markdown. And some more text because I still won't stoop, yes I said stoop, to Latin.
+
+In simple terms of readability, [John Gruber's Markdown][8] (the second sample code) is a stroke of true brilliance. I can honestly say that nothing has changed my writing style as much since my parents bought one of these newfangled computer thingys back in the late 80's. So, with no more inane hyperbole, lets just say I like Markdown.
+
+LaTeX on the other hand shows it's age like the denture baring ladies of a burlesque revival show. It ain't sexy. And believe me, my sample is the tip of the iceberg in terms of mark up.
+
+###using Perl and Applescript to generate XeTeX
+
+Here's where I get vague, beg personal preferences, hint a vast undivulged knowledge of AppleScript (not true, I just use the "start recording" feature in BBEdit) and simply say that, with a limited knowledge of Perl, I was able to rewrite Markdown, combine that with some applescripts to call various Grep patterns (LaTeX must escape certain characters, most notably, `$` and `&`) and create a BBEdit Textfactory which combines the first two elements to generate LaTeX markup from a Markdown syntax plain text document. And no I haven't been reading Proust, I just like long, parenthetically-aside sentences.
+
+Yes all of the convolution of the preceding sentence allows me to, in one step, convert this document to a latex document and output it as a PDF file. Don't believe me? [Download this article as a PDF produced using LaTeX][9]. In fact it's so easy I'm going to batch process all my entries and make them into nice looking PDFs which will be available at the bottom of the page.
+
+###Technical Details
+
+I first proposed this idea of using Markdown to generate LaTeX on the BBEdit mailing list and was informed that it would be counter-productive to the whole purpose and philosophy of LaTeX. While I sort of understand this guidance, I disagree.
+
+I already have a ton of documents written with Markdown syntax. Markdown is the most minimal syntax I've found for generating html. Why not adapt my existing workflow to generate some basic LaTeX? See I don't want to write LaTeX documents; I want to write text documents with Markdown syntax in them and generate html and PDF from the same initial document. Then I want to revert the initial document back to it's original form and stash it away on my hard drive.
+
+I simply wanted a one step method of processing a Markdown syntax text file into XeTeX to compliment the one step method I already have for turning the same document into HTML.
+
+Here's how I do it. I modified Markdown to generate what LaTeX markup I need, i.e. specific definitions for list elements, headings, quotes, code blocks etc. This was actually pretty easy, and keep in mind that I have never gotten beyond a "hello world" script in Perl. Kudos to John Gruber for copious comments and very logical, easy to read code.
+
+That's all good and well, but then there are some other things I needed to do to get a usable TeX version of my document. For instance certain characters need to be escaped, like the entities mentioned above. Now if I were more knowledgeable about Perl I would have just added these to the Markdown file, but rather than wrestle with Perl I elected to use grep via BBEdit. So I crafted an applescript that first parsed out things like `—` and replaced them with the unicode equivalent which is necessary to get an em-dash in XeTeX (in a normal LaTeX environment you would use `---` to generate an emdash). Other things like quote marks, curly brackets and ampersands are similarly replaced with their XeTeX equivalents (for some it's unicode, others like `{` or `}` must be escaped like so: `\{`).
+
+Next I created a BBEdit Textfactory to call these scripts in the right order (for instance I need to replace quote marks after running my modified Markdown script since Markdown will use quotes to identify things like url title tags (which my version simply discards). Then I created an applescript that calls the textfactory and then applies a BBEdit glossary item to the resulting (selected) text, which adds all the preamble TeX definitions I use and then passes that whole code block off to XeTeX via TeXShop and outputs the result in Preview.
+
+Convoluted? Yes. But now that it's done and assigned a shortcut key it takes less than two seconds to generate a pdf of really good looking (double spaced) text. The best part is if I want to change things around, the only file I have to adjust is the BBEdit glossary item that creates the preamble.
+
+The only downside is that to undo the various manipulations wrought on the original text file I have to hit the undo command five times. At some point I'll sit down and figure out how to do everything using Perl and then it will be a one step undo just like regular Markdown. In the mean time I just wrote a quick applescript that calls undo five times :)
+
+###Am I insane?
+
+I don't know. I'm willing to admit to esoteric and when pressed will concede stupid, but damnit I like it. And from initial install to completed workflow we're only talking about six hours, most of which was spent pouring over LaTeX manuals. Okay yes, I'm insane. I went to all this effort just to avoid an animated paperclip. But seriously, that thing is creepy.
+
+Note of course that my LaTeX needs are limited and fairly simple. I wanted one version of my process to output a pretty simple double spaced document for editing. Then I whipped up another version for actual reading by others (single spaced, nice margins and header etc). I'm a humanities type, I'm not doing complex math equations, inline images, or typesetting an entire book with table of contents and bibliography. Of course even if I were, the only real change I would need to make is to the LaTeX preamble template. Everything else would remain the same, which is pretty future proof. And if BBEdit disappears and Apple goes belly up, well, I still have plain text files to edit on my PS457.
+
+[1]: http://www.luxagraf.com/archives/flash/software_sucks "Why Software sucks. Sometimes."
+[2]: http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/gates.asp "Bill Gates gets sexy for the teens--yes, that is a mac in the background"
+[3]: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html "TeXShop for Mac OS X"
+[4]: http://www.mecheng.adelaide.edu.au/~will/texstart/ "TeX on Mac OS X: The most simple beginner's guide"
+[5]: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex_texshop "Using XeTeX with TexShop"
+[6]: http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/ "online LaTeX manual"
+[7]: http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/lshort.pdf "Not so Short introduction to LaTeX"
+[8]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ "Markdown"
+[9]: http://www.luxagraf.com/pdf/hifitext.pdf "this article as an XeTeX generated pdf"
+[10]: http://www1.appstate.edu/~clarkne/hatemicro.html "Microsoft Word Suicide Note help"
+[11]: http://www.redlers.com/ "Mellel, great software and a bargin at $39"
+[12]: http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/ "Apple's Pages, part of the new iWork suite"
+[13]: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex&_sc=1 "The XeTeX typesetting system"
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It still doesn't quite seem real. But I'm here, staying in the Marais, in what must be the smallest apartment ever made. </p> +<p>I used to stay in a very small apartment in the Village off 6th avenue which I thought was the smallest apartment ever made. But no. This French apartment is more like a railway sleeper car than apartment proper. Maybe fifteen feet long and only three feet wide at the ceiling. More like five feet wide at the floor, but, because it's an attic, the outer wall slopes in and you lose two feet by the time you get to the ceiling. It's narrow enough that you can't pass another body when you walk to length of it. And yet somehow in this space the French have managed to pack a kitchen, a twin bed, a large bookshelf and a shower. Due to the size and arrangement you can go to bathroom, sort your laundry and fry eggs at the same time. Not that you'd want to.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>But it's actually not a bad place. Livable for one, tolerable for about three hours with two. So long as the two are good friends. About two months ago I spent a week living on a 40 ft boat with six other people. In hindsight that was roomy and spacious. So I try to think of this place as a little ship in the vast sea of Paris, which makes it more fun. For those of you thinking, oh it can't be that small, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf/sets/1231279/" title="first Paris photo gallery">check out the pictures</a>.</p> +<p>Paris itself is lovely. I'm not exactly sure what to write about Paris because I feel like the only person that's never been here. I'm going to eschew the ‘I went here,' ‘I went there' stuff in favor of more eccentric observations. A couple of things of note… Paris is by far the quietest major city I've ever been in. At least the Marais is quiet at night in ways that New York can only dream of. French pre-packaged food is better than most of the restaurants I've eaten at in America. You can buy things like créme fraiche in little containers at any grocer. Try to even find pre-made créme fraiche in America. And that myth of wine being cheaper than water, strictly myth, though wine is cheap. In general though Paris is more expensive than New York. But like New York, you can live cheap if you know where to go.</p> +<p>Outside the obvious landmarks, the highlight so far has been the food. For those of you that don't know I've spent the last five years of so working in restaurants, so there may well be a good bit posted about food in the course of this trip. Sort of an obsession of mine. Last night we ate at a very traditional French restaurant, duck breast with poached figs, salade de epinard etc. One nice thing about having worked in French leaning restaurants is, while I may not understand much in the way of French, I can read a menu just fine. Of course I can't really order except with pathetic finger gestures, but at least I know what's being served.</p> +<p>Speaking of not speaking French, I haven't said much since I've been here. I say <strong>bonjour</strong> and <strong>merci</strong> to be polite, but I haven't gone much beyond that, which I feel a little weird about. The French are intimidating when it comes to language, I'm not sure why, they just are. And I'm not about to try English; I would feel much more comfortable trying to order something in Spanish than English. I feel guilty for speaking English, but then I have weird hang-ups about language so it may just be me. So far I've let L.S. take care of the talking since she's fluent.</p> +<p>I guess I'll indulge in a little itinerary repetition. Today we went to the <a href="http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Accueil.nsf/tunnel?OpenForm" title="Centre Pompidou - Art culture musee expositions cinemas conferences debats spectacles concerts">Centre Pompidou</a>, which is currently having a huge Dada exhibition. We're saving the Dada for a later day, but we did go to the <a href="http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/AllExpositions/8D0EA2C4889E5B13C1256FDA004E5FE8?OpenDocument&sessionM=2.2.1&L=2&form=ActualiteCategorie" title="Centre Pompidou - Big Bang">Big Bang</a> collection and saw some good stuff. <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=Cy+Twombly&hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en&sa=N&tab=ii&oi=imagest" title="Google Images - Cy Twombly">Cy Twombly</a> and <a href="http://www.basquiat.com/art.php" title="Some Basquiat Images">Basquiat</a> along with a few Picassos and some other good stuff by people I've never heard of. A lot of it was crap (i.e. overly intellectual with no soul, maybe crap is too harsh, just not my thing), but there was enough good stuff to make it worthwhile. </p> +<p>Then we caught a train out to <a href="http://www.paris.org/Expos/PereLachaise/pl.history.html" title="Paris Pages - Pere Lachaise Cemetery - History">Père Lachaise</a>, the famous graveyard. We managed to see <a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/apollina.htm" title="Guillaume Apollinaire">Apollinaire's</a> grave, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust" title="Wikipedia - Marcel Proust">Marcel Proust's</a>, and <a href="http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/wright_richard/" title="MWP: Richard Wright (1908-1960)">Richard Wright's</a> before we got kicked out because the cemetery was closing. Who knew graveyards closed? We'll have to try that one again. It's a massive, massive cemetery, there's no way you can see it in one day anyway. By the way, if you're into this sort of thing, it turns out there is <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gs&" title="Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records and Online Memorials">a search engine for graves</a>.</p> +<p>Well that's all for now, stay tuned. Also, we're looking to get out of France for an overnight, or maybe two-day excursion so if there's something you know of that you think we really should see, let me know in the comments below. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/living-railway-car.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/living-railway-car.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d00e3c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/living-railway-car.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Living In A Railway Car - 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'm in Paris, staying in the Marais, in what might be the smallest apartment ever made. 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It still doesn’t quite seem real. But I’m here, staying in the Marais, in what must be the smallest apartment ever made. </p> +<p>I used to stay in a very small apartment in the Village off 6th avenue which I thought was the smallest apartment ever made. But no. This French apartment is more like a railway sleeper car than apartment proper. Maybe fifteen feet long and only three feet wide at the ceiling. More like five feet wide at the floor, but, because it’s an attic, the outer wall slopes in and you lose two feet by the time you get to the ceiling. It’s narrow enough that you can’t pass another body when you walk to length of it. And yet somehow in this space the French have managed to pack a kitchen, a twin bed, a large bookshelf and a shower. Due to the size and arrangement you can go to bathroom, sort your laundry and fry eggs at the same time. Not that you’d want to.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>But it’s actually not a bad place. Livable for one, tolerable for about three hours with two. So long as the two are good friends. About two months ago I spent a week living on a 40 ft boat with six other people. In hindsight that was roomy and spacious. So I try to think of this place as a little ship in the vast sea of Paris, which makes it more fun. For those of you thinking, oh it can’t be that small, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf/sets/1231279/" title="first Paris photo gallery">check out the pictures</a>.</p> +<p>Paris itself is lovely. I’m not exactly sure what to write about Paris because I feel like the only person that’s never been here. I’m going to eschew the ‘I went here,’ ‘I went there’ stuff in favor of more eccentric observations. A couple of things of note… Paris is by far the quietest major city I’ve ever been in. At least the Marais is quiet at night in ways that New York can only dream of. French pre-packaged food is better than most of the restaurants I’ve eaten at in America. You can buy things like créme fraiche in little containers at any grocer. Try to even find pre-made créme fraiche in America. And that myth of wine being cheaper than water, strictly myth, though wine is cheap. In general though Paris is more expensive than New York. But like New York, you can live cheap if you know where to go.</p> +<p>Outside the obvious landmarks, the highlight so far has been the food. For those of you that don’t know I’ve spent the last five years of so working in restaurants, so there may well be a good bit posted about food in the course of this trip. Sort of an obsession of mine. Last night we ate at a very traditional French restaurant, duck breast with poached figs, salade de epinard etc. One nice thing about having worked in French leaning restaurants is, while I may not understand much in the way of French, I can read a menu just fine. Of course I can’t really order except with pathetic finger gestures, but at least I know what’s being served.</p> +<p>Speaking of not speaking French, I haven’t said much since I’ve been here. I say <strong>bonjour</strong> and <strong>merci</strong> to be polite, but I haven’t gone much beyond that, which I feel a little weird about. The French are intimidating when it comes to language, I’m not sure why, they just are. And I’m not about to try English; I would feel much more comfortable trying to order something in Spanish than English. I feel guilty for speaking English, but then I have weird hang-ups about language so it may just be me. So far I’ve let L.S. take care of the talking since she’s fluent.</p> +<p>I guess I’ll indulge in a little itinerary repetition. Today we went to the <a href="http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Accueil.nsf/tunnel?OpenForm" title="Centre Pompidou - Art culture musee expositions cinemas conferences debats spectacles concerts">Centre Pompidou</a>, which is currently having a huge Dada exhibition. We’re saving the Dada for a later day, but we did go to the <a href="http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/AllExpositions/8D0EA2C4889E5B13C1256FDA004E5FE8?OpenDocument&sessionM=2.2.1&L=2&form=ActualiteCategorie" title="Centre Pompidou - Big Bang">Big Bang</a> collection and saw some good stuff. <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=Cy+Twombly&hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en&sa=N&tab=ii&oi=imagest" title="Google Images - Cy Twombly">Cy Twombly</a> and <a href="http://www.basquiat.com/art.php" title="Some Basquiat Images">Basquiat</a> along with a few Picassos and some other good stuff by people I’ve never heard of. A lot of it was crap (i.e. overly intellectual with no soul, maybe crap is too harsh, just not my thing), but there was enough good stuff to make it worthwhile. </p> +<p>Then we caught a train out to <a href="http://www.paris.org/Expos/PereLachaise/pl.history.html" title="Paris Pages - Pere Lachaise Cemetery - History">Père Lachaise</a>, the famous graveyard. We managed to see <a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/apollina.htm" title="Guillaume Apollinaire">Apollinaire’s</a> grave, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust" title="Wikipedia - Marcel Proust">Marcel Proust’s</a>, and <a href="http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/wright_richard/" title="MWP: Richard Wright (1908-1960)">Richard Wright’s</a> before we got kicked out because the cemetery was closing. Who knew graveyards closed? We’ll have to try that one again. It’s a massive, massive cemetery, there’s no way you can see it in one day anyway. By the way, if you’re into this sort of thing, it turns out there is <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gs&" title="Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records and Online Memorials">a search engine for graves</a>.</p> +<p>Well that’s all for now, stay tuned. Also, we’re looking to get out of France for an overnight, or maybe two-day excursion so if there’s something you know of that you think we really should see, let me know in the comments below. </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/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go" rel="prev" title=" Twenty More Minutes to Go">Twenty More Minutes to Go</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/sainte-chapelle" rel="next" title=" Sainte Chapelle">Sainte Chapelle</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="11" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833489" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="97beea263bd2cdf744e90767bee75fa9b2aa09a1" 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 still doesn't quite seem real. But I'm here, staying in the Marais, in what must be the smallest apartment ever made.
+
+I used to stay in a very small apartment in the Village off 6th avenue which I thought was the smallest apartment ever made. But no. This French apartment is more like a railway sleeper car than apartment proper. Maybe fifteen feet long and only three feet wide at the ceiling. More like five feet wide at the floor, but, because it's an attic, the outer wall slopes in and you lose two feet by the time you get to the ceiling. It's narrow enough that you can't pass another body when you walk to length of it. And yet somehow in this space the French have managed to pack a kitchen, a twin bed, a large bookshelf and a shower. Due to the size and arrangement you can go to bathroom, sort your laundry and fry eggs at the same time. Not that you'd want to.
+
+<break>
+
+But it's actually not a bad place. Livable for one, tolerable for about three hours with two. So long as the two are good friends. About two months ago I spent a week living on a 40 ft boat with six other people. In hindsight that was roomy and spacious. So I try to think of this place as a little ship in the vast sea of Paris, which makes it more fun. For those of you thinking, oh it can't be that small, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf/sets/1231279/" title="first Paris photo gallery">check out the pictures</a>.
+
+Paris itself is lovely. I'm not exactly sure what to write about Paris because I feel like the only person that's never been here. I'm going to eschew the ‘I went here,' ‘I went there' stuff in favor of more eccentric observations. A couple of things of note… Paris is by far the quietest major city I've ever been in. At least the Marais is quiet at night in ways that New York can only dream of. French pre-packaged food is better than most of the restaurants I've eaten at in America. You can buy things like créme fraiche in little containers at any grocer. Try to even find pre-made créme fraiche in America. And that myth of wine being cheaper than water, strictly myth, though wine is cheap. In general though Paris is more expensive than New York. But like New York, you can live cheap if you know where to go.
+
+Outside the obvious landmarks, the highlight so far has been the food. For those of you that don't know I've spent the last five years of so working in restaurants, so there may well be a good bit posted about food in the course of this trip. Sort of an obsession of mine. Last night we ate at a very traditional French restaurant, duck breast with poached figs, salade de epinard etc. One nice thing about having worked in French leaning restaurants is, while I may not understand much in the way of French, I can read a menu just fine. Of course I can't really order except with pathetic finger gestures, but at least I know what's being served.
+
+Speaking of not speaking French, I haven't said much since I've been here. I say **bonjour** and **merci** to be polite, but I haven't gone much beyond that, which I feel a little weird about. The French are intimidating when it comes to language, I'm not sure why, they just are. And I'm not about to try English; I would feel much more comfortable trying to order something in Spanish than English. I feel guilty for speaking English, but then I have weird hang-ups about language so it may just be me. So far I've let L.S. take care of the talking since she's fluent.
+
+I guess I'll indulge in a little itinerary repetition. Today we went to the <a href="http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Accueil.nsf/tunnel?OpenForm" title="Centre Pompidou - Art culture musee expositions cinemas conferences debats spectacles concerts">Centre Pompidou</a>, which is currently having a huge Dada exhibition. We're saving the Dada for a later day, but we did go to the <a href="http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/AllExpositions/8D0EA2C4889E5B13C1256FDA004E5FE8?OpenDocument&sessionM=2.2.1&L=2&form=ActualiteCategorie" title="Centre Pompidou - Big Bang">Big Bang</a> collection and saw some good stuff. <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=Cy+Twombly&hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en&sa=N&tab=ii&oi=imagest" title="Google Images - Cy Twombly">Cy Twombly</a> and <a href="http://www.basquiat.com/art.php" title="Some Basquiat Images">Basquiat</a> along with a few Picassos and some other good stuff by people I've never heard of. A lot of it was crap (i.e. overly intellectual with no soul, maybe crap is too harsh, just not my thing), but there was enough good stuff to make it worthwhile.
+
+Then we caught a train out to <a href="http://www.paris.org/Expos/PereLachaise/pl.history.html" title="Paris Pages - Pere Lachaise Cemetery - History">Père Lachaise</a>, the famous graveyard. We managed to see <a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/apollina.htm" title="Guillaume Apollinaire">Apollinaire's</a> grave, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust" title="Wikipedia - Marcel Proust">Marcel Proust's</a>, and <a href="http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/wright_richard/" title="MWP: Richard Wright (1908-1960)">Richard Wright's</a> before we got kicked out because the cemetery was closing. Who knew graveyards closed? We'll have to try that one again. It's a massive, massive cemetery, there's no way you can see it in one day anyway. By the way, if you're into this sort of thing, it turns out there is <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gs&" title="Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records and Online Memorials">a search engine for graves</a>.
+
+Well that's all for now, stay tuned. Also, we're looking to get out of France for an overnight, or maybe two-day excursion so if there's something you know of that you think we really should see, let me know in the comments below. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/new-luddites.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/new-luddites.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3f505c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/new-luddites.amp @@ -0,0 +1,191 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The New Luddites</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/10/new-luddites"> + <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/2005/10/new-luddites"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Writing is participating in something bigger than you. 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This was written some time ago, before Google became, well, Google. I still think the Author's Guild was being ridiculous, but I'm no longer sure Google's motives were benign. I do still agree with this bit though: Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It's a contribution to the body of humanity's knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that.</p> +<p class="pull-quote">This post, along with a few others, is from the time before luxagraf was a travel blog. Back then it was just sort of a place for me to spout off on things I care about, in this case books. Consider yourself warned</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p><span class="drop">I</span>t might just be what I happen to read, but the big topic of late on this here internet seems to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-mediavore25sep25,0,185479.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions" title="You authors are saps to resist Googling - Los Angeles Times">the Author's Guild</a> <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/27/authors_guild_v_goog.html" title="Boing Boing: Authors' Guild v Google: opt-out is evil, except when we do it">lawsuit</a> <a href="http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003140.shtml" title="Lawrence Lessig's Take...">against</a> <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html" title="Google's Response to the Author's Guild Lawsuit">Google</a>. For those that haven't heard, the Author's Guild has brought a class action lawsuit against Google to try and stop Google from indexing scanned books. I am a writer and I make about half of my income from writing (the other half comes from programming) so I have a personal interest in the outcome of this lawsuit. That said, I really wish it wasn't happening. I really wish that we weren't so tied to money that it has come to this. Are writers, authors, and members of the guild, to say nothing of the music industry, really this stupid? </p> +<p>Here's the thing in plain English. Google wants to scan and index hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books, magazines and newspapers. Google understands that many authors might not want this to happen. They have thus provided an opt-out program. They set a deadline for this offer. Several authors protested the existence of the deadline, saying the opt-out should be available at any time. Essentially they're asking Google to expend the effort to index their work and then waste that effort and discard it. That doesn't even begin to make sense to me. If these authors are so concerned with their copyrights they out to be on the ball about and able to meet a deadline. </p> +<p>The irony is of course that the Authors Guild is suing on behalf of all their members (I.e. an opt out style), which in essence is the very thing they're trying to stop Google from doing. To the best of my knowledge there is no way for a member of the Authors Guild to opt out. At least Google gives you the option.</p> +<p>But the bigger issue is why do these writers care at all? Isn't being indexed by Google in fact a good thing? Won't that open an avenue for more people to discover their work? Such was my initial reaction, nicely and perhaps most eloquently expounded by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/opinion/28oreilly.html?ex=1285560000&en=aa457b249728c229&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss" title="Search and Rescue - New York Times">Tim O'Reilly in a recent NYTimes op/ed piece</a>:</p> +<blockquote> +<p>A search engine for books will be revolutionary in its benefits. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. While publishers invest in each of their books, they depend on bestsellers to keep afloat. They typically throw their products into the market to see what sticks and cease supporting what doesn't, so an author has had just one chance to reach readers. Until now.</p> +<p>Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now that just plain makes sense. So who objects to this and on what grounds? I've spent two days now digging around on Google (yes the irony is steak knife thick in my house) trying to figure out why these writers are opposed to Google scanning their work. And why the Author's Guild doesn't mind Google indexing the content of their website…</p> +<p>The argument, as best as I can follow it, seems to be that Google will be profiting and the authors will not directly. But as O'Reilly and others point out, that just isn't true. So what then? Why oppose this. The Author's Guild website (I refuse to link to it) talks a lot about people stealing my work and all the money I will be losing from that. So is Google going to profit off these works? Well that depends how you look at it. In some sense yes they are; they will of course do their usual ads amongst content to generate revenue. But I think the argument can be made that the success of the ads rest more on Google's service than on the individual works being indexed. That is, what will draw people in is the fact that Google is doing this; Google makes the service available. In other words, I think Google's name is a bigger draw than the authors themselves. I think Google could generate a handsome profit just working with public domain works. </p> +<p>This is the point at which I apparently part ways with a number of authors. I wholeheartedly agree with O'Reilly, and desperately hope that Google wins this suit. I would love to see some of my favorite authors raised out of obscurity, <a href="http://www.raintaxi.com/online/1998fall/stanford.shtml" title="Frank Stanford - Rain Taxi online">Frank Stanford</a>, <a href="http://www2.hawaii.edu/~spahr/syllabi/up98/mayer.htm" title="Bernadette Mayer">Bernadette Mayer</a>; <a href="http://slopeeditions.org/solomon.html" title="Laura Solomon, Bivouac">I could</a> <a href="http://bostonreview.net/BR30.2/sampler.html" title="Dorthea Lasky, in The Boston Review">point out</a> <a href="http://www.versepress.org/baus.html" title="The To Sound">great overlooked</a> <a href="http://www.versepress.org/nakayasu_so_we_have_been_given.html" title="Sawako Nayayasu, So We Have Been Given Time Or">writers all</a> <a href="http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2004/10/noelle-kocot-is-pen-name-of-noelle.html" title="Noelle Kocot">day long</a>. Most of their works are out of print and the publishing rights in the hands of people who either don't want to or can't afford to bring them out in print again. By indexing these works Google can hopefully introduce more people to their words. And that's the point of writing right? Communication? Or is it only about the money these days? Frankly I think writers ought to get down on their hands and knees and thank god that they live in the only century in the history of man where they can feed themselves by writing. And don't even try to say that's because copyright laws protect their work. It's because of the printing press and all the other technologies that have enabled the cheap production of printed books, not a bunch of laws written three centuries ago.</p> +<p>See, I write for webmonkey, which is owned by wirednews.com, which is owned by Lycos, which I believe is owned by someone else, who may in fact be owned by someone else. It's entirely possible that the chain is infinite. I write in a situation of built-in, absolutely guaranteed obscurity. The tiniest plankton in a vast ocean of money. The toilets seats in Lycos' office probably cost more than I do. Certainly no one at Lycos is sitting around thinking about how they can get my articles out to a wider audience. And that's fine, I don't expect them to, the articles have a limited audience by their very subject matter. It's entirely possible that my Dad is the only one who actually goes out and finds them. Most people that write me tend to start off saying, hey I stumbled across your article the other day, or I was search for <strong>__</strong> and ran across your article. In other words most people find me because of Google or other search engines.</p> +<p>Now this brings us to an interesting thing. Sometimes I forget what I wrote, so I go look for it again. Unfortunately Webmonkey's search powers are, um, well, pathetic. So I often have to Google a title to even find out the url so I can reread it. But when I do these searches interesting things happen. It turns out that a lot of sites reprint webmonkey articles. Some of them are probably within fair use guidelines, some of them are not. At first I was a little disturbed by this discovery. After all these people are earning ad revenue off of my writing. Of course my writing is in fact owned by Lycos, so I really have no claim or very little claim at best. Not enough money to worry about. But what if it were? Major print magazines pay in the neighborhood of a dollar or two per word, sometimes even more. But let's say for instance that my 3000 word article netted me $6000. Not only would my bank account be in much better shape (though the lump in the mattress might be a bit awkward for sleeping), I would in fact be even <strong>less</strong> concerned with other sites reprinting my work without compensating me. Only one site irritates me because it's trying to pass of my code as the authors own, but whatever, it happens. Move on.</p> +<p>I guess the question we have come down to is how much compensation is enough? And along with that comes larger questions, am I being paid for the writing, that is the act of writing, or am I being paid for the words I write? Do I own the act of writing or the words I've written? I don't know that anyone can own words. The whole notion of ownership seems a non-sequitur and a logical paradox… in the end I don't own the language, so what do I own—the order of the words? It's a labyrinth of circular logic. But I don't see the harm in Google indexing them and making them available to a wider audience.</p> +<p>In fact I think that Google's plan is wonderful and I wish they would go ahead and skip the authors that are against it and just use my stuff instead. I'd love to land ahead of some people in the old search rankings. I already see the upside of being reprinted. I've gotten several jobs based on the exposure I receive just from webmonkey reprinting them. In fact, averaged out, I would say each article I've written has led to at least one writing or programming gig. Exposure is a good thing. Never a bad thing.</p> +<p>Opponents of the Google plan claim that Google does not have the right to index the content. Probably these writers are also behind the Aerospace industries recent drive to start charging model airplane manufacturers for using actual diagrams to build scale models. I think both claims are insane. No one is trying to pass off your work as his or her own. Google is of course a company and companies make money, that's what they do, so I'm not so naive as to think that Google's motivations are pure. That said, I don't care what Google's motivations are, I think the idea is wonderful, the exposure helpful to both authors and readers.</p> +<p>See the thing is, without readers you aren't going to get any money whatsoever. This, as my friend likes to say, equals bad. Writers dream of living off their writing. Money is an unfortunate motivator, but a motivator nonetheless. I started writing for Webmonkey for the money. The idea of getting paid to write was intoxicating. But something funny happened along the way, I found that I got to meet lots of great people, and help them solve little programming problems. To this day I have only had one bit of negative feedback out of the 4000+ people that have contacted me over the years. And though I might sometimes be slow to respond, I do enjoy solving problems for people. And yes to money may still be a motivation, but it's not the only one, I have fun writing and I have fun responding to people. This might sound really lame, but it means a lot to me when people take the time to comment on something I've written, even if that something is a dry technical article on computer programming.</p> +<p>Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It's a contribution to the body of humanity's knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that. I have friends that are far better writers than I with books on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and they have never seen a dime. The fact that you could even make money writing would come as a shock to some of them. The Authors Guild is not acting on their behalf, it is not acting on my behalf, it's acting on the behalf of selfish, wealthy writers whose words the world would be better off losing anyway. My message to them is simple. Stop writing and become a banker, you're wasting the world's time and effort. My message to Google is, go forth, index all you want, give away pdfs if you want, just don't index the aforementioned writers, they don't deserve to be found, let them drift off into obscurity where they belong. I look forward to seeing their remaindered copies in the dollar bin.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/new-luddites.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/new-luddites.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c6ed09 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/new-luddites.html @@ -0,0 +1,380 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The New Luddites - 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="Writing is participating in something bigger than you. 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This was written some time ago, before Google became, well, Google. I still think the Author’s Guild was being ridiculous, but I’m no longer sure Google’s motives were benign. I do still agree with this bit though: Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It’s a contribution to the body of humanity’s knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that.</p> + +<p class="pull-quote">This post, along with a few others, is from the time before luxagraf was a travel blog. Back then it was just sort of a place for me to spout off on things I care about, in this case books. Consider yourself warned</p> + +<p><break></p> +<p><span class="drop">I</span>t might just be what I happen to read, but the big topic of late on this here internet seems to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-mediavore25sep25,0,185479.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions" title="You authors are saps to resist Googling - Los Angeles Times">the Author’s Guild</a> <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/27/authors_guild_v_goog.html" title="Boing Boing: Authors' Guild v Google: opt-out is evil, except when we do it">lawsuit</a> <a href="http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003140.shtml" title="Lawrence Lessig's Take...">against</a> <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html" title="Google's Response to the Author's Guild Lawsuit">Google</a>. For those that haven’t heard, the Author’s Guild has brought a class action lawsuit against Google to try and stop Google from indexing scanned books. I am a writer and I make about half of my income from writing (the other half comes from programming) so I have a personal interest in the outcome of this lawsuit. That said, I really wish it wasn’t happening. I really wish that we weren’t so tied to money that it has come to this. Are writers, authors, and members of the guild, to say nothing of the music industry, really this stupid? </p> +<p>Here’s the thing in plain English. Google wants to scan and index hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books, magazines and newspapers. Google understands that many authors might not want this to happen. They have thus provided an opt-out program. They set a deadline for this offer. Several authors protested the existence of the deadline, saying the opt-out should be available at any time. Essentially they’re asking Google to expend the effort to index their work and then waste that effort and discard it. That doesn’t even begin to make sense to me. If these authors are so concerned with their copyrights they out to be on the ball about and able to meet a deadline. </p> +<p>The irony is of course that the Authors Guild is suing on behalf of all their members (I.e. an opt out style), which in essence is the very thing they’re trying to stop Google from doing. To the best of my knowledge there is no way for a member of the Authors Guild to opt out. At least Google gives you the option.</p> +<p>But the bigger issue is why do these writers care at all? Isn’t being indexed by Google in fact a good thing? Won’t that open an avenue for more people to discover their work? Such was my initial reaction, nicely and perhaps most eloquently expounded by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/opinion/28oreilly.html?ex=1285560000&en=aa457b249728c229&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss" title="Search and Rescue - New York Times">Tim O’Reilly in a recent NYTimes op/ed piece</a>:</p> +<blockquote> +<p>A search engine for books will be revolutionary in its benefits. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. While publishers invest in each of their books, they depend on bestsellers to keep afloat. They typically throw their products into the market to see what sticks and cease supporting what doesn’t, so an author has had just one chance to reach readers. Until now.</p> +<p>Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now that just plain makes sense. So who objects to this and on what grounds? I’ve spent two days now digging around on Google (yes the irony is steak knife thick in my house) trying to figure out why these writers are opposed to Google scanning their work. And why the Author’s Guild doesn’t mind Google indexing the content of their website…</p> +<p>The argument, as best as I can follow it, seems to be that Google will be profiting and the authors will not directly. But as O’Reilly and others point out, that just isn’t true. So what then? Why oppose this. The Author’s Guild website (I refuse to link to it) talks a lot about people stealing my work and all the money I will be losing from that. So is Google going to profit off these works? Well that depends how you look at it. In some sense yes they are; they will of course do their usual ads amongst content to generate revenue. But I think the argument can be made that the success of the ads rest more on Google’s service than on the individual works being indexed. That is, what will draw people in is the fact that Google is doing this; Google makes the service available. In other words, I think Google’s name is a bigger draw than the authors themselves. I think Google could generate a handsome profit just working with public domain works. </p> +<p>This is the point at which I apparently part ways with a number of authors. I wholeheartedly agree with O’Reilly, and desperately hope that Google wins this suit. I would love to see some of my favorite authors raised out of obscurity, <a href="http://www.raintaxi.com/online/1998fall/stanford.shtml" title="Frank Stanford - Rain Taxi online">Frank Stanford</a>, <a href="http://www2.hawaii.edu/~spahr/syllabi/up98/mayer.htm" title="Bernadette Mayer">Bernadette Mayer</a>; <a href="http://slopeeditions.org/solomon.html" title="Laura Solomon, Bivouac">I could</a> <a href="http://bostonreview.net/BR30.2/sampler.html" title="Dorthea Lasky, in The Boston Review">point out</a> <a href="http://www.versepress.org/baus.html" title="The To Sound">great overlooked</a> <a href="http://www.versepress.org/nakayasu_so_we_have_been_given.html" title="Sawako Nayayasu, So We Have Been Given Time Or">writers all</a> <a href="http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2004/10/noelle-kocot-is-pen-name-of-noelle.html" title="Noelle Kocot">day long</a>. Most of their works are out of print and the publishing rights in the hands of people who either don’t want to or can’t afford to bring them out in print again. By indexing these works Google can hopefully introduce more people to their words. And that’s the point of writing right? Communication? Or is it only about the money these days? Frankly I think writers ought to get down on their hands and knees and thank god that they live in the only century in the history of man where they can feed themselves by writing. And don’t even try to say that’s because copyright laws protect their work. It’s because of the printing press and all the other technologies that have enabled the cheap production of printed books, not a bunch of laws written three centuries ago.</p> +<p>See, I write for webmonkey, which is owned by wirednews.com, which is owned by Lycos, which I believe is owned by someone else, who may in fact be owned by someone else. It’s entirely possible that the chain is infinite. I write in a situation of built-in, absolutely guaranteed obscurity. The tiniest plankton in a vast ocean of money. The toilets seats in Lycos’ office probably cost more than I do. Certainly no one at Lycos is sitting around thinking about how they can get my articles out to a wider audience. And that’s fine, I don’t expect them to, the articles have a limited audience by their very subject matter. It’s entirely possible that my Dad is the only one who actually goes out and finds them. Most people that write me tend to start off saying, hey I stumbled across your article the other day, or I was search for <strong>__</strong> and ran across your article. In other words most people find me because of Google or other search engines.</p> +<p>Now this brings us to an interesting thing. Sometimes I forget what I wrote, so I go look for it again. Unfortunately Webmonkey’s search powers are, um, well, pathetic. So I often have to Google a title to even find out the url so I can reread it. But when I do these searches interesting things happen. It turns out that a lot of sites reprint webmonkey articles. Some of them are probably within fair use guidelines, some of them are not. At first I was a little disturbed by this discovery. After all these people are earning ad revenue off of my writing. Of course my writing is in fact owned by Lycos, so I really have no claim or very little claim at best. Not enough money to worry about. But what if it were? Major print magazines pay in the neighborhood of a dollar or two per word, sometimes even more. But let’s say for instance that my 3000 word article netted me $6000. Not only would my bank account be in much better shape (though the lump in the mattress might be a bit awkward for sleeping), I would in fact be even <strong>less</strong> concerned with other sites reprinting my work without compensating me. Only one site irritates me because it’s trying to pass of my code as the authors own, but whatever, it happens. Move on.</p> +<p>I guess the question we have come down to is how much compensation is enough? And along with that comes larger questions, am I being paid for the writing, that is the act of writing, or am I being paid for the words I write? Do I own the act of writing or the words I’ve written? I don’t know that anyone can own words. The whole notion of ownership seems a non-sequitur and a logical paradox… in the end I don’t own the language, so what do I own—the order of the words? It’s a labyrinth of circular logic. But I don’t see the harm in Google indexing them and making them available to a wider audience.</p> +<p>In fact I think that Google’s plan is wonderful and I wish they would go ahead and skip the authors that are against it and just use my stuff instead. I’d love to land ahead of some people in the old search rankings. I already see the upside of being reprinted. I’ve gotten several jobs based on the exposure I receive just from webmonkey reprinting them. In fact, averaged out, I would say each article I’ve written has led to at least one writing or programming gig. Exposure is a good thing. Never a bad thing.</p> +<p>Opponents of the Google plan claim that Google does not have the right to index the content. Probably these writers are also behind the Aerospace industries recent drive to start charging model airplane manufacturers for using actual diagrams to build scale models. I think both claims are insane. No one is trying to pass off your work as his or her own. Google is of course a company and companies make money, that’s what they do, so I’m not so naive as to think that Google’s motivations are pure. That said, I don’t care what Google’s motivations are, I think the idea is wonderful, the exposure helpful to both authors and readers.</p> +<p>See the thing is, without readers you aren’t going to get any money whatsoever. This, as my friend likes to say, equals bad. Writers dream of living off their writing. Money is an unfortunate motivator, but a motivator nonetheless. I started writing for Webmonkey for the money. The idea of getting paid to write was intoxicating. But something funny happened along the way, I found that I got to meet lots of great people, and help them solve little programming problems. To this day I have only had one bit of negative feedback out of the 4000+ people that have contacted me over the years. And though I might sometimes be slow to respond, I do enjoy solving problems for people. And yes to money may still be a motivation, but it’s not the only one, I have fun writing and I have fun responding to people. This might sound really lame, but it means a lot to me when people take the time to comment on something I’ve written, even if that something is a dry technical article on computer programming.</p> +<p>Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It’s a contribution to the body of humanity’s knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that. I have friends that are far better writers than I with books on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and they have never seen a dime. The fact that you could even make money writing would come as a shock to some of them. The Authors Guild is not acting on their behalf, it is not acting on my behalf, it’s acting on the behalf of selfish, wealthy writers whose words the world would be better off losing anyway. My message to them is simple. Stop writing and become a banker, you’re wasting the world’s time and effort. My message to Google is, go forth, index all you want, give away pdfs if you want, just don’t index the aforementioned writers, they don’t deserve to be found, let them drift off into obscurity where they belong. I look forward to seeing their remaindered copies in the dollar bin.</p> + </div> + <div class="entry-footer"> + <aside id="wildlife"> + <h3>Fauna and Flora</h3> + + <ul> + + <li class="grouper">Birds<ul> + + <li>Allen's Hummingbird </li> + + <li>Black Phoebe </li> + + <li>California Gull </li> + + <li>Double-crested Cormorant </li> + + <li>Heermann's Gull </li> + + <li>Marbled Godwit </li> + + <li>Ring-billed Gull </li> + + <li>Western Gull </li> + + <li>Willet </li> + </ul> + </ul> + </aside> + + + </div> + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" > + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text" rel="prev" title=" New Adventures in HiFi Text">New Adventures in HiFi Text</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/tips-and-resources" rel="next" title=" Travel Tips and Resources">Travel Tips and Resources</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="9" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833490" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="602c8eba7b616145f1a6381af811e7a27650618c" 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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This was written some time ago, before Google became, well, Google. I still think the Author's Guild was being ridiculous, but I'm no longer sure Google's motives were benign. I do still agree with this bit though: Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It's a contribution to the body of humanity's knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that.</p>
+
+<p class="pull-quote">This post, along with a few others, is from the time before luxagraf was a travel blog. Back then it was just sort of a place for me to spout off on things I care about, in this case books. Consider yourself warned</p>
+
+<break>
+
+<span class="drop">I</span>t might just be what I happen to read, but the big topic of late on this here internet seems to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-mediavore25sep25,0,185479.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions" title="You authors are saps to resist Googling - Los Angeles Times">the Author's Guild</a> <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/27/authors_guild_v_goog.html" title="Boing Boing: Authors' Guild v Google: opt-out is evil, except when we do it">lawsuit</a> <a href="http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003140.shtml" title="Lawrence Lessig's Take...">against</a> <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html" title="Google's Response to the Author's Guild Lawsuit">Google</a>. For those that haven't heard, the Author's Guild has brought a class action lawsuit against Google to try and stop Google from indexing scanned books. I am a writer and I make about half of my income from writing (the other half comes from programming) so I have a personal interest in the outcome of this lawsuit. That said, I really wish it wasn't happening. I really wish that we weren't so tied to money that it has come to this. Are writers, authors, and members of the guild, to say nothing of the music industry, really this stupid?
+
+Here's the thing in plain English. Google wants to scan and index hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books, magazines and newspapers. Google understands that many authors might not want this to happen. They have thus provided an opt-out program. They set a deadline for this offer. Several authors protested the existence of the deadline, saying the opt-out should be available at any time. Essentially they're asking Google to expend the effort to index their work and then waste that effort and discard it. That doesn't even begin to make sense to me. If these authors are so concerned with their copyrights they out to be on the ball about and able to meet a deadline.
+
+The irony is of course that the Authors Guild is suing on behalf of all their members (I.e. an opt out style), which in essence is the very thing they're trying to stop Google from doing. To the best of my knowledge there is no way for a member of the Authors Guild to opt out. At least Google gives you the option.
+
+But the bigger issue is why do these writers care at all? Isn't being indexed by Google in fact a good thing? Won't that open an avenue for more people to discover their work? Such was my initial reaction, nicely and perhaps most eloquently expounded by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/opinion/28oreilly.html?ex=1285560000&en=aa457b249728c229&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss" title="Search and Rescue - New York Times">Tim O'Reilly in a recent NYTimes op/ed piece</a>:
+
+>A search engine for books will be revolutionary in its benefits. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. While publishers invest in each of their books, they depend on bestsellers to keep afloat. They typically throw their products into the market to see what sticks and cease supporting what doesn't, so an author has had just one chance to reach readers. Until now.
+
+>Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them.
+
+Now that just plain makes sense. So who objects to this and on what grounds? I've spent two days now digging around on Google (yes the irony is steak knife thick in my house) trying to figure out why these writers are opposed to Google scanning their work. And why the Author's Guild doesn't mind Google indexing the content of their website…
+
+The argument, as best as I can follow it, seems to be that Google will be profiting and the authors will not directly. But as O'Reilly and others point out, that just isn't true. So what then? Why oppose this. The Author's Guild website (I refuse to link to it) talks a lot about people stealing my work and all the money I will be losing from that. So is Google going to profit off these works? Well that depends how you look at it. In some sense yes they are; they will of course do their usual ads amongst content to generate revenue. But I think the argument can be made that the success of the ads rest more on Google's service than on the individual works being indexed. That is, what will draw people in is the fact that Google is doing this; Google makes the service available. In other words, I think Google's name is a bigger draw than the authors themselves. I think Google could generate a handsome profit just working with public domain works.
+
+This is the point at which I apparently part ways with a number of authors. I wholeheartedly agree with O'Reilly, and desperately hope that Google wins this suit. I would love to see some of my favorite authors raised out of obscurity, <a href="http://www.raintaxi.com/online/1998fall/stanford.shtml" title="Frank Stanford - Rain Taxi online">Frank Stanford</a>, <a href="http://www2.hawaii.edu/~spahr/syllabi/up98/mayer.htm" title="Bernadette Mayer">Bernadette Mayer</a>; <a href="http://slopeeditions.org/solomon.html" title="Laura Solomon, Bivouac">I could</a> <a href="http://bostonreview.net/BR30.2/sampler.html" title="Dorthea Lasky, in The Boston Review">point out</a> <a href="http://www.versepress.org/baus.html" title="The To Sound">great overlooked</a> <a href="http://www.versepress.org/nakayasu_so_we_have_been_given.html" title="Sawako Nayayasu, So We Have Been Given Time Or">writers all</a> <a href="http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2004/10/noelle-kocot-is-pen-name-of-noelle.html" title="Noelle Kocot">day long</a>. Most of their works are out of print and the publishing rights in the hands of people who either don't want to or can't afford to bring them out in print again. By indexing these works Google can hopefully introduce more people to their words. And that's the point of writing right? Communication? Or is it only about the money these days? Frankly I think writers ought to get down on their hands and knees and thank god that they live in the only century in the history of man where they can feed themselves by writing. And don't even try to say that's because copyright laws protect their work. It's because of the printing press and all the other technologies that have enabled the cheap production of printed books, not a bunch of laws written three centuries ago.
+
+See, I write for webmonkey, which is owned by wirednews.com, which is owned by Lycos, which I believe is owned by someone else, who may in fact be owned by someone else. It's entirely possible that the chain is infinite. I write in a situation of built-in, absolutely guaranteed obscurity. The tiniest plankton in a vast ocean of money. The toilets seats in Lycos' office probably cost more than I do. Certainly no one at Lycos is sitting around thinking about how they can get my articles out to a wider audience. And that's fine, I don't expect them to, the articles have a limited audience by their very subject matter. It's entirely possible that my Dad is the only one who actually goes out and finds them. Most people that write me tend to start off saying, hey I stumbled across your article the other day, or I was search for <strong>__</strong> and ran across your article. In other words most people find me because of Google or other search engines.
+
+Now this brings us to an interesting thing. Sometimes I forget what I wrote, so I go look for it again. Unfortunately Webmonkey's search powers are, um, well, pathetic. So I often have to Google a title to even find out the url so I can reread it. But when I do these searches interesting things happen. It turns out that a lot of sites reprint webmonkey articles. Some of them are probably within fair use guidelines, some of them are not. At first I was a little disturbed by this discovery. After all these people are earning ad revenue off of my writing. Of course my writing is in fact owned by Lycos, so I really have no claim or very little claim at best. Not enough money to worry about. But what if it were? Major print magazines pay in the neighborhood of a dollar or two per word, sometimes even more. But let's say for instance that my 3000 word article netted me $6000. Not only would my bank account be in much better shape (though the lump in the mattress might be a bit awkward for sleeping), I would in fact be even **less** concerned with other sites reprinting my work without compensating me. Only one site irritates me because it's trying to pass of my code as the authors own, but whatever, it happens. Move on.
+
+I guess the question we have come down to is how much compensation is enough? And along with that comes larger questions, am I being paid for the writing, that is the act of writing, or am I being paid for the words I write? Do I own the act of writing or the words I've written? I don't know that anyone can own words. The whole notion of ownership seems a non-sequitur and a logical paradox… in the end I don't own the language, so what do I own—the order of the words? It's a labyrinth of circular logic. But I don't see the harm in Google indexing them and making them available to a wider audience.
+
+In fact I think that Google's plan is wonderful and I wish they would go ahead and skip the authors that are against it and just use my stuff instead. I'd love to land ahead of some people in the old search rankings. I already see the upside of being reprinted. I've gotten several jobs based on the exposure I receive just from webmonkey reprinting them. In fact, averaged out, I would say each article I've written has led to at least one writing or programming gig. Exposure is a good thing. Never a bad thing.
+
+Opponents of the Google plan claim that Google does not have the right to index the content. Probably these writers are also behind the Aerospace industries recent drive to start charging model airplane manufacturers for using actual diagrams to build scale models. I think both claims are insane. No one is trying to pass off your work as his or her own. Google is of course a company and companies make money, that's what they do, so I'm not so naive as to think that Google's motivations are pure. That said, I don't care what Google's motivations are, I think the idea is wonderful, the exposure helpful to both authors and readers.
+
+See the thing is, without readers you aren't going to get any money whatsoever. This, as my friend likes to say, equals bad. Writers dream of living off their writing. Money is an unfortunate motivator, but a motivator nonetheless. I started writing for Webmonkey for the money. The idea of getting paid to write was intoxicating. But something funny happened along the way, I found that I got to meet lots of great people, and help them solve little programming problems. To this day I have only had one bit of negative feedback out of the 4000+ people that have contacted me over the years. And though I might sometimes be slow to respond, I do enjoy solving problems for people. And yes to money may still be a motivation, but it's not the only one, I have fun writing and I have fun responding to people. This might sound really lame, but it means a lot to me when people take the time to comment on something I've written, even if that something is a dry technical article on computer programming.
+
+Writing is participating in something bigger than you. It's a contribution to the body of humanity's knowledge and I think authors ought to respect that. I have friends that are far better writers than I with books on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and they have never seen a dime. The fact that you could even make money writing would come as a shock to some of them. The Authors Guild is not acting on their behalf, it is not acting on my behalf, it's acting on the behalf of selfish, wealthy writers whose words the world would be better off losing anyway. My message to them is simple. Stop writing and become a banker, you're wasting the world's time and effort. My message to Google is, go forth, index all you want, give away pdfs if you want, just don't index the aforementioned writers, they don't deserve to be found, let them drift off into obscurity where they belong. I look forward to seeing their remaindered copies in the dollar bin. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/sainte-chapelle.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/sainte-chapelle.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..84de297 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/sainte-chapelle.amp @@ -0,0 +1,179 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Sainte Chapelle</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/10/sainte-chapelle"> + <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/2005/10/sainte-chapelle"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Sainte Chapelle where the entire Bible is unfolding similtaneously in glass."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Sainte Chapelle"/> + <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/saintechapelle.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="Paris, France"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="FR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Sainte Chapelle" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/10/sainte-chapelle" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Sainte Chapelle where the entire Bible is unfolding similtaneously in glass." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-10-28T18:25:56" /> + <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/saintechapelle.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/stchapelle.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/stchapelle2.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Sainte Chapelle", + "description": "Sainte Chapelle where the entire Bible is unfolding similtaneously in glass.", + "datePublished": "2005-10-28T18:25:56", + "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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This feeling stems partly of course from the fact that I'm staying in an apartment rather than a hotel. </p> +<p>But add to that last night's dinner with Laura's friend Justine, and couple that with Laura being sick and it all adds up to a feeling of belongingness that leads me to believe that I live here. To which I should add, were it not for the language barrier, I could really enjoy living here. Paris is rather expensive, but in the end probably only a little more so than New York. Oh that and the little fact that the French wouldn't let me live here without tripping through some serious bureaucratic red tape. But were the world what it ought to be, I would move to Paris in a flash. Who knows maybe someday I will. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="St. Chapelle, Paris, France" height="225" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/stchapelle.jpg" width="300"></amp-img>Yesterday we went to see <a href="http://www.parisdigest.com/monument/sainte-chapelle-interior.htm" title="Paris Digest info on Sainte Chapelle">Sainte Chapelle</a>, cathedral from the 1240s, built by a brilliant architect that history apparently did not recorded. </p> +<p>But it's kind of great that know one knows who designed the building because it adds an air of anonymous grandeur to it. One obvious thing about the chapel's design, whoever did it, is it's intended to inspire fear and awe. Just daring to look upward at the ceiling induces a dizzying sense of vertigo. </p> +<p>The chapel was originally built to house what was supposedly the crown of thorns from Christ's crucifixion along with other relics that Louis the IX had purchased from the holy lands. No word on what became of those, though you have to wonder about a King who believed a crown of thorns would last 1200 years. Whatever the history of the place, Sainte Chapelle today is full of spellbinding stained glass, amazing and beautiful to watch the sun stream through. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="St. Chapelle, Paris, France" height="274" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/stchapelle2.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>The remarkable thing about it is that all that stained glass tells the entire story of the Bible in roughly one-foot square panels. It was interesting to see after the modern, conceptual art stuff at the Pompidou, since, as Laura pointed out, Sainte Chapelle felt quite conceptual. In a sense the entire Bible (i.e. all history from this perspective) is unfolding simultaneously, quite a so-called post-modern idea if you think about. And yet it was conceived and executed over 800 years ago. Kind of kicks a lot pretentious modern art in its collective ass.</p> +<p><break></break></p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/sainte-chapelle.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/sainte-chapelle.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fba34ad --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/sainte-chapelle.html @@ -0,0 +1,334 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Sainte Chapelle - 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="Sainte Chapelle where the entire Bible is unfolding similtaneously in glass."> + <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/2005/10/sainte-chapelle" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="48.85556694853056, 2.3452591892792514" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="48.85556694853056; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-10-28T18:25:56" itemprop="datePublished">October <span>28, 2005</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> feel strangely like I live here. This feeling stems partly of course from the fact that I’m staying in an apartment rather than a hotel. </p> +<p>But add to that last night’s dinner with Laura’s friend Justine, and couple that with Laura being sick and it all adds up to a feeling of belongingness that leads me to believe that I live here. To which I should add, were it not for the language barrier, I could really enjoy living here. Paris is rather expensive, but in the end probably only a little more so than New York. Oh that and the little fact that the French wouldn’t let me live here without tripping through some serious bureaucratic red tape. But were the world what it ought to be, I would move to Paris in a flash. Who knows maybe someday I will. </p> +<p><img alt="St. Chapelle, Paris, France" class="postpic" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/stchapelle.jpg"/>Yesterday we went to see <a href="http://www.parisdigest.com/monument/sainte-chapelle-interior.htm" title="Paris Digest info on Sainte Chapelle">Sainte Chapelle</a>, cathedral from the 1240s, built by a brilliant architect that history apparently did not recorded. </p> +<p>But it’s kind of great that know one knows who designed the building because it adds an air of anonymous grandeur to it. One obvious thing about the chapel’s design, whoever did it, is it’s intended to inspire fear and awe. Just daring to look upward at the ceiling induces a dizzying sense of vertigo. </p> +<p>The chapel was originally built to house what was supposedly the crown of thorns from Christ’s crucifixion along with other relics that Louis the IX had purchased from the holy lands. No word on what became of those, though you have to wonder about a King who believed a crown of thorns would last 1200 years. Whatever the history of the place, Sainte Chapelle today is full of spellbinding stained glass, amazing and beautiful to watch the sun stream through. </p> +<p><img alt="St. Chapelle, Paris, France" class="postpicright" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/stchapelle2.jpg"/>The remarkable thing about it is that all that stained glass tells the entire story of the Bible in roughly one-foot square panels. It was interesting to see after the modern, conceptual art stuff at the Pompidou, since, as Laura pointed out, Sainte Chapelle felt quite conceptual. In a sense the entire Bible (i.e. all history from this perspective) is unfolding simultaneously, quite a so-called post-modern idea if you think about. And yet it was conceived and executed over 800 years ago. Kind of kicks a lot pretentious modern art in its collective ass.</p> +<p><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/2005/10/living-railway-car" rel="prev" title=" Living in a Railway Car">Living in a Railway Car</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live" rel="next" title=" The Houses We Live In">The Houses We Live In</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="12" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833489" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="192c884c6bbaaa918b5b795136ddf2a06ebeba6e" 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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This feeling stems partly of course from the fact that I'm staying in an apartment rather than a hotel.
+
+But add to that last night's dinner with Laura's friend Justine, and couple that with Laura being sick and it all adds up to a feeling of belongingness that leads me to believe that I live here. To which I should add, were it not for the language barrier, I could really enjoy living here. Paris is rather expensive, but in the end probably only a little more so than New York. Oh that and the little fact that the French wouldn't let me live here without tripping through some serious bureaucratic red tape. But were the world what it ought to be, I would move to Paris in a flash. Who knows maybe someday I will.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/stchapelle.jpg" class="postpic" alt="St. Chapelle, Paris, France" />Yesterday we went to see <a href="http://www.parisdigest.com/monument/sainte-chapelle-interior.htm" title="Paris Digest info on Sainte Chapelle">Sainte Chapelle</a>, cathedral from the 1240s, built by a brilliant architect that history apparently did not recorded.
+
+But it's kind of great that know one knows who designed the building because it adds an air of anonymous grandeur to it. One obvious thing about the chapel's design, whoever did it, is it's intended to inspire fear and awe. Just daring to look upward at the ceiling induces a dizzying sense of vertigo.
+
+The chapel was originally built to house what was supposedly the crown of thorns from Christ's crucifixion along with other relics that Louis the IX had purchased from the holy lands. No word on what became of those, though you have to wonder about a King who believed a crown of thorns would last 1200 years. Whatever the history of the place, Sainte Chapelle today is full of spellbinding stained glass, amazing and beautiful to watch the sun stream through.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/stchapelle2.jpg" class="postpicright" alt="St. Chapelle, Paris, France" />The remarkable thing about it is that all that stained glass tells the entire story of the Bible in roughly one-foot square panels. It was interesting to see after the modern, conceptual art stuff at the Pompidou, since, as Laura pointed out, Sainte Chapelle felt quite conceptual. In a sense the entire Bible (i.e. all history from this perspective) is unfolding simultaneously, quite a so-called post-modern idea if you think about. And yet it was conceived and executed over 800 years ago. Kind of kicks a lot pretentious modern art in its collective ass.
+
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So here we go… everything added post-trip is in red. I updated a few things again in 2014.]</p> +<p>When I started planning for this trip I had no idea the volume of research it would entail. Every website of helpful information that I found led to ten more things I knew nothing about. Digging for information on travel insurance would accidentally lead me to investigate world phones which would then point me toward… you know how the internet goes. And goes and goes. The process was something akin to trying to pull one thread out of the world's largest ball of yarn. It was one of those searches that brings to mind the old saying that knowing what you don't know is more important than what you know. </p> +<p>With that in mind I started compiling links and outlining general topics based on my research. Eventually I decided that I would write it all down. Partly as a resource for you my dear traveler, but also partly so I wouldn't forget anything. </p> +<p>Naturally I can't cover everything in detail, but I thought I could cover the basics as I've encountered them. A lot of folks have written very helpful pages for would-be round-the-world travelers, but many links on those sites were out of date or pointed to products and services that were no longer available. Hopefully potential travelers will find this page helpful. I'll be updating it as time goes on and things become more or less relevant to me. This is really more of a resource than it is a review, but where appropriate I'll offer my opinions. Just keep in mind that this page is meant as an overview and where possible I have added external links to other resources that go into more detail.</p> +<h2>Guides, Flights, and General Planning Suggestions</h2> +<h3>Guidebooks</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="practical nomad" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/prac.gif" width="57"></amp-img>It wasn't long into my search that I ran across Edward Hasbrouck. Type “round the world trip” into Google and his name will pop up on the first page. Overwhelmed and tired of chasing down links that generated 404 errors, I decided to head to the bookstore and see if his book might be helpful. Hasbrouck's <em>The Practical Nomad</em> proved very helpful and so I bought it (online of course). This book is great for getting started. If you've long had a dim inkling that you <em>might</em> someday want to go around the world, this book will inspire you to get off the couch and start planning. It has tons of practical information for planning your trip, even tips on how to afford it. Hasbrouck will walk you through how to get deals, what to bring, what not to bring, how to travel, what to be concerned about, what you don't need to worry about, where/how to get visas, etc etc etc. <a href="http://www.hasbrouck.org/" title="Edward Hasbrouck, The Practical Nomad">Hasbrouck has a website</a> with <a href="http://www.hasbrouck.org/excerpts/index.html#RTW" title='"Excerpts from "The Practical Nomad'>a few of the chapters available</a>. <em>The Practical Nomad</em> quickly became an indispensable reference. </p> +<p>Once you have an idea of how you're going to pull this off, the next step is figuring out where you want to go. Once you know where you want to go, it's time to buy guidebooks. Do yourself a favor and head down to the actual bookstore. You can buy it online later if it's cheaper, but look guidebooks over carefully before actually purchasing any. </p> +<p>When searching for a good guidebook at you local bookseller, first look at each publisher's guide to your hometown or some place you have a local's knowledge of. See how the guide's description of your hometown and suggestions for what to do, what to see, where to stay etc, matches the reality of what you know. Of course a guidebook can't give you a local's knowledge of a place, but seeing how a publisher treats something familiar helps to give you some idea of how they're treating unfamiliar places. This isn't gospel by any means. No guidebook series has the same quality for every location. It may be that they cover your town really well and suck when it comes to Nepal. Or the opposite could be true as well. The quality depends on the authors and there are usually different authors for each location covered. Take my suggestion as a hint, not the final word. Believe me the guidebook section at Borders can be overwhelming, this tip might make it seem more manageable. [Note that it helps if your hometown is a major city, I grew up in and around Los Angeles.] Keep in mind that the turnaround time on a guidebook is roughly two years, so when you buy one the information is already two years out of date. </p> +<p>For my trip I ended up with a mix of <a href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/" title="Lonely Planet: travel advice and information">Lonely Planet Guides</a>, <a href="http://travel.roughguides.com/default.html" title="Rough Guides Travel">Rough Guides</a>, and <a href="http://www.letsgo.com/" title="Let's Go Travel Guides">Let's Go Guides</a>. They all have their strength and weaknesses, but all three are targeting budget travelers like me. They also all have websites (linked above). The sites themselves aren't that great, but each one has a forum section. If you devote the time necessary to wade through them, you can find tons of information from people that have been to your destination recently — in some cases you'll hear from people that are there right now. This is the best source for more up-to-date information than a guidebook can offer (especially for areas effected by the tsunami early this year).</p> +<p>I'd also like to say that a guidebook is great and it can help you plan, but don't plan too much. The more flexible you are the better your experience is going to be. Also, consider that the travelers you meet on the road are akin to kiosks of information, always listen to what others recommend. At the same time if you don't plan at all you're going to be overwhelmed and lost. Find a happy medium. Get an idea of what guidebooks suggest, check the online forums to see what others think and be open to the whims that strike you on the road.</p> +<p><span class="alert">I stand by all that, but I'll add a few things. All guidebooks suck at something so don't expect much. If it has good restaurant listings, its maps will suck and so on. Generally speaking I'd say skip the Lonely Planet Guides. Everyone you meet will have one you can glance at or borrow for a night (of course if everyone thinks that way…). The best deal I had with guidebooks was traveling with Matt and Debi. Matt had the Rough Guide to Southeast Asia which covered everything and Debi and I had individual country guides from Lonely Planet. The combination of the two gave us a nice cross referencing ability. Each had things the other didn't and we just combined the info. And I really think that's the best approach. When I leave for Central America in a few months I'll be toting the Rough Guide to Central America and first cute British girl with a Lonely Planet Guide will be my new best friend. Hopefully. </span></p> +<h3>Airline Tickets</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="AirTreks Travel Agents" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/airtreks.gif" width="90"></amp-img>Before you buy plane tickets for any trip I strongly suggest you read the airline section of <cite>The Practical Nomad</cite>. Airplane tickets were always a mystery to me and finding a good deal is something like conjuring spirits with voodoo. Hasbrouck's detailed explanation of the in and outs of how ticket prices work took much of the mystery out of the process. It helped me make sense of the pricing structures and see how to navigate through the terribly confusing waters of the airline industry.</p> +<p>After reading the aforementioned chapter I shopped around a lot for air tickets. Tons of online and offline research. Calling travel agents, scouring airline websites, wading through price aggregator websites, talking with recent travelers on message boards, you name it, I researched it. I ended up going with <a href="http://www.airtreks.com/" title="Affordable International Airline Tickets">AirTreks</a> for my plane tickets. They were extremely helpful in the planning of this trip and offered many suggestions for itineraries. They also put up with me continually postponing my payment. I never felt pressured or that I was being sold on something. If you qualify, <a href="http://www.statravel.com/" title="cheap student airfare deals and discount tickets to Student Travel Discounts, Cheap Tickets and Airfare Deals">STA Travel</a> may be able get you a better deal, but in terms of service and price for non-students I highly recommend AirTreks.</p> +<p><span class="alert">I stand by this as well. It sucks to get locked into flights way ahead of time, but the more you buy from home the cheaper it will be. I flew from Los Angeles to Paris, on to Dubai, on to Cochin, on to Kathmandu and finally to Bangkok for $1200. Coming home cost me $2000+ and I only stopped twice. Buy ahead. </span></p> +<p><span class="alert">That said I also suggest flying less. If I had it to do over again I would go from Delhi to Kathmandu by bus. Not that there's anything wrong with flying, it just isn't as fun. Some the best experiences I had traveling were horrendous road trips. Suffering is bonding. Learn to love it.</span></p> +<h3>Vaccinations</h3> +<p>Check the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/travel/" title="CDC guide to traveler's health">CDC's guidelines</a> for the areas you're going to visit and budget quite a bit of time and money for vaccinations. Hepatitis B for instance requires six months between shots to get full immunity. You get your first shot, wait a month and get another. Then six months after the first you get a third. Hep A is similar. None of my vaccinations have made me sick yet, though I do still have a couple to get. Beware that these are not cheap. Generally the cheapest place to get them is through county or city clinics. Check with your insurance to see if they'll cover them, if not, try your local public health service.</p> +<p>If you need malaria pills be prepared to fork over some serious dough. I need malaria pills for roughly 300 days. That's 300 pills. It's roughly $40 for 12 pills here in the US. You do the math. I bought 60 pills in Tijuana and am planning to pick up the rest in India. India never signed the international drug copyright act so they make generic drugs using the same recipes as American companies, but sell them at prices the third world can afford. India is an exception though, its medicine is very advanced. You may or may not be able to get Malaria pills in the places you are visiting.</p> +<p><span class="alert">Okay here we've entered total shit land. Get the basics, measles, mumps rubella, hep A and B and screw the rest of it. Unless you can get it for free. Then load up, hey why not. As for malaria pills… I took them for about a month (Malarone) and then just kind of stopped. Malaria just isn't that big of a deal most places. If you're going to get something it's probably going to be Dengue and there's no vaccine for that anyway. Bring about ten Malarone pills. If you do get malaria you can pop like four at a time for two days and supposedly that'll knock it out. And no that isn't a traveller's myth it's actually printed on the literature you get when you pick up your proscription. On the whole I wouldn't worry about it too much, you're much much more likely to hurt yourself in an automobile or motorcycle accident than you are to catch malaria. If you do think you have malaria get your ass to the nearest real hospital around. If you're in Southeast Asia, that means Bangkok, not, for instance, The Australian Medical Clinic in Vientiane.</span></p> +<h3>Passports and Visas</h3> +<p><strike>Get a US passport now before they put the RDIF chips in them. Head the post office for more details. It takes about two months to get one so plan ahead.</strike>. Too Late. Generally speaking most countries require you to have a passport that is good for at least six months beyond the dates of your intended travel. If you already have a passport, check to make sure that it doesn't expire anytime soon. </p> +<p>Visas are much more complicated. Check the procedures for the country you intend to visit. It's called Google. But be careful, there is generally no need to pay anyone to do this for you. Find the actual embassy's website for each country and get the forms yourself. And don't be an asshole. Remember that the country doesn't <em>have</em> to give you a visa. Make sure you fill out all the proper forms and find out if the visa is a stamped visa (in which case you have to send off your passport with your application) or a separate piece of paper (in which case you can usually just send a copy of you passport). Be a little wary of what you put on your visa forms. Atheists are often viewed with suspicion even more so than a Christian in a Muslim country. I put down that I'm Christian and my occupation is listed as chef, which seemed less controversial than writer. </p> +<p>Again time and money are issues here. Take care of this as soon as you can. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Well. Yeah I agree with that. It really depends where you're headed. For India you need one ahead of time. Thailand you just get a stamp at the airport. You can get a visa for just about anywhere in Southeast Asia from any old guesthouse in Bangkok. It does take a few days. And god forbid you try to get anything remotely official during Chinese New Year.</span></p> +<h3>Travel Insurance</h3> +<p>I don't have medical insurance. For whatever reason this doesn't bother me all that much when I'm in the United States (I'm willing to concede that this makes me an idiot). However, for the purposes of traveling I decided to get some insurance. Among the things you want to look for in the realm of medical coverage are, basic medical coverage, evacuation coverage (flying you home where necessary), emergency reunion (bringing a loved one to where you are) and my personal favorite, accidental death or dismemberment. In addition to medical coverage, the policy I purchased covers things like unexpected interruptions to travel (i.e. someone at home dies or needs you to return) and luggage lost in flight.</p> +<p>Above and beyond medical coverage you will probably want some standard travel insurance to cover you in the event your luggage is lost or stolen, the airline you're flying on goes out of business or a war breaks out in you destination country. It's even possible to insure high-end electronic equipment. In some cases these sorts of things are bundled with medical coverage in a package deal. For instance the policy I purchased covers everything I've listed so far except for the high-end electronic stuff and the cancellation of air tickets.</p> +<p>As with any insurance plan the cost is going to reflect how much stuff is covered. I looked at four different companies and all had similar coverage and prices. One thing to keep in mind is that these companies don't cover many things. For instance injury due to terrorism is generally not covered or costs extra. Injury due to what insurance companies call “high risk” activity are generally not covered at all. This high-risk category can contain many things that you and I would not generally consider high risk. Examples include rock climbing, scuba diving, and mountain trekking, none of which would be high risk from my point of view. And that doesn't mean you can't do these things, just don't expect to get covered when the reef shark bites your arm off.</p> +<p>The other thing to bear in mind is that most of these policies require that you pay for things upfront and then file a claim and they will reimburse you when it's approved. In other words the hospital in the country that is treating you is probably going to want payment. There isn't going to be the whole list your insurer and we'll bill them process you may be accustomed to in the United States.</p> +<p>I have two recommendations. First off the company I ended up buying insurance from is <a href="http://www.imglobal.com/" title="International Medical Group - IMG">IMGlobal</a>. You can download a sample policy from the website. I almost went with <a href="http://www.worldnomads.com/" title="Travel Insurance Online from World Nomads">world nomads insurance</a> and they seemed like a good choice, but they are an Australian company and though they say they have US offices I could never find a phone number for them. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Yeah the insurance thing sucks. It costs a bunch of money, but don't be an idiot get some.</span></p> +<h2>Travel Equipment - what I'm bringing</h2> +<h3>Osprey Transporter 60</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="Osprey Transporter 60" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/trans.gif" width="90"></amp-img> Despite the fact that I've done a good bit of traveling, I've never had a decent travel bag. I alternated between a full size backpacking pack and a beat up old duffle bag I got for free when worked at The North Face. The backpack is great, but covered in straps and buckles, which are at the mercy of baggage handlers. The duffle bag is also nice, but only has a shoulder strap. I decided this trip merited special luggage. After much online research a few trips to REI, I settled on the <a href="http://www.ospreypacks.com/" title="Osprey Packs, Inc. ~ 2005 Packs">Osprey</a> <a href="http://www.ospreypacks.com/travel/transporter.htm" title="Transporter Travel Packs">Transporter 60</a>. So far I've taken the bag on a week-long sailing trip and a two-week drive down the east coast. Having lived out of it for a total of three weeks I am very happy with my purchase. The Transporter has shoulder straps and a hip belt, both of which are comfortable under a moderate load. These straps then tuck away when you'd like to carry it as a handbag. There are also eye-holes for shoulder straps. The back of the Transporter is half inch foam padding which helps protect sensitive gear from injury. I should mention that the Transporter doesn't have wheels. Where I'm going there aren't really surfaces on which wheels would be practical, but if you're more a first world traveler, you might want to look at something that has wheels. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Okay, well. The osprey was a uh, mixed bag. Sorry. But yes I liked it because it's one giant cavern, no pockets to dig through. The suspension could be better, but the foam padded side saved my stuff a couple of times (Generally, when traveling by bus or truck, your bag will end up on top. Some strapping young lad will then cinch it down with rope. Usually by putting the full weight of his body on the rope and then tying it off. The effect on you bag is something like a cheese cutter. The foam helps.</span></p> +<p><span class="alert">I've since purchased a very nice bag, the <a href="http://www.eaglecreek.com/bags_luggage/adventure_travel_packs/Voyage-65L-10051/">Voyage 65</a> from Eagle Creek. It's easily the best travel pack I've owned, highly recommended.</span></p> +<h3>Sweetwater Purifier System</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="MSR Sweetwater Purifier" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/purifier.gif" width="90"></amp-img> Most people seem to go for bottled water when traveling in third world countries. There are two reasons this is stupid: price and ecological impact. Water in most the places I'm visiting/have visited is expensive. And the bottled water in foreign countries is not Aquafina. Most other countries do not have the regulations on bottled water that we in the West do, you may well be drinking tap water. Most of it is probably fine and I'll likely buy a few myself, but it's not fail-safe. More disturbing is the ecological impact. Constantly buying and disposing of water bottles has a tremendous ecological impact on the areas you visit. It increases the burden on a country's landfills, ends up on the street, in the river and floating in the ocean. Don't be an America idiot, bring your own water filter. I chose the <a href="http://www.msrcorp.com/filters/sweet_system.asp" title="MSR - Mountain Safety Research : Water Filters : Sweetwater Purifier System">MSR Sweetwater filter</a> with chlorine drops to kill viruses. I used to work for The North Face and when I decided to get a water filter this was the one I remembered. It's also the best. If you do research on this stuff keep in mind that there are <a href="http://www.rei.com/rei/learn/noDetail.jsp?URL=/rei/learn/camp/clwatertreatf.jsp&vcat=REI_SSHP_CAMPING_TOC#ORIG" title="Excellent REI article on water filtration versus purification">water filters and water purifiers</a>. If you're going abroad, you want a purifier. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Much as I would like to say I used the filter. I didn't. It won't be coming next time, though I stand by the reasoning for it.</span></p> +<h3>ALL NEW SECTION - stuff you don't need</h3> +<p>Mostly what I learned traveling is you don't need much. A pair of pants a pair of shorts, swim suit. Two shirts. Don't bother with t-shirts, just buy some when you're there. 3 pair underwear. 3 pairs of socks. Sandals or flip flops. Shoes. That's it. The best thing I brought was my Choco sandals. Pretty much lived in them and they have no wear to speak off (this is still true in 2014). My shoes, as noted elsewhere wore through the soles completely.</p> +<p>First Aid Kit. — Bring a few Band Aids (plasters if you happen to be from any part of once massive Commonwealth of Great Britain). Maybe so gauze. Aleve comes in handy when it's only 50 cents for 650 ml of beer. Everything else is a waste. If you hurt yourself get to real hospital. </p> +<p>A sewing kit is handy. Actually Lifehacker has a link to an article that puts together a little survival kit that fits in an Altoids tin, which would be handy. Next time I go my first aide kit and survival kit will all fit in an Altoids tin.</p> +<p>A List by an Amateur. Yes this was a list compiled by an industrious young woman whose identity shall be protected. But don't laugh because you would bring this crap too. So, to help you out, I've done a bit of editing.</p> +<ul class="list-debi"> +<li>Essentials + +<ul> +<li>Address book with important phone numbers. Upload to net.</li> +<li>Backpack</li> +<li>Insurance ? health/travel</li> +<li>Money ? card, converter, money belt, TCs, cash</li> +<li>Passport</li> +<li>Pencils, Pens </li> +<li>Padlock</li> +<li>Tickets and itinerary (airline, train, bus etc.) </li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>Clothes +<ul> +<li>Bras</li> +<li>Bikinis</li> +<li><strike>Fleece </strike></li> +<li><strike>Hat</strike></li> +<li><strike>Leggings</strike></li> +<li>Light jacket</li> +<li><strike>Trousers</strike> Not plural, just one.</li> +<li><strike>Sandals, shower shoes</strike></li> +<li><strike>Shorts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li> +<li><strike>Skirts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li> +<li>Socks</li> +<li>Sunglasses</li> +<li><strike>T-shirts</strike></li> +<li>Underwear</li> +</ul></li> +<li>Toiletries + +<ul> +<li><strike>Anti-bacterial cream/wash </strike></li> +<li><strike>Comb </strike></li> +<li><strike>Cotton buds </strike></li> +<li><strike>Dental floss</strike></li> +<li><strike>Deodorant </strike></li> +<li><strike>Earplugs </strike></li> +<li><strike>Face wash</strike></li> +<li><strike>Hair products (gel, spray etc.) </strike></li> +<li><strike>Lip balm </strike></li> +<li><strike>Blusher</strike></li> +<li><strike>Mirror </strike></li> +<li><strike>Moisturizer (face and body) </strike></li> +<li><strike>Razors </strike></li> +<li><strike>Shampoo and Conditioner </strike></li> +<li><strike>Shaving Cream </strike></li> +<li><strike>Shower Gel</strike></li> +<li><strike>Sunscreen and After sun cream </strike></li> +<li><strike>Tampons</strike></li> +<li><strike>Toilet bag</strike></li> +<li><strike>Toilet paper w. core out</strike></li> +<li><strike>Toothbrush</strike></li> +<li><strike>Toothpaste </strike></li> +</ul></li> +<li> + +First Aid Kit + +<ul> +<li><strike>Anti histamines</strike></li> +<li>Band aids</li> +<li><strike>Diarrhea tablets</strike></li> +<li>Insect and/or mosquito repellent</li> +<li><strike>Iodine</strike></li> +<li><strike>Paracetemol, Tylenol etc. </strike></li> +<li><strike>Pepper spray</strike></li> +<li>Replacement salts</li> +<li><strike>Vitamin pills </strike></li> +<li><strike>Infection cream/Hydrocoritsone</strike></li> +</ul></li> +<li> + +Other Items + +<ul> +<li><strike>Address Labels laminated</strike></li> +<li><strike>Batteries</strike></li> +<li>Books</li> +<li><strike>Bottled water </strike></li> +<li><strike>Cards</strike></li> +<li><strike>Camera, film and batteries</strike> Spare flash cards or memory for digital camera</li> +<li>Diary (where I come from we call this a notebook. I prefer the very popular <a href="http://www.moleskine.com/eng/_interni/catalogo/Cat_int/catalogo_notebooks.htm" title="Moleskine Catalogue">Moleskine</a> variety.</li> +<li>Duct Tape - okay but for the love of god not the whole roll. wrap some around something else you're bringing. Actually you probably don't need it, but you're talking to someone who held a radiator together for two months with duct tape and coat hanger. Seriously.</li> +<li><strike>Electrical adapter and plug converter </strike></li> +<li><strike>Fishing Line</strike></li> +<li><strike>Flashlight</strike></li> +<li><strike>Guidebooks </strike></li> +<li><strike>International Student Identification Card</strike></li> +<li><strike>Laundry detergent </strike></li> +<li><strike>Matches - storm</strike></li> +<li><strike>Mobile phone or SIM card </strike></li> +<li>Passport Photos</li> +<li><strike>Phone for Skype</strike></li> +<li>Photocopies of important documents in case they are stolen</li> +<li><strike>Pillowcase to stuff with clothes </strike></li> +<li><strike>Plastic bags </strike></li> +<li>Recharger for electrical items</li> +<li><strike>Rubber bands</strike></li> +<li>Sewing Kit ? needle, thread, safety pins</li> +<li><strike>Sleeping bag </strike></li> +<li><strike>Swiss Army knife </strike></li> +<li><strike>Towels </strike></li> +<li>MP3 player</li> +<li><strike>Watch</strike></li> +<li>Ziplock bags</li> +</ul></li> +</ul> +<p>I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, <em>hey, wait, some of that stuff is handy... like an electrical adapter and converter</em>. And yeah, you're right. You might want to buy that. Or course I bought a nice one in the states and it blew up in India. Then I bought one for 200 baht ($5) at a black market electronics market in Bangkok that lasted for five more months and it's still going strong in 2014. So you know… do what you feel is best.</p> +<p>And now a word about technological gadgets. I can now say, without jinxing anything, that you were wrong Todd. Wrong wrong wrong. My laptop will not disappear the first ten minutes I'm in India. In fact it won't disappear at all. In fact i'll leave it unattended on trains, buses, trucks, restaurants, shoddy guesthouses and all manner of other stupid places and it will never be stolen. In fact I worry more about it being stolen from the coffeehouse when I use the restroom than I ever did in Southeast Asia. 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-10-19T18:14:56" itemprop="datePublished">October <span>19, 2005</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>[Update 7/23/06 — I promised when I got back I would update this to fit with what I learned. So here we go… everything added post-trip is in red. I updated a few things again in 2014.]</p> +<p>When I started planning for this trip I had no idea the volume of research it would entail. Every website of helpful information that I found led to ten more things I knew nothing about. Digging for information on travel insurance would accidentally lead me to investigate world phones which would then point me toward… you know how the internet goes. And goes and goes. The process was something akin to trying to pull one thread out of the world’s largest ball of yarn. It was one of those searches that brings to mind the old saying that knowing what you don’t know is more important than what you know. </p> +<p>With that in mind I started compiling links and outlining general topics based on my research. Eventually I decided that I would write it all down. Partly as a resource for you my dear traveler, but also partly so I wouldn’t forget anything. </p> +<p>Naturally I can’t cover everything in detail, but I thought I could cover the basics as I’ve encountered them. A lot of folks have written very helpful pages for would-be round-the-world travelers, but many links on those sites were out of date or pointed to products and services that were no longer available. Hopefully potential travelers will find this page helpful. I’ll be updating it as time goes on and things become more or less relevant to me. This is really more of a resource than it is a review, but where appropriate I’ll offer my opinions. Just keep in mind that this page is meant as an overview and where possible I have added external links to other resources that go into more detail.</p> +<h2>Guides, Flights, and General Planning Suggestions</h2> +<h3>Guidebooks</h3> +<p><img alt="practical nomad" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/prac.gif" width="57"/>It wasn’t long into my search that I ran across Edward Hasbrouck. Type “round the world trip” into Google and his name will pop up on the first page. Overwhelmed and tired of chasing down links that generated 404 errors, I decided to head to the bookstore and see if his book might be helpful. Hasbrouck’s <em>The Practical Nomad</em> proved very helpful and so I bought it (online of course). This book is great for getting started. If you’ve long had a dim inkling that you <em>might</em> someday want to go around the world, this book will inspire you to get off the couch and start planning. It has tons of practical information for planning your trip, even tips on how to afford it. Hasbrouck will walk you through how to get deals, what to bring, what not to bring, how to travel, what to be concerned about, what you don’t need to worry about, where/how to get visas, etc etc etc. <a href="http://www.hasbrouck.org/" title="Edward Hasbrouck, The Practical Nomad">Hasbrouck has a website</a> with <a href="http://www.hasbrouck.org/excerpts/index.html#RTW" title=""Excerpts from "The Practical Nomad">a few of the chapters available</a>. <em>The Practical Nomad</em> quickly became an indispensable reference. </p> +<p>Once you have an idea of how you’re going to pull this off, the next step is figuring out where you want to go. Once you know where you want to go, it’s time to buy guidebooks. Do yourself a favor and head down to the actual bookstore. You can buy it online later if it’s cheaper, but look guidebooks over carefully before actually purchasing any. </p> +<p>When searching for a good guidebook at you local bookseller, first look at each publisher’s guide to your hometown or some place you have a local’s knowledge of. See how the guide’s description of your hometown and suggestions for what to do, what to see, where to stay etc, matches the reality of what you know. Of course a guidebook can’t give you a local’s knowledge of a place, but seeing how a publisher treats something familiar helps to give you some idea of how they’re treating unfamiliar places. This isn’t gospel by any means. No guidebook series has the same quality for every location. It may be that they cover your town really well and suck when it comes to Nepal. Or the opposite could be true as well. The quality depends on the authors and there are usually different authors for each location covered. Take my suggestion as a hint, not the final word. Believe me the guidebook section at Borders can be overwhelming, this tip might make it seem more manageable. [Note that it helps if your hometown is a major city, I grew up in and around Los Angeles.] Keep in mind that the turnaround time on a guidebook is roughly two years, so when you buy one the information is already two years out of date. </p> +<p>For my trip I ended up with a mix of <a href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/" title="Lonely Planet: travel advice and information">Lonely Planet Guides</a>, <a href="http://travel.roughguides.com/default.html" title="Rough Guides Travel">Rough Guides</a>, and <a href="http://www.letsgo.com/" title="Let's Go Travel Guides">Let’s Go Guides</a>. They all have their strength and weaknesses, but all three are targeting budget travelers like me. They also all have websites (linked above). The sites themselves aren’t that great, but each one has a forum section. If you devote the time necessary to wade through them, you can find tons of information from people that have been to your destination recently — in some cases you’ll hear from people that are there right now. This is the best source for more up-to-date information than a guidebook can offer (especially for areas effected by the tsunami early this year).</p> +<p>I’d also like to say that a guidebook is great and it can help you plan, but don’t plan too much. The more flexible you are the better your experience is going to be. Also, consider that the travelers you meet on the road are akin to kiosks of information, always listen to what others recommend. At the same time if you don’t plan at all you’re going to be overwhelmed and lost. Find a happy medium. Get an idea of what guidebooks suggest, check the online forums to see what others think and be open to the whims that strike you on the road.</p> +<p><span class="alert">I stand by all that, but I’ll add a few things. All guidebooks suck at something so don’t expect much. If it has good restaurant listings, its maps will suck and so on. Generally speaking I’d say skip the Lonely Planet Guides. Everyone you meet will have one you can glance at or borrow for a night (of course if everyone thinks that way…). The best deal I had with guidebooks was traveling with Matt and Debi. Matt had the Rough Guide to Southeast Asia which covered everything and Debi and I had individual country guides from Lonely Planet. The combination of the two gave us a nice cross referencing ability. Each had things the other didn’t and we just combined the info. And I really think that’s the best approach. When I leave for Central America in a few months I’ll be toting the Rough Guide to Central America and first cute British girl with a Lonely Planet Guide will be my new best friend. Hopefully. </span></p> +<h3>Airline Tickets</h3> + +<p><img alt="AirTreks Travel Agents" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/airtreks.gif" width="90"/>Before you buy plane tickets for any trip I strongly suggest you read the airline section of <cite>The Practical Nomad</cite>. Airplane tickets were always a mystery to me and finding a good deal is something like conjuring spirits with voodoo. Hasbrouck’s detailed explanation of the in and outs of how ticket prices work took much of the mystery out of the process. It helped me make sense of the pricing structures and see how to navigate through the terribly confusing waters of the airline industry.</p> +<p>After reading the aforementioned chapter I shopped around a lot for air tickets. Tons of online and offline research. Calling travel agents, scouring airline websites, wading through price aggregator websites, talking with recent travelers on message boards, you name it, I researched it. I ended up going with <a href="http://www.airtreks.com/" title="Affordable International Airline Tickets">AirTreks</a> for my plane tickets. They were extremely helpful in the planning of this trip and offered many suggestions for itineraries. They also put up with me continually postponing my payment. I never felt pressured or that I was being sold on something. If you qualify, <a href="http://www.statravel.com/" title="cheap student airfare deals and discount tickets to Student Travel Discounts, Cheap Tickets and Airfare Deals">STA Travel</a> may be able get you a better deal, but in terms of service and price for non-students I highly recommend AirTreks.</p> +<p><span class="alert">I stand by this as well. It sucks to get locked into flights way ahead of time, but the more you buy from home the cheaper it will be. I flew from Los Angeles to Paris, on to Dubai, on to Cochin, on to Kathmandu and finally to Bangkok for $1200. Coming home cost me $2000+ and I only stopped twice. Buy ahead. </span></p> +<p><span class="alert">That said I also suggest flying less. If I had it to do over again I would go from Delhi to Kathmandu by bus. Not that there’s anything wrong with flying, it just isn’t as fun. Some the best experiences I had traveling were horrendous road trips. Suffering is bonding. Learn to love it.</span></p> +<h3>Vaccinations</h3> + +<p>Check the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/travel/" title="CDC guide to traveler's health">CDC’s guidelines</a> for the areas you’re going to visit and budget quite a bit of time and money for vaccinations. Hepatitis B for instance requires six months between shots to get full immunity. You get your first shot, wait a month and get another. Then six months after the first you get a third. Hep A is similar. None of my vaccinations have made me sick yet, though I do still have a couple to get. Beware that these are not cheap. Generally the cheapest place to get them is through county or city clinics. Check with your insurance to see if they’ll cover them, if not, try your local public health service.</p> +<p>If you need malaria pills be prepared to fork over some serious dough. I need malaria pills for roughly 300 days. That’s 300 pills. It’s roughly $40 for 12 pills here in the US. You do the math. I bought 60 pills in Tijuana and am planning to pick up the rest in India. India never signed the international drug copyright act so they make generic drugs using the same recipes as American companies, but sell them at prices the third world can afford. India is an exception though, its medicine is very advanced. You may or may not be able to get Malaria pills in the places you are visiting.</p> +<p><span class="alert">Okay here we’ve entered total shit land. Get the basics, measles, mumps rubella, hep A and B and screw the rest of it. Unless you can get it for free. Then load up, hey why not. As for malaria pills… I took them for about a month (Malarone) and then just kind of stopped. Malaria just isn’t that big of a deal most places. If you’re going to get something it’s probably going to be Dengue and there’s no vaccine for that anyway. Bring about ten Malarone pills. If you do get malaria you can pop like four at a time for two days and supposedly that’ll knock it out. And no that isn’t a traveller’s myth it’s actually printed on the literature you get when you pick up your proscription. On the whole I wouldn’t worry about it too much, you’re much much more likely to hurt yourself in an automobile or motorcycle accident than you are to catch malaria. If you do think you have malaria get your ass to the nearest real hospital around. If you’re in Southeast Asia, that means Bangkok, not, for instance, The Australian Medical Clinic in Vientiane.</span></p> +<h3>Passports and Visas</h3> + +<p><strike>Get a US passport now before they put the RDIF chips in them. Head the post office for more details. It takes about two months to get one so plan ahead.</strike>. Too Late. Generally speaking most countries require you to have a passport that is good for at least six months beyond the dates of your intended travel. If you already have a passport, check to make sure that it doesn’t expire anytime soon. </p> +<p>Visas are much more complicated. Check the procedures for the country you intend to visit. It’s called Google. But be careful, there is generally no need to pay anyone to do this for you. Find the actual embassy’s website for each country and get the forms yourself. And don’t be an asshole. Remember that the country doesn’t <em>have</em> to give you a visa. Make sure you fill out all the proper forms and find out if the visa is a stamped visa (in which case you have to send off your passport with your application) or a separate piece of paper (in which case you can usually just send a copy of you passport). Be a little wary of what you put on your visa forms. Atheists are often viewed with suspicion even more so than a Christian in a Muslim country. I put down that I’m Christian and my occupation is listed as chef, which seemed less controversial than writer. </p> +<p>Again time and money are issues here. Take care of this as soon as you can. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Well. Yeah I agree with that. It really depends where you’re headed. For India you need one ahead of time. Thailand you just get a stamp at the airport. You can get a visa for just about anywhere in Southeast Asia from any old guesthouse in Bangkok. It does take a few days. And god forbid you try to get anything remotely official during Chinese New Year.</p> +<h3>Travel Insurance</h3> + +<p>I don’t have medical insurance. For whatever reason this doesn’t bother me all that much when I’m in the United States (I’m willing to concede that this makes me an idiot). However, for the purposes of traveling I decided to get some insurance. Among the things you want to look for in the realm of medical coverage are, basic medical coverage, evacuation coverage (flying you home where necessary), emergency reunion (bringing a loved one to where you are) and my personal favorite, accidental death or dismemberment. In addition to medical coverage, the policy I purchased covers things like unexpected interruptions to travel (i.e. someone at home dies or needs you to return) and luggage lost in flight.</p> +<p>Above and beyond medical coverage you will probably want some standard travel insurance to cover you in the event your luggage is lost or stolen, the airline you’re flying on goes out of business or a war breaks out in you destination country. It’s even possible to insure high-end electronic equipment. In some cases these sorts of things are bundled with medical coverage in a package deal. For instance the policy I purchased covers everything I’ve listed so far except for the high-end electronic stuff and the cancellation of air tickets.</p> +<p>As with any insurance plan the cost is going to reflect how much stuff is covered. I looked at four different companies and all had similar coverage and prices. One thing to keep in mind is that these companies don’t cover many things. For instance injury due to terrorism is generally not covered or costs extra. Injury due to what insurance companies call “high risk” activity are generally not covered at all. This high-risk category can contain many things that you and I would not generally consider high risk. Examples include rock climbing, scuba diving, and mountain trekking, none of which would be high risk from my point of view. And that doesn’t mean you can’t do these things, just don’t expect to get covered when the reef shark bites your arm off.</p> +<p>The other thing to bear in mind is that most of these policies require that you pay for things upfront and then file a claim and they will reimburse you when it’s approved. In other words the hospital in the country that is treating you is probably going to want payment. There isn’t going to be the whole list your insurer and we’ll bill them process you may be accustomed to in the United States.</p> +<p>I have two recommendations. First off the company I ended up buying insurance from is <a href="http://www.imglobal.com/" title="International Medical Group - IMG">IMGlobal</a>. You can download a sample policy from the website. I almost went with <a href="http://www.worldnomads.com/" title="Travel Insurance Online from World Nomads">world nomads insurance</a> and they seemed like a good choice, but they are an Australian company and though they say they have US offices I could never find a phone number for them. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Yeah the insurance thing sucks. It costs a bunch of money, but don’t be an idiot get some.</span></p> +<h2>Travel Equipment - what I’m bringing</h2> + +<h3>Osprey Transporter 60</h3> + +<p><img alt="Osprey Transporter 60" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/trans.gif" width="90"/> Despite the fact that I’ve done a good bit of traveling, I’ve never had a decent travel bag. I alternated between a full size backpacking pack and a beat up old duffle bag I got for free when worked at The North Face. The backpack is great, but covered in straps and buckles, which are at the mercy of baggage handlers. The duffle bag is also nice, but only has a shoulder strap. I decided this trip merited special luggage. After much online research a few trips to REI, I settled on the <a href="http://www.ospreypacks.com/" title="Osprey Packs, Inc. ~ 2005 Packs">Osprey</a> <a href="http://www.ospreypacks.com/travel/transporter.htm" title="Transporter Travel Packs">Transporter 60</a>. So far I’ve taken the bag on a week-long sailing trip and a two-week drive down the east coast. Having lived out of it for a total of three weeks I am very happy with my purchase. The Transporter has shoulder straps and a hip belt, both of which are comfortable under a moderate load. These straps then tuck away when you’d like to carry it as a handbag. There are also eye-holes for shoulder straps. The back of the Transporter is half inch foam padding which helps protect sensitive gear from injury. I should mention that the Transporter doesn’t have wheels. Where I’m going there aren’t really surfaces on which wheels would be practical, but if you’re more a first world traveler, you might want to look at something that has wheels. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Okay, well. The osprey was a uh, mixed bag. Sorry. But yes I liked it because it’s one giant cavern, no pockets to dig through. The suspension could be better, but the foam padded side saved my stuff a couple of times (Generally, when traveling by bus or truck, your bag will end up on top. Some strapping young lad will then cinch it down with rope. Usually by putting the full weight of his body on the rope and then tying it off. The effect on you bag is something like a cheese cutter. The foam helps.</span></p> +<p><span class="alert">I’ve since purchased a very nice bag, the <a href="http://www.eaglecreek.com/bags_luggage/adventure_travel_packs/Voyage-65L-10051/">Voyage 65</a> from Eagle Creek. It’s easily the best travel pack I’ve owned, highly recommended.</span></p> +<h3>Sweetwater Purifier System</h3> + +<p><img alt="MSR Sweetwater Purifier" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/purifier.gif" width="90"/> Most people seem to go for bottled water when traveling in third world countries. There are two reasons this is stupid: price and ecological impact. Water in most the places I’m visiting/have visited is expensive. And the bottled water in foreign countries is not Aquafina. Most other countries do not have the regulations on bottled water that we in the West do, you may well be drinking tap water. Most of it is probably fine and I’ll likely buy a few myself, but it’s not fail-safe. More disturbing is the ecological impact. Constantly buying and disposing of water bottles has a tremendous ecological impact on the areas you visit. It increases the burden on a country’s landfills, ends up on the street, in the river and floating in the ocean. Don’t be an America idiot, bring your own water filter. I chose the <a href="http://www.msrcorp.com/filters/sweet_system.asp" title="MSR - Mountain Safety Research : Water Filters : Sweetwater Purifier System">MSR Sweetwater filter</a> with chlorine drops to kill viruses. I used to work for The North Face and when I decided to get a water filter this was the one I remembered. It’s also the best. If you do research on this stuff keep in mind that there are <a href="http://www.rei.com/rei/learn/noDetail.jsp?URL=/rei/learn/camp/clwatertreatf.jsp&vcat=REI_SSHP_CAMPING_TOC#ORIG" title="Excellent REI article on water filtration versus purification">water filters and water purifiers</a>. If you’re going abroad, you want a purifier. </p> +<p><span class="alert">Much as I would like to say I used the filter. I didn’t. It won’t be coming next time, though I stand by the reasoning for it.</span></p> +<h3>ALL NEW SECTION - stuff you don’t need</h3> + +<p>Mostly what I learned traveling is you don’t need much. A pair of pants a pair of shorts, swim suit. Two shirts. Don’t bother with t-shirts, just buy some when you’re there. 3 pair underwear. 3 pairs of socks. Sandals or flip flops. Shoes. That’s it. The best thing I brought was my Choco sandals. Pretty much lived in them and they have no wear to speak off (this is still true in 2014). My shoes, as noted elsewhere wore through the soles completely.</p> +<p>First Aid Kit. — Bring a few Band Aids (plasters if you happen to be from any part of once massive Commonwealth of Great Britain). Maybe so gauze. Aleve comes in handy when it’s only 50 cents for 650 ml of beer. Everything else is a waste. If you hurt yourself get to real hospital. </p> +<p>A sewing kit is handy. Actually Lifehacker has a link to an article that puts together a little survival kit that fits in an Altoids tin, which would be handy. Next time I go my first aide kit and survival kit will all fit in an Altoids tin.</p> +<p>A List by an Amateur. Yes this was a list compiled by an industrious young woman whose identity shall be protected. But don’t laugh because you would bring this crap too. So, to help you out, I’ve done a bit of editing.</p> +<ul class="list-debi"> + +<li>Essentials + +<ul> + +<li>Address book with important phone numbers. Upload to net.</li> + +<li>Backpack</li> + +<li>Insurance ? health/travel</li> + +<li>Money ? card, converter, money belt, TCs, cash</li> + +<li>Passport</li> + +<li>Pencils, Pens </li> + +<li>Padlock</li> + +<li>Tickets and itinerary (airline, train, bus etc.) </li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Clothes +<ul> + +<li>Bras</li> + +<li>Bikinis</li> + +<li><strike>Fleece </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Hat</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Leggings</strike></li> + +<li>Light jacket</li> + +<li><strike>Trousers</strike> Not plural, just one.</li> + +<li><strike>Sandals, shower shoes</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Shorts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li> + +<li><strike>Skirts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li> + +<li>Socks</li> + +<li>Sunglasses</li> + +<li><strike>T-shirts</strike></li> + +<li>Underwear</li> + +</ul></li> + +<li>Toiletries + +<ul> + +<li><strike>Anti-bacterial cream/wash </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Comb </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Cotton buds </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Dental floss</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Deodorant </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Earplugs </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Face wash</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Hair products (gel, spray etc.) </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Lip balm </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Blusher</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Mirror </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Moisturizer (face and body) </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Razors </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Shampoo and Conditioner </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Shaving Cream </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Shower Gel</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Sunscreen and After sun cream </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Tampons</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Toilet bag</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Toilet paper w. core out</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Toothbrush</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Toothpaste </strike></li> + +</ul></li> + +<li> + +First Aid Kit + +<ul> + +<li><strike>Anti histamines</strike></li> + +<li>Band aids</li> + +<li><strike>Diarrhea tablets</strike></li> + +<li>Insect and/or mosquito repellent</li> + +<li><strike>Iodine</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Paracetemol, Tylenol etc. </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Pepper spray</strike></li> + +<li>Replacement salts</li> + +<li><strike>Vitamin pills </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Infection cream/Hydrocoritsone</strike></li> + +</ul></li> + +<li> + +Other Items + +<ul> + +<li><strike>Address Labels laminated</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Batteries</strike></li> + +<li>Books</li> + +<li><strike>Bottled water </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Cards</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Camera, film and batteries</strike> Spare flash cards or memory for digital camera</li> + +<li>Diary (where I come from we call this a notebook. I prefer the very popular <a href="http://www.moleskine.com/eng/_interni/catalogo/Cat_int/catalogo_notebooks.htm" title="Moleskine Catalogue">Moleskine</a> variety.</li> + +<li>Duct Tape - okay but for the love of god not the whole roll. wrap some around something else you’re bringing. Actually you probably don’t need it, but you’re talking to someone who held a radiator together for two months with duct tape and coat hanger. Seriously.</li> + +<li><strike>Electrical adapter and plug converter </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Fishing Line</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Flashlight</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Guidebooks </strike></li> + +<li><strike>International Student Identification Card</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Laundry detergent </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Matches - storm</strike></li> + +<li><strike>Mobile phone or SIM card </strike></li> + +<li>Passport Photos</li> + +<li><strike>Phone for Skype</strike></li> + +<li>Photocopies of important documents in case they are stolen</li> + +<li><strike>Pillowcase to stuff with clothes </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Plastic bags </strike></li> + +<li>Recharger for electrical items</li> + +<li><strike>Rubber bands</strike></li> + +<li>Sewing Kit ? needle, thread, safety pins</li> + +<li><strike>Sleeping bag </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Swiss Army knife </strike></li> + +<li><strike>Towels </strike></li> + +<li>MP3 player</li> + +<li><strike>Watch</strike></li> + +<li>Ziplock bags</li> + +</ul></li> + +</ul> + +<p>I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, <em>hey, wait, some of that stuff is handy… like an electrical adapter and converter</em>. And yeah, you’re right. You might want to buy that. Or course I bought a nice one in the states and it blew up in India. Then I bought one for 200 baht ($5) at a black market electronics market in Bangkok that lasted for five more months and it’s still going strong in 2014. So you know… do what you feel is best.</p> +<p>And now a word about technological gadgets. I can now say, without jinxing anything, that you were wrong Todd. Wrong wrong wrong. My laptop will not disappear the first ten minutes I’m in India. In fact it won’t disappear at all. In fact i’ll leave it unattended on trains, buses, trucks, restaurants, shoddy guesthouses and all manner of other stupid places and it will never be stolen. In fact I worry more about it being stolen from the coffeehouse when I use the restroom than I ever did in Southeast Asia. [Historical note: in 2005 traveling with a laptop was a rarity.]</p> + </div> + <div class="entry-footer"> + <aside id="wildlife"> + <h3>Fauna and Flora</h3> + + <ul> + + <li class="grouper">Birds<ul> + + <li>Allen's Hummingbird </li> + + <li>Black Phoebe </li> + + <li>California Gull </li> + + <li>Double-crested Cormorant </li> + + <li>Heermann's Gull </li> + + <li>Marbled Godwit </li> + + <li>Ring-billed Gull </li> + + <li>Western Gull </li> + + <li>Willet </li> + </ul> + </ul> + </aside> + + + </div> + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" > + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/new-luddites" rel="prev" title=" The New Luddites">The New Luddites</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go" rel="next" title=" Twenty More Minutes to Go">Twenty More Minutes to Go</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'); 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So here we go… everything added post-trip is in red. I updated a few things again in 2014.]
+
+When I started planning for this trip I had no idea the volume of research it would entail. Every website of helpful information that I found led to ten more things I knew nothing about. Digging for information on travel insurance would accidentally lead me to investigate world phones which would then point me toward… you know how the internet goes. And goes and goes. The process was something akin to trying to pull one thread out of the world's largest ball of yarn. It was one of those searches that brings to mind the old saying that knowing what you don't know is more important than what you know.
+
+With that in mind I started compiling links and outlining general topics based on my research. Eventually I decided that I would write it all down. Partly as a resource for you my dear traveler, but also partly so I wouldn't forget anything.
+
+Naturally I can't cover everything in detail, but I thought I could cover the basics as I've encountered them. A lot of folks have written very helpful pages for would-be round-the-world travelers, but many links on those sites were out of date or pointed to products and services that were no longer available. Hopefully potential travelers will find this page helpful. I'll be updating it as time goes on and things become more or less relevant to me. This is really more of a resource than it is a review, but where appropriate I'll offer my opinions. Just keep in mind that this page is meant as an overview and where possible I have added external links to other resources that go into more detail.
+
+##Guides, Flights, and General Planning Suggestions
+
+###Guidebooks
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/prac.gif" width="57" height="90" class="postpic" alt="practical nomad" />It wasn't long into my search that I ran across Edward Hasbrouck. Type “round the world trip” into Google and his name will pop up on the first page. Overwhelmed and tired of chasing down links that generated 404 errors, I decided to head to the bookstore and see if his book might be helpful. Hasbrouck's <em>The Practical Nomad</em> proved very helpful and so I bought it (online of course). This book is great for getting started. If you've long had a dim inkling that you <em>might</em> someday want to go around the world, this book will inspire you to get off the couch and start planning. It has tons of practical information for planning your trip, even tips on how to afford it. Hasbrouck will walk you through how to get deals, what to bring, what not to bring, how to travel, what to be concerned about, what you don't need to worry about, where/how to get visas, etc etc etc. <a href="http://www.hasbrouck.org/" title="Edward Hasbrouck, The Practical Nomad">Hasbrouck has a website</a> with <a href="http://www.hasbrouck.org/excerpts/index.html#RTW" title=""Excerpts from "The Practical Nomad">a few of the chapters available</a>. <em>The Practical Nomad</em> quickly became an indispensable reference.
+
+Once you have an idea of how you're going to pull this off, the next step is figuring out where you want to go. Once you know where you want to go, it's time to buy guidebooks. Do yourself a favor and head down to the actual bookstore. You can buy it online later if it's cheaper, but look guidebooks over carefully before actually purchasing any.
+
+When searching for a good guidebook at you local bookseller, first look at each publisher's guide to your hometown or some place you have a local's knowledge of. See how the guide's description of your hometown and suggestions for what to do, what to see, where to stay etc, matches the reality of what you know. Of course a guidebook can't give you a local's knowledge of a place, but seeing how a publisher treats something familiar helps to give you some idea of how they're treating unfamiliar places. This isn't gospel by any means. No guidebook series has the same quality for every location. It may be that they cover your town really well and suck when it comes to Nepal. Or the opposite could be true as well. The quality depends on the authors and there are usually different authors for each location covered. Take my suggestion as a hint, not the final word. Believe me the guidebook section at Borders can be overwhelming, this tip might make it seem more manageable. [Note that it helps if your hometown is a major city, I grew up in and around Los Angeles.] Keep in mind that the turnaround time on a guidebook is roughly two years, so when you buy one the information is already two years out of date.
+
+For my trip I ended up with a mix of <a href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/" title="Lonely Planet: travel advice and information">Lonely Planet Guides</a>, <a href="http://travel.roughguides.com/default.html" title="Rough Guides Travel">Rough Guides</a>, and <a href="http://www.letsgo.com/" title="Let's Go Travel Guides">Let's Go Guides</a>. They all have their strength and weaknesses, but all three are targeting budget travelers like me. They also all have websites (linked above). The sites themselves aren't that great, but each one has a forum section. If you devote the time necessary to wade through them, you can find tons of information from people that have been to your destination recently — in some cases you'll hear from people that are there right now. This is the best source for more up-to-date information than a guidebook can offer (especially for areas effected by the tsunami early this year).
+
+I'd also like to say that a guidebook is great and it can help you plan, but don't plan too much. The more flexible you are the better your experience is going to be. Also, consider that the travelers you meet on the road are akin to kiosks of information, always listen to what others recommend. At the same time if you don't plan at all you're going to be overwhelmed and lost. Find a happy medium. Get an idea of what guidebooks suggest, check the online forums to see what others think and be open to the whims that strike you on the road.
+
+<span class="alert">I stand by all that, but I'll add a few things. All guidebooks suck at something so don't expect much. If it has good restaurant listings, its maps will suck and so on. Generally speaking I'd say skip the Lonely Planet Guides. Everyone you meet will have one you can glance at or borrow for a night (of course if everyone thinks that way…). The best deal I had with guidebooks was traveling with Matt and Debi. Matt had the Rough Guide to Southeast Asia which covered everything and Debi and I had individual country guides from Lonely Planet. The combination of the two gave us a nice cross referencing ability. Each had things the other didn't and we just combined the info. And I really think that's the best approach. When I leave for Central America in a few months I'll be toting the Rough Guide to Central America and first cute British girl with a Lonely Planet Guide will be my new best friend. Hopefully. </span>
+
+<h3>Airline Tickets</h3>
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/airtreks.gif" width="90" height="90" class="postpic" alt="AirTreks Travel Agents" />Before you buy plane tickets for any trip I strongly suggest you read the airline section of <cite>The Practical Nomad</cite>. Airplane tickets were always a mystery to me and finding a good deal is something like conjuring spirits with voodoo. Hasbrouck's detailed explanation of the in and outs of how ticket prices work took much of the mystery out of the process. It helped me make sense of the pricing structures and see how to navigate through the terribly confusing waters of the airline industry.
+
+After reading the aforementioned chapter I shopped around a lot for air tickets. Tons of online and offline research. Calling travel agents, scouring airline websites, wading through price aggregator websites, talking with recent travelers on message boards, you name it, I researched it. I ended up going with <a href="http://www.airtreks.com/" title="Affordable International Airline Tickets">AirTreks</a> for my plane tickets. They were extremely helpful in the planning of this trip and offered many suggestions for itineraries. They also put up with me continually postponing my payment. I never felt pressured or that I was being sold on something. If you qualify, <a href="http://www.statravel.com/" title="cheap student airfare deals and discount tickets to Student Travel Discounts, Cheap Tickets and Airfare Deals">STA Travel</a> may be able get you a better deal, but in terms of service and price for non-students I highly recommend AirTreks.
+
+<span class="alert">I stand by this as well. It sucks to get locked into flights way ahead of time, but the more you buy from home the cheaper it will be. I flew from Los Angeles to Paris, on to Dubai, on to Cochin, on to Kathmandu and finally to Bangkok for $1200. Coming home cost me $2000+ and I only stopped twice. Buy ahead. </span>
+
+<span class="alert">That said I also suggest flying less. If I had it to do over again I would go from Delhi to Kathmandu by bus. Not that there's anything wrong with flying, it just isn't as fun. Some the best experiences I had traveling were horrendous road trips. Suffering is bonding. Learn to love it.</span>
+
+<h3>Vaccinations</h3>
+
+Check the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/travel/" title="CDC guide to traveler's health">CDC's guidelines</a> for the areas you're going to visit and budget quite a bit of time and money for vaccinations. Hepatitis B for instance requires six months between shots to get full immunity. You get your first shot, wait a month and get another. Then six months after the first you get a third. Hep A is similar. None of my vaccinations have made me sick yet, though I do still have a couple to get. Beware that these are not cheap. Generally the cheapest place to get them is through county or city clinics. Check with your insurance to see if they'll cover them, if not, try your local public health service.
+
+If you need malaria pills be prepared to fork over some serious dough. I need malaria pills for roughly 300 days. That's 300 pills. It's roughly $40 for 12 pills here in the US. You do the math. I bought 60 pills in Tijuana and am planning to pick up the rest in India. India never signed the international drug copyright act so they make generic drugs using the same recipes as American companies, but sell them at prices the third world can afford. India is an exception though, its medicine is very advanced. You may or may not be able to get Malaria pills in the places you are visiting.
+
+<span class="alert">Okay here we've entered total shit land. Get the basics, measles, mumps rubella, hep A and B and screw the rest of it. Unless you can get it for free. Then load up, hey why not. As for malaria pills… I took them for about a month (Malarone) and then just kind of stopped. Malaria just isn't that big of a deal most places. If you're going to get something it's probably going to be Dengue and there's no vaccine for that anyway. Bring about ten Malarone pills. If you do get malaria you can pop like four at a time for two days and supposedly that'll knock it out. And no that isn't a traveller's myth it's actually printed on the literature you get when you pick up your proscription. On the whole I wouldn't worry about it too much, you're much much more likely to hurt yourself in an automobile or motorcycle accident than you are to catch malaria. If you do think you have malaria get your ass to the nearest real hospital around. If you're in Southeast Asia, that means Bangkok, not, for instance, The Australian Medical Clinic in Vientiane.</span>
+
+<h3>Passports and Visas</h3>
+
+<strike>Get a US passport now before they put the RDIF chips in them. Head the post office for more details. It takes about two months to get one so plan ahead.</strike>. Too Late. Generally speaking most countries require you to have a passport that is good for at least six months beyond the dates of your intended travel. If you already have a passport, check to make sure that it doesn't expire anytime soon.
+
+Visas are much more complicated. Check the procedures for the country you intend to visit. It's called Google. But be careful, there is generally no need to pay anyone to do this for you. Find the actual embassy's website for each country and get the forms yourself. And don't be an asshole. Remember that the country doesn't <em>have</em> to give you a visa. Make sure you fill out all the proper forms and find out if the visa is a stamped visa (in which case you have to send off your passport with your application) or a separate piece of paper (in which case you can usually just send a copy of you passport). Be a little wary of what you put on your visa forms. Atheists are often viewed with suspicion even more so than a Christian in a Muslim country. I put down that I'm Christian and my occupation is listed as chef, which seemed less controversial than writer.
+
+Again time and money are issues here. Take care of this as soon as you can.
+
+<span class="alert">Well. Yeah I agree with that. It really depends where you're headed. For India you need one ahead of time. Thailand you just get a stamp at the airport. You can get a visa for just about anywhere in Southeast Asia from any old guesthouse in Bangkok. It does take a few days. And god forbid you try to get anything remotely official during Chinese New Year.
+
+<h3>Travel Insurance</h3>
+
+I don't have medical insurance. For whatever reason this doesn't bother me all that much when I'm in the United States (I'm willing to concede that this makes me an idiot). However, for the purposes of traveling I decided to get some insurance. Among the things you want to look for in the realm of medical coverage are, basic medical coverage, evacuation coverage (flying you home where necessary), emergency reunion (bringing a loved one to where you are) and my personal favorite, accidental death or dismemberment. In addition to medical coverage, the policy I purchased covers things like unexpected interruptions to travel (i.e. someone at home dies or needs you to return) and luggage lost in flight.
+
+Above and beyond medical coverage you will probably want some standard travel insurance to cover you in the event your luggage is lost or stolen, the airline you're flying on goes out of business or a war breaks out in you destination country. It's even possible to insure high-end electronic equipment. In some cases these sorts of things are bundled with medical coverage in a package deal. For instance the policy I purchased covers everything I've listed so far except for the high-end electronic stuff and the cancellation of air tickets.
+
+As with any insurance plan the cost is going to reflect how much stuff is covered. I looked at four different companies and all had similar coverage and prices. One thing to keep in mind is that these companies don't cover many things. For instance injury due to terrorism is generally not covered or costs extra. Injury due to what insurance companies call “high risk” activity are generally not covered at all. This high-risk category can contain many things that you and I would not generally consider high risk. Examples include rock climbing, scuba diving, and mountain trekking, none of which would be high risk from my point of view. And that doesn't mean you can't do these things, just don't expect to get covered when the reef shark bites your arm off.
+
+The other thing to bear in mind is that most of these policies require that you pay for things upfront and then file a claim and they will reimburse you when it's approved. In other words the hospital in the country that is treating you is probably going to want payment. There isn't going to be the whole list your insurer and we'll bill them process you may be accustomed to in the United States.
+
+I have two recommendations. First off the company I ended up buying insurance from is <a href="http://www.imglobal.com/" title="International Medical Group - IMG">IMGlobal</a>. You can download a sample policy from the website. I almost went with <a href="http://www.worldnomads.com/" title="Travel Insurance Online from World Nomads">world nomads insurance</a> and they seemed like a good choice, but they are an Australian company and though they say they have US offices I could never find a phone number for them.
+
+<span class="alert">Yeah the insurance thing sucks. It costs a bunch of money, but don't be an idiot get some.</span>
+
+<h2>Travel Equipment - what I'm bringing</h2>
+
+<h3>Osprey Transporter 60</h3>
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/trans.gif" width="90" height="90" class="postpic" alt="Osprey Transporter 60" /> Despite the fact that I've done a good bit of traveling, I've never had a decent travel bag. I alternated between a full size backpacking pack and a beat up old duffle bag I got for free when worked at The North Face. The backpack is great, but covered in straps and buckles, which are at the mercy of baggage handlers. The duffle bag is also nice, but only has a shoulder strap. I decided this trip merited special luggage. After much online research a few trips to REI, I settled on the <a href="http://www.ospreypacks.com/" title="Osprey Packs, Inc. ~ 2005 Packs">Osprey</a> <a href="http://www.ospreypacks.com/travel/transporter.htm" title="Transporter Travel Packs">Transporter 60</a>. So far I've taken the bag on a week-long sailing trip and a two-week drive down the east coast. Having lived out of it for a total of three weeks I am very happy with my purchase. The Transporter has shoulder straps and a hip belt, both of which are comfortable under a moderate load. These straps then tuck away when you'd like to carry it as a handbag. There are also eye-holes for shoulder straps. The back of the Transporter is half inch foam padding which helps protect sensitive gear from injury. I should mention that the Transporter doesn't have wheels. Where I'm going there aren't really surfaces on which wheels would be practical, but if you're more a first world traveler, you might want to look at something that has wheels.
+
+<span class="alert">Okay, well. The osprey was a uh, mixed bag. Sorry. But yes I liked it because it's one giant cavern, no pockets to dig through. The suspension could be better, but the foam padded side saved my stuff a couple of times (Generally, when traveling by bus or truck, your bag will end up on top. Some strapping young lad will then cinch it down with rope. Usually by putting the full weight of his body on the rope and then tying it off. The effect on you bag is something like a cheese cutter. The foam helps.</span>
+
+<span class="alert">I've since purchased a very nice bag, the <a href="http://www.eaglecreek.com/bags_luggage/adventure_travel_packs/Voyage-65L-10051/">Voyage 65</a> from Eagle Creek. It's easily the best travel pack I've owned, highly recommended.</span>
+
+<h3>Sweetwater Purifier System</h3>
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/purifier.gif" width="90" height="90" class="postpic" alt="MSR Sweetwater Purifier" /> Most people seem to go for bottled water when traveling in third world countries. There are two reasons this is stupid: price and ecological impact. Water in most the places I'm visiting/have visited is expensive. And the bottled water in foreign countries is not Aquafina. Most other countries do not have the regulations on bottled water that we in the West do, you may well be drinking tap water. Most of it is probably fine and I'll likely buy a few myself, but it's not fail-safe. More disturbing is the ecological impact. Constantly buying and disposing of water bottles has a tremendous ecological impact on the areas you visit. It increases the burden on a country's landfills, ends up on the street, in the river and floating in the ocean. Don't be an America idiot, bring your own water filter. I chose the <a href="http://www.msrcorp.com/filters/sweet_system.asp" title="MSR - Mountain Safety Research : Water Filters : Sweetwater Purifier System">MSR Sweetwater filter</a> with chlorine drops to kill viruses. I used to work for The North Face and when I decided to get a water filter this was the one I remembered. It's also the best. If you do research on this stuff keep in mind that there are <a href="http://www.rei.com/rei/learn/noDetail.jsp?URL=/rei/learn/camp/clwatertreatf.jsp&vcat=REI_SSHP_CAMPING_TOC#ORIG" title="Excellent REI article on water filtration versus purification">water filters and water purifiers</a>. If you're going abroad, you want a purifier.
+
+<span class="alert">Much as I would like to say I used the filter. I didn't. It won't be coming next time, though I stand by the reasoning for it.</span>
+
+<h3>ALL NEW SECTION - stuff you don't need</h3>
+
+Mostly what I learned traveling is you don't need much. A pair of pants a pair of shorts, swim suit. Two shirts. Don't bother with t-shirts, just buy some when you're there. 3 pair underwear. 3 pairs of socks. Sandals or flip flops. Shoes. That's it. The best thing I brought was my Choco sandals. Pretty much lived in them and they have no wear to speak off (this is still true in 2014). My shoes, as noted elsewhere wore through the soles completely.
+
+First Aid Kit. — Bring a few Band Aids (plasters if you happen to be from any part of once massive Commonwealth of Great Britain). Maybe so gauze. Aleve comes in handy when it's only 50 cents for 650 ml of beer. Everything else is a waste. If you hurt yourself get to real hospital.
+
+A sewing kit is handy. Actually Lifehacker has a link to an article that puts together a little survival kit that fits in an Altoids tin, which would be handy. Next time I go my first aide kit and survival kit will all fit in an Altoids tin.
+
+A List by an Amateur. Yes this was a list compiled by an industrious young woman whose identity shall be protected. But don't laugh because you would bring this crap too. So, to help you out, I've done a bit of editing.
+
+<ul class="list-debi">
+
+<li>Essentials
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>Address book with important phone numbers. Upload to net.</li>
+
+<li>Backpack</li>
+
+<li>Insurance ? health/travel</li>
+
+<li>Money ? card, converter, money belt, TCs, cash</li>
+
+<li>Passport</li>
+
+<li>Pencils, Pens </li>
+
+<li>Padlock</li>
+
+<li>Tickets and itinerary (airline, train, bus etc.) </li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Clothes
+<ul>
+
+<li>Bras</li>
+
+<li>Bikinis</li>
+
+<li><strike>Fleece </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Hat</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Leggings</strike></li>
+
+<li>Light jacket</li>
+
+<li><strike>Trousers</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>
+
+<li><strike>Sandals, shower shoes</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Shorts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>
+
+<li><strike>Skirts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>
+
+<li>Socks</li>
+
+<li>Sunglasses</li>
+
+<li><strike>T-shirts</strike></li>
+
+<li>Underwear</li>
+
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Toiletries
+
+<ul>
+
+<li><strike>Anti-bacterial cream/wash </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Comb </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Cotton buds </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Dental floss</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Deodorant </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Earplugs </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Face wash</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Hair products (gel, spray etc.) </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Lip balm </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Blusher</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Mirror </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Moisturizer (face and body) </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Razors </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Shampoo and Conditioner </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Shaving Cream </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Shower Gel</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Sunscreen and After sun cream </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Tampons</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Toilet bag</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Toilet paper w. core out</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Toothbrush</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Toothpaste </strike></li>
+
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>
+
+First Aid Kit
+
+<ul>
+
+<li><strike>Anti histamines</strike></li>
+
+<li>Band aids</li>
+
+<li><strike>Diarrhea tablets</strike></li>
+
+<li>Insect and/or mosquito repellent</li>
+
+<li><strike>Iodine</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Paracetemol, Tylenol etc. </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Pepper spray</strike></li>
+
+<li>Replacement salts</li>
+
+<li><strike>Vitamin pills </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Infection cream/Hydrocoritsone</strike></li>
+
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>
+
+Other Items
+
+<ul>
+
+<li><strike>Address Labels laminated</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Batteries</strike></li>
+
+<li>Books</li>
+
+<li><strike>Bottled water </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Cards</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Camera, film and batteries</strike> Spare flash cards or memory for digital camera</li>
+
+<li>Diary (where I come from we call this a notebook. I prefer the very popular <a href="http://www.moleskine.com/eng/_interni/catalogo/Cat_int/catalogo_notebooks.htm" title="Moleskine Catalogue">Moleskine</a> variety.</li>
+
+<li>Duct Tape - okay but for the love of god not the whole roll. wrap some around something else you're bringing. Actually you probably don't need it, but you're talking to someone who held a radiator together for two months with duct tape and coat hanger. Seriously.</li>
+
+<li><strike>Electrical adapter and plug converter </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Fishing Line</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Flashlight</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Guidebooks </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>International Student Identification Card</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Laundry detergent </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Matches - storm</strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Mobile phone or SIM card </strike></li>
+
+<li>Passport Photos</li>
+
+<li><strike>Phone for Skype</strike></li>
+
+<li>Photocopies of important documents in case they are stolen</li>
+
+<li><strike>Pillowcase to stuff with clothes </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Plastic bags </strike></li>
+
+<li>Recharger for electrical items</li>
+
+<li><strike>Rubber bands</strike></li>
+
+<li>Sewing Kit ? needle, thread, safety pins</li>
+
+<li><strike>Sleeping bag </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Swiss Army knife </strike></li>
+
+<li><strike>Towels </strike></li>
+
+<li>MP3 player</li>
+
+<li><strike>Watch</strike></li>
+
+<li>Ziplock bags</li>
+
+</ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+
+I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, *hey, wait, some of that stuff is handy... like an electrical adapter and converter*. And yeah, you're right. You might want to buy that. Or course I bought a nice one in the states and it blew up in India. Then I bought one for 200 baht ($5) at a black market electronics market in Bangkok that lasted for five more months and it's still going strong in 2014. So you know… do what you feel is best.
+
+And now a word about technological gadgets. I can now say, without jinxing anything, that you were wrong Todd. Wrong wrong wrong. My laptop will not disappear the first ten minutes I'm in India. In fact it won't disappear at all. In fact i'll leave it unattended on trains, buses, trucks, restaurants, shoddy guesthouses and all manner of other stupid places and it will never be stolen. In fact I worry more about it being stolen from the coffeehouse when I use the restroom than I ever did in Southeast Asia. [Historical note: in 2005 traveling with a laptop was a rarity.]
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I just got done pacing around the driveway of my parents house smoking cigarettes… nervously? Excitedly? Restlessly? A bit of all of those I suppose.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>Across the street from the house I grew up in (which my parents still live in, wonderfully quaint isn't it?) there is a rather large park. Actually, it may be that the park isn't that large, but it spills out into the baseball fields of an elementary school. Where the park ends and the adjacent elementary school begins has long been a subject of debate. One that I experienced previously from the perspective of shrill recess whistles. We used to try and sneak slowly, feigning at playing outfield, toward the tennis courts and library that lie opposite the school. Every now and then we would actually make it. A feat something akin to those crazy soldiers covered in twigs who can crawl painstakingly slow across a field and pop up right in front of you without you ever realizing that they were anywhere near you.</p> +<p>Nowadays I just walk across the street, over the drainage ditch and head for the swing set. Sometime late in high school I discovered that swinging on a swing set, which neither I nor my friends had done for years, was really damn fun. So whenever I come home, being the insomniac that I turned out to be, I inevitably head over to the park for some night swinging.</p> +<p>Swings have a rhythm of up and down, that mirrors all of existence, the tides, love lives, population, the stock market, the sun and moon, hem lines, economies, your chest when you breathe, everything is up and down. You kick your legs our straight and propel your body forward and then lean back on the downswing such that you are always both propelling and being propelled by the motion of the swing. </p> +<p>Then I dig my heals in to stop and light a cigarette or lean back and watch the stars--what are those three stars that form a triangle on the ceiling of the sky trying to do? Am I the only one who sees that triangle or is it universally obvious and I just have a weird hang-up because my high school girlfriend used to say that I pointed to three different stars every time I asked her if she saw it, which might really be the point here, that if you look for it it's there. Any three stars can be a triangle true, but are you looking at the same triangle I am?</p> +<p>In order to swing there must be a point to pivot around. Between you and those three stars there has to be an axis around which to pivot. Right now I'm swinging in a park in Costa Mesa California. Tomorrow France. Strange swings. Different pivots. Less of swing now than a pendulum circling a point I can't yet see, but my heels drag definite patterns through the sand.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f497bd5 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go.html @@ -0,0 +1,364 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Twenty More Minutes To Go - 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=" Swings have a rhythm of up and down, that mirrors all of existence, the tides, love lives, population, the stock market, the sun and moon, hem lines, economies, your chest when you breathe, everything is up and down."> + <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/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="33.63332664528318, -117.90302036551485" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="33.63332664528318; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-10-20T18:19:10" itemprop="datePublished">October <span>20, 2005</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">W</span>ell it’s the night before I leave. I just got done pacing around the driveway of my parents house smoking cigarettes… nervously? Excitedly? Restlessly? A bit of all of those I suppose.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>Across the street from the house I grew up in (which my parents still live in, wonderfully quaint isn’t it?) there is a rather large park. Actually, it may be that the park isn’t that large, but it spills out into the baseball fields of an elementary school. Where the park ends and the adjacent elementary school begins has long been a subject of debate. One that I experienced previously from the perspective of shrill recess whistles. We used to try and sneak slowly, feigning at playing outfield, toward the tennis courts and library that lie opposite the school. Every now and then we would actually make it. A feat something akin to those crazy soldiers covered in twigs who can crawl painstakingly slow across a field and pop up right in front of you without you ever realizing that they were anywhere near you.</p> +<p>Nowadays I just walk across the street, over the drainage ditch and head for the swing set. Sometime late in high school I discovered that swinging on a swing set, which neither I nor my friends had done for years, was really damn fun. So whenever I come home, being the insomniac that I turned out to be, I inevitably head over to the park for some night swinging.</p> +<p>Swings have a rhythm of up and down, that mirrors all of existence, the tides, love lives, population, the stock market, the sun and moon, hem lines, economies, your chest when you breathe, everything is up and down. You kick your legs our straight and propel your body forward and then lean back on the downswing such that you are always both propelling and being propelled by the motion of the swing. </p> +<p>Then I dig my heals in to stop and light a cigarette or lean back and watch the stars—what are those three stars that form a triangle on the ceiling of the sky trying to do? Am I the only one who sees that triangle or is it universally obvious and I just have a weird hang-up because my high school girlfriend used to say that I pointed to three different stars every time I asked her if she saw it, which might really be the point here, that if you look for it it’s there. Any three stars can be a triangle true, but are you looking at the same triangle I am?</p> +<p>In order to swing there must be a point to pivot around. Between you and those three stars there has to be an axis around which to pivot. Right now I’m swinging in a park in Costa Mesa California. Tomorrow France. Strange swings. Different pivots. Less of swing now than a pendulum circling a point I can’t yet see, but my heels drag definite patterns through the sand.</p> + </div> + <div class="entry-footer"> + <aside id="wildlife"> + <h3>Fauna and Flora</h3> + + <ul> + + <li class="grouper">Birds<ul> + + <li>Allen's Hummingbird </li> + + <li>Black Phoebe </li> + + <li>California Gull </li> + + <li>Double-crested Cormorant </li> + + <li>Heermann's Gull </li> + + <li>Marbled Godwit </li> + + <li>Ring-billed Gull </li> + + <li>Western Gull </li> + + <li>Willet </li> + </ul> + </ul> + </aside> + + + </div> + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" > + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/tips-and-resources" rel="prev" title=" Travel Tips and Resources">Travel Tips and Resources</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/living-railway-car" rel="next" title=" Living in a Railway Car">Living in a Railway Car</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="10" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833489" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="9fbc37d273d7f8abe377de259b9797838ead834f" 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 just got done pacing around the driveway of my parents house smoking cigarettes… nervously? Excitedly? Restlessly? A bit of all of those I suppose.
+
+<break>
+
+Across the street from the house I grew up in (which my parents still live in, wonderfully quaint isn't it?) there is a rather large park. Actually, it may be that the park isn't that large, but it spills out into the baseball fields of an elementary school. Where the park ends and the adjacent elementary school begins has long been a subject of debate. One that I experienced previously from the perspective of shrill recess whistles. We used to try and sneak slowly, feigning at playing outfield, toward the tennis courts and library that lie opposite the school. Every now and then we would actually make it. A feat something akin to those crazy soldiers covered in twigs who can crawl painstakingly slow across a field and pop up right in front of you without you ever realizing that they were anywhere near you.
+
+Nowadays I just walk across the street, over the drainage ditch and head for the swing set. Sometime late in high school I discovered that swinging on a swing set, which neither I nor my friends had done for years, was really damn fun. So whenever I come home, being the insomniac that I turned out to be, I inevitably head over to the park for some night swinging.
+
+Swings have a rhythm of up and down, that mirrors all of existence, the tides, love lives, population, the stock market, the sun and moon, hem lines, economies, your chest when you breathe, everything is up and down. You kick your legs our straight and propel your body forward and then lean back on the downswing such that you are always both propelling and being propelled by the motion of the swing.
+
+Then I dig my heals in to stop and light a cigarette or lean back and watch the stars--what are those three stars that form a triangle on the ceiling of the sky trying to do? Am I the only one who sees that triangle or is it universally obvious and I just have a weird hang-up because my high school girlfriend used to say that I pointed to three different stars every time I asked her if she saw it, which might really be the point here, that if you look for it it's there. Any three stars can be a triangle true, but are you looking at the same triangle I am?
+
+In order to swing there must be a point to pivot around. Between you and those three stars there has to be an axis around which to pivot. Right now I'm swinging in a park in Costa Mesa California. Tomorrow France. Strange swings. Different pivots. Less of swing now than a pendulum circling a point I can't yet see, but my heels drag definite patterns through the sand. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cf9f0ab --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.amp @@ -0,0 +1,180 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Anjuna Market</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market"> + <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/2005/11/anjuna-market"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. 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", + "datePublished": "2005-11-24T00:58:15", + "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">Anjuna Market</h1> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2005-11-24T00:58:15" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>24, 2005</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">Anjuna Beach</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/india/" title="travel writing from India">India</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">M</span>y time in Goa is winding down, tomorrow I catch a plane to Mumbai, another on to Ahmedabad and then finally a train up to Udaipur. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>Two days ago I rented a bicycle and road down the beach to Benaulim, about 2km south of here, which turned out to be pretty much just like Colva Beach, but it was nice to get some exercise. And having been here now for a week, there are those indelible reminders that you are India and not just any beach town, whether it's cows wandering the beach or the endless hustlers wanting you to have a look, just a look… it is always uniquely, somewhat insanely, India.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Cows on the beach, Goa India" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeachcows.jpg" width="139"></amp-img>It was not without some regret that I went for a final swim in the Arabian Sea yesterday evening. My time in Goa has felt like nice vacation from my trip. I have stocked up vitamin D as well as increased my melatonin count to the point that some of the girls hawking wares on the beach approached me speaking Hindi and were surprised to learn that I was not Indian.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Parasailing in the sunset Goa India" height="109" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvapara.jpg" width="145"></amp-img>Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. In the end though it was pretty much the same stuff at every stall and the touts were relentless, especially the ones that want to clean your ear.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Girl on a tightrope" height="159" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tightrope.jpg" width="120"></amp-img>The highlight of Anjuna to me was actually away from the market, out on the beach where many Tibetan refuges spend their time entertaining tourists, such as the little girl that walked a tightrope with various objects balanced on her head. Then there was a man with a Tibetan flute and a cow that was apparently mesmerized by the flute and could be made to go in various directions according the notes from the flute. He would walk down the beach with the cow covered in beads and silks and kind of maneuver him with a tune.</p> +<p>I've met several nice people here in Goa including a man roughly my age from Nepal who invited me to stay with his family when I get to Nepal. All in all I've enjoyed my time here, but I'm ready to be moving on. As a final note of weirdness, tonight at the Joema there are two Swedish girls one of whom is apparently an aspiring opera singer and has spent most of the evening working through her vocal scales. It's an interesting contrast, operatic scales, the smell of burning leaves and garbage, the sound of roosters, and to cap it off occasional burst of fireworks from the beach. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e150ee --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.html @@ -0,0 +1,334 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Anjuna Market - 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="Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. 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And having been here now for a week, there are those indelible reminders that you are India and not just any beach town, whether it’s cows wandering the beach or the endless hustlers wanting you to have a look, just a look… it is always uniquely, somewhat insanely, India.</p> +<p><img alt="Cows on the beach, Goa India" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeachcows.jpg" width="139"/>It was not without some regret that I went for a final swim in the Arabian Sea yesterday evening. My time in Goa has felt like nice vacation from my trip. I have stocked up vitamin D as well as increased my melatonin count to the point that some of the girls hawking wares on the beach approached me speaking Hindi and were surprised to learn that I was not Indian.</p> +<p><img alt="Parasailing in the sunset Goa India" class="postpicright" height="159" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvapara.jpg" width="120"/>Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. In the end though it was pretty much the same stuff at every stall and the touts were relentless, especially the ones that want to clean your ear.</p> +<p><img alt="Girl on a tightrope" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tightrope.jpg" width="90"/>The highlight of Anjuna to me was actually away from the market, out on the beach where many Tibetan refuges spend their time entertaining tourists, such as the little girl that walked a tightrope with various objects balanced on her head. Then there was a man with a Tibetan flute and a cow that was apparently mesmerized by the flute and could be made to go in various directions according the notes from the flute. He would walk down the beach with the cow covered in beads and silks and kind of maneuver him with a tune.</p> +<p>I’ve met several nice people here in Goa including a man roughly my age from Nepal who invited me to stay with his family when I get to Nepal. All in all I’ve enjoyed my time here, but I’m ready to be moving on. As a final note of weirdness, tonight at the Joema there are two Swedish girls one of whom is apparently an aspiring opera singer and has spent most of the evening working through her vocal scales. It’s an interesting contrast, operatic scales, the smell of burning leaves and garbage, the sound of roosters, and to cap it off occasional burst of fireworks from the beach. </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/2005/11/fish-story" rel="prev" title=" Fish Story">Fish Story</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" rel="next" title=" Living in Airport Terminals">Living in Airport Terminals</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="19" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833487" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="df437d24c9879f7b8bc706086af79ea3f6ff1d05" 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>
+
+Two days ago I rented a bicycle and road down the beach to Benaulim, about 2km south of here, which turned out to be pretty much just like Colva Beach, but it was nice to get some exercise. And having been here now for a week, there are those indelible reminders that you are India and not just any beach town, whether it's cows wandering the beach or the endless hustlers wanting you to have a look, just a look… it is always uniquely, somewhat insanely, India.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvabeachcows.jpg" width="139" height="100" class="postpic" alt="Cows on the beach, Goa India" />It was not without some regret that I went for a final swim in the Arabian Sea yesterday evening. My time in Goa has felt like nice vacation from my trip. I have stocked up vitamin D as well as increased my melatonin count to the point that some of the girls hawking wares on the beach approached me speaking Hindi and were surprised to learn that I was not Indian.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvapara.jpg" width="120" height="159" class="postpicright" alt="Parasailing in the sunset Goa India" />Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. In the end though it was pretty much the same stuff at every stall and the touts were relentless, especially the ones that want to clean your ear.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/tightrope.jpg" width="90" height="90" class="postpic" alt="Girl on a tightrope" />The highlight of Anjuna to me was actually away from the market, out on the beach where many Tibetan refuges spend their time entertaining tourists, such as the little girl that walked a tightrope with various objects balanced on her head. Then there was a man with a Tibetan flute and a cow that was apparently mesmerized by the flute and could be made to go in various directions according the notes from the flute. He would walk down the beach with the cow covered in beads and silks and kind of maneuver him with a tune.
+
+
+
+I've met several nice people here in Goa including a man roughly my age from Nepal who invited me to stay with his family when I get to Nepal. All in all I've enjoyed my time here, but I'm ready to be moving on. As a final note of weirdness, tonight at the Joema there are two Swedish girls one of whom is apparently an aspiring opera singer and has spent most of the evening working through her vocal scales. It's an interesting contrast, operatic scales, the smell of burning leaves and garbage, the sound of roosters, and to cap it off occasional burst of fireworks from the beach. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4461ce --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.amp @@ -0,0 +1,183 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Around Udaipur</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur"> + <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/2005/11/around-udaipur"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Around Udaipur"/> + <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/shiplogram.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="Udiapur, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Around Udaipur" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-30T19:05:47" /> + <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/shiplogram.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jagdish.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/havelipeacock.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Around Udaipur", + "description": "Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-30T19:05:47", + "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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I don't have much interest in religious temples apart from an architectural standpoint, but the Jagdish Temple was an incredibly impressive design, covered in very delicate and ornate stone carvings depicting everything from scenes of Vishnu to elephants butting heads.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Carving Jagdish Temple Udaipur India" height="124" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jagdish.jpg" width="200"></amp-img> I walked around the main building for a while watching the various supplications going on, one in particular caught my eye, a father and his young son, two maybe three years old, came to pray at the sun god temple on the southeast side of the complex and the boy seemed to instinctively know that something important was going on and as he approached he put his hands together as you would to say namaste, but his father had to show him how to bow and at first he did not, the father had to place his hand on the boy's head and show him what to do which made me feel slightly better, perhaps genuflection is not instinctive with in us, but taught by culture. I sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of the bewildering tangle of carvings on the sides of the main temple. I started thinking about the Taj Mahal, which, for those like myself that did not know this, is actually a mausoleum. I don't know what all the so-called seven wonders of the world are off the top of my head, but I do know that the Taj Mahal is one and the pyramids in Egypt are another which means two out of seven, possibly more, of man's greatest structures are essentially graves. Not temples or churches or monuments, but tombs. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>After the temple visit I wandered down toward the lakeshore and bought a ticket to the Bagore-ki-Haveli. Another word I did not know, but can now offer the dictionary definition: haveli, traditional, often ornately-decorated, residences, which of course means nothing to me or you, except to say that perhaps this is how the upper middle class and upper class, but not quite royalty, seems to have lived. There are havelis all over India, but they seem to mainly be a focus in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it's here that the most effort has been made to restore some of these often decrepit buildings to their once and former glory. The Bagore-ki-Haveli is one of the high points of these restoration projects. It took five years to restore and capturing the lifestyles of the rich circa 1780. </p> +<p>Comprising a total of 138 rooms it took me sometime to negotiate the entire museum, which in a way resembles the nicest most labyrinthine dorm you've ever imagined. There were elegant and gracefully decorated rooms that in many ways reminded me of Japanese paintings in and their minimalist, almost spartan aesthetic. There were also rooms for the more everyday life, kitchen equipment, including the biggest cooking bowl—I would say wok, but I know it's not a wok, still it looks like a wok— I've ever seen which was easily six feet in diameter, and then there were game rooms with gorgeous chess sets and some games I didn't recognize, they even restored the bathroom, which was a stunning example of the frozen sense of time that exists in India, since it looks exactly the same as the average India bathroom of today. There were also more of the same inlaid glass peacocks that I saw at the City Palace two days ago.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Haveli Udaipur India" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/havelipeacock.jpg" width="158"></amp-img>Throughout my time in the Haveli I couldn't quite escape the feeling of false history, of idealizing a culture whose great wealth and power existed on the back of people who are not remembered, whose homes are not on display and whose lives are barely recorded. I guess that to some extent the architecture and daily life of those people vanishes when they do, which is a shame. Obviously it isn't the workers that get to write the story of the building, save with their anonymous hands that laid the stones and marble in place and perhaps the perfection and beauty of the stone is in the end a more lasting monument than restored trinkets and board games. The rich may have lived and played in the Haveli, but the stone workers who built it and the craftsmen and women who carved the intricate chess pieces and pounded out the giant metal cookware are what made the Haveli a place that anyone wanted to live in the first place.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Dancer Shilpogram, Udaipur India" height="185" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>After the haveli I decided I ought to head out of town to Shilpogram which is ostensibly a museum of traditional cultures that continue to exist today in northeastern India—the craftsmen and women who would have built a haveli if such things were still built by hand. I took a rickshaw about 4km out of Udaipur to see what is actually a government sponsored project, an artist colony for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government—for the India government to actually get anything done is nothing short of miracle apparently, unless you count badmouthing Pakistan and forming grand plans—but on the other hand the "artists colony" is slightly creepy. </p> +<p>Amidst displays of typical tribal life and buildings from each region there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum designed to give you an idea of how these people live in their respective villages. The creepiness comes from the fact that I could well have ended the last sentence: <em>how they live in their natural habitat</em>, and indeed Shilpogram has the feel of a kind of human zoo, a place for curious tourists to come and observe the anomalous foreign animals in their carefully reconstructed natural habitats. Still, the dancers were stunning in their acrobatic abilities, motions and positions of the body you have to witness to believe and the musical instruments of India are always particularly intriguing to me. I would like to say that what the government of India is doing is a good thing, trying to give tribal people a venue where they can come for two week periods and do what they do, but still the feeling of walking about a human zoo persists and I can not say that I would ever go back.</p> +<p>As I was walking home from dinner the sound of explosions drew my interest down toward the water where I was quickly caught up in a wedding procession with a number of other tourists. The Indians insisted on us joining them for a number of dances in street and even wanted us to follow the procession and have dinner. I had already eaten so I begged out and wandered down to the shoreline where the little kids were lighting of fireworks. But not the sort of fireworks you can buy in say South Carolina, no these were more like high explosives that had a shockwave you feel when they detonated. I sat up on the steps near the main ghat and watched ten year olds light massive aerial fireworks like the kind that professional companies set off at fourth of July in the U.S. using of course pyrotechnic experts and whatnot, but here anyone seems capable. And nobody lost an arm. At least while I was there.</p> +<p>My time here in Udaipur has been my favorite so far in India and yet like all things it will soon come to an end. Tomorrow I have errands to take care of and then I catch an early morning bus to Jodhpur where the next unbelievable thing awaits. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34f53f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Around Udaipur - 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="Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram."> + <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/2005/11/around-udaipur" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="24.667610368715458, 73.78486632273662" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="24.667610368715458; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-30T19:05:47" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>30, 2005</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> spent the day wandering around Udaipur, in the morning I visited the Jagdish Temple and the Bagore-ki-Haveli. I don’t have much interest in religious temples apart from an architectural standpoint, but the Jagdish Temple was an incredibly impressive design, covered in very delicate and ornate stone carvings depicting everything from scenes of Vishnu to elephants butting heads.</p> +<p><img alt="Carving Jagdish Temple Udaipur India" class="postpicright" height="124" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jagdish.jpg" width="200"/> I walked around the main building for a while watching the various supplications going on, one in particular caught my eye, a father and his young son, two maybe three years old, came to pray at the sun god temple on the southeast side of the complex and the boy seemed to instinctively know that something important was going on and as he approached he put his hands together as you would to say namaste, but his father had to show him how to bow and at first he did not, the father had to place his hand on the boy’s head and show him what to do which made me feel slightly better, perhaps genuflection is not instinctive with in us, but taught by culture. I sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of the bewildering tangle of carvings on the sides of the main temple. I started thinking about the Taj Mahal, which, for those like myself that did not know this, is actually a mausoleum. I don’t know what all the so-called seven wonders of the world are off the top of my head, but I do know that the Taj Mahal is one and the pyramids in Egypt are another which means two out of seven, possibly more, of man’s greatest structures are essentially graves. Not temples or churches or monuments, but tombs. </p> +<p><break></p> +<p>After the temple visit I wandered down toward the lakeshore and bought a ticket to the Bagore-ki-Haveli. Another word I did not know, but can now offer the dictionary definition: haveli, traditional, often ornately-decorated, residences, which of course means nothing to me or you, except to say that perhaps this is how the upper middle class and upper class, but not quite royalty, seems to have lived. There are havelis all over India, but they seem to mainly be a focus in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it’s here that the most effort has been made to restore some of these often decrepit buildings to their once and former glory. The Bagore-ki-Haveli is one of the high points of these restoration projects. It took five years to restore and capturing the lifestyles of the rich circa 1780. </p> +<p>Comprising a total of 138 rooms it took me sometime to negotiate the entire museum, which in a way resembles the nicest most labyrinthine dorm you’ve ever imagined. There were elegant and gracefully decorated rooms that in many ways reminded me of Japanese paintings in and their minimalist, almost spartan aesthetic. There were also rooms for the more everyday life, kitchen equipment, including the biggest cooking bowl—I would say wok, but I know it’s not a wok, still it looks like a wok— I’ve ever seen which was easily six feet in diameter, and then there were game rooms with gorgeous chess sets and some games I didn’t recognize, they even restored the bathroom, which was a stunning example of the frozen sense of time that exists in India, since it looks exactly the same as the average India bathroom of today. There were also more of the same inlaid glass peacocks that I saw at the City Palace two days ago.</p> +<p><img alt="Haveli Udaipur India" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/havelipeacock.jpg" width="158"/>Throughout my time in the Haveli I couldn’t quite escape the feeling of false history, of idealizing a culture whose great wealth and power existed on the back of people who are not remembered, whose homes are not on display and whose lives are barely recorded. I guess that to some extent the architecture and daily life of those people vanishes when they do, which is a shame. Obviously it isn’t the workers that get to write the story of the building, save with their anonymous hands that laid the stones and marble in place and perhaps the perfection and beauty of the stone is in the end a more lasting monument than restored trinkets and board games. The rich may have lived and played in the Haveli, but the stone workers who built it and the craftsmen and women who carved the intricate chess pieces and pounded out the giant metal cookware are what made the Haveli a place that anyone wanted to live in the first place.</p> +<p><img alt="Dancer Shilpogram, Udaipur India" class="postpic" height="185" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" width="200"/>After the haveli I decided I ought to head out of town to Shilpogram which is ostensibly a museum of traditional cultures that continue to exist today in northeastern India—the craftsmen and women who would have built a haveli if such things were still built by hand. I took a rickshaw about 4km out of Udaipur to see what is actually a government sponsored project, an artist colony for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government—for the India government to actually get anything done is nothing short of miracle apparently, unless you count badmouthing Pakistan and forming grand plans—but on the other hand the “artists colony” is slightly creepy. </p> +<p>Amidst displays of typical tribal life and buildings from each region there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum designed to give you an idea of how these people live in their respective villages. The creepiness comes from the fact that I could well have ended the last sentence: <em>how they live in their natural habitat</em>, and indeed Shilpogram has the feel of a kind of human zoo, a place for curious tourists to come and observe the anomalous foreign animals in their carefully reconstructed natural habitats. Still, the dancers were stunning in their acrobatic abilities, motions and positions of the body you have to witness to believe and the musical instruments of India are always particularly intriguing to me. I would like to say that what the government of India is doing is a good thing, trying to give tribal people a venue where they can come for two week periods and do what they do, but still the feeling of walking about a human zoo persists and I can not say that I would ever go back.</p> +<p>As I was walking home from dinner the sound of explosions drew my interest down toward the water where I was quickly caught up in a wedding procession with a number of other tourists. The Indians insisted on us joining them for a number of dances in street and even wanted us to follow the procession and have dinner. I had already eaten so I begged out and wandered down to the shoreline where the little kids were lighting of fireworks. But not the sort of fireworks you can buy in say South Carolina, no these were more like high explosives that had a shockwave you feel when they detonated. I sat up on the steps near the main ghat and watched ten year olds light massive aerial fireworks like the kind that professional companies set off at fourth of July in the U.S. using of course pyrotechnic experts and whatnot, but here anyone seems capable. And nobody lost an arm. At least while I was there.</p> +<p>My time here in Udaipur has been my favorite so far in India and yet like all things it will soon come to an end. Tomorrow I have errands to take care of and then I catch an early morning bus to Jodhpur where the next unbelievable thing awaits. </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/2005/11/monsoon-palace" rel="prev" title=" The Monsoon Palace">The Monsoon Palace</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/majestic-fort" rel="next" title=" The Majestic Fort">The Majestic Fort</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="23" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833486" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="e31c868c58c14af2756cab1b125636b00c4aeb85" 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 don't have much interest in religious temples apart from an architectural standpoint, but the Jagdish Temple was an incredibly impressive design, covered in very delicate and ornate stone carvings depicting everything from scenes of Vishnu to elephants butting heads.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/jagdish.jpg" width="200" height="124" class="postpicright" alt="Carving Jagdish Temple Udaipur India" /> I walked around the main building for a while watching the various supplications going on, one in particular caught my eye, a father and his young son, two maybe three years old, came to pray at the sun god temple on the southeast side of the complex and the boy seemed to instinctively know that something important was going on and as he approached he put his hands together as you would to say namaste, but his father had to show him how to bow and at first he did not, the father had to place his hand on the boy's head and show him what to do which made me feel slightly better, perhaps genuflection is not instinctive with in us, but taught by culture. I sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of the bewildering tangle of carvings on the sides of the main temple. I started thinking about the Taj Mahal, which, for those like myself that did not know this, is actually a mausoleum. I don't know what all the so-called seven wonders of the world are off the top of my head, but I do know that the Taj Mahal is one and the pyramids in Egypt are another which means two out of seven, possibly more, of man's greatest structures are essentially graves. Not temples or churches or monuments, but tombs.
+
+<break>
+
+After the temple visit I wandered down toward the lakeshore and bought a ticket to the Bagore-ki-Haveli. Another word I did not know, but can now offer the dictionary definition: haveli, traditional, often ornately-decorated, residences, which of course means nothing to me or you, except to say that perhaps this is how the upper middle class and upper class, but not quite royalty, seems to have lived. There are havelis all over India, but they seem to mainly be a focus in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it's here that the most effort has been made to restore some of these often decrepit buildings to their once and former glory. The Bagore-ki-Haveli is one of the high points of these restoration projects. It took five years to restore and capturing the lifestyles of the rich circa 1780.
+
+Comprising a total of 138 rooms it took me sometime to negotiate the entire museum, which in a way resembles the nicest most labyrinthine dorm you've ever imagined. There were elegant and gracefully decorated rooms that in many ways reminded me of Japanese paintings in and their minimalist, almost spartan aesthetic. There were also rooms for the more everyday life, kitchen equipment, including the biggest cooking bowl—I would say wok, but I know it's not a wok, still it looks like a wok— I've ever seen which was easily six feet in diameter, and then there were game rooms with gorgeous chess sets and some games I didn't recognize, they even restored the bathroom, which was a stunning example of the frozen sense of time that exists in India, since it looks exactly the same as the average India bathroom of today. There were also more of the same inlaid glass peacocks that I saw at the City Palace two days ago.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/havelipeacock.jpg" width="158" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Haveli Udaipur India" />Throughout my time in the Haveli I couldn't quite escape the feeling of false history, of idealizing a culture whose great wealth and power existed on the back of people who are not remembered, whose homes are not on display and whose lives are barely recorded. I guess that to some extent the architecture and daily life of those people vanishes when they do, which is a shame. Obviously it isn't the workers that get to write the story of the building, save with their anonymous hands that laid the stones and marble in place and perhaps the perfection and beauty of the stone is in the end a more lasting monument than restored trinkets and board games. The rich may have lived and played in the Haveli, but the stone workers who built it and the craftsmen and women who carved the intricate chess pieces and pounded out the giant metal cookware are what made the Haveli a place that anyone wanted to live in the first place.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" width="200" height="185" class="postpic" alt="Dancer Shilpogram, Udaipur India" />After the haveli I decided I ought to head out of town to Shilpogram which is ostensibly a museum of traditional cultures that continue to exist today in northeastern India—the craftsmen and women who would have built a haveli if such things were still built by hand. I took a rickshaw about 4km out of Udaipur to see what is actually a government sponsored project, an artist colony for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government—for the India government to actually get anything done is nothing short of miracle apparently, unless you count badmouthing Pakistan and forming grand plans—but on the other hand the "artists colony" is slightly creepy.
+
+Amidst displays of typical tribal life and buildings from each region there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum designed to give you an idea of how these people live in their respective villages. The creepiness comes from the fact that I could well have ended the last sentence: *how they live in their natural habitat*, and indeed Shilpogram has the feel of a kind of human zoo, a place for curious tourists to come and observe the anomalous foreign animals in their carefully reconstructed natural habitats. Still, the dancers were stunning in their acrobatic abilities, motions and positions of the body you have to witness to believe and the musical instruments of India are always particularly intriguing to me. I would like to say that what the government of India is doing is a good thing, trying to give tribal people a venue where they can come for two week periods and do what they do, but still the feeling of walking about a human zoo persists and I can not say that I would ever go back.
+
+As I was walking home from dinner the sound of explosions drew my interest down toward the water where I was quickly caught up in a wedding procession with a number of other tourists. The Indians insisted on us joining them for a number of dances in street and even wanted us to follow the procession and have dinner. I had already eaten so I begged out and wandered down to the shoreline where the little kids were lighting of fireworks. But not the sort of fireworks you can buy in say South Carolina, no these were more like high explosives that had a shockwave you feel when they detonated. I sat up on the steps near the main ghat and watched ten year olds light massive aerial fireworks like the kind that professional companies set off at fourth of July in the U.S. using of course pyrotechnic experts and whatnot, but here anyone seems capable. And nobody lost an arm. At least while I was there.
+
+My time here in Udaipur has been my favorite so far in India and yet like all things it will soon come to an end. Tomorrow I have errands to take care of and then I catch an early morning bus to Jodhpur where the next unbelievable thing awaits. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..88fe9ab --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.amp @@ -0,0 +1,199 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Backwaters of Kerala</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala"> + <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/2005/11/backwaters-kerala"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Backwaters of Kerala"/> + <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/keralabackwater.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="Fort Kochi, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="The Backwaters of Kerala" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-15T00:53:50" /> + <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/keralabackwater.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ernakulam.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterplants.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/coconut.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwatertour.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "The Backwaters of Kerala", + "description": "Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-15T00:53:50", + "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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I took a ferry across the harbor into Ernakulam Friday morning with the intention of buying a train ticket to Mangalore for Saturday. </p> +<p>I brought all my bags so it would be easier, just get up and catch an autorickshaw to the train station. I found a rundown hotel that had reasonable rates and decent rooms, dumped my bags and headed to the train station. Unfortunately first class was already booked for the Saturday train and the particular train I needed doesn't run on Sundays so I bought a ticket for Monday and went walking around Ernakulam thinking that perhaps it would reveal something cool. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<h3>You Never Had To Go Anywhere</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="Ernakulam India" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ernakulam.jpg" width="133"></amp-img>Unfortunately that just wasn't the case. Ernakulam is a large city with large city problems, pollution, garbage, traffic, unfriendly people, confusion, noise, touts, etc. If I wanted to go to New Jersey I would have gone to New Jersey. But I had already paid for the room so I stuck it out for the night. </p> +<p>I have no doubt that Ernakulam does have some good things in it, just like New Jersey does, but they aren't things that a tourist gets to see. Cities are private things held in the minds of the people that inhabit them; you can never know anything about a city until you live there. So this one remains a city like any other, and the next morning I high tailed it back to fort Cochin and got a room. </p> +<p>With some time to kill before my Monday train I figured I might as well take the fabled backwater tour of Kerala. If you've never been to India or even looked at it in any detail this might bear some explanation. Kerala is one of the Southern states of India and lies on west coast just below the state of Karnataka (whose capital is Bangalore, which most of you have probably heard of— it's where your calls to tech support get routed to). Anyway the main draw of the Kochi area of Kerala is the "backwater" area where the numerous lakes and rivers in the region come together and meet the Arabian Sea to form a massive area of lagoons and canals. Most guidebooks say that a tour of this backwater area will be the "highlight of your Kerala stay," so I figured I might as well sign up for a tour. </p> +<p>Before I left on this trip I wrote a piece about travel blogs on the net and travel writing in general and swore up and down that I would not resort to the "crazy bus ride" or "cabbie from hell" or "eccentric local doesn't know much but his simple wisdom has showed me the key to life" clichés when writing for luxagraf. I bring this up mainly because I never actually published that piece (because it wasn't that good). If you dig into the world of travel writing you will find that these plots occur over and over again and have become terrible clichés, but seem to be what editors want. I wanted to point this out because though this story could go that direction it does not, because I am not trying to sell this to Conde Nast. In fact the bus was destroyed before it got to me, the cabbie was a very good driver and I did not get any morsels of wisdom from the locals, just a coconut.</p> +<h3>The Way We Get By</h3> +<p>Those that know me well know that if I had known the tour started at 8 AM <em>before</em> I paid, I would have booked a different tour. But I did not know that until the money had changed hands and the transaction seemed too concluded to back out. So I set my alarm for seven and got downstairs at just about eight. Just as I walked outside there was a bus leaving, which I must say did not seem to encouraging. I asked the hotel manager if anyone had asked for me and he said no, but then when he realized I booked a tour through someone other than him, he became decidedly less helpful. So I sat down and smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. Eventually a guy on a motorcycle came up and asked if I was waiting for a tour bus. I said yes, but generally ignored him since I figured he was trying to con me into a different "better" tour. Finally he convinced me that he was in fact with the tour company I booked through and that the bus had been destroyed in an accident. He said he would take me to where the rest of the people were (apparently everyone else was from one hotel and I was the oddball stop). So I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and we went about 2km to another hotel where the rest of the tour was staying. </p> +<p>I waited around with two couples from Belgium while the man and another tour rep tried to find us some transportation. After about 20 minutes they told us a cab was on its way. So the six of us (including) driver piled into a fairly compact automobile, though by Indian standards this was far from crowded. The drive took about 45 minutes and we had to make several stops for our very nice, but understandably confused, driver to ask for directions. Eventually we got to the dock where about 15 other people were waiting. Everyone piled into a large thatched roof boat and we were finally underway. There was a large family from Bombay, another couple and their two kids from Delhi, an Iranian couple that now lives in London, the Belgians and myself.</p> +<p>We cruised around the islands for about forty minutes watching people on the shore and men out in canoes fishing. Eventually we stopped on one island to tour a factory. <amp-img alt="fishermen" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" width="159"></amp-img>I believe that during the week you get to stop off at places where you can see native workers doing their thing, making fishing nets, weaving rope, etc, but because it was a Sunday we got to go to a Calcium Hydroxide factory. Which was better because it certainly wasn't a show being put on to entertain the tourists. This is how the island dwellers really survive. They turn shells into calcium hydroxide and sell the results to cement companies. Except that in this case apparently a new buyer has come in the last six months, yes that's right everybody's favorite, hey look at us we help third world economies, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Apparently various pills are made from calcium hydroxide (that is, the actual stuff you want is suspended in calcium hydroxide). It was an interesting portrait of the changes rural India is undergoing.</p> +<h3>Mixing Up The Medicine</h3> +<p>The after a short walk through the jungle we came to one of the worker's houses where our guide went through the front garden and showed us all the plants and what they were used for. As we approached the front yard of the workers house, to an untrained eye such as mine, the plants looked random, like parts of the jungle that hadn't been cleared because they gave shade, but in fact they weren't random, they were carefully cultivated. </p> +<p>The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have forgotten. <amp-img alt="plants" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterplants.jpg" width="100"></amp-img>Nearly all of them had some medicinal use not just in their leaves and fruit, but also the roots and bark, and most of them had four different uses depending on which part of the plant you wanted to use. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, according to our guide, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with, though cyanide does have other uses.</p> +<p>After getting about an hour's worth of botanical information we got back on the boat and headed back to the launch area for lunch. We were served a meal typical of Kerala, which was more or less the same thing a waiter gave me two days before when I asked for some typical Kerala cuisine, boiled rice, vegetable curry, and various slaws of carrots or beans or cabbage. With the exception of the rice, which I find tastes just like overcooked white rice, I enjoy Kerala cuisine although it is very different from what gets served as Indian food in the States or Europe.</p> +<h3>Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet</h3> +<p>At this point we hopped back in cab and drove to a second wharf area where we got aboard smaller boats that could navigate the narrower canals. Similar to dugout canoes, but not dugout, these boats were piloted by two men, one on each end using long poles to push off the bottom. Sort of like rowing, but less effective. </p> +<p>As my guidebook says of the longboat tours: "along the way are settlements where people live on narrow spits of land only a few meters wide." The thing it fails to mention is that you are more or less traveling through people's backyards, which felt sort of invasive to me. Women were doing laundry or taking a bath only a meter or so from our boat, which felt decidedly intrusive, though I suppose the people that live in these areas must be used to it by now.</p> +<p>One of the strangest things I saw was a fairly large lizard on a lily pad floating several meters from shore, which, if you're a lizard, is quite a ways even if you can swim. We also saw some sort of water snake (which the guides said was not poisonous), numerous Kingfishers, and from a distance an elephant walking down the road.</p> +<p>At one point we stopped and some of the guides climbed up a palm tree and retrieved coconuts which were first cracked and drank and then split open and eaten. I've never been all that fond of coconut so after drinking the juice I sort of wandered back to boat, hoping perhaps the elephant would return and watching the sky to the north turn so dark it looked like night.<amp-img alt="coconut" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/coconut.jpg" width="100"></amp-img></p> +<p>Then it was back in the boats and onward. It started to rain a little bit, but not too hard at first and I thought we might make it back without getting soaked. But then with no warning the sky just opened up and a deluge of water poured down on us. Luckily I had learned couple of days previous that you really shouldn't go anywhere in southern India without an umbrella so I had one in my bag. Of course it's still about 85 degrees and even the rain is warm so getting wet wasn't that big of deal, but digital camera's react poorly to water, so I kept the umbrella mainly over my bag and partly over the older India man who sat next to me.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="riverboat" height="133" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwatertour.jpg" width="100"></amp-img>We stopped the boats and everyone piled out and went up on the porch of someone's house where we waited for while. But the rain showed no signs of letting up and after half an hour our taxi and everyone else bus were summoned to come and pick us up. Driving back to Fort Cochin our taxi was kicking up a roaster tail of water higher than the car itself and our driver had to turn around several times where streets became impassible, but eventually we made it back.</p> +<p>And there you have it, the backwater tour extraordinaire. Later this evening I will be boarding an overnight train for Mangalore and then switch to another train that should get me to Goa by late Tuesday evening. The picture gallery has been updated. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0617e0d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.html @@ -0,0 +1,351 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Backwaters Of Kerala - 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="Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India."> + <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/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="9.958029970964114, 76.2533569229791" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="9.958029970964114; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-15T00:53:50" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>15, 2005</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> am back in Fort Cochin after a brief and ill-advised stay in Ernakulam. I took a ferry across the harbor into Ernakulam Friday morning with the intention of buying a train ticket to Mangalore for Saturday. </p> +<p>I brought all my bags so it would be easier, just get up and catch an autorickshaw to the train station. I found a rundown hotel that had reasonable rates and decent rooms, dumped my bags and headed to the train station. Unfortunately first class was already booked for the Saturday train and the particular train I needed doesn’t run on Sundays so I bought a ticket for Monday and went walking around Ernakulam thinking that perhaps it would reveal something cool. </p> +<p><break></p> +<h3>You Never Had To Go Anywhere</h3> +<p><img alt="Ernakulam India" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ernakulam.jpg" width="133"/>Unfortunately that just wasn’t the case. Ernakulam is a large city with large city problems, pollution, garbage, traffic, unfriendly people, confusion, noise, touts, etc. If I wanted to go to New Jersey I would have gone to New Jersey. But I had already paid for the room so I stuck it out for the night. </p> +<p>I have no doubt that Ernakulam does have some good things in it, just like New Jersey does, but they aren’t things that a tourist gets to see. Cities are private things held in the minds of the people that inhabit them; you can never know anything about a city until you live there. So this one remains a city like any other, and the next morning I high tailed it back to fort Cochin and got a room. </p> +<p>With some time to kill before my Monday train I figured I might as well take the fabled backwater tour of Kerala. If you’ve never been to India or even looked at it in any detail this might bear some explanation. Kerala is one of the Southern states of India and lies on west coast just below the state of Karnataka (whose capital is Bangalore, which most of you have probably heard of— it’s where your calls to tech support get routed to). Anyway the main draw of the Kochi area of Kerala is the “backwater” area where the numerous lakes and rivers in the region come together and meet the Arabian Sea to form a massive area of lagoons and canals. Most guidebooks say that a tour of this backwater area will be the “highlight of your Kerala stay,” so I figured I might as well sign up for a tour. </p> +<p>Before I left on this trip I wrote a piece about travel blogs on the net and travel writing in general and swore up and down that I would not resort to the “crazy bus ride” or “cabbie from hell” or “eccentric local doesn’t know much but his simple wisdom has showed me the key to life” clichés when writing for luxagraf. I bring this up mainly because I never actually published that piece (because it wasn’t that good). If you dig into the world of travel writing you will find that these plots occur over and over again and have become terrible clichés, but seem to be what editors want. I wanted to point this out because though this story could go that direction it does not, because I am not trying to sell this to Conde Nast. In fact the bus was destroyed before it got to me, the cabbie was a very good driver and I did not get any morsels of wisdom from the locals, just a coconut.</p> +<h3>The Way We Get By</h3> +<p>Those that know me well know that if I had known the tour started at 8 AM <em>before</em> I paid, I would have booked a different tour. But I did not know that until the money had changed hands and the transaction seemed too concluded to back out. So I set my alarm for seven and got downstairs at just about eight. Just as I walked outside there was a bus leaving, which I must say did not seem to encouraging. I asked the hotel manager if anyone had asked for me and he said no, but then when he realized I booked a tour through someone other than him, he became decidedly less helpful. So I sat down and smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. Eventually a guy on a motorcycle came up and asked if I was waiting for a tour bus. I said yes, but generally ignored him since I figured he was trying to con me into a different “better” tour. Finally he convinced me that he was in fact with the tour company I booked through and that the bus had been destroyed in an accident. He said he would take me to where the rest of the people were (apparently everyone else was from one hotel and I was the oddball stop). So I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and we went about 2km to another hotel where the rest of the tour was staying. </p> +<p>I waited around with two couples from Belgium while the man and another tour rep tried to find us some transportation. After about 20 minutes they told us a cab was on its way. So the six of us (including) driver piled into a fairly compact automobile, though by Indian standards this was far from crowded. The drive took about 45 minutes and we had to make several stops for our very nice, but understandably confused, driver to ask for directions. Eventually we got to the dock where about 15 other people were waiting. Everyone piled into a large thatched roof boat and we were finally underway. There was a large family from Bombay, another couple and their two kids from Delhi, an Iranian couple that now lives in London, the Belgians and myself.</p> +<p>We cruised around the islands for about forty minutes watching people on the shore and men out in canoes fishing. Eventually we stopped on one island to tour a factory. <img alt="fishermen" class="postpicright" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" width="159"/>I believe that during the week you get to stop off at places where you can see native workers doing their thing, making fishing nets, weaving rope, etc, but because it was a Sunday we got to go to a Calcium Hydroxide factory. Which was better because it certainly wasn’t a show being put on to entertain the tourists. This is how the island dwellers really survive. They turn shells into calcium hydroxide and sell the results to cement companies. Except that in this case apparently a new buyer has come in the last six months, yes that’s right everybody’s favorite, hey look at us we help third world economies, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Apparently various pills are made from calcium hydroxide (that is, the actual stuff you want is suspended in calcium hydroxide). It was an interesting portrait of the changes rural India is undergoing.</p> +<h3>Mixing Up The Medicine</h3> +<p>The after a short walk through the jungle we came to one of the worker’s houses where our guide went through the front garden and showed us all the plants and what they were used for. As we approached the front yard of the workers house, to an untrained eye such as mine, the plants looked random, like parts of the jungle that hadn’t been cleared because they gave shade, but in fact they weren’t random, they were carefully cultivated. </p> +<p>The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have forgotten. <img alt="plants" class="postpic" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterplants.jpg" width="100"/>Nearly all of them had some medicinal use not just in their leaves and fruit, but also the roots and bark, and most of them had four different uses depending on which part of the plant you wanted to use. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, according to our guide, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with, though cyanide does have other uses.</p> +<p>After getting about an hour’s worth of botanical information we got back on the boat and headed back to the launch area for lunch. We were served a meal typical of Kerala, which was more or less the same thing a waiter gave me two days before when I asked for some typical Kerala cuisine, boiled rice, vegetable curry, and various slaws of carrots or beans or cabbage. With the exception of the rice, which I find tastes just like overcooked white rice, I enjoy Kerala cuisine although it is very different from what gets served as Indian food in the States or Europe.</p> +<h3>Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet</h3> +<p>At this point we hopped back in cab and drove to a second wharf area where we got aboard smaller boats that could navigate the narrower canals. Similar to dugout canoes, but not dugout, these boats were piloted by two men, one on each end using long poles to push off the bottom. Sort of like rowing, but less effective. </p> +<p>As my guidebook says of the longboat tours: “along the way are settlements where people live on narrow spits of land only a few meters wide.” The thing it fails to mention is that you are more or less traveling through people’s backyards, which felt sort of invasive to me. Women were doing laundry or taking a bath only a meter or so from our boat, which felt decidedly intrusive, though I suppose the people that live in these areas must be used to it by now.</p> +<p>One of the strangest things I saw was a fairly large lizard on a lily pad floating several meters from shore, which, if you’re a lizard, is quite a ways even if you can swim. We also saw some sort of water snake (which the guides said was not poisonous), numerous Kingfishers, and from a distance an elephant walking down the road.</p> +<p>At one point we stopped and some of the guides climbed up a palm tree and retrieved coconuts which were first cracked and drank and then split open and eaten. I’ve never been all that fond of coconut so after drinking the juice I sort of wandered back to boat, hoping perhaps the elephant would return and watching the sky to the north turn so dark it looked like night.<img alt="coconut" class="postpicright" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/coconut.jpg" width="100"/></p> +<p>Then it was back in the boats and onward. It started to rain a little bit, but not too hard at first and I thought we might make it back without getting soaked. But then with no warning the sky just opened up and a deluge of water poured down on us. Luckily I had learned couple of days previous that you really shouldn’t go anywhere in southern India without an umbrella so I had one in my bag. Of course it’s still about 85 degrees and even the rain is warm so getting wet wasn’t that big of deal, but digital camera’s react poorly to water, so I kept the umbrella mainly over my bag and partly over the older India man who sat next to me.</p> +<p><img alt="riverboat" class="postpic" height="133" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwatertour.jpg" width="100"/>We stopped the boats and everyone piled out and went up on the porch of someone’s house where we waited for while. But the rain showed no signs of letting up and after half an hour our taxi and everyone else bus were summoned to come and pick us up. Driving back to Fort Cochin our taxi was kicking up a roaster tail of water higher than the car itself and our driver had to turn around several times where streets became impassible, but eventually we made it back.</p> +<p>And there you have it, the backwater tour extraordinaire. Later this evening I will be boarding an overnight train for Mangalore and then switch to another train that should get me to Goa by late Tuesday evening. 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I took a ferry across the harbor into Ernakulam Friday morning with the intention of buying a train ticket to Mangalore for Saturday.
+
+I brought all my bags so it would be easier, just get up and catch an autorickshaw to the train station. I found a rundown hotel that had reasonable rates and decent rooms, dumped my bags and headed to the train station. Unfortunately first class was already booked for the Saturday train and the particular train I needed doesn't run on Sundays so I bought a ticket for Monday and went walking around Ernakulam thinking that perhaps it would reveal something cool.
+
+<break>
+
+###You Never Had To Go Anywhere###
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/ernakulam.jpg" width="133" height="90" class="postpic" alt="Ernakulam India" />Unfortunately that just wasn't the case. Ernakulam is a large city with large city problems, pollution, garbage, traffic, unfriendly people, confusion, noise, touts, etc. If I wanted to go to New Jersey I would have gone to New Jersey. But I had already paid for the room so I stuck it out for the night.
+
+I have no doubt that Ernakulam does have some good things in it, just like New Jersey does, but they aren't things that a tourist gets to see. Cities are private things held in the minds of the people that inhabit them; you can never know anything about a city until you live there. So this one remains a city like any other, and the next morning I high tailed it back to fort Cochin and got a room.
+
+With some time to kill before my Monday train I figured I might as well take the fabled backwater tour of Kerala. If you've never been to India or even looked at it in any detail this might bear some explanation. Kerala is one of the Southern states of India and lies on west coast just below the state of Karnataka (whose capital is Bangalore, which most of you have probably heard of— it's where your calls to tech support get routed to). Anyway the main draw of the Kochi area of Kerala is the "backwater" area where the numerous lakes and rivers in the region come together and meet the Arabian Sea to form a massive area of lagoons and canals. Most guidebooks say that a tour of this backwater area will be the "highlight of your Kerala stay," so I figured I might as well sign up for a tour.
+
+Before I left on this trip I wrote a piece about travel blogs on the net and travel writing in general and swore up and down that I would not resort to the "crazy bus ride" or "cabbie from hell" or "eccentric local doesn't know much but his simple wisdom has showed me the key to life" clichés when writing for luxagraf. I bring this up mainly because I never actually published that piece (because it wasn't that good). If you dig into the world of travel writing you will find that these plots occur over and over again and have become terrible clichés, but seem to be what editors want. I wanted to point this out because though this story could go that direction it does not, because I am not trying to sell this to Conde Nast. In fact the bus was destroyed before it got to me, the cabbie was a very good driver and I did not get any morsels of wisdom from the locals, just a coconut.
+
+###The Way We Get By###
+
+Those that know me well know that if I had known the tour started at 8 AM *before* I paid, I would have booked a different tour. But I did not know that until the money had changed hands and the transaction seemed too concluded to back out. So I set my alarm for seven and got downstairs at just about eight. Just as I walked outside there was a bus leaving, which I must say did not seem to encouraging. I asked the hotel manager if anyone had asked for me and he said no, but then when he realized I booked a tour through someone other than him, he became decidedly less helpful. So I sat down and smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. Eventually a guy on a motorcycle came up and asked if I was waiting for a tour bus. I said yes, but generally ignored him since I figured he was trying to con me into a different "better" tour. Finally he convinced me that he was in fact with the tour company I booked through and that the bus had been destroyed in an accident. He said he would take me to where the rest of the people were (apparently everyone else was from one hotel and I was the oddball stop). So I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and we went about 2km to another hotel where the rest of the tour was staying.
+
+I waited around with two couples from Belgium while the man and another tour rep tried to find us some transportation. After about 20 minutes they told us a cab was on its way. So the six of us (including) driver piled into a fairly compact automobile, though by Indian standards this was far from crowded. The drive took about 45 minutes and we had to make several stops for our very nice, but understandably confused, driver to ask for directions. Eventually we got to the dock where about 15 other people were waiting. Everyone piled into a large thatched roof boat and we were finally underway. There was a large family from Bombay, another couple and their two kids from Delhi, an Iranian couple that now lives in London, the Belgians and myself.
+
+We cruised around the islands for about forty minutes watching people on the shore and men out in canoes fishing. Eventually we stopped on one island to tour a factory. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" height="100" width="159" class="postpicright" alt="fishermen" />I believe that during the week you get to stop off at places where you can see native workers doing their thing, making fishing nets, weaving rope, etc, but because it was a Sunday we got to go to a Calcium Hydroxide factory. Which was better because it certainly wasn't a show being put on to entertain the tourists. This is how the island dwellers really survive. They turn shells into calcium hydroxide and sell the results to cement companies. Except that in this case apparently a new buyer has come in the last six months, yes that's right everybody's favorite, hey look at us we help third world economies, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Apparently various pills are made from calcium hydroxide (that is, the actual stuff you want is suspended in calcium hydroxide). It was an interesting portrait of the changes rural India is undergoing.
+
+###Mixing Up The Medicine###
+
+The after a short walk through the jungle we came to one of the worker's houses where our guide went through the front garden and showed us all the plants and what they were used for. As we approached the front yard of the workers house, to an untrained eye such as mine, the plants looked random, like parts of the jungle that hadn't been cleared because they gave shade, but in fact they weren't random, they were carefully cultivated.
+
+The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have forgotten. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/backwaterplants.jpg" width="100" height="75" class="postpic" alt="plants" />Nearly all of them had some medicinal use not just in their leaves and fruit, but also the roots and bark, and most of them had four different uses depending on which part of the plant you wanted to use. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, according to our guide, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with, though cyanide does have other uses.
+
+After getting about an hour's worth of botanical information we got back on the boat and headed back to the launch area for lunch. We were served a meal typical of Kerala, which was more or less the same thing a waiter gave me two days before when I asked for some typical Kerala cuisine, boiled rice, vegetable curry, and various slaws of carrots or beans or cabbage. With the exception of the rice, which I find tastes just like overcooked white rice, I enjoy Kerala cuisine although it is very different from what gets served as Indian food in the States or Europe.
+
+###Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet###
+
+At this point we hopped back in cab and drove to a second wharf area where we got aboard smaller boats that could navigate the narrower canals. Similar to dugout canoes, but not dugout, these boats were piloted by two men, one on each end using long poles to push off the bottom. Sort of like rowing, but less effective.
+
+As my guidebook says of the longboat tours: "along the way are settlements where people live on narrow spits of land only a few meters wide." The thing it fails to mention is that you are more or less traveling through people's backyards, which felt sort of invasive to me. Women were doing laundry or taking a bath only a meter or so from our boat, which felt decidedly intrusive, though I suppose the people that live in these areas must be used to it by now.
+
+One of the strangest things I saw was a fairly large lizard on a lily pad floating several meters from shore, which, if you're a lizard, is quite a ways even if you can swim. We also saw some sort of water snake (which the guides said was not poisonous), numerous Kingfishers, and from a distance an elephant walking down the road.
+
+At one point we stopped and some of the guides climbed up a palm tree and retrieved coconuts which were first cracked and drank and then split open and eaten. I've never been all that fond of coconut so after drinking the juice I sort of wandered back to boat, hoping perhaps the elephant would return and watching the sky to the north turn so dark it looked like night.<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/coconut.jpg" height="75" width="100" class="postpicright" alt="coconut" />
+
+Then it was back in the boats and onward. It started to rain a little bit, but not too hard at first and I thought we might make it back without getting soaked. But then with no warning the sky just opened up and a deluge of water poured down on us. Luckily I had learned couple of days previous that you really shouldn't go anywhere in southern India without an umbrella so I had one in my bag. Of course it's still about 85 degrees and even the rain is warm so getting wet wasn't that big of deal, but digital camera's react poorly to water, so I kept the umbrella mainly over my bag and partly over the older India man who sat next to me.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/backwatertour.jpg" width="100" height="133" class="postpic" alt="riverboat" />We stopped the boats and everyone piled out and went up on the porch of someone's house where we waited for while. But the rain showed no signs of letting up and after half an hour our taxi and everyone else bus were summoned to come and pick us up. Driving back to Fort Cochin our taxi was kicking up a roaster tail of water higher than the car itself and our driver had to turn around several times where streets became impassible, but eventually we made it back.
+
+And there you have it, the backwater tour extraordinaire. Later this evening I will be boarding an overnight train for Mangalore and then switch to another train that should get me to Goa by late Tuesday evening. The picture gallery has been updated. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b204a8f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.amp @@ -0,0 +1,177 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Bury Your Dead</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead"> + <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/2005/11/bury-your-dead"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="The catacombs of Paris "/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Bury Your Dead"/> + <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/pariscatacombs.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="Paris, France"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="FR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Bury Your Dead" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="The catacombs of Paris " /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-06T18:28:52" /> + <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/pariscatacombs.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/catacombs.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Bury Your Dead", + "description": "The catacombs of Paris ", + "datePublished": "2005-11-06T18:28:52", + "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">Bury Your Dead</h1> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2005-11-06T18:28:52" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>6, 2005</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">Paris</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/france/" title="travel writing from France">France</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> feel I've been neglecting the site lately, but I haven't really done much worth writing about. The last two days I've been inside working on a new project. For those of you wondering how I afford this trip, well that's how, I stop doing fun things, lock the door and write or develop websites as the case maybe. </p> +<p>In this case I've had to do both in the last two days. So not too much interesting stuff to tell. Yesterday I took a break in the afternoon and we went to see the catacombs. There are some pictures up in the photo section. I would like to say that the catacombs had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, "decoratively arranged," but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. It was sort of initially horrifying to think that all these bones had been dug up out of their graves and brought here, intermingled, "decoratively arranged" and more or less became indistinguishably melded together into one singular body that stretches in and around an old underground rock quarry. </p> +<p><break> +<amp-img alt="" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/catacombs.jpg" width="133"></amp-img>But then about half way through I started thinking about a passage in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilly" title="The Center of the Cyclone">Dr. Lilly's</a> <em>The Center of the Cyclone</em> where he talks about his experiments in sensory deprivation chambers, in particular he mentions one experience where, having lost track of any sort of notion of bodily form he reaches a point where all the universe becomes visible as pulses and orbs of electricity, a current he can feel moving through him to the point that he becomes uncertain where he ends and the universe begins and vice versa, and in that light the bones in the catacombs seemed to me an appropriate representation of death, a loss of individuality, a rejoining of some universal body so massive as contain everything and everyone. Besides which, at the rate were going many of us might end up in a big pile of bones ourselves. A word of caution to others, if you're at all claustrophobic don't go down in the catacombs, claustrophobia coupled with human remains every which way you turn is not the recipe for happiness. </break></p> +<p>After the contemplation of death it seemed appropriate to spend the next day in a park or garden of some kind and being a Sunday there wasn't a whole lot else to do. We walked down to little square/park and sat in the last rays of sunshine eating salami and butter sandwiches and reading. </p> +<p>Later in the evening we took a train and bottle of Belgium beer over to Sacre Coure and sat on the steps admiring the panorama of Paris. All in all I had a wonderful time and look forward to returning next spring via the trans Siberian Railway (if all goes according to plan anyway). But now it's time to pack the bags and get ready for India… </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e594136 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.html @@ -0,0 +1,333 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Bury Your Dead - 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 catacombs of Paris "> + <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/2005/11/bury-your-dead" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="48.88623656623962, 2.343757152231122" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="48.88623656623962; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-06T18:28:52" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>6, 2005</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> feel I’ve been neglecting the site lately, but I haven’t really done much worth writing about. The last two days I’ve been inside working on a new project. For those of you wondering how I afford this trip, well that’s how, I stop doing fun things, lock the door and write or develop websites as the case maybe. </p> +<p>In this case I’ve had to do both in the last two days. So not too much interesting stuff to tell. Yesterday I took a break in the afternoon and we went to see the catacombs. There are some pictures up in the photo section. I would like to say that the catacombs had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, “decoratively arranged,” but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. It was sort of initially horrifying to think that all these bones had been dug up out of their graves and brought here, intermingled, “decoratively arranged” and more or less became indistinguishably melded together into one singular body that stretches in and around an old underground rock quarry. </p> +<p><break> +<img alt="" class="postpic" height="133" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/catacombs.jpg" width="100"/>But then about half way through I started thinking about a passage in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilly" title="The Center of the Cyclone">Dr. Lilly’s</a> <em>The Center of the Cyclone</em> where he talks about his experiments in sensory deprivation chambers, in particular he mentions one experience where, having lost track of any sort of notion of bodily form he reaches a point where all the universe becomes visible as pulses and orbs of electricity, a current he can feel moving through him to the point that he becomes uncertain where he ends and the universe begins and vice versa, and in that light the bones in the catacombs seemed to me an appropriate representation of death, a loss of individuality, a rejoining of some universal body so massive as contain everything and everyone. Besides which, at the rate were going many of us might end up in a big pile of bones ourselves. A word of caution to others, if you’re at all claustrophobic don’t go down in the catacombs, claustrophobia coupled with human remains every which way you turn is not the recipe for happiness. </p> +<p>After the contemplation of death it seemed appropriate to spend the next day in a park or garden of some kind and being a Sunday there wasn’t a whole lot else to do. We walked down to little square/park and sat in the last rays of sunshine eating salami and butter sandwiches and reading. </p> +<p>Later in the evening we took a train and bottle of Belgium beer over to Sacre Coure and sat on the steps admiring the panorama of Paris. All in all I had a wonderful time and look forward to returning next spring via the trans Siberian Railway (if all goes according to plan anyway). But now it’s time to pack the bags and get ready for India… </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/2005/11/houses-we-live" rel="prev" title=" The Houses We Live In">The Houses We Live In</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" rel="next" title=" Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine">Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine</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="14" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="098beedca6a3ab088a8c06a9688d5ee13ab7a32c" 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 last two days I've been inside working on a new project. For those of you wondering how I afford this trip, well that's how, I stop doing fun things, lock the door and write or develop websites as the case maybe.
+
+In this case I've had to do both in the last two days. So not too much interesting stuff to tell. Yesterday I took a break in the afternoon and we went to see the catacombs. There are some pictures up in the photo section. I would like to say that the catacombs had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, "decoratively arranged," but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. It was sort of initially horrifying to think that all these bones had been dug up out of their graves and brought here, intermingled, "decoratively arranged" and more or less became indistinguishably melded together into one singular body that stretches in and around an old underground rock quarry.
+
+<break>
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/catacombs.jpg" width="100" height="133" class="postpic" alt="" />But then about half way through I started thinking about a passage in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilly" title="The Center of the Cyclone">Dr. Lilly's</a> *The Center of the Cyclone* where he talks about his experiments in sensory deprivation chambers, in particular he mentions one experience where, having lost track of any sort of notion of bodily form he reaches a point where all the universe becomes visible as pulses and orbs of electricity, a current he can feel moving through him to the point that he becomes uncertain where he ends and the universe begins and vice versa, and in that light the bones in the catacombs seemed to me an appropriate representation of death, a loss of individuality, a rejoining of some universal body so massive as contain everything and everyone. Besides which, at the rate were going many of us might end up in a big pile of bones ourselves. A word of caution to others, if you're at all claustrophobic don't go down in the catacombs, claustrophobia coupled with human remains every which way you turn is not the recipe for happiness.
+
+After the contemplation of death it seemed appropriate to spend the next day in a park or garden of some kind and being a Sunday there wasn't a whole lot else to do. We walked down to little square/park and sat in the last rays of sunshine eating salami and butter sandwiches and reading.
+
+Later in the evening we took a train and bottle of Belgium beer over to Sacre Coure and sat on the steps admiring the panorama of Paris. All in all I had a wonderful time and look forward to returning next spring via the trans Siberian Railway (if all goes according to plan anyway). But now it's time to pack the bags and get ready for India… diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5876876 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.amp @@ -0,0 +1,183 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The City Palace</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace"> + <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/2005/11/city-palace"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="The City Palace"/> + <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/citypalaceudaipur.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="Udiapur, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="The City Palace" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-28T22:00:46" /> + <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/citypalaceudaipur.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colonade.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pigeoncage.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/bathplanter.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "The City Palace", + "description": "Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-28T22:00:46", + "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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But this guy just shrugged and took me where I wanted to go. Once we got to Lal Ghat a man hopped in beside me and started in about his hotel. Luckily for him I was too exhausted to protest much and I agreed to at least look at it. It turned out to be a very nice family run guesthouse that was cheap, immaculately clean, had a lovely rooftop restaurant and, amazingly enough, hot water. All this for a mere Rs 150 a night.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>I tried briefly to sleep but decided that was a waste and set out to explore. I didn't feel up to much and was planning to just walk around for a while and maybe have a bite to eat, but I ended up walking right up to the City Palace Gate. I figured why not and bought a ticket for the museum. The City Palace is sort of a generic name for a whole bunch of palaces that were built over the years, each adding on to what existed before it. Legend has it that the founding Mewar ruler who started it was chasing a hare and when his dog cornered to hare the hare kicked the dog in the face so hard that the dog backed down. So rather than getting a new, tougher dog, the king took it as a sign and built a palace on the hill. Based on what I overheard guides telling other groups, nearly every successive ruler seemed to feel the need to expand and add his own touch to the legacy of what is now City Palace, kind of like the never ending construction projects you see around Boston. So the term City Palace refers to the whole collection and serves chiefly to distinguish it from the Lake Palace (now a hotel) and the Monsoon Palace high atop a nearby mountain.</p> +<p>After touring the museum section, seeing the various rooms and deciding that Mewar rulers had a serious glass and mirror fetish, I came to a sort of hanging garden courtyard that was just off what was once the King's bathtub, though that term hardly does justice to the massive swimming pool sized bathing area. The garden was ringed on all sides by arched colonnades and then within those were trees and decorative planters intermixed with benches. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Colonnades City Palace Udaipur" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colonade.jpg" width="110"></amp-img>I took a seat on a bench in the shade and stared for a long time at a collection of woven cages with rosewood frames and inlaid brass that once housed the king's collection of carrier pigeons. A pair of cages hanging beneath the colonnades outside the main display room were less ornate, solid brass and of a design similar to the one that Sylvester often attempted to decode in his endless pursuit of Tweety. For the most part tourists ignored the room full of cages despite the guides' attempts to impress upon them that once there was no telephone, no email, no long distance communication at all save carrier pigeons. I started to remember all the strange stories I had read about the now extinct birds. <amp-img alt="Pigeon Cages City Palace Udaipur, India" height="217" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pigeoncage.jpg" width="260"></amp-img>The best comes from W.G. Sebald in his novel Austerlitz where a passenger pigeon was sent out somewhere and on its journey home it broke its wing and so, with an obsession that borders on human, it walked home over god knows how many miles. And yes it is a novel so it's ostensibly fiction, but I find that well written fiction is often much closer to the truth than things that confine themselves to facts.</p> +<p>I continued to sit there for quite some time listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. Each and everyone of the guides made a point to say that the King's bath, which was just behind my seat on the bench and sunken slightly into the middle of the garden, to say that this bath was in fact the absolute center and highest point of the mountain over which the palace was built, as if this detail would somehow shed some light on why in fact the bath of all things occupied this particular area when in fact, to me at least, it simply made it all the more curious. It reminded me of children's book that Laura and I once gave to a friend's daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him.</p> +<p>About two weeks ago while I was in Fort Cochin I was overwhelmed by the assault on the senses that India presents in both positive and negative aspects and to cope with it I started trying to notice the small details of things that I or anyone else often overlooks when confronted with any sort of overwhelming, novel experience. But the City Palace was confounding in many ways and stubbornly resisted my attempts to find its details. </p> +<p>I began to realize that perhaps palaces are in effect an attempt to so overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details that it becomes impossible to single them out and that a palace's architectural goal is instead to overawe one into a generalized sensation of wonder or perhaps even confusion. I tried to picture the various kings lying in the bath behind me alone staring at the marble edges or perhaps the leaves in the trees above or even the tiny little plants in their relief cut stone planters along the sides, perhaps he would have noticed that the plants grow in the negative space, <amp-img alt="Stone Planters, City Palace, Udaipur, India" height="183" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/bathplanter.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>where the stone is not, the space that actually forms the pattern that has been cut into the stone, or maybe notice that the pattern of the planter is the same as that of the inlays in the marble around the bath, a sort of blunt flower shape that exists as negative space, similar perhaps to the way a king must exist not a person but a negative space into which is poured all the concerns of his land, his people, his economy, and his foreign affairs.</p> +<p>After a while an older Indian gentleman who appeared tired of the large tour he was partaking in, broke away from the group and sat down on the bench beside me. After asking where I was from and how long I had been in India and other such questions that all the Indians I meet want to know, he started talking about the sheer size of the marble blocks that made up the room around us, not to mention the equally massive stone blocks that formed the walls, all of which had to be dug up, cut to size and hauled up this mountain. We spoke for a while about what the workers lives must have been like in that time and how whatever they did and however they lived is not recorded anywhere in the museum. Eventually the shade of trees above us gave way and bench where we were seated became warm and then hot in the direct sunlight. The man never said another word, simply stood and nodded to me before wandering off to rejoin his tour and I headed back down out of the palace toward the city proper. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c6aca36 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The City Palace - 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="Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate."> + <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/2005/11/city-palace" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="24.591304879190837, 73.69319914745653" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="24.591304879190837; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-28T22:00:46" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>28, 2005</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> arrived in Udaipur in the early morning disembarking from the train bleary eyed and just awake enough to walk past the touts into the first hints of urban sprawl and find a rickshaw that I was pretty sure wasn’t looking for a kickback. </p> +<p>I told him to head to Lal Ghat which is the area I wanted to stay in rather than any specific hotel, lest I find it had suddenly burned down or gone out of business or was run by a very nasty man who breeds cockroaches or any of the other fantastical stories I have heard from touts. But this guy just shrugged and took me where I wanted to go. Once we got to Lal Ghat a man hopped in beside me and started in about his hotel. Luckily for him I was too exhausted to protest much and I agreed to at least look at it. It turned out to be a very nice family run guesthouse that was cheap, immaculately clean, had a lovely rooftop restaurant and, amazingly enough, hot water. All this for a mere Rs 150 a night.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>I tried briefly to sleep but decided that was a waste and set out to explore. I didn’t feel up to much and was planning to just walk around for a while and maybe have a bite to eat, but I ended up walking right up to the City Palace Gate. I figured why not and bought a ticket for the museum. The City Palace is sort of a generic name for a whole bunch of palaces that were built over the years, each adding on to what existed before it. Legend has it that the founding Mewar ruler who started it was chasing a hare and when his dog cornered to hare the hare kicked the dog in the face so hard that the dog backed down. So rather than getting a new, tougher dog, the king took it as a sign and built a palace on the hill. Based on what I overheard guides telling other groups, nearly every successive ruler seemed to feel the need to expand and add his own touch to the legacy of what is now City Palace, kind of like the never ending construction projects you see around Boston. So the term City Palace refers to the whole collection and serves chiefly to distinguish it from the Lake Palace (now a hotel) and the Monsoon Palace high atop a nearby mountain.</p> +<p>After touring the museum section, seeing the various rooms and deciding that Mewar rulers had a serious glass and mirror fetish, I came to a sort of hanging garden courtyard that was just off what was once the King’s bathtub, though that term hardly does justice to the massive swimming pool sized bathing area. The garden was ringed on all sides by arched colonnades and then within those were trees and decorative planters intermixed with benches. </p> +<p><img alt="Colonnades City Palace Udaipur" class="postpicright" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colonade.jpg" width="110"/>The best comes from W.G. Sebald in his novel Austerlitz where a passenger pigeon was sent out somewhere and on its journey home it broke its wing and so, with an obsession that borders on human, it walked home over god knows how many miles. And yes it is a novel so it’s ostensibly fiction, but I find that well written fiction is often much closer to the truth than things that confine themselves to facts.</p> +<p>I continued to sit there for quite some time listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. Each and everyone of the guides made a point to say that the King’s bath, which was just behind my seat on the bench and sunken slightly into the middle of the garden, to say that this bath was in fact the absolute center and highest point of the mountain over which the palace was built, as if this detail would somehow shed some light on why in fact the bath of all things occupied this particular area when in fact, to me at least, it simply made it all the more curious. It reminded me of children’s book that Laura and I once gave to a friend’s daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him.</p> +<p>About two weeks ago while I was in Fort Cochin I was overwhelmed by the assault on the senses that India presents in both positive and negative aspects and to cope with it I started trying to notice the small details of things that I or anyone else often overlooks when confronted with any sort of overwhelming, novel experience. But the City Palace was confounding in many ways and stubbornly resisted my attempts to find its details. </p> +<p>I began to realize that perhaps palaces are in effect an attempt to so overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details that it becomes impossible to single them out and that a palace’s architectural goal is instead to overawe one into a generalized sensation of wonder or perhaps even confusion. I tried to picture the various kings lying in the bath behind me alone staring at the marble edges or perhaps the leaves in the trees above or even the tiny little plants in their relief cut stone planters along the sides, perhaps he would have noticed that the plants grow in the negative space, <img alt="Stone Planters, City Palace, Udaipur, India" class="postpicright" height="183" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/bathplanter.jpg" width="200"/>where the stone is not, the space that actually forms the pattern that has been cut into the stone, or maybe notice that the pattern of the planter is the same as that of the inlays in the marble around the bath, a sort of blunt flower shape that exists as negative space, similar perhaps to the way a king must exist not a person but a negative space into which is poured all the concerns of his land, his people, his economy, and his foreign affairs.</p> +<p>After a while an older Indian gentleman who appeared tired of the large tour he was partaking in, broke away from the group and sat down on the bench beside me. After asking where I was from and how long I had been in India and other such questions that all the Indians I meet want to know, he started talking about the sheer size of the marble blocks that made up the room around us, not to mention the equally massive stone blocks that formed the walls, all of which had to be dug up, cut to size and hauled up this mountain. We spoke for a while about what the workers lives must have been like in that time and how whatever they did and however they lived is not recorded anywhere in the museum. Eventually the shade of trees above us gave way and bench where we were seated became warm and then hot in the direct sunlight. The man never said another word, simply stood and nodded to me before wandering off to rejoin his tour and I headed back down out of the palace toward the city proper. </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/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" rel="prev" title=" Living in Airport Terminals">Living in Airport Terminals</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/monsoon-palace" rel="next" title=" The Monsoon Palace">The Monsoon Palace</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="21" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833487" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="f46db486f5abdc6ade0d1476331aa77e33bc95d1" 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 told him to head to Lal Ghat which is the area I wanted to stay in rather than any specific hotel, lest I find it had suddenly burned down or gone out of business or was run by a very nasty man who breeds cockroaches or any of the other fantastical stories I have heard from touts. But this guy just shrugged and took me where I wanted to go. Once we got to Lal Ghat a man hopped in beside me and started in about his hotel. Luckily for him I was too exhausted to protest much and I agreed to at least look at it. It turned out to be a very nice family run guesthouse that was cheap, immaculately clean, had a lovely rooftop restaurant and, amazingly enough, hot water. All this for a mere Rs 150 a night.
+
+<break>
+
+I tried briefly to sleep but decided that was a waste and set out to explore. I didn't feel up to much and was planning to just walk around for a while and maybe have a bite to eat, but I ended up walking right up to the City Palace Gate. I figured why not and bought a ticket for the museum. The City Palace is sort of a generic name for a whole bunch of palaces that were built over the years, each adding on to what existed before it. Legend has it that the founding Mewar ruler who started it was chasing a hare and when his dog cornered to hare the hare kicked the dog in the face so hard that the dog backed down. So rather than getting a new, tougher dog, the king took it as a sign and built a palace on the hill. Based on what I overheard guides telling other groups, nearly every successive ruler seemed to feel the need to expand and add his own touch to the legacy of what is now City Palace, kind of like the never ending construction projects you see around Boston. So the term City Palace refers to the whole collection and serves chiefly to distinguish it from the Lake Palace (now a hotel) and the Monsoon Palace high atop a nearby mountain.
+
+
+
+After touring the museum section, seeing the various rooms and deciding that Mewar rulers had a serious glass and mirror fetish, I came to a sort of hanging garden courtyard that was just off what was once the King's bathtub, though that term hardly does justice to the massive swimming pool sized bathing area. The garden was ringed on all sides by arched colonnades and then within those were trees and decorative planters intermixed with benches.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colonade.jpg" width="110" height="150" class="postpicright" alt="Colonnades City Palace Udaipur" />I took a seat on a bench in the shade and stared for a long time at a collection of woven cages with rosewood frames and inlaid brass that once housed the king's collection of carrier pigeons. A pair of cages hanging beneath the colonnades outside the main display room were less ornate, solid brass and of a design similar to the one that Sylvester often attempted to decode in his endless pursuit of Tweety. For the most part tourists ignored the room full of cages despite the guides' attempts to impress upon them that once there was no telephone, no email, no long distance communication at all save carrier pigeons. I started to remember all the strange stories I had read about the now extinct birds. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/pigeoncage.jpg" width="260" height="217" class="postpic" alt="Pigeon Cages City Palace Udaipur, India" />The best comes from W.G. Sebald in his novel Austerlitz where a passenger pigeon was sent out somewhere and on its journey home it broke its wing and so, with an obsession that borders on human, it walked home over god knows how many miles. And yes it is a novel so it's ostensibly fiction, but I find that well written fiction is often much closer to the truth than things that confine themselves to facts.
+
+
+
+I continued to sit there for quite some time listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. Each and everyone of the guides made a point to say that the King's bath, which was just behind my seat on the bench and sunken slightly into the middle of the garden, to say that this bath was in fact the absolute center and highest point of the mountain over which the palace was built, as if this detail would somehow shed some light on why in fact the bath of all things occupied this particular area when in fact, to me at least, it simply made it all the more curious. It reminded me of children's book that Laura and I once gave to a friend's daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him.
+
+
+
+About two weeks ago while I was in Fort Cochin I was overwhelmed by the assault on the senses that India presents in both positive and negative aspects and to cope with it I started trying to notice the small details of things that I or anyone else often overlooks when confronted with any sort of overwhelming, novel experience. But the City Palace was confounding in many ways and stubbornly resisted my attempts to find its details.
+
+I began to realize that perhaps palaces are in effect an attempt to so overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details that it becomes impossible to single them out and that a palace's architectural goal is instead to overawe one into a generalized sensation of wonder or perhaps even confusion. I tried to picture the various kings lying in the bath behind me alone staring at the marble edges or perhaps the leaves in the trees above or even the tiny little plants in their relief cut stone planters along the sides, perhaps he would have noticed that the plants grow in the negative space, <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/bathplanter.jpg" width="200" height="183" class="postpicright" alt="Stone Planters, City Palace, Udaipur, India" />where the stone is not, the space that actually forms the pattern that has been cut into the stone, or maybe notice that the pattern of the planter is the same as that of the inlays in the marble around the bath, a sort of blunt flower shape that exists as negative space, similar perhaps to the way a king must exist not a person but a negative space into which is poured all the concerns of his land, his people, his economy, and his foreign affairs.
+
+
+
+After a while an older Indian gentleman who appeared tired of the large tour he was partaking in, broke away from the group and sat down on the bench beside me. After asking where I was from and how long I had been in India and other such questions that all the Indians I meet want to know, he started talking about the sheer size of the marble blocks that made up the room around us, not to mention the equally massive stone blocks that formed the walls, all of which had to be dug up, cut to size and hauled up this mountain. We spoke for a while about what the workers lives must have been like in that time and how whatever they did and however they lived is not recorded anywhere in the museum. Eventually the shade of trees above us gave way and bench where we were seated became warm and then hot in the direct sunlight. The man never said another word, simply stood and nodded to me before wandering off to rejoin his tour and I headed back down out of the palace toward the city proper. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b6b57d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.amp @@ -0,0 +1,195 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Fish Story</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story"> + <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/2005/11/fish-story"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Fish Story"/> + <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/colvabeach.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="Colva Beach, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Fish Story" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-20T00:54:46" /> + <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/colvabeach.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeach.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvaboat.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvacow.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/mejoema.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Fish Story", + "description": "It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-20T00:54:46", + "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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Yes, after about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it to Goa. I'm staying at Colva Beach, which is in Southern Goa and apparently less of a party town than some of the areas to the north. </p> +<p>Quite frankly the idea of coming all the way to India and being surrounded by partying Euroteens just didn't appeal to me, so I opted for Colva Beach. This area also seems to be popular with Indian tourists. <amp-img alt="Colva Beach India" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeach.jpg" width="181"></amp-img>Anyone who's ever been to Panama City, Florida and stayed at the west end of the beach knows pretty much what this area is like. For you west coast folks think Rosarita Beach in Mexico. From Hawaii and Florida to Mexico or India tropical beach towns are all more or less the same, thatched roofs abound, chaise lounges and bars with twinkling Christmas lights are tucked between coconut palms, outrigger fishing boats, everything and everyone is relaxed and friendly.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3> +<p>But before I say much about Goa itself I wanted to tell a word or two about trains because until Tuesday I had never actually ridden on a train. The first train I took from Ernakulam to Mangalore was overnight and first class. Strangely enough first class was cheaper than 2nd sleeper, I guess because of the lack of air conditioning, but with the ceiling fans and open windows there was plenty of circulating air to keep cool. The second train from Mangalore to Margao, Goa I opted for regular sleeper class. The main difference between first class and regular sleeper seems to be the amount of padding on the seats. And regular sleeper is a little more crowded, but still quite comfortable. </p> +<p>There is of course chair class, but it doesn't seem practical with the amount of luggage I'm carrying. I enjoyed traveling by train; I didn't sleep much, but that was more me than the train. I spent most of my time by the open door watching the Indian countryside whirl by in a kaleidoscope of greens and reds and then flashes of purple and blue and white whenever we passed through a town. I saw quite a number of a very eagle or hawk-like birds, not unlike a bald eagle from the states, but with the white extending further down its body. Whatever it is, crows certainly seem to hate it; I saw whole flocks trying to attack these hawks or eagles with very little success. </p> +<p>The other entertainment of an India train is listening to the calls of "chai garam" (hot tea I think) from the venders continually marching up and down the aisles. Traveling by train in India is sort of like being on a moving smorgasbord. One can get everything from biryanis to dosas to a fried dough concoctions, not unlike an American doughnut but not sweet, to of course chai, which in India is just tea, not the chai you get at Starbucks, though that is available as well. </p> +<p>The second train passed by the massive 17m high Gomtateshvara statue in Karnataka, which was beautifully lit up on the horizon, though too far for pictures. I arrived in Margao, Goa at about 9:30pm roughly 26 hours after I left Fort Cochin. I very nearly missed the station because the signs for the station were labeled Madgaon, rather than Margao. Almost every other station I went through the name was simply the name of the town and I'm still not sure if Madgaon is simply another name or Margao or if they changed the name recently—India loves to change names, for instance Bombay is now Mumbai (even though everybody still calls it Bombay), they seems to slowly shedding the British colonial legacy— or what, but luckily I got off and didn't end up going all the way to Mumbai.</p> +<p>I took a cab from Margao to Colva Beach and dragged the poor cabbie through three different hotels that were all full before I gave up and let him take me to an overpriced place that was nice, but really not much more than you get at the cheaper places. Except. Except this place had hot water which was nice for shaving. I have learned to do the cold water shave and it isn't as bad as it sounds, but obviously hot water is better.</p> +<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3> +<p>The next day I moved across the street to a place called the Joema Tourist Home which is structurally not unlike the little compound I used to live in Athens, GA. When I arrived the owner told me that there was a room available, but not until evening. I said fine I'll take it and went to go get my bag and have some breakfast. When I returned two hours later he apparently had given up on me and rented the room to someone else. But he said he felt bad about the mix-up and offered me his son's room in the main house. Because it's very crowded around here and I wanted to stay on the cheap I took him up on the offer and spent the night with his family, who were very nice and accommodating. His younger son was working on a silk painting of the Madonna and Child next to Shiva, a coupling that is not uncommon in India. He was a very talented painter even if the subject was not necessarily one I would choose. He had fantastic attention to detail, especially in the faces, the eyes of which were exactly as I think of the Virgin Mary, flat and lifeless, but with some excruciating depth behind them that makes you feel as if you are falling into a pool of blackness.</p> +<p>The next morning I went to a travel agent and booked a flight from Goa to Ahmedabad and a train from Ahmedabad to Udaipur. I had intended to travel all of that by train, but I'm starting to feel like I'm running out of time and I really want to see Rajasthan so I went for the flights, which ended up being only about $40 more than the trains and saves me about 48 hours of travel time, sadly I will miss Mumbai (Bombay). After taking care of the travel details and moving my stuff into the new, private room I headed down to the beach for a swim.</p> +<h3>A Salty Salute</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="Colva Sunset" height="154" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvaboat.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>The Arabian Sea is very warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. The sand is a kind of silt which must come from rivers up the coast as no ocean is capable of grinding out sand this fine. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and a fairly decent swell brings waves with maybe two foot backs, big enough to ride for a little ways though the beach slopes so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep (which makes body surfing tricky); I have seen men in the afternoon walk to the fishing boats moored quite a ways off the shore. They use a single outrigger fishing boat here and everyday many of them lie unused on the beach, painted in dazzling almost garish hues of blue and green and orange with blue plastic tarps to cover the nets lying in the stern of each boat, and when the breeze kicks up in the afternoon, keeping the mosquitoes and sand fleas and countless other bugs at bay, the tarps on the unused boats luff up and you can see the brightly colored orange and red buoys of the nets lying beneath. It's a nice reminder that Colva is not just tourism, at least some of the residents still earn their living by fishing.</p> +<p>For about two a kilometers in either direction of the main beach the shoreline is dotted with thatched roof huts selling drinks and various foods, a couple of them even offer tandoori, though the ovens never seem to be on when I ask, but I can't say I blame them as the midday heat combined with a tandoor oven would be miserable. The main appeal of these huts seems to be that, provided you purchase something from them, you may lie on their chaise lounges and, more importantly, they keep an eye on you things while you go swimming. I would like to say they also keep the countless girls selling jewelry and sarongs and fruit and every other portable, saleable item you can imagine from pestering you, but unfortunately they do not. </p> +<p>I have decided to spend the entire week here lying on the beach, staring out at the Arabian Sea and otherwise doing nothing. Laura told me the other day that I wrote her an email years ago saying I wanted to lie on the beach, sip pina coladas and do nothing, well, for a week anyway, I plan to do just that. I spent that first afternoon staring out at the ocean, watching the light reflect off it and create rippling textures that moved as surges of water and light, not unlike the way sunlight glitters in a stained glass window, which was undoubtedly (to my mind anyway) inspired by someone staring at the sea. And the substance of glass was, perhaps not coincidentally, right beneath my feet; I enjoy the possible symmetry of some ancestor melting the shoreline to capture the undulation and glitter s/he saw out on the sea.</p> +<h3>It's A Sight To Behold</h3> +<p>The Joema Tourist home is sort of one part hotel, one part residence and one part farm. Pigs and chickens scratch at the dirt and root in the bushes below my window and on the way to the beach there are several cows that consider the field you pass through more theirs than yours. It would be nice to imagine that leopards and even tigers might lurk in the bushes, but like everywhere else in the world, the big cats have long since been driven out and retreated up to the hills where they hide in the few nature preserves and national parks of India. Still, I do get to feel a bit like I am living in the forest on a little farm with all the animals, including the extremely annoying rooster who starts in at about six AM.<amp-img alt="sacred cow" height="160" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvacow.jpg" width="200"></amp-img></p> +<p>The food in Goa is more what we from the States think of as Indian Food, though, as my waiter some nights ago explained, this sort of food is actually only one region of India—Punjab—where a lot of people were displaced and apparently resettled in America. But Goa is enough to the north that one can find spectacular tandoori dishes, the best I've ever had, and wonderful naan and biryanis. The specialty here in Goa is, naturally enough, fish. I spent all day on the beach watching the fishermen out in their boats so I thought it only appropriate that I actually eat some of the local catch. </p> +<p>Last night I trekked down the road to what everyone claims is the best, though not the cheapest, restaurant for fish. And I didn't want just a fish curry or some bits of fish with other things, no, I wanted a whole fish like I have seen some people eating when I walked by. So I asked and did receive. They first brought out a platter of whole raw fish for me to choose from. There was a mackerel, a red snapper and something that looked like what I call a sunfish, but may have other names. It's a flattish fish sort of like a halibut but not that flat and I don't think it swims sideway like a Halibut. Whatever the case that's what I picked.</p> +<p>When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side by<amp-img alt="me" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/mejoema.jpg" width="110"></amp-img> saffron rice and the other by steamed cauliflower with beans, carrots and peas. The entire concoction was covered in a mildly spicy, thick, brownish garlic sauce. Picking the meat off the bones was quite a project, but rewarding once you got the buttery sweet taste in your mouth. It was the best meal so far and yes it was expensive, but it was worth it. And no I didn't pick my teeth with the remaining bones. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a73435 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.html @@ -0,0 +1,352 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Fish Story - 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 not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point."> + <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/2005/11/fish-story" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="15.277230227117771, 73.91541479989145" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="15.277230227117771; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-20T00:54:46" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>20, 2005</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> ate a whole fish—skin, flesh, and all. Yes, after about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it to Goa. I’m staying at Colva Beach, which is in Southern Goa and apparently less of a party town than some of the areas to the north. </p> +<p>Quite frankly the idea of coming all the way to India and being surrounded by partying Euroteens just didn’t appeal to me, so I opted for Colva Beach. This area also seems to be popular with Indian tourists. <img alt="Colva Beach India" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeach.jpg" width="181"/>Anyone who’s ever been to Panama City, Florida and stayed at the west end of the beach knows pretty much what this area is like. For you west coast folks think Rosarita Beach in Mexico. From Hawaii and Florida to Mexico or India tropical beach towns are all more or less the same, thatched roofs abound, chaise lounges and bars with twinkling Christmas lights are tucked between coconut palms, outrigger fishing boats, everything and everyone is relaxed and friendly.</p> +<p><break></p> +<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3> + +<p>But before I say much about Goa itself I wanted to tell a word or two about trains because until Tuesday I had never actually ridden on a train. The first train I took from Ernakulam to Mangalore was overnight and first class. Strangely enough first class was cheaper than 2nd sleeper, I guess because of the lack of air conditioning, but with the ceiling fans and open windows there was plenty of circulating air to keep cool. The second train from Mangalore to Margao, Goa I opted for regular sleeper class. The main difference between first class and regular sleeper seems to be the amount of padding on the seats. And regular sleeper is a little more crowded, but still quite comfortable. </p> +<p>There is of course chair class, but it doesn’t seem practical with the amount of luggage I’m carrying. I enjoyed traveling by train; I didn’t sleep much, but that was more me than the train. I spent most of my time by the open door watching the Indian countryside whirl by in a kaleidoscope of greens and reds and then flashes of purple and blue and white whenever we passed through a town. I saw quite a number of a very eagle or hawk-like birds, not unlike a bald eagle from the states, but with the white extending further down its body. Whatever it is, crows certainly seem to hate it; I saw whole flocks trying to attack these hawks or eagles with very little success. </p> +<p>The other entertainment of an India train is listening to the calls of “chai garam” (hot tea I think) from the venders continually marching up and down the aisles. Traveling by train in India is sort of like being on a moving smorgasbord. One can get everything from biryanis to dosas to a fried dough concoctions, not unlike an American doughnut but not sweet, to of course chai, which in India is just tea, not the chai you get at Starbucks, though that is available as well. </p> +<p>The second train passed by the massive 17m high Gomtateshvara statue in Karnataka, which was beautifully lit up on the horizon, though too far for pictures. I arrived in Margao, Goa at about 9:30pm roughly 26 hours after I left Fort Cochin. I very nearly missed the station because the signs for the station were labeled Madgaon, rather than Margao. Almost every other station I went through the name was simply the name of the town and I’m still not sure if Madgaon is simply another name or Margao or if they changed the name recently—India loves to change names, for instance Bombay is now Mumbai (even though everybody still calls it Bombay), they seems to slowly shedding the British colonial legacy— or what, but luckily I got off and didn’t end up going all the way to Mumbai.</p> +<p>I took a cab from Margao to Colva Beach and dragged the poor cabbie through three different hotels that were all full before I gave up and let him take me to an overpriced place that was nice, but really not much more than you get at the cheaper places. Except. Except this place had hot water which was nice for shaving. I have learned to do the cold water shave and it isn’t as bad as it sounds, but obviously hot water is better.</p> +<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3> + +<p>The next day I moved across the street to a place called the Joema Tourist Home which is structurally not unlike the little compound I used to live in Athens, GA. When I arrived the owner told me that there was a room available, but not until evening. I said fine I’ll take it and went to go get my bag and have some breakfast. When I returned two hours later he apparently had given up on me and rented the room to someone else. But he said he felt bad about the mix-up and offered me his son’s room in the main house. Because it’s very crowded around here and I wanted to stay on the cheap I took him up on the offer and spent the night with his family, who were very nice and accommodating. His younger son was working on a silk painting of the Madonna and Child next to Shiva, a coupling that is not uncommon in India. He was a very talented painter even if the subject was not necessarily one I would choose. He had fantastic attention to detail, especially in the faces, the eyes of which were exactly as I think of the Virgin Mary, flat and lifeless, but with some excruciating depth behind them that makes you feel as if you are falling into a pool of blackness.</p> +<p>The next morning I went to a travel agent and booked a flight from Goa to Ahmedabad and a train from Ahmedabad to Udaipur. I had intended to travel all of that by train, but I’m starting to feel like I’m running out of time and I really want to see Rajasthan so I went for the flights, which ended up being only about $40 more than the trains and saves me about 48 hours of travel time, sadly I will miss Mumbai (Bombay). After taking care of the travel details and moving my stuff into the new, private room I headed down to the beach for a swim.</p> +<h3>A Salty Salute</h3> + +<p><img alt="Colva Sunset" class="postpic" height="154" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvaboat.jpg" width="200"/>The Arabian Sea is very warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. The sand is a kind of silt which must come from rivers up the coast as no ocean is capable of grinding out sand this fine. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and a fairly decent swell brings waves with maybe two foot backs, big enough to ride for a little ways though the beach slopes so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep (which makes body surfing tricky); I have seen men in the afternoon walk to the fishing boats moored quite a ways off the shore. They use a single outrigger fishing boat here and everyday many of them lie unused on the beach, painted in dazzling almost garish hues of blue and green and orange with blue plastic tarps to cover the nets lying in the stern of each boat, and when the breeze kicks up in the afternoon, keeping the mosquitoes and sand fleas and countless other bugs at bay, the tarps on the unused boats luff up and you can see the brightly colored orange and red buoys of the nets lying beneath. It’s a nice reminder that Colva is not just tourism, at least some of the residents still earn their living by fishing.</p> +<p>For about two a kilometers in either direction of the main beach the shoreline is dotted with thatched roof huts selling drinks and various foods, a couple of them even offer tandoori, though the ovens never seem to be on when I ask, but I can’t say I blame them as the midday heat combined with a tandoor oven would be miserable. The main appeal of these huts seems to be that, provided you purchase something from them, you may lie on their chaise lounges and, more importantly, they keep an eye on you things while you go swimming. I would like to say they also keep the countless girls selling jewelry and sarongs and fruit and every other portable, saleable item you can imagine from pestering you, but unfortunately they do not. </p> +<p>I have decided to spend the entire week here lying on the beach, staring out at the Arabian Sea and otherwise doing nothing. Laura told me the other day that I wrote her an email years ago saying I wanted to lie on the beach, sip pina coladas and do nothing, well, for a week anyway, I plan to do just that. I spent that first afternoon staring out at the ocean, watching the light reflect off it and create rippling textures that moved as surges of water and light, not unlike the way sunlight glitters in a stained glass window, which was undoubtedly (to my mind anyway) inspired by someone staring at the sea. And the substance of glass was, perhaps not coincidentally, right beneath my feet; I enjoy the possible symmetry of some ancestor melting the shoreline to capture the undulation and glitter s/he saw out on the sea.</p> +<h3>It’s A Sight To Behold</h3> + +<p>The Joema Tourist home is sort of one part hotel, one part residence and one part farm. Pigs and chickens scratch at the dirt and root in the bushes below my window and on the way to the beach there are several cows that consider the field you pass through more theirs than yours. It would be nice to imagine that leopards and even tigers might lurk in the bushes, but like everywhere else in the world, the big cats have long since been driven out and retreated up to the hills where they hide in the few nature preserves and national parks of India. Still, I do get to feel a bit like I am living in the forest on a little farm with all the animals, including the extremely annoying rooster who starts in at about six AM.<img alt="sacred cow" class="postpicright" height="160" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvacow.jpg" width="200"/></p> +<p>The food in Goa is more what we from the States think of as Indian Food, though, as my waiter some nights ago explained, this sort of food is actually only one region of India—Punjab—where a lot of people were displaced and apparently resettled in America. But Goa is enough to the north that one can find spectacular tandoori dishes, the best I’ve ever had, and wonderful naan and biryanis. The specialty here in Goa is, naturally enough, fish. I spent all day on the beach watching the fishermen out in their boats so I thought it only appropriate that I actually eat some of the local catch. </p> +<p>Last night I trekked down the road to what everyone claims is the best, though not the cheapest, restaurant for fish. And I didn’t want just a fish curry or some bits of fish with other things, no, I wanted a whole fish like I have seen some people eating when I walked by. So I asked and did receive. They first brought out a platter of whole raw fish for me to choose from. There was a mackerel, a red snapper and something that looked like what I call a sunfish, but may have other names. It’s a flattish fish sort of like a halibut but not that flat and I don’t think it swims sideway like a Halibut. Whatever the case that’s what I picked.</p> +<p>When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side by<img alt="me" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/mejoema.jpg" width="110"/> saffron rice and the other by steamed cauliflower with beans, carrots and peas. The entire concoction was covered in a mildly spicy, thick, brownish garlic sauce. Picking the meat off the bones was quite a project, but rewarding once you got the buttery sweet taste in your mouth. It was the best meal so far and yes it was expensive, but it was worth it. 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Yes, after about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it to Goa. I'm staying at Colva Beach, which is in Southern Goa and apparently less of a party town than some of the areas to the north.
+
+Quite frankly the idea of coming all the way to India and being surrounded by partying Euroteens just didn't appeal to me, so I opted for Colva Beach. This area also seems to be popular with Indian tourists. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvabeach.jpg" width="181" height="100" class="postpic" alt="Colva Beach India" />Anyone who's ever been to Panama City, Florida and stayed at the west end of the beach knows pretty much what this area is like. For you west coast folks think Rosarita Beach in Mexico. From Hawaii and Florida to Mexico or India tropical beach towns are all more or less the same, thatched roofs abound, chaise lounges and bars with twinkling Christmas lights are tucked between coconut palms, outrigger fishing boats, everything and everyone is relaxed and friendly.
+
+<break>
+
+<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3>
+
+
+
+But before I say much about Goa itself I wanted to tell a word or two about trains because until Tuesday I had never actually ridden on a train. The first train I took from Ernakulam to Mangalore was overnight and first class. Strangely enough first class was cheaper than 2nd sleeper, I guess because of the lack of air conditioning, but with the ceiling fans and open windows there was plenty of circulating air to keep cool. The second train from Mangalore to Margao, Goa I opted for regular sleeper class. The main difference between first class and regular sleeper seems to be the amount of padding on the seats. And regular sleeper is a little more crowded, but still quite comfortable.
+
+There is of course chair class, but it doesn't seem practical with the amount of luggage I'm carrying. I enjoyed traveling by train; I didn't sleep much, but that was more me than the train. I spent most of my time by the open door watching the Indian countryside whirl by in a kaleidoscope of greens and reds and then flashes of purple and blue and white whenever we passed through a town. I saw quite a number of a very eagle or hawk-like birds, not unlike a bald eagle from the states, but with the white extending further down its body. Whatever it is, crows certainly seem to hate it; I saw whole flocks trying to attack these hawks or eagles with very little success.
+
+The other entertainment of an India train is listening to the calls of "chai garam" (hot tea I think) from the venders continually marching up and down the aisles. Traveling by train in India is sort of like being on a moving smorgasbord. One can get everything from biryanis to dosas to a fried dough concoctions, not unlike an American doughnut but not sweet, to of course chai, which in India is just tea, not the chai you get at Starbucks, though that is available as well.
+
+
+
+The second train passed by the massive 17m high Gomtateshvara statue in Karnataka, which was beautifully lit up on the horizon, though too far for pictures. I arrived in Margao, Goa at about 9:30pm roughly 26 hours after I left Fort Cochin. I very nearly missed the station because the signs for the station were labeled Madgaon, rather than Margao. Almost every other station I went through the name was simply the name of the town and I'm still not sure if Madgaon is simply another name or Margao or if they changed the name recently—India loves to change names, for instance Bombay is now Mumbai (even though everybody still calls it Bombay), they seems to slowly shedding the British colonial legacy— or what, but luckily I got off and didn't end up going all the way to Mumbai.
+
+
+
+I took a cab from Margao to Colva Beach and dragged the poor cabbie through three different hotels that were all full before I gave up and let him take me to an overpriced place that was nice, but really not much more than you get at the cheaper places. Except. Except this place had hot water which was nice for shaving. I have learned to do the cold water shave and it isn't as bad as it sounds, but obviously hot water is better.
+
+
+
+<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3>
+
+
+
+The next day I moved across the street to a place called the Joema Tourist Home which is structurally not unlike the little compound I used to live in Athens, GA. When I arrived the owner told me that there was a room available, but not until evening. I said fine I'll take it and went to go get my bag and have some breakfast. When I returned two hours later he apparently had given up on me and rented the room to someone else. But he said he felt bad about the mix-up and offered me his son's room in the main house. Because it's very crowded around here and I wanted to stay on the cheap I took him up on the offer and spent the night with his family, who were very nice and accommodating. His younger son was working on a silk painting of the Madonna and Child next to Shiva, a coupling that is not uncommon in India. He was a very talented painter even if the subject was not necessarily one I would choose. He had fantastic attention to detail, especially in the faces, the eyes of which were exactly as I think of the Virgin Mary, flat and lifeless, but with some excruciating depth behind them that makes you feel as if you are falling into a pool of blackness.
+
+
+
+The next morning I went to a travel agent and booked a flight from Goa to Ahmedabad and a train from Ahmedabad to Udaipur. I had intended to travel all of that by train, but I'm starting to feel like I'm running out of time and I really want to see Rajasthan so I went for the flights, which ended up being only about $40 more than the trains and saves me about 48 hours of travel time, sadly I will miss Mumbai (Bombay). After taking care of the travel details and moving my stuff into the new, private room I headed down to the beach for a swim.
+
+
+
+<h3>A Salty Salute</h3>
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvaboat.jpg" width="200" height="154" class="postpic" alt="Colva Sunset" />The Arabian Sea is very warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. The sand is a kind of silt which must come from rivers up the coast as no ocean is capable of grinding out sand this fine. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and a fairly decent swell brings waves with maybe two foot backs, big enough to ride for a little ways though the beach slopes so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep (which makes body surfing tricky); I have seen men in the afternoon walk to the fishing boats moored quite a ways off the shore. They use a single outrigger fishing boat here and everyday many of them lie unused on the beach, painted in dazzling almost garish hues of blue and green and orange with blue plastic tarps to cover the nets lying in the stern of each boat, and when the breeze kicks up in the afternoon, keeping the mosquitoes and sand fleas and countless other bugs at bay, the tarps on the unused boats luff up and you can see the brightly colored orange and red buoys of the nets lying beneath. It's a nice reminder that Colva is not just tourism, at least some of the residents still earn their living by fishing.
+
+
+
+For about two a kilometers in either direction of the main beach the shoreline is dotted with thatched roof huts selling drinks and various foods, a couple of them even offer tandoori, though the ovens never seem to be on when I ask, but I can't say I blame them as the midday heat combined with a tandoor oven would be miserable. The main appeal of these huts seems to be that, provided you purchase something from them, you may lie on their chaise lounges and, more importantly, they keep an eye on you things while you go swimming. I would like to say they also keep the countless girls selling jewelry and sarongs and fruit and every other portable, saleable item you can imagine from pestering you, but unfortunately they do not.
+
+
+
+I have decided to spend the entire week here lying on the beach, staring out at the Arabian Sea and otherwise doing nothing. Laura told me the other day that I wrote her an email years ago saying I wanted to lie on the beach, sip pina coladas and do nothing, well, for a week anyway, I plan to do just that. I spent that first afternoon staring out at the ocean, watching the light reflect off it and create rippling textures that moved as surges of water and light, not unlike the way sunlight glitters in a stained glass window, which was undoubtedly (to my mind anyway) inspired by someone staring at the sea. And the substance of glass was, perhaps not coincidentally, right beneath my feet; I enjoy the possible symmetry of some ancestor melting the shoreline to capture the undulation and glitter s/he saw out on the sea.
+
+
+
+<h3>It's A Sight To Behold</h3>
+
+
+
+The Joema Tourist home is sort of one part hotel, one part residence and one part farm. Pigs and chickens scratch at the dirt and root in the bushes below my window and on the way to the beach there are several cows that consider the field you pass through more theirs than yours. It would be nice to imagine that leopards and even tigers might lurk in the bushes, but like everywhere else in the world, the big cats have long since been driven out and retreated up to the hills where they hide in the few nature preserves and national parks of India. Still, I do get to feel a bit like I am living in the forest on a little farm with all the animals, including the extremely annoying rooster who starts in at about six AM.<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvacow.jpg" width="200" height="160" class="postpicright" alt="sacred cow" />
+
+
+
+The food in Goa is more what we from the States think of as Indian Food, though, as my waiter some nights ago explained, this sort of food is actually only one region of India—Punjab—where a lot of people were displaced and apparently resettled in America. But Goa is enough to the north that one can find spectacular tandoori dishes, the best I've ever had, and wonderful naan and biryanis. The specialty here in Goa is, naturally enough, fish. I spent all day on the beach watching the fishermen out in their boats so I thought it only appropriate that I actually eat some of the local catch.
+
+Last night I trekked down the road to what everyone claims is the best, though not the cheapest, restaurant for fish. And I didn't want just a fish curry or some bits of fish with other things, no, I wanted a whole fish like I have seen some people eating when I walked by. So I asked and did receive. They first brought out a platter of whole raw fish for me to choose from. There was a mackerel, a red snapper and something that looked like what I call a sunfish, but may have other names. It's a flattish fish sort of like a halibut but not that flat and I don't think it swims sideway like a Halibut. Whatever the case that's what I picked.
+
+
+
+When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side by<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/mejoema.jpg" width="110" height="100" class="postpic" alt="me" /> saffron rice and the other by steamed cauliflower with beans, carrots and peas. The entire concoction was covered in a mildly spicy, thick, brownish garlic sauce. Picking the meat off the bones was quite a project, but rewarding once you got the buttery sweet taste in your mouth. It was the best meal so far and yes it was expensive, but it was worth it. And no I didn't pick my teeth with the remaining bones. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b773abc --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.amp @@ -0,0 +1,186 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Houses We Live In</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live"> + <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/2005/11/houses-we-live"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently"/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Houses We Live In"/> + <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/pariscityscape.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="Paris, France"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="FR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="The Houses We Live In" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently" /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-01T10:40:00" /> + <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/pariscityscape.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/eiffel.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/choc.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "The Houses We Live In", + "description": "People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently", + "datePublished": "2005-11-01T10:40:00", + "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'm paraphrasing here since I don't remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of "people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently." </p> +<p>Mr. Bill is widely traveled from his time in the Air Force so it's not like he just pulled this idea out of his ass. I also don't think he meant it in too strict of terms. But with this idea in mind I've been paying more attention to architecture than I ever did in the past and, if for no other reason than that, I appreciate Mr. Bill's point. Or as my dad likes to say, when you get to Paris you really feel like you have gone somewhere. </p> +<p><break> +Paris's architecture is unlike anything in America. There is really just no comparison. A few neighborhoods in the more modern parts of town remind me at times of San Francisco if it were pancaked and painted mute colors. But by and large, Paris architecture is completely unlike anything in America. And I think one of the reasons that is so has to do with the way in which architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. So while Mr. Bill may be right that people are essentially the same, nevertheless, important differences distinguish them from one another and sometimes these differences are reflected in the houses they make.</break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Eiffel Tower" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/eiffel.jpg" width="135"></amp-img>To Americans the French are renowned for the emphasis they place on pleasure and sensual details of life. When Americans think of the French they tend to think of food and art and sex. Whereas I cannot pretend to tell you what the French at large think of Americans they seem somewhat obsessed with our bad television dramas, particularly those with detective/police/crime bent. Which to seems to reflect a view of Americans that is perhaps not entirely unfounded. </p> +<p>We're obsessed with regulating things the French don't care about, yet we love the anti-hero who flaunts our own regulations. We're gruff, only semi-civilized and most importantly very, very young as a culture. We still love to play cops and robbers (though cowboys and indians seems to have fallen out of favor). Many Americans would take tremendous offense to the nudes that adorn French gardens, which is just silly, but undeniably part of America's historical Puritanism, a history the French lack.</p> +<p>Of course I am speaking in clichés and do not want to imply that I actually believe either of these perceptions is in any way accurate or even representative of each culture. Still there may well be something to be learned from clichés.</p> +<p>There are more concrete cultural differences I've observed, for instance, one which really irritates Laura, is that Parisians at least, have a concept of personal space that's radically smaller than American's concept. The French have no problem basically stepping on you in crowded metro cars for instance. The other related irritating thing is the Parisians' habit of not getting the hell out of the way. For instance no one here runs to catch the metro train. Whereas in New York, if you are descending to the platform and clearly hear or see a train arrive nearly everyone speeds up and tries to make that train, not so here. People continue along at whatever plodding pace they may have and good luck getting around them. Yet curiously they have no problem moving into the 10 inch space between you and the supermarket shelf. These two things combined make the Louvre quite an ordeal even on a weekday.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Clytemnestra and Agamemnon" height="213" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>Yet perhaps if you are always running to catch the train you cannot produce something like Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. And I don't mean that in the sense of stopping to smell the flowers, it's much more than that. It's an entirely different approach to life, something so big I don't pretend to fully understand it, but merely catch glimpses of it here and there in the smaller actions and movements of a culture similar too, and yet entirely different from mine.</p> +<p>At the same time I have come to see certain ways in which I am indelibly American. Laura, who has been here about three weeks longer than me, pointed out that while we tend to think of America as having no unifying culture, it actually does. It's just very hard to see until you look at it from along way away. I think perhaps it's doubly noticeable when encountering a culture that is very close to and yet not, your own. That is to say that certainly India will be so different from America as to virtually incomparable in any meaningful way (which raise the question whether or not comparing cultures is in fact ever meaningful, but I can't go there at this juncture). But France is just close enough that the differences are more obvious.</p> +<p>Yet similarities remain. For instance if you want to see the French go crazy with Americanesque consumer frenzy just stop by BHV on a Saturday. And BHV is itself a very America idea, and yet, as with everything, the French have refined the Target/Wal-Mart concept to a new and somewhat higher level. Everything under one roof takes on a new meaning at BHV where literally everything is under one roof except groceries. Imagine Wal-Mart mashed with Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Pier 1, Macy's, True Value, and Ikea. Nine stories of crazed French consumers. And yet the cafe has good coffee, beer and pretty good photography on the walls. They take what they like about an American idea, and add that distinctive French refinement.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Chocolat Chaud" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/choc.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>If you pinned me down and wanted some definitive difference between Paris and say New York, I would, aside from the architecture, point out that Paris has a relaxed culture where the emphasis is on doing things well rather than the quantity of things one gets done. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the things the French love to do, they fashion into an art form, and even when the output may be thought of as consumerist, there is still an art to it that distinguishes it from its American counterpart. Sometimes, as in the case of food, art, etc this is a wonderfully refreshing change from the homogenization of American culture. But other times this can be a bad thing. Which brings me to another point in favor of American culture, despite how many of might complain about a visit to the DMV, the paperwork involved in American life is nowhere near the bureaucracy the French deal with. Interestingly enough the word bureaucracy come from a French word, bureau (meaning office). But if the trade off for the way of life I see around me in Paris is to have a bureaucratic nightmare of a government, well damn it sign me up, I'd love to wait in line for health care. [And please please don't bring up taxes. I guarantee French taxes are nothing compared to visiting the ER in the states]</p> +<p>What seems like it might be ideal is a melding of the good aspects of both cultures, though inevitably such an idea would be doomed to failure. Perhaps the truth of culture is simply that you cannot have the good aspects without accepting the bad ones. Viewed from this light it seems to me that the question becomes not how much you love the good, but how little you mind the bad. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b05a75c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.html @@ -0,0 +1,340 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Houses We Live In - 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="People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently"> + <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/2005/11/houses-we-live" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="48.86409366210158, 2.3615670200875383" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="48.86409366210158; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-01T10:40:00" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>1, 2005</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>‘ve been thinking the last couple of days about something Bill’s dad said to me before I left. I’m paraphrasing here since I don’t remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of “people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently.” </p> +<p>Mr. Bill is widely traveled from his time in the Air Force so it’s not like he just pulled this idea out of his ass. I also don’t think he meant it in too strict of terms. But with this idea in mind I’ve been paying more attention to architecture than I ever did in the past and, if for no other reason than that, I appreciate Mr. Bill’s point. Or as my dad likes to say, when you get to Paris you really feel like you have gone somewhere. </p> +<p><break> +Paris’s architecture is unlike anything in America. There is really just no comparison. A few neighborhoods in the more modern parts of town remind me at times of San Francisco if it were pancaked and painted mute colors. But by and large, Paris architecture is completely unlike anything in America. And I think one of the reasons that is so has to do with the way in which architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. So while Mr. Bill may be right that people are essentially the same, nevertheless, important differences distinguish them from one another and sometimes these differences are reflected in the houses they make.</p> +<p><img alt="Eiffel Tower" class="postpic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/eiffel.jpg" width="135"/>To Americans the French are renowned for the emphasis they place on pleasure and sensual details of life. When Americans think of the French they tend to think of food and art and sex. Whereas I cannot pretend to tell you what the French at large think of Americans they seem somewhat obsessed with our bad television dramas, particularly those with detective/police/crime bent. Which to seems to reflect a view of Americans that is perhaps not entirely unfounded. </p> +<p>We’re obsessed with regulating things the French don’t care about, yet we love the anti-hero who flaunts our own regulations. We’re gruff, only semi-civilized and most importantly very, very young as a culture. We still love to play cops and robbers (though cowboys and indians seems to have fallen out of favor). Many Americans would take tremendous offense to the nudes that adorn French gardens, which is just silly, but undeniably part of America’s historical Puritanism, a history the French lack.</p> +<p>Of course I am speaking in clichés and do not want to imply that I actually believe either of these perceptions is in any way accurate or even representative of each culture. Still there may well be something to be learned from clichés.</p> +<p>There are more concrete cultural differences I’ve observed, for instance, one which really irritates Laura, is that Parisians at least, have a concept of personal space that’s radically smaller than American’s concept. The French have no problem basically stepping on you in crowded metro cars for instance. The other related irritating thing is the Parisians’ habit of not getting the hell out of the way. For instance no one here runs to catch the metro train. Whereas in New York, if you are descending to the platform and clearly hear or see a train arrive nearly everyone speeds up and tries to make that train, not so here. People continue along at whatever plodding pace they may have and good luck getting around them. Yet curiously they have no problem moving into the 10 inch space between you and the supermarket shelf. These two things combined make the Louvre quite an ordeal even on a weekday.</p> +<p><img alt="Clytemnestra and Agamemnon" class="postpicright" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg"/>Yet perhaps if you are always running to catch the train you cannot produce something like Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. And I don’t mean that in the sense of stopping to smell the flowers, it’s much more than that. It’s an entirely different approach to life, something so big I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but merely catch glimpses of it here and there in the smaller actions and movements of a culture similar too, and yet entirely different from mine.</p> +<p>At the same time I have come to see certain ways in which I am indelibly American. Laura, who has been here about three weeks longer than me, pointed out that while we tend to think of America as having no unifying culture, it actually does. It’s just very hard to see until you look at it from along way away. I think perhaps it’s doubly noticeable when encountering a culture that is very close to and yet not, your own. That is to say that certainly India will be so different from America as to virtually incomparable in any meaningful way (which raise the question whether or not comparing cultures is in fact ever meaningful, but I can’t go there at this juncture). But France is just close enough that the differences are more obvious.</p> +<p>Yet similarities remain. For instance if you want to see the French go crazy with Americanesque consumer frenzy just stop by BHV on a Saturday. And BHV is itself a very America idea, and yet, as with everything, the French have refined the Target/Wal-Mart concept to a new and somewhat higher level. Everything under one roof takes on a new meaning at BHV where literally everything is under one roof except groceries. Imagine Wal-Mart mashed with Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Pier 1, Macy’s, True Value, and Ikea. Nine stories of crazed French consumers. And yet the cafe has good coffee, beer and pretty good photography on the walls. They take what they like about an American idea, and add that distinctive French refinement.</p> +<p><img alt="Chocolat Chaud" class="postpic" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/choc.jpg" width="150"/>If you pinned me down and wanted some definitive difference between Paris and say New York, I would, aside from the architecture, point out that Paris has a relaxed culture where the emphasis is on doing things well rather than the quantity of things one gets done. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the things the French love to do, they fashion into an art form, and even when the output may be thought of as consumerist, there is still an art to it that distinguishes it from its American counterpart. Sometimes, as in the case of food, art, etc this is a wonderfully refreshing change from the homogenization of American culture. But other times this can be a bad thing. Which brings me to another point in favor of American culture, despite how many of might complain about a visit to the DMV, the paperwork involved in American life is nowhere near the bureaucracy the French deal with. Interestingly enough the word bureaucracy come from a French word, bureau (meaning office). But if the trade off for the way of life I see around me in Paris is to have a bureaucratic nightmare of a government, well damn it sign me up, I’d love to wait in line for health care. [And please please don’t bring up taxes. I guarantee French taxes are nothing compared to visiting the ER in the states]</p> +<p>What seems like it might be ideal is a melding of the good aspects of both cultures, though inevitably such an idea would be doomed to failure. Perhaps the truth of culture is simply that you cannot have the good aspects without accepting the bad ones. Viewed from this light it seems to me that the question becomes not how much you love the good, but how little you mind the bad. </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/2005/10/sainte-chapelle" rel="prev" title=" Sainte Chapelle">Sainte Chapelle</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead" rel="next" title=" Bury Your Dead">Bury Your Dead</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="13" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="4837212c364e5ceda1620f25c5290d5ab4d46910" 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'm paraphrasing here since I don't remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of "people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently."
+
+Mr. Bill is widely traveled from his time in the Air Force so it's not like he just pulled this idea out of his ass. I also don't think he meant it in too strict of terms. But with this idea in mind I've been paying more attention to architecture than I ever did in the past and, if for no other reason than that, I appreciate Mr. Bill's point. Or as my dad likes to say, when you get to Paris you really feel like you have gone somewhere.
+
+
+<break>
+Paris's architecture is unlike anything in America. There is really just no comparison. A few neighborhoods in the more modern parts of town remind me at times of San Francisco if it were pancaked and painted mute colors. But by and large, Paris architecture is completely unlike anything in America. And I think one of the reasons that is so has to do with the way in which architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. So while Mr. Bill may be right that people are essentially the same, nevertheless, important differences distinguish them from one another and sometimes these differences are reflected in the houses they make.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/eiffel.jpg" height="180" width="135" alt="Eiffel Tower" class="postpic" />To Americans the French are renowned for the emphasis they place on pleasure and sensual details of life. When Americans think of the French they tend to think of food and art and sex. Whereas I cannot pretend to tell you what the French at large think of Americans they seem somewhat obsessed with our bad television dramas, particularly those with detective/police/crime bent. Which to seems to reflect a view of Americans that is perhaps not entirely unfounded.
+
+We're obsessed with regulating things the French don't care about, yet we love the anti-hero who flaunts our own regulations. We're gruff, only semi-civilized and most importantly very, very young as a culture. We still love to play cops and robbers (though cowboys and indians seems to have fallen out of favor). Many Americans would take tremendous offense to the nudes that adorn French gardens, which is just silly, but undeniably part of America's historical Puritanism, a history the French lack.
+
+Of course I am speaking in clichés and do not want to imply that I actually believe either of these perceptions is in any way accurate or even representative of each culture. Still there may well be something to be learned from clichés.
+
+There are more concrete cultural differences I've observed, for instance, one which really irritates Laura, is that Parisians at least, have a concept of personal space that's radically smaller than American's concept. The French have no problem basically stepping on you in crowded metro cars for instance. The other related irritating thing is the Parisians' habit of not getting the hell out of the way. For instance no one here runs to catch the metro train. Whereas in New York, if you are descending to the platform and clearly hear or see a train arrive nearly everyone speeds up and tries to make that train, not so here. People continue along at whatever plodding pace they may have and good luck getting around them. Yet curiously they have no problem moving into the 10 inch space between you and the supermarket shelf. These two things combined make the Louvre quite an ordeal even on a weekday.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg" alt="Clytemnestra and Agamemnon" class="postpicright" />Yet perhaps if you are always running to catch the train you cannot produce something like Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. And I don't mean that in the sense of stopping to smell the flowers, it's much more than that. It's an entirely different approach to life, something so big I don't pretend to fully understand it, but merely catch glimpses of it here and there in the smaller actions and movements of a culture similar too, and yet entirely different from mine.
+
+At the same time I have come to see certain ways in which I am indelibly American. Laura, who has been here about three weeks longer than me, pointed out that while we tend to think of America as having no unifying culture, it actually does. It's just very hard to see until you look at it from along way away. I think perhaps it's doubly noticeable when encountering a culture that is very close to and yet not, your own. That is to say that certainly India will be so different from America as to virtually incomparable in any meaningful way (which raise the question whether or not comparing cultures is in fact ever meaningful, but I can't go there at this juncture). But France is just close enough that the differences are more obvious.
+
+Yet similarities remain. For instance if you want to see the French go crazy with Americanesque consumer frenzy just stop by BHV on a Saturday. And BHV is itself a very America idea, and yet, as with everything, the French have refined the Target/Wal-Mart concept to a new and somewhat higher level. Everything under one roof takes on a new meaning at BHV where literally everything is under one roof except groceries. Imagine Wal-Mart mashed with Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Pier 1, Macy's, True Value, and Ikea. Nine stories of crazed French consumers. And yet the cafe has good coffee, beer and pretty good photography on the walls. They take what they like about an American idea, and add that distinctive French refinement.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/choc.jpg" height="120" width="150" alt="Chocolat Chaud" class="postpic" />If you pinned me down and wanted some definitive difference between Paris and say New York, I would, aside from the architecture, point out that Paris has a relaxed culture where the emphasis is on doing things well rather than the quantity of things one gets done. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the things the French love to do, they fashion into an art form, and even when the output may be thought of as consumerist, there is still an art to it that distinguishes it from its American counterpart. Sometimes, as in the case of food, art, etc this is a wonderfully refreshing change from the homogenization of American culture. But other times this can be a bad thing. Which brings me to another point in favor of American culture, despite how many of might complain about a visit to the DMV, the paperwork involved in American life is nowhere near the bureaucracy the French deal with. Interestingly enough the word bureaucracy come from a French word, bureau (meaning office). But if the trade off for the way of life I see around me in Paris is to have a bureaucratic nightmare of a government, well damn it sign me up, I'd love to wait in line for health care. [And please please don't bring up taxes. I guarantee French taxes are nothing compared to visiting the ER in the states]
+
+What seems like it might be ideal is a melding of the good aspects of both cultures, though inevitably such an idea would be doomed to failure. Perhaps the truth of culture is simply that you cannot have the good aspects without accepting the bad ones. Viewed from this light it seems to me that the question becomes not how much you love the good, but how little you mind the bad. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0bb126d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/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="2005-11-29T12:03:31-05:00">Nov 29, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" title="The City Palace">The City Palace</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-28T22:00:46-05:00">Nov 28, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" title="Living in Airport Terminals">Living in Airport Terminals</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-27T11:56:20-05:00">Nov 27, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market" title="Anjuna Market">Anjuna Market</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-24T00:58:15-05:00">Nov 24, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story" title="Fish Story">Fish Story</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-20T00:54:46-05:00">Nov 20, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" title="The Backwaters of Kerala">The Backwaters of Kerala</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-15T00:53:50-05:00">Nov 15, 2005</time> + </li> + <li 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2005</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">Ahmedabad</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/india/" title="travel writing from India">India</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">W</span>ell I've learned to roll with the punches in India when it comes to traveling so I wasn't really all that surprised that my plane was delayed four hours in Mumbai. Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur. </p> +<p>So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn't as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. <amp-img alt="City Gate Ahmedabad India" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ahmedabadgate.jpg" width="160"></amp-img>I'll grant them the smoggy bit; I've never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn't so bad for one day. I figure if you've seen the worst it's all uphill from there.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own. </p> +<p>Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler's god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are. </p> +<p><a name="back1"></a>According to author Nathaniel Mackey<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled "wered," as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us. </p> +<p>Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever.</p> +<p>The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Airport Terminal Goa, India" height="190" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/goaterminal.jpg" width="143"></amp-img>The floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend. </p> +<p>Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it's me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you're now four generations removed from old Sun the one. <a href="#back1" title="return to footnote paragraph">↩</a> </p></li> +</ol> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/living-airport-terminals.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/living-airport-terminals.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7acaa7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/living-airport-terminals.html @@ -0,0 +1,340 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Living In Airport Terminals - 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="Airport terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary between where we were and where we will be."> + <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/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="23.009675285624738, 72.56237982693523" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="23.009675285624738; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-27T11:56:20" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>27, 2005</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">W</span>ell I’ve learned to roll with the punches in India when it comes to traveling so I wasn’t really all that surprised that my plane was delayed four hours in Mumbai. Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur. </p> +<p>So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn’t as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. <img alt="City Gate Ahmedabad India" class="postpicright" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ahmedabadgate.jpg" width="160"/>I’ll grant them the smoggy bit; I’ve never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn’t so bad for one day. I figure if you’ve seen the worst it’s all uphill from there.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own. </p> +<p>Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler’s god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are. </p> +<p><a name="back1"></a>According to author Nathaniel Mackey<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled “wered,” as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us. </p> +<p>Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever.</p> +<p>The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal. </p> +<p><img alt="Airport Terminal Goa, India" class="postpic" height="190" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/goaterminal.jpg" width="143"/>The floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend. </p> +<p>Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it’s me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you’re now four generations removed from old Sun the one. <a href="#back1" title="return to footnote paragraph">↩</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/2005/11/anjuna-market" rel="prev" title=" Anjuna Market">Anjuna Market</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" rel="next" title=" The City Palace">The City Palace</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="20" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833487" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="382be43988ba695f3162a5cdd9809026269e45bf" 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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Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur.
+
+So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn't as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/ahmedabadgate.jpg" width="160" height="120" class="postpicright" alt="City Gate Ahmedabad India" />I'll grant them the smoggy bit; I've never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn't so bad for one day. I figure if you've seen the worst it's all uphill from there.
+
+<break>
+
+But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own.
+
+Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler's god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are.
+
+
+
+<a name="back1"></a>According to author Nathaniel Mackey<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled "wered," as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us.
+
+Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever.
+
+
+
+The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/goaterminal.jpg" width="143" height="190" class="postpic" alt="Airport Terminal Goa, India" />The floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend.
+
+Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock.
+
+
+
+<ol class="footnote">
+<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it's me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you're now four generations removed from old Sun the one. <a href="#back1" title="return to footnote paragraph">↩</a> </p></li>
+</ol> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..337f9e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.amp @@ -0,0 +1,182 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Monsoon Palace</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/monsoon-palace"> + <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/2005/11/monsoon-palace"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. 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Just to capture the beam of light across the narrow stretch of lake between this shore and the one opposite me, a light that begins its reflection strong, turning a thick band of water brilliant orange, but then as it extends out away from that shore toward me, the light weakens and narrows like a straight road in the desert, shimmering as it comes to a point and then it begins to break up and ripple across the placid, but not entirely still, water which bends the light and makes it warble side to side until finally it breaks up into individual chunks of light dancing across the waves like luminous water striders in the still eddy of a river; even to capture one small, simple description like this (and we have not even begun to capture it, merely described it) would take hours if not days. Or perhaps to try and describe the emotional impact a simple tree can have silhouetted in a black shroud of leaves and branches against the vague slightly mauve last glow of light eking over the mountains in the distance. But even this simple scene calls up a hundred others, and each of those a hundred more.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunset Udaipur, India" height="253" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurtree.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>I hired a rickshaw driven by a nice Indian man who spoke near perfect English and had clearly watched too many episodes of Pimp My Ride as evidenced by his tricked out rickshaw complete with recessed speakers in the back through which he enjoys blasting strange Indian dance music. I hired him, as I started to say, to take me up to the Monsoon palace at sunset. We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature that made me question my decision to not bring my jacket, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks. </p> +<p>Eventually we reached the summit and parked the rickshaw. My driver and his friend who had accompanied us were quick to point out that this was the highest summit around Udaipur, which is probably why Maharana Sajjan Sigh built his monsoon palace here. In India it pays to have a house in a high place so that when the monsoons come you can observe the torrential runoff from a safe distance (this is also the reason that Hindu temples are often very steep sided, architects found that the quicker the runoff the longer their work lasted).</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Monsoon Palace Udaipur India" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonpalace.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>The Monsoon Palace is at this point showing its age and the primary caretakers appear to be pigeons and some token gestures by the government, namely introducing UHF, shortwave and now cell relay towers on the rooftop. The result is somewhat disappointing after the City Palace and seems a good argument for the privatization of India's landmarks. Yes, large portions of the City palace are now exclusive hotels, but at least they aren't slowly crumbling into ruin. </p> +<p>The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. The stark empty rooms and bare walls give no hint of the splendor that must have once filled them, the only hint of the palaces former grandeur comes from standing in the window balconies and admiring the sweeping mounta</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Shadows Monsoon Palace" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonshadow.jpg" width="100"></amp-img>I went down out of the palace proper and sat in the courtyard looking up at the three stories of reddish pink stone that make up the various towers and rooms. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades took on an increasingly orange hue. I struck up a conversation briefly with an American couple from Tennessee who raved about the camel markets in Pushkar and then I decided to go back up inside the palace. </p> +<p>The rooms were still bare and essentially stark, but the light of the setting sun now imbued them with a soft pinkish orange glow and standing in the window I looked back and noticed that even my shadow was slightly fuzzy with feathered indistinct edges. After taking few pictures and admiring the light for while I went back out to the courtyard and sat down to watch the color begin to fade from the walls. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills we headed back down to Udiapur.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d93f150 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.html @@ -0,0 +1,336 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Monsoon Palace - 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 inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. 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Just to capture the beam of light across the narrow stretch of lake between this shore and the one opposite me, a light that begins its reflection strong, turning a thick band of water brilliant orange, but then as it extends out away from that shore toward me, the light weakens and narrows like a straight road in the desert, shimmering as it comes to a point and then it begins to break up and ripple across the placid, but not entirely still, water which bends the light and makes it warble side to side until finally it breaks up into individual chunks of light dancing across the waves like luminous water striders in the still eddy of a river; even to capture one small, simple description like this (and we have not even begun to capture it, merely described it) would take hours if not days. Or perhaps to try and describe the emotional impact a simple tree can have silhouetted in a black shroud of leaves and branches against the vague slightly mauve last glow of light eking over the mountains in the distance. But even this simple scene calls up a hundred others, and each of those a hundred more.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p><img alt="Sunset Udaipur, India" class="postpicright" height="253" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurtree.jpg" width="200"/>I hired a rickshaw driven by a nice Indian man who spoke near perfect English and had clearly watched too many episodes of Pimp My Ride as evidenced by his tricked out rickshaw complete with recessed speakers in the back through which he enjoys blasting strange Indian dance music. I hired him, as I started to say, to take me up to the Monsoon palace at sunset. We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature that made me question my decision to not bring my jacket, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks. </p> +<p>Eventually we reached the summit and parked the rickshaw. My driver and his friend who had accompanied us were quick to point out that this was the highest summit around Udaipur, which is probably why Maharana Sajjan Sigh built his monsoon palace here. In India it pays to have a house in a high place so that when the monsoons come you can observe the torrential runoff from a safe distance (this is also the reason that Hindu temples are often very steep sided, architects found that the quicker the runoff the longer their work lasted).</p> +<p><img alt="Monsoon Palace Udaipur India" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonpalace.jpg" width="150"/>The Monsoon Palace is at this point showing its age and the primary caretakers appear to be pigeons and some token gestures by the government, namely introducing UHF, shortwave and now cell relay towers on the rooftop. The result is somewhat disappointing after the City Palace and seems a good argument for the privatization of India’s landmarks. Yes, large portions of the City palace are now exclusive hotels, but at least they aren’t slowly crumbling into ruin. </p> +<p>The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. The stark empty rooms and bare walls give no hint of the splendor that must have once filled them, the only hint of the palaces former grandeur comes from standing in the window balconies and admiring the sweeping mounta</p> +<p><img alt="Shadows Monsoon Palace" class="postpicright" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonshadow.jpg" width="100"/>I went down out of the palace proper and sat in the courtyard looking up at the three stories of reddish pink stone that make up the various towers and rooms. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades took on an increasingly orange hue. I struck up a conversation briefly with an American couple from Tennessee who raved about the camel markets in Pushkar and then I decided to go back up inside the palace. </p> +<p>The rooms were still bare and essentially stark, but the light of the setting sun now imbued them with a soft pinkish orange glow and standing in the window I looked back and noticed that even my shadow was slightly fuzzy with feathered indistinct edges. After taking few pictures and admiring the light for while I went back out to the courtyard and sat down to watch the color begin to fade from the walls. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills we headed back down to Udiapur.</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/2005/11/city-palace" rel="prev" title=" The City Palace">The City Palace</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur" rel="next" title=" Around Udaipur">Around Udaipur</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="22" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833486" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="e7e6ff00e70e4b5cc63cf8d77873003072371ec6" 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 would, like Proust, have to stop living entirely and just write. Just to capture the beam of light across the narrow stretch of lake between this shore and the one opposite me, a light that begins its reflection strong, turning a thick band of water brilliant orange, but then as it extends out away from that shore toward me, the light weakens and narrows like a straight road in the desert, shimmering as it comes to a point and then it begins to break up and ripple across the placid, but not entirely still, water which bends the light and makes it warble side to side until finally it breaks up into individual chunks of light dancing across the waves like luminous water striders in the still eddy of a river; even to capture one small, simple description like this (and we have not even begun to capture it, merely described it) would take hours if not days. Or perhaps to try and describe the emotional impact a simple tree can have silhouetted in a black shroud of leaves and branches against the vague slightly mauve last glow of light eking over the mountains in the distance. But even this simple scene calls up a hundred others, and each of those a hundred more.
+
+<break>
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/udaipurtree.jpg" width="200" height="253" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset Udaipur, India" />I hired a rickshaw driven by a nice Indian man who spoke near perfect English and had clearly watched too many episodes of Pimp My Ride as evidenced by his tricked out rickshaw complete with recessed speakers in the back through which he enjoys blasting strange Indian dance music. I hired him, as I started to say, to take me up to the Monsoon palace at sunset. We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature that made me question my decision to not bring my jacket, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks.
+
+Eventually we reached the summit and parked the rickshaw. My driver and his friend who had accompanied us were quick to point out that this was the highest summit around Udaipur, which is probably why Maharana Sajjan Sigh built his monsoon palace here. In India it pays to have a house in a high place so that when the monsoons come you can observe the torrential runoff from a safe distance (this is also the reason that Hindu temples are often very steep sided, architects found that the quicker the runoff the longer their work lasted).
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/monsoonpalace.jpg" width="150" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Monsoon Palace Udaipur India" />The Monsoon Palace is at this point showing its age and the primary caretakers appear to be pigeons and some token gestures by the government, namely introducing UHF, shortwave and now cell relay towers on the rooftop. The result is somewhat disappointing after the City Palace and seems a good argument for the privatization of India's landmarks. Yes, large portions of the City palace are now exclusive hotels, but at least they aren't slowly crumbling into ruin.
+
+The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. The stark empty rooms and bare walls give no hint of the splendor that must have once filled them, the only hint of the palaces former grandeur comes from standing in the window balconies and admiring the sweeping mounta
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/monsoonshadow.jpg" width="100" height="180" class="postpicright" alt="Shadows Monsoon Palace" />I went down out of the palace proper and sat in the courtyard looking up at the three stories of reddish pink stone that make up the various towers and rooms. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades took on an increasingly orange hue. I struck up a conversation briefly with an American couple from Tennessee who raved about the camel markets in Pushkar and then I decided to go back up inside the palace.
+
+The rooms were still bare and essentially stark, but the light of the setting sun now imbued them with a soft pinkish orange glow and standing in the window I looked back and noticed that even my shadow was slightly fuzzy with feathered indistinct edges. After taking few pictures and admiring the light for while I went back out to the courtyard and sat down to watch the color begin to fade from the walls. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills we headed back down to Udiapur. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0b6e547 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.amp @@ -0,0 +1,180 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine"> + <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/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine"/> + <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/seinetower.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="Paris, France"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="FR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-08T18:30:13" /> + <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/seinetower.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/iraqi.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine", + "description": "Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-08T18:30:13", + "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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<amp-img alt="iraqi restaurant" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/iraqi.jpg" width="133"></amp-img> I don't want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. But now that I am abroad I prefer not to think about politics too much. +<break></break></p> +<p>At the same time I thought I should mention that yes, there are riots in the suburbs around Paris right now. As a matter of fact I had to take a bus out to Charles DeGaulle airport rather than the train, because they shut down the RER to the airport yesterday evening since it passes through the rioting neighborhoods. A number of people have emailed me concerned about the riots and my safety. Prior to the fifth or so such email, I hadn't paid any attention whatsoever to the riots. And it turns out that some gasoline bombs were set off within walking distance of Laura's house. That said, you would never know there are riots just from looking about on the streets. Even the local papers aren't exactly screaming New York Post-style headlines like <em>Paris Burns!</em> or whatever.</p> +<p>And I think the fact that Paris is ignoring the riots is sort of symptomatic of the point that the rioters are trying to make. Lest you be misinformed by the hyperbole prone sensationalism of the America press, I did a little digging and proffer this little summary. About two weeks ago some police officers were chasing three young men. The young men tried to hide in an electrical substation and two of them were killed, presumably when they touched some sort of electrical current. Now obviously, while tragic, this event alone is unlikely to start riots. Unless. Unless the young men were of North African descent and police force in Paris were almost exclusively white. Unless the North African community in the Paris suburbs were marginalized, discriminated against, and generally repressed by the white population of France (I'm not sure if anyone remembers all the apartment fires in Paris this summer and French governments response, which was to round up the displaced from there lean-tos in the street and send them off to god knows where). </p> +<p>When you have a situation where a large population (there are five million first and second generation North Africans living in France, if you would like to know why, google the terms "French Algerian War") feels marginalized and basically discarded by the dominant population some sort of flashpoint is inevitable. I'm not going to pretend to understand French politics, but my cursory understanding is that top French political officials are generally speaking, inept, out of touch and often blatantly racist in their political decisions. More or less just like top political officials in the United States.</p> +<p>And so you get riots (New Orleans anyone?). And then you hear officials call the rioters "thugs" and you get more riots. And then the officials hold meetings, and you have more riots. And then the officials vow to "catch the crooks" and you have more rioting. And then the officials hold meetings…. Who knows, maybe France is on the edge of some sort of um, restructuring. Probably not, but they could certainly use a little adjustment. I've only been here two weeks and I've seen two acts of blatant racism, the likes of which I can't imagine in the United States (and I did live in the South for four years). The French, and more generally, all of Europe has a growing population of Muslim immigrants that it needs to address and to find a way to live with, otherwise bad things are going to happen. Are happening. Will continue to happen.</p> +<p>So yes, there are riots outside Paris, but good lord the US media can blow things out of proportion to sell a newspaper. For instance, yesterday the New York Times headline read "ten French police officers shot in riots." The reality? Well someone fired a scattershot gun into a crowd of cops and several of them were injured. Okay technically you could say they were shot and no doubt it does not feel pleasant, but come on, printing a headline that says ten cops shot implies some serious shooting, a gun battle even, especially to American audiences whom are used to gun battles occurring in the streets. Not only is such reporting misleading, it's just plain wrong. </p> +<p>So take the headlines with a grain of salt. Or even better keep a whole salt lick by your side when you watch the news. As for me, I appreciate the concern, but I am fine. I even made it here to airport without any trouble and about an hour I'll be on my way to Cochin, India.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eeca212 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.html @@ -0,0 +1,336 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine - 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="Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown."> + <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/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="48.863514907961644, 2.3610734936288558" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="48.863514907961644; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-08T18:30:13" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>8, 2005</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">W</span>ell it’s my last night here in Paris and I’ve chosen to return to the best restaurant we’ve been to so far, an Iraqi restaurant around the corner from Laura’s apartment here in a Marais. </p> +<p>I am using all my willpower right now to avoid having a political outburst re the quality of Iraqi food versus the intelligence of George Bush etc etc. I’m traveling; <img alt="iraqi restaurant" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/iraqi.jpg" width="133"/> I don’t want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. But now that I am abroad I prefer not to think about politics too much. +<break></p> +<p>At the same time I thought I should mention that yes, there are riots in the suburbs around Paris right now. As a matter of fact I had to take a bus out to Charles DeGaulle airport rather than the train, because they shut down the RER to the airport yesterday evening since it passes through the rioting neighborhoods. A number of people have emailed me concerned about the riots and my safety. Prior to the fifth or so such email, I hadn’t paid any attention whatsoever to the riots. And it turns out that some gasoline bombs were set off within walking distance of Laura’s house. That said, you would never know there are riots just from looking about on the streets. Even the local papers aren’t exactly screaming New York Post-style headlines like <em>Paris Burns!</em> or whatever.</p> +<p>And I think the fact that Paris is ignoring the riots is sort of symptomatic of the point that the rioters are trying to make. Lest you be misinformed by the hyperbole prone sensationalism of the America press, I did a little digging and proffer this little summary. About two weeks ago some police officers were chasing three young men. The young men tried to hide in an electrical substation and two of them were killed, presumably when they touched some sort of electrical current. Now obviously, while tragic, this event alone is unlikely to start riots. Unless. Unless the young men were of North African descent and police force in Paris were almost exclusively white. Unless the North African community in the Paris suburbs were marginalized, discriminated against, and generally repressed by the white population of France (I’m not sure if anyone remembers all the apartment fires in Paris this summer and French governments response, which was to round up the displaced from there lean-tos in the street and send them off to god knows where). </p> +<p>When you have a situation where a large population (there are five million first and second generation North Africans living in France, if you would like to know why, google the terms “French Algerian War”) feels marginalized and basically discarded by the dominant population some sort of flashpoint is inevitable. I’m not going to pretend to understand French politics, but my cursory understanding is that top French political officials are generally speaking, inept, out of touch and often blatantly racist in their political decisions. More or less just like top political officials in the United States.</p> +<p>And so you get riots (New Orleans anyone?). And then you hear officials call the rioters “thugs” and you get more riots. And then the officials hold meetings, and you have more riots. And then the officials vow to “catch the crooks” and you have more rioting. And then the officials hold meetings…. Who knows, maybe France is on the edge of some sort of um, restructuring. Probably not, but they could certainly use a little adjustment. I’ve only been here two weeks and I’ve seen two acts of blatant racism, the likes of which I can’t imagine in the United States (and I did live in the South for four years). The French, and more generally, all of Europe has a growing population of Muslim immigrants that it needs to address and to find a way to live with, otherwise bad things are going to happen. Are happening. Will continue to happen.</p> +<p>So yes, there are riots outside Paris, but good lord the US media can blow things out of proportion to sell a newspaper. For instance, yesterday the New York Times headline read “ten French police officers shot in riots.” The reality? Well someone fired a scattershot gun into a crowd of cops and several of them were injured. Okay technically you could say they were shot and no doubt it does not feel pleasant, but come on, printing a headline that says ten cops shot implies some serious shooting, a gun battle even, especially to American audiences whom are used to gun battles occurring in the streets. Not only is such reporting misleading, it’s just plain wrong. </p> +<p>So take the headlines with a grain of salt. Or even better keep a whole salt lick by your side when you watch the news. As for me, I appreciate the concern, but I am fine. I even made it here to airport without any trouble and about an hour I’ll be on my way to Cochin, India.</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/2005/11/bury-your-dead" rel="prev" title=" Bury Your Dead">Bury Your Dead</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed" rel="next" title=" Vasco de Gama Exhumed">Vasco de Gama Exhumed</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="15" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="d78425c386c86dcda9ebd1d600cef251385d6b1c" 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 am using all my willpower right now to avoid having a political outburst re the quality of Iraqi food versus the intelligence of George Bush etc etc. I'm traveling; <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/iraqi.jpg" height="100" width="133" alt="iraqi restaurant" class="postpic" /> I don't want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. But now that I am abroad I prefer not to think about politics too much.
+<break>
+
+At the same time I thought I should mention that yes, there are riots in the suburbs around Paris right now. As a matter of fact I had to take a bus out to Charles DeGaulle airport rather than the train, because they shut down the RER to the airport yesterday evening since it passes through the rioting neighborhoods. A number of people have emailed me concerned about the riots and my safety. Prior to the fifth or so such email, I hadn't paid any attention whatsoever to the riots. And it turns out that some gasoline bombs were set off within walking distance of Laura's house. That said, you would never know there are riots just from looking about on the streets. Even the local papers aren't exactly screaming New York Post-style headlines like *Paris Burns!* or whatever.
+
+And I think the fact that Paris is ignoring the riots is sort of symptomatic of the point that the rioters are trying to make. Lest you be misinformed by the hyperbole prone sensationalism of the America press, I did a little digging and proffer this little summary. About two weeks ago some police officers were chasing three young men. The young men tried to hide in an electrical substation and two of them were killed, presumably when they touched some sort of electrical current. Now obviously, while tragic, this event alone is unlikely to start riots. Unless. Unless the young men were of North African descent and police force in Paris were almost exclusively white. Unless the North African community in the Paris suburbs were marginalized, discriminated against, and generally repressed by the white population of France (I'm not sure if anyone remembers all the apartment fires in Paris this summer and French governments response, which was to round up the displaced from there lean-tos in the street and send them off to god knows where).
+
+When you have a situation where a large population (there are five million first and second generation North Africans living in France, if you would like to know why, google the terms "French Algerian War") feels marginalized and basically discarded by the dominant population some sort of flashpoint is inevitable. I'm not going to pretend to understand French politics, but my cursory understanding is that top French political officials are generally speaking, inept, out of touch and often blatantly racist in their political decisions. More or less just like top political officials in the United States.
+
+And so you get riots (New Orleans anyone?). And then you hear officials call the rioters "thugs" and you get more riots. And then the officials hold meetings, and you have more riots. And then the officials vow to "catch the crooks" and you have more rioting. And then the officials hold meetings…. Who knows, maybe France is on the edge of some sort of um, restructuring. Probably not, but they could certainly use a little adjustment. I've only been here two weeks and I've seen two acts of blatant racism, the likes of which I can't imagine in the United States (and I did live in the South for four years). The French, and more generally, all of Europe has a growing population of Muslim immigrants that it needs to address and to find a way to live with, otherwise bad things are going to happen. Are happening. Will continue to happen.
+
+So yes, there are riots outside Paris, but good lord the US media can blow things out of proportion to sell a newspaper. For instance, yesterday the New York Times headline read "ten French police officers shot in riots." The reality? Well someone fired a scattershot gun into a crowd of cops and several of them were injured. Okay technically you could say they were shot and no doubt it does not feel pleasant, but come on, printing a headline that says ten cops shot implies some serious shooting, a gun battle even, especially to American audiences whom are used to gun battles occurring in the streets. Not only is such reporting misleading, it's just plain wrong.
+
+So take the headlines with a grain of salt. Or even better keep a whole salt lick by your side when you watch the news. As for me, I appreciate the concern, but I am fine. I even made it here to airport without any trouble and about an hour I'll be on my way to Cochin, India. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f00040 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.amp @@ -0,0 +1,187 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Vasco de Gama Exhumed</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed"> + <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/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Vasco de Gama Exhumed"/> + <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/fortcochin.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="Fort Kochi, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Vasco de Gama Exhumed" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-11T00:51:41" /> + <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/fortcochin.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/princess.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/treecochin.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/gama.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Vasco de Gama Exhumed", + "description": "Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-11T00:51:41", + "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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Fort Kochi to be more precise. It's a little touristy for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. I flew out of Paris Wednesday morning with a four-hour stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. </p> +<p>In the cursory glance I had given my ticket way back when I got it I for some reason had read Delhi rather than Dubai, so it was kind of exciting to realize I was landing in Africa. The layover was my only time in Africa, which is too bad, but I guess I have to leave some things for the future. The flight crossed over the Alps, which were spectacularly large, even from thirty thousand feet; I now have a strong desire to get back to Switzerland and Austria. Unfortunately I crossed Saudi Arabia at night so I wasn't able to see anything, but judging from the photos around the airport, Dubai seems like Los Angeles twenty years in the future. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>I have to say if you ever fly in this region, look into Emirates Airlines, it's the best experience I've had flying. I mean how many times have you gotten a menu while on an airplane, especially one that boasts gravlax and cheesecake?</p> +<p>I landed in Cochin after about sixteen hours of traveling and managed to get through immigration and customs without too much trouble. The Cochin airport is quite a ways from Fort Kochi so I had a rather long taxi ride into town, which I was sort of dreading given what I've read about Indian cab drivers (actually Indian drivers in general). However I found the experience an enjoyable, though mysterious, one. Maybe I'm a little crazier than most Americans but the driving didn't bother me. I mean sure, Indian drivers think nothing of passing an autorickshaw with oncoming buses in the opposite lane, but it makes sense when you watch them do it. Nobody is going much over 70km (45 mph) so you have more time than you think you do. Anyway it's not that scary, though after driving around New York with Jimmy I realized that, so long as you can fully inhabit your automobile, to the point that it truly is an extension of yourself, anything is possible when driving. What is kind of scary is that Indian automobiles have no seat belts. </p> +<p>What is confusing about India's highways is the Indian drivers use of the horn, which is constant enough to emerge as an almost linguistic device. I could tell that the horns constitute a language of sorts, but I couldn't for the life of me understand more than a few syllables so to speak.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Princess Street Fort Cochin India" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/princess.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>I directed the cabbie to a hotel which I picked at random out of the Lonely Planet Guide to India and sprung for an air-con double-bed room. It sounds a little crazy, but after that tiny apartment in France, having some space and huge bed was worth the extra 400 rupees. I spent the afternoon in a sort of daze from lack of sleep, though I did take a walk along the waterfront in the evening, just as it was starting to drizzle a little bit, munching on roasted nuts and trying to understand the Chinese fishing nets, which seem impossibly complicated. Apparently they are some sort of cantilevered device which require four or five people to operate.</p> +<p>About a block from my hotel there is little park/public square that spills across the street and out onto the waterfront walkway, with street vendors and a fish market displaying some rather massive fish that I didn't recognize (though the fish make a strong testament to the feats of the Chinese fishing nets). I didn't partake in it last night, but you can buy a fish at one end of the market and then take it down to the other end and they will cook it up for you.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="tree" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/treecochin.jpg" width="113"></amp-img>The side of the park opposite the waterfront is lined with the most massive trees I've ever seen. The canopy of the trees is at least 40 meters up and stretches almost an entire block. The colossal trunks must be 8 meters in diameter and are covered in a mixture of moss and a fern-like plant—a leafy plant, but the leaves grow in the structure of a fern frond—that extend from the ground to about three quarters of the way into the branches and give the trees the appearance of a shaggy jungle beard.</p> +<p>After walking around for an hour or so I stopped into a little restaurant with a large hidden terrace/garden in the back where I had some passable vegetable curry, the local variation of rice and a wonderful bread that resembled an over-sized friend egg, but tasted delicious. </p> +<p>The whole time I was out and about memories of the time I spent traveling around Mexico when I was younger kept flooding back to me, similar smells and sounds rise up out of darkened doorways and muddy alleys, run-down abandoned and overgrown buildings lie right next to well kept, though equally old and moss-covered estates. There is also the characteristic lack of a middle class that puts tarp-covered shanty towns just over the back fence from massive almost hacienda-style mansions. Perhaps the similarities with Mexico come from the presence of the Portuguese in this area a few hundred years ago. Many of the obviously older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style—moss covered, adobe-colored, arches abound. There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, <amp-img alt="graveyard" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/gama.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>who died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (there we go again, more Europeans digging up and moving the dead). The Dutch appear to have had an influence as well, there is Dutch graveyard somewhere around here and obviously the presence of the Chinese fishing nets seems to indicate an oriental influence, which, according to my guidebook, dates from the Kublai Khan era.</p> +<p>After sleeping about fifteen hours I got up around noon and went to Addy's restaurant which is a converted Dutch house dating from around the 1770s. I had an amazing dish called fish chootuporichuthu (try saying that five times fast), which was tuna (I think) steamed in a banana leaf with some sort of great spice mixture and served with what passes for an acknowledgement of Dutch heritage—Belgium Fries. </p> +<p>I spent the next three hours wandering around in the heat of day like a true gringo (not sure what the Indian equivalent of gringo would be) watching all the locals stare at me from their shaded doorways. I ended up at the Dutch cemetery, which is not open to the public, but has some amazing decaying tombs and sepulchers. I stood at the gate for a while wondering which one might be Vasco de Gama's former resting place and why it is that I keep ending up around the dead.</p> +<p>Afterward I walked clear across town to the market area and bought some fruit and roasted peanuts for breakfast tomorrow. I have decided to skip the backwater tour and keep moving north toward Bangalore. Tomorrow I plan to catch the 2 pm express train the Bangalore, which is a 14 hour journey, so I probably won't be posting anything for a couple of days. The picture gallery has been updated for your viewing pleasure. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f0d71f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.html @@ -0,0 +1,415 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Vasco De Gama Exhumed - 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="Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon."> + <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/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="9.964370231041398, 76.24091147315163" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="9.964370231041398; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-11T00:51:41" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>11, 2005</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>After a sleepless 36 hours I am now in Kerala India. Fort Kochi to be more precise. It’s a little touristy for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. I flew out of Paris Wednesday morning with a four-hour stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. </p> +<p>In the cursory glance I had given my ticket way back when I got it I for some reason had read Delhi rather than Dubai, so it was kind of exciting to realize I was landing in Africa. The layover was my only time in Africa, which is too bad, but I guess I have to leave some things for the future. The flight crossed over the Alps, which were spectacularly large, even from thirty thousand feet; I now have a strong desire to get back to Switzerland and Austria. Unfortunately I crossed Saudi Arabia at night so I wasn’t able to see anything, but judging from the photos around the airport, Dubai seems like Los Angeles twenty years in the future. </p> +<p>I have to say if you ever fly in this region, look into Emirates Airlines, it’s the best experience I’ve had flying. I mean how many times have you gotten a menu while on an airplane, especially one that boasts gravlax and cheesecake?</p> +<p>I landed in Cochin after about sixteen hours of traveling and managed to get through immigration and customs without too much trouble. The Cochin airport is quite a ways from Fort Kochi so I had a rather long taxi ride into town, which I was sort of dreading given what I’ve read about Indian cab drivers (actually Indian drivers in general). However I found the experience an enjoyable, though mysterious, one. Maybe I’m a little crazier than most Americans but the driving didn’t bother me. I mean sure, Indian drivers think nothing of passing an autorickshaw with oncoming buses in the opposite lane, but it makes sense when you watch them do it. Nobody is going much over 70km (45 mph) so you have more time than you think you do. Anyway it’s not that scary, though after driving around New York with Jimmy I realized that, so long as you can fully inhabit your automobile, to the point that it truly is an extension of yourself, anything is possible when driving. What is kind of scary is that Indian automobiles have no seat belts. </p> +<p>What is confusing about India’s highways is the Indian drivers use of the horn, which is constant enough to emerge as an almost linguistic device. I could tell that the horns constitute a language of sorts, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand more than a few syllables, so to speak.</p> +<p>I directed the cabbie to a hotel which I picked at random out of the Lonely Planet Guide to India and sprung for an air-con double-bed room. It sounds a little crazy, but after that tiny apartment in France, having some space and huge bed was worth the extra 400 rupees. </p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> +</div> + +<p>I spent the afternoon in a sort of daze from lack of sleep, though I did take a walk along the waterfront in the evening, just as it was starting to drizzle a little bit, munching on roasted nuts and trying to understand the Chinese fishing nets, which seem impossibly complicated. Apparently they are some sort of cantilevered device which require four or five people to operate.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03.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/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide960.jpg 1920w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide-sm.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04.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/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-med.jpg 1170w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_featured_jrnl.jpg 520w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-sm.jpg" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-med.jpg" alt="chinese fishing nets, Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>About a block from my hotel there is little park/public square that spills across the street and out onto the waterfront walkway, with street vendors and a fish market displaying some rather massive fish that I didn’t recognize (though the fish make a strong testament to the feats of the Chinese fishing nets). I didn’t partake in it last night, but you can buy a fish at one end of the market and then take it down to the other end and they will cook it up for you.</p> +<p>The side of the park opposite the waterfront is lined with the most massive trees I’ve ever seen. The canopy of the trees is at least 40 meters up and stretches almost an entire block. The colossal trunks must be 8 meters in diameter and are covered in a mixture of moss and a fern-like plant — a leafy plant, but the leaves grow in the structure of a fern frond — that extend from the ground to about three quarters of the way into the branches and give the trees the appearance of a shaggy jungle beard.</p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> +<span class="row-2"> + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09_pic66.jpg" alt="Ayurvedic massage, barbecue sign photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> +</div> + +<p>After walking around for an hour or so I stopped into a little restaurant with a large hidden terrace/garden in the back where I had some passable vegetable curry, the local variation of rice and a wonderful bread that resembled an over-sized friend egg, but tasted delicious. </p> +<p>The whole time I was out and about memories of the time I spent traveling around Mexico when I was younger kept flooding back to me, similar smells and sounds rise up out of darkened doorways and muddy alleys, run-down abandoned and overgrown buildings lie right next to well kept, though equally old and moss-covered estates. </p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17.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/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide960.jpg 1920w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide-sm.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>There is also the characteristic lack of a middle class that puts tarp-covered shanty towns just over the back fence from massive almost hacienda-style mansions. </p> +<p>The similarities with Mexico come from the presence of the Portuguese in this area a few hundred years ago. Many of the older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style — adobe-colored, arches and heavy tile roofs abound, plenty of moss covered walls. </p> +<p>There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, who died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (yet more Europeans digging up and <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead">moving the dead</a>). </p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13.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/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide960.jpg 1920w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide-sm.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>The Dutch appear to have had an influence around here as well, there is Dutch graveyard somewhere around here and obviously the presence of the Chinese fishing nets seems to indicate an oriental influence, which, according to my guidebook, dates from the Kublai Khan era.</p> +<p>After sleeping about fifteen hours I got up around noon and went to Addy’s restaurant which is a converted Dutch house dating from around the 1770s. I had an amazing dish called fish chootuporichuthu (try saying that five times fast), which was tuna (I think) steamed in a banana leaf with some sort of great spice mixture and served with what passes for an acknowledgement of Dutch heritage — Belgium Fries. </p> +<p>I spent the next three hours wandering around in the heat of day like a true gringo (not sure what the Indian equivalent of gringo would be) watching all the locals stare at me from their shaded doorways. I ended up at the Dutch cemetery, which is not open to the public, but has some amazing decaying tombs and sepulchers. I stood at the gate for a while wondering which one might be Vasco de Gama’s former resting place and why it is that I keep ending up around the dead.</p> +<p>Afterward I walked clear across town to the market area and bought some fruit and roasted peanuts for breakfast tomorrow. I have decided to skip the backwater tour and keep moving north toward Bangalore. Tomorrow I plan to catch the 2 pm express train the Bangalore, which is a 14 hour journey.</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/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" rel="prev" title=" Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine">Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" rel="next" title=" The Backwaters of Kerala">The Backwaters of Kerala</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="16" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="89cb993b14c90e12b9995235198ac9f8d27e0bfb" 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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Fort Kochi to be more precise. It's a little touristy for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. I flew out of Paris Wednesday morning with a four-hour stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
+
+In the cursory glance I had given my ticket way back when I got it I for some reason had read Delhi rather than Dubai, so it was kind of exciting to realize I was landing in Africa. The layover was my only time in Africa, which is too bad, but I guess I have to leave some things for the future. The flight crossed over the Alps, which were spectacularly large, even from thirty thousand feet; I now have a strong desire to get back to Switzerland and Austria. Unfortunately I crossed Saudi Arabia at night so I wasn't able to see anything, but judging from the photos around the airport, Dubai seems like Los Angeles twenty years in the future.
+
+I have to say if you ever fly in this region, look into Emirates Airlines, it's the best experience I've had flying. I mean how many times have you gotten a menu while on an airplane, especially one that boasts gravlax and cheesecake?
+
+I landed in Cochin after about sixteen hours of traveling and managed to get through immigration and customs without too much trouble. The Cochin airport is quite a ways from Fort Kochi so I had a rather long taxi ride into town, which I was sort of dreading given what I've read about Indian cab drivers (actually Indian drivers in general). However I found the experience an enjoyable, though mysterious, one. Maybe I'm a little crazier than most Americans but the driving didn't bother me. I mean sure, Indian drivers think nothing of passing an autorickshaw with oncoming buses in the opposite lane, but it makes sense when you watch them do it. Nobody is going much over 70km (45 mph) so you have more time than you think you do. Anyway it's not that scary, though after driving around New York with Jimmy I realized that, so long as you can fully inhabit your automobile, to the point that it truly is an extension of yourself, anything is possible when driving. What is kind of scary is that Indian automobiles have no seat belts.
+
+What is confusing about India's highways is the Indian drivers use of the horn, which is constant enough to emerge as an almost linguistic device. I could tell that the horns constitute a language of sorts, but I couldn't for the life of me understand more than a few syllables, so to speak.
+
+I directed the cabbie to a hotel which I picked at random out of the Lonely Planet Guide to India and sprung for an air-con double-bed room. It sounds a little crazy, but after that tiny apartment in France, having some space and huge bed was worth the extra 400 rupees.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX.jpg" id="image-1750" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10.jpg" id="image-1753" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+</div>
+
+I spent the afternoon in a sort of daze from lack of sleep, though I did take a walk along the waterfront in the evening, just as it was starting to drizzle a little bit, munching on roasted nuts and trying to understand the Chinese fishing nets, which seem impossibly complicated. Apparently they are some sort of cantilevered device which require four or five people to operate.
+
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03.jpg" id="image-1751" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04.jpg" id="image-1752" class="picwide" />
+
+About a block from my hotel there is little park/public square that spills across the street and out onto the waterfront walkway, with street vendors and a fish market displaying some rather massive fish that I didn't recognize (though the fish make a strong testament to the feats of the Chinese fishing nets). I didn't partake in it last night, but you can buy a fish at one end of the market and then take it down to the other end and they will cook it up for you.
+
+The side of the park opposite the waterfront is lined with the most massive trees I've ever seen. The canopy of the trees is at least 40 meters up and stretches almost an entire block. The colossal trunks must be 8 meters in diameter and are covered in a mixture of moss and a fern-like plant -- a leafy plant, but the leaves grow in the structure of a fern frond -- that extend from the ground to about three quarters of the way into the branches and give the trees the appearance of a shaggy jungle beard.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18.jpg" id="image-1755" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19.jpg" id="image-1759" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09.jpg" id="image-1758" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15.jpg" id="image-1754" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+</div>
+
+After walking around for an hour or so I stopped into a little restaurant with a large hidden terrace/garden in the back where I had some passable vegetable curry, the local variation of rice and a wonderful bread that resembled an over-sized friend egg, but tasted delicious.
+
+The whole time I was out and about memories of the time I spent traveling around Mexico when I was younger kept flooding back to me, similar smells and sounds rise up out of darkened doorways and muddy alleys, run-down abandoned and overgrown buildings lie right next to well kept, though equally old and moss-covered estates.
+
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17.jpg" id="image-1756" class="picwide" />
+
+There is also the characteristic lack of a middle class that puts tarp-covered shanty towns just over the back fence from massive almost hacienda-style mansions.
+
+The similarities with Mexico come from the presence of the Portuguese in this area a few hundred years ago. Many of the older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style -- adobe-colored, arches and heavy tile roofs abound, plenty of moss covered walls.
+
+There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, who died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (yet more Europeans digging up and [moving the dead][1]).
+
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13.jpg" id="image-1757" class="picwide" />
+
+The Dutch appear to have had an influence around here as well, there is Dutch graveyard somewhere around here and obviously the presence of the Chinese fishing nets seems to indicate an oriental influence, which, according to my guidebook, dates from the Kublai Khan era.
+
+After sleeping about fifteen hours I got up around noon and went to Addy's restaurant which is a converted Dutch house dating from around the 1770s. I had an amazing dish called fish chootuporichuthu (try saying that five times fast), which was tuna (I think) steamed in a banana leaf with some sort of great spice mixture and served with what passes for an acknowledgement of Dutch heritage -- Belgium Fries.
+
+I spent the next three hours wandering around in the heat of day like a true gringo (not sure what the Indian equivalent of gringo would be) watching all the locals stare at me from their shaded doorways. I ended up at the Dutch cemetery, which is not open to the public, but has some amazing decaying tombs and sepulchers. I stood at the gate for a while wondering which one might be Vasco de Gama's former resting place and why it is that I keep ending up around the dead.
+
+Afterward I walked clear across town to the market area and bought some fruit and roasted peanuts for breakfast tomorrow. I have decided to skip the backwater tour and keep moving north toward Bangalore. Tomorrow I plan to catch the 2 pm express train the Bangalore, which is a 14 hour journey.
+
+[1]: /jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/camel-no-name.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/camel-no-name.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4963680 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/camel-no-name.amp @@ -0,0 +1,183 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>On a Camel With No Name</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/12/camel-no-name"> + <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/2005/12/camel-no-name"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Riding camels through the desert outside of Jaisalmer. The Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place. 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The military police here always walk around with bamboo canes, but the train station in Jaisalmer is the first place I've seen them brandish, though not actually use them, to keep the touts under control. </p> +<p>Once again I had called ahead and avoided the mayhem, but it was still a bizarre sight to see when you stumble out of the station half asleep. And once I was at the hotel, I promptly went back to sleep. Later in the afternoon I went exploring in the fort, which is actually still an occupied city and seems very much the same as it must have been in the middle ages except now it's full of tourist shops rather than, well, I'm not sure what the shops would have been five hundred years ago. The walls and indeed most everything in the fort is made of honey colored sandstone, some of which has been walked on so much it's almost glassy smooth and the sunlight glints off its shiny surfaces. After walking around for a while I started stopping in at various different camel safari operators to check out what was offered and how much it cost. Eventually I settled on one that offered a simple overnight trip since that's really all the time I had.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>Bright and early at eight o'clock the next morning I found myself in the back of a jeep bouncing down a dirt road toward some waiting camels. There were only four of us on the trip, Thet, a girl from Burma who grew up in Namibia, but now lives in London, Ignacio a student from Lisbon who spoke flawless French English and Spanish, Casimir an aficionado of Cajun music who was from the south of France and didn't speak much English and myself. An interesting mix to say the least Ignacio would go from speaking French to Casimir and then English when talking to all us. Let me say right now before we go further, that camel is no way to travel if you can help it. <amp-img alt="Camels Jaisalmer India" height="175" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/camelsafari.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>Imagine being on a horse that's twice as fat so that your legs feel like their being ripped out of your hip sockets, now imagine that the horse walks about the same speed, possibly even slower, than a motivated hiker with a backpack—that's camel travel in a nutshell. Camels also tend to fart frequently and with odors like you've never wanted to smell. Luckily the camel I climbed on was sort of the stoic of the bunch and as such was always in the lead. Camels are much easier to control than horse because the reins are attached to what amount to nose piercings, little pegs inserted through the nostrils and attached to a rope, so with only the slightest tug they'll go wherever you want.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="That Desert India" height="162" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/thar.jpg" width="245"></amp-img>The Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place, and it reminded me of areas of the Great Basin between Las Vegas and St. George, Utah. Twigging mesquite-like trees, bluish gray bushes resembling creosote, a very large bush that resembled a Palo Verde tree and grew in impenetrable clumps, and strangely only one species of cactus and not a whole lot of them, make up the sparse vegetation and support the village goats and cows that wander freely about grazing. We rode past a few small villages where the children begged for chocolates and rupees. We paused in the heat of the day to make lunch and sit in a dry riverbed in the shade of small tree. We quickly learned that the thistle covered grass in no good for sitting and spent most of our lunch break removing spiked prickles from our clothing. As the heat began to subside a bit we mounted up again and after tanking up on water at the local well, we left civilization behind and headed into the dunes. Except that the dunes proved to be not more than a kilometer square at best and civilization remained visible as distant wind turbines slowly spinning on the horizon. I was told that longer safaris head deeper into the wilderness and to far larger sand dunes, but the majority of the Thar desert lies in a sort of demilitarized zone north of Jaisalmer and stretches into Pakistan, unfortunately you need a special and difficult to obtain permit to enter that area and once you have entered it you must beware of armies and land mines on both sides of the border. </p> +<p>Our safari might have been short on true wilderness, but after the exhausting day on a camel, we sat facing to the north and it was easy to imagine that we were in the middle nowhere and it was hours before we were willing to move our aching bones again so the illusion reinforced itself. And it was nice to camp out, it had been a while since I sat around a campfire and ate dhal and chapattis. Okay I've never sat around a fire and eaten dhal and chapattis, so that was a unique experience. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Moonrise Thar Desert, India" height="227" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tharmoon.jpg" width="170"></amp-img>And then the sun set over the dunes and the new moon rose as a glowing red sliver flanking a dusty grey disk. I've never been able to see the unlit portion of the moon so clearly before, but the spectacle was short lived and the moon set after only an hour. But it was just as well that its brilliant light faded away, because when it did the stars came out filling the sky like tiny little diamonds, billions of them, I have never seen so many stars, for the first time in my life I saw the bow, or shield or whatever it is of Orion (see previously I could only take peoples word that it existed so I never bothered to remember what it was). In fact there were so many stars it was difficult to locate the constellations I usually recognize.</p> +<p>We all lay our bedrolls on the edge of the fire and looked up at the stars. Whenever more wood was added to fire and it got brighter the stars faded out, cloaked in blackness and the radiance of the flames lighting up the nearby bushes. The sky looked then more like does over western Massachusetts, but as the flames turned to glowing coals again and the bitter cold of the desert night fell over us the rest of the stars would fade back in as if the night sky were slowly revealing and concealing itself by turns. Finally I managed to fall asleep for a while in spite of the cold, but it was a short-lived and restless sleep spent curled in a ball huddling with my head beneath the blankets thinking of how hot I was just two weeks ago. </p> +<p>Our guides were up at dawn making chai, but none of us westerners stirred until the chai was ready and fire had been enlarged so a modicum of warm would entice us from under the blankets. We watched the sunrise and ate a small breakfast of boiled eggs and toast with jelly and then it was back up on the camels for a long ride through the desert. Because we had to cover about twice the ground we had covered the say before we had the camels at more of a trot, though I hesitate to say trot because a camel trotting is nothing like a horse trotting. Still we were moving significantly faster. My camel still led the pack and at some point I was about two hundred yards ahead of the others and did not see what happened, but heard shouts to turn around so I came back to where they were all no dismounted and discovered that Thet had been thrown from her camel. Camels are quite tall so being thrown is roughly the same as falling off a roof backwards, depending on how you land you could easily be paralyzed or worse. Luckily for her the camel had decided to pitch her off right beside the only road in the area. After making sure that she did not seem to have broken her back or any other bones we used cell phones to call a jeep, which came and picked her up. While we were waiting for the jeep I decided I had had enough safari and volunteered to ride back with Thet to the hotel. Neither Ignacio nor Casimir had ever really been in a desert whereas I've been in more than I care to remember so I let them continue on with the guides and after getting Thet back to her room I went to my own room and fell asleep for the better part of the afternoon, happy to be warm and thistle free.</p> +<p>Oh and truthfully my camel had a name, but I couldn't pronounce it or spell it. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/camel-no-name.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/camel-no-name.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ffed3e --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/camel-no-name.html @@ -0,0 +1,425 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>On A Camel With No Name - 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 camels through the desert outside of Jaisalmer. 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It was one of the most surreal sights I’ve seen in India, a huge line of touts yelling and screaming, holding up placards for the various hotels in the area, kept at bay by the military police. The military police here always walk around with bamboo canes, but this was the first I’ve seen them brandish, though still not actually use, them to keep the touts under control. </p> +<p>Once again I had called ahead and avoided the mayhem, but it was still a bizarre sight to see when you stumble out of the station half asleep. </p> +<p>I found my driver amidst the mayhem and made it to my hotel without being accosted much. Once I was at the hotel, I promptly went back to sleep. Later in the afternoon I went exploring in the fort, which is actually still an occupied city and seems very much the same as it must have been in the middle ages except now it’s full of tourist shops rather than, well, I’m not sure what the shops would have been five hundred years ago. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_05.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_05_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_05_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="The walled city of Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_05.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>The walls and indeed most everything in the fort is made of honey colored sandstone, some of which has been walked on so much it’s almost glassy smooth and the sunlight glints off its shiny surfaces. </p> +<p>After walking around for a while I started stopping in at various different camel safari operators to check out what was offered and how much it cost. Eventually I settled on one that offered a simple overnight trip since that’s really all the time I had.</p> +<p>Bright and early at eight o’clock the next morning I found myself in the back of a jeep bouncing down a dirt road toward some waiting camels. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10_picwide960.jpg 1920w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10_picwide-med.jpg 1170w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10_featured_jrnl.jpg 520w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10_picwide960.jpg" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10_picwide-med.jpg" alt="Camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>There were only four of us on the trip, Thet, a girl from Burma who grew up in Namibia, but now lives in London, Ignacio a student from Lisbon who spoke flawless French English and Spanish, Casimir an aficionado of Cajun music who was from the south of France and didn’t speak much English, and myself. An interesting mix to say the least. Ignacio did his best to translate for Casimir. </p> +<p>Let me say right now before we go further, that camel is no way to travel if you can help it. Imagine being on a horse that’s twice as fat, stretching your legs until they feel like they’re being ripped out of your hip sockets. Now imagine that this horse walks about the same speed, possibly even slower, than a motivated hiker with a backpack — that’s camel travel in a nutshell. </p> +<p>Camels also tend to fart frequently and with odors like you’ve never wanted to smell. Luckily the camel I climbed on was sort of the stoic of the bunch and as such was always in the lead. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_15.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_15_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_15_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="View from a top camel, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_15.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_16.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_16_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_16_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="Camels resting, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_16.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>The only upside to camels is that they’re much easier to control than a horse. The reins are attached to what amounts to a nose piercing, little pegs inserted through the nostrils and attached to a rope, so with only the slightest tug they’ll go wherever you want. And then there’s the whole walking on sand thing, they are good at that. They also don’t need much water, which makes them good desert travelers.</p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_21.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_21_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_21_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="View from the top of the dunes, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_21.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>The Thar Desert is a stark, bewitching place. It reminded me of the Great Basin desert between Las Vegas and St. George, Utah. </p> +<p>Twiggy, mesquite-like trees, bluish gray bushes resembling creosote, a very large bush that resembled a Palo Verde tree and grew in impenetrable clumps, and strangely only one species of cactus and not a whole lot of them, make up the sparse vegetation and support the village goats and cows that wander freely about grazing. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_18.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_18_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_18_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="Sand dune ripples, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_18.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>We rode past a few small villages where the children begged for chocolates and rupees. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_09.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_09_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_09_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="Houses on camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_09.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_12.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_12_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_12_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="Mud huts on camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_12.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>We paused in the heat of the day to make lunch and sit in a dry riverbed in the shade of small tree. We quickly learned that the thistle covered grass in no good for sitting and spent most of our lunch break removing spiked prickles from our clothing. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_17.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_17_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_17_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="Making tea in the sand dunes, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_17.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>As the heat began to subside a bit we mounted up again and after tanking up on water at the local well, we left civilization behind and headed into the dunes. Except that the dunes proved to be not more than a kilometer square at best and civilization remained visible as distant wind turbines slowly spinning on the horizon. </p> +<p>I was told that longer safaris head deeper into the wilderness and to far larger sand dunes, but the majority of the Thar desert lies in a sort of demilitarized zone north of Jaisalmer and stretches into Pakistan, unfortunately you need a special and difficult to obtain permit to enter that area and once you have entered it you must beware of armies and land mines on both sides of the border. </p> +<p>Our safari might have been short on wildness, but after the exhausting day on a camel, we sat facing to the north, looking away from any signs of civilization, and it was easy to imagine that we were in the middle nowhere. We sat a long time, just chatting. It was hours before we were willing to move our aching bones again so the illusion of isolation reinforced itself. And it was nice to camp out, it had been a while since I sat around a campfire.</p> +<p>The sun set over the dunes and the new moon rose as a glowing red sliver flanking a dusty grey disk. I’ve never been able to see the unlit portion of the moon so clearly before, but the spectacle was short lived and the moon set after only an hour. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_26.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_26_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_26_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="Moon over the dunes, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_26.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>But it was just as well that its brilliant light faded away, because when it did the stars came out filling the sky like tiny little diamonds, billions of them, I have never seen so many stars, for the first time in my life I saw the whole of Orion, not just the belt. There were so many stars it was difficult to locate the constellations I usually recognize.</p> +<p>I lay awake on the edge of the fire looking up at the stars. Whenever more wood was added to fire and it got brighter the stars faded out, cloaked in blackness and the radiance of the flames lighting up the nearby bushes. The sky looked then more like does over western Massachusetts. But as the flames turned to glowing coals again, and the bitter cold of the desert night fell over us, the rest of the stars would fade back in, as if the night sky were slowly revealing and concealing itself by turns. </p> +<p>It was cold. Cold enough that sleep was long in coming. Finally I managed to fall asleep for a while in spite of the temperature, but it was a short-lived and restless sleep spent curled in a ball huddling with my head beneath the blankets thinking of how hot I was just two weeks ago. </p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_27.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_27_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_27_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="Breaking camp day two, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_27.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>Our guides were up at dawn making chai, but none of us westerners stirred until the chai was ready and fire had been enlarged so a modicum of warm would entice us from under the blankets. </p> +<p>We watched the sunrise and ate a small breakfast of boiled eggs and toast with jelly and then it was back up on the camels for a long ride through the desert. </p> +<p>Because we had to cover about twice the ground we had covered the day before we had the camels at more of a trot, though I hesitate to say trot because a camel trotting is nothing like a horse trotting. Still we were moving significantly faster. My camel still led the pack. </p> +<p>I was about two hundred yards ahead of the others and did not see what happened, but I heard shouts to turn around so I came back to where they were all no dismounted and discovered that Thet had been thrown from her camel. Camels are quite tall so being thrown is roughly the same as falling off a roof backwards. Depending on how you land you could easily be paralyzed or killed. Fortunately Thet was mostly fine, a little bruised and shaken, but not broken. She was not, however, keen to keep going.</p> +<p>Luckily for Thet her camel decided to pitch her off right beside the only road in the area. After making sure that she did not break any bones, the guides called a jeep, which came and picked her up. </p> +<p>While we were waiting for the jeep I decided I had had enough safari and volunteered to ride back with Thet to the hotel. Neither Ignacio nor Casimir had ever really been in a desert whereas I’ve been in more than I care to remember so I let them continue on with the guides and after getting Thet back to her room I went to my own room and fell asleep for the better part of the afternoon, happy to be warm and thistle free.</p> +<div class="pic960"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_28.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 959px) 100vw, (min-width: 960px) 960px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_28_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_28_picwide960.jpg 1920w" alt="shadow self portrait on the sand dunes, camel trek, Jaisalmer, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_28.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + </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/majestic-fort" rel="prev" title=" The Majestic Fort">The Majestic Fort</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/taj-express" rel="next" title=" The Taj Express">The Taj Express</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="25" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833486" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="d8cd8795f9dcc5bd64c6cc361115f3cbfec92484" 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 was one of the most surreal sights I've seen in India, a huge line of touts yelling and screaming, holding up placards for the various hotels in the area, kept at bay by the military police. The military police here always walk around with bamboo canes, but this was the first I've seen them brandish, though still not actually use, them to keep the touts under control.
+
+Once again I had called ahead and avoided the mayhem, but it was still a bizarre sight to see when you stumble out of the station half asleep.
+
+I found my driver amidst the mayhem and made it to my hotel without being accosted much. Once I was at the hotel, I promptly went back to sleep. Later in the afternoon I went exploring in the fort, which is actually still an occupied city and seems very much the same as it must have been in the middle ages except now it's full of tourist shops rather than, well, I'm not sure what the shops would have been five hundred years ago.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_05.jpg" id="image-2017" class="pic960" />
+
+The walls and indeed most everything in the fort is made of honey colored sandstone, some of which has been walked on so much it's almost glassy smooth and the sunlight glints off its shiny surfaces.
+
+After walking around for a while I started stopping in at various different camel safari operators to check out what was offered and how much it cost. Eventually I settled on one that offered a simple overnight trip since that's really all the time I had.
+
+Bright and early at eight o'clock the next morning I found myself in the back of a jeep bouncing down a dirt road toward some waiting camels.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_10.jpg" id="image-2008" class="pic960" />
+
+There were only four of us on the trip, Thet, a girl from Burma who grew up in Namibia, but now lives in London, Ignacio a student from Lisbon who spoke flawless French English and Spanish, Casimir an aficionado of Cajun music who was from the south of France and didn't speak much English, and myself. An interesting mix to say the least. Ignacio did his best to translate for Casimir.
+
+Let me say right now before we go further, that camel is no way to travel if you can help it. Imagine being on a horse that's twice as fat, stretching your legs until they feel like they're being ripped out of your hip sockets. Now imagine that this horse walks about the same speed, possibly even slower, than a motivated hiker with a backpack -- that's camel travel in a nutshell.
+
+Camels also tend to fart frequently and with odors like you've never wanted to smell. Luckily the camel I climbed on was sort of the stoic of the bunch and as such was always in the lead.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_15.jpg" id="image-2010" class="pic960" />
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_16.jpg" id="image-2011" class="pic960" />
+
+The only upside to camels is that they're much easier to control than a horse. The reins are attached to what amounts to a nose piercing, little pegs inserted through the nostrils and attached to a rope, so with only the slightest tug they'll go wherever you want. And then there's the whole walking on sand thing, they are good at that. They also don't need much water, which makes them good desert travelers.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_21.jpg" id="image-2014" class="pic960" />
+
+The Thar Desert is a stark, bewitching place. It reminded me of the Great Basin desert between Las Vegas and St. George, Utah.
+
+Twiggy, mesquite-like trees, bluish gray bushes resembling creosote, a very large bush that resembled a Palo Verde tree and grew in impenetrable clumps, and strangely only one species of cactus and not a whole lot of them, make up the sparse vegetation and support the village goats and cows that wander freely about grazing.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_18.jpg" id="image-2013" class="pic960" />
+
+
+We rode past a few small villages where the children begged for chocolates and rupees.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_09.jpg" id="image-2018" class="pic960" />
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_12.jpg" id="image-2009" class="pic960" />
+
+
+We paused in the heat of the day to make lunch and sit in a dry riverbed in the shade of small tree. We quickly learned that the thistle covered grass in no good for sitting and spent most of our lunch break removing spiked prickles from our clothing.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_17.jpg" id="image-2012" class="pic960" />
+
+As the heat began to subside a bit we mounted up again and after tanking up on water at the local well, we left civilization behind and headed into the dunes. Except that the dunes proved to be not more than a kilometer square at best and civilization remained visible as distant wind turbines slowly spinning on the horizon.
+
+I was told that longer safaris head deeper into the wilderness and to far larger sand dunes, but the majority of the Thar desert lies in a sort of demilitarized zone north of Jaisalmer and stretches into Pakistan, unfortunately you need a special and difficult to obtain permit to enter that area and once you have entered it you must beware of armies and land mines on both sides of the border.
+
+Our safari might have been short on wildness, but after the exhausting day on a camel, we sat facing to the north, looking away from any signs of civilization, and it was easy to imagine that we were in the middle nowhere. We sat a long time, just chatting. It was hours before we were willing to move our aching bones again so the illusion of isolation reinforced itself. And it was nice to camp out, it had been a while since I sat around a campfire.
+
+The sun set over the dunes and the new moon rose as a glowing red sliver flanking a dusty grey disk. I've never been able to see the unlit portion of the moon so clearly before, but the spectacle was short lived and the moon set after only an hour.
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_26.jpg" id="image-2019" class="pic960" />
+
+But it was just as well that its brilliant light faded away, because when it did the stars came out filling the sky like tiny little diamonds, billions of them, I have never seen so many stars, for the first time in my life I saw the whole of Orion, not just the belt. There were so many stars it was difficult to locate the constellations I usually recognize.
+
+I lay awake on the edge of the fire looking up at the stars. Whenever more wood was added to fire and it got brighter the stars faded out, cloaked in blackness and the radiance of the flames lighting up the nearby bushes. The sky looked then more like does over western Massachusetts. But as the flames turned to glowing coals again, and the bitter cold of the desert night fell over us, the rest of the stars would fade back in, as if the night sky were slowly revealing and concealing itself by turns.
+
+It was cold. Cold enough that sleep was long in coming. Finally I managed to fall asleep for a while in spite of the temperature, but it was a short-lived and restless sleep spent curled in a ball huddling with my head beneath the blankets thinking of how hot I was just two weeks ago.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_27.jpg" id="image-2015" class="pic960" />
+
+Our guides were up at dawn making chai, but none of us westerners stirred until the chai was ready and fire had been enlarged so a modicum of warm would entice us from under the blankets.
+
+We watched the sunrise and ate a small breakfast of boiled eggs and toast with jelly and then it was back up on the camels for a long ride through the desert.
+
+Because we had to cover about twice the ground we had covered the day before we had the camels at more of a trot, though I hesitate to say trot because a camel trotting is nothing like a horse trotting. Still we were moving significantly faster. My camel still led the pack.
+
+I was about two hundred yards ahead of the others and did not see what happened, but I heard shouts to turn around so I came back to where they were all no dismounted and discovered that Thet had been thrown from her camel. Camels are quite tall so being thrown is roughly the same as falling off a roof backwards. Depending on how you land you could easily be paralyzed or killed. Fortunately Thet was mostly fine, a little bruised and shaken, but not broken. She was not, however, keen to keep going.
+
+Luckily for Thet her camel decided to pitch her off right beside the only road in the area. After making sure that she did not break any bones, the guides called a jeep, which came and picked her up.
+
+While we were waiting for the jeep I decided I had had enough safari and volunteered to ride back with Thet to the hotel. Neither Ignacio nor Casimir had ever really been in a desert whereas I've been in more than I care to remember so I let them continue on with the guides and after getting Thet back to her room I went to my own room and fell asleep for the better part of the afternoon, happy to be warm and thistle free.
+
+<img src="images/2005/India-Jaisalmer_12_01-05_05_28.jpg" id="image-2016" class="pic960" /> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5aa73c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu.amp @@ -0,0 +1,191 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Durbar Square Kathmandu</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu"> + <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/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Nevermind the Beatles, Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. 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I spent most of the next day walking the streets of Thamel (the backpackers' area of Katmandu) looking at the endless tables of vegetables, fruits, spices, and most omnipresently, curios of all kinds, statuettes of Buddha and Ganesh, tiny Buddhist prayer wheels, Gurkha knives and swords, wooden carvings of various gods, wooden flutes, endless stalls of wool hats, wool socks, and the nearly ubiquitous stores full of Pashmina shawls, scarves, bedcovers, sweaters and even dresses, most of which are probably 60% pashmina at best, but of course carry the full pashmina price tag. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Katamandu Curios" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/katmanducurios.jpg" width="158"></amp-img>The Thamel area has been the center of tourist activity in Katmandu for so long now that it very much resembles a European city, complete with salami and butter sandwiches available in little garden cafes, which I had quite a few of during my stay in Paris. I suppose you could say that Thamel is the touristiest area I've been in yet, but that hasn't really bothered me. There are all sort of western foods available, everything from tacos to great big pepper steaks. It's a nice change to have a variety of culinary options, I will confess to being sick of Indian food. With the exception of a few nights here and there, I ate exclusively Indian food for 30 days. I don't think I've ever eaten so much of one nationality's cuisine in my entire life, so the change is nice. And from what I've read and heard from other travelers, Nepali food is nothing to get excited about (their chai is certainly lacking by Indian standards). </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>Nearly everything in Thamel is somehow geared to Nepal's biggest tourist draw—trekking. Every other store on the streets is either a trekking guide company or sells knockoff trekking gear with fake US brand labels. The gear was particularly fascinating to me because I used to work at a North Face store in Costa Mesa and one of the things we were trained to do was spot fake gear that climbers brought back from expeditions. Whether the climbers were conscious of what they were doing or not depended on the individual, but invariably the cheap stuff they bought in Nepal fell apart and, by passing it off as genuine, would be covered by the North Face's lifetime warranty. Most of the time it was pretty easy to spot fakes, telltale signs like terrible stitching or zippers that opened to nothing and existed only because the original had a pocket there, but some of the jackets and backpacks I saw on the streets of Katmandu were pretty good forgeries and it made me wonder if perhaps we missed a few things here and there when I worked at the North Face. There is one legitimate North face store somewhere in Thamel and though I have not been there, I was told that the prices are only marginally less than those in the US.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Durbar Square" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/katmandudurbar.jpg" width="165"></amp-img>After saturating myself with the streets of Thamel I went on a longer excursion down to Durbar Square (durbar means palace) to see the various pagodas, temples and the old palace. The palace itself no longer houses the King, but is still used for coronations and ceremonies and Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. I haven't talked to any Nepalis about it, but the King seems less than popular shall we say. The current King of Nepal came to power under <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1365739.stm" title="Royal Massacre">rather bizarre circumstances</a> and seems to be unpopular if the local English newspapers are to be believed. I arrived on International Human Rights day, which is an area where Nepal is, um, lacking. Along these lines I have added Amnesty International to the list of charities on <a href="http://luxagraf.com/donate/" title="Donate to Charity">the donations page</a>.</p> +<p>Unfortunately most of the structures in the Durbar Square area were destroyed in a large earthquake in 1934 so, while much of the amazing teak woodwork was salvaged, the actual buildings are all relatively new. On my walk down to Durbar Square I passed hundreds of little shrines lurking in every corner of every streets; so many in fact that it was overwhelming and nearly impossible to keep track of even with my guidebook<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>. <a name="back1"></a>I decided to hire a guide for a walking tour of Durbar Square itself with the hope that maybe that way I wouldn't overlook anything. After skipping over the expensive and pushy guides near the entrance to the square, I managed to find one that was willing to work for cheap in exchange for an English lesson after my tour. </p> +<p>Each temple in the area is generally for a particular god and only a couple were actually open. I went in the Kumari Bahal which is The House of the Living Goddess and is, as the name implies, home to Kumari the living goddess reincarnated in the figure of a little girl. Every decade or so the Nepalis have to find the new Kumari through a process not unlike the way Tibetans find the next reincarnated Dalai Lama. Once found the young girl lives in Kumari Bahal until she reaches puberty at which point the goddess leaves her body and the search begins again. Presumably the girl then returns to her normal life though I didn't actually get that part of the story.</p> +<p>Most of the other buildings and temples are only open on certain festival days, but you can go inside Kasthamandap (from which Katmandu takes its name) which began life as a community center for festivals and ceremonies and was only later turned into a temple for Gorakahnath. Originally built in the 11th century and supposedly constructed from a single tree, Kasthamadap, which means house of wood, was greatly rebuilt following the earthquake. Katmandu and Nepal in general has an interesting mixture of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs which also draw somewhat off of older tribal religions to create a wholly different sort of hybrid. Thus I also saw temples in a Muslim style with statues of Krishna inside and traditional Hindu gods with the head of Buddha. </p> +<p>The touristy aspect of Durbar Square is unfortunate and part of me spent much of my time wondering what Katmandu was like when the first mountaineers arrived overland from India, or even when the Beatles came and sat up on top of the temple. My guide claimed that many Nepalis thought for a while that these curious bleached skinned longhaired strangers must have come from space, which I didn't really believe, but it must have been a strange site to see the Beatles sitting up on the temple steps smoking hash with the sadhus while throngs of Nepalis gathered to watch the incongruous strangers</p> +<p>After the tour we went to a little cafe and had some chai and I tried to help him understand the English verb "get, which is harder than it sounds, especially if one takes into account the number of idiomatic expressions that involve get. For instance "I'll get you for that" or "how do I get to ______" none of which seems to translate very well to Nepali. I don't know that I helped him all that much, but he seemed to pick up a few things and was satisfied enough to pay for the chai. The walk back to Thamel took me through what amounts to the garment district where I picked up a new hat and a pair of shoes which may well fall apart before I have a chance to wear them, but $3 US is hard to argue with.</p> +<p>I have slowly adjusting to the sight of my breath in the early morning chill of Katmandu's unheated budget hotels. The nighttime temperatures drop near freezing, but, wrapped in a couple blankets and wearing my fleece jacket to bed, I have managed to stay comfortably warm through the night, though I have picked up a bit of a head cold probably due to the continuous and inescapable chill.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Swayambhunath Katmandu, Nepal" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/kathmandubuddha.jpg" width="168"></amp-img>In spite of an annoying nasal drip, the next day I set out for Swayambhunath, better known as the monkey temple. I was planning to walk, but about half way there a taxi driver convinced me to take a ride and after seeing the steps up to the main stupa I was glad I gave up the idea of walking. I entered the area from the back where a golden Buddha dominates the entrance to the monastery area and then walked over several smaller hills and then up to the main stupa. The stupa (the stupa being a sort of hemispherical Buddhist temple structure) is surrounded by numerous smaller shrines some in Buddhist styles and some in Hindu styles, which again illustrates the curious mix of religions in Nepal. The most interesting thing I saw was an inscription in Sanskrit which dates from the 12th century.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Monkey" height="199" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monkeybuddha.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>And yes there were indeed a number of monkeys in the temple grounds. The monkeys are considered holy because the monkey god once came to the aid of Shiva (at least I believe it was Shiva) when some bad monkey's kidnapped one of his wives. I suppose it's the curious nature of religious belief that the monkey who rescued her comes to symbolize all monkeys rather than those that kidnapped her. Had it gone the other way I suppose I would be able to dine on monkey some evening.</p> +<p>I have also been to Pashupatinath by the Bagmati River where the Hindus cremate the dead, but my experiences there were enough to warrant a full article so you'll have to wait a day for that one at which point I will also upload some more pictures.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> Incidentally if you come to Nepal bring something other than the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal, it's terrible. I swapped mine for a Rough Guide, which is much better. <a href="#back1" title="return to paragraph">↩</a></p></li> +</ol> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee00485 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu.html @@ -0,0 +1,344 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Durbar Square Kathmandu - 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="Nevermind the Beatles, Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. 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I spent most of the next day walking the streets of Thamel (the backpackers’ area of Katmandu) looking at the endless tables of vegetables, fruits, spices, and most omnipresently, curios of all kinds, statuettes of Buddha and Ganesh, tiny Buddhist prayer wheels, Gurkha knives and swords, wooden carvings of various gods, wooden flutes, endless stalls of wool hats, wool socks, and the nearly ubiquitous stores full of Pashmina shawls, scarves, bedcovers, sweaters and even dresses, most of which are probably 60% pashmina at best, but of course carry the full pashmina price tag. </p> +<p><img alt="Katamandu Curios" class="postpicright" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/katmanducurios.jpg" width="158"/>The Thamel area has been the center of tourist activity in Katmandu for so long now that it very much resembles a European city, complete with salami and butter sandwiches available in little garden cafes, which I had quite a few of during my stay in Paris. I suppose you could say that Thamel is the touristiest area I’ve been in yet, but that hasn’t really bothered me. There are all sort of western foods available, everything from tacos to great big pepper steaks. It’s a nice change to have a variety of culinary options, I will confess to being sick of Indian food. With the exception of a few nights here and there, I ate exclusively Indian food for 30 days. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much of one nationality’s cuisine in my entire life, so the change is nice. And from what I’ve read and heard from other travelers, Nepali food is nothing to get excited about (their chai is certainly lacking by Indian standards). </p> +<p><break></p> +<p>Nearly everything in Thamel is somehow geared to Nepal’s biggest tourist draw—trekking. Every other store on the streets is either a trekking guide company or sells knockoff trekking gear with fake US brand labels. The gear was particularly fascinating to me because I used to work at a North Face store in Costa Mesa and one of the things we were trained to do was spot fake gear that climbers brought back from expeditions. Whether the climbers were conscious of what they were doing or not depended on the individual, but invariably the cheap stuff they bought in Nepal fell apart and, by passing it off as genuine, would be covered by the North Face’s lifetime warranty. Most of the time it was pretty easy to spot fakes, telltale signs like terrible stitching or zippers that opened to nothing and existed only because the original had a pocket there, but some of the jackets and backpacks I saw on the streets of Katmandu were pretty good forgeries and it made me wonder if perhaps we missed a few things here and there when I worked at the North Face. There is one legitimate North face store somewhere in Thamel and though I have not been there, I was told that the prices are only marginally less than those in the US.</p> +<p><img alt="Durbar Square" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/katmandudurbar.jpg" width="165"/>After saturating myself with the streets of Thamel I went on a longer excursion down to Durbar Square (durbar means palace) to see the various pagodas, temples and the old palace. The palace itself no longer houses the King, but is still used for coronations and ceremonies and Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. I haven’t talked to any Nepalis about it, but the King seems less than popular shall we say. The current King of Nepal came to power under <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1365739.stm" title="Royal Massacre">rather bizarre circumstances</a> and seems to be unpopular if the local English newspapers are to be believed. I arrived on International Human Rights day, which is an area where Nepal is, um, lacking. Along these lines I have added Amnesty International to the list of charities on <a href="http://luxagraf.com/donate/" title="Donate to Charity">the donations page</a>.</p> +<p>Unfortunately most of the structures in the Durbar Square area were destroyed in a large earthquake in 1934 so, while much of the amazing teak woodwork was salvaged, the actual buildings are all relatively new. On my walk down to Durbar Square I passed hundreds of little shrines lurking in every corner of every streets; so many in fact that it was overwhelming and nearly impossible to keep track of even with my guidebook<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>. <a name="back1"></a>I decided to hire a guide for a walking tour of Durbar Square itself with the hope that maybe that way I wouldn’t overlook anything. After skipping over the expensive and pushy guides near the entrance to the square, I managed to find one that was willing to work for cheap in exchange for an English lesson after my tour. </p> +<p>Each temple in the area is generally for a particular god and only a couple were actually open. I went in the Kumari Bahal which is The House of the Living Goddess and is, as the name implies, home to Kumari the living goddess reincarnated in the figure of a little girl. Every decade or so the Nepalis have to find the new Kumari through a process not unlike the way Tibetans find the next reincarnated Dalai Lama. Once found the young girl lives in Kumari Bahal until she reaches puberty at which point the goddess leaves her body and the search begins again. Presumably the girl then returns to her normal life though I didn’t actually get that part of the story.</p> +<p>Most of the other buildings and temples are only open on certain festival days, but you can go inside Kasthamandap (from which Katmandu takes its name) which began life as a community center for festivals and ceremonies and was only later turned into a temple for Gorakahnath. Originally built in the 11th century and supposedly constructed from a single tree, Kasthamadap, which means house of wood, was greatly rebuilt following the earthquake. Katmandu and Nepal in general has an interesting mixture of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs which also draw somewhat off of older tribal religions to create a wholly different sort of hybrid. Thus I also saw temples in a Muslim style with statues of Krishna inside and traditional Hindu gods with the head of Buddha. </p> +<p>The touristy aspect of Durbar Square is unfortunate and part of me spent much of my time wondering what Katmandu was like when the first mountaineers arrived overland from India, or even when the Beatles came and sat up on top of the temple. My guide claimed that many Nepalis thought for a while that these curious bleached skinned longhaired strangers must have come from space, which I didn’t really believe, but it must have been a strange site to see the Beatles sitting up on the temple steps smoking hash with the sadhus while throngs of Nepalis gathered to watch the incongruous strangers</p> +<p>After the tour we went to a little cafe and had some chai and I tried to help him understand the English verb “get, which is harder than it sounds, especially if one takes into account the number of idiomatic expressions that involve get. For instance “I’ll get you for that” or “how do I get to ______” none of which seems to translate very well to Nepali. I don’t know that I helped him all that much, but he seemed to pick up a few things and was satisfied enough to pay for the chai. The walk back to Thamel took me through what amounts to the garment district where I picked up a new hat and a pair of shoes which may well fall apart before I have a chance to wear them, but $3 US is hard to argue with.</p> +<p>I have slowly adjusting to the sight of my breath in the early morning chill of Katmandu’s unheated budget hotels. The nighttime temperatures drop near freezing, but, wrapped in a couple blankets and wearing my fleece jacket to bed, I have managed to stay comfortably warm through the night, though I have picked up a bit of a head cold probably due to the continuous and inescapable chill.</p> +<p><img alt="Swayambhunath Katmandu, Nepal" class="postpicright" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/kathmandubuddha.jpg" width="168"/>In spite of an annoying nasal drip, the next day I set out for Swayambhunath, better known as the monkey temple. I was planning to walk, but about half way there a taxi driver convinced me to take a ride and after seeing the steps up to the main stupa I was glad I gave up the idea of walking. I entered the area from the back where a golden Buddha dominates the entrance to the monastery area and then walked over several smaller hills and then up to the main stupa. The stupa (the stupa being a sort of hemispherical Buddhist temple structure) is surrounded by numerous smaller shrines some in Buddhist styles and some in Hindu styles, which again illustrates the curious mix of religions in Nepal. The most interesting thing I saw was an inscription in Sanskrit which dates from the 12th century.</p> +<p><img alt="Monkey" class="postpic" height="199" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monkeybuddha.jpg" width="200"/>And yes there were indeed a number of monkeys in the temple grounds. The monkeys are considered holy because the monkey god once came to the aid of Shiva (at least I believe it was Shiva) when some bad monkey’s kidnapped one of his wives. I suppose it’s the curious nature of religious belief that the monkey who rescued her comes to symbolize all monkeys rather than those that kidnapped her. Had it gone the other way I suppose I would be able to dine on monkey some evening.</p> +<p>I have also been to Pashupatinath by the Bagmati River where the Hindus cremate the dead, but my experiences there were enough to warrant a full article so you’ll have to wait a day for that one at which point I will also upload some more pictures.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> Incidentally if you come to Nepal bring something other than the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal, it’s terrible. I swapped mine for a Rough Guide, which is much better. <a href="#back1" title="return to paragraph">↩</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/2005/12/goodbye-india" rel="prev" title=" Goodbye India">Goodbye India</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/pashupatinath" rel="next" title=" Pashupatinath">Pashupatinath</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="28" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833485" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="9f720ace077db684cd2aee9e847e2b8240db49f1" 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 spent most of the next day walking the streets of Thamel (the backpackers' area of Katmandu) looking at the endless tables of vegetables, fruits, spices, and most omnipresently, curios of all kinds, statuettes of Buddha and Ganesh, tiny Buddhist prayer wheels, Gurkha knives and swords, wooden carvings of various gods, wooden flutes, endless stalls of wool hats, wool socks, and the nearly ubiquitous stores full of Pashmina shawls, scarves, bedcovers, sweaters and even dresses, most of which are probably 60% pashmina at best, but of course carry the full pashmina price tag.
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+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/katmanducurios.jpg" width="158" height="200" class="postpicright" alt="Katamandu Curios" />The Thamel area has been the center of tourist activity in Katmandu for so long now that it very much resembles a European city, complete with salami and butter sandwiches available in little garden cafes, which I had quite a few of during my stay in Paris. I suppose you could say that Thamel is the touristiest area I've been in yet, but that hasn't really bothered me. There are all sort of western foods available, everything from tacos to great big pepper steaks. It's a nice change to have a variety of culinary options, I will confess to being sick of Indian food. With the exception of a few nights here and there, I ate exclusively Indian food for 30 days. I don't think I've ever eaten so much of one nationality's cuisine in my entire life, so the change is nice. And from what I've read and heard from other travelers, Nepali food is nothing to get excited about (their chai is certainly lacking by Indian standards).
+
+<break>
+
+Nearly everything in Thamel is somehow geared to Nepal's biggest tourist draw—trekking. Every other store on the streets is either a trekking guide company or sells knockoff trekking gear with fake US brand labels. The gear was particularly fascinating to me because I used to work at a North Face store in Costa Mesa and one of the things we were trained to do was spot fake gear that climbers brought back from expeditions. Whether the climbers were conscious of what they were doing or not depended on the individual, but invariably the cheap stuff they bought in Nepal fell apart and, by passing it off as genuine, would be covered by the North Face's lifetime warranty. Most of the time it was pretty easy to spot fakes, telltale signs like terrible stitching or zippers that opened to nothing and existed only because the original had a pocket there, but some of the jackets and backpacks I saw on the streets of Katmandu were pretty good forgeries and it made me wonder if perhaps we missed a few things here and there when I worked at the North Face. There is one legitimate North face store somewhere in Thamel and though I have not been there, I was told that the prices are only marginally less than those in the US.
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+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/katmandudurbar.jpg" width="165" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Durbar Square" />After saturating myself with the streets of Thamel I went on a longer excursion down to Durbar Square (durbar means palace) to see the various pagodas, temples and the old palace. The palace itself no longer houses the King, but is still used for coronations and ceremonies and Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. I haven't talked to any Nepalis about it, but the King seems less than popular shall we say. The current King of Nepal came to power under <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1365739.stm" title="Royal Massacre">rather bizarre circumstances</a> and seems to be unpopular if the local English newspapers are to be believed. I arrived on International Human Rights day, which is an area where Nepal is, um, lacking. Along these lines I have added Amnesty International to the list of charities on <a href="http://luxagraf.com/donate/" title="Donate to Charity">the donations page</a>.
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+Unfortunately most of the structures in the Durbar Square area were destroyed in a large earthquake in 1934 so, while much of the amazing teak woodwork was salvaged, the actual buildings are all relatively new. On my walk down to Durbar Square I passed hundreds of little shrines lurking in every corner of every streets; so many in fact that it was overwhelming and nearly impossible to keep track of even with my guidebook<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>. <a name="back1"></a>I decided to hire a guide for a walking tour of Durbar Square itself with the hope that maybe that way I wouldn't overlook anything. After skipping over the expensive and pushy guides near the entrance to the square, I managed to find one that was willing to work for cheap in exchange for an English lesson after my tour.
+
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+Each temple in the area is generally for a particular god and only a couple were actually open. I went in the Kumari Bahal which is The House of the Living Goddess and is, as the name implies, home to Kumari the living goddess reincarnated in the figure of a little girl. Every decade or so the Nepalis have to find the new Kumari through a process not unlike the way Tibetans find the next reincarnated Dalai Lama. Once found the young girl lives in Kumari Bahal until she reaches puberty at which point the goddess leaves her body and the search begins again. Presumably the girl then returns to her normal life though I didn't actually get that part of the story.
+
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+Most of the other buildings and temples are only open on certain festival days, but you can go inside Kasthamandap (from which Katmandu takes its name) which began life as a community center for festivals and ceremonies and was only later turned into a temple for Gorakahnath. Originally built in the 11th century and supposedly constructed from a single tree, Kasthamadap, which means house of wood, was greatly rebuilt following the earthquake. Katmandu and Nepal in general has an interesting mixture of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs which also draw somewhat off of older tribal religions to create a wholly different sort of hybrid. Thus I also saw temples in a Muslim style with statues of Krishna inside and traditional Hindu gods with the head of Buddha.
+
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+The touristy aspect of Durbar Square is unfortunate and part of me spent much of my time wondering what Katmandu was like when the first mountaineers arrived overland from India, or even when the Beatles came and sat up on top of the temple. My guide claimed that many Nepalis thought for a while that these curious bleached skinned longhaired strangers must have come from space, which I didn't really believe, but it must have been a strange site to see the Beatles sitting up on the temple steps smoking hash with the sadhus while throngs of Nepalis gathered to watch the incongruous strangers
+
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+After the tour we went to a little cafe and had some chai and I tried to help him understand the English verb "get, which is harder than it sounds, especially if one takes into account the number of idiomatic expressions that involve get. For instance "I'll get you for that" or "how do I get to ______" none of which seems to translate very well to Nepali. I don't know that I helped him all that much, but he seemed to pick up a few things and was satisfied enough to pay for the chai. The walk back to Thamel took me through what amounts to the garment district where I picked up a new hat and a pair of shoes which may well fall apart before I have a chance to wear them, but $3 US is hard to argue with.
+
+
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+I have slowly adjusting to the sight of my breath in the early morning chill of Katmandu's unheated budget hotels. The nighttime temperatures drop near freezing, but, wrapped in a couple blankets and wearing my fleece jacket to bed, I have managed to stay comfortably warm through the night, though I have picked up a bit of a head cold probably due to the continuous and inescapable chill.
+
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+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/kathmandubuddha.jpg" width="168" height="200" class="postpicright" alt="Swayambhunath Katmandu, Nepal" />In spite of an annoying nasal drip, the next day I set out for Swayambhunath, better known as the monkey temple. I was planning to walk, but about half way there a taxi driver convinced me to take a ride and after seeing the steps up to the main stupa I was glad I gave up the idea of walking. I entered the area from the back where a golden Buddha dominates the entrance to the monastery area and then walked over several smaller hills and then up to the main stupa. The stupa (the stupa being a sort of hemispherical Buddhist temple structure) is surrounded by numerous smaller shrines some in Buddhist styles and some in Hindu styles, which again illustrates the curious mix of religions in Nepal. The most interesting thing I saw was an inscription in Sanskrit which dates from the 12th century.
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+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/monkeybuddha.jpg" width="200" height="199" class="postpic" alt="Monkey" />And yes there were indeed a number of monkeys in the temple grounds. The monkeys are considered holy because the monkey god once came to the aid of Shiva (at least I believe it was Shiva) when some bad monkey's kidnapped one of his wives. I suppose it's the curious nature of religious belief that the monkey who rescued her comes to symbolize all monkeys rather than those that kidnapped her. Had it gone the other way I suppose I would be able to dine on monkey some evening.
+
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+I have also been to Pashupatinath by the Bagmati River where the Hindus cremate the dead, but my experiences there were enough to warrant a full article so you'll have to wait a day for that one at which point I will also upload some more pictures.
+
+
+
+<ol class="footnote">
+<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> Incidentally if you come to Nepal bring something other than the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal, it's terrible. I swapped mine for a Rough Guide, which is much better. <a href="#back1" title="return to paragraph">↩</a></p></li>
+</ol> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/goodbye-india.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/goodbye-india.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee37147 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/goodbye-india.amp @@ -0,0 +1,180 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Goodbye India</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/12/goodbye-india"> + <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/2005/12/goodbye-india"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="I have traveled nearly 4000 km in India. The vast majority of that distance I traveled by trains, in all classes, even regular chair. 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While I am excited to be heading for Nepal, I am sorry to be leaving India. India has been at times challenging, at times overwhelming, at times horrifying, at times gorgeous, at times tranquil and peaceful and at times the most magical place on earth. </p> +<p>The India people are the friendliest I have ever met and even when they are trying to sell something they are also genuinely interested in you, where you come from and how you like India. Even the touts, while annoying, are something you get used to and even sort of enjoy after a while, provided you aren't already frustrated and tired. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>I have taken almost 750 photos and traveled nearly 4000 km (2500 miles) in India, two bus rides and two quick domestic flights, but the vast majority of that distance I traveled by trains, in all classes, even regular chair. I have seen everything from depressing squalor to majestic palaces and yet I still feel as if I have hardly scratched the surface. I can't think of another and certainly have never been to a country with the kind of geographic and ethnic diversity of India. Everywhere I went was nothing like the place before it, and even though it can be overwhelming and hard to deal with at times, I think it's worth it and I would do it again. I plan to return to India someday and see the Darjeeling and Himachal Pradesh areas as well as Varanasi and Kolkata (Calcutta).</p> +<p>There is really no way to describe or categorize the India people except to say again that they are the warmest and friendliest I have ever met. I have talked with everyone from accountants to hotel owners to waiters and busboys, rickshaw drivers, school children, beggars, shoeshine boys, fruit stand dealers, professional photographers, camel drivers, religious pilgrims, hustlers, con artists, tour guides, bus drivers and just random people on the street. Everyone wants to meet you, know where you are from, what you do, and most of all what you think of India. Nothing makes an Indian happier than the hear you say you love India (though quite a few thought I was crazy because I didn't mind Ahmedabad).</p> +<p>Still it would be remiss of me to leave India without touching on the subject of poverty. The worst slums and shantytowns in all of Southeast Asia are here in India and at times the poverty of the people can be overwhelming. I have seen things that made we want to cry, but were so shocking I remained mute, temporarily unable to think. But in spite of the obvious and confronting poverty and yes the dirt and cow shit and human waste, in spite of all the pollution, garbage and general filth of many India cities, the people here remain the most gregarious and good natured I have ever met. Just yesterday on the train back from my daytrip to Agra while I was waiting in the station several little boys came up begging for change as they do in every railway station in India. The Indian people generally give a few rupees to the beggars, particularly the older ones badly afflicted and misshapen from Polio or Leprosy, but most western tourists tend to turn the other way or pretend as if the person at their feet simply did not exist. I myself have turned away at times, but at other times I give a few rupees to the beggars, especially the children. Yesterday however I did not have any change so I went and bought a bunch of bananas and gave them to one little boy and it made him very happy. He ate them and then followed me around for the rest of the wait talking in Hindi and playing hide and go seek in the train car until it started to move and then he waved goodbye and jumped off. It isn't hard to bring out a smile even in the most impoverished and seemingly depressed of Indians; their smiles are never more than a kind gesture away. I have had total strangers offer to share their lunch with me as I walked by them in a park or invite me to have chai with their families, even the shopkeepers who bargain hard insist you sit and have a cup of chai before they try to rip you off.</p> +<p>Several westerners I have traveled with who witnessed me giving money here and there to children have told me I shouldn't encourage children to beg or they'll be begging the rest of their lives. But the truth is they'll be begging the rest of their lives anyway and later many of them will contract Polio or worse from tainted water and will become the misshapen men and women pulling themselves along on their mutilated hands still begging for change. To think that there are opportunities for begging children to improve their lot is naive and delusional. Just as it would be delusional and naive of me to think that I can give anyone more than five minutes of relief from their life. </p> +<p>I could not begin to suggest what India ought to do to help its poor, but I am glad that Bill and Melinda Gates are pouring a tremendous amount of money into disease research and medical help for India and other countries like it. It is painful to see the victims of Polio and know that Polio is a preventable disease. Polio is rare to nonexistent in the west and yet here thousands die of it every year simply because the vaccines can't get from A to B. I don't know why the vaccines aren't distributed the way they need to be, there are probably a thousand reasons but none of them are good. </p> +<p>In closing let me also say that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about cultural differences since I have been here. I have learned to never let my left hand get anywhere near food, I've come to the conclusion that squat toilets are actually easier to use, though harder to keep clean than western ones, that lane lines are not necessary, that time is a purely western concern, that driving a rickshaw is actually pretty easy, as is riding a motorcycle, that I can say my name and ask how someone is doing in Hindi, that saying no is impolite, that the sky has more stars than we know, that trains are the best form of transportation and most of all that patience is not a virtue, but a way of life. In spite of that there are some aspects of Indian culture I cannot abide by. My conclusion on cultural differences is that any cultural practice that fails to treat your fellow human beings with the same respect you accord yourself is not a cultural tradition worthy of respect.</p> +<p>And finally for my fellow Americans, please get out and see the world. We are an isolated country both geographically and culturally and the rest of the world is going to pass us by while we have our heads buried in the sand. The rest of the world looks to us, but then discovers that we are often ignorant and ill-informed, that we start wars and fail to allow for anyone who disagrees with us, that we expect and demand that the world bend to our ways when we have never experienced theirs. We have the power and resources to transform so much of the world for the better and the more of us that come out here and see what the rest of the world is like, what they want, what they love, what they would die to protect, the more we will be able to understand and help them. The day and age when we could be isolationist and ignorant came and went before we were born, we owe it to the world to see them on their own terms. So pack your bags, I'll meet you in Nepal. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/goodbye-india.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/goodbye-india.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c848dd2 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/goodbye-india.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Goodbye India - 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 have traveled nearly 4000 km in India. The vast majority of that distance I traveled by trains, in all classes, even regular chair. 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While I am excited to be heading for Nepal, I am sorry to be leaving India. India has been at times challenging, at times overwhelming, at times horrifying, at times gorgeous, at times tranquil and peaceful and at times the most magical place on earth. </p> +<p>The India people are the friendliest I have ever met and even when they are trying to sell something they are also genuinely interested in you, where you come from and how you like India. Even the touts, while annoying, are something you get used to and even sort of enjoy after a while, provided you aren’t already frustrated and tired. </p> +<p><break></p> +<p>I have taken almost 750 photos and traveled nearly 4000 km (2500 miles) in India, two bus rides and two quick domestic flights, but the vast majority of that distance I traveled by trains, in all classes, even regular chair. I have seen everything from depressing squalor to majestic palaces and yet I still feel as if I have hardly scratched the surface. I can’t think of another and certainly have never been to a country with the kind of geographic and ethnic diversity of India. Everywhere I went was nothing like the place before it, and even though it can be overwhelming and hard to deal with at times, I think it’s worth it and I would do it again. I plan to return to India someday and see the Darjeeling and Himachal Pradesh areas as well as Varanasi and Kolkata (Calcutta).</p> +<p>There is really no way to describe or categorize the India people except to say again that they are the warmest and friendliest I have ever met. I have talked with everyone from accountants to hotel owners to waiters and busboys, rickshaw drivers, school children, beggars, shoeshine boys, fruit stand dealers, professional photographers, camel drivers, religious pilgrims, hustlers, con artists, tour guides, bus drivers and just random people on the street. Everyone wants to meet you, know where you are from, what you do, and most of all what you think of India. Nothing makes an Indian happier than the hear you say you love India (though quite a few thought I was crazy because I didn’t mind Ahmedabad).</p> +<p>Still it would be remiss of me to leave India without touching on the subject of poverty. The worst slums and shantytowns in all of Southeast Asia are here in India and at times the poverty of the people can be overwhelming. I have seen things that made we want to cry, but were so shocking I remained mute, temporarily unable to think. But in spite of the obvious and confronting poverty and yes the dirt and cow shit and human waste, in spite of all the pollution, garbage and general filth of many India cities, the people here remain the most gregarious and good natured I have ever met. Just yesterday on the train back from my daytrip to Agra while I was waiting in the station several little boys came up begging for change as they do in every railway station in India. The Indian people generally give a few rupees to the beggars, particularly the older ones badly afflicted and misshapen from Polio or Leprosy, but most western tourists tend to turn the other way or pretend as if the person at their feet simply did not exist. I myself have turned away at times, but at other times I give a few rupees to the beggars, especially the children. Yesterday however I did not have any change so I went and bought a bunch of bananas and gave them to one little boy and it made him very happy. He ate them and then followed me around for the rest of the wait talking in Hindi and playing hide and go seek in the train car until it started to move and then he waved goodbye and jumped off. It isn’t hard to bring out a smile even in the most impoverished and seemingly depressed of Indians; their smiles are never more than a kind gesture away. I have had total strangers offer to share their lunch with me as I walked by them in a park or invite me to have chai with their families, even the shopkeepers who bargain hard insist you sit and have a cup of chai before they try to rip you off.</p> +<p>Several westerners I have traveled with who witnessed me giving money here and there to children have told me I shouldn’t encourage children to beg or they’ll be begging the rest of their lives. But the truth is they’ll be begging the rest of their lives anyway and later many of them will contract Polio or worse from tainted water and will become the misshapen men and women pulling themselves along on their mutilated hands still begging for change. To think that there are opportunities for begging children to improve their lot is naive and delusional. Just as it would be delusional and naive of me to think that I can give anyone more than five minutes of relief from their life. </p> +<p>I could not begin to suggest what India ought to do to help its poor, but I am glad that Bill and Melinda Gates are pouring a tremendous amount of money into disease research and medical help for India and other countries like it. It is painful to see the victims of Polio and know that Polio is a preventable disease. Polio is rare to nonexistent in the west and yet here thousands die of it every year simply because the vaccines can’t get from A to B. I don’t know why the vaccines aren’t distributed the way they need to be, there are probably a thousand reasons but none of them are good. </p> +<p>In closing let me also say that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about cultural differences since I have been here. I have learned to never let my left hand get anywhere near food, I’ve come to the conclusion that squat toilets are actually easier to use, though harder to keep clean than western ones, that lane lines are not necessary, that time is a purely western concern, that driving a rickshaw is actually pretty easy, as is riding a motorcycle, that I can say my name and ask how someone is doing in Hindi, that saying no is impolite, that the sky has more stars than we know, that trains are the best form of transportation and most of all that patience is not a virtue, but a way of life. In spite of that there are some aspects of Indian culture I cannot abide by. My conclusion on cultural differences is that any cultural practice that fails to treat your fellow human beings with the same respect you accord yourself is not a cultural tradition worthy of respect.</p> +<p>And finally for my fellow Americans, please get out and see the world. We are an isolated country both geographically and culturally and the rest of the world is going to pass us by while we have our heads buried in the sand. The rest of the world looks to us, but then discovers that we are often ignorant and ill-informed, that we start wars and fail to allow for anyone who disagrees with us, that we expect and demand that the world bend to our ways when we have never experienced theirs. We have the power and resources to transform so much of the world for the better and the more of us that come out here and see what the rest of the world is like, what they want, what they love, what they would die to protect, the more we will be able to understand and help them. The day and age when we could be isolationist and ignorant came and went before we were born, we owe it to the world to see them on their own terms. So pack your bags, I’ll meet you in Nepal. </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/taj-express" rel="prev" title=" The Taj Express">The Taj Express</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu" rel="next" title=" Durbar Square Kathmandu">Durbar Square Kathmandu</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="27" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833485" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="744d7232f1072e7daa3a81ee8999846285a6f372" 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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While I am excited to be heading for Nepal, I am sorry to be leaving India. India has been at times challenging, at times overwhelming, at times horrifying, at times gorgeous, at times tranquil and peaceful and at times the most magical place on earth.
+
+The India people are the friendliest I have ever met and even when they are trying to sell something they are also genuinely interested in you, where you come from and how you like India. Even the touts, while annoying, are something you get used to and even sort of enjoy after a while, provided you aren't already frustrated and tired.
+
+<break>
+
+I have taken almost 750 photos and traveled nearly 4000 km (2500 miles) in India, two bus rides and two quick domestic flights, but the vast majority of that distance I traveled by trains, in all classes, even regular chair. I have seen everything from depressing squalor to majestic palaces and yet I still feel as if I have hardly scratched the surface. I can't think of another and certainly have never been to a country with the kind of geographic and ethnic diversity of India. Everywhere I went was nothing like the place before it, and even though it can be overwhelming and hard to deal with at times, I think it's worth it and I would do it again. I plan to return to India someday and see the Darjeeling and Himachal Pradesh areas as well as Varanasi and Kolkata (Calcutta).
+
+
+
+There is really no way to describe or categorize the India people except to say again that they are the warmest and friendliest I have ever met. I have talked with everyone from accountants to hotel owners to waiters and busboys, rickshaw drivers, school children, beggars, shoeshine boys, fruit stand dealers, professional photographers, camel drivers, religious pilgrims, hustlers, con artists, tour guides, bus drivers and just random people on the street. Everyone wants to meet you, know where you are from, what you do, and most of all what you think of India. Nothing makes an Indian happier than the hear you say you love India (though quite a few thought I was crazy because I didn't mind Ahmedabad).
+
+
+
+Still it would be remiss of me to leave India without touching on the subject of poverty. The worst slums and shantytowns in all of Southeast Asia are here in India and at times the poverty of the people can be overwhelming. I have seen things that made we want to cry, but were so shocking I remained mute, temporarily unable to think. But in spite of the obvious and confronting poverty and yes the dirt and cow shit and human waste, in spite of all the pollution, garbage and general filth of many India cities, the people here remain the most gregarious and good natured I have ever met. Just yesterday on the train back from my daytrip to Agra while I was waiting in the station several little boys came up begging for change as they do in every railway station in India. The Indian people generally give a few rupees to the beggars, particularly the older ones badly afflicted and misshapen from Polio or Leprosy, but most western tourists tend to turn the other way or pretend as if the person at their feet simply did not exist. I myself have turned away at times, but at other times I give a few rupees to the beggars, especially the children. Yesterday however I did not have any change so I went and bought a bunch of bananas and gave them to one little boy and it made him very happy. He ate them and then followed me around for the rest of the wait talking in Hindi and playing hide and go seek in the train car until it started to move and then he waved goodbye and jumped off. It isn't hard to bring out a smile even in the most impoverished and seemingly depressed of Indians; their smiles are never more than a kind gesture away. I have had total strangers offer to share their lunch with me as I walked by them in a park or invite me to have chai with their families, even the shopkeepers who bargain hard insist you sit and have a cup of chai before they try to rip you off.
+
+
+
+Several westerners I have traveled with who witnessed me giving money here and there to children have told me I shouldn't encourage children to beg or they'll be begging the rest of their lives. But the truth is they'll be begging the rest of their lives anyway and later many of them will contract Polio or worse from tainted water and will become the misshapen men and women pulling themselves along on their mutilated hands still begging for change. To think that there are opportunities for begging children to improve their lot is naive and delusional. Just as it would be delusional and naive of me to think that I can give anyone more than five minutes of relief from their life.
+
+I could not begin to suggest what India ought to do to help its poor, but I am glad that Bill and Melinda Gates are pouring a tremendous amount of money into disease research and medical help for India and other countries like it. It is painful to see the victims of Polio and know that Polio is a preventable disease. Polio is rare to nonexistent in the west and yet here thousands die of it every year simply because the vaccines can't get from A to B. I don't know why the vaccines aren't distributed the way they need to be, there are probably a thousand reasons but none of them are good.
+
+In closing let me also say that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about cultural differences since I have been here. I have learned to never let my left hand get anywhere near food, I've come to the conclusion that squat toilets are actually easier to use, though harder to keep clean than western ones, that lane lines are not necessary, that time is a purely western concern, that driving a rickshaw is actually pretty easy, as is riding a motorcycle, that I can say my name and ask how someone is doing in Hindi, that saying no is impolite, that the sky has more stars than we know, that trains are the best form of transportation and most of all that patience is not a virtue, but a way of life. In spite of that there are some aspects of Indian culture I cannot abide by. My conclusion on cultural differences is that any cultural practice that fails to treat your fellow human beings with the same respect you accord yourself is not a cultural tradition worthy of respect.
+
+And finally for my fellow Americans, please get out and see the world. We are an isolated country both geographically and culturally and the rest of the world is going to pass us by while we have our heads buried in the sand. The rest of the world looks to us, but then discovers that we are often ignorant and ill-informed, that we start wars and fail to allow for anyone who disagrees with us, that we expect and demand that the world bend to our ways when we have never experienced theirs. We have the power and resources to transform so much of the world for the better and the more of us that come out here and see what the rest of the world is like, what they want, what they love, what they would die to protect, the more we will be able to understand and help them. The day and age when we could be isolationist and ignorant came and went before we were born, we owe it to the world to see them on their own terms. So pack your bags, I'll meet you in Nepal. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00d7e2b --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,125 @@ +<!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 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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">Jodhpur</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/india/" title="travel writing from India">India</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> arrived in Jodhpur on the edge of the Great Thar Desert around midday after an uneventful five or six hour bus ride and disembarked into a sea of shouting gesticulating touts intent on making their commissions. </p> +<p>Fortunately I had booked ahead on the condition that the guesthouse send someone to get me so, after dodging the touts as best I could, I found the man I was looking for, hopped on the back of his motorcycle and was whisked out of the chaos into the even greater chaos of sprawling Jodhpur. After putting up my things at the guesthouse and arranging for a ticket on the next sleeper train to Jaisalmer, I went out into the ruckus and commotion of Jodhpur's clock tower market. The clock tower is the center of the old town in Jodhpur and from the main square countless markets, each street with its own specialty, from vegetables and fruits to jewelry and silverwork as well as everything from sewing machines to internet cafes, take off from the main square. For the first time in India, somewhere between dodging the camels trotting by and saying no to the shopkeepers grabbing my arm, I got lost. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Camel Jodhpur India" height="202" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jodhpurcamel.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>After snacking on some fresh roasted peanuts and enjoying a pineapple lassi I asked around trying to find my way back to the guesthouse. Indians have a curious way of shaking their heads that seems to move on two axis at once so that you can't determine anything like yes or no from the gesture. Having observed this movement in context for three weeks now I've concluded that sometimes it means yes, sometimes no and most often, I don't understand what you're saying but I like to listen to you talk. There is also a feeling here that saying no to anything is rude, so even if someone doesn't know where something is, they'll say they do rather than be what they consider rude and say no I can't help you. I've learned the best policy when asking directions is the take a kind of census and go with the majority opinion. Then once you set off it's best to ask again every now and then and see if the majority opinion still favors your direction. Eventually I made it back to the hotel and everything was fine.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>The next day I hopped in a rickshaw and headed up to tour Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English. As its English name indicates, it is indeed perched majestically atop the only hill around, and seems not so much built on a hill as to have naturally risen out the very rocks that form the mesa on which it rests. The outer wall encloses some of the sturdiest and most impressive ramparts I've seen in India or anywhere else and then within that, mainly on the north side, are a series of palaces and courtyards that, when linked together by the various passages, comprise what was once the ruling seat of the Marwar Empire. The current Maharaja does not actually have any more power than a common citizen, but he does have the deed to the fort and, with no revenue source (i.e. taxes go to the federal government of India, not him), he did the smart thing and formed a trust and turned the fort into the Museum. According the audio tour guide, the initial means of raising money for the restoration of the fort came from selling off the fort's resident bat populations' guano to the farmers in the surrounding area. At some point wealthy investors begin to pour money into the project, including I noticed the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Fort is now recognized by UNESCO. It has been beautifully restored and just wandering about its various courtyards and palaces gave the feeling of having stepped back in time a few hundred years.</p> +<p>Each area of the sprawling palace has some fantastical name such as Pearl Palace, Flower Place, or The Courtyard of Treasures which is ringed by arched balconies and hundreds of Jalies (the carved sandstone screens that go over the windows). <amp-img alt="Jalies Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, India" height="210" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jaliesjodhpur.jpg" width="179"></amp-img>Each Jalie is unique in its pattern and the purpose behind them is to provide privacy and yet still let in light, which indeed they do, it is nearly impossible to see in them from the outside and yet on the inside they let through a surprising amount of light which falls in ever-changing geometric patterns that dance across the floor as if forever running away from the sun. The overhanging curved stone eaves of the windows looked like Mongol warrior helmets from a Kurosawa movie, but were actually inspired by the domed huts in the area. </p> +<p>The roof overhangs with their sweeping oriental curves together with the intricate patterns of the screened windows gives the Courtyard of Treasures a feeling of architectural schizophrenia, embracing the organic and symmetrical and also the asymmetrical and random. This feeling pervades not just this one courtyard, but the whole palace, and yet somehow the way in which the buildings are linked by the walkways between levels forms a bridge between the two styles and holds the design together as a cohesive whole.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="room majestic fort, jodhpur, India" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/poetsroom.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>Inside the palace is quite magnificent and contains one room that was the most amazing, lavish room I've ever seen anywhere. It was used for poets to recite poetry and musicians and dancers to perform. And to think that most of poets I know have been reduced to reading in the local tavern or some nearly abandoned building on a college campus. I should like to have seen a performance in this room when it was still in use.</p> +<p>After finishing up the audio tour I set out to walk the length of the ramparts and ran into a German man who had been on my bus the day before. We smoked a cigarette and strolled along the various stone parapets admiring the myriad of cannons on display, including on extremely beautiful one (if one can say that a object of death and destruction is beautiful), that was apparently captured in China during the boxer rebellion, and took in the sweeping views of the blue city below. Once it was just Brahmins that used the blue on their houses, but these days pretty much everyone does it, the house are painted white and then washed in an indigo dye so that the city, when viewed from on high, looks not unlike a sprawling underwater fantasy world.</p> +<p>The German man, whose name I never did get, was anxious to practice his English so we sat down beside a rather nondescript and long since mute cannon and talked for some time while in the background the sounds of the frenetic clock tower market drifted up the hill with the breeze. He had apparently also been walking around the market yesterday in search of the one street that sells nothing but betel nut in all its various forms. I have seen more than a few betel nut chewers in the last three weeks, it's a habit that seems on par with the coca leaf chewers in Peru and is apparently just as addictive, except that betel nut juice is bright red and rots the teeth and gums. If you ever come to India and see someone who looks like they got their grill kicked in (as Jimmy would say) the night before, that is your betel nut chewer.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, India" height="138" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/majesticfort.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>Later in the evening, after I had returned to the hotel and was waiting for my night train, I sat up at the rooftop restaurant and watched the setting sun turn the distant and very imposing fort ever-brighter shades of red and orange. I tried to imagine the position of an attacking army and what it would require to assault such a fort, which apparently must be more than anyone could ever muster since the fort was never captured. Ten or so India buzzards were circling lazily high of the fort floating on the thermals, some of them able to remain suspended almost perfectly still in the wind, as if they went up there everyday expecting some carnage and feasting they had heard about from their great grandfathers who doubtless could tell tales of carrion banquets after the various attempts to take the fort. </p> +<p>Later that night I headed over to the train station and caught a sleeper for Jaisalmer (which I've seen spelled that way and also as Jaiselmar—in fact noticing the constant misspellings of English words in India has become a sort of hobby of mine, but this is first time I've seen variable spellings on an Indian word). My time in Jodhpur was short, but I wanted to get up into the desert and I still want to see the Taj Mahal so I must keep moving. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/majestic-fort.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/majestic-fort.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..29d7364 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/majestic-fort.html @@ -0,0 +1,339 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Majestic Fort - 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="Johdpur and Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English."> + <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/2005/12/majestic-fort" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="26.29741635354351, 73.01766871389577" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="26.29741635354351; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-12-02T17:40:02" itemprop="datePublished">December <span>2, 2005</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> arrived in Jodhpur on the edge of the Great Thar Desert around midday after an uneventful five or six hour bus ride and disembarked into a sea of shouting gesticulating touts intent on making their commissions. </p> +<p>Fortunately I had booked ahead on the condition that the guesthouse send someone to get me so, after dodging the touts as best I could, I found the man I was looking for, hopped on the back of his motorcycle and was whisked out of the chaos into the even greater chaos of sprawling Jodhpur. After putting up my things at the guesthouse and arranging for a ticket on the next sleeper train to Jaisalmer, I went out into the ruckus and commotion of Jodhpur’s clock tower market. The clock tower is the center of the old town in Jodhpur and from the main square countless markets, each street with its own specialty, from vegetables and fruits to jewelry and silverwork as well as everything from sewing machines to internet cafes, take off from the main square. For the first time in India, somewhere between dodging the camels trotting by and saying no to the shopkeepers grabbing my arm, I got lost. </p> +<p><img alt="Camel Jodhpur India" class="postpic" height="202" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jodhpurcamel.jpg" width="180"/>After snacking on some fresh roasted peanuts and enjoying a pineapple lassi I asked around trying to find my way back to the guesthouse. Indians have a curious way of shaking their heads that seems to move on two axis at once so that you can’t determine anything like yes or no from the gesture. Having observed this movement in context for three weeks now I’ve concluded that sometimes it means yes, sometimes no and most often, I don’t understand what you’re saying but I like to listen to you talk. There is also a feeling here that saying no to anything is rude, so even if someone doesn’t know where something is, they’ll say they do rather than be what they consider rude and say no I can’t help you. I’ve learned the best policy when asking directions is the take a kind of census and go with the majority opinion. Then once you set off it’s best to ask again every now and then and see if the majority opinion still favors your direction. Eventually I made it back to the hotel and everything was fine.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>The next day I hopped in a rickshaw and headed up to tour Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it’s known in English. As its English name indicates, it is indeed perched majestically atop the only hill around, and seems not so much built on a hill as to have naturally risen out the very rocks that form the mesa on which it rests. The outer wall encloses some of the sturdiest and most impressive ramparts I’ve seen in India or anywhere else and then within that, mainly on the north side, are a series of palaces and courtyards that, when linked together by the various passages, comprise what was once the ruling seat of the Marwar Empire. The current Maharaja does not actually have any more power than a common citizen, but he does have the deed to the fort and, with no revenue source (i.e. taxes go to the federal government of India, not him), he did the smart thing and formed a trust and turned the fort into the Museum. According the audio tour guide, the initial means of raising money for the restoration of the fort came from selling off the fort’s resident bat populations’ guano to the farmers in the surrounding area. At some point wealthy investors begin to pour money into the project, including I noticed the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Fort is now recognized by UNESCO. It has been beautifully restored and just wandering about its various courtyards and palaces gave the feeling of having stepped back in time a few hundred years.</p> +<p>Each area of the sprawling palace has some fantastical name such as Pearl Palace, Flower Place, or The Courtyard of Treasures which is ringed by arched balconies and hundreds of Jalies (the carved sandstone screens that go over the windows). <img alt="Jalies Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, India" class="postpicright" height="210" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jaliesjodhpur.jpg" width="179"/>Each Jalie is unique in its pattern and the purpose behind them is to provide privacy and yet still let in light, which indeed they do, it is nearly impossible to see in them from the outside and yet on the inside they let through a surprising amount of light which falls in ever-changing geometric patterns that dance across the floor as if forever running away from the sun. The overhanging curved stone eaves of the windows looked like Mongol warrior helmets from a Kurosawa movie, but were actually inspired by the domed huts in the area. </p> +<p>The roof overhangs with their sweeping oriental curves together with the intricate patterns of the screened windows gives the Courtyard of Treasures a feeling of architectural schizophrenia, embracing the organic and symmetrical and also the asymmetrical and random. This feeling pervades not just this one courtyard, but the whole palace, and yet somehow the way in which the buildings are linked by the walkways between levels forms a bridge between the two styles and holds the design together as a cohesive whole.</p> +<p><img alt="room majestic fort, jodhpur, India" class="postpic" height="188" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/poetsroom.jpg" width="250"/>Inside the palace is quite magnificent and contains one room that was the most amazing, lavish room I’ve ever seen anywhere. It was used for poets to recite poetry and musicians and dancers to perform. And to think that most of poets I know have been reduced to reading in the local tavern or some nearly abandoned building on a college campus. I should like to have seen a performance in this room when it was still in use.</p> +<p>After finishing up the audio tour I set out to walk the length of the ramparts and ran into a German man who had been on my bus the day before. We smoked a cigarette and strolled along the various stone parapets admiring the myriad of cannons on display, including on extremely beautiful one (if one can say that a object of death and destruction is beautiful), that was apparently captured in China during the boxer rebellion, and took in the sweeping views of the blue city below. Once it was just Brahmins that used the blue on their houses, but these days pretty much everyone does it, the house are painted white and then washed in an indigo dye so that the city, when viewed from on high, looks not unlike a sprawling underwater fantasy world.</p> +<p>The German man, whose name I never did get, was anxious to practice his English so we sat down beside a rather nondescript and long since mute cannon and talked for some time while in the background the sounds of the frenetic clock tower market drifted up the hill with the breeze. He had apparently also been walking around the market yesterday in search of the one street that sells nothing but betel nut in all its various forms. I have seen more than a few betel nut chewers in the last three weeks, it’s a habit that seems on par with the coca leaf chewers in Peru and is apparently just as addictive, except that betel nut juice is bright red and rots the teeth and gums. If you ever come to India and see someone who looks like they got their grill kicked in (as Jimmy would say) the night before, that is your betel nut chewer.</p> +<p><img alt="Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, India" class="postpicright" height="138" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/majesticfort.jpg" width="250"/>Later in the evening, after I had returned to the hotel and was waiting for my night train, I sat up at the rooftop restaurant and watched the setting sun turn the distant and very imposing fort ever-brighter shades of red and orange. I tried to imagine the position of an attacking army and what it would require to assault such a fort, which apparently must be more than anyone could ever muster since the fort was never captured. Ten or so India buzzards were circling lazily high of the fort floating on the thermals, some of them able to remain suspended almost perfectly still in the wind, as if they went up there everyday expecting some carnage and feasting they had heard about from their great grandfathers who doubtless could tell tales of carrion banquets after the various attempts to take the fort. </p> +<p>Later that night I headed over to the train station and caught a sleeper for Jaisalmer (which I’ve seen spelled that way and also as Jaiselmar—in fact noticing the constant misspellings of English words in India has become a sort of hobby of mine, but this is first time I’ve seen variable spellings on an Indian word). My time in Jodhpur was short, but I wanted to get up into the desert and I still want to see the Taj Mahal so I must keep moving. </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/2005/11/around-udaipur" rel="prev" title=" Around Udaipur">Around Udaipur</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/camel-no-name" rel="next" title=" On a Camel With No Name">On a Camel With No Name</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="24" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833486" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="37492eada0e1fd862c011330a2b68f90ad548124" 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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+
+Fortunately I had booked ahead on the condition that the guesthouse send someone to get me so, after dodging the touts as best I could, I found the man I was looking for, hopped on the back of his motorcycle and was whisked out of the chaos into the even greater chaos of sprawling Jodhpur. After putting up my things at the guesthouse and arranging for a ticket on the next sleeper train to Jaisalmer, I went out into the ruckus and commotion of Jodhpur's clock tower market. The clock tower is the center of the old town in Jodhpur and from the main square countless markets, each street with its own specialty, from vegetables and fruits to jewelry and silverwork as well as everything from sewing machines to internet cafes, take off from the main square. For the first time in India, somewhere between dodging the camels trotting by and saying no to the shopkeepers grabbing my arm, I got lost.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/jodhpurcamel.jpg" width="180" height="202" class="postpic" alt="Camel Jodhpur India" />After snacking on some fresh roasted peanuts and enjoying a pineapple lassi I asked around trying to find my way back to the guesthouse. Indians have a curious way of shaking their heads that seems to move on two axis at once so that you can't determine anything like yes or no from the gesture. Having observed this movement in context for three weeks now I've concluded that sometimes it means yes, sometimes no and most often, I don't understand what you're saying but I like to listen to you talk. There is also a feeling here that saying no to anything is rude, so even if someone doesn't know where something is, they'll say they do rather than be what they consider rude and say no I can't help you. I've learned the best policy when asking directions is the take a kind of census and go with the majority opinion. Then once you set off it's best to ask again every now and then and see if the majority opinion still favors your direction. Eventually I made it back to the hotel and everything was fine.
+
+<break>
+
+The next day I hopped in a rickshaw and headed up to tour Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English. As its English name indicates, it is indeed perched majestically atop the only hill around, and seems not so much built on a hill as to have naturally risen out the very rocks that form the mesa on which it rests. The outer wall encloses some of the sturdiest and most impressive ramparts I've seen in India or anywhere else and then within that, mainly on the north side, are a series of palaces and courtyards that, when linked together by the various passages, comprise what was once the ruling seat of the Marwar Empire. The current Maharaja does not actually have any more power than a common citizen, but he does have the deed to the fort and, with no revenue source (i.e. taxes go to the federal government of India, not him), he did the smart thing and formed a trust and turned the fort into the Museum. According the audio tour guide, the initial means of raising money for the restoration of the fort came from selling off the fort's resident bat populations' guano to the farmers in the surrounding area. At some point wealthy investors begin to pour money into the project, including I noticed the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Fort is now recognized by UNESCO. It has been beautifully restored and just wandering about its various courtyards and palaces gave the feeling of having stepped back in time a few hundred years.
+
+
+
+Each area of the sprawling palace has some fantastical name such as Pearl Palace, Flower Place, or The Courtyard of Treasures which is ringed by arched balconies and hundreds of Jalies (the carved sandstone screens that go over the windows). <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/jaliesjodhpur.jpg" width="179" height="210" class="postpicright" alt="Jalies Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, India" />Each Jalie is unique in its pattern and the purpose behind them is to provide privacy and yet still let in light, which indeed they do, it is nearly impossible to see in them from the outside and yet on the inside they let through a surprising amount of light which falls in ever-changing geometric patterns that dance across the floor as if forever running away from the sun. The overhanging curved stone eaves of the windows looked like Mongol warrior helmets from a Kurosawa movie, but were actually inspired by the domed huts in the area.
+
+
+
+The roof overhangs with their sweeping oriental curves together with the intricate patterns of the screened windows gives the Courtyard of Treasures a feeling of architectural schizophrenia, embracing the organic and symmetrical and also the asymmetrical and random. This feeling pervades not just this one courtyard, but the whole palace, and yet somehow the way in which the buildings are linked by the walkways between levels forms a bridge between the two styles and holds the design together as a cohesive whole.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/poetsroom.jpg" width="250" height="188" class="postpic" alt="room majestic fort, jodhpur, India" />Inside the palace is quite magnificent and contains one room that was the most amazing, lavish room I've ever seen anywhere. It was used for poets to recite poetry and musicians and dancers to perform. And to think that most of poets I know have been reduced to reading in the local tavern or some nearly abandoned building on a college campus. I should like to have seen a performance in this room when it was still in use.
+
+
+
+After finishing up the audio tour I set out to walk the length of the ramparts and ran into a German man who had been on my bus the day before. We smoked a cigarette and strolled along the various stone parapets admiring the myriad of cannons on display, including on extremely beautiful one (if one can say that a object of death and destruction is beautiful), that was apparently captured in China during the boxer rebellion, and took in the sweeping views of the blue city below. Once it was just Brahmins that used the blue on their houses, but these days pretty much everyone does it, the house are painted white and then washed in an indigo dye so that the city, when viewed from on high, looks not unlike a sprawling underwater fantasy world.
+
+
+
+The German man, whose name I never did get, was anxious to practice his English so we sat down beside a rather nondescript and long since mute cannon and talked for some time while in the background the sounds of the frenetic clock tower market drifted up the hill with the breeze. He had apparently also been walking around the market yesterday in search of the one street that sells nothing but betel nut in all its various forms. I have seen more than a few betel nut chewers in the last three weeks, it's a habit that seems on par with the coca leaf chewers in Peru and is apparently just as addictive, except that betel nut juice is bright red and rots the teeth and gums. If you ever come to India and see someone who looks like they got their grill kicked in (as Jimmy would say) the night before, that is your betel nut chewer.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/majesticfort.jpg" width="250" height="138" class="postpicright" alt="Majestic Fort, Jodhpur, India" />Later in the evening, after I had returned to the hotel and was waiting for my night train, I sat up at the rooftop restaurant and watched the setting sun turn the distant and very imposing fort ever-brighter shades of red and orange. I tried to imagine the position of an attacking army and what it would require to assault such a fort, which apparently must be more than anyone could ever muster since the fort was never captured. Ten or so India buzzards were circling lazily high of the fort floating on the thermals, some of them able to remain suspended almost perfectly still in the wind, as if they went up there everyday expecting some carnage and feasting they had heard about from their great grandfathers who doubtless could tell tales of carrion banquets after the various attempts to take the fort.
+
+
+
+Later that night I headed over to the train station and caught a sleeper for Jaisalmer (which I've seen spelled that way and also as Jaiselmar—in fact noticing the constant misspellings of English words in India has become a sort of hobby of mine, but this is first time I've seen variable spellings on an Indian word). My time in Jodhpur was short, but I wanted to get up into the desert and I still want to see the Taj Mahal so I must keep moving. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..51bd016 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005.amp @@ -0,0 +1,175 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Merry Christmas 2005</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005"> + <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/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="I just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. 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I'm in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment and while it doesn't have a very Christmasy feel, but it's a great city. Very much like Los Angeles — looks similar, weather's about the same, but the food is ten times better and the river actually has water in it. </p> +<p>I am taking a short break from traveling to do a little working so I don't have much to report. I've seen the two big temples down in the Khaosan Rd area, but otherwise I've been trying to live an ordinary life. Get up in the morning and work, take a lunch break go back to work, ironically most of the things I didn't want to do back home. Strange though it may sound, this routine is actually appealing right now, but that will probably only last another week.</p> +<p><break> +I just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. </break></p> +<p>Cheers!</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fae1185 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005.html @@ -0,0 +1,332 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Merry Christmas 2005 - 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 just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. 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I’m in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment and while it doesn’t have a very Christmasy feel, but it’s a great city. Very much like Los Angeles — looks similar, weather’s about the same, but the food is ten times better and the river actually has water in it. </p> +<p>I am taking a short break from traveling to do a little working so I don’t have much to report. I’ve seen the two big temples down in the Khaosan Rd area, but otherwise I’ve been trying to live an ordinary life. Get up in the morning and work, take a lunch break go back to work, ironically most of the things I didn’t want to do back home. Strange though it may sound, this routine is actually appealing right now, but that will probably only last another week.</p> +<p><break> +I just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. </p> +<p>Cheers!</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/sunset-over-himalayas" rel="prev" title=" Sunset Over the Himalayas">Sunset Over the Himalayas</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2006/01/are-you-amplified-rock" rel="next" title=" Are You Amplified to Rock?">Are You Amplified to Rock?</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="31" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833484" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="a0c2727c510058b7eaccaae6d3ffcba44d53cdd4" 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'm in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment and while it doesn't have a very Christmasy feel, but it's a great city. Very much like Los Angeles — looks similar, weather's about the same, but the food is ten times better and the river actually has water in it.
+
+I am taking a short break from traveling to do a little working so I don't have much to report. I've seen the two big temples down in the Khaosan Rd area, but otherwise I've been trying to live an ordinary life. Get up in the morning and work, take a lunch break go back to work, ironically most of the things I didn't want to do back home. Strange though it may sound, this routine is actually appealing right now, but that will probably only last another week.
+
+<break>
+I just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support.
+
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Nestled on a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India. </p> +<p>Pashupatinath consists of a large temple which is open only to Hindus, surrounded by a number of smaller shrines and then down on the banks of the Bagmati are the burning ghats where bodies are cremated. After walking around the various pagodas and little temples I made my way across the river on one of the small foot bridges and up the hillside on opposite bank past a series of eleven small temples of Shiva to the top of a terrace. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Pashupatinath Katmandu, Nepal" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pashupatinathtemple.jpg" width="187"></amp-img>I sat up above the river on the terrace where there were some wooden benches whose beams seemed perhaps deliberately too far apart to be comfortable, as if comfort were not something to be found here. From the temple across the river came a continual ringing of bells and the sound of a flute which seemed to irritate the resident flock of pigeons sitting on the roof. Every few minutes the pigeons would launch off into a circuitous arcs seemingly blown like leaves, streaking along the river in a cloud so thick it was impossible to distinguish individual birds. Below me another funeral pyre was being prepared. After washing away the ashes of the last fire, workers began stacking cordwood and bamboo at cross patterns like Lincoln logs and then over the wood were draped long garlands of marigold flowers. In each corner of the pyre was a bamboo pole with leaves still at the top to form a canopy over the wood. Around these poles they slowly wrapped more marigold garlands and over the top they laid a piece of red silk. This pyre was for an upper caste person while farther down the river less ornate pyres were still burning. In the air I could smell the smoke of burning bamboo which mixed with the vague odor of burnt flesh though I could never decide whether or not that was merely my imagination.</p> +<p>After an hour of preparation they brought out a body wrapped in linen and lying on what amounted to a bamboo ladder borne by four Hari Krishna's who lifted the body up on to the pile of wood, covered it with grasses and then, with very little additional ceremony, they lit the pyre. Throughout this process the family of the deceased, who in this case was some sort of dignitary since the pyre was on one of the upper caste platforms, followed behind the Haris signing various songs in Hindi. The family was dressed in white the traditional Hindu color of mourning. Once the pyre was lit and the songs finished the family threw little bits of marigold petals on the fire and then retreated back into the building behind the ghats where there are rooms for the traditional Hindu mourning ceremonies.</p> +<p>I've remarked before on the number of times death has come up in my travels, but this certainly was the most culturally jarring thing I have witnessed thus far. I've been to a number of funerals in my life and looked in on a couple of autopsies before and the dead are always a strange site, but I had never witnessed a body being destroyed in flames before and something about it was very disturbing. You can't actually see the body burn because the wood and grass is hides it, but it's still a very disquieting just to know that under the grass and wood is a once living human being. I have often thought that I would rather be cremated than buried and I still think that I would, but I'm not sure I would want anyone to watch.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Pashupatinath Funeral Pyre Katmandu Nepal" height="160" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pashupatinathpyre.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>After watching the pyre burn for a while I recalled a horrific story I read in the Indian paper about a woman whose family could no longer afford to pay for her health care and since she was catatonic they simply took her to a crematorium and left the body. The man who prepared her fire was about to lift her body into it when he noticed tears in her eyes. At the time I found the story disturbing, but now as I remembered it it produced a slight feeling of vertigo and dizziness as I thought of the woman unable to move and thinking that she was going to be burned alive, able to communicate the pain and loneliness she must have felt only by the welling of tears in her eyes.</p> +<p>Overcome with a sort of panicky feeling, but a feeling that was distinctly different than an actual panic attack to which I am prone; this was more a feeling of the world spinning as if I had for the first time become aware that even while standing still we are moving at around twenty thousand miles per hour and could feel the motion in my head; I decided to head back to Thamel. I don't have a real distinct memory of getting down, I could not really say how long I had even been up on the terrace. I remember walking down the steps from the terrace because I stopped to make a quick photograph of a doorway that had caught my eye earlier and somehow I centered my attention for long enough to photograph it, but then I don't remember much except that the sky was just then nearly obliterated by a flock of circling pigeons whose flight I watched until I realized I was still very dizzy and needed to sit down again. <amp-img alt="Pashupatinath Katmandu Nepal" height="267" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pashupatinathdoorway.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>I remember thinking that the pigeons looked like a broken kaleidoscope whose fragments had gotten stuck in my eye. And then I leaned against a bench for support and looked up at a little temple or pagoda rather that was next to me and saw the Kama Sutra carvings that often adorn the roof beams of temples in Nepal. </p> +<p>I leaned there for some time thinking that about the cycle of birth love and death that makes up our lives and that at Pashupatinath the cycle has become a singularity so that the distinction between life and death no longer exists. The strange spectacle around me had brought birth love and death together in one place and compressed it down as if to say, despite the procession of time which makes it seem like a cycle, this progression is in fact not a progression, but a single point from which all other things emanate. These thoughts gradually pulled me out of my dizziness and the feeling of falling away from myself until at some length I was able to find my way back to Thamel.</p> +<p>And as the taxi dropped me off in front of my hotel, it occurred to me that losing one's mind might be one of the central attributes of traveling in the first place; not necessarily going crazy, which really I am not, but finding one's mind displaced enough that it begins to feel slightly alien, as if certain contexts which we are raised in and simply accept without ever thinking about become suddenly out of their element and foreign as we absorb different, new and strange contexts.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/pashupatinath.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/pashupatinath.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c35ff5f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/pashupatinath.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Pashupatinath - 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="On a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India."> + <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/2005/12/pashupatinath" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="27.710573155686955, 85.3485345721645" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="27.710573155686955; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-12-15T18:02:59" itemprop="datePublished">December <span>15, 2005</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>t was well past noon before I dragged myself out of the comforts of Thamel and caught a taxi to Pashupatinath. Nestled on a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India. </p> +<p>Pashupatinath consists of a large temple which is open only to Hindus, surrounded by a number of smaller shrines and then down on the banks of the Bagmati are the burning ghats where bodies are cremated. After walking around the various pagodas and little temples I made my way across the river on one of the small foot bridges and up the hillside on opposite bank past a series of eleven small temples of Shiva to the top of a terrace. </p> +<p><break></p> +<p><img alt="Pashupatinath Katmandu, Nepal" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pashupatinathtemple.jpg" width="187"/>I sat up above the river on the terrace where there were some wooden benches whose beams seemed perhaps deliberately too far apart to be comfortable, as if comfort were not something to be found here. From the temple across the river came a continual ringing of bells and the sound of a flute which seemed to irritate the resident flock of pigeons sitting on the roof. Every few minutes the pigeons would launch off into a circuitous arcs seemingly blown like leaves, streaking along the river in a cloud so thick it was impossible to distinguish individual birds. Below me another funeral pyre was being prepared. After washing away the ashes of the last fire, workers began stacking cordwood and bamboo at cross patterns like Lincoln logs and then over the wood were draped long garlands of marigold flowers. In each corner of the pyre was a bamboo pole with leaves still at the top to form a canopy over the wood. Around these poles they slowly wrapped more marigold garlands and over the top they laid a piece of red silk. This pyre was for an upper caste person while farther down the river less ornate pyres were still burning. In the air I could smell the smoke of burning bamboo which mixed with the vague odor of burnt flesh though I could never decide whether or not that was merely my imagination.</p> +<p>After an hour of preparation they brought out a body wrapped in linen and lying on what amounted to a bamboo ladder borne by four Hari Krishna’s who lifted the body up on to the pile of wood, covered it with grasses and then, with very little additional ceremony, they lit the pyre. Throughout this process the family of the deceased, who in this case was some sort of dignitary since the pyre was on one of the upper caste platforms, followed behind the Haris signing various songs in Hindi. The family was dressed in white the traditional Hindu color of mourning. Once the pyre was lit and the songs finished the family threw little bits of marigold petals on the fire and then retreated back into the building behind the ghats where there are rooms for the traditional Hindu mourning ceremonies.</p> +<p>I’ve remarked before on the number of times death has come up in my travels, but this certainly was the most culturally jarring thing I have witnessed thus far. I’ve been to a number of funerals in my life and looked in on a couple of autopsies before and the dead are always a strange site, but I had never witnessed a body being destroyed in flames before and something about it was very disturbing. You can’t actually see the body burn because the wood and grass is hides it, but it’s still a very disquieting just to know that under the grass and wood is a once living human being. I have often thought that I would rather be cremated than buried and I still think that I would, but I’m not sure I would want anyone to watch.</p> +<p><img alt="Pashupatinath Funeral Pyre Katmandu Nepal" class="postpicright" height="160" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pashupatinathpyre.jpg" width="200"/>After watching the pyre burn for a while I recalled a horrific story I read in the Indian paper about a woman whose family could no longer afford to pay for her health care and since she was catatonic they simply took her to a crematorium and left the body. The man who prepared her fire was about to lift her body into it when he noticed tears in her eyes. At the time I found the story disturbing, but now as I remembered it it produced a slight feeling of vertigo and dizziness as I thought of the woman unable to move and thinking that she was going to be burned alive, able to communicate the pain and loneliness she must have felt only by the welling of tears in her eyes.</p> +<p>Overcome with a sort of panicky feeling, but a feeling that was distinctly different than an actual panic attack to which I am prone; this was more a feeling of the world spinning as if I had for the first time become aware that even while standing still we are moving at around twenty thousand miles per hour and could feel the motion in my head; I decided to head back to Thamel. I don’t have a real distinct memory of getting down, I could not really say how long I had even been up on the terrace. I remember walking down the steps from the terrace because I stopped to make a quick photograph of a doorway that had caught my eye earlier and somehow I centered my attention for long enough to photograph it, but then I don’t remember much except that the sky was just then nearly obliterated by a flock of circling pigeons whose flight I watched until I realized I was still very dizzy and needed to sit down again. <img alt="Pashupatinath Katmandu Nepal" class="postpic" height="267" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pashupatinathdoorway.jpg" width="200"/>I remember thinking that the pigeons looked like a broken kaleidoscope whose fragments had gotten stuck in my eye. And then I leaned against a bench for support and looked up at a little temple or pagoda rather that was next to me and saw the Kama Sutra carvings that often adorn the roof beams of temples in Nepal. </p> +<p>I leaned there for some time thinking that about the cycle of birth love and death that makes up our lives and that at Pashupatinath the cycle has become a singularity so that the distinction between life and death no longer exists. The strange spectacle around me had brought birth love and death together in one place and compressed it down as if to say, despite the procession of time which makes it seem like a cycle, this progression is in fact not a progression, but a single point from which all other things emanate. These thoughts gradually pulled me out of my dizziness and the feeling of falling away from myself until at some length I was able to find my way back to Thamel.</p> +<p>And as the taxi dropped me off in front of my hotel, it occurred to me that losing one’s mind might be one of the central attributes of traveling in the first place; not necessarily going crazy, which really I am not, but finding one’s mind displaced enough that it begins to feel slightly alien, as if certain contexts which we are raised in and simply accept without ever thinking about become suddenly out of their element and foreign as we absorb different, new and strange contexts.</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/durbar-square-kathmandu" rel="prev" title=" Durbar Square Kathmandu">Durbar Square Kathmandu</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas" rel="next" title=" Sunset Over the Himalayas">Sunset Over the Himalayas</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="29" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833485" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="b90c71b9b88bb72f73be655937366b69ad30b7ff" 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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Nestled on a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India.
+
+Pashupatinath consists of a large temple which is open only to Hindus, surrounded by a number of smaller shrines and then down on the banks of the Bagmati are the burning ghats where bodies are cremated. After walking around the various pagodas and little temples I made my way across the river on one of the small foot bridges and up the hillside on opposite bank past a series of eleven small temples of Shiva to the top of a terrace.
+
+<break>
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/pashupatinathtemple.jpg" width="187" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Pashupatinath Katmandu, Nepal" />I sat up above the river on the terrace where there were some wooden benches whose beams seemed perhaps deliberately too far apart to be comfortable, as if comfort were not something to be found here. From the temple across the river came a continual ringing of bells and the sound of a flute which seemed to irritate the resident flock of pigeons sitting on the roof. Every few minutes the pigeons would launch off into a circuitous arcs seemingly blown like leaves, streaking along the river in a cloud so thick it was impossible to distinguish individual birds. Below me another funeral pyre was being prepared. After washing away the ashes of the last fire, workers began stacking cordwood and bamboo at cross patterns like Lincoln logs and then over the wood were draped long garlands of marigold flowers. In each corner of the pyre was a bamboo pole with leaves still at the top to form a canopy over the wood. Around these poles they slowly wrapped more marigold garlands and over the top they laid a piece of red silk. This pyre was for an upper caste person while farther down the river less ornate pyres were still burning. In the air I could smell the smoke of burning bamboo which mixed with the vague odor of burnt flesh though I could never decide whether or not that was merely my imagination.
+
+
+
+After an hour of preparation they brought out a body wrapped in linen and lying on what amounted to a bamboo ladder borne by four Hari Krishna's who lifted the body up on to the pile of wood, covered it with grasses and then, with very little additional ceremony, they lit the pyre. Throughout this process the family of the deceased, who in this case was some sort of dignitary since the pyre was on one of the upper caste platforms, followed behind the Haris signing various songs in Hindi. The family was dressed in white the traditional Hindu color of mourning. Once the pyre was lit and the songs finished the family threw little bits of marigold petals on the fire and then retreated back into the building behind the ghats where there are rooms for the traditional Hindu mourning ceremonies.
+
+
+
+I've remarked before on the number of times death has come up in my travels, but this certainly was the most culturally jarring thing I have witnessed thus far. I've been to a number of funerals in my life and looked in on a couple of autopsies before and the dead are always a strange site, but I had never witnessed a body being destroyed in flames before and something about it was very disturbing. You can't actually see the body burn because the wood and grass is hides it, but it's still a very disquieting just to know that under the grass and wood is a once living human being. I have often thought that I would rather be cremated than buried and I still think that I would, but I'm not sure I would want anyone to watch.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/pashupatinathpyre.jpg" width="200" height="160" class="postpicright" alt="Pashupatinath Funeral Pyre Katmandu Nepal" />After watching the pyre burn for a while I recalled a horrific story I read in the Indian paper about a woman whose family could no longer afford to pay for her health care and since she was catatonic they simply took her to a crematorium and left the body. The man who prepared her fire was about to lift her body into it when he noticed tears in her eyes. At the time I found the story disturbing, but now as I remembered it it produced a slight feeling of vertigo and dizziness as I thought of the woman unable to move and thinking that she was going to be burned alive, able to communicate the pain and loneliness she must have felt only by the welling of tears in her eyes.
+
+
+
+Overcome with a sort of panicky feeling, but a feeling that was distinctly different than an actual panic attack to which I am prone; this was more a feeling of the world spinning as if I had for the first time become aware that even while standing still we are moving at around twenty thousand miles per hour and could feel the motion in my head; I decided to head back to Thamel. I don't have a real distinct memory of getting down, I could not really say how long I had even been up on the terrace. I remember walking down the steps from the terrace because I stopped to make a quick photograph of a doorway that had caught my eye earlier and somehow I centered my attention for long enough to photograph it, but then I don't remember much except that the sky was just then nearly obliterated by a flock of circling pigeons whose flight I watched until I realized I was still very dizzy and needed to sit down again. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/pashupatinathdoorway.jpg" width="200" height="267" class="postpic" alt="Pashupatinath Katmandu Nepal" />I remember thinking that the pigeons looked like a broken kaleidoscope whose fragments had gotten stuck in my eye. And then I leaned against a bench for support and looked up at a little temple or pagoda rather that was next to me and saw the Kama Sutra carvings that often adorn the roof beams of temples in Nepal.
+
+
+
+I leaned there for some time thinking that about the cycle of birth love and death that makes up our lives and that at Pashupatinath the cycle has become a singularity so that the distinction between life and death no longer exists. The strange spectacle around me had brought birth love and death together in one place and compressed it down as if to say, despite the procession of time which makes it seem like a cycle, this progression is in fact not a progression, but a single point from which all other things emanate. These thoughts gradually pulled me out of my dizziness and the feeling of falling away from myself until at some length I was able to find my way back to Thamel.
+
+
+
+And as the taxi dropped me off in front of my hotel, it occurred to me that losing one's mind might be one of the central attributes of traveling in the first place; not necessarily going crazy, which really I am not, but finding one's mind displaced enough that it begins to feel slightly alien, as if certain contexts which we are raised in and simply accept without ever thinking about become suddenly out of their element and foreign as we absorb different, new and strange contexts. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cfcc4b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas.amp @@ -0,0 +1,189 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Sunset Over the Himalayas</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas"> + <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/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Rowing Fewa Lake, laying back, looking up at the Annapurna range in the destance."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Sunset Over the Himalayas"/> + <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/pokharaboat.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="Pokhara, Nepal"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="NP-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Sunset Over the Himalayas" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Rowing Fewa Lake, laying back, looking up at the Annapurna range in the destance." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-12-17T21:03:43" /> + <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/pokharaboat.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaboats.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaannapurna.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaterrace.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaboy.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/annapurnasunsetII.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/annapurnasunset.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Sunset Over the Himalayas", + "description": "Rowing Fewa Lake, laying back, looking up at the Annapurna range in the destance.", + "datePublished": "2005-12-17T21:03:43", + "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 had spent the morning and early afternoon walking the streets of Lakeside looking up at the soaring peaks of the Annapurna Range and stopping in at some of the dozens of nearly identical curio and fabric stores, occasionally bargaining for a piece of cloth or vaguely interesting knickknack though in truth I did it more for the game of bargaining then any desire to possess the items in question. </p> +<p>Any time I could get a store owner below 25% of the original asking price I felt as if the game were over and I obligated to complete the exchange by handing over money and departing with the object. In this way I came to own several shawls, a mask supposedly antique which I don't really believe though it is of superior quality to all the others I saw, and one wooden flute, all of which excepting the mask will be given to friends when I return home. After stopping off at my hotel to deposit the days catch on the unused second bed which I had pushed up against the wall beneath the window, I went out as I said to rent a boat and paddle about Fewa Lake.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>At just over $2 US per hour the boats were hardly a bargain (my hotel is the same per night) but I rented one anyway and opted to paddle myself, partly for the exercise and partly to escape the constant barrage of questions I had endured throughout the morning and early afternoon. <amp-img alt="boats Fewa Lake Nepal" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaboats.jpg" width="250"></amp-img>It is very difficult to find any peace and quiet in areas like Pokhara and while it's fun to talk to the local people, especially the children who are almost always sincerely interested in you, whereas the others usually have an end goal of selling you something, I was wanting some peace and quiet. Part of the reason I talked to so many people is that the off-season had arrived in Nepal and very few tourists remain, in fact in my four or five hours of wandering I came across only two other tourists a woman and her daughter bargaining for some embroidered silk shawls.</p> +<p>The boat I received for my 150 rupees could easily have seated a family of six and two oarsmen and consequently moved sluggishly with one lone paddler seated at the stern. Once I got past the Varahi Temple, a small island temple not fifty meters from shore where a modest and possibly ceremonial fire was burning on the left side which sent a plume of smoke drifting out across the still lake waters and looked, with the jungle hillsides in the background, not unlike some of the foggy river scenes in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now; I turned back toward shore and saw the cake-icing snows covering the peaks of Lamgung Himal and Annapurna II. <amp-img alt="Annapurna Range Pokhara Nepal" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaannapurna.jpg" width="247"></amp-img>Such views spurred my paddling on until I was well across the lake skirting the opposite shore among a multitude of water striders darting on the placid, hill-sheltered waters where the views were even more spectacular.</p> +<p>A handful of other boats were on the lake, but I seemed to be the only foreigner out at such a late hour, indeed this was one of many times I felt that I was in fact the only foreign tourist in Pokhara. Most of the other vessels on the water were fishermen bringing in their nets for the day or heavily loaded transport canoes hauling goods from Lakeside to the isolated west shore, which is only reachable by boat or on foot. Here and there were a few people out for fun, including two boats chock full of local school children still in their blue and white uniforms, one boat full of girls and one of boys each racing the other back to the landing. After about forty-five minutes of paddling I reached a point where the views of the Annapurna range were, in the words of an Englishman I met in Katmandu, "gob smacking gorgeous." I put down the paddle and moved to the center of the boat where the benches were wider and, using my bag a cushion, lay back against the gunnel and hung my feet over the opposite side so that they just skimmed the surface of the chilly water. I lay like that for some time snacking on a snickers bar and drinking water as the sun painted very subtly changing orange hues across the mastiff of Machhapuchhre; I thought of all the Nepali people I have met in the last week and a half and how while they are slightly more reserved than Indians they are every bit as friendly and probably even more genuine. I remembered the story a British climber told me about the sherpas that accompanied his expedition, who, despite the fact that their homes were a hard two days hike over mountainous terrain, waited beside the runway until the expedition team's plane had taken off, which, as he told me, was delayed several hours, but the sherpas insisted on waiting. I could picture them standing at the side of the runway smiling and waving as that plane finally lifted off, tucked in its wheels and disappeared. </p> +<p>I must have laid there an hour or more thinking about how much I have seen and how many little tiny incidents could be entire stories in themselves until finally I noticed the moon rising over the eastern ridge and it occurred to me suddenly that it would soon be dark and I had the better part of an hours paddle back to the landing I departed from. By the time I finally made it back the boats owner was nearly the only person left and he already had his flashlight out to guide me in amongst the boats, but he too seemed unperturbed at waiting.</p> +<h3>Sarangkot</h3> +<p>The last day I spent in Pokhara I rented a bicycle in the morning and road around Fewa Lake stopping off occasionally to watch fishermen, women watching clothes in the tributary streams and children herding goats on the now barren hay terraces at the upper end of the lake. <amp-img alt="Upper Fewa Lake, Nepal" height="118" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaterrace.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>I rested for a while in the shade of a large tree and several young boys playing on a nearby bridge came over to see if they could ride my bicycle while I rested. While the older boys took off on the bike one younger one who was too small to ride it, sat with me in the shade and I showed him how to use my camera.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Local Boy, Nepal" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaboy.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>After using up most of the memory I had left he finally got the hang of having to wait after each picture (no instance gratification on my aging equipment) before taking the next one. He was actually pretty good with the camera, in fact he took the picture of the lake above and then like most other children I've met insisted I take his picture. On the way back the chain on my bicycle broke which made for an unplanned and fairly long, but not unpleasant walk around the lake.</p> +<p>By the time I made it back to my hotel I was exhausted, but I had only one more chance to get to Sarangkot which is the main overlook for the Annapurna Range. Despite being tired there was no way I was going to be in Nepal and not see the sunset of the Himalayas. I was resting in the garden court of my hotel talking to the owners sun about hiring a taxi to get up to Sarangkot when he offered to take me by motorcycle. I've come to enjoy motorcycles on this trip so I took him up on the offer. Sarangkot is about 1200 meters above Pokhara of which it is possible to climb about 800 of them by road. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Annapurna Nepal" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/annapurnasunsetII.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>We parked the bike at the end of the road and began to ascend the nearly vertical stairs that lead up the other 400 meters. I couldn't say how long it took, perhaps an hour, but it was definitely the hardest hiking I've done in quite sometime. For those used to nonmetric systems we climbed roughly 1300 vertical feet in less than a mile of walking. And apparently the Nepalis have never heard of switchbacks.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Annapurna Sunset, Nepal" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/annapurnasunset.jpg" width="320"></amp-img>Once we finally made it to the top the exhaustion quickly became a memory and we sat on benches atop the hill looking out at the Annapurna Range. The mountains felt so close you could reach out and touch them. When the sun begin to set the wisps of clouds around the peaks turned into what looked like a pinkish mist, as if someone has airbrushed it into the scene. There is really no way to describe the view and unfortunately my camera was not up to the task either. I have put up the new photos, but they fail to capture it for me, the mountains were in fact much closer than the lens of my camera makes them seem. Nevertheless I have the images in my memory and I am glad that I made this side trip to Nepal. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e14ec6f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas.html @@ -0,0 +1,397 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Sunset Over The Himalayas - 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="Rowing Fewa Lake, laying back, looking up at the Annapurna range in the destance."> + <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/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="28.210482777870325, 83.95820616507119" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="28.210482777870325; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-12-17T21:03:43" itemprop="datePublished">December <span>17, 2005</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>t was around four in the evening when I walked down to the lake shore with the intention of renting a boat. I had spent the morning and early afternoon walking the streets of Lakeside looking up at the soaring peaks of the Annapurna Range and stopping in at some of the dozens of nearly identical curio and fabric stores, occasionally bargaining for a piece of cloth or vaguely interesting knickknack though in truth I did it more for the game of bargaining then any desire to possess the items in question. </p> +<p>Any time I could get a store owner below 25% of the original asking price I felt as if the game were over and I obligated to complete the exchange by handing over money and departing with the object. In this way I came to own several shawls, a mask supposedly antique which I don’t really believe though it is of superior quality to all the others I saw, and one wooden flute, all of which excepting the mask will be given to friends when I return home. After stopping off at my hotel to deposit the days catch on the unused second bed which I had pushed up against the wall beneath the window, I went out as I said to rent a boat and paddle about Fewa Lake.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>At just over $2 US per hour the boats were hardly a bargain (my hotel is the same per night) but I rented one anyway and opted to paddle myself, partly for the exercise and partly to escape the constant barrage of questions I had endured throughout the morning and early afternoon. <img alt="boats Fewa Lake Nepal" class="postpic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaboats.jpg" width="250"/>It is very difficult to find any peace and quiet in areas like Pokhara and while it’s fun to talk to the local people, especially the children who are almost always sincerely interested in you, whereas the others usually have an end goal of selling you something, I was wanting some peace and quiet. Part of the reason I talked to so many people is that the off-season had arrived in Nepal and very few tourists remain, in fact in my four or five hours of wandering I came across only two other tourists a woman and her daughter bargaining for some embroidered silk shawls.</p> +<p>The boat I received for my 150 rupees could easily have seated a family of six and two oarsmen and consequently moved sluggishly with one lone paddler seated at the stern. Once I got past the Varahi Temple, a small island temple not fifty meters from shore where a modest and possibly ceremonial fire was burning on the left side which sent a plume of smoke drifting out across the still lake waters and looked, with the jungle hillsides in the background, not unlike some of the foggy river scenes in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now; I turned back toward shore and saw the cake-icing snows covering the peaks of Lamgung Himal and Annapurna II. <img alt="Annapurna Range Pokhara Nepal" class="postpicright" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaannapurna.jpg" width="247"/>Such views spurred my paddling on until I was well across the lake skirting the opposite shore among a multitude of water striders darting on the placid, hill-sheltered waters where the views were even more spectacular.</p> +<p>A handful of other boats were on the lake, but I seemed to be the only foreigner out at such a late hour, indeed this was one of many times I felt that I was in fact the only foreign tourist in Pokhara. Most of the other vessels on the water were fishermen bringing in their nets for the day or heavily loaded transport canoes hauling goods from Lakeside to the isolated west shore, which is only reachable by boat or on foot. Here and there were a few people out for fun, including two boats chock full of local school children still in their blue and white uniforms, one boat full of girls and one of boys each racing the other back to the landing. After about forty-five minutes of paddling I reached a point where the views of the Annapurna range were, in the words of an Englishman I met in Katmandu, “gob smacking gorgeous.” I put down the paddle and moved to the center of the boat where the benches were wider and, using my bag a cushion, lay back against the gunnel and hung my feet over the opposite side so that they just skimmed the surface of the chilly water. I lay like that for some time snacking on a snickers bar and drinking water as the sun painted very subtly changing orange hues across the mastiff of Machhapuchhre; I thought of all the Nepali people I have met in the last week and a half and how while they are slightly more reserved than Indians they are every bit as friendly and probably even more genuine. I remembered the story a British climber told me about the sherpas that accompanied his expedition, who, despite the fact that their homes were a hard two days hike over mountainous terrain, waited beside the runway until the expedition team’s plane had taken off, which, as he told me, was delayed several hours, but the sherpas insisted on waiting. I could picture them standing at the side of the runway smiling and waving as that plane finally lifted off, tucked in its wheels and disappeared. </p> +<p>I must have laid there an hour or more thinking about how much I have seen and how many little tiny incidents could be entire stories in themselves until finally I noticed the moon rising over the eastern ridge and it occurred to me suddenly that it would soon be dark and I had the better part of an hours paddle back to the landing I departed from. By the time I finally made it back the boats owner was nearly the only person left and he already had his flashlight out to guide me in amongst the boats, but he too seemed unperturbed at waiting.</p> +<h3>Sarangkot</h3> + +<p>The last day I spent in Pokhara I rented a bicycle in the morning and road around Fewa Lake stopping off occasionally to watch fishermen, women watching clothes in the tributary streams and children herding goats on the now barren hay terraces at the upper end of the lake. <img alt="Upper Fewa Lake, Nepal" class="postpic" height="118" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaterrace.jpg" width="200"/>I rested for a while in the shade of a large tree and several young boys playing on a nearby bridge came over to see if they could ride my bicycle while I rested. While the older boys took off on the bike one younger one who was too small to ride it, sat with me in the shade and I showed him how to use my camera.</p> +<p><img alt="Local Boy, Nepal" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/fewaboy.jpg" width="150"/>After using up most of the memory I had left he finally got the hang of having to wait after each picture (no instance gratification on my aging equipment) before taking the next one. He was actually pretty good with the camera, in fact he took the picture of the lake above and then like most other children I’ve met insisted I take his picture. On the way back the chain on my bicycle broke which made for an unplanned and fairly long, but not unpleasant walk around the lake.</p> +<p>By the time I made it back to my hotel I was exhausted, but I had only one more chance to get to Sarangkot which is the main overlook for the Annapurna Range. Despite being tired there was no way I was going to be in Nepal and not see the sunset of the Himalayas. I was resting in the garden court of my hotel talking to the owners sun about hiring a taxi to get up to Sarangkot when he offered to take me by motorcycle. I’ve come to enjoy motorcycles on this trip so I took him up on the offer. Sarangkot is about 1200 meters above Pokhara of which it is possible to climb about 800 of them by road. </p> +<p><img alt="Annapurna Nepal" class="postpicright" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/annapurnasunsetII.jpg" width="180"/>We parked the bike at the end of the road and began to ascend the nearly vertical stairs that lead up the other 400 meters. I couldn’t say how long it took, perhaps an hour, but it was definitely the hardest hiking I’ve done in quite sometime. For those used to nonmetric systems we climbed roughly 1300 vertical feet in less than a mile of walking. And apparently the Nepalis have never heard of switchbacks.</p> +<p><img alt="Annapurna Sunset, Nepal" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/annapurnasunset.jpg" width="320"/>Once we finally made it to the top the exhaustion quickly became a memory and we sat on benches atop the hill looking out at the Annapurna Range. The mountains felt so close you could reach out and touch them. When the sun begin to set the wisps of clouds around the peaks turned into what looked like a pinkish mist, as if someone has airbrushed it into the scene. There is really no way to describe the view and unfortunately my camera was not up to the task either. I have put up the new photos, but they fail to capture it for me, the mountains were in fact much closer than the lens of my camera makes them seem. Nevertheless I have the images in my memory and I am glad that I made this side trip to Nepal. </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/pashupatinath" rel="prev" title=" Pashupatinath">Pashupatinath</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005" rel="next" title=" Merry Christmas 2005">Merry Christmas 2005</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<p class="comments--header">2 Comments</p> + + + + + + + <div class="comments--wrapper"> + + <div id="comment-2" class="comment"> + <noscript class="datahashloader" data-hash="default"> + <img class="gravatar" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/gravcache/default.jpg" alt="gravatar icon for Carol" /> + </noscript> + <div class="comment--head"> + <span class="who"><b>Carol</b></span> + <span class="when">September 28, 2008 at 3:09 p.m.</span> + </div> + + <div class="comment--body"> + + <p>Your blog rings back such happy memories! I can’t wait to go back to Nepal. I too have the same problem with the pics not doing the mountains justice. How on earth does one capture the “bigness” of that immense scenery?</p> + + </div> + </div> + + <div id="comment-3" 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">September 30, 2008 at 3:12 p.m.</span> + </div> + + <div class="comment--body"> + + <p>@Carol-</p> +<p>Thanks for stopping by, I’m always happy to trigger good memories.</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="30" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833484" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="8ed0551ffb7068e1399a98e500a37de45aa20155" 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 spent the morning and early afternoon walking the streets of Lakeside looking up at the soaring peaks of the Annapurna Range and stopping in at some of the dozens of nearly identical curio and fabric stores, occasionally bargaining for a piece of cloth or vaguely interesting knickknack though in truth I did it more for the game of bargaining then any desire to possess the items in question.
+
+Any time I could get a store owner below 25% of the original asking price I felt as if the game were over and I obligated to complete the exchange by handing over money and departing with the object. In this way I came to own several shawls, a mask supposedly antique which I don't really believe though it is of superior quality to all the others I saw, and one wooden flute, all of which excepting the mask will be given to friends when I return home. After stopping off at my hotel to deposit the days catch on the unused second bed which I had pushed up against the wall beneath the window, I went out as I said to rent a boat and paddle about Fewa Lake.
+
+<break>
+
+At just over $2 US per hour the boats were hardly a bargain (my hotel is the same per night) but I rented one anyway and opted to paddle myself, partly for the exercise and partly to escape the constant barrage of questions I had endured throughout the morning and early afternoon. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/fewaboats.jpg" width="250" height="180" class="postpic" alt="boats Fewa Lake Nepal" />It is very difficult to find any peace and quiet in areas like Pokhara and while it's fun to talk to the local people, especially the children who are almost always sincerely interested in you, whereas the others usually have an end goal of selling you something, I was wanting some peace and quiet. Part of the reason I talked to so many people is that the off-season had arrived in Nepal and very few tourists remain, in fact in my four or five hours of wandering I came across only two other tourists a woman and her daughter bargaining for some embroidered silk shawls.
+
+
+
+The boat I received for my 150 rupees could easily have seated a family of six and two oarsmen and consequently moved sluggishly with one lone paddler seated at the stern. Once I got past the Varahi Temple, a small island temple not fifty meters from shore where a modest and possibly ceremonial fire was burning on the left side which sent a plume of smoke drifting out across the still lake waters and looked, with the jungle hillsides in the background, not unlike some of the foggy river scenes in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now; I turned back toward shore and saw the cake-icing snows covering the peaks of Lamgung Himal and Annapurna II. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/fewaannapurna.jpg" width="247" height="150" class="postpicright" alt="Annapurna Range Pokhara Nepal" />Such views spurred my paddling on until I was well across the lake skirting the opposite shore among a multitude of water striders darting on the placid, hill-sheltered waters where the views were even more spectacular.
+
+
+
+A handful of other boats were on the lake, but I seemed to be the only foreigner out at such a late hour, indeed this was one of many times I felt that I was in fact the only foreign tourist in Pokhara. Most of the other vessels on the water were fishermen bringing in their nets for the day or heavily loaded transport canoes hauling goods from Lakeside to the isolated west shore, which is only reachable by boat or on foot. Here and there were a few people out for fun, including two boats chock full of local school children still in their blue and white uniforms, one boat full of girls and one of boys each racing the other back to the landing. After about forty-five minutes of paddling I reached a point where the views of the Annapurna range were, in the words of an Englishman I met in Katmandu, "gob smacking gorgeous." I put down the paddle and moved to the center of the boat where the benches were wider and, using my bag a cushion, lay back against the gunnel and hung my feet over the opposite side so that they just skimmed the surface of the chilly water. I lay like that for some time snacking on a snickers bar and drinking water as the sun painted very subtly changing orange hues across the mastiff of Machhapuchhre; I thought of all the Nepali people I have met in the last week and a half and how while they are slightly more reserved than Indians they are every bit as friendly and probably even more genuine. I remembered the story a British climber told me about the sherpas that accompanied his expedition, who, despite the fact that their homes were a hard two days hike over mountainous terrain, waited beside the runway until the expedition team's plane had taken off, which, as he told me, was delayed several hours, but the sherpas insisted on waiting. I could picture them standing at the side of the runway smiling and waving as that plane finally lifted off, tucked in its wheels and disappeared.
+
+
+
+I must have laid there an hour or more thinking about how much I have seen and how many little tiny incidents could be entire stories in themselves until finally I noticed the moon rising over the eastern ridge and it occurred to me suddenly that it would soon be dark and I had the better part of an hours paddle back to the landing I departed from. By the time I finally made it back the boats owner was nearly the only person left and he already had his flashlight out to guide me in amongst the boats, but he too seemed unperturbed at waiting.
+
+
+
+<h3>Sarangkot</h3>
+
+
+
+The last day I spent in Pokhara I rented a bicycle in the morning and road around Fewa Lake stopping off occasionally to watch fishermen, women watching clothes in the tributary streams and children herding goats on the now barren hay terraces at the upper end of the lake. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/fewaterrace.jpg" width="200" height="118" class="postpic" alt="Upper Fewa Lake, Nepal" />I rested for a while in the shade of a large tree and several young boys playing on a nearby bridge came over to see if they could ride my bicycle while I rested. While the older boys took off on the bike one younger one who was too small to ride it, sat with me in the shade and I showed him how to use my camera.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/fewaboy.jpg" width="150" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Local Boy, Nepal" />After using up most of the memory I had left he finally got the hang of having to wait after each picture (no instance gratification on my aging equipment) before taking the next one. He was actually pretty good with the camera, in fact he took the picture of the lake above and then like most other children I've met insisted I take his picture. On the way back the chain on my bicycle broke which made for an unplanned and fairly long, but not unpleasant walk around the lake.
+
+
+
+By the time I made it back to my hotel I was exhausted, but I had only one more chance to get to Sarangkot which is the main overlook for the Annapurna Range. Despite being tired there was no way I was going to be in Nepal and not see the sunset of the Himalayas. I was resting in the garden court of my hotel talking to the owners sun about hiring a taxi to get up to Sarangkot when he offered to take me by motorcycle. I've come to enjoy motorcycles on this trip so I took him up on the offer. Sarangkot is about 1200 meters above Pokhara of which it is possible to climb about 800 of them by road.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/annapurnasunsetII.jpg" width="180" height="200" class="postpicright" alt="Annapurna Nepal" />We parked the bike at the end of the road and began to ascend the nearly vertical stairs that lead up the other 400 meters. I couldn't say how long it took, perhaps an hour, but it was definitely the hardest hiking I've done in quite sometime. For those used to nonmetric systems we climbed roughly 1300 vertical feet in less than a mile of walking. And apparently the Nepalis have never heard of switchbacks.
+
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/annapurnasunset.jpg" width="320" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Annapurna Sunset, Nepal" />Once we finally made it to the top the exhaustion quickly became a memory and we sat on benches atop the hill looking out at the Annapurna Range. The mountains felt so close you could reach out and touch them. When the sun begin to set the wisps of clouds around the peaks turned into what looked like a pinkish mist, as if someone has airbrushed it into the scene. There is really no way to describe the view and unfortunately my camera was not up to the task either. I have put up the new photos, but they fail to capture it for me, the mountains were in fact much closer than the lens of my camera makes them seem. Nevertheless I have the images in my memory and I am glad that I made this side trip to Nepal. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/taj-express.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/taj-express.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e40f0e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/taj-express.amp @@ -0,0 +1,188 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Taj Express</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/12/taj-express"> + <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/2005/12/taj-express"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="The Taj Mahal is one of the 7 Wonders of the World. 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I tried to see too much too fast. I don't regret what I have done, but were I to do it again I would spend twice as long and try to cover half as much ground. When I return, and return I shall, I will come for at least two months and concentrate on two or three states at the most. As it is I nearly missed the Taj Mahal. </p> +<p>It wasn't until a couple of days before I headed to Delhi that I realized it would be silly to come all the way to India and not see the Taj Mahal. Luckily for me there is the Taj Express train which runs daily from Delhi to Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) and takes only about two and a half hours each way. On the train into Delhi I met a fellow American named John who had the same plan as I did so we got tickets and somehow managed to get up at 5:30 AM and catch the train.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>But before I saw the Taj Mahal I visited the Agra Fort. I have seen about five forts in India now and I went to the Agra Fort more to pass the time than out of any real desire to see anything, but I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. <amp-img alt="Agra Fort, India" height="153" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/agrafort.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>The Agra Fort is a massive red sandstone structure constructed by several rulers over a couple hundred years. It was originally built as an actual fort and then later a palace was added in. As is typical of India designs that were started by one ruler and finished by another, the fort has a sort of split personality. Half done in ornately carved red sandstone and half done in also ornately carved white marble, the blend is not so contrasting as you would think.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Archways Agra Fort India" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/agraarches.jpg" width="113"></amp-img>The sandstone is finely carved which I know I have said before, but the thing you have to realize is that sandstone crumbles and is probably the weakest stone out there, so to build with it, let alone carve anything out of it, is nothing sort of astonishing and to carve it with the kind of detail that the Indians have is extraordinary. It must be a very frustrating process, I imagine pieces must have frequently chipped or broken and had to be started all over again. Agra Fort was of a more Muslim design than those I saw in Rajasthan and owes this style of scalloped, arched colonnades to the influence of Persia. I was never able to find out for sure, but the Pearl Palace section seemed like it must have been designed by the same minds behind the Taj Mahal as it uses similar inlaid stones to create floral patterns in the marble.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunbeam Agra Fort, India" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/agrasunbeam.jpg" width="180"></amp-img>In one area of the fort right near the entrance to the main palace there was a very dark room with a single screened window that let through an extraordinary little beam of light like a spotlight of sun that slowly migrated across the floor as the morning went on until, by the time we left, it was gone entirely.</p> +<p>After a few hours in the Fort, my traveling companion and I walked through a rather large park separating the Fort from the Taj Mahal. Like Prospect Park in Brooklyn this park leaned to the wild rather than cultivated side, though there were some areas with fountains and the like. Unfortunately the smog in Agra is very bad and most of the trees had a brownish cast and thick coating of diesel dust on their leaves. Since he was leaving Delhi by plane the next morning, John wanted to do a little shopping while I opted to just head straight into the Taj Mahal complex. After paying the exorbitant 750 rupee entrance fee, you walk past a few red sandstone structures and hang a left toward the massive red sandstone entry gate which is inscribed with verses from the Koran. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Entry Gate, Taj Mahal, India" height="141" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tajentry.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>The room you pass through is rather dark and it was difficult to see much detail on the inside, but I think the point of the darkness was really to emphasis what the entry arch opens up into. As I have mentioned previously the Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, along with the great wall in China, the pyramids in Egypt etc. Given this level of hype I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but in fact I find it difficult to describe what it's like to pass out of the gate and into the Taj Garden area, there are probably at least dozen synonyms of beautiful that I could toss out, but none would begin to cover the experience. I have never in my life seen anything so extravagant, elegant and colossal. It took twenty-two years to build, but standing in front of the garden waterways staring out at the sheer mass of marble that must of flattened at least one mountain, possibly more for its creation, twenty-two years sounds unbelievably fast.</p> +<p>The main building, the famous one you see in pictures, is the single most massive structure of marble I've ever seen. It sits on a raised platform about twenty meters high and then towers over everything in the surrounding area by at least two hundred meters. The main building is flanked on either side by a pair of mosques, only one of which is actually a mosque, the other, because it faces the wrong way, is purely for symmetry. And symmetry is the theme of the Taj Mahal; the main mausoleum building is perfectly symmetrical and looks exactly the same on all four sides. In each corner, set about one hundred meters from the building are four minarets made of the same semi-translucent white marble that makes up the rest of the mausoleum. The marble is covered in inlaid stone and semi precious minerals some or which are floral patterns and some of which form verses of the Koran. The vaulted archways of the main building have some of the most complicated curves and vaulting you can possibly imagine and yet are made of massive blocks of marble, a marvel of engineering that probably couldn't be repeated today without laser saws. And let me point out that when I say massive and colossal I don't necessarily mean just big, it is big, but not that big, it is, well it's so solid, so unbroken by windows or anything else save archways which really just make it seem even more solid. It's very difficult to capture with words.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Taj Mahal India" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/taj.jpg" width="232"></amp-img>I spent about three hours wandering around the garden sitting down on different benches and just staring at the Taj Mahal. It's quite literally indescribable. I finally sat down on one bench on the west side of the garden and tried to let the place sink in a little bit but it just wouldn't do it. It is too big, too massive, too marble, too beautiful to swallow. Where the Louvre would take two lifetimes to see every work of art, the Taj Mahal would take two lifetimes simply for its existence to become real to me. The grounds were crowded with tourists, Indian and Foreign alike, but not so crowded as the guidebooks make it sound, they milled about pointing cameras at the Taj often with friends or lovers in the foreground as if just the building itself would be too much, that it needed some sort of human reference point beside it to make any sense.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Taj Mahal Sunset, India" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tajsunset.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>Perhaps what makes the Taj Mahal so magnificent is that it provokes no singular association, no context, no memory that can be associated with it, but rather seems to call on all your references, all your memories and all your past associations at once so that your brain is overwhelmed and goes completely blank leaving you with the sensation that it might be a threat to your very existence, that the Taj were capable of wiping you to a blank slate and then writing or not writing whatever it might choose, so that the feeling you are left with is that the Taj Mahal seems mythically, spiritually, as well as architecturally, to have risen from nowhere, without equal or context.</p> +<p>And that is the only stab I will make at describing what is a singular experience, and I will not even begin to tell you what is on the inside in the hope that perhaps one day you will make the journey to see it for yourself. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/taj-express.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/taj-express.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..402ca98 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/12/taj-express.html @@ -0,0 +1,339 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Taj Express - 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 Taj Mahal is one of the 7 Wonders of the World. 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I tried to see too much too fast. I don’t regret what I have done, but were I to do it again I would spend twice as long and try to cover half as much ground. When I return, and return I shall, I will come for at least two months and concentrate on two or three states at the most. As it is I nearly missed the Taj Mahal. </p> +<p>It wasn’t until a couple of days before I headed to Delhi that I realized it would be silly to come all the way to India and not see the Taj Mahal. Luckily for me there is the Taj Express train which runs daily from Delhi to Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) and takes only about two and a half hours each way. On the train into Delhi I met a fellow American named John who had the same plan as I did so we got tickets and somehow managed to get up at 5:30 AM and catch the train.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>But before I saw the Taj Mahal I visited the Agra Fort. I have seen about five forts in India now and I went to the Agra Fort more to pass the time than out of any real desire to see anything, but I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. <img alt="Agra Fort, India" class="postpicright" height="153" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/agrafort.jpg" width="240"/>The Agra Fort is a massive red sandstone structure constructed by several rulers over a couple hundred years. It was originally built as an actual fort and then later a palace was added in. As is typical of India designs that were started by one ruler and finished by another, the fort has a sort of split personality. Half done in ornately carved red sandstone and half done in also ornately carved white marble, the blend is not so contrasting as you would think.</p> +<p><img alt="Archways Agra Fort India" class="postpic" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/agraarches.jpg" width="113"/>The sandstone is finely carved which I know I have said before, but the thing you have to realize is that sandstone crumbles and is probably the weakest stone out there, so to build with it, let alone carve anything out of it, is nothing sort of astonishing and to carve it with the kind of detail that the Indians have is extraordinary. It must be a very frustrating process, I imagine pieces must have frequently chipped or broken and had to be started all over again. Agra Fort was of a more Muslim design than those I saw in Rajasthan and owes this style of scalloped, arched colonnades to the influence of Persia. I was never able to find out for sure, but the Pearl Palace section seemed like it must have been designed by the same minds behind the Taj Mahal as it uses similar inlaid stones to create floral patterns in the marble.</p> +<p><img alt="Sunbeam Agra Fort, India" class="postpic" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/agrasunbeam.jpg" width="180"/>In one area of the fort right near the entrance to the main palace there was a very dark room with a single screened window that let through an extraordinary little beam of light like a spotlight of sun that slowly migrated across the floor as the morning went on until, by the time we left, it was gone entirely.</p> +<p>After a few hours in the Fort, my traveling companion and I walked through a rather large park separating the Fort from the Taj Mahal. Like Prospect Park in Brooklyn this park leaned to the wild rather than cultivated side, though there were some areas with fountains and the like. Unfortunately the smog in Agra is very bad and most of the trees had a brownish cast and thick coating of diesel dust on their leaves. Since he was leaving Delhi by plane the next morning, John wanted to do a little shopping while I opted to just head straight into the Taj Mahal complex. After paying the exorbitant 750 rupee entrance fee, you walk past a few red sandstone structures and hang a left toward the massive red sandstone entry gate which is inscribed with verses from the Koran. </p> +<p><img alt="Entry Gate, Taj Mahal, India" class="postpicright" height="141" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tajentry.jpg" width="200"/>The room you pass through is rather dark and it was difficult to see much detail on the inside, but I think the point of the darkness was really to emphasis what the entry arch opens up into. As I have mentioned previously the Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, along with the great wall in China, the pyramids in Egypt etc. Given this level of hype I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but in fact I find it difficult to describe what it’s like to pass out of the gate and into the Taj Garden area, there are probably at least dozen synonyms of beautiful that I could toss out, but none would begin to cover the experience. I have never in my life seen anything so extravagant, elegant and colossal. It took twenty-two years to build, but standing in front of the garden waterways staring out at the sheer mass of marble that must of flattened at least one mountain, possibly more for its creation, twenty-two years sounds unbelievably fast.</p> +<p>The main building, the famous one you see in pictures, is the single most massive structure of marble I’ve ever seen. It sits on a raised platform about twenty meters high and then towers over everything in the surrounding area by at least two hundred meters. The main building is flanked on either side by a pair of mosques, only one of which is actually a mosque, the other, because it faces the wrong way, is purely for symmetry. And symmetry is the theme of the Taj Mahal; the main mausoleum building is perfectly symmetrical and looks exactly the same on all four sides. In each corner, set about one hundred meters from the building are four minarets made of the same semi-translucent white marble that makes up the rest of the mausoleum. The marble is covered in inlaid stone and semi precious minerals some or which are floral patterns and some of which form verses of the Koran. The vaulted archways of the main building have some of the most complicated curves and vaulting you can possibly imagine and yet are made of massive blocks of marble, a marvel of engineering that probably couldn’t be repeated today without laser saws. And let me point out that when I say massive and colossal I don’t necessarily mean just big, it is big, but not that big, it is, well it’s so solid, so unbroken by windows or anything else save archways which really just make it seem even more solid. It’s very difficult to capture with words.</p> +<p><img alt="Taj Mahal India" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/taj.jpg" width="232"/>I spent about three hours wandering around the garden sitting down on different benches and just staring at the Taj Mahal. It’s quite literally indescribable. I finally sat down on one bench on the west side of the garden and tried to let the place sink in a little bit but it just wouldn’t do it. It is too big, too massive, too marble, too beautiful to swallow. Where the Louvre would take two lifetimes to see every work of art, the Taj Mahal would take two lifetimes simply for its existence to become real to me. The grounds were crowded with tourists, Indian and Foreign alike, but not so crowded as the guidebooks make it sound, they milled about pointing cameras at the Taj often with friends or lovers in the foreground as if just the building itself would be too much, that it needed some sort of human reference point beside it to make any sense.</p> +<p><img alt="Taj Mahal Sunset, India" class="postpicright" height="240" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tajsunset.jpg" width="200"/>Perhaps what makes the Taj Mahal so magnificent is that it provokes no singular association, no context, no memory that can be associated with it, but rather seems to call on all your references, all your memories and all your past associations at once so that your brain is overwhelmed and goes completely blank leaving you with the sensation that it might be a threat to your very existence, that the Taj were capable of wiping you to a blank slate and then writing or not writing whatever it might choose, so that the feeling you are left with is that the Taj Mahal seems mythically, spiritually, as well as architecturally, to have risen from nowhere, without equal or context.</p> +<p>And that is the only stab I will make at describing what is a singular experience, and I will not even begin to tell you what is on the inside in the hope that perhaps one day you will make the journey to see it for yourself. </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/camel-no-name" rel="prev" title=" On a Camel With No Name">On a Camel With No Name</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/goodbye-india" rel="next" title=" Goodbye India">Goodbye India</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="26" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833485" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="586fb9709e481810994f40d477bd712b5739e594" 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 tried to see too much too fast. I don't regret what I have done, but were I to do it again I would spend twice as long and try to cover half as much ground. When I return, and return I shall, I will come for at least two months and concentrate on two or three states at the most. As it is I nearly missed the Taj Mahal.
+
+It wasn't until a couple of days before I headed to Delhi that I realized it would be silly to come all the way to India and not see the Taj Mahal. Luckily for me there is the Taj Express train which runs daily from Delhi to Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) and takes only about two and a half hours each way. On the train into Delhi I met a fellow American named John who had the same plan as I did so we got tickets and somehow managed to get up at 5:30 AM and catch the train.
+
+<break>
+
+But before I saw the Taj Mahal I visited the Agra Fort. I have seen about five forts in India now and I went to the Agra Fort more to pass the time than out of any real desire to see anything, but I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/agrafort.jpg" width="240" height="153" class="postpicright" alt="Agra Fort, India" />The Agra Fort is a massive red sandstone structure constructed by several rulers over a couple hundred years. It was originally built as an actual fort and then later a palace was added in. As is typical of India designs that were started by one ruler and finished by another, the fort has a sort of split personality. Half done in ornately carved red sandstone and half done in also ornately carved white marble, the blend is not so contrasting as you would think.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/agraarches.jpg" width="113" height="150" class="postpic" alt="Archways Agra Fort India" />The sandstone is finely carved which I know I have said before, but the thing you have to realize is that sandstone crumbles and is probably the weakest stone out there, so to build with it, let alone carve anything out of it, is nothing sort of astonishing and to carve it with the kind of detail that the Indians have is extraordinary. It must be a very frustrating process, I imagine pieces must have frequently chipped or broken and had to be started all over again. Agra Fort was of a more Muslim design than those I saw in Rajasthan and owes this style of scalloped, arched colonnades to the influence of Persia. I was never able to find out for sure, but the Pearl Palace section seemed like it must have been designed by the same minds behind the Taj Mahal as it uses similar inlaid stones to create floral patterns in the marble.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/agrasunbeam.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpic" alt="Sunbeam Agra Fort, India" />In one area of the fort right near the entrance to the main palace there was a very dark room with a single screened window that let through an extraordinary little beam of light like a spotlight of sun that slowly migrated across the floor as the morning went on until, by the time we left, it was gone entirely.
+
+
+
+After a few hours in the Fort, my traveling companion and I walked through a rather large park separating the Fort from the Taj Mahal. Like Prospect Park in Brooklyn this park leaned to the wild rather than cultivated side, though there were some areas with fountains and the like. Unfortunately the smog in Agra is very bad and most of the trees had a brownish cast and thick coating of diesel dust on their leaves. Since he was leaving Delhi by plane the next morning, John wanted to do a little shopping while I opted to just head straight into the Taj Mahal complex. After paying the exorbitant 750 rupee entrance fee, you walk past a few red sandstone structures and hang a left toward the massive red sandstone entry gate which is inscribed with verses from the Koran.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/tajentry.jpg" width="200" height="141" class="postpicright" alt="Entry Gate, Taj Mahal, India" />The room you pass through is rather dark and it was difficult to see much detail on the inside, but I think the point of the darkness was really to emphasis what the entry arch opens up into. As I have mentioned previously the Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, along with the great wall in China, the pyramids in Egypt etc. Given this level of hype I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but in fact I find it difficult to describe what it's like to pass out of the gate and into the Taj Garden area, there are probably at least dozen synonyms of beautiful that I could toss out, but none would begin to cover the experience. I have never in my life seen anything so extravagant, elegant and colossal. It took twenty-two years to build, but standing in front of the garden waterways staring out at the sheer mass of marble that must of flattened at least one mountain, possibly more for its creation, twenty-two years sounds unbelievably fast.
+
+
+
+The main building, the famous one you see in pictures, is the single most massive structure of marble I've ever seen. It sits on a raised platform about twenty meters high and then towers over everything in the surrounding area by at least two hundred meters. The main building is flanked on either side by a pair of mosques, only one of which is actually a mosque, the other, because it faces the wrong way, is purely for symmetry. And symmetry is the theme of the Taj Mahal; the main mausoleum building is perfectly symmetrical and looks exactly the same on all four sides. In each corner, set about one hundred meters from the building are four minarets made of the same semi-translucent white marble that makes up the rest of the mausoleum. The marble is covered in inlaid stone and semi precious minerals some or which are floral patterns and some of which form verses of the Koran. The vaulted archways of the main building have some of the most complicated curves and vaulting you can possibly imagine and yet are made of massive blocks of marble, a marvel of engineering that probably couldn't be repeated today without laser saws. And let me point out that when I say massive and colossal I don't necessarily mean just big, it is big, but not that big, it is, well it's so solid, so unbroken by windows or anything else save archways which really just make it seem even more solid. It's very difficult to capture with words.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/taj.jpg" width="232" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Taj Mahal India" />I spent about three hours wandering around the garden sitting down on different benches and just staring at the Taj Mahal. It's quite literally indescribable. I finally sat down on one bench on the west side of the garden and tried to let the place sink in a little bit but it just wouldn't do it. It is too big, too massive, too marble, too beautiful to swallow. Where the Louvre would take two lifetimes to see every work of art, the Taj Mahal would take two lifetimes simply for its existence to become real to me. The grounds were crowded with tourists, Indian and Foreign alike, but not so crowded as the guidebooks make it sound, they milled about pointing cameras at the Taj often with friends or lovers in the foreground as if just the building itself would be too much, that it needed some sort of human reference point beside it to make any sense.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/tajsunset.jpg" width="200" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Taj Mahal Sunset, India" />Perhaps what makes the Taj Mahal so magnificent is that it provokes no singular association, no context, no memory that can be associated with it, but rather seems to call on all your references, all your memories and all your past associations at once so that your brain is overwhelmed and goes completely blank leaving you with the sensation that it might be a threat to your very existence, that the Taj were capable of wiping you to a blank slate and then writing or not writing whatever it might choose, so that the feeling you are left with is that the Taj Mahal seems mythically, spiritually, as well as architecturally, to have risen from nowhere, without equal or context.
+
+
+
+And that is the only stab I will make at describing what is a singular experience, and I will not even begin to tell you what is on the inside in the hope that perhaps one day you will make the journey to see it for yourself. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f72abe --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,232 @@ +<!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>2005</li> + + </ul> + <main role="main" id="writing-archive" class="archive"> + <h1>2005, on luxagraf</h1> + <ul class="date-archive"> + <li class="dater"><span>February 2005</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/02/farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson" title="Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson">Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson</a> + <time datetime="2005-02-24T18:11:10-05:00">Feb 24, 2005</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>March 2005</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/03/one-nation-under-groove" title="One Nation Under a Groove">One Nation Under a Groove</a> + <time datetime="2005-03-25T18:12:59-05:00">Mar 25, 2005</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>May 2005</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/05/new-adventures-hifi-text" title="New Adventures in HiFi Text">New Adventures in HiFi Text</a> + <time datetime="2005-05-12T21:21:44-04:00">May 12, 2005</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>October 2005</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/sainte-chapelle" title="Sainte Chapelle">Sainte Chapelle</a> + <time datetime="2005-10-28T18:25:56-04:00">Oct 28, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/living-railway-car" title="Living in a Railway Car">Living in a Railway Car</a> + <time datetime="2005-10-24T11:20:54-04:00">Oct 24, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/twenty-more-minutes-go" title="Twenty More Minutes to Go">Twenty More Minutes to Go</a> + <time datetime="2005-10-20T18:19:10-04:00">Oct 20, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/tips-and-resources" title="Travel Tips and Resources">Travel Tips and Resources</a> + <time datetime="2005-10-19T18:14:56-04:00">Oct 19, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/new-luddites" title="The New Luddites">The New Luddites</a> + <time datetime="2005-10-08T18:17:45-04:00">Oct 08, 2005</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>November 2005</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur" title="Around Udaipur">Around Udaipur</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-30T19:05:47-05:00">Nov 30, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/monsoon-palace" title="The Monsoon Palace">The Monsoon Palace</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-29T12:03:31-05:00">Nov 29, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" title="The City Palace">The City Palace</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-28T22:00:46-05:00">Nov 28, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" title="Living in Airport Terminals">Living in Airport Terminals</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-27T11:56:20-05:00">Nov 27, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market" title="Anjuna Market">Anjuna Market</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-24T00:58:15-05:00">Nov 24, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story" title="Fish Story">Fish Story</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-20T00:54:46-05:00">Nov 20, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" title="The Backwaters of Kerala">The Backwaters of Kerala</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-15T00:53:50-05:00">Nov 15, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed" title="Vasco de Gama Exhumed">Vasco de Gama Exhumed</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-11T00:51:41-05:00">Nov 11, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" title="Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine">Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-08T18:30:13-05:00">Nov 08, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead" title="Bury Your Dead">Bury Your Dead</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-06T18:28:52-05:00">Nov 06, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live" title="The Houses We Live In">The Houses We Live In</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-01T10:40:00-05:00">Nov 01, 2005</time> + </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li class="dater"><span>December 2005</span> + <ul> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/merry-christmas-2005" title="Merry Christmas 2005">Merry Christmas 2005</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-25T18:27:48-05:00">Dec 25, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/sunset-over-himalayas" title="Sunset Over the Himalayas">Sunset Over the Himalayas</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-17T21:03:43-05:00">Dec 17, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/pashupatinath" title="Pashupatinath">Pashupatinath</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-15T18:02:59-05:00">Dec 15, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/durbar-square-kathmandu" title="Durbar Square Kathmandu">Durbar Square Kathmandu</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-15T17:57:48-05:00">Dec 15, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/goodbye-india" title="Goodbye India">Goodbye India</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-10T17:53:25-05:00">Dec 10, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/taj-express" title="The Taj Express">The Taj Express</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-09T17:49:40-05:00">Dec 09, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/camel-no-name" title="On a Camel With No Name">On a Camel With No Name</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-05T22:46:54-05:00">Dec 05, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/majestic-fort" title="The Majestic Fort">The Majestic Fort</a> + <time datetime="2005-12-02T17:40:02-05:00">Dec 02, 2005</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 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